Help me understand...Follow

Ok, I don't understand the damage meter thing. I am a 46 mage and it seems that people only care about comming out on top in damage doing instance runs. I got into a group last night with a shadow priest who was bragging about how he was gonna be top in the group. Ok, fine, epeen. After the first fight, pull 3, sheep one, we are fighting away, he has 0 mana. After a couple of fights like this he is way ahead in the damage but we have to rest after every fight. Also, the mob is all over the place.

At this point I lose it. I tell him that this instance is going to take twice as long if he doesn't conserve some mana. "STFU and mnd your own business"

Ok its on now, no more sheeping, fire nova and arcane explosin, any aoe I can do. I admitt that it was wrong of me, but I still don't understnad why people can't see that there is more to running an instance than who did the most damage, like letting the tank keep the hate...I usually scorch my way thru and it goes quick with little to no stops for mana

Meh I guess I am just being a whiny little *****, I can be the top DPS in almost any party, and die every 3rd fight....hehe

ROFL!

Did you out-damage him after doing lots of AOE? And, did the priest shoot you both? LOL.

Some people are damage meter driven. I think it can be a good thing in select instances... for example, when pounding on a boss, you need to crank out as much damage as you can (if need be, use invisibility, then nuke to oblivion). In *that* case, being top damager helps your group out a lot, but in most instances you'll be sheeping. That takes both time and mana. The time = less damage. Then, if you're not on the top of the damage chart, so what. If they give you grief, tell em to get bent.

I guarantee you that the priest/healer will love you for sheeping and doing your job.

*edit: All that being said, you should be near the top of the damage meter or you may not be playing your class right or have a bad spec. That's used for self-evaluation.

Edited, Apr 5th 2007 10:57am by ktangent

Damage meter is useless. It's all about your contribution to the group, remember that.

Useless is a mighty strong word, as with all tools there is use, and overuse. Dammage/Thret meeters are a godsend, they allow the members of a riad to keep themselves in check. They can prevent wipes as well as allow for raid coradunaters to provide positive feedback to members of a raid.

Now players who think being #1 makes a lick of diffrence are just being silly, or for that matter anybody running a dammage meeter in a pre 60 envinroment(even then I would say 10 man and up). Class leaders can use Dammage meeters to evaluate new members to the raid/Guild; If the class leader sees somebody is WAY far behind, they can watch the casting cycle and maybe give some input.

I could go on for weeks about how DPS meeters are good, but nobody can deny that they are misused more often than not.

Threat meters are useful; hell, as a shadow priest I almost rely on them.
Damage meters are pretty much useless beyond epeen reasons unless you have at least 3-4 of them synced up in raids to see who's not pulling their weight. Unsynced damage meters = useless.
Though I admit it is fun to top the damage meter and also have the main healer do only about 5k more healing than you in Steamvaults (shadow priest ^_^).

As said, it's your contribution to the group, not the damage. I'm usually below people's pets in Shadow Labs because I spend most of the instance mind controlling mobs.

that's the only reason i'm not terribly upset that mages aren't the best damage. there are jobs mages can do, and we perform them. not that there aren't other classes that do those jobs better, but that when i'm playing my mage my mage, i don't yet feel completely useless.

if i were a shadow priest and couldn't top mages in damage, then i would be upset: what would be the point in being a gimped healer if i couldn't even make up for that? in the case of mages, while we don't outperform rogue dps, we do have more utility than they do, and i feel that this makes up for our weaker dps output.

in 5 mans, meters are meaningless. damage meters are purely tools for raids. threat meters can be handy for 5 mans, but in general the fights are so straight-forward that you can just "eyeball it" and do fine.

you were perfectly within your rights to reign in that shadow mage.

Damage meters are very usefull in an raid enviroment if you know what to do with them.

It tells you tons of information about usefullness of different classes and different specs in different situations,
it often also tells you why you did wipe. (not enough damage on the boss, some healers being overburdened while others arent at all, etc) And then you can distill actions to optimize youre game/raid.
And it allows you to compare different group compositions over different runs.

Without damage meters officers are flailing in the dark and are stuck in reciting common posted strategys on the internet, damage meters are the only major source of statistical information.

*IMPORTANT* Ive heard various storys of ads on this site being corrupt and stealing youre WoW account so i advise against using this site if youre using Internet Explorer.

KLHthreatmeter

Edited, Apr 6th 2007 9:28am by Sjans

Of course.

Also, I'd like to note that the newest version of KTM is awesome...it shows the reduction on each tick of invis. So if it breaks, you know where you are.