Your DPS/healing/tanking can rock, but you suck
Posted 06-17-2008 at 01:33 PM by Thist
I have noticed this before, but more often now that I pug a lot - there are people who do amazing dps/healing/tanking, but suck horribly despite this. There are two main reasons that they suck - not paying attention/listening, and lack of mobility.
They can even be in tier 6 because most high end guilds will tolerate a certain % of people who "always stand in the fire, lol" and who need to be told exactly what they have to do.
You will notice these people sucking a lot in places where listening and moving come into play, examples: when your incredibly high dps group has 3-4 deaths to chains on illhoof in kara, netherspite owns you for weird reasons, a bad infernal means a wipe on prince, the second boss in hyjal is impossible, lurker deaths, najentus spear isn't thrown, vashj core not tossed, kael's first add kills them, they shatter people on gruul etc.
Sometimes people "sort of" compensate for not being able to dps/heal/tank and move by just stopping their dps/healing/tanking then moving, then resuming it again. Or they compensate for not paying attention by learning one new way to not get killed per attempt. This saves them on some encounters, but still makes things painful for the entire raid.
I would always rather have an average person who can move and is paying attention than a great person who is lacking in either.
I have some ideas on how they can improve - I'll talk about paying attention/listening first. If you know you will have frequent unavoidable interruptions then tell your RL and give them the option to replace you, it's the polite thing to do. Other than that, the solutions are generally obvious - stop watching TV while you play, get drinks and snacks ready before raiding, make use of the scheduled afks, listen carefully to strats, save chatting with friends for later and put up a /dnd during raids, and just overall be considerate.
The entire raid should never be waiting on you. You need to listen all the time there isn't a general raid afk, not just after the pull - you can miss things like your expected position, whether you should be wearing dps gear or not, what symbols mean etc.
If you are called out for making the entire raid wait then don't get pissy and throw out overused sympathy-inducing remarks at your RL in an argumentative tone - your attention is a basic raiding requirement, not a favor you do to the raid. Excuses (even good or funny ones) are never as good or funny as you think, and really annoy more people than you think. A quick apology and not doing it again are the best thing to do if you messed up.
Now the problem of mobility - this is something I have struggled with, so here are some things that helped me: changing A and D keys so they don't move your char and force you to mouse move, binding your main clicks to keys so you can do them while moving, doing arena and bgs and learning to hit those bastards who are strafing around you, and leveling a character of the faction you don't usually play (so you can't autopilot cos you don't know where anything is) without using your mouse.
It does take practice, and some people just get it right away and you may not, but don't get disheartened - even if you only learnt to hit one key instead of clicking this week it still made you better.
Anyway, end of my rant.
They can even be in tier 6 because most high end guilds will tolerate a certain % of people who "always stand in the fire, lol" and who need to be told exactly what they have to do.
You will notice these people sucking a lot in places where listening and moving come into play, examples: when your incredibly high dps group has 3-4 deaths to chains on illhoof in kara, netherspite owns you for weird reasons, a bad infernal means a wipe on prince, the second boss in hyjal is impossible, lurker deaths, najentus spear isn't thrown, vashj core not tossed, kael's first add kills them, they shatter people on gruul etc.
Sometimes people "sort of" compensate for not being able to dps/heal/tank and move by just stopping their dps/healing/tanking then moving, then resuming it again. Or they compensate for not paying attention by learning one new way to not get killed per attempt. This saves them on some encounters, but still makes things painful for the entire raid.
I would always rather have an average person who can move and is paying attention than a great person who is lacking in either.
I have some ideas on how they can improve - I'll talk about paying attention/listening first. If you know you will have frequent unavoidable interruptions then tell your RL and give them the option to replace you, it's the polite thing to do. Other than that, the solutions are generally obvious - stop watching TV while you play, get drinks and snacks ready before raiding, make use of the scheduled afks, listen carefully to strats, save chatting with friends for later and put up a /dnd during raids, and just overall be considerate.
The entire raid should never be waiting on you. You need to listen all the time there isn't a general raid afk, not just after the pull - you can miss things like your expected position, whether you should be wearing dps gear or not, what symbols mean etc.
If you are called out for making the entire raid wait then don't get pissy and throw out overused sympathy-inducing remarks at your RL in an argumentative tone - your attention is a basic raiding requirement, not a favor you do to the raid. Excuses (even good or funny ones) are never as good or funny as you think, and really annoy more people than you think. A quick apology and not doing it again are the best thing to do if you messed up.
Now the problem of mobility - this is something I have struggled with, so here are some things that helped me: changing A and D keys so they don't move your char and force you to mouse move, binding your main clicks to keys so you can do them while moving, doing arena and bgs and learning to hit those bastards who are strafing around you, and leveling a character of the faction you don't usually play (so you can't autopilot cos you don't know where anything is) without using your mouse.
It does take practice, and some people just get it right away and you may not, but don't get disheartened - even if you only learnt to hit one key instead of clicking this week it still made you better.
Anyway, end of my rant.
