I was trying to finish up the Fordring questline earlier, on the leg that has you go into Live Strat to find a painting in the Cathedral, near the end. I end up in a group filled with members of another guild, including a Mage and a Feral Druid that are both pretty well geared. Nobody is saying much of anything in party (I get the impression they were all in Discord or something together), but it became pretty clear early on that the only thing the Mage gave even half a shit about was beating me on the meters. For example, the tank's pulls were initially pretty quick, and the resto shaman had been dropping Strength of Earth and Windfury. But then everything just ... stopped. I saw the Mage target me, and I assumed he was checking out my gear because he didn't expect me to be ahead on damage. Then he pops a Greater Arcane Elixir to increase his spell damage. And on the next pull, I notice that our shaman's now dropping Stoneskin and Grace of Air. There's no reason for this switch-up, as near as I can tell; everyone's pretty well-geared, and the tank was not experiencing the kind of danger that would necessitate a swap to full mitigation totems. But whatever, I didn't say anything about it.
Mage is actually pulling great numbers in the beginning. All of those initial packs in Live Strat are 6-7+ skeletons/zombies, and he's AoE'ing the absolute shit out of them. Definitely gaining a healthy lead on me. Again, it's worth mentioning that I've said essentially nothing to these guys. I wasn't stroking my Fury Warrior e-peen, or talking about damage, or anything like that. It wasn't until we got to that transitional area after the cigar shop encounter, where the gates close and all of the bugs come out, that he blinked ahead of the group so that nobody else was inside with him, and he gained 30k+ damage on the meters by just spamming the fuck out of Arcane Explosion, that I started thinking "You know what? Fuck this guy."
Dude might have pulled great damage out in the courtyard, but once we got into the Cathedral, where the packs were a lot smaller, and often necessitated CC to prune them down even farther, motherfucker realized he was in my house. And then, despite all of his dumb ass shenanigans, despite all of the stacked deck bullshit he and his guild pulled, I still beat him overall by 35k. His Druid buddy, who seemed somehow like even more of a tryhard, constantly powershifting and blowing consumables throughout what was very clearly a casual run, got his shit smashed in by 350k.
They're a great tool for analyzing performance, in yourself certainly, but I also find them helpful when coaching players struggling to find their footing.
The MC raid we were in last night, one of the pug hunters quadrupled his DPS after I noticed he was using arcane shot instead of aimed and gave him some pointers. Wouldn't have noticed if I weren't looking through damage meters after boss pulls.
If it were up to me I'd break the damage meter addons because there's nothing quicker to make people feel like shit about themselves than some goober linking meters over and over because they got the #1 spot. We had a rogue like this in TBC and Wrath that would do it fucking constantly and it was god damned grating.
I agree it has its uses though.
He stopped linking it when I started topping DPS meters as the tank though 8-)
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
It always seems kinda funny to me how hung up people seem to get on the DPS meters as a measure of skill or whatever.
I mean being a good DPS is important and all.
But it's not nearly as important as being a good tank or a good healer.
And I'm not saying there's NO skill involved in being a great DPS, but I do think that the MAJORITY of how well someone does on the meter boils down to class, gear, and circumstance.
It always seems kinda funny to me how hung up people seem to get on the DPS meters as a measure of skill or whatever.
I mean being a good DPS is important and all.
But it's not nearly as important as being a good tank or a good healer.
And I'm not saying there's NO skill involved in being a great DPS, but I do think that the MAJORITY of how well someone does on the meter boils down to class, gear, and circumstance.
It doesn't even really matter until like the end of AQ and Naxx anyways.
