I'd love it if we could block damage meters

[Tolmos]

I'm a healer, so DPS meters shouldn't mean crap to me. If you are alive, I'm doing my job right. If you are dead, either I or the tank are failing at something. HOWEVER, DPS meters annoy me because they seem to encourage bad playstyles. I see so many people AOEing like mad because it will maximize their DPS, when in actuality they are slowing down the run. And the players who doing single target DPS, actually killing the NPCs, are getting *****ed at for their DPS.

[Skulls]

I see so many people AOEing like mad because it will maximize their DPS, when in actuality they are slowing down the run.

But spamming fanout on 8 elites for 60 seconds makes me feel like a MAN! My DPS meter proves it!

[wildwolfay2]

There are HUNDREDS of things you can do for fun in this game that don't require damage meters or making a cut. when you DO do dungeons you are part of a team that is expected to make a goal. If you are not pulling your weight, and you don't like it when people tell you thast, return to the hundredsssss of things other thandungeons to do in the game.


If you don't like damage meters, then maybe MMO's aren't your cup of tea

[Tolmos]

There are HUNDREDS of things you can do for fun in this game that don't require damage meters or making a cut. when you DO do dungeons you are part of a team that is expected to make a goal. If you are not pulling your weight, and you don't like it when people tell you thast, return to the hundredsssss of things other thandungeons to do in the game.


If you don't like damage meters, then maybe MMO's aren't your cup of tea

The problem is that most of the time "pulling your weight" equates to holding back the team with pointless AOE spam, since single target DPS would hurt your value on the damage meter.

It would be nice if damage meters ignored AOE damage all together, or found some way to treat it as single target damage, so people will actually play SMART and not just play to maximize that meter at the cost of the rest of the group's time.

[Mizza]

The problem is that most of the time "pulling your weight" equates to holding back the team with pointless AOE spam, since single target DPS would hurt your value on the damage meter.

It would be nice if damage meters ignored AOE damage all together, or found some way to treat it as single target damage, so people will actually play SMART and not just play to maximize that meter at the cost of the rest of the group's time.

And how exactly is AoE "pointless" or "spam".

[the_real_seebs]

Meters are not built into the game. I am not paying for meters. Therefore I should have the option to allow people to receive my information to an optional add on.

This doesn't even begin to make sense.

You're not paying my sub. My sub is supposed to provide me with the ability to play the game, and part of playing the game is making informed choices, so it's important that the game provide me with the information I need to make those informed choices.

The information in the combat log is provided because players can use that information to make better choices. Once it's provided, it's up to the player to decide how to use it.

Why are you getting upset over a suggestion on the suggestion board?

Because it is a suggestion that the game be broken in a way that prevents me from having fun.

The meters have not always been around. I was in beta, I played right after beta. There were no damage meters.

There were. In early beta, even. They have always been here. ACT and the RiftJunkies parser were both present and actively used in beta. That you didn't notice them proves my point: The existence of meters is not the problem. They were here and you didn't have a problem then. What changed? Not the existence of meters.

[Princessblue]

Saying your dps is too low at Lev17 is poor form on the other players behalf but you rarely do find players like this.
I was the same when it came to parsers and refused to get one as I too thought that it would take away the fun of the game however, I got a parser when I hit 50 purely for myself and to improve on my own dps/heals. I have also found that being an officer in our guild, having a parser and our guildies having parsers has massively improved our guild dps and heals as a whole. We have a very close guild and if we see that someone is struggling or if a guildie themselves find they are struggling to keep up with the work load then we work together to improve it, that being said we would never put a pug down for having low dps as we don't know the circumstances behind it for example we did a DH with a pug and one guy was really low heals (less than 150 hps) so we asked if he had a dps spec so we could swap one of guildies into heals as to get through the 3rd boss it was heavy on raid heals and we needed someone pulling more than 150hps to keep us alive and when he changed we noticed he was also doing really low dps (less that 100dps) we privately messaged him and asked what spec he was using and later found out that he thought the amount of dps/heals per second was the numbers that were coming up on his screen from each of his spells and when he saw that one of his heals hit for 500 he thought that meant he was doing 500hps which in fact isn't the case.
Do yourself a favor and don't quit the game on this one bad dungeon but get yourself into a nice guild that you can do dungeon runs with and if you want to progress into raids alot of the bosses do have enrage timers and require a certain amount of group dps and heals to be able to progress onto further stages so having a parser isn't such a bad thing.

[Blackblade]

Damage meters at level 17 is ridiculous to be honest. That said, blocking meters is not a solution as meters are invaluable for end-game where most players spend 90%+ of their time at.

My advice is as follows -

1. Ignore the idiots
2. Find a casual guild or a guild with like-minded people. There are guilds like this in every shard.
3. Read the forums and seek advice regarding DPS specs. There tends to be a correlation to how much you enjoy a game depending on your individual performance. Note the improvement in DPS (using the damage meters!) and feel good about your improvement
4. Ignore the idiots

Enjoy the game OP. Remember, it's just a game. Don't let such issues stress you out or reduce the enjoyability of the experience.

[TimeBomb]

I do think that ignoring people is the best course of action in this situation.


Also, I must point out that all ingame DPS meters are not 100% accurate except for your own character. This revolves mostly around how the meters turn on/off when YOU go into combat, and thus do not take into account when OTHERS go into combat.