Total Comments 20
Comments
 | seconded! I absolutely hate people who will "stand in the fire" over and over and over and over, never realizing what's going on around them. |
Posted 06-18-2008 at 07:01 AM by Sprot  |
| |  I linked this from the frontpage because there's a whole lot of insight in here that people don't usually understand from the outside looking in. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 07:24 AM by Ciderhelm |
| |  any chance you do public speaking on this topic to guilds? this really hits home. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 07:43 AM by Keza |
| | 2nd it aswell, basically tunnelvision players who do this, they only have 1 thing at their mind when they play the game and that is either dmg numbers on the screen or healing bars, like on supremus so often where the same h ealer died over and over again... |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 08:08 AM by Sirq |
| | I agree with the premise, but I've always found keyboard-walking essential for tanking. When you have a bad infernal on prince, for example, how do you mouse move without getting crushed as you turn your back? |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 09:08 AM by Galf |
| | You might also want to check on their computers. I've played with people like this, only to find out later that they couldn't run any addons but omen, got like 5fps, and had environment details turned down. I mean, sure you should see you health go down, but it's easier to miss that fire's there when it's not even being rendered. In those cases, we had folks use DBM and push notes to folks with those kinds of issues. <shrug>. In any case, it's not always idiocy, though I've certainly seen (and been a part of...) my share of that. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 09:17 AM by larsberg |
| | Galf, by default the A and D keys rotate you. I think in situations like you describe, it's more effective to strafe away from a bad situation, so you don't turn your back. The default keys for that are Q and E, I believe (could be wrong, I changed my default keybinds a long time ago). Good post, by the way. I'm trying to figure out good, measurable ways to track who does cause these problems rather than just relying upon hearsay from raid members. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 09:34 AM by bosephus |
| |  With the emphasis on empirical perfomance metrics like meters and WWS reports, etc. its easy to lose sight of all the factors that make a player 'good' or 'bad' or somewhere inbetween. Dead class X does 0 DPS. Yeah, we know that but do we only give it lip service? What gets people killed and what causes failures in raids aside from not enough of the basic DPS/Healing/Tanking(threat/surviveability)? Lazyness? Lack of Focus? Self interested epeen brandishment? Lack of core gaming skills? Pressure? I think they all make a difference and are interlinked but I doubt this list encompasses all issues. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 10:24 AM by Horacio |
| | This has long been a concern of mine, ever since we had a healer in my old guild that had most of her gear presented to her on a silver platter because she was a beloved member... but she was useless on any fight that required her to do anything beyond standing in a single spot and spamming heals. Of course, that wasn't quite as bad the hunter we pugged who consistently asked for the boss' loot table to be linked during the fight. As a raid leader, the most expedient thing to do is to replace these people. Teaching raid members who suck because they're either distracted/distracting or immobile is a frustrating and tiresome endeavor at the best of times. If you know that you're one of these people, the best thing you can do is to ask for help, shed your ego, humble yourself, and don't take offense at the advice you're given. Prove that you're willing to do what it takes to improve without complaining. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 11:02 AM by Archfiend |
| | Absolutely....people in general are terrible at taking critisim. Performance issues based on hard numbers are easier. Post the WWS after the raid and demonstrate where each person came in. Not enough DPS? Using the wrong healing spells? Poor threat rotation? Easy enough. Convincing someone that crap doesn't just happen, that they weren't unlucky or that you instructed them something else or didn't do enough explaining isn't as simple. They can point to the stats. "Yeah, but I did 1400DPS, don't tell me I don't know what I'm doing" even if they yanked aggro on a timed transition and got splattered or didn't move because they were casting a spell and got hosed. And its not always easy to pinpoint. Boss throws totems that wreck the raid. Rogue doesn't pull off to kill it because he has 5 combo points and is going to drop a finish on the boss. Why did this happen? Why didn't we kill the totem fast? Why are we scrambling to heal up the raid? "mumble, mumble didn't see it, couldn't target it, thought ranged was supposed to nuke it blah, blah" |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 11:28 AM by Horacio |
| |
After making this post I also thought of some other things that you may want to touch on if you do a podcast: - not knowing how to do your classes secondary abilities - like the classic 1k+ dps mage who can't keep a sheep sheeped. - focussing on more than just yourself - sometimes you need to take it for the team and keep debuffs up or counter or disarm or grab an add, or do other things that make your dpsing/healing/tanking less than 100%. - triaging - you'd be surprised how many people suck at this - do you intervene the healer who is low or the hunter? do you heal the mt at 10% or the rogue? You should always know where you can be most effective, and what will save the raid from a wipe, and what won't.
