Epic Wipe and the Year of the AoE DPS
February 13, 2009 2 Comments
I saw an amazing wipe last night, well more than one actually, but the one I’m referring to was epic. It was not caused by a healer, or a tank, but overzealous DPS.
This is the Year of the AoE DPS. Make no mistake about it, AoE DPS is king of this game now, and it has a tendency to get people in trouble. What’s the smartest way to kill things? One at a time. What’s the fastest way to kill things? At the same time.
Enter Gothik the Harvester, his legions, and our 25 man Naxxramus raid. Pan left to the live side of the encounter, and 10 dead raid members. Zoom in on the gate in the middle of the room opening as the other 15 members of the raid are hopelessly slaughtered.
How did this happen? Impatience. Sometimes, I really wish Recount had never been invented. Too many DPS players are blinded by the tunnel vision of being #1 on the meter. I have to admit that I like seeing big numbers and it feels like an accomplishment to top the chart, but in a 25 man raid on a boss like Gothik is not the time to go crazy.
The main issue last night was that the tanks never got a chance to establish aggro before the DPS started to light the waves of adds up with AoE. How bad was it? The tanks were not in the top 5 of Damage taken, they were 6, 9, and 10 respectively. One of our Deathknights took over 200k damage, and he was not a tank.
Surely the tanks could just taunt the mobs right? Well, yes and no. Taunts are not spammable, and we only were using 1 tank on live side. Once a mob or two gets out of control of the tank it’s basically a domino effect from that point forward to failure. Even Challenging Shout has its limits.
The bottom line, is that meters are not the best or sometimes even a good indicator of a good player. Anyone can make the data look good, like a player doing AoE damage on 15+ mobs at once. It’s not hard to pull 17k DPS on a pull like that, but it doesn’t make you leet. The best DPS players are the ones who pull good damage while avoiding threat and incoming damage issues.
– Sam
Slice and Dice 
I agree with you completely, I too sometimes wish recount would have never been invented, too many dps do not wait on the tank to establish threat. This is the biggest problem I have with WoW.
was iinvolved in that? cant remember