Post by taallonn on Aug 26, 2008 4:25:39 GMT -5
What prompted this are some concerns guild mates have brought up to me and I think they need to be addressed. This is not directed at anyone in particular so if this makes you feel guilty, maybe you should re-evaluate your raiding attitude.
The guild has never stated how any person needs to spec their character. When asked for advice, I tend to give people a good solid raid build as that’s pretty much what most are looking for. Personally I have read and asked others about all the classes I play to learn how best to utilize them in raids.
Now here comes the problem. Not everyone has the same play style and perhaps they haven’t fully researched their class well enough to know the differences within their own class. So, when in a raid, they look at the damage meter to see how well everyone else but them is doing. Should the raid not go so well they may make comments about particular class’s shortcomings. It gets old.
I’ll give you some very basic scenarios
Mage 1, warlock 1, hunter 1 and rogue 1 are all the top dps in the raid. You look at the meter after all the trash pulls to the boss. Warlock and hunter are low, why?
Hunter is using a 2.8 speed bow and is MM spec for his arena team. Warlock is demon/affliction spec and has no reduction for his shadow bolt (primary damage). In the mean time, the rogue is melee with a 1.8 attack speed and is hit capped, and the mage is arcane spamming 1 sec attacks like crazy. In other words, by the time the slow ass bow, and slow ass shadow bolt finally get to the mob…it is dead. So the warlock and hunter have lost 3k damage on that mob. Did they contribute any less? No. Can they improve their damage output? Does it matter? It’s just trash, it’s not the Boss which is the reason we are there. But yes, they could with better gear (and a different spec if they so chose to do it) which is also why they are there.
Same group setup, this time on the Boss. 5 minute fight, no mana pots for anyone that uses mana as it’s the last of the night and well…they ran out/forgot them.
We’ll use prince as an example. Top dps hunter, mage, warlock rogue. Ok so the rogue doesn’t know what he’s doing because he’s at the bottom right? Well let’s see…..Considering he spends at least ¼ of the entire fight running the hell away from Prince, I think he did pretty good to still be above the main tank for the fight, not to mention he lived til the end. I’m pretty confident that though his/her dps was not number one that they knew what they were doing.
So how come the hunter was on top at the end of the fight? Warlock died 2 minutes before the boss died because he life tapped and got hit with swords (yeah dumb ass gnome locks these days), the mage was wanding at the end cause he used up his mana and evocate in an all out attempt to kill the boss in the first minute. And the hunter, after he realized he had no pots, switched to aspect of the viper to conserve mana which allowed him to last to the end. So at the end of the fight we spam the damage meter which shows an inept warlock as number 1, a rogue at number 2, a mage at number 3 and the hunter at number 6. Yet the hunter was in the top 3 of every boss fight he was in. And warlock number 1 makes a smart ass comment about hunters not knowing what they are doing (no, he didn’t check the individual boss fights cause all he knows is how to show all and clear fights. )
This is not a true story, this was made up however I used it to point out that just because someone is not number 1 on that damage meter, does not mean they don’t know what they are doing. I also made it a point to use pure classes, not hybrids like shaman, druid, and paladin….Why? Because you never know when one that can heal is backing up for a healer that just got killed, battle rezing, or whatever it may be that is not pure dps but still doing something necessary for the raid.
The bottom line is quit using that damn meter as the Holy Grail of raiding. It will and has caused problems. Someone gets a gear upgrade or wants to try a new spec, fine, that’s a good reason to check it. Been struggling on the first 2 bosses in Kara, fine, it’s a good time to see how far we can get that night. Wanting to see it to stroke one’s own e-peen….bad idea
The guild has never stated how any person needs to spec their character. When asked for advice, I tend to give people a good solid raid build as that’s pretty much what most are looking for. Personally I have read and asked others about all the classes I play to learn how best to utilize them in raids.
Now here comes the problem. Not everyone has the same play style and perhaps they haven’t fully researched their class well enough to know the differences within their own class. So, when in a raid, they look at the damage meter to see how well everyone else but them is doing. Should the raid not go so well they may make comments about particular class’s shortcomings. It gets old.
I’ll give you some very basic scenarios
Mage 1, warlock 1, hunter 1 and rogue 1 are all the top dps in the raid. You look at the meter after all the trash pulls to the boss. Warlock and hunter are low, why?
Hunter is using a 2.8 speed bow and is MM spec for his arena team. Warlock is demon/affliction spec and has no reduction for his shadow bolt (primary damage). In the mean time, the rogue is melee with a 1.8 attack speed and is hit capped, and the mage is arcane spamming 1 sec attacks like crazy. In other words, by the time the slow ass bow, and slow ass shadow bolt finally get to the mob…it is dead. So the warlock and hunter have lost 3k damage on that mob. Did they contribute any less? No. Can they improve their damage output? Does it matter? It’s just trash, it’s not the Boss which is the reason we are there. But yes, they could with better gear (and a different spec if they so chose to do it) which is also why they are there.
Same group setup, this time on the Boss. 5 minute fight, no mana pots for anyone that uses mana as it’s the last of the night and well…they ran out/forgot them.
We’ll use prince as an example. Top dps hunter, mage, warlock rogue. Ok so the rogue doesn’t know what he’s doing because he’s at the bottom right? Well let’s see…..Considering he spends at least ¼ of the entire fight running the hell away from Prince, I think he did pretty good to still be above the main tank for the fight, not to mention he lived til the end. I’m pretty confident that though his/her dps was not number one that they knew what they were doing.
So how come the hunter was on top at the end of the fight? Warlock died 2 minutes before the boss died because he life tapped and got hit with swords (yeah dumb ass gnome locks these days), the mage was wanding at the end cause he used up his mana and evocate in an all out attempt to kill the boss in the first minute. And the hunter, after he realized he had no pots, switched to aspect of the viper to conserve mana which allowed him to last to the end. So at the end of the fight we spam the damage meter which shows an inept warlock as number 1, a rogue at number 2, a mage at number 3 and the hunter at number 6. Yet the hunter was in the top 3 of every boss fight he was in. And warlock number 1 makes a smart ass comment about hunters not knowing what they are doing (no, he didn’t check the individual boss fights cause all he knows is how to show all and clear fights. )
This is not a true story, this was made up however I used it to point out that just because someone is not number 1 on that damage meter, does not mean they don’t know what they are doing. I also made it a point to use pure classes, not hybrids like shaman, druid, and paladin….Why? Because you never know when one that can heal is backing up for a healer that just got killed, battle rezing, or whatever it may be that is not pure dps but still doing something necessary for the raid.
The bottom line is quit using that damn meter as the Holy Grail of raiding. It will and has caused problems. Someone gets a gear upgrade or wants to try a new spec, fine, that’s a good reason to check it. Been struggling on the first 2 bosses in Kara, fine, it’s a good time to see how far we can get that night. Wanting to see it to stroke one’s own e-peen….bad idea