“Dear BRK, my guidies laugh at my DPS. I’m usually in the middle of my raid’s output and I think, but I’m not sure, that my pet’s DPS is being counted. How can I improve my shot rotation or do more damage?”

While not a direct letter from any specific reader, we receive lots of these types at the BRK Industrial Paperclip Recycling Facility and Email Boondoggle.

Congratulations, you’re a race car driver.

What do you do if your car can’t win a street race? What’s the recourse if your nitrous bottle and carbon-fiber body kit and low-pressure exhaust system aren’t getting you to the finish line first?

You take it to a pro.

Now the pro aftermarket installer pops the hood, looks at the engine, then looks at you and says,

“Chester, you’ve got to upgrade that camshaft. And those spark plug wires are ugly, change ‘em.”

Is this the type of service you’d expect from a professional car racing mechanic? Nope. You’d want to see him hook up your car to a dynamometer.

Have you ever seen the Gatorade commercials with a super-lean athlete hooked up to tubes and electrodes and running on a treadmill, computers and o’scopes in the background looking cool and important? A dynamometer is the same contraption except it measures torque and horsepower for your car.

Your car is put on the dyno, raced for an hour or so, charts and spreadsheets are produced, the pro brings the data to his office and studies them for a while, then generates a report for you that says,

“Your horsepower is fine through the redline, but your dead-stop torque can be improved. We recommend an upgraded camshaft and pistons package to produce more torque at low revolutions. This should increase your torque by 10% and shave 0.4 seconds off of your quarter-mile time.”

(Dudes, we’re just making up the numbers; don’t flame us for non-realistic expectations of automotive statistics, please.)

Now that’s what you’re paying the guy for. A detailed analysis of the situation, an identification of a problem, and a suggested solution.

So you blow $5000 on the new parts, install them, and go out and lose three more races in a row. You bring the car back to the pro and tell him what happened. He says,

“Well, you improved your quarter-mile time by 0.3 seconds so the parts did their job. Maybe the other drivers are just better than you are.”

Hunters, if you’ve got good gear, the right enchants, and aren’t AFK-auto-shotting your way through Karazhan or SSC, maybe the “problem” isn’t your gear. Maybe that mage or that rogue is just a d@mn good player and you’re not. Or maybe you’re a good player and they are Great.

The purpose of a hunter is to provide massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS. Notice we didn’t say, “… to provide the most DPS of any class.” A hunter can top the damage meters, but so can a rogue. So can an mage. So can a warlock. So can a fury warrior. So can an elemental shaman. So can a shadow priest. So can a feral druid.

There are people who are really good at their class and spec and will dominate you and us and everybody else in because of their mad skillz. That’s just life.

We can improve your gear and your talent spec, we can show you ways to improve your damage-output, but sometimes you’re just not going to win the DPS-race. So here’s the #1 thing to remember:

WoW is NOT a DPS race.

It is fun to compare damage-output but you don’t get better loot if you do more DPS than the other members of your raid. If you are not causing wipes, not grabbing aggro, not FD’ing trash mobs onto your healers, are chain-trapping when required, and doing a respectable amount of damage, your guild will be more than happy you’re along for the ride. A rogue who does 1200DPS but grabs aggro and gets squished will not be loved as much as a hunter who does 700DPS and never disrupts the tank’s or healers’ jobs.

“But BRK, I really want to do a better job of doing massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS!”

Well we can certainly help with that. We’re going to hook your toon up to a dynamometer!

WoWWebStats.

And that will be our next post. Probably. Depending on time and raiding. And movies. And responding to email which we’ve totally fallen behind.

WoWWebStats, our introduction to it is coming.