Meters and their place in raiding

[Icthus]

Ok, here is a fine place for discussion of meters.

I for one think they are too easily tricked and often measure things that are of little value.

They can, however, point out where work needs to be done.

[ewoksrule]

I think Meters are a good way for class/raid leaders to monitor how ppl are performing. When I see that 4 pallys cleansed at: 200, 140, 145, 20 I know that we have 1 real hard worker, 2 ppl doing their job and 1 thats slacking.

I think they are good in that they keep ppl accountable to work hard and not fall way behind in the stats.

I think they are bad when ppl use them to put another player down. Its also bad when ppl forget to do other parts of their job just to win on the meters, often causing potential wipes. They need to be used with tact and care as well as understanding.

There are part of the game and here to stay, but it would be wise to comment now and then to raid groups how they should be used and viewed. I like the idea that you only see them posted in the Meters chat channel unless asked to by a leader for a certain reason.

[Neirai the Forgiven]

The best Damage Meter read out is the one called "Idle Time"

If anyone has an inordinate amount of idle time compared to the other raiders, and never said why (aka he was here the whole raid, he didn't go afk for a half-hour), it is because he wasn't healing, cleansing, dpsing, tanking, or buffing for most of the run.

The other meters? They're useful as long as they don't become an idol.

[Plankeye]

Reminds me of the Stat mods everyone wanted on the Counter Strike server we had a couple of years ago. I kept them off our server because it changed the environment of the game. I noticed servers with the mods would have an influx of stat hounds who would ignore all objectives of the maps like saving/protecting hostages and defusing/planting the bombs in favor of pure death match. If they died more then once on a single map they would start to complain about everyone hacking or would quit and come back just to reset their kill/death counter.

I would say it is a must for the class leaders as long as it is used to appropriately gauge raid stats and the class leaders work on their class team improving those stats.

There is a lot of useful information that goes unreported or unused in a typical damage meter. Most of the time healing and damage are the only things looked at. Sometimes you will see curing posted. But what about frequency of deaths to use of anti-threat abilities? This would show you real quick if your DPS classes are staying at the top of the threat lists. Count of how many times a non tank/pulling class pulls threat. Frequency of Divine Intervention to raid deaths. Amount of time a raider is not buffed by a class specific buff (need a separate number for fort/motw/ab/blessings). Even instance specific things like number of lava spawns that spawn per Firelord. I would also agree on the idle time being something extremely useful too.

I think it is more important for raiders to have KTM then a damage meter.

[Plankeye]

An additional note about not capturing things. As a protection paladin I have the health and armor (6k and 10k respectively) to stand in the middle of a fray and take some hits while I judge Seal of Light and keep it on a target which gives each melee attacker a chance to regain 61 health that does not show up on any damage meter. I have been doing this on every MC raid I go on now. But if you were to look at my healing, I am usually the lowest on the list.