Blizzard lost the battle, players like getting feedback about how good they are performing in a game, which is why damage/heal meters are so prevalent. People like knowing they are getting better.
My question is why haven’t blizzard innovated so fights are less focused on damage going out (i.e don’t stand in fire or you die) and more don’t stand in fire or you do less damage\generate less resources\have increased cooldowns essentially YOU are worse at what you do, if you dont do things right (dont rely on the healer/show players how they messed up not “the healer didnt save them” - which given the amount of unavoidable damage that goes out is sometimes the case too) … whatever it is punish the role that didn’t do the thing right. I think that would start cleaning up a lot of the toxicity in the game.
They started down this track when they gave damage bonuses to some interupts, just keep running with that design.
I was thinking about this on the last phase of Fyrakk this week and how people don’t even run the fire whirlwinds out on LFR. They need to incentivize following important mechanics somehow—get a speed boost, a healing shield, or damage boost for doing things correctly, and put a big dumb banner up that newer players can’t miss, but advanced players can turn off.
I mean, dead bodies don’t dps, and it’s pretty easy for logs to show when someone screwed up their positioning rather than healers not healing enough. I think “don’t stand in the fire” is still a pretty good mechanic to punish the role.
Because its not about ‘how good am I doing’, but used to call out people how bad they are doing compared to someone else. Just like that post earlier about an elitist add on, there is enough toxicity in the game. If anyone but a min maxer cared, they would just get the addons already out there.
People get enough of that crud with ‘metrics’ at work. Dont want to deal with it in a game
I don’t think most players—even in LFR—are using it that way, even though once in a while someone does. Personally, I like to see how I’m doing week to week as I gear up, and hone my rotations, and I wouldn’t be able to do that without a meter letting me look at where I made mistakes. Why get better gear or even try if you can’t see an improvement?
Problem becomes pushing and rewards. Too often people stray into content they aren’t ready for.
I’ve been fearing and leveling up my resto shaman this week. I’m hanging around 11s currently and the amount of tanks that aren’t using CDs, interacting with mechanics or dps standing in crud is staggering. It’s literally every group. I’m failing keys for the first time this season really.
I like to have a way to show these players why I’m fussing. I can’t heal 4 stacks of fel frenzy in black rook hold on fort week when we have 2 people pushing 60k overall dps. The dps need to learn rotations, the tank needs to learn the pulls, and everyone needs to learn to interrupt. Having meters let me teach that group how to beat that encounter in a numerical way. They all failed, and so I failed to heal the team (because 100k bat hits on six bats is nasty on any difficulty).
If I have the only interrupts, 80k hps for the trash pull, and I’m using CDs - I’m not the problem. Meters are good, otherwise I just come off as nagging. I can’t tell who interrupts a cast without the software telling me so.
I see improvement by how fast I can kill something and with how much difficulty. I dont need to know what my dps is outside of that. But if I did, there are already addons and have been for years.
And even in LFR, Ive seen someone post a damage meter ranking. That serves only 1 purpose…
I like the FFXIV approach to damage meters. They aren’t allowed. BUT…they will look the other way if they are ONLY used by people to gauge their own performance and improve. Calling someone out for not doing enough damage is a terms of use violation in FFXIV because it requires an unauthorized mod to do it. And they do ban for it.
There are some fights like that. Smolderon for example gives a significant DPS/healing buff for soaking correctly and then successfully catching your orbs. And if people fail to properly do the orb mechanic, the boss gets a damage buff instead. It’s just not a design element they use frequently.
In my opinion, I prefer that they not design bosses that way because they usually tune them with the expectation that everyone does the mechanic correctly…and for casual raiders, that can be really frustrating because there are usually a few people that mess it up.
I think damage meters are fine. If a DPS fails mech and dies their DPS will tank. The same meters can show how they died. And if they want to blame the healer they can safely be dismissed.
I’ve seen one healing (not DPS) meter posted in LFR in dragonflight and it was to highlight that only 2 healers were healing/dispelling. I run it weekly on 9 toons every week…
It would be nice if all mechanics were in all levels of raiding. They could be less impactful like they are now with the ones that are in.
It would be cool to learn and do the mythic mechanics in normal and heroic so that the only gate to mythic is dps and healing output instead of a new mechanic that needs to be practiced a bunch of times on a boss that has been on farm for weeks on a lower difficulty.
A reward for doing mechanics properly is loot because the boss is dead.
I could see a shift in focus from raw dps output being fun for some encounters but the limiting factor in your dps and healing is how well you do the mechanics already. The best dps and healers dont take avoidable damage.
TBH in the whole journey to 2500 pugging, I rarely ever a meter posted. I mean, I saw people say things like, “hey, can you interrupt too bc you have zero interrupts done” for things like doti where not interrupting volleys can literally get everyone killed.
But nothing like what it was when meters first came out way back and were constantly spammed.
This is just me, but I do just use my meter for me, to see if my talent choices (I don’t like using guides) make a difference, or which trinket is performing better in what situation.
Its how you deliver the message. Too many people are toxic and rude as can be about it. They dont know how to be nice and help the person to do better, easier to call them out and continue the negative wow rep.
