DamageMeters as a Raid Tool
“Dear BRK, you need to rethink your priority on damagemeters. I know that you have stated in the past that damagemeters don’t prove your skill, but it seems that lately you have placed a lot of your superiority over other classes by screenshotting damagemeters as evidence. This is just false.
“Now that I have dropped my Hunter to alt status and run a Shadow Priest full-time, I am just now getting geared to the point where I can compete with some of the other Hunters in the guild. It’s at this point where I realize why I was never beaten on the meters by Mages and Shadow Priests… threat mitigation. Hunters have no limitation to the damage they can output. Pew-pew, FD, pew pew, lewtz. Shadow Priests (and I think Mages, but I’m not positive) have no aggro reset, only a temporary threat reducer which gives back all your threat after the 10 seconds is up, so all our threat is limited by our tank.
“If the tank isnt doing all he can to get his threat up, we usually end up having to stop DPSing for 10-15 seconds just to let him catch up. This of course makes us cry a little when we see the Hunter next to us continue through his/her rotation, just to FD and continue.
“Why would I bring this up to you? I’m still a Hunter at heart and would never give up my attitude that the Hunter class is the best to play, but I think some attitudes need to change towards what constitutes a good DPS class. Damagemeters are a good tool when used with proper context… in this case, it would be your tank.
“Here is the bottomline - I dont think showing the damagemeters is an appropriate way to show one’s skill/gear without mentioning how well the tank did during this particular collection of damage data. Misfit”
What is the purpose of a hunter, boys and girls? Have we said it enough times so you’ve memorized it?
The purpose of a hunter is to provide massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS.
So Misfit is 100% right about saying that a hunter should not be considered superior because he tops the damage meters. In fact, we’re pretty darn sure we’ve never espoused that particular belief. Our superiority is based upon much more empirical evidence than that, natch.
But let’s talk about damage meters and why they are important. As Misfit said, a hunter’s ability to control his aggro, thus allowing him to pour on DPS without affecting the tank’s ability to do his job, is tremendously enviable. And it is specifically because we can wipe ourselves from the mob’s threat list that hunters are capable of providing the amount of destruction we do.
So what would you say about a hunter who was comparably geared to a fire mage, yet the mage significantly out-DPS’d the hunter? You’d say that hunter maybe wasn’t doing is job, that’s what. The mage has to throttle his DPS so that he doesn’t pull aggro whereas the hunter doesn’t. In an evenly-geared match, over a long period of time, who should do more total damage? Unless the tank is capable of holding aggro during the fire mage’s crit-party, the hunter should. But what if he doesn’t? What if he’s not first or second, but fourth or fifth?
Something would be Wrong.
And that’s what BRK recommends guilds use damage meters to accomplish: to find the people who are, for whatever reason, not living up to their potential.
A hunter who tops the damage meters is doing his job. A hunter who is running in fourth place out of ten is either pooly trained, geared, spec’d, or just AFK-ing his way through the instance. Do you want an AFK hunter grabbing purples? We sure don’t.
Do the DPS-classes use damage meters for bragging rights? Darn tootin’ we do. Does BRK take pride in his ability to consistently do his job? You betcha. Do we think we’re superior to others because of our ability to bring truckloads of DPS to a fight? No; it’s what we were built to do!
Misfit’s final point about mentioning how well the tank performs his job is a problem for us. We are neither qualified nor willing to judge a tank’s performance. We love tanks at BRK the Blog and try to give them Hunter Love whenever possible. We Misdirect on trash mobs to give them an added boost. We bring them food that will buff their strength and stamina. We try to tip them to help pay for their repair costs. But we cannot say how great or poorly a tank is doing because we don’t have the ability or knowledge to measure their performance.
But let’s continue to talk about using damage meters as a tool. Last night, Aetherial Cirle took down Curator on our second night. BRK was standby on the first night, so last night was our first foray to Curator since… sheesh, we don’t really remember; it’s been a while. How did we do? 
This data was compiled from our entry through the side door, through Curator, and stopped after our first and only attempt at Shade of Aran. If you add our damage with Hobbes’, you’ll see we top 21% of the total damage, which is almost 5% higher than the druid at the top of the list. BRK is doing his job and the rest of the raid, if they can overlook our massive and uncontrollable ego, knows we’re valuable and worth keeping around.
