For the first time in my guild's history, not having enough DPS is proving to be more of a problem than not having enough healing/tanking. Because of this I'm having to make a greater effort to watch DPS meters and identify weak links so that I can get them to make improvements. However, since we typically only take 1 of each class in a 10 man raid, I can't use the best of each class as a benchmark like I used to for 40 man content. So now comes my question. What classes/roles should get cut slack on the DPS meters and how much slack? I know that on any given raid, you will see someone from any class take the top spot or perform better than expected because they are really good at their class, but I'd like some input from the rest of you on what classes are typically accepted as being the low guy on the meter. Healers and Tanks excluded of course.

Well not only is this so far open for: what fight, what level of gear, and what are you basing "bad" off of.

Give an SS of a fight and we shall point out the scrubs, and why they are scrubs.

Tips:

1. "Overall run" dps meters aren't much use to you for this exercise since some trash/bosses favour different classes extremely. For example, if you're working on Aran and you clear the library a couple of times between attempts, between the magic-immune fish and Aran himself your physical DPS will be >> the magic DPS.

2. Use simpler fights (where nothing is immune to stuff and there's no AOE to pad mage/warlock DPS) to benchmark. On a fight like Attumen or Moroes or even Curator, and the ordinary single/double pull trash, keep an eye on the DPS meters for those specific fights. There's no reason why any DPS class should be hugely above another DPS class in those, gear and consumable usage aside.

Obviously cut slack for DPS who are doing other things; a shadow priest having to shackle stuff on Moroes, a DPS shaman who's doing some spot healing and spending time keeping totems up and giving buffs to the rest of his group, a warlock banishing or fearing something, etc. This is why I recommend "benchmarking" on a fight like Attumen.

Oh, and also allow for group setup. A rogue with a warrior and an enhancement shaman should comfortably beat a hunter who's jammed into a caster group with not even a grace of air totem or shadow priest mana regen, for example.


Edit: Sadris, giving the guy a 36 page thread which starts with about 20 pages of Patchwerk damagemeters and then about 15 pages of Gruul DMs interspersed with consumables bitching helps the poor guy not very much :/

I run an extra karazhan with these people that can only get through Curator. Basically it's my effort to get more people into our pool of possibilities for 25 man content. A lot of these people have quest blues, some lvl 70 instance blues, maybe an epic or two. We filter some alts into this group that are equally geared and they tend to blow the other people away. They are more experienced players of course and usually rogue or mage, but the difference in damage is substantial.

My problem is I just don't know how to compare a rogue or mage to say a warlock or hunter. And I'm really not sure where a shadow priest should show up in the list. I will try to get some actual print outs though.

It depends on the fight really.

Edit:

- Fights where melee is forced to stop DPS'ing, ranged DPS should be tops.
- Fights that are melee friendly you should see Rogues up top.
- Fights that have adds etc, classes who can tackle multiple mobs should be up top.

Look to make sure your classes are at least all bunched up.

Lets not forget group composition.

The other night I had a bit of a conundrum, Feral Druid, Resto Druid, Shadow Priest, Holy Priest, Elem Shaman, Resto Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Warrior, Rogue. The groups here are pretty obvious at first glance (3 melee/resto shaman/warlock, other casters) Until you consider that both the Resto Shaman and Druid were undergeared, on a Boss Fight mana becomes an big issue, as does their very low health (important on Aran, Netherspite, Nightbane).

I ended up with Priestx2, Druid, Resto Shaman, Warlock in one group and then the Elem Shaman and Mage with the Melee. Understandably, the DPS of our 4 casters suffered at the benefit of 3 healers, but it worked out in our favor with healers having more mana and health.

Any class *can* put out respectable dps numbers (with the exception of paladins, a really good/geared ret paladin can push some scary numbers, but that's an outlier not an expected case).

Basically, you don't *have* to cut anyone slack nowadays, but the three 'bads' come into play - bad spec, bad gear, bad player.

I don't really think you can base who's bad and who isn't bad off one single DM anyways. I'd keep an eye out probably over a week or two at who's consistently being awful. If, for example, a rogue who's consistently getting grouped with an enhancement shaman is just getting stomped repeatedly by a warlock who isn't getting VE/VT, the rogue is probably awful. Or if a hunter and mage are both getting grouped with a shadow priest, and one of them is consistently doing significantly more damage than the other, then someone is bad.

Edit: another thing to keep in mind is pet damage. Often, a hunter or warlock's pet's damage is overlooked. Another error I've been noticing is the combined Water Elemental damage for all of the mage's elementals in the raid being added up and attributed to each individual mage.

Karazhan is a weird place for checking damage, because there are so many fights that heavily favor some classes, and people get 'off-tasks' all the time. But the first fight is a nice straightforward 'beating on a dead horse' type of deal. No movement, no add control, no AOE. The only thing that could throw people off their performance is the debuff, if not dispelled.

