Using Recount effectively

[Bluepepper]

I did some searching on the site and couldn't find any guides or general tips on how to use the Recount add-on effectively. If someone can provide me with a link or with a detailed post on the topic of Recount or an add-on like it I'd really appreciate it.

-Thanks

[Metasynaptic]

What do you want to use it for?

Most people think to themselves: "I think I need a damage meter so I can..."

...know which DPS is doing the most damage so i can cast vigilence on them.
...know which DPS is sucking so I can kick vote them out of my pug.
...show off how big my epeen is.

Etc.

Why is it you think you need a meter?

[Turelliax]

Some people also use recount to analyze their own rotations and DPS so they can figure out How they can get optimize. So Perhaps you are wondering how to read the graphs and such?

[Shodowz]

Recount is good to see the death meters after a wipe to see what people died too, Making people more of aware of 'WHY' they died and explaining that part of the mechanic is what i use to assure people are not dying repeatably to the same particular mechanic, Also checking peoples deaths for the past X seconds to see why they died could have just been because they didn't receive any heals, This allows you to say to your healers you let him die.

Valithria fight healing meters to see what sort of rotation healers are using, what HPS there pushing, majority of times people need something 'specific' that there doing wrong so they dont do it again.
Most pug leaders will just say YOU SUCK /kick but if you look at there recount and give certain people a chance 9 times out of 10 they come good once they know what it is they have to avoid (especially 1st timers), Recount is very VERY effective at providing this.

As stated it makes for pickin Vig target (if prot warr in raid), but mainly i use it for Deaths-Interrupts-Dispels-Healing/HPS and Damage/DPS.

Once you've selected X topic to look at click the individual raid member to go into his log for that fight to see a break down of what happened, there is buttons (left and right) to scroll through everything listed in the fight that i included above and then some.

So there is my speel on what i use it for, i hope it was somewhat useful.

Shodowz.

[KnThrak]

There are two important things to realize with Damage Meters though:
1. The HPS or total healing of a healer is not necessarily relevant to her worth to the raid.
2. The DPS or total damage of a damage dealer is not necessarily relevant to her worth to the raid either. Even if it is much more so than healing is for a healer.

Once one accepts this, they can be an interesting tool. Certain small shifts in setup or buff spreading can have outstanding effects on total raid DPS - we pushed nearly 20k extra raid-DPS on Lanathel25 by resorting positioning to optimize bite-travel-time and totem coverage, and it was interesting to see how some people lost minor amounts of DPS, others gained some, and in total we fielded 20k more (and killed her! \o/).

As said already Death logs are very interesting, even if both Recount and Skada have fairly bad ones. Acherons are awesome but I think the mod is no longer updated.

Failmeters can be good if you suspect your group is doing something wrong at a base level, check how many got hit by what fire how often and see whether positioning is just screwy.

Lastly, while the meters themselves are fairly useless for judging people (meaning don't look at people in comparison to each other unless you know what you're doing!), isolated per-player stats are very interesting. Composition of healing and damage tells you whether they do something clever or wrong, and total numbers can tell you whether they slack or miss crucial utility to perform.

But as said, nether DPS nor HPS reflects the worth of a player to the raid. It's a part of it, but not as large a part as people would like others to believe. That is, the people who are top and frantically spamming their meters would love you to believe it is their worth, but it only goes to show they got nothing else to lean on.

[woodyman]

i only usually use recount to kick myself up the bum and also to experiment with gear changes
clicking on my name and bringing up individual ability usage can tell me if im not using enough of say Mortal strikes etc etc
before i had recount i never really took my rotation that seriously because i honestly didnt believe that it had that much effect on my dps.....but it does :P

[bling581]

As said already Death logs are very interesting, even if both Recount and Skada have fairly bad ones. Acherons are awesome but I think the mod is no longer updated.

Our healing officer uses a mod called Grim Reaper that seems to work fairly well on displaying the last couple heals and damage someone took before they died. It might be worth looking into if you like to keep track of that sort of thing.

[Mookey]

It's "best ingame" analysis tool
Best analysis tool is combat log parsing.

Analysis tools are used in many other fields.
#wikipedia: Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle

To use it effectively you can:
• Look @ dps to measure your or your raid performance
• Look and compare dps and damage done to understand who's slacking at what.
• Understand how people died.
• Understand for how much damage some ability does
• Find out if people are using wrong rotations by percentage of their abilities

and many many more.

[Mammoth]

Some of my favorite uses for Recount:

Seeing just what people are attacking. Click on the name to get a detailed view for that player. You can view the attacks used and how much damage they did to each mob. Great method to see who's not switching to adds (Snobalds for example) and who is hitting adds they shouldn't (melee with WW damage on Blood Beasts).

Checking who's taking damage from what. Hard to blame the healers for your death when recount shows you've taken 40k worth of Slime Spray damage.

Displaying who is actually helping the group by interrupting or dispelling.

It's no WOW Logs but it can be a very useful tool in-game when used right.

[Bluepepper]

First off, thanks everyone for your posts I really appreciate it.

