Introducing: Roguelike Series

I'm sure you've all heard that hunters are going to use Focus (Energy, only with a fancy new name), DK Runes are overhauled and Rage Normalization is coming to warriors. So, what do these mean for these classes?

Roguelike series will look at all tree classes -Hunters, DKs and Warriors- one at a time and try to explain what these classes should expect from the expansion pack.

The way DPS works in WoW, is that for physical classes, there's their auto-attacks, and special attacks. For spellcasters, there's only special attacks, unless you count wands, which no one does since Vanilla (And briefly in TBC). For all DPS classes, there's a cooldown model for special attacks. Notably:

• Energy - For Rogues, Druids & Deathknights: You have a predefined set amount of power you can use. Your special attacks have organic cooldowns, meaning, you have to wait for your power to fill up.
• Mana - For Spellcasters: You have a predefined set amount of mana you can use. However, since Blizzard thinks it's fun for DPS Spellcasters to go OOM, the only limiting factors are GCD for Instants and spellcast times for everything else.
• Mana - For Hunters & Enhancement Shamans: You have a predefined set amount of mana you can use. Again, it's completely irrelevant. Your limiting factors are cast timers (Steady Shot pre soft-haste cap), GCD (Soft-haste capped Steady Shot) and artificial cooldowns.
• Rage - For Warriors: The more autoattack damage you deal, the more rage you get.

You see a problem here? I certainly do.

There just has to be a way for people to not spam a certain ability every single GCD, to make them unique and interesting to use.

For Rogues & DKs, even though their most devastating abilities do not have cooldowns, they can't spam them at every single second. Rogues' Sinister Strike costs 40 Energy, and each second they gain 10 Energy so they can only use it every 4 seconds. 

For spellcasters, GCD for instants and spellcast timers everything else works to that fashion. A Mage's Frost bolt spam might give him the most damage, but he can only cast it as every X seconds only. 

Now for Hunters and Shamans, both Mana users acting like Rogues, they have instant attacks all around, but they also have mana. For them now to go OOM, their mana has to be large and keep refreshing. But what then they can just spam their abilities non-stop. What's the fix? Cooldown model, on spells like Arcane Blast, Storm Strike, etc.

For Warriors, it's even worse. Playing a DPS Warrior is a rollercoaster of an ordeal, dealing next to nothing at early levels of gear due how pathetic white damage is, and becoming the single best DPSer in ICC. Furthermore, to compensate it, their numbers are always crunched with introduction of new gear, to "normalize" their DPS with the rest of DPS classes.

Blizzard has finally, after five years of trying to make status quo work, giving up, and utilized the Rogue model for these classes. 

Stick around to hear how these changes will effect your gameplay.

DPS in Trash

Gevlon doesn't disappoint with his latest post. Quote him:

"Posting damage meter on trash is considered impolite in WoW. There were even posts where this was considered "jerk" behavior, since "properly specced" DPS can't compete with a tank or a DPS who has a stupid AoE spec he made clearly to top the meters.

This is bullshit!"

You just gotta love the man.

For a long time, I've advocated using cooldowns and such in raid trash to speed up the process. It was even worse when I was level 70, a Rogue (We didn't have FoK back then) and on Karazhan stairs, an obviously AoE pull, I'd outdps several mages or warlocks randomly.

In Ulduar, there's this massive pull before General Vezax. Three of them, to be exact. There are 9-10 mobs each pull, and they can't be AoE'd. Or so our GM told us. We tried to sheep, hex, cyclone them so that tanks took less damage... Yes, no.

Even though I was an officer/raid assist, of course the GM's word was law. But not to my subjects. I told the DKs I had (We were three DPSers) to AoE shit down like their life depended on it, and to be ready to tank the sheep targets that they were likely to break. We pull, Team-DK goes nuts on bolts, we pull off around 30-35k DPS each, and the pack is down in meager seconds.

From there-on, those pulls became the most fun pull in Ulduar for us as I had successfully persuaded that they were AoE packs.

