Friday, February 20, 2009

DPS: what's in a number?

My daddy is 77 years old today. So much of who I am has been influenced by him.
To say that my life has been a bit stressful lately would be putting it mildly. I consider myself fortunate to have guildies that understand that, while I will come into a raid absolutely fried, I will probably not be at my best, and I need to not be yelled at.
After the raid last night, I went into heroic violet hold with a couple guildie alts, and two pug dps'ers. Other than the fact that I kept thinking I could tank in cloth, it went fine. During the run, Boom (who was healing) asked if I was running a meter. I always run a meter. I hate them, but they do provide a good measuring stick. My dps was the lowest i've seen it in a long time, and yet, I did about a third of the damage. That made me start thinking about the value of dps as a statistic.
In Elsia's FAQ about Recount on CurseGaming, he says, "DPS is a poor measure". So, I would say that for recount, I need to see how much damage I am contributing in the raid.
WoW web stats defines dps as damage done divided by the dps time, dps time being based on a 5 second window following each damage done. Anyone doing damage every 5 seconds or less would have 100% dps time.
DPS time is my biggest opportunity for improvement, and also my most challenging. Tuesday on Patchwerk, I had 95% dps time, and 3492 dps. That's my damage alone, my doomguard contributed more. I need to find those 5 second windows where I'm not damaging, and eliminate them. Here we go!

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