Am I reading this thing right?

Damage Meters!

Lots of bloggers go on and on about the double edge sword that damage meters present.

On the one hand, you've got the view that damage meters are a valuable tool that can provide DPS'ers (or lots of other stats for healers and other classes, but I'm talking DPS here) good feedback on damage output.

On the other hand, you've got people who value the #1 spot on the damage meter, and are willing to pull aggro and mess up the team in their personal effort to be #1.

A bit of a love/hate situation with damage meter addons.

I'm at the point in my WoW career where I'm really just starting to look at my damage output a little more closely. Sure, I've got some goals for gear improvements and enchants and inscriptions and such, but that takes time and luck of random drops. I like the Damage Meter because it allows me to experiment with variables that're under my immediate control, and get some feedback on the results.

The thing is, I'm starting to doubt my own numbers.

I use the standard DamageMeters addon for my analysis.

The first thing that comes up is that I run with me and my pet combined. I usually peek at the raw damage output from time to time during a 5-man run to see how everybody's doing. My number is pretty much always the higest, often by a large margin. So large, in fact, that I'm now doubting how correct it is.

One thing that I think is playing here is the inclusion of other hunter pets. I don't think my DM does that, so if I have a huge lead over another hunter, I pretty much just write the data off as incorrect and assume he's up there close to me. I mentally try to add 40% to his number if he's a beast master, and see where that comes out. If he's not BM, I have no idea. Same for warlock minions, but I'm not sure what multiplier is good to apply for those guys.

For classes who do not have combat pets, such as rogues, I assume that the number is pretty much correct, with my data only missing damage the rogue does when we're too far away for me to record.

I think I might need to install WoWWebStats just to cross reference the correctness of my DM data. But writeups from BRK and others seem to indicate that parsing a combat log with WWS is a bit of a chore. Meh, got enough chores I neglect already, why add another one. But maybe I need to do it at least once just to get a baseline.

Then I also look at the DPS chart on the damage meter. I'm not sure if this is valuable for trash parts of an instance, so I only check from time to time. I do like to look at it for boss events, as that is my real time to provide massive quantities of sustained ranged DPS.

Monday night in Black Morass, I posted 727 DPS for the whole instance. I forgot to reset before the last boss, as I had really wanted to check DPS just for that dragon, but such as it it.

My meter also showed the other hunter at 243 DPS and the Shammy in the upper 100's.

So I'm assuming that their data is totally skewed due to range and pet data. I was fighting the adds, and they were concentrating on the portals, so we were far away from eachother lots of the time. I'm willing to discard their numbers as totally wrong, since we pwned the instance, and no way we could do that with a DPS'er under 200.

So, Z, if you read this, know that I trust you did way more damage than that, you were rockin' last night.

Looking only at my own numbers, that's a huge boost over the other day when I was in the upper 500's. Changes that were present during the Black Morass run:

1. Kibler's Bits - fed my pet one of those puppies before starting the portals (aside: black morass portal battle sequence is so much fun with a good group).


2. I ate some sort of quest reward buff food that gave me +20agi. The other day, I ate grilled squid which only gives me +10agi.


3. Druid buffed me with Mark of the Wild for a bonus to all stats


4. Whatever totems the Shammy was dropping. We were spread out, so these probably only buffed me during the last boss when we were all concentrated on the same target, but in any event, I love me some shammy totem buffs.


5. Other hunter was BM also, so lots of time with both of our Ferocious Inspirations proc'ing. Love to see those 2 buff icons up there.

So in the end, I was pretty stoked at an awesome instance run through one of my favorite dungeons with some of my favorite players, and then to see my 727 DPS at the end, icing on the cake.