We were syncing with two druids and the main tank so the coverage should have been pretty good. Starting at the top of the list, we have a druid as #1, rogue #2, druid 4 and 5, off-tank at 7, warlock at 8, and main tank at 9.
Is there something wrong with this picture? We’re not sure but isn’t the warlock is too low? We know less about ‘locks than we do tanks but shouldn’t she be higher? The raid leader was concerned, too. Perhaps he’ll investigate, see if her spec could use tweaking or maybe she’s being used inefficiently. It could all be his fault for not putting her talents to their most efficient use, who knows, but DPS on the Curator adds was definitely lacking at first.
During the our first two attempts on Curator, we put Hobbes on the boss because we remember being told that a hunter’s pet will do nothing but cause problems if he joins the fray with the add-killers. And the first two times we tried Curator with Hobbes just beating on the boss, the raid wiped because the arcane adds weren’t being brought down quickly enough.
So for the third attempt, we kept Hobbes with us and used him to help burn down the adds. With Pet Mend kept up at all times, Hobbes took whatever they could dish out and smacked them aside like nothing. He tore those things up and gave us the extra oomph we needed to burn the adds down quickly enough for the healers to keep everybody alive. Down went Curator and our GM got some spiffy Tier 4 gloves.
Will anything be done about the seeming lack of Warlock DPS? We don’t know, we haven’t been asked for our opinion, our knowledge of warlock mechanics is pathetic and it’s not our prerogative to get involved uninvited. But if there was a hunter in our group who was showing up that low, we’d definitely have something to say.
And that’s why we recommend posting damage meters; to identify problems, not for bragging rights.
Although if Doomilias is in our raid, we do want to rub his face in our uberness, of course.
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36 Responses to “DamageMeters as a Raid Tool”
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Mages can wipe agro btw. We just lose 5 seconds of damage. “Invisibility” is a total wipe from the threat list, but it takes 5 seconds to take full effect (Reduces 20% of threat per second. Can be cancelled after 1 tick). Time it right and you can cast a fireball while it’s working so that it leaves your hand the second you hit 100% wipe - only 2 seconds lost.
“having to stop DPSing for 10-15 seconds just to let him [tank] catch up” is a Bad Thing.
BRK needs to start saying Mend Pet instead of pet mend.
In other words, I have no clue what the topic is about because of that constant typo D:
hahaha…brk, brk, brk. i saw the forming of sweat on your brow a few minutes into that heroic bot run. what was it you said…”i hate running with you because you challenge my dps”? in the end you beat me, but only by a couple percentage points!
I’m also no warlock expert (my lock alt is in a holding pattern at 17), but I play with a particular group most of the time, which includes a 70 lock and a 70 fire mage. For a while the lock’s performance on the DM was…lacking at best, but then we realized something:
Apparently the DamageMeters addon only picks up your own pet damage, so unless that lock was syncing too (which he wasn’t), his pet’s damage wouldn’t show up. Since he’s the only lock on the list, I’d guess he had his imp out and phased, so this would be a moot point, but if he were demonology specced and had a felguard out for most of the instance, all that axe-swinging would be for naught as far as the meters are concerned.
Even after my lock buddy started syncing his meters he was still far behind, but it turned out he didn’t know what some abilities did (?) and some abilities were only trained to rank 1 (?!), because he thought he’d never use them - like enslave demon (?!?!?!?!).
Meanwhile, I always strived to top the fire mage without counting my pet damage.
There is more to DPS than what the dps meters report. Warlocks in general have a lower dps on trash mobs due to the nature of their spells. On trash they seldom get to put on all their DoT’s due to the short lifetime of the mob.
Direct damage classes have no such problems and can usually nuke away to their hearts content on the trash. This will usually give the direct damage classes a solid lead on the warlocks in Kara due to the amount of thrash there.
To get a more accurate picture of an Warlocks dps you should reset the damagemeter before the Bossfights. Its only then the fights last long enough that the warlocks can unleash their full dps potential.
Oh, and nobody really cares too much about dps on the trash. Its the bossfights that matter.
If the Warlock is trying to DoT trash mobs then his DPS will suffer, because mobs will die before the DoT takes full effect.
