Wednesday, May 26, 2010

DPS are selfish

So last sunday I was in icc25, attempting lady deathwhisper 25 hc.
We did some nice proggress getting to phase 3 the more tries we got on her.
I play healer and as such it is my job to keep the bars green.
It gets very hard when for some recount is more interesting than looking out for cleaves and ghosts.

Anyway, I have noticed a trend among the damage dealers, generally speaking, not just about last sunday:
Selfish damage dealers would rather wipe and get to dps fulltime than killing the boss by doing what is actually required.

How often have you seen a dps class actually use their interrupt without being told to do so? If there ever is a skull up it quite often dies last. Should a encounter/pull require crowd control, well: Good luck with that! And worst of them all, aggro pulling and then blaming the tank.

Then there are of course those that do bad dps, yes, you guys are selfish too. By doing bad dps you are slowing everyone else down. I do not care if you THINK your spec/rotation is the best, or how much you like it better. If its less than optimal you are selfish, periord.

Unselfish damage dealer then? -Glad you asked! :D
In my mind a unselfish (aka proper) damage dealer is one that requires as little maintenance as possible, as a healer is one that I should not even notice, except for when encounter design requires me to (raidwide aoe for instance). They are also willing to go the extra mile to help out the raid, EVEN if it costs them some damage done.

In conclusion.
Good damage dealer: high damage output.
GREAT damage dealer: high damage output, low maintenance AND is able to do the "thing" the encounter requires.
Which one will you be?

Thats my 0,02€
-Nairi

6 comments:

  1. Hmm I agree with you about many DPS focusing only on their recount meters but also a large proportion of these guys just simply don't know what they are doing. They have been brought up on welfare epics and that's about it, they get carried through PUGs and then join a guild thinking they are imba.

    One thing I don't agree with is you saying that people in alternative specs are selfish. Okay so they are doing rubbish DPS in an alt spec that's fair enough to some degree they should be working on improving their DPS for raids, however if they are doing reasonable DPS there is no reason why they cannot join in. If your raid is a progress one by all means don't bring along the guy with the slightly off spec but that doesn't mean he cant be in that spec. Some people like playing certain builds more than others and since wow is for having fun it's not for you to tell him he's not allowed to play the spec he loves. If it's a problem for the guild the guild should just impose a "best specs only" rule and be done with it and I'm sure he'd move on to another less hardcore guild or change depending on what he values more.

    For a rogue, builds are constantly in a state of flux, every single patch they change and people have solid ideas about what is the best and what isn't that completely conflict with others. Rogues keep changing every two minutes to fit the latest trends and to be honest it's ridiculous. Combat and Mutilate builds are pretty equal on DPS right now and are useful for two different types of raid situation but still people keep switching and saying "this is better than that how dare you be that!". I just say fuck it, I'm a great DPS and I love Combat and I pwn Mutilates every where I go so (even before we became 20/51/0 Mutilates kissed my ass) I have no issues being something not everyone agrees with. :) The fact of the matter is I play better in combat and crap as mutilate, it's unavoidable.


    Sorry didn't mean to go on like that :P I'm not ranting at you don't worry just sharing my own view on this. Thanks ^^

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  2. yeah, obviously everyone can play whatever they like playing. However, I stand by my opinion that by not speccing in a optimal (not always maximum dps, shadowfury on saurfang is great) fashion you are in fact selfish.

    If you do what you think is the most fun without regard for anyone else then I would definately call that selfish.

    I would not go and tell someone they cannot ever do this or that, especially not when it comes to a game. I would say to someone that he is selfish :P

    And also, there is not right or wrong. The game should be played the way you enjoy it most, if it is by being selfish, so be it.