If there's something I hate more than raid trash, it's probably powerleveling (which I do with any-all characters I have a slight interest in playing). Raid trash is uninteresting, boring, heart-grinding. It's something all 25 people in the raid just want to get over with. So why not bring your A-Game to these ugly packs to make them die so fast it's actually a little fun?

I once even got a whisper once about my DPS in trash, pulling easily a few Ks over others, and the voice told me "Why do you use cooldowns and abuse the system on trash? Does pulling off more DPS make you feel a better player?"

There certainly is a notion, like Gevlon said, about people topping the charts. They "Abuse" the system. These people are the ones that say:

• I don't care about DPS Meters (Then why do you play a DPSer?)
• I cold easily top them if I could (Why don't you?)
• I hate people who are obsessed with putting out highest DPS (Because you're not one?)
• DPS doesn't mean skill (Both of which you lack)

Don't be deluded. Once at Freya, someone criticized me and a fellow Feral druid when we were "training" on Freya as the PvPers say. He said we were cheating the DPS meters because we were DPSing her when she was healing herself, so our DPS meant nothing. 

He completely ignored the fact that I was trying to roll a high-damage disease on her to spread to her adds, and that the feral was building combo points. But since most other DPSers didn't do anything to Freya, we were showing highest, and haters hated that we were cheating our way to success. 

There's one thing DPSers should know and care about -numbers. Beautiful, shady numbers. Our jobs is a quantitive one. We bring DPS, which is not an in-calculable objective. True, in some places, your DPS will naturally suffer, like when I was running around the room in General Vezax to Death Grip sparks to healers. I pretty much sucked those attempts. Does it make me feel useless? No, but I still make he best of my time when I'm not running around the room like a headless chicken, DPSing the boss to best of my abilities. For example, Yogg-Saron and the tentacles for the Brain Group. I'd have chance to kill one every few attempts when I didn't need to regain full sanity. Why shouldn't I do it, even if it's not my priority? 

Or, why shouldn't I work harder to do my job better?

Let the haters hate. Numbers don't lie. Yes, the person pulling off higher DPS than you are is likely (though not positively certainly) a better player. Conversely, you're a better player than the slackers in your raids. Just because people don't want to do what they were brought in to do doesn't mean those who do are evil, evil people. They just enjoy smashing skulls.

Praying by Damage Meters

I think the name of the blog is biased enough to let you know what I think of Damage Meters. While the tagline is a tongue-in-cheek joke, I still base my analyses of my DPSers on how they perform on the Damage Meters. I got booed off the stage numerous times for defending Damage Meters, and even met some fellow DPSers who refused to install a Meter addon, just because they were opposed to the idea.

How more wrong can you get?

I've read a reader reply on Wow.com, that said "DPS is a science, Healing is an art." As much as the quote sounds biased on the "Healers & Tanks are the serious business har har har!" mentality, it's still true. Everything a DPSer needs to do, is shown on the Damage Meter. Let's refine our role for this matter, once again:

A DPSer's job is...

1. To attack the right target and interrupt as needed
2. To deal maximum amount of damage
3. To receive minimum amount of avoidable damage

This is a science (While certain specs' rotations/priorities borderline the "art" scope, those are still rotations that could be better performed by a machine than a human if enough variables could be calculated). Everything we have to do, is calculated on the Damage Meter: Outgoing Damage, Damage dealt to whom, Damage received from what. This is why it's crucial for a DPSer to know how to handle the statistics gathered from Recount/Skada. 

Let's learn how to avoid the common pitfalls when using that data:

The Right Target:

Hodir is a fight of two priorities: After each freeze, rescue the silly DPSer NPCs (They fail horribly on the third bullet), and then unleash hell on Hodir. The fight's mechanics really help Mages with their DPSes, since NPCs give you a lot of crit and haste.