Nothing until that point requires everyone to be on their A game, shit even their C game.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Healers stop working eventually if you can't deal damage. Better dps usually means you don't need to rely on healers as much as well. You are right that being a good tank or healer is more important, but it's all linked
This will apply to mobs like princess too. Unclear if it'll apply to murlocs, gnolls, etc that group up when you tag one. Shit like this was possible in Vanilla and TBC, even with mobs like princess.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah the hunter one I'm not 100% on, but if it's making sure you can't leash _all_ quest mobs that join together like that that is not vanilla functionality. You could absolutely leash princess' boar companions, I had soloed that quest many a time as a lowbie.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
The post is referring to a bugfix that legit broke the Solenor encounter. He summons swarms of beetles that move pretty slowly (as far as I remember), and you have to dance around and group them up so your once-a-minute Volley spell can kill them all. Apparently attacking them or attacking him would bug them all out and reset the encounter. That was probably some consequence of how those fights are designed, i.e. the Hunter can be the only one on the demon's threat table, combined with some bug that did... weird things to threat tables for linked mobs. It's supposedly this latter bug that they fixed, they just worded the bugfix poorly.
BUT they might also have broken things in new and interesting ways, because Hunters soloing DM Tribute are reporting on the Classic forums that feigning death, then shooting just the King or just Cho'Rush is aggroing both of them now. Which it isn't supposed to do.
We’ve implemented a bugfix this week that should now be live in this region.
Fixed a bug that caused creatures such as Solenor the Slayer to misbehave when pursuing the player. Groups of creatures that commit to combat as a group will now all continue to pursue whenever any one of them are struck by a player attack or ability.
Solenor the Slayer should no longer reset if the player strikes the adds that he summons while he’s rooted, or if the player strikes Solenor himself. And now, if you aggro one of a group of creatures in any zone, and then you keep occasionally hitting any one of them, the whole group will follow you across the zone.
The bugfix to leash behavior of groups of enemies makes the game behave like it did in original WoW. We discovered the problem because of Solenor the Slayer, but it was a bug with all linked combat groups’ leashing behavior. The fix only affects linked combat groups with a leash timer, so there are still plenty of situations when you might attract the attention of multiple enemies and be able to split one off.
I haven't tested mob splitting since the "bugfix" because I rarely find myself in a situation where I need to anymore, but I can play around with it after the raid tonight.
Mob splitting was definitely a thing for non quest mobs with guards.
This is a pretty ugly break to the original's game design if it goes through and breaks all mob splitting. But if it just fixes the hunter quest and like a dozen of quest mobs that have guards, that's whatever I guess.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I've still been able to split most mobs. One notable counter-example: the four dwarves that spawn when you try to find Tyrion's son's toy hammer in Eastern Plaguelands. Those definitely can't be split. I dragged them all the way to Andorhal as a group by hitting just the named fellow. I killed him, feigned death, and his body despawned instantly before I could even loot it, so maybe that's a separate bug...
I've still been able to split most mobs. One notable counter-example: the four dwarves that spawn when you try to find Tyrion's son's toy hammer in Eastern Plaguelands. Those definitely can't be split. I dragged them all the way to Andorhal as a group by hitting just the named fellow. I killed him, feigned death, and his body despawned instantly before I could even loot it, so maybe that's a separate bug...
I soloed that but killing the named guy first and then vanishing. I couldn't get to a good spot to loot after that so after a couple minutes he despawned. It wasn't instantaneous.
I triggered the event again though, killed the guy, looted, THEN vanished and had no issues.
Yeah, after that I kited them again and tried to loot him *before* feigning death, but I got stuck in the kneeling looting pose and eventually was told I didn't have permission to loot the corpse, haha.
Then I kited them *again*, but stayed within Eastern Plaguelands (thinking that the zone transfer to Western Plaguelands may have broken looting rights), killed him, looted him, feigned, and that finally worked.
Every tool is bad in the wrong hands and good in the right hands.
I would say the vast majority of gamers are the wrong hands tools.
gottem
Allegedly a voice of reason.
+2
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Meters are fun.
But also they make people really, really, really jealous and stupid.
Like, a point to @milk ducks story. You can't beat a warrior in meters straight up, especially not as a caster. It's a losing battle. DPS meters, especially in the first three expansions, were really silly because of how ridiculously imbalanced everything was. In vanilla, it was warriors. In TBC, it was hunters. In Wrath, it was Death Knights.