So you may have done 400 DPS over 30 seconds, but someone else may have done 900 DPS over 10 seconds. But that will show as 300 DPS on your meter, as YOU have been in combat for 30 seconds.

This is an integral problem with DPS meters. I don't think the addon API currently has access to other character's state of combat. If it did, then this major problem could be fixed pretty easily.

[Raynedrops]

The problem is that most of the time "pulling your weight" equates to holding back the team with pointless AOE spam, since single target DPS would hurt your value on the damage meter.

Because ST dps on trash is such a better option.

/facepalm

[BobTheGoblin]

Because ST dps on trash is such a better option.

/facepalm

I wonder about that, sometimes. If you have 4 NPCs, and you are capable of pulling 1,000 DPS ST on one of the, or 2,500 on the group... doesn't that mean that you are actually doing less damage to each INDIVIDUAL mob? Wouldn't burning them down at 1,000 dps each be faster? Obviously in groups of 10 non-elites, AOEs would be a faster option due to retargeting and things like that, but seeing people spam AOEs against groups of 3 to 4 elites seems like they are just trying to pad their damage meter more than actually kill the mobs quickly.

[Marikhen]

I was in a lowbie dungeon a few days ago on my Justicar as support. After several comments from the healer about how great they were at healing, the healer suggested I go to DPS because she was doing such an awesome job. I did, and the very next pull someone dies. A quick check of my meter (after the death) and I was outhealing her prior to swapping, highly amusing. Didn't get anymore comments from the healer about how awesome they were after that funnily enough, they were working a lot harder... in a lowbie dungeon haha.

I think about stuff like that whenever I'm queued in as Support, doing a large amount of healing during a tough fight, and the "good healing" comments get laid at the feet of the healer when I managed almost half of the overall healing.

A parser, in my understanding, is not the same as a damage meter that you can have in game on your screen. So, maybe I'm mistaken on that fact.

You are mistaken. Rift Junkies' parser has had the option for an overlay for 7 or 8 months now. The only problem with it is that due to how Java works you'll take a massive frame rate hit if you set its transparency to anything less than totally opaque.

damage meters should be entirely superfluous outside of raiding and disregarded entirely as long as everyone is pulling their weight in terms of completing the content efficiently.

So how do you tell whether or not someone is pulling their own weight without some sort of tool to measure group contribution? Isn't measuring without tools really not much more than guessing, even if it's educated guessing?

@OP: /ignore works wonders. Some people are just annoying, no need to get all worked up about it. Guy won't shut up about your dps in (lol) reg IT? /ignore him.

Agreed. Parsers and meters aren't the issue, the players are. Worse still if you let players dictate how much data other players see about them and when they see them damage meters/parsers can, and will, become wildly inaccurate for anything but personal contribution. It will be a cascading failure of GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out, as pertains to group activities.

Now if /ignore isn't enough for you here's a real solution. Ask Trion to let party members see each others' home addresses of record and current IP addresses if they use damage meters. Then when someone starts being an idiot about them you can just see where they live, drive/fly out there, and put a bullet in their head.

It's a great solution really. They won't be idiots anymore and, if you get them early enough, they won't pass their defective genes on to the next generation.

Don't ruin it for those of us that use dps meters without being total wankers.

Again, agreed. I tend to be very self-conscious when it comes to group performance. I use meters to judge whether or not I'm doing a decent job.

Yes all that is important at end game, not lvl 17.

Actually meters can be important at 17. Habits, both good and bad, start early, and it's better to know sooner than later if your build isn't doing well enough. It's not that important that others point out your issues, but seeing them yourself, and correcting them, can be quite important even at that low a level.

I see so many people AOEing like mad because it will maximize their DPS, when in actuality they are slowing down the run. And the players who doing single target DPS, actually killing the NPCs, are getting *****ed at for their DPS.

So let me see if I understand you. If you have 3 people who do 200 ST DPS and 150/target AoE DPS and a cluster of 5 trash mobs with 5k HP it will take longer to AoE them down. Taking 11.1~ seconds to AoE them down takes longer than taking 41.6~ seconds to ST them all down.

Yeah, I'm not seeing how 11s > 42s. I can see how it might be easier on the healer to knock mobs down one at a time since it reduces the maximum amount of HPS needed, even if at the cost of increasing the total amount of healing needed, but I'm not seeing how it's faster.

Even if it was 100 AoE DPS to 250 ST DPS it would take 17s for 3 people to burn down 5 5k mobs versus 33.3~ seconds to ST them down. It still takes almost twice as long despite doing 150% more DPS.

[Hotter]

Pink wall of text crits for 13k.

[Tragic Heretic]

All I pulled out of this was. Wah someone made fun of me because of a damage meter. Make them not work k thanks. Don't get butt hurt over what people on the internet say, you'll have less ulcers in life. But honestly to quit over a damage meter is pretty petty in my book, so really nothing lost.

[Tenof]

Yeah, I'm not seeing how 11s > 42s. I can see how it might be easier on the healer to knock mobs down one at a time since it reduces the maximum amount of HPS needed, even if at the cost of increasing the total amount of healing needed, but I'm not seeing how it's faster.

Because of drinking, and rez due to somebody accidentally (not really accidentally tho) pulling mob/s, I would think.