If you're good on the Damage Done meters, odds are some of your guildmates are going to grief about your constant performance, especially if you're a hybrid and they're a pure DPS class. This time, I was the Death Knight and the other suspect was a Mage. I heard the "Ha! I beat Nighthavk on DPS!!!11!" on Ventrilo. After the fight was over (as a wipe), I did what all the bad DPSers do after each fight: Linked the meter in raid chat. The one statistic I chose to show was Damage Dealt to Frost.

The top damage was an Arms Warrior (Who was usually Fury, but had changed to Arms for better movement during the fight for Hodir only. Talk about perfection!) and second was me. Our good old mage was nowhere to be seen.

It didn't help that we just had a wipe, especially because we were slow to rescue frozen NPCs.

This is where a lot of DPSers fail - they understand that they're performing a job with quantitative statistics, and want to "exploit" the system. The utter most important thing in a raid for a DPSer is to tag the right target and interrupt as needed. No excuses.

The old "Oh, but I lose precious DPS when I switch targets!" is a moot point. Rogues and feral druids even, one of the classes that benefit most to sticking to the target, just refresh their SnD/SR and switch their targets. Even better, some niche specs excel at AoE or Cleave damage. If you're so concerned with your performance that dropping a few slots from the Recount is important to you, why didn't you come with a better spec for this fight?

Any raid worth its salt will concern themselves with damage done to the right target first and foremost.

The Right Damage:

This one is simple: You should be constantly comparing yourself to your past performance and other members of your class. I've seen a lot of people who don't help others of their class just to show that they're valuable to the guild and do more DPS than the others of the same class. This is unacceptable. When I was DK Class Leader, I was the DPS/OT, and so my recruits were DPS alone. After a few discussion, me and the Guild Leader decided we needed three DK DPSers including me. So I had to find two other DKs who showcased insane damage.

It wasn't easy. I recruited around fifteen people, far more than any other class leaders did, and worked with them at Ebon Hold, burned literally thousands of golds to respec, reglyph. In the end, I found two other excellent members.

Those days were a blast, as the Recount's top three was painted in dark red at all times, and it made me more proud than just seeing my name on the top. It was a group effort, that my recruits volunteered to work with. In the end, we were constantly teasing ourselves for doing 23 more DPS than the other or silly stuff like that and generally having a blast. The guild leader congratulated me on my work, and my recruits were thanking me for the opportunity and for taking my time to work with them.

The work wasn't simply a matter of me teaching them either. I had dropped Unholy long after the nerf, only using it for gimmick fights with a lot of AoE requirements. I was Frost first after the buffs as it held the best single target damage, which was replaced by Blood in TotC gear. One of my members showed interest in going Unholy, and we went down to Ebon Hold, tested out several specs and in the end, he stuck with Blood with his overabundance of ArP, and I respecced to Unholy. Hadn't it been for him, I wouldn't have given Unholy another shot.

DPS should be handled by people who genuinely enjoy excelling at this science. Is it completely necessary? It can be done without all 15 DPSers in the raid min-maxing to the balls, though certainly more people who take it seriously should do it. But the more important question is, admit it: You're DPSer because you enjoy dealing big damages. Why don't you work harder for this joy?

Avoiding the Damage:

"Nighthavk, get away from the boss."
"Naah."
"Dude, he's going to Overload!"
"Yeah, I know. Watch dis:"

"HOW, WHAT, YOU BARELY TOOK ANY DAMAGE?!"

Anti-Magic Shield says "Hi!".

I loved Overload. Stormcaller of Ulduar's Council was a bitch, and I was constantly on interrupt duty on him. Overload meant I had seven seconds of freedom to just whack at him, and also using Anti-Magic Shield as a way to refill my Runic Bar. In the end, the damage I would take from him was about ~2k. Which I'd promptly Death Strike to regain back, and unleash my Runic Power to the boss.

(The side effect to my exploit was, a feral friend stuck with me DPSing the boss on next Overload. When I told him to move away, he told me "Watch dis:" and promptly died. We all burst in laughter on Ventrilo. Good times...)