Like, trying to beat a fury warrior in vanilla on meters is kinda like trying to beat a TBC hunter on meters:
THAT WAS ONE BUTTON
YOU KNOW HOW MANY BUTTONS FURY WARRIORS PRESS?
TWO
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
+1
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
i love DPS meters for myself because i love crunching numbers and seeing how i can improve and stuff
i can't stand anyone who thinks your DPS meter measures anything other than how much gear you've been lucky enough to get to drop and how well you know what order to press a few buttons
i love DPS meters for myself because i love crunching numbers and seeing how i can improve and stuff
i can't stand anyone who thinks your DPS meter measures anything other than how much gear you've been lucky enough to get to drop and how well you know what order to press a few buttons
Just the fact that it doesn't matter very much until the end of the expansion (in classic) it usually just ends up being a way to wave your dick in front of others. Most people I know hate them for one reason or another, but yes, it's usually because of the people linking it not because of the concept of improving ones self, most people are open to criticism until someone goes "lol look at me I topped the meter" then it shuts it all fucking down.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
As a tank, I really don't want people constantly trying to do MORE damage. Same thing with threat meters, don't try to min/max, just pay attention. I'd rather go slow and steady than to constantly try to regain threat and split heals and damage, which means you just have more downtime between pulls anyway.
As a tank, I really don't want people constantly trying to do MORE damage.
I feel the exact opposite way. As a tank, I want to output as much threat as I can so that my DPS can push damage as hard as possible, and the encounter ends quickly. It's the entire philosophy behind fury tanking.
ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
DPS is an integral component in an encounter and of course you should be trying to do the most you can without doing so much you fuck up the tanking and healing portion because you can’t manage aggro properly
but it’s when it gets to a point that you refuse to include people because they aren’t hitting whatever number you think is acceptable that things go from learning how to be effective to just being a shitbird
In BC my core group had a shadow priest that did insane damage. Let's just say our tank learned his trade.
We used to do... whatsitcalled, the other dungeon that's above Hellfire Ramparts? The hard mode on that was considered the toughest BC dungeon, and we just zerged through it with our awesome tank.
but it’s when it gets to a point that you refuse to include people because they aren’t hitting whatever number you think is acceptable that things go from learning how to be effective to just being a shitbird
I'm not advocating for the exclusion of folks who can't hit certain numbers. If the only thing I cared about was DPS, I'd only ever invite Fury Warriors, lol. Classic's just not that deep to me.
I'm just saying that my tanking philosophy is centered around the importance of threat generation, rather than total mitigation.
Strong DPS is bottlenecked by threat, so as a tank, I push it as hard as I can so that they don't have to go easy.
I'm fine with people using damage meters to constructively advise me on how to play better, especially if they actually know what they're talking about (both in terms of knowing the class/build and also observation). Fuck, I'm a bad, bad player, who's trying to just fucking learn at a reasonable pace. Go ahead, tell me how I should be timing my shots and shit. I may or may not catch on right away.
But my experience over my wow career is that wow players are super fucking bad at doing that. Even the ones who are legitimately interested in helping tend to lean towards competition rather than actual advice. Just link the damage meters, show they're on top and I'm in the shitter, and just say, "Hey you need to work on your rotation." As if there's just a competition engine in me that needs to be started up or something. Like we're in a race and I just need a pace-setter in front of me. You see that in a lot of comments, actually.
And what really grinds my gears is if they make that sort of comment after a fight where I was blowing all my CD's and utilities to save the healer and keep the aggro off of them, and/or doing/learning the actual mechanics of the fight. Damage meters don't provide context. If you don't have context, ask legitimate, non-rhetorical questions (that one's hard for gamers, let me tell ya, I could write a goddamn book about gamers and rhetorical questions), then go for it.
