The Problem With Wowmeter/Highest DPS Lists

#0 - Dec. 21, 2009, 4:28 p.m.

People could have easily stacked the encounter for one person just to inflate their numbers.

The winners are meleers who got chain hysteriad all fight.

The winners are casters who stuck the boss and didn't target switch. And got chain tricks'd.

Discuss. Am i horribly wrong?

Ghostcrawler

#16 - Dec. 21, 2009, 7:22 p.m.

I don't think it's that players are necessarily trying to pad the meters (though I'm sure that does happen). I think the risk is misinterpreting "highest damage ever" as some kind of metric of how *you* do in your raid. The goal here is not to break the world record and win a gold medal. The goal is to defeat the boss, and it's probably a boss you are going to be fighting week after week. Consistency is generally more important than occasionally achieving huge numbers.

Consider two players below:

Player A has a damage range of 8000 to 12,000 dps. His average is 10,000 dps and 90% of the time he is near 10,000 dps. When the stars align, he can reach 12,000 dps. He sometimes drops to 8000 dps too.

Player B has a damage range of 10,000 to 11,500 dps. His average is 10,750 dps, but he still hits 11,500 quite often.

Now who would you rather have with you? Probably B. Yet when you look at a "Highest damage ever" list, you'll see A pegged at 12K and B pegged at 11.5K and worry that "A wins."