I come from the school of rogues of the vanilla content. Raiding was a lot primitive back then. A DPS getting healed was a DPSer who was lucky. Between health potions you could use multiple times in an encounter, bandages, health stones, a DPSer was meant to take care of himself. While I understand that there's a lot of unavoidable damage that DPSers take nowadays, I learned to thank for every Renew or Shield tossed on my way. We had to get... creative, with out class mechanics. A Warlock would life tap as usual, but would Drain Life to regain back the health lost. Warriors would stance dance to get survival countdowns. We exploited the best of our abilities.

I see very rarely that abilities like Anti-Magic Shield, Icebound Fortitude, Feint etc used to minimize the damage taken. They should be keybound and used as much as possible.

Some fights, like Mimiron, brain room at Yogg-Saron, these fights make me nervous with relying on healers to survive, despite anything I might do.  In these cases, I either try to take talents that reduce the AoE damage a la Rogue and Feral Druids, or else ignore these cooldowns unless a real emergency comes up. The reason is simple: Healers flow into a rotation of HoTs and heals in these cases. You don't want to illusion them that you take less damage than other DPSers. They might put you off their rotations, and believe me, you'll notice it once your CDs wear off. Your health will drop like you didn't know it, and you'll be topped off by several healers wasting mana on Greater Heal equivalents. For fights like this, trust that your healers are good, and if shit hits the fan and one your healers die, you'll hear "Alright ladies, you're on your own!" which means, blow off those survival cooldowns and pray, pray that feral aura will be enough to keep you alive.

In both cases, you have to make your healers job easier. Know beforehand the abilities of the boss and understand the mechanics, plan ahead when to use your survival cooldowns and minimize the avoidable damage. In some cases like XT, using Icebound Fortitude/Feint/Dispersion will only make your healers thank you, but in others, such cooldowns will mislead your healers and make several healers blow off big heals on you (That's a NO!). Your own survival is more dependant on your actions than the heals of your healers. Understand this.

...What do you mean, "What does this section have to do with DPS Meters?"

But why, silly: We keep track of the source of damage you took! This is yet another area where you have to be competitive among others and impress with your magic skills. Your job is to stay low, very low on this meter. And again, if you're melee, compare the damage you took with other melees (Preferably of the same armor class). Ask around for tips if you can. No one likes a big DPSer who constantly needs a pocket healer to keep him up.

Wrapping up, we can see that the science of DPS is very much mathematically calculable and your friendly Recount will give you all the data you'll need.

Nature of DPS is competitive, especially because of this simplistic design. While in a raid there's only so much healing can be done, and as the same for Tanks, whose role is that of a success-or-failure, DPSers show their importance by the quantitative data. The line of "Player A is better than Player B" is much more refined than compared to other roles. Thus as a DPSer, you have to constantly keep your A-Game up, constantly think of ways to make things work better, to do more damage, to take less, and such. The simplicity of our roles demands a dedication that burdens you to use the few tools you have to the maximum efficiency.

Attunements & Everything That Was Right with TBC

I know I'm not going to make much impact with an idea that Blizzard apparently scratched out completely, but still. Ready Check: I miss Karazhan reminded me of the raiding in The Burning Crusade, and I don't mean the late stages when nothing required attunements. I mean the real raiding.

A wanna-be raider in The Burning Crusade had to do these:

• Get attuned to Karazhan. This involved doing several quests, nothing comparable to Old Onyxia Attunement... And you had to do 4 Level 80 instances. No, silly, not Heroic. Normal. You know, the ones people never do nowadays. You would be surprised how many people were not attuned to Karazhan. 

• Get several factions to Revered to enter Heroic Dungeons. This might sound surprising to WotLK children. "What? Attunement to Heroics?" In a sense, yes. There were several factions per instance areas. For example, being Revered with Thrallmar/Honor Hold  would unlock Shattered Halls, Burning Furnace, Hellfire Ramparts. For other heroics, you had to grind them to revered as well.

• Farming your Heroics. Yes, Badge rewards were again handed out. But there were no daily dungeons in the beginning. And given that you had to grind a certain faction to revered just to unlock some heroics, Badge Gear held its value. 

