DamageMeters Question
“Dear BRK, I started reading your blog when a hunter friend in my guild recommended it not too long ago. At the time I was playing as a MM build of my own designs, respecced from BM at about level 65. After reading your blog and debating with myself, I respecced back to BM using your 41/20/0 build and I love it to pieces.
“Last night in Karazhan I was 3rd in damage according to DamageMeters, just barely nudging myself above my hunter friend who runs a 0/21/40 survival build. However, my main question is this: Looking at the DM, there was a rather large gap between me and the top 2: a mage (did around 22% of the damage) and a fury war (did around 19% of the damage); next up was me at just above 12%.
“I know there are a few things on my end that are preventing me from getting all the damage I desire; my gear is still a bit lacking (blame that on absolutely terrible luck, I haven’t gotten anything I’ve wanted since my Beast Lord Leggings around a month ago), and I need to get some more enchants done (although I was waiting to get some better gear for that as money is tight). Also, I wasn’t sure if DamageMeters takes other people’s pets into account; the priest that was running it says it does, but I wasn’t sure. Just wondering if that’s all there is to it for me, or is there something else I should be doing?
“Thanks a ton for reading, I love your blog! Cielidor and Hawkbane”
We don’t have access to the WoW Armory right now so we have to make an educated guess as to your gear. If all you have of the Dungeon Set 3 gear is the Beast Lord Leggings - the single worst piece of the bunch - then we’re going to guess that you are, quite frankly, undergeared for Karazhan. But no worries! It’s not like you can’t go or anything. It’s just that compared to people - like mages and arms warriors who have their DS3 gear - your damage totals are going to suffer.
But not so badly as you are reporting, for the following reason:
Hunter A is running damagemeters and has it set to count his pet in his totals. Hunter B is running damagemeters and has it set to count his pet in his totals. When these two sync, their data should merge fluidly.
Hunter A is running damagemeters and has it set to NOT count his pet in his totals. Hunter B is running damagemeters and has it set to NOT count his pet in his totals. When these two sync, their data should merge fluidly.
However, if one hunter is set to count his pet and the other is set to NOT count his pet, damagemeters can get buggy. Likewise, if the raid has several members running damagemeters and some of them are including pets and others are not, damagemeters is gonna be very buggy. And Elune help you if someone changes their setting in the middle of a run. You can just ignore damagemeters for the rest of the night after that.
BRK likes to keep his pet separated so that the entire raid can see how important it is to send Hobbes healz. For two weeks in a row, Hobbes has off-tanked two of Moroes’ adds without healz and died both times. Our guild likes to try to use a rogue to off-tank a caster on the initial pull, but Hobbes grabbs aggro regardless if Growl is on or not.
But that add isn’t the problem, it’s the melee guy we’ve been trapping that nukes our pet. When he is to be DPS’d, we slap Growl and Intimidation and Pet Mend and send him to save our rogue’s @ss. Yep, Hobbes cannot off-tank him and survive, but it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make for the raid. Once the 2nd add is down and all DPS focuses on Moroes, we run to Our Spot and rez Hobbes, slap a Pet Mend on him, shove a Sporeling Snack in his jowls, and get him back in the fight. We’d rather be out of commission for a few seconds than have a dead rogue.
And we’re off-track. Sorry.
What we think you saw was your pet not being included in the reporting. If your top DPS folks are in good gear and you’re not they could quite easily out-DPS you, but probably not by 7-10%. As a BM hunter in below-average gear, we’re thinking your pet did 3-5% of the total DPS and that wasn’t being reported due to conflicting damagemeters settings.
At the beginning of the run, ask all the raid members to select not to include pets. That should solve your immediate problem of Lack of Information and Confidence in the reporting. Then go get your DS3 gear.
And if you’ve got gold-problems, consider dumping your manufacturing professions, hmm?
We’re sure to get the obligatory “SW STATS FTW!” comment but we’ve been unsuccessful in convincing our guild to switch. Frankly, a new damage meters addon isn’t our biggest concern; it’s getting our tanks to generate threat. More on that in a later post.
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Oh the upcoming threat thread should be interesting…*waits impatiently*
P.s. what ever happened to the why hunters are like Denny’s wowinsider post. Did I miss it?
Just wanted to mention that in the “Whats yer spec” poll, the options are super hard to read. i see a light maroon’ish color and it blends perfectly with the greenish color of the side bar.
The poll colors are fixed; we cannot change them. Yes, we agree that the aesthetics of the poll have a very intimate interactition with a piece of a donkey’s reproductive system.
No matter what I do or say, my guildmates don’t seem to realize that my pet actually does damage and isn’t just there to make me look cool. 5-7% of all the damage + 3% dmg boost to my group doesn’t mean anything? I hate it. Too bad the guild is otherwise great.
That’s all.
I am using Omen right now. I like it, seems to be slimmer than KTM. I know that’s not damage meteres, but apparently there is a way to link Omen with a damage program. I am looking through the websites to figure it out.
I was checking Cielidor’s gear at the Armory. Start doing some 5 mans to get your DS3 gear. Those greens won’t help if you want to top the damage meter on Karazhan. Always aim for Agility on your gems (I’ve learned that from you, BRK) — +8 agi for red sockets, +4 agi/hit for yellow sockets, and +4 agi/+6 stam for the blue ones (I guess this is the better combination of gems).
