Which damage meter?
 

I often hear people lament when confronted with their (so-so) dps after a raid that 'those meters are inaccurate'. So I made it my mission to have the best dmg meter out there to catch out the slackers ;-)

So what is the accepted 'gold-standard' dps meter? I use Recap atm, but is there something better/more accurate?

Any meter is only as accurate as the combat log range of the players involved in making it. If everyone is in range, it's accurate. The two ways to make sure this is true is to either expand your combat log range, or sync with multiple people running the same mod to make sure the entire group is covered within the existing range.

SW_Stats and DamageMeters sync.

Personally, I use the extended combat range and a self-modified version of SW_Stats that doesn't sync (my Timeline preferences are different from most people I run with).

Either run these inside the game:
Or modify your config.wtf for those options (I forget the exact syntax right now).

awesome great :)

My config.wtf file has this in it:

SET CombatLogRangeParty "200"
SET CombatLogRangePartyPet "200"
SET CombatLogRangeFriendlyPlayers "200"
SET CombatLogRangeFriendlyPlayersPets "200"
SET CombatLogRangeCreature "200"
SET CombatDeathLogRange "200"
SET CombatLogRangeHostilePlayers "200"
SET CombatLogRangeHostilePlayersPets "200"

I'm currently using Recap. I like the way I can get a basic summary of damage dealt/taken/healed, and if I want to I can get intricate details like how much of Rogue#2's damage was from his poisons, how often my chain lightning was resisted, etc.

I use MinnaStats:
http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=3500

I'll give this one a try tonight. I've tried DMs, Recap and in the end stuck with SW_stats.

Hawsky's Recap also now comes with synch options.

http://www-en.curse-gaming.com/files.../recap-hawksy/

I have yet to test the synch (no one else seems to like recap in my guild) however with the above combat radius settings it will match DMG Meter's synched at the end of the night.

Sw-Stats was updated to 2.0.3 a couple of days ago.

http://forums.sw-stats.com/viewtopic.php?t=303

If you're looking to catch slackers, it doesn't really matter what damage meter you use. Either way, the players with the lowest damage/healing done are the slackers.

Provided you set combat log range to the max, the only valid excuses for "your DMs are inaccurate" have to do with the inclusion of pet damage and totem damage. All of them are accurate otherwise and it's just a matter of which you prefer for reporting methods, memory usage and which extra stats they track.

"Pet damage" bugs also includes warlocks enslaving somethign and then being awarded all the damage one by mobs of that name, enslaved or no (took me a moment to track that one down when one of our warlocks ZOOMED up in Kara on the weekend... worked out it was due to enslaving dreadbeasts in the cellar and being awarded all damage done by all dreadbeasts). Getting 60k from a trash fight where the next highest is getting about 20k, multiply that by 5 or 6 packs of demon hounds...

I'm personally using MinnaStats at the moment, which Alcaras linked above, but then I'm a dog person so a DM with a pciture of a dog appeals to me :)

I always enjoyed that DamageMeter used the new built-in raid/party channel for sync'ing. At the times the raid/party (and guild) channels were implemented I was using SW_Stats (since I liked it better), and I'm curious if SW_Stats has since gone over to the built in channels? I never ever want to run a mod that has to use actual chat-channels.

I do like DMs ability to track individual spells for my use. I don't think I ever found that feature in SW. Though I wish DM would seperate crits and hits, instead of just 1 "average".

SW_Stats has bug where if you do not reset it displays your DPS as cumulative of the whole. If you need to see the dps you and others do and no I am not talking about amount of damage, but actual DPS you need to reset the mod quite frequently. It also counted damage done to my char from few netherstorm mobs as my own damage. These were netherray (67) and mana wraiths.

SW definitely uses the addon communication function. I believe that it also does individual spells. I think 2.0.3 is the latest, it's at least worth playing with.

This is only partially true. Some meters parse and record data incorrectly for other players.

For example, SW_stats still has issues with hunter pets (pets in general, really) and hunter autoshots, counting a hunters damage as Munter did x damage and Munter' s Autoshot did y damage, rather than adding the two. This is just one of many examples of parsing mistakes.

Generally such mods are better at counting your own damage without error so the only way to ensure 100% accurate stats would be to have everyone in the raid run a mod capable of syncing.

Alternatively (I don't have any links to this at present, sorry) you can take the combat logs themselves and parse them outside of wow. I did come across a parser which did this and broke various statistics down in a very similar manner to recap. The basic idea was that 5 or so people sent their combat logs to one person for parsing, the script did its job and that raid would be posted publically for people to poke at.

It all depends just how accurate you want to get. Generally (with the possible exceptions of hunters, who seem to break most addons) any meter will show slacking.

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