What this system accomplished was making player ask questions before jumping into raiding. "How do I get attuned?" The attunement started in a rather secluded part of the Shattrath, Lower City. So, it wasn't something you'd stumble upon just about leveling up. This simple part, this little nuance, was the difference between average Joe SlackaLot and John Serious. Do you think there's a single player level 80 now that hasn't done all of the level 80 instances? I don't think there is. So still, about half the playerbase hadn't done the quest for Karazhan. Why? They didn't know how to look up for it.

A problem we Raid Leaders often have nowadays (And even before, but especially in Wrath) that we have raiders that are not autonomous. I remember my first TK raid as a Rogue. Our rogue CL opened up a trade window with me and told me the boss was immune to poison, and offered me stones. I knew Void Reaver was immune to poisons so I had some sharpening stones with me. I showed him my stones in the trade window, which amused him, and told me "You passed the first test!".

How often do you have raiders who did in fact read up tactics and watched some videos? 

Attunements served thus to eliminate people who didn't even ask how to get attuned (Or, as some applicants would say "Didn't bother with it, seeing I don't have a guild yet"). Of course there were still a lot of slackers among those who were attuned, but the process still ate up a vast majority of clueless chimpanzees. 

The problem with current structure is that, 10/25 raids, while mostly PuGable, are still difficult enough for said people who wouldn't even bother with attunement. If Wrath has hurt anything, it's the health of the Raid Leaders, who were suddenly facing a horde of players with good gear, but needed to be led like sheeps. 

A lot of raiders commented how, outside of Ulduar, Wrath-Raids lack the "Ooo" mystic aura of the old raids. Enterring Karazhan was something. Being buffed inside TK, in the tiny entrance, where the patrol was just outside, was something. It was different from todays' raids which feel more like easy battlegrounds. It depends on the premise that, there will be guildless players who are willing to bother lead a PuG and carry others on their shoulders, just to get the new gear. 

It worked in Wrath. Not saying it was best, nor that it was pleasurable, but it did work. Will it continue to work in Cataclysm? I do doubt that. There's already people asking for ridiculous amounts of GearScore for public raids. And to be honest, if I were playing still, I would do the same. When I made PuG raids, it wasn't for the best of my server, it wasn't a benevolent action, to help people see some content and get better gear. If I wanted to PuG ICC, it wouldn't be because I wanted to progress: It would be because I wanted to farm it, and farm it with people who have farmed it before. 

If you don't have ICC gear by now, too bad. It's not hard to get it, not hard at all. People complain on forums "How can I get ICC gear when I can't get into PuGs?!" Erm. Get into a good guild, maybe? PuGing raids, especially final content, was never easy. Most Naxx PuGs would fail, almost all Ulduar PuGs would fail. TotC was a mistake, as everyone else agrees that TotC in Ulduar gear was easier than Ulduar in same gear. People were spoiled with the easiness of TotC, and now complain they can't PuG raids.

Raids never used to be PuGable, and while I can't read Blizzard's intentions, they make it rewarding for Guilds, now especially with Guild Leveling up. 

In a sense, GearScore helps nowadays to create the same 'Absolutely Idiot/Not Absolutely An Idiot' buffer of the attunements. If you haven't got ICC gear right now, you haven't done the instance yet, and seeing how it's out for several months, most ex-TotC guilds are already working on Heroics or LK. Simple as that, you weren't a member of a good guild. You might be a skilled player, sure, but the easiest way to cut down on the awful people that cause headaches to raid leaders is to make sure anyone who were not 'skilled' enough to clear ICC several times already, not enter at all. 

The problem with Wrath wasn't that everything is accessible. Most stuff were not really accessible by a majority on their original release. But there's an illusion of accessibility. This upsets people when they realize they can't actually access the content. Sure, there are no attunements required! Yehoo! But you need to have a guild to enter ICC. That, or you have to have ICC gear to join a PuG.

So, bring back attunements. 

So that we can go back to judging people with their ability to look up a seven-steps-quest. 