- zoom in, and look at walls or the ground - on Vashj we had several people who needed to do this when the bats came out - I think they used the minimap and knowing the general layout to get by - change from wireless to wired if all it takes is a $5 cable - a lot of home wireless networks are dreadfully unreliable and slow - shut down things like messenger before launching wow, maybe turn your antivirus scanner off if you feel the risk is worth it, make sure nobody in your house is downloading massive amounts of er...stuff while your raid - basic computer maintenance stuff - defrag, check your mem allocation is nice and high, scan for loggers and spyware, clean that dirty mouse underside, etc There are also lots of factors that you can do absolutely nothing about and that will hurt you to try. Sometimes someone is just an annoying stubborn idiot, and you can't give them the perfect childhood, thousands of hours of therapy, happier life, true love, or kinder world that they need. The very worst (and saddest - because they could be family or a dear friend) is when everyone just knows someone is "slow". | ||
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 12:11 PM by Thist |
| | it's called situational awareness. everyone would have it, if they cared enough to try. this game isn't hard. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 12:22 PM by byechee |
| | I tell my guild to find a yellow sticky note and write in a thick black marker "DON'T STAND IN THE FIRE" and stick it on the side of their monitor. I also periodically call out 'watch out for the fire' when there's a non-critical point in the fight. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 02:00 PM by Wesclorck |
| | I think one of the prime problems is DPS classes tend to pay to much attention to those fat crits there getting. Funny thing is, there is no benefit from seeing just how hard your hitting, hit the button and you will do the attack, then hit the next one in your rotation. Therefore you should only be glancing at your action bars, threat meter, DPS meter if you have one to see if you need to step it up. Otherwise you can pay attention to everything going around. I learned this being that when I'm Fury I wanna see that next Bloodthirst crit since thats all thats fun about DPS, but as a tank you dont even look at the damage your doing, but focus on the important shit. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 10:54 PM by Kahmal |
| | Kahmal, that is so totally a lie. We all know we all look to wait for that giant 1400+ shield slam crit, and quietly cheer to ourselves about our awesome damage-output. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 11:26 PM by Nayre |
| | @Kahmal: Too true. I'm too busy managing my cooldowns, let alone watching my health and keeping an eye on potentially dangerous situations, to care if my dps is anywhere close to the next highest guy on the list. After the fight, I might check my stats on recount, but comparing numbers is usually just flexing your e-peen. We actually have a rule in our guild runs: damage meters are not allowed to be posted for two reasons, 1) the people who need to know how the raid is doing, i.e. the raid leaders, are already keeping track of that sort of thing, and 2) if you really cared, you'd have your own damage meters installed. |
| Posted 06-18-2008 at 11:32 PM by Archfiend |
| | There's also people who are just plain stupid. We've had a guy aggro Archimonde by running too close to him while getting to the raid not once....but twice. Wipe us on TK trash because he ran too close to banish the engineers. Stood around with the Vashj core for 2 minutes while the entire raid died around him (he was last to die and still didn't realize he had the core). WoW's gotten a lot of very useful mods for raiding since the expansion (Vael with no omen really tests the mettle of your tanks and dps!). However, even with a bajillion mods no amount of mods or help will ever replace using your brain. |
| Posted 06-19-2008 at 08:34 AM by doodootoo |
| | I wouldn't go so far to say its a total lie, but it certainly has less appeal. I like to know when I deal a hefty SS crit. Believe me, when I drilled Curator for 4976, I was paying attention, lol. But I have my SCT set differently for my different toons. On my mage, I want to know exactly how hard I'm hitting. On my tank, eh, knowing I am landing alot of threat abilities is nice. If you have good rage and are hammering HS/Dev, you aren't necassarily concerned with how much they are hitting for but you want to see it. |
| Posted 06-19-2008 at 10:14 AM by Horacio |
| | I guess there may be some truth to that... but I don't use mods to display enemy damage, so for me, I'd have to crane my viewing angle around to where I'm not staring at monster crotch, which isn't always viable or even a possibility depending upon the fight. |
| Posted 06-19-2008 at 07:34 PM by Archfiend |
| | @doodootoo Exactly, you dont look your damage on your because you know your hitting him. Thats just one less distraction, you can look at everything else. DPS class with that same frame of mind would probably perform better overall also, you know your using your spells/ablities so there is no reason to actually see how hard it hits, you can direct your attention to others things. Example: Though I've never raided as ranged DPS class but I can never understand why people let Orbs hit them on VR, even after DBM stopped broadcasting it, aim camera towards head run if you see one coming your way. Healers have it a little harder, but DPS only have that one thing to watch for, so I'm just guessing they're paying way too much attention to their numbers. Also in many cases these people that keep getting guild during boss fights are also the kind that pull aggro during trash. Sometimes they dont have Salv, sure DPS need Salv during boss fights but on trash you could patiently wait for Salv, and just go a bit lighter on DPS, sadly these are the types of players that can't hold there DPS wads so they keep at it like normal. All of this is just my theory though and I'm going to suggest it to my guild. |
| Posted 06-19-2008 at 08:25 PM by Kahmal |
Recent Blog Entries by Thist
- Failing at Hyjal still possible (11-05-2008)
- Stage of the invasion event your server is at? (11-04-2008)
- Random stuff - new job and warrior changes (11-02-2008)
- Arthas (the server), I hate you. (10-22-2008)
- Truly dismal DPS (09-02-2008)