I’ve stopped using damage meters, and now I’m using the reports generated by WWS. Much more information, and the organization of it is nice. Check it at http://www.lossendil.com/wws/.
Using the WWS reports, I’ve managed to show my guild how important my pet is on raids like Karazhan. Topping the damage meter with 24% of the damage, it’s possible to see that my pet does something around 35% of my damage. Impressive number, I guess!
In a recent assault on Underbog, I cast misdirect on the Giant Boglord Boss and managed to send pet, 3 shots and scorpid sting. The rest of the time I spent was in the air being bashed against walls and out of range of the Boss. On death I was excluded from the Phat Loot.
How is misdirection dealt with by the Damage Meters?
Misdirection isn’t damage, so damage meters don’t have any way of representing it. Take damage meter output with a grain of salt, as they say. If your ENTIRE PURPOSE is to do damage (like when i’m in cat form on the Prince), then you can use the damage meters to make sure you’re doing your job. If you are busy getting knocked against the walls, it doesn’t really matter what the damage meters say, but you should probably reconsider your strategy.
Wait a minute, the bog lord boss (Hungarfen) doesn’t knock people against the walls, as far as i’m aware. What the heck are you talking about?
As for addons, what i like to do is run SW Stats, Recap, or Recount (or some combination thereof — right now, it’s Recap and Recount), turn UP my combat log range (Recap has a setting for this, as does DamageMeters), turn ON all options in the combat log itself (so all possible information gets printed to the combat log to be processed by the damage meters), and turn OFF synchronization (so i don’t have to be concerned about other people’s settings or when they reset their meters). It works well. My numbers typically disagree by only about 1% with anyone else’s, and i can reset or set new data segments whenever i want, so i get whatever information i want and i don’t annoy other people.
WWS looks like a fantastic tool, and i recommend it also. The fact that you have to wait until after the run means that it’s nice to have something IN the game that you can play with, however.
“Frankly, a new damage meters addon isn’t our biggest concern; it’s getting our tanks to generate threat.”
unfortunately some tanks haven’t figured out that just using sunder armor like the old MC days no longer exist.
I use damage meters & SW stats - seeing as nobody has SWS, its not great, but i find that it picks info up fairly well - what is more useful though is stuff like mana efficiency per spell & how much of my damage was caused by X, and how much by Y. I can then compare that to someone else (another hunter perhaps) and see how our attack styles differ, and how they are then under or over dpsing vs me.
I also run with dmg meters always up, showing Name, Quantity, % of total, and delta.
SW STATS FTW
-guy
Swstats is far more acurate and makes the pet issue a non issue, if you have it on its on. I also notice that synched swstats always works for all people while the dmg meters still varries sometimes as though its too slow. Although tank threat is an obvious first issue, acurate DPS meters will be very important for IDing problems on later fights like curator prince nightbane and gruul where your dps needs to be up to snuff or you will OOM your healers. Right now its no biggie if everyone is comparably geared to BRK you already outgear the content probably up to and including prince. But gear isn’t the only factor and a meter will ID a bad dpser who didn’t learn the fight and died or gets LOS’d etc.
I had never bothered with any damage meters before and always dismissed the stats from others as flawed due to the whole pet thing.
However, after getting more and more annoyed at rogues boasting that they had doubled my dps and also having started getting more seriously into Kara, I added damagemeters.
The info was invaluable and finally convinced me that I had to change my 41/5/15 spec. On Tuesday I moved to the classic BRK 41/20/0 to give it a try.
What a difference!! Sure, I miss the 26 sec trap and the increased range but the dps is now staggering. I have literally gone from 3rd or 4th in Kara to the number one spot.
After impressing my new guild with the increase in power last night (I’m the only hunter who runs Kara) I have received another sign that the deity known as BRK was right all along; the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle dropped and it was duly given to the only hunter in the group
+5 BRK Cool Points to Traz for:
1. Seeing exactly why running some form of damage meters is invaluable to dps-classes
2. For seeing the light of the 41/20/0 spec
It was said earlier that Sunder isn’t what it used to be and that’s exactly right. If your tank is still relying on that as their main source of aggro generation, you need to send your tank back to school.
I got a crash course in tanking a while back and here were the first words out of our main tanks mouth as he was explaining it to me:
“If Shield Block isn’t waiting on cooldown, you’re doing it wrong. If shield Slam isn’t waiting on cooldown, you’re doing it wrong. Revenge, revenge, revenge. Sunder if you have the time and rage.”
i was running mana tomb the other night with another hunter she was MM and our damage was neck and neck one fight i was higher the next she was higher than i noticed i had it set for my pet damage to be separate so i switched it but than it was no fun she didn’t have a chance…
i have a question about KTM.. does it show the threat of people even if they don’t have the addon cos if it is its not working on mine it only shows my threat and my pets some times it shows others but most of the time it does not….
Adrus
I’ve never used a DmgMeter before because I didn’t care exactly how much damage I did, but after installing it and running Heroic Mech with guild, I was #1 and beat #2 (Warlock) by 15%. ^-^ Ego +1 and Spirits +10
Yeah, I’m not normally big on the damage meters, either, as I’ve frequently found them abused in PUGs by people who race for the top without regards for the tank. But my main Arms Warrior topped them for the very first time in SL last night on a guild run, so I decided they were worth in that particular night.