Next time you're at attumen, get your tank to build up agro longer than usual, and tell the guildies to go all-out. Reset your meter just before the pull, and see what gives.

Now a lot also depends on how good your tank is. There are classes who can manage their agro better than others, and if your tank generates relatively low threat, they have an advantage.

Gear causing low dps is in my opinion a poor reason to cut someone slack. There is a lot of blue stuff and crafted gear out there that blows kara epics out of the water, especially early kara stuff. Lag on the other hand can't be helped, and can really hurt especially caster dps; either live with it or get rid of those people, depending on how anti-social your guild is.

I agree. If you're only up to the Curator, Midnight is your best DPS test. If you really want to be fair for it, have the MT give DPS calls for when people are allowed to start (initially, and after the "combine").

It sounds like you're comparing experienced players with some fresh 70s on a fairly level playing field, and raiding experience already gives a pretty large advantage to the alts. Like everyone else is saying, check dps on Midnight because every other fight has something or another that will negatively impact performance for one class or another.

It sounds kind of silly, but take it from the basics and have an experienced member of the class check w/ the weaker dpsers on things like spec, spell/ability cycle, positioning, etc. Make sure they're using appropriate mods (dot timers, threat meters, trinket menu, and so on) and macros to wring out as much performance as they can. Also, use something like wow web stats (wws) that parses combat logs so you exactly what each individual is doing, which spells/abilities they're using and how often. Damage meters give sort of an idea of what's going on, but WWS tells how they got there and will help to ask the right questions to get a person to improve. (e.g. spriest skipping SWDeath, frost mage skipping fireblasts, hunter using a really wierd shot rotation)

You mentioned spriest in another post. If there's a lock in the group, both should be competitive for the top spots on the meters...at least until the patch. And on that note, i'm going to go QQ in the corner for my spriest.

Something tells me that the rogues would object :P

I second that. The dps of a player is fundamentally based on three things : gear, skill, template. If you lack gear, you should be able to compensate with your template and skill, and by skill I mean knowledge of your class, reactiveness, how you have to use your mana/energy/rage during combat, etc.
As a rogue, it's not because I have the arena swords that I do a good dps, it's because I know how to use them.

Well actually I meant that there's no excuse for lousy gear, but your point is fair too ;-)

Whatever you do, don't just kick or treat badly those who you believe are doing poor dps. Let them know you've got a problem with their dps and try to get someone from that class who you know is good and has decent knowledge to give them some tips. If they take that badly or refuse to try to improve then you've got valid reason to do with them as you wish.

When I was doing somewhat less damage than my officer would like he didn't just gkick me right off the bat. He asked me about my build (which was into Survival for CC at the time) and kindly suggested a change deeper into Marksmanship. That imho is the way to do it. Use the carrot, not the stick.

Apart from Attumen I can't see any really long fights-against-a-nonmoving-object in Karazhan on the order of Patchwerk or some of the older bosses. Moroes comes close but there's a lot of CC there (I'm generally required to trap and retrap an add there), on Aran there's a lot of running about and so on. A good player may well outperform a better-geared bad one there. And of course a dead player does no dps..

The casters/ranged dps you might want to test out on Curator - not only does it indicate how much dps they can do but also how fast they react to new adds and so on.

Oh, and after my respec I got in top 5 on dam-meters on last Gruul, just behind 3 locks and my officer! (slacker mages! ^^). Kindness is the way.

Sadly, it doesn't work every time

If the carrot doesn't work, that's when you apply the stick.

Paladins and their sexual habits ... yuk !
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Sorry it was so easy I couldn't resist .

As a 0/40/21 or 0/30/31 druid I often start off the fight tanking, then switch to dps, shift out to innervate/battle rez/tranq, and finish off healing. If anyone abuses me for my spot on either healing or dps meters I'd be pretty enraged.

There isn't a DPS class that you should cut any slack. But as several people has said here it all depends on the fight. One thing I would like to mention though is that you might not acutally have a weak link even though some people might be lower on damage meters. During a lot of our raids I notice that our DPS is all in between 1% of each other, making the lowest person there not really a weak link. If it so I would worry to much about it. It is when you have people doing 5-10% more than others on a fight where they should be equal I would start to worry a bit.

Also would like to note that some classes like warlocks sometimes have to hold back. Last night when we did Prince I simply couldn't do more damage because of aggro. Forcing me to hold back, even ended up using Fetish of the sandreaver to hold off some aggro. The result was of course that the hunter passed me in damage real fast, but it's not like I did anything wrong. I always save my shatter for phase 3 in that fight because it's important to be able to go all out then.

The last thing I would like to mention is that some people that doesn't do optimal damage might also be very careful about re-sheeping, or keeping banish up. So even if you have a player that isn't doing "omgz damage" the player might acutally keep the raid alive by being attentive about crowd control and such.