Personally speaking, I don't intend to use a damage meter, because that'll become my focus almost immediately, and the stuff I'm trying to learn that has nothing to do with my damage output will fall by the wayside. Maybe once I have that stuff down, I'll move on to using a damage meter to shore up my rotation and figure things out more and more. My intention isn't to play blindly, but I do need to learn at a reasonable pace, and have focus while doing so.
As far as others using them, frankly, I'm not debating whether or not they should use them, instead, I challenge those of you who do use them, to think about how you use them, and whether you should change that at all.
My favorite story about meters was my friend getting into a high end guild and they employed the Steve Balmer method of cutting out the fat. Lowest performer DPS wise was cut and someone else would get to sub in. They were doing hard modes and had plenty of people to pull from.
That is until they kept cutting people and people stopped applying because who the fuck wants that kind of stress?
The end of Wrath was a weird time.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Posts
Risk/reward of saving 30 seconds vs risking a wipe. :rotate:
Mage is actually pulling great numbers in the beginning. All of those initial packs in Live Strat are 6-7+ skeletons/zombies, and he's AoE'ing the absolute shit out of them. Definitely gaining a healthy lead on me. Again, it's worth mentioning that I've said essentially nothing to these guys. I wasn't stroking my Fury Warrior e-peen, or talking about damage, or anything like that. It wasn't until we got to that transitional area after the cigar shop encounter, where the gates close and all of the bugs come out, that he blinked ahead of the group so that nobody else was inside with him, and he gained 30k+ damage on the meters by just spamming the fuck out of Arcane Explosion, that I started thinking "You know what? Fuck this guy."
Dude might have pulled great damage out in the courtyard, but once we got into the Cathedral, where the packs were a lot smaller, and often necessitated CC to prune them down even farther, motherfucker realized he was in my house. And then, despite all of his dumb ass shenanigans, despite all of the stacked deck bullshit he and his guild pulled, I still beat him overall by 35k. His Druid buddy, who seemed somehow like even more of a tryhard, constantly powershifting and blowing consumables throughout what was very clearly a casual run, got his shit smashed in by 350k.
Felt pretty good, guys
Maybe ... maybe.
I've yet to meet one that can outsmart Fury.
They're a great tool for analyzing performance, in yourself certainly, but I also find them helpful when coaching players struggling to find their footing.
But yeah, I get where you're coming from.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I agree it has its uses though.
He stopped linking it when I started topping DPS meters as the tank though 8-)
I mean being a good DPS is important and all.
But it's not nearly as important as being a good tank or a good healer.
And I'm not saying there's NO skill involved in being a great DPS, but I do think that the MAJORITY of how well someone does on the meter boils down to class, gear, and circumstance.
It doesn't even really matter until like the end of AQ and Naxx anyways.
Nothing until that point requires everyone to be on their A game, shit even their C game.
https://classic.wowhead.com/news=295782/hotfix-for-solenor-the-slayer
This will apply to mobs like princess too. Unclear if it'll apply to murlocs, gnolls, etc that group up when you tag one. Shit like this was possible in Vanilla and TBC, even with mobs like princess.
never done the hunter quest so idk how that matches up to reality
BUT they might also have broken things in new and interesting ways, because Hunters soloing DM Tribute are reporting on the Classic forums that feigning death, then shooting just the King or just Cho'Rush is aggroing both of them now. Which it isn't supposed to do.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I used to be able to handle groups of enemies by just kiting one until the others dropped aggro.
Now I can't fight groups of enemies.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/bugfix-for-solenor-the-slayer-and-other-enemies/340034/41
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I would say the vast majority of gamers are the wrong hands.
This is a pretty ugly break to the original's game design if it goes through and breaks all mob splitting. But if it just fixes the hunter quest and like a dozen of quest mobs that have guards, that's whatever I guess.
what they fixed was that some mobs are *not* supposed to be split, like a pet from his master
Going blind isn't going to address those problems either.