Optimization and You

Gevlon, a funny little anti-social Goblin (And a must read for a variety of subjects and his philosophical points of view, especially AH whoring) has expanded his views on The Myth of the Gear.

He and his guild cleared Ulduar 10 in iLevel 200 blues, and made a little progress in ICC 10. If this should tell anything, it should tell that for a random guild in random epics that haven't downed ICC 25 yet, that it's more of a matter of tactic than anything else.

Should we deduct that gear is not required at all to do raids / that epic gems are useless? That we shouldn't bother to gem everything with epic gems, or not buy out crafted gear on patch days?

Absolutely not.

Gevlon has said that iLevel 200 gear is sufficient to clear most of the game's contents, and thus on a binary stand point, higher gear level is not only unnecessary, but is a waste (of time and gold). There are two problems with this statement:

• Gear decreases the learning curve and brings progress faster. In any serious progress guilds, not whether but when you've made the kill is what matters. Case in point: ICC. Did you clear it without the zone buffs? Are you still struggling with %20 buffs?

• Gelvon's party, to my knowledge, hasn't done any hardmodes (yet). I could only imagine the punishment a blue tank would get from any hardmodes.

Case in point, here is their Damage Meter on XT. Let's see if it can pull off an heartbreaker.

In Heartbreaker, heart is exposed for 20 seconds, has 1.5M health, and takes double damage. For simplicity's sake, let's say that the heart has 750k health instead of 1.5m and takes normal damage. You need 37.5k DPS to bring down the Heart.

And Gevlon's party's barely pulling 20k dps.

So they need to almost double their damage output. 6k dps in blues? Even when you're pulling out all Trinkets and Bloodlust and such, it's just not possible (And let this be a challenge for Gevlon to do either Heartbreaker or well, any other hardmodes. Note on this challenge: Only 4 Towers for FL and 3 Trees are considered 'hard' mode.)

Leaving the trolling behind, we deduct that you do need gear, after all. And Heartbreaker is but one of the easiest Hardmodes, with a very easy DPS requirement. Most other hardmodes combine battle for survival with DPS race. Thus, you need to optimize.

There are two kinds of people I despise when we're progressing:

• Mr. I'm Good Enough: I'm not talking about a full blue warrior with all of his gear enchanted and gemmed and sitting at 23k Health, Defense cap being ready for Naxxramas or not. I'm talking about the guy with same stats but in iLevel 232 gear for ICC 5 men, with no enchants or gems. I will always take the former than the latter to my raids.

The problem with this guy is he sets himself a qualitative limit. Optimization is not qualitative. Sure, last raid's BiS gear and BiS food/buffs are the most optimized, but it's still not a case of 1s and 0s. You do not optimize for being ready to an instance: You optimize to save down the time spent wiping.

• Mr. I'm Better than Him: You know these people. These are the Frost Mages, Subtlety Rogues, Arms Warriors, whatever spec of Hunter that sucks nowadays. They point out they're doing better dps than their Fire/Mutilate/Fury/Whatever counterparts in the raid. This only means that the raid has not only one, but two slackers to get rid of! 

The problem with this guy is he's doing less damage on purpose. It's like trying to hang a painting on the wall with a nerf hammer. Sure, you can nail that wall with a nerf hammer. It would just take several generations of people, coordinately taking turns to hit the nail harder. We're trying to cut down on the time (Remember Gevlon: Time is Money!), not much else.

Why is it such a bad thing? Because I've explained before how DPS helps increase the progress cushion for your guild. For each of the %10 wipes you've had, the blame's on your Frost Mages and Subtlety Rogues.

Optimization is an attitude you bring to your raid. Take a loot at someone freshly dinged, with reputation gear, enchants, gems, some BoE epics, and some welfare faceroller. Even if the former has less of a gear-power than the latter, he's more dedicated to achieve a high-end result. 

• He's done everything he can with his gear. 

• Odds are, the blue guy spent more time in Wowhead and various forums to get a good pre-raid gear.