Besides, the only thing that really counts is your DPS on boss fights, so as long as the Lock is pulling his weight there then he’s going ok.
But perhaps your Warlock isn’t experiences enough to know that he should just be spamming shadowbolt on trash.
Or Maybe he’s a Felguard lock and Felguard damage isn’t included in there?
Woohoo people QQing about the dmg meters. Heres my take on it. Deal with it. If your not a tank or healer your worry should be the dmg meters. Now sure some classes CC, others provide buffs and some generate mana for their party but in the long run these are the specific jobs for raiders.
Tank - Mitigate damage and generate lots and lots of threat.
Healer - Keep tanks alive, don’t waste mana on overheal, heal raid if raid takes dmg in a fight.
DPS - DEAL DMG. Provide more dmg via buffs to other DPSers.
Since you cant measure party untility you use the DMG meters as an indication. If the raid leader never looks at dmg healing and overhealing meters he’s never going to see the issues a raid is having and resolve them. And as BRK said flaunting your top spot on the DPS meters is appropriate because you’re doing your job well and you should be damn proud of it.
With regards to the author complaining about FD. Thats part of our mechanic just like you giving mana back is part of yours. The real problem is you’re taking agression out on a particular class when the blame is really spec and itemization. So you have stacked your gear with spell dmg and specced full shadow. If you’re still gaining agro theres a few things you need to look at. First is items. If your dps is so high you are pulling threat sacrifice stats on a trinket slot and get a threat reduction trinket. Also check if there are any adjustments to your spec to decrease threat, almost all builds have this.
But the big issue you may have is the performance of your tank. On a raid boss from prince on (ie they hit hard enough) your tank should have the rage to be spamming every high threat ability he has. On KTM all three of my guilds prot wars can generate 1k threat per second once 10-20 seconds into a boss fight. If you have the sense to take blessing of salvation this means you can do well over 1200 dps all fight and not gain agro. If your MT isn’t making enough threat tell him to read up online. If you are sustaining 1200dps+ an entire fight go get a threat reduction trinket.
Shifttusk
“And that’s why we recommend posting damage meters; to identify problems, not for bragging rights.”
Ah BRK, you once again have proven your superior logical thinking…this was exactly what I was trying to say. Unfortunately I lack the writings skills to portray this, but I tried. Thanks for following up on my e-mail.
“Woohoo people QQing about the dmg meters. Heres my take on it. Deal with it. If your not a tank or healer your worry should be the dmg meters.”
Shift, I think you either forgot to read my post or are just trying to be arrogant. In my e-mail I said that I am a Shadow Priest. I am a damage spec. Yes I provide mana back to the raid and occasionaly get to throw VE up for everyone to enjoy, but my job is to do as much damage as I can…period. You saying that I need to “deal with it” shows your ignorance of other classe who have the same job as you. So, I think YOU should deal with it and try to omit the bull____ arrogant comments that are at the troll level of the WoW forums.
- Misfit
Lol, so much good stuff here. My view coincides with most others. Dps classes are there for dps. Period. I want my raid competing for dps. If you don’t care about your dps, I don’t want you. If threat becomes an issue because your dps is so high, we compliment you on your dps and ask you to eat a burger while you play and relax a little. As far as threat met*edited for length*
S
W
Stats!!!
now.. afk while I make a samwhich.
/autoshoot
In the end it’s whether or not you can complete the instance/event. Topping the meters is nice but anything more than playful jabs about beating someone makes you an ass.
Damage meters are a good tool for either identifying weak players that are hurting your progress or determining if you have enough DPS/healing to beat a boss.
And like the previous poster said, meters should be reset before boss encounters. Warlocks can’t DPS trash effectively; when equally geared they will maybe have half or less of your damage on trash (and the worms before Aran are magic immune as well).
I play a rogue in a guild with an equally geared BM hunter and Destro Warlock. On boss fights where the mobs don’t die so quickly the warlock crushes the BM hunter by a wide margin.
Most likely, your warlock got the shaft because no one had the common sense to reset the meters.
You take a Hunter to Kara because of their skills and utility, you take a BM Hunter because they are the highest DPS spec.