I soloed that but killing the named guy first and then vanishing. I couldn't get to a good spot to loot after that so after a couple minutes he despawned. It wasn't instantaneous.
I triggered the event again though, killed the guy, looted, THEN vanished and had no issues.
Then I kited them *again*, but stayed within Eastern Plaguelands (thinking that the zone transfer to Western Plaguelands may have broken looting rights), killed him, looted him, feigned, and that finally worked.
Yes but what if we just surgically remove the eyes of rogues and hunters instead.
gottem
But also they make people really, really, really jealous and stupid.
Like, a point to @milk ducks story. You can't beat a warrior in meters straight up, especially not as a caster. It's a losing battle. DPS meters, especially in the first three expansions, were really silly because of how ridiculously imbalanced everything was. In vanilla, it was warriors. In TBC, it was hunters. In Wrath, it was Death Knights.
Like, trying to beat a fury warrior in vanilla on meters is kinda like trying to beat a TBC hunter on meters:
THAT WAS ONE BUTTON
YOU KNOW HOW MANY BUTTONS FURY WARRIORS PRESS?
TWO
i can't stand anyone who thinks your DPS meter measures anything other than how much gear you've been lucky enough to get to drop and how well you know what order to press a few buttons
Just the fact that it doesn't matter very much until the end of the expansion (in classic) it usually just ends up being a way to wave your dick in front of others. Most people I know hate them for one reason or another, but yes, it's usually because of the people linking it not because of the concept of improving ones self, most people are open to criticism until someone goes "lol look at me I topped the meter" then it shuts it all fucking down.
I feel the exact opposite way. As a tank, I want to output as much threat as I can so that my DPS can push damage as hard as possible, and the encounter ends quickly. It's the entire philosophy behind fury tanking.
but it’s when it gets to a point that you refuse to include people because they aren’t hitting whatever number you think is acceptable that things go from learning how to be effective to just being a shitbird
We used to do... whatsitcalled, the other dungeon that's above Hellfire Ramparts? The hard mode on that was considered the toughest BC dungeon, and we just zerged through it with our awesome tank.
I'm not advocating for the exclusion of folks who can't hit certain numbers. If the only thing I cared about was DPS, I'd only ever invite Fury Warriors, lol. Classic's just not that deep to me.
I'm just saying that my tanking philosophy is centered around the importance of threat generation, rather than total mitigation.
Strong DPS is bottlenecked by threat, so as a tank, I push it as hard as I can so that they don't have to go easy.
I liked TBC's paladin tank spec where sanct gave you mana when you were healed.
But my experience over my wow career is that wow players are super fucking bad at doing that. Even the ones who are legitimately interested in helping tend to lean towards competition rather than actual advice. Just link the damage meters, show they're on top and I'm in the shitter, and just say, "Hey you need to work on your rotation." As if there's just a competition engine in me that needs to be started up or something. Like we're in a race and I just need a pace-setter in front of me. You see that in a lot of comments, actually.
And what really grinds my gears is if they make that sort of comment after a fight where I was blowing all my CD's and utilities to save the healer and keep the aggro off of them, and/or doing/learning the actual mechanics of the fight. Damage meters don't provide context. If you don't have context, ask legitimate, non-rhetorical questions (that one's hard for gamers, let me tell ya, I could write a goddamn book about gamers and rhetorical questions), then go for it.
Personally speaking, I don't intend to use a damage meter, because that'll become my focus almost immediately, and the stuff I'm trying to learn that has nothing to do with my damage output will fall by the wayside. Maybe once I have that stuff down, I'll move on to using a damage meter to shore up my rotation and figure things out more and more. My intention isn't to play blindly, but I do need to learn at a reasonable pace, and have focus while doing so.
As far as others using them, frankly, I'm not debating whether or not they should use them, instead, I challenge those of you who do use them, to think about how you use them, and whether you should change that at all.
That is until they kept cutting people and people stopped applying because who the fuck wants that kind of stress?
The end of Wrath was a weird time.