• He also took time to learn a rotation because god damn it man, he spent 2k gold on epic gems in blue gear. 

This guy surely means business, and will make sure any and all piece of gear will be optimized in the best rotation he can pull out. 

Optimization is not competing with your fellow guildies, however the latter is a by-product of several DPSers, both sharing the same joy for bringing their best, having a friendly rivalry. But optimization itself is not about being the best out there, but it's about bringing the best of you out there. 

This can swing both ways: 

• You might be the best DPSer in your guild but if you're a frost mage instead of fire, you're not optimizing. 

• You might be the worst DPSer in your guild, but hey, you're pulling 8k DPS.

Optimization is a proactive action. Tanking and Healing both have proactive natures to them too, of course. For example, Tanks have to balance their own survivability with their threat generation. Healers have to think hard on what to gem and what to Glyph. But most of their work is reactive. 

• Healers' healing is never the same in two raids.

• Tanks will always recieve different damage spikes to monitor their survival cooldowns. 

• And there's the matter of spawns, random mobs, threat losses. 

All in all, these two roles are more reactive, and are dependant on actual in-game variables (Both for serious progression raiders, of course these classes should try to optimize their gear, abilities and gems/glyphes). For DPS, most of the work is proactive. Case in point: Bruttalus, more recently, Saurfang. These are straight-up gear check encounters. Tanks will have to use their CDs as necessary and will have to adapt to RNG nature of incoming damage, the same for the healers. DPSers rarely have to react to anything. Outside of some Beasts spanking, it's just a tank and spank for them. 

For a DPSer, you have to figure out what gems give you the most benefit, what is the correct way to Glyph, how your guild handles Bloodlust (A note: It should be blown on the pull, I'll write a post later on that), and various number crunches you can easily find if you should lurk around ElitistJerks a bit, take a look at your class' spreadsheet, and work out on the target dummy. 

There is no excuse for the disrespectful DPSer, who:

• Relies on Fish Feast

• Doesn't Flask (Or use double Elixirs if it benefits him the most)

• Doesn't give his pet food

• Doesn't use bombs as an Engineer

• Comes with a 'wrong' spec

• Has wrong gems and glyphes

• Doesn't know his rotation/priority list

Our job is simple! It doesn't take a Physics PhD. to pull off the right rotation. Consumables are not expensive. All the info they ever need is found from Google. And if you fail any of these steps, there's simply no excuse. 

I can forgive someone dying to avoidable damage. Everyone screws up sometimes. You might be tired, you might have had little sleep, or you might be in a perfect physical condition and just didn't see it. It's ok, try not to do it next time. If you do everything above, odds are you also understand the simple optimization golden rule that Dead DPS does no damage, and I'm confident you'll try better next time.

But if you show up with no food buffs and ask if there's going to be a Fish Feast?

Boy. 

Good lucking finding a spot in my raids.

Benefits of Insane DPS

I love to explain everything with a napkin math.

• Let's say the boss you're working on needs 30k DPS from the raid (After Tanks' DPS). 

• With 15 DPSers, it means each DPSer needs to bring at least 2k DPS to bring the boss down to the table.

Here's a common pitfall - "Anything else is unnecessary".

All DPSers learn from Rogues that 'A dead DPSer does 0 DPS'. Non-dps classes evaluating the raid DPS seems to miss this bit when they're evaluating the raid DPS. To their eyes, 2k DPS is the amount their members should be pulling off. This evaluation relies on the fact that not a single DPSer dies during the boss fights. These guilds go with the bare requirements, having read on TankSpot the DPS they need to bring, and then complain that the boss enraged after some DPSers dying to [un]avoidable damage.

The blame goes to 'LolDPS died to fire.' and the raid leader making a lecture like 'Guise, PvE is easy. Sometimes there's fire, sometimes there isn't. Don't stand in the fire.'

Darling, we all know that. If you want to blame someone, blame the healers who leave DPSers to heal themselves with pathetic bandages on progress nights when people are learning the encounter thus, learning where the fire stands and how to avoid it. Progress means learning. People will make mistakes. Healers are one of the key buffers to help DPSers when they couldn't have avoided avoidable damage because they are not used to the encounters. But the real progress buffer with fights for DPS requirements is simply more DPS.