My main is a Warlock, and my alt is a hunter (though you wouldn’t know by my current playtimes). The previous posters are 100% correct regarding dps on trash vs bosses for warlocks. Its a big difference.
On Curator specifically, it depends upon the role that the lock is performing. If he/she is killing the adds, the lock’s dps will be pretty low. In my opinion, the lock’s potential is wasted there. Put the lock 100% on curator, and have him take the long range damage (can’t remember the term at the moment) by staying second on the aggro list. Lots of siphon life and drain life to aid in healing. Time a Curse of Doom so that it hits just as the Evocation starts and the damage it deals will be massive. In this role, the warlock should be near the top of the meters, while performing a valuable team role by absorbing damage.
Misfit,
I think I must have worded things in a bad way. Basicaly I’m saying the same thing is that you are there to do DMG like all DPS classes. Buffs are nice but we cant record them. What I’m saying is that if your issue is that you don’t have feign death theres 2 ways to increase your dps.
The first was to drop some spell dmg and other dmg stats for a threat reduction trinket and possibly a subtlty enchant to cloak. You could also swap spell dmg enchants for some other stats like intel (bracers) to lower your initial threat and give you more longevity (although i don’t think you have issues with that class spec considered).
I have a feeling the biggest issue you have however is that your tank is not making enough threat. I mean literaly on fights without adds to make agro complicated I FD once and maybe twice.
I’m def thinking you should investigate threat droping trinkets. I know a spriest in my raid used to bring one with him expecialy in a pug situation. If that doesnt work talk to your tanks about making more threat.
It wasn’t meant as a troll or a shot at you. Me being the loudmouth I am probably came across the table a bit aggressive.
Shifttusk
In the end it’s whether or not you can complete the instance/event. Topping the meters is nice but anything more than playful jabs about beating someone makes you an ass.
QFT
As a former raid healer converted to rogue, I get more pissed when SWStats says I took more healing than other DPS players. There is nothing worse from a healer perspective than some @sshat DPS’er who’s only concern is topping a meter.
And if you aren’t resetting the meters before boss fights, you may as well not be using them, seeing as there is nothing useful to be learned from cumulative damage through trash and bosses. Though it might make for a pretty screenshot.
-Chris
There’s definitely something amiss with the warlock. Even if DM is not counting their pet (and they should be running/syncing DM just to be on the safe side), there’s no way a Warlock should be getting beat by a Hunter’s pet. In fact, there’s little reason why they should not be #2 or 3 (when combined with their pet). Maybe they’re way undergeared?
They need to check their gear/spec/tactics.
My main is a 70 Affliction lock, and my alt is a 70 BM hunter. And I agree with what Dave said earlier.
On trash, the lock doesn’t get to do full DPS. I was running Bot the other day with a mage, hunter, shammy healer and pally tank. The trash went down before I could get two shadow bolts in. Mage was using arcane missles and the hunter was pew-pew’ing as only a hunter can, and I couldn’t compete. Until we got to the bosses. Then I catch up. Popping trinkets, Curse of Doom hits for 7-8k. 3 other dots hitting for between 300-500 a tick. And while all of those are going on, I shadow bolt for 1200-1500 a pop. If a shadow bolt crits, all shadow damage goes up by 20%. Its pretty much the same in all instances and raids. Trash, I fall behind. Bosses, I catch up.
There is no reason for a lock to be 8th in the damage meters on a 10 man run. Even a demonology warlock, arguably the weakest in pure DPS, should be doing better than that. If they are that low, they either don’t know their class that well, they have a funky talent spec, or they have total crap for gear. And I would guess at least two of those.
Like most classes, it takes practice to shine as a warlock. Soloing is easy as pie. Performing well in a group is a whole different story. Hunters have trapping to learn, warlocks have banish, fear and seduce. All take some skill to handle correctly. Ok, the banish itself is pretty foolproof, but making sure the tank is ready to pick it up isn’t. Regardless, I think the point has been made: while damage meters aren’t the end-all of raid performance, a warlock in 8th is definately a problem. Is there a warlock school around here anywhere?
Off topic: that was the first time this undead ran with a pally tank, and praise Thrall that sweet little Blood Elf could hold agro!