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  3. Hey... I found the title of your topic... Uhh.. "interesting". I agree that some DPS can be selfish, however the fact of the matter is the REST of the community (even the tanks and the healers) generally lack the knowledge to know the difference between truly good DPS and the selfish ones other than arbitrary opinions like "not hard to tank for" and "easy to heal". The specific encounter you mention, LDW 25 H, is a difficult encounter for everyone. One question I ask is this - why are the dps not proud of the interrupt meters? Why are they not proud of being low on the "Damage Taken" meter? Sadly, people wouldn't be so concerned about their DPS if no one gave a crap and instead were proud about encounter mechanics instead. You said yourself "Then there are of course those that do bad dps, yes, you guys are selfish too. By doing bad dps you are slowing everyone else down." Unfortunately DPS KNOW people think this about them when they do badly. I'm not saying it's 100% true, but most of the time people don't go in vent or raid "WOW! Look at that damage taken meter. So and so didn't get hit by a single ghost!" No, they usually look happily (once the boss is dead people tend to just take victories where they can get them rather than look for improvement even in a win) at the Damage Done or healing done meters. It's the sad truth. I played a Disc priest for a very long time (I have an 80 of every heal class and have healed raids as each one) and I can say, they get meter-judged too by people who aren't privvy to how they work. On my shaman I easily pull #1 heals on almost every fight. People look at that and assume I'm good. My disc priest heals just as well but most people don't really know HOW to gauge a disc priest's ability to heal because they are so used to just quickly eyeballing meters, which doesn't work out well for disc priests based on the way they work (absorb meters work to gauge them better but even those aren't clear indicators of a disc priest doing their job 100% of the time).
    Now on the other hand, I do play a rogue DPS. I think being a low maintenance DPS is a large part of being a good DPS. It's my opinion that the DPS which can reduce damage done(rogues using feint/vanish/evasion/cloak of shadows, DKs using AMS, and the like..) are very valuable to a raid. That's why I LOVE playing a rogue! If you play it right, not only are you useful with aggro management (Tricks, etc.) but you have MANY tools to lessen your damage taken, a pretty decent interrupt, and also by nature just simply do a lot of DPS.
    And I can see that this post has brought out a wall of text so to speak from us DPSers. Lol.

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  4. Hehe yeah it's a very interesting topic and the clarification of what being selfish is can also be very tricky to discuss. It's also important to note as poptart so eloquently summarised above, that being in a build that does top DPS does not automatically make you the best raid member, it's also about other aspects of your build such as raid buffs, situational builds and of course the skills to stay alive and not take massive amounts of damage.

    Personally I am always really happy when I'm on interrupt duty. Other people do not notice it but I manage to get very high on the DPS meters if not at the top in places like ToC Jaxx when I'm interrupting fel fire thingies. In order to do this successfully each and every time I have to make sure I pool 25 energy constantly and sometimes this means not having the optimal rotation for dps but hell I'm still proud because i interrupted the thing 25 times despite this. On anub I kindly switched out my poisons for one anaesthetic one to help the guild clear up the small ads quickly because the hunters cant cope with large volumes of enrages (AOE FoK dis-enrage ftw) and while this made my dps suffer it meant we handled each phase more efficiently and lead to our first downing of anub. I volunteered to do this based purely on my build. We had a mutilate rogue at the time as well who also refused to offer his services in that regard because he was a dps junkie. However I maintained that a mutilate rogue swapping out a poison for anaesthetic would have been a far larger impact on his DPS than it would have been to mine and worked out that it would have been detrimental to the raid over all because of the substantial dps loss over weighing the time it takes to down the ads. This is because Mutilate rogues were heavily dependant on poisons back then and I was a combat rogue before they changed to a more poison focused build. So since i wasn't poison focused i was able to sacrifice a poison to benefit the raid ( no longer necessary but important at the time).

    The Mutilate rogue viewed my build as inferior because he didn't understand it and it was the trend to be mutilate at the time but even though he was 200 gear score above me we did the same dps. I think that goes to show that sometimes you have to mix up builds a little bit and it's not always going to be the best build in the wrong hands or the worst build in the right hands.

    I am a firm believer (in case you didn't guess :P) in mixing up builds a little bit. Yes there are good builds and bad builds out there, I wouldn't agree to a sub rogue raiding for instance but sometimes raids need a different build to keep the spices lively, mix it up a bit and provide unique buffs to the raid and unique benefits.

    So long as the Deeps is keeping up with the rest of them I say go for it.

    However do not mistake my intentions, if your dps sucks, go to Elitist Jerks (or my own blog of course) and figure it out or ask your class leader for some advice and tips and follow them. I wholeheartedly agree that it's vitally important to always improve upon your character and keep practicing not just maximum DPS but also surviving, minimising damage and knowing wtf to do :P

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  5. yes, I also like to clarify that optimal dps spec isnt always the one with the highest dps.

    I do not like mixing up builds all the much to be honest, except:
    a) for a specific fight
    b) to bring something unique (buff, ability, whatever)
    c) the most optimal build is mind-numbingly boring and the second best is not that far off. (Alot like warlocks are atm, all 3 specs are viable, it comes to down preferance.)

    yes, huge wall of text I do feel a bit(very tiny bit) sorry for someone who wish to read it later on :P

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  6. It's okay people, you dont have to read my huge walls of text :P Just skip it and pretend you did hehe.

    I think that's why dual spec has become so awesomely useful to many players now. It's not just great for trying our heals instead of dps, but for example rogues can have both a combat and mutilate spec and switch out if they so desire depending on the fights.

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