Let's say that the each DPSer was on steroids, and were pulling 3k dps a man. The boss does an avoidable damage, but say 5 DPSers died, unable to react to a complete new encounter the first time ever. Your remaining 10 dpsers are still pulling 3k dps each, which means the 30k dps requirement is fulfilled.

Further exaggerating the same example, if all your DPSers were doing 4k dps, then you would still have a shot after your 7 DPSers dying.

• Progress kills are messy.

• Progression guilds seek clean kills. 

• Hardcore guilds pull off the same encounter with 5 people remaining in the raid, all of them being healers and wanding and smiting the boss from his last 100k health. 

• The difference between the two guilds is, the latter clears the said encounter a good few months before the former.

Some encounters (Mainly, VoA, Onyxia and anything of that salt) do not have steep skill requirements. Most of them are pathetically easy tank & spank. Lots of people can die to avoidable sources of damage on progress nights, and it's not a sign of being a bad player. Sure, a good player might have a lucky reaction time the first time and adapt quickly, but case in point: 

Mimiron 25 Firefighter.

The Stars completed this challenge after 500 wipes. Knowing the fight myself, I don't doubt their kill was messy as hell. They most probably didn't instantly become more adapt to react to the fires after the 499th try and then suddenly killed it with 25 players remaining. Go to YouTube and watch Ensidia's Firefighter. More than half the raid (including the main tank of the bottom) is dead when the boss is downed. Were these lucky tries?

No, it's a simple equation. There are two definite points that dictate the length of the encounter:

1. Enrage Timer. Some of these 'instant-kill' the raid, even.
2. Healers' ability to keep up the tank and then the rest of the raid before going out of mana.

Progress doesn't mean 'learning not to stand in the fire', it means killing the damn boss. Killing the boss without any deaths is farming. You have to progress through the encounter first before farming it. 

What does more DPS achieve with all these? While theoretically, it could be calculated through a function with variables and an average approximation, you may never know when the healers are going to go out of mana. But, if the [hardmode] encounter lasts its time, it's likely that one or all healers are going to get OOM even before the enrage timer goes off. People will take avoidable damages and healers will have to heal these damages. Which one would you prefer:

• Wiping for one-two months on flavor of the month (Formerly Yogg-Saron, Anub'arak, currently Lich King) before all your members learn the encounter inside-out and get a 'clean kill'.

• Wiping for a week and killing it first time with 7 people remaining alive, the number increasing by 5 every subsequent reset and having the said boss long on farm status when the former guild has just had its 'clean kill'

Long story short, more DPS means more room for margin of error for DPS deaths, which is more common in progress guilds than the healers being unable to heal their BiS Tanks. 

This is why, while there is always a bare minimum for the DPSers, but this number should at all times be ignored, because this specific number is so low that 15 educated monkeys staying alive could pull it off. You will easily top these numbers if you know what you're doing and you should set sky (And not even the #1 spot on DPS meters) as your limit and pour liquid destruction on the bosses accordingly. 

PS: Being good at DPS doesn't mean being on the top of the DPS Meter. While it's a good sign you're doing better than rest of the people, DPS Meters should make you race with yourself, constantly making you do better than the previous attempt. If you're top of your guild's DPS Meter, it doesn't mean it's OK to just do enough to stay in top - that's counter intuitive to everything DPSers stand for. And conversely, just because you aren't the top of the meter, doesn't mean you suck because you did 20k DPS and your Fury Warrior did 22k. 

PSS: Randomly, please also pour your hearts into killing the trash ASAP. Our guild's mad DPSers were notorious for pulling the mobs in General Vezax's room 10 at a time, and AoE them down with 20-30k DPSers per head. While a horror of most guilds, we had the mod time with trash in Ulduar in there. Respect your fellow raiders and kill the damn trash as fast as you can!

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.