I’m with everyone else, meters can be good (see where people are falling down on the job/using the wrong skills/whatever) but can also encourage some tremendously stupid behavior (staying in to dps too long/pulling aggro/padding healing meters/bad skill selection etc.).
On the aggro reduction thing, all primarily dps classes have an aggro dump if not a complete aggro wipe (feign, vanish, invisibility, and soulshatter) as do one of the hybrids (cower). Only offspec dps’ers don’t (shamans, fury wars, retadins, and shadowpriests), it’s just one of the prices to pay for an off-spec/hybrid. If you’re not ready to deal with that complexity, you’re probably better off playing a pure class.
Don’t you guys know about the huge amount of trash mobs between Curator and Shade that are immune to magic?
Hard for a warlock to damage magic immune mobs…what’s he supposed to do, top the charts by hitting stuff with his staff?
Also, another thing…if a hunter is topping the meters in your guild, you have some pathetic rogues/mages/locks.
One other thing …
Warlocks really shouldn’t be using pets for DPS in raids. Yes, Felguard does some nice DPS, but there are so many better ways. If you are heavy demonology, use Imp for threat reduction. Sacrifice a Voidwalker for health regen. Sac the hussy for 15% shadow damage boost.
Affliction and Destruction locks are just using the Imp for the added stamina, unless there is a specific need for the felhunter or succubus.
Fade is there for a spriest, I know it’s not fantastic, but it’s there. Also if your dps is that high, your heals probably aren’t. So if you can’t manage aggro totally while dpsing, throw an offheal every so often? I don’t know if this would be better or worse, but at least it wouldn’t be idletime while breaking from dps. My shadowpriest is only lvl 32 and my guild doesn’t have one, so this is just conjecture this time, not th*edited for length*
anonymous-
“Also, another thing…if a hunter is topping the meters in your guild, you have some pathetic rogues/mages/locks.”
If you’re ignorant enough to believe that a hunter simply cannot out dps a rogue/mage/lock of equal gear, then just save yourself the time and cancel the wow subscription. L2P other classes before you judge them weaker. Blizzard has actually done a stand up job of balancing out classes, despite what some think.
Read ya loud and clear Shift, thanks for responding.
Commence loud-mouthery!
Oh and to respond to your observation about tank threat - yes, we had some problems with our MT not being able to sustain high enough threat to let the DPSers do their job effectively. This problem was made clearer to me now that I dont have my FD button on my hotbar and, in fact, have no way of wiping my threat away, only temperaraly lowering it.
Also, thanks for bringing up the threat reducing trinkets. I’ve seen em drop, but never rolled on em due to me not understanding the mechanics of them. I’ll be sure to throw a need roll on em from now on.
- Misfit
“So if you can’t manage aggro totally while dpsing, throw an offheal every so often? I don’t know if this would be better or worse, but at least it wouldn’t be idletime while breaking from dps.”
Great point Zem and I have actually started to DPS out of Shadowform just to lower my DPS, which allows me to toss up a heal or two when needed. Of course this is still a problem of me not being able to live up to my full potentioal, cause even with Salvation on me I can still blast through the meters, even without VE up.
Anyway, thanks for the comments on this guys, I will start rethinking my current gems/enchants and maybe take this issue to a S Priest blog/forum.
Cheers all!
- Misfit
Misfit: 1 more thing: Are you casting Vampiric Embrace ever? If you are, that could be the problem.
It creates a lot of threat for you for a very minor heal that your healers should really be able to take of themselves.
To Zem abotu hunters on the meters:
Hunters of almost any spec can top the meters as long as they play well and itemize right. You’re 100% on. Bliz has gotten raid dpsers pretty balanced to the point anyone can be on top if they focus their gear right and get on their game. I regularly rip apart the charts expecialy on dps intensive fights like Prince and Gruul. I do notice due to the pet travel time and lack of burst BM’s have issues topping on fights like Curator and maiden.
@ Misfit - Glad I wasn’t being too loud :-). I was thinking of a few more things to help your tank boost threat and one was to get him to buck up on the battle master enchant its a beautiful thing. If he has picked up the sun eater or kings defender its worth it. Expecialy if he occasionaly tanks lower 5 mans where hes overgeared.