Part of the reason I want a better understanding of how to use Recount is so I can have a better understanding of what is going on all the stratum of an encounter: Dps, Healing, Deaths, Target Acquisition, etc. and come to a better informed conclusion about which steps are necessary to take.

Back Story
I was in a ToGC25 recently and after a wipe the Raid Lead decide to do some pruning. The first person the Raid Lead decided to let go was a Discipline Priest because his Heals were low on the meters-He wasn't aware that the Priest was Disc. In short order, the person on vent who was playing that Priest made himself vocal and objected. The Raid Lead was reasonable enough to try and explain to the Priest why he kicked him out of the raid group, but I had a feeling that even though the Raid Lead's intentions were understandable his conclusion as to why this Priest had "low heals" was wrong.

In order to resolve this conflict, I took a wild guess and on vent asked if someone using Recount could bring up Absorbs if there was such a thing. With my limited knowledge of the Priest class I figured that this Disc Priest's spells were probably absorbing more damage rather than healing through the damage. Someone took my suggestion and posted the Absorbs that were being kept track of by recount Recount. To the surprise of the Raid Lead this Priest was on top of the meters for Absorbs and invited the Priest back to our group.

After that experience with Recount I was amazed at how beneficial this tool could be if used correctly. Is there any type of mathematics involved that could help out with the analysis of Recount? For example, what are the Red Flags I should be looking for in the pie charts, time studies, or logs for Dps, Heals, Deaths, or the like?

[Muffin Man]

There are two important things to realize with Damage Meters though:
1. The HPS or total healing of a healer is not necessarily relevant to her worth to the raid.
2. The DPS or total damage of a damage dealer is not necessarily relevant to her worth to the raid either. Even if it is much more so than healing is for a healer.

These are very good points to remember:
Be aware that healing can be sniped very easily. If a druid spams the raid with wild growth, he chips away at the HPS of a shaman spamming chain heal. This isn't a bad thing. But just shows how meters don't always accurately show worth.

DPS can also be sniped, but this is much harder/rarer. I sometimes encounter this in heroics when I apply rend and the mob dies before the first OP proc. This shouldn't ever happen on a raid boss. But there are raid activities that will lower dps. Target switching (killing snobolds on Gormok) and movement are two big ones (Rotface). So bad raiders can (and often will) abuse these mechanics to pad the meters. Looking at Torvalon it's common for really bad ranged to ignore the orbs and just stick on the boss. Their numbers may look prettier... but they're bringing down the raid. Of course as an DK this is a fight where pestilence + bb means I pad the meters *and* get adds at the same time =p. But generally speaking, doing the 'right thing' will lower your dps (take a look at what happens to ranged dps on Saurfang or melee dps on Putricide).

Lastly, while the meters themselves are fairly useless for judging people (meaning don't look at people in comparison to each other unless you know what you're doing!), isolated per-player stats are very interesting. Composition of healing and damage tells you whether they do something clever or wrong, and total numbers can tell you whether they slack or miss crucial utility to perform.

But as said, nether DPS nor HPS reflects the worth of a player to the raid. It's a part of it, but not as large a part as people would like others to believe. That is, the people who are top and frantically spamming their meters would love you to believe it is their worth, but it only goes to show they got nothing else to lean on.

Quoted for emphasis. Meters are just a cursory look at what's happening over the course of the raid. There are reasons some people may have good or bad numbers independent of how well that person plays. Last night for instance we had a healing priest get bone spiked by Marrogar 3 times in a row. We wiped on the first bone storm due to a d/c. Guess how terrible his healing meter looked?

As some people have suggested, and I'll echo, I get the most use out of meters when I want to look at my rotation (am I hitting shield slam every 6 seconds? ect).

Also, I've been noticing that Skada and recount show wildly different numbers for dps even when damage done is the same.

[Destruyen]

i like the fact that someone mentioned earlier about who is attacking what in pugs. after a wipe you can look to see ( toravon in this example) to see which ranged were dpsing the frost orbs and which just stayed on the boss to boost his dps. sure it's not as good as wmo or wol, but in-game you can see fairly accurately who is doing their jobs and who isn't and deserves a kick. granted, this is limited to how knowledgable about each class/spec (like the disc priest mentioned earlier) and what their strengths and weaknesses are. a rogue or feral will not have as much dps as possible on fights with alot of target switches due to the combo point system or if a group has alot of caster friendly buffs or vice versa with alot of melee buffs. it basically requires some knowledge of fight mechanics and raid comp to be able to confidently say someone needs to be kicked due to just not being able to play properly or if they just don't have the right buffs that other classes are getting.

i use skada in game to see the breakdown of my abilities used on a fight by fight basis to check and make sure i'm properly executing my rotation.

[bling581]

You can get a addon for Recount that changes it to display absorbs as effective healing so Disc Priests will show their full worth on the meter. This way you can link it to anyone in question such as the misinformed raid leader in the post above.

[Theotherone]

As pointed out one, fight (and especially trash) is not the yardstick by which to measure anything; also to effectively use Recount, as some have hinted at, you need to know the class you're looking at and the fight. Recount can be good, but it needs to understood as merely one tool in the toolbox.