Introductions - Why DPS Meter?

So, one more blog to an ocean of blogs.

I'm a(n ex) Magic: The Gathering Tournament player. What's true there is also true in every aspect of life: If you're doing something, it must have a specific purpose, and it must succeed at hitting that said purpose. So what does this blog aim to achieve?

This blog aims to gather intelligent raiders, who are past lurking ElitistJerks and went beyond the theorycrafting, taking it on a deeper, philosophical level, with aims to see real-life results (or in our case, real pixel results). 


As the name of the blog might imply, I will often be writing from a DPSer perspective. I've been topping the meters since Vanilla as a Rogue, recently OTed often in faceroll raids or instances as a Death Knight. Yet, my heart lies with the DPS role. This is more or less due to my obsessive-compulsive nature, but also due to the DPS problem in raid guilds.

The guilds often have the most problem with DPSers, as opposed to PuGs having problem with Tanks. To understand it, you must understand first the tanks.

Tanks often come in two fashions.

• First one is LFD Hero, a Fury Warrior, DPS Death Knight, Cat Druid or Retridin. The class doesn't really matter. This guy doesn't give a crap about raiding progress, sees hardmodes for something that no-lifers do, and for him, being a tank means shorter wait times for the next LFD. He's probably not even close to being optimised for his role, but for today's faceroll heroics, random badge gear and ICC 5-Man rewards are more than enough for an educated monkey to clear public raids. 

• Second one is Guild's Tank, the guy who gives impression that even if he had a level 60 Mage in MC gear, he could tank Festergut 25 HM. This is the guy, who's often an ex-DPSer, often a control freak and likes setting other 4/9/24 people's pace to his own. Which is, given the healers are responsive, faster than a LFD typing 'gogogogo'.

Just like a raid boss' death, a guild is found on a solid foundation of at least two tanks of the latter type. For semi-serious guilds and up, Tanks are the stars of the guild, treated as if they're boosting all other 24 people with their Stamina gear, often get the first upgrades in a raid environment and they get priority on orbs. Good tanks are dime and dozen, and being the first requirement of raiding an instance, they're (naturally and respectfully) spoiled.

Just like Tanks, Healers (Who are always between DPSers and Tanks on priority list, regardless of which of the two is the most important) get their share of the love.

DPSers in raiding guilds are ruthless, vicious, unloved people with problems (And I do not exclude myself from these).

The great funny ultimatum of 'I'm the tank FFS, if I don't pull, the boss doesn't go down. Shut up and listen.' elitism (Which healers also share the market, with 'Do not heal Tom McDPS, he asked me to Rejuv him for DPS increase.' in their private channels) works every single time, while rest of the 15 DPSers in the guild don't have brains to say 'Heh, we kill the boss, you know. We'll just stand still after the pull.' and give the similar ultimatum.

Long story short, DPSers are the bastard children of progress guilds.

There is a reason why good guilds recruit tanks and healers, and best guilds recruit DPSers. DPSers face the same treatment in raids that tanks face in random heroics. Awesomenessess DPS is expected from everyone, and who pull off the insane numbers are regarded as the norm, even if rest of the raid is pathetic on the meters, die to fire etc, in which case those slackers are 'bad' but outperforming DPSers are treated like they don't deserve any recognition.

This obviously changes as you reach closer to guilds that start trying and downing hardmode bosses on the release day, but is still true for vast majority of guilds.

For the most part, 'Average' raider guilds (And I mean the ones that are progressing in 25 ICC right now, maybe having 10 men cleared, and maybe working on 10 men hardmodes) learn the mistake of the PuGs of not giving enough credit to Tanks & Healers but see DPSers as rest of the 15 people to fill in the raid.

Most of the Raid Leaders of such guilds couldn't care less about optimal usage of Bloodlust, about assigning a Resto Druids to HoT the DPSers for insane amount of Rage/Energy/Runic Power/Mana returns, and are happy to see members pulling off the minimum amount of required DPS (Calculated from Minimum DPS = Boss Health / (Enrage Time in Seconds X Number of DPSers) and anything more is wasted / unnecessary / not important.

To them, if the boss requires 8k DPS, and all your guild is pulling 9k, except for that Shadow Priest, who's mastered his rotation to pull off 13k DPS, the guild's DPSers are good. How can they not be? They're good enough.

• No one asks how did that Shadow Priest beat the Fury Warrior who's got himself a Shadowmourne with concentrated efforts of the guild.

• No one enjoys seeing Damage Done meter in raid chat, as it's 'A pointless number', the boss is down, everyone is happy. 

• The DPSers are required to do Minimum DPS, those who don't are kicked, and those who top it are pricks. 

• [Friendly] DPS competitions are frowned upon, and a fire mage mocking a frost mage (Or a Mutilate Rogue mocking a Subtlety Rogue) is not tolerated, even if it's a progress night, even if the boss had only 100k health left before wiping the raid, and that optimal spec on the DPSers would mean a kill. 

Being a DPSer in a progressing guild (As opposed to an end-raiding guild farming Hard Modes for next content) is a thankless job. 

But barring that most hardmodes have insane amount of DPS requirements that most of the Average Guilds can only dream to achieve (not because of gear but because of the lack of willingness on both the raid leaders' and dpsers to achieve maximum damage possible). How many times have you heard Tanks of your guild being invincible and awesome? And the healers doing a tremendous job? And compare in to number of times DPSers being congratulated for the awesome DPS. The latter is surely scarce.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not griefing. I've been in guilds that were top of the line. Where I could compete on the DPS meters with blood and tear. Where good DPS was valued and Raid Leaders saw the DPSers as the blade of the sword, constantly working to get a keener edge. But to my luck, most all of them were mindless retards. 'Yo mama!' jokes and mindless spam. Sure, they were playing pro, but I would often leave them after a month, getting my DKP back with items and seeing a little more content. I draw a line where I play with people with brains, even if they don't need one to dominate the game.

But this is a problem of all the guilds not having downed 11/12 ICC Hardmode yet.

Thus the name of the blog. DPS Meter. Upholding the honor of those 20-odd DPSers whom you rotate in your guild every night.

My next post is going to further explain what a great DPS can help your guild achieve.