I have been a vocal hater of Recount and other Dps meter addons in the past. I value greatly the ability to be able to compare your own performance from one encounter to the other and being to compare to other players but too often, the information gathered is badly used and interpreted.
Recount is too often used as the only indicator of skill. The simple equation being more DPS equals more skill and that’s the end of it. Dps meters can be one of the many tools to evaluate skill but it shouldn’t end there. If I use a critical non-dps ability to save a healer for example and thus give us a win, I might end up lower on the dps charts but my being able to think on my feet and save the raid actualy shows more skill than someone having dps tunnel vision. Still many players are using DPS meters as holy gospel and it drives me nuts… hence my Recount hate.
But, if I want to be a good warlock I need to be able to see how I’m doing so I have put back Recount and I’m monitoring my progress in the low level dungeons. Good news is that I’m not at the bottom so I must be doing not too bad but I’m strugling getting over the tanks… in fact all the dps seems to be having trouble beating the tanks so I’m suspecting this is a low level issue. If not the heirloom twinks are usualy doing better than me but I’m pretty close to them and I beat a few on boss fights so I’m somewhat satisfied.
So that’s how I’ve been doing lately. Trying to improve my dps actualy makes those old dungeons a lot more fun so there’s hope. Also, heirlooms twinks are total cheats
Yes, the last year I played WoW, it was mostly with a dedicated group of lowbie dungeon runners. The tanks was consistently at or near the top of the DPS meter. I think it’s partly the lack of specialization at that level. Most of their aggro generation is simply from hitting hard.
Agreed on the over emphasis on DPS in any game. It’s important, but I enjoy fights that are more than simple tank-n-spanks.
No snark intended, it’s just been a long time since I’ve raided in WoW. Can you give an example of how a DPS could think on his feet to save a raid?
Easiest example would be a hybrid switching role mid-fight, like a Shadow priest dropping shadowform and healing for a few or a dps with some tanking cooldown tank a mob for a few instant while healers get a battlerez off for example.
More subtle would be the various abilities to control mob movement (snares, trap, cc) or various interrupts/damage reduction/etc… that are not normaly used in a fight but can be very useful when things go south because of an unplanned event.
Actually, as a disc priest you can sometimes beat the tank – while healing the entire group. You always beat the DDs, except for the heirloomed+enchanted+skilled ones.
Speaking of hybrid switching, had an LFR run yesterday where we had a new tank on Magaera (?) who had no idea what he was doing… green head was blowing pretty much non-stop across the entire raid, a feral druid went over to the tank spot, flipped to bear, (might have used the hybrid-boosting talent, not clear on that), taunted and actually tanked the head for a while until the tank figured out what was going on and took over… after the heads dropped, feral went back to bear at the new spot and started tanking the blue head, tank took over… then went bear to go back to the green one, tank adjusted quickly and was fine from there. It was awesome, the druid completely saved that attempt and the tank was good enough to figure it out on the fly. Meant to thank the druid afterward but forgot, hopefully he sees this.
Most classes have some ability to prevent a wipe in specific situations.
(I do still wish tanks wouldn’t queue in LFR until they’ve seen the fights first, though… I’d rather have them dps in tank gear first time through, been ages since I’ve seen a dps bumped for crappy dps, bumps for crappy tanks are a regular occurence… is there a worse thing to hear when you first zone in than a pair of “I haven’t tanked this before, what do I do?” on fights as complex as in this expansion? Standard response: “Survive”)