The threat reduction trinkets are kinda nifty I’d say they function similar to soulshater and FD. What I’ve seen is they either reduce threat by a set amount for mobs within 30yds (the one in shadow labs) to the COT one which seems to be 30%. Id say try it out I use one on my buddies fire mage in 5 mans because well… yea he hits majorly hard and alot of tanks in PUGS can’t keep up with that even if they’re semi good.
Shifttusk
No Wolf I know better than that, and I also start off with DoTs (SW:P and VT) then wait a bit before going into a rotation, which usually consists of MB, SW:D, MF, MF, refresh DoTs if needed, rinse and repeat. If I need some longevity I just MF while keeping the DoTs up.
Good looking out though
- Misfit
Shadow Priests…don’t immediately throw up VE. For long fights, wait until about 65% of a fight then throw it up.
You’ll be able to do more damage in the beginning of the fight because you won’t be holding back, and hopefully by the time you throw up VE the tank will have built enough threat to allow you to go almost all-out.
Hunters should be continually MDing as well.
Actually I don’t think there is a very good balance with DPS’ers atm. Well, maybe everyone but hunters, esp BM hunters. Considering equal gear and players skills a hunter should be able to out dps anyone period. That’s not balanced. It’s usually not even a close race. BM Hunters should be doing at least 5-8% more damage then the rest of the people in any given raid. That’s actually a very considerable amount of damage. On one hand, the hunter is in your raid, he’s helping you take down the mob faster everything is wonderful… But that’s not the way the world goes. WoW is a very competitive game, people don’t want to hear you have almost zero chance to out dps a hunter without pulling aggro. Also you have some raid leaders that will look at the BM hunters damage and yours 5-8% below his and say, why aren’t you holding your own? Why are you getting out dps’d so badly.. when they don’t have a clue.
One other thing, MT TPS is actually very very important for everyone except hunters. obviously for reasons stated above a hunter can just FD when ever it’s up and reset his threat and not worry to much about the tanks TPS. Other classes can only do it from time to time. Yes, a mage can Invis but that takes 6 seconds (not 5 like someone above stated) you can’t do anything while it’s ticking or you break it. So you have to stand there for 6 seconds wait to invis out then wait for the GCD, click it off, wait again, then start casting.. so we have 6 + 1.5 + 1.5 + 3(to cast another FB) so we just wasted 12 seconds of casting time. That’s 4 FBs mine hit for 2300 on average that’s 9200 damage wasted just trying to reduce my threat. Also I can hit 800-900 tps with threat reducing talents, salvation, and sub on my cloak. If I have to “wait” to cast cause I’m right up with the MT I’m wasting dps as well. Lets not also forget hunters usually start firing long before Mages, locks, Shadow Priests for the same reason as stated before. they can just FD and keep going.. I have to wait for the tank to get 5-6k or more threat which means I’m wasting even more dps..
Balanced? I really don’t think so.
Fyn
Guy speaks the truth. Get SW Stats, everyone in your raid should have it.
If you are seriously going to consider using any sort of meters to evaluate the performance of your raid members, it’s the only way to go. It allows you to evaluate so much, quickly… just try it and see. (I’d recommend merge pets)
If I were that lock, I’d just claimed my meters weren’t synced, and nobody was near enough me to get a decent portion of my damage in their log. I know because I’ve used that argument (truthfully) back in MC… MS warrior thought he was out-dpsing epic mages… /lol
Misfit: The only other thing I can recommend is to get DoTimers so you don’t ever miss refreshing your DoTs.
I’ve raided as a hunter since I started playing WOW shortly after it came out. I’ve since switch my main to my mage, which I love to play as much as once did my hunter. On my hunter, I was lucky enough to get into some very good guilds. Made our way though MC, BWL, AQ and eventually Naxx, all on my hunter. In those days, I was Marksman to the bone. You basically had to be, to raid. I spent many a night on the top of the dmg meters as well but the hunter class has changed quite a bit since those days.
