WTH is WWS, Part I
“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!
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.
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13 Responses to “WTH is WWS, Part I”
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Oh my…. I have not seen wowwebstats before and just seeing where others fall in line is Awesome! BRK, you’re the greatest!
Waiting with bated breath.
Whereas I study graphs, pie charts, census polls, etc. trying to squeeze every drop of dps out of Siva’s lil’ paws and my own ranged weapon, my guildies do not. It would be great to figure out how to set this up and post it for everyone to see, so that they may, in turn, do the same. I’ve visited the website before, saw the link that said “Documentation”, and decided on the spot that I may need to set aside a couple or four hours to figure it out. Haven’t found those hours yet! Can’t wait!
WWS is great for weeding out problematic raiders and fine tuning tactics/gear/spec.
A version of WWS with “Recount”-esque style functionality would be really, really neat. I love crunching numbers but putting it into graphics makes it much easier to grok.
Hi, Feral Druid here.
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.
Without saying it, it seems like you are implying it’s ok for a Hunter to be outdamaged by a Feral druid.
I would say think of it this way…
The purpose of a Feral Druid is to enhance and rescue his teammates while providing moderate quantities of sustained DPS.
Yes, we work hard to maximize that DPS because it’s half our role in a group. Still, we have a limit, and it isn’t as high as that of a Rogue or Hunter. No amount of mad druid skills can outdo what a good Rogue/Hunter is capable of. If a Hunter or Rogue is consistently not out-damaging the lead Feral Druid, then that Hunter or Rogue needs to put some more effort into his DPS.
For Rogues and Hunters (and Mages and ‘locks?), it really should be a mad race to the top of the charts without disrupting healer/tanks, because those are the only classes designed to do that.
BRK I think you killed WoWWebStats…
error 504 Gateway Time-out
The server didn’t respond in time.
“WoW is NOT a DPS race.”
Except on gruul. “600 DPS? PULL YOUR OWN WEIGHT, GAWD!”
I would like to stear this discussion to talking about actual dps instead!
Fighting dps! Not paperdoll.
It should be possible to make some “acceptable dps” chart that takes into account the individuals level of progression.
Nothing to advanced but a sort of personal “benchmarking” tool.
I will contribute the first number myself: Running kara but have never gone past Curator. Hybrid build SV/MM atm and doing approx 500 dps on boss fights.
What do the rest of u do in the dps department, please include level of progression and build!
41/20 BM/MM build, running Kara, downed everything but Illhoof and the dragons. Don’t have all the hunter drops yet but doing pretty well. Running Gruul with another group. Logged the Gruul run last week in WWS, did not down Gruul though (45%). I did 472 DPS on my own, with my pet added I was at 683, and finished #2 for overall damage done.
I still need to get alot of enchant work done.
BRK has covered the same topic as I did
He’ll do it better than I would anyways. But you know what? If I once feel like writing on chain trapping I will do so as well 
I’d like to posit that your role as hunter is to be “the best d@amned hunter in your guild and not be the ‘hun-tard’.” My guild is still not running Kara. Getting people attuned is an aspirin bottle enough every week.
One instance, I am called upon to CC and I wind up doing just that, chain trapping, pulling mobs off squishes and grabbing the aggro of the mobs who once were trapped but now are free.
In another instance, I simply keep the healer alive because no one else is.
In a third instance, my pet off-tanks and I wind up spending my time simply auto-shooting because my usual macros pull aggro off the tank who can’t hold it. How much damage do I have to take until FD is ready, for the 3rd time?
Before you say, “Go find another guild”, all of these situations force me to be a better hunter. So I can’t provide sustained amounts of dps in anything near consistent fashion and I wind up in the middle of the pack. No one died, we finished the instance, people got what they needed and I figured out that “X” is resistant to freeze traps but fire traps, hahahaha. Or if I watch the cooldown on “Intimidation” and toss it every time it cools down, the tank can do what he’s supposed to be doing. Or if I watch both my pet and my health bars, the healer doesn’t have to worry about me and can concentrate on keeping the frost mage, who thinks he’s a tank, alive.
My point is, I do my job, whatever it turns out to be even if it’s not what I signed up to do. I don’t have to be #1 in dps. If I screw up, even if it’s something no one notices but me, I come back here and check out what I could have done differently. It’s nice to be #1 in dps but it’s nicer to get through the instance alive. The drops don’t come off the last boss if you never get there.
To maximize your DPS a great tool is Cheeky’s spreadsheet from Havoc guild.
An intro and instructions with the link to the sheet is at:
http://forums.tkasomething.com/showthread.php?t=8616
Assuming you are 70 in this you can choose all your gear, spec, pet and pet abilities and it will calc your DPS vrs a lvl 73 boss. It is also very useful for comparing items for possible upgrade (ex should you switch sonic spear for legacy or emeral ripper or Malchezeen etc).
This tool is used by many to break the 1000DPS on Gruul at both the Elitistjerks forum and the TKASomething forums.
Yes, this coming from a dps class, lol. If actually bothered to play a healer / tank, you’d realize the onus of a successful raid is much more on the dps now than it ever has been. There are a LOT of DPS players out there who output shit dps, and the WWS is a TOOL to help find those players and correct what they’re doing. It’s a lot easier to figure out if a tank / healer sucks because it causes very noticeable results. So yes, don’t cry about WWS because it’s going to expose you as a bad dps’er. Embrace it, use it, learn from it.
[...] (The ubiquitous (in a good way )) BRK covers getting started and thoughts on measuring DPS. [...]