How to Use Damage and Healing Meters Properly

You know I don't think this is talked about enough considering the ubiquity of meters in WoW.

While a lot of players may use meters simply to confirm their existence and dominance over others, the real benefit of meters is to act as a tool to down difficult encounters. Meters are also PUBLIC to your group assuming they have a meter, and hence they can see how efficient or effective you are at managing encounters.

Just as a preface: Meters Do Not Matter for ANYTHING That is Trivial
(But they do help if someone fails at something that is trivial to find out WHY)

For me that is anything including and below heroic (normal aka the old flex aka fake) raids. The difficulty is just not there to even care. And seriously why is it called "normal"? Stop it. Just don't even. Do you EVEN even? UGH.

If running time-walking or a regular 5 man, just turn the damn thing off, nothing drastic is going to happen because someone did not do one of the trivial mechanics.

Damage Meters Example:

P1: 65,000 DPS
P2: 30,000 DPS
P3: 28,000 DPS

If you're just using throughput gauging, it may seem that P1 is the superior player. But it all depends on the encounter.

Example 1:

True: If this was a single target, no movement no encounter Patchwerk type fight.

Example 2:

False: If this encounter required DPS to manage adds. Further details reveal:

P1: 98% Damage on boss. 2% damage on adds.
P2: 75% Damage on adds. 25% damage on boss.
P3: 80% Damage on adds. 20% damage on boss.

You can now see that P2 and P3 have contributed more to the encounter, assuming the adds were a critical piece of progression, if P1 had helped perhaps the encounter would have been more smooth. It all DEPENDS. Perhaps they were ASSIGNED as the boss nuker. In that case, just compare P2 and P3, and you'll see everything was fine.

So the next time someone tries to flaunt their amazing abilities, maybe see if they even helped with any critical components of the encounter.

This is also why classes that can simultaneously blow up adds AND the boss seem to always do better than those who can't. If your class can, figure it out.

Healing Meters Example:

P1: 40,000 HPS
P2: 35,000 HPS
P3: 30,000 HPS

Hard to say right? It all depends on the class and the role. If someone is assigned to solely heal group AOE damage, they'd have a bit more heals than the healer assigned to perhaps a very geared tank.

Example 1:

P1: 40% pure heals. 60% overheals.
P2: 80% pure heals. 20% overheals.
P3: 50% pure heals. 50% overheals.

Looking from this example, P1 was probably healing inefficiently or wasting a lot of mana. P2 was on spot and P3 may be under-geared and trying to over-compensate by being inefficient, hence the overheals. If P1 was being a bit more efficient, P3 may also have been able to save mana. Without BEING a healer you can already see the synergy of the three healers in my imaginary raid here.

I found healing meters to be more of a personal measurement than anything. We are interested in total uptime of all heals including HoTs, which is important for resto druids. You should be aiming for 99%+ uptime of Lifebloom and Rejuv. Unless you need the bloom, NEVER let it drop off EVER. If you're out of range, cast it on yourself. Internalize its timing so you don't need to watch those silly heal helper addons.

Mana management also used to be a fun side-game. There are some who prefer being at full mana all the time, and those who prefer to deplete it all. I like both. Make it move with the boss' HP. If things are going well then keep it cool, as the fight progresses, step up those heals a bit, get a little bit less comfortable with low health. Whatever floats your healing boat.

Numbers Lie

Ok, don't, but they definitely do not paint the entire picture unless you are using all the correct numbers. I personally apply a mental metric that weighs all of what I have mentioned above to give "real" performance relative to everyone else.

You're undergeared, but did relatively well for your ilvl AND stayed out of bad? Well I will rank you as someone who pumped out more damage but died before execute phase. EXECUTE PHASE is what you live for why are you dying before it? Go out in a blaze of glory AFTER!

TL;DR

NO F*CK YOU GO READ IT!

1. Use meters more smartlier.
2. Damage TAKEN and mitigated and overall utility factors into performance (just like real life).
3. Have a layout of how the ideal [Role] would perform in any given encounter. And then gauge your performance by adhering to that vision.

If anything, if you're staying out of bad, you KNOW so you don't need meters to tell you that. If you interrupted or dispelled, YOU KNOW. Use a meter if you wish to gauge your progression, see if any tweaks made any improvement.

USE IT FOR IMPROVEMENT. Not dick measuring. Learn to read the different metrics and the next time someone pulls out that obnoxious 10 person list, retort them and tell them to pipe the fuck down no one cares.

Truny the Unmetered