After BC came out, I lvled my hunter to 70, one day a friend and I we’re bored and we decided to spec BM to try it out. To our amazement, we both loved it. He has been a marks hunter forever as well and is also one of the best hunters I know. After a trip to Kara one night, (with me spanking one of our main hunters in DPS, even though he out geared me to the teeth) I was BM for good. All that being said, my mage is speced 10/48/3 (fire) w/full epics, over 1100 spell dmg and 34% crit. I have no problem being #1 on the dmg meters ANY time I want. IF someone beats me, it will be another fire mage or Dest lock. We have 2 other hunters that are equally as geared as I am on my mage, neither are even close to me on the dmg meters, ever. With that being said, are hunters shitty dps? Not at all. They are what they are. Even the best hunter will never beat a good mage or lock in DPS these days. If they are, you have some shitty mages/locks. As far as aggro…it should obviously never be an issue for a hunter, nor a mage for that matter. With invis and even soulshatter, for locks, aggro should be a non-issue with a good tank.
All that being said, I agree with most of what you say BRK, but at times your inexperience in raiding shows
Keep up the good work and great blog!
Ikon 70 Hunter-Dalvengyr
Ikonic 70 Mage-Dalvengyr
Blizz has done a good job balancing the classes. That being said, Destro Locks, certain Mages, Combat Rogues should always top the meters. This is because their skillsets are limited to a specific form of CC and DPS.
Classes like the hunter have a form of universal CC, an agro push (MD), higher armor and a pet that isn’t just eye candy or a battery. A hunter’s damage will be lower even when combined with their pets.
We always take a hunter though because of the skillsets they bring. Their DPS doesn’t have to be #1 on the charts to make them invaluable.
And it’s been said before but I feel it’s important. If you don’t reset the meters for boss fights, you may as well not use them because the data is worthless.
@ Fyn. You make an interesting point about BM dps. And you are right. I agree with it all. Since switching to BM, my dps is retarded. The rogues that were neck and neck with me as MM are left in the dust on dps now. I truly am at around 1k dps on long encounters. No joke.
To the other posters saying a hunter simply can’t out dps the others assuming equal gear. You’re simply wrong. The difference is in ease of play. To shine as dps as a hunter, you have to really be good. IMO, other than a warrior, the hunter is the hardest class to master. Warrior is hardest because you’re responsable for everyone else. I’ll stop there, but basically if you can’t be out dpsed by a BM, you’re not playing with a good BM
I saw a bunch of anon posts regarding BM hunters smoking your raid every time in DPS. I’d hate to say it but this is silly. This just means your other DPSers are not going full tilt. If its because of tank threat address it. If its gear/spec/ability tell them to address it. I have out dps’d and been out dps’d by several of our guilds warlocks shadow priests and fire mages. Our rogues are lagging behind but mostly because all of them are insisting on pvp/pve hybrid specs with muti. If your BM hunters are smoking everyone else tell those others to check their gear and spec. BM hunter in blues/kara epics smoking a frost mage in quest reward gear? Tell them to go spec fire and craft their 3&2 piece sets. Out dpsing a demo warlock? Tell them to respec to a raid build.
The fact is to top the meters you need to know your class and have your dps cycle down. If your raid is in kara and crafted purples you need the same to match them. I’m specced BM and wearing my crafter gear and kara wepons and because i did that work I can roll with warlocks in frozen shadowweave. I beat them, they beat me. They never seem to complain and just ask that they can get in my group for FI.
Who have I heard complain about dps class imbalance? Hemo/Muti rogues, demo locks and other such non raid specs. If you’re not specced and geared to do it, someone who is even if its a hunter is going to smoke you.
Shifttusk
To me the flaw with damages meters used in raids is that you shouldn’t compare it against other classes. The most effective use of damage meters, for me, is to compare it against like specced hunters. Enter WWS - http://www.lossendil.com/wws/
I’ve started using this in my guild and it’s finally shown how well certain members hold their own in a raid. It’s also shown how certain members either can’t dps or really don’t know what to do. I’ve used this to compare what I do against other BM hunters in kara raids.
The utility allows you to look up boss fights specifically and compare them against other guilds. The website itself allows you to parse combat logs not only for bosses, but for each attempt on a boss. It breaks down each buff, each trinket proc, each trinket use. Everything you need to try and maximize your dps. I hope this tool helps you as much as it has helped my guild and I, and someone actually reads back postings.
as a side not for your warlock, if you time your curse of doom’s explosion for the curator’s evocation your warlock will hit for around 18k in 1 shot.
-Onar - Skullcrusher