State of Dungeon DPS

My Rogue was my second character to 85 and then I never really touched him.  He basically just sat there in the shadows, fitting, but serving no purpose otherwise.

Being all my characters are either healers or tanks with the exception of my hunter which is my main I decided that I wanted to start gearing up a second DPS character (Not big into casters so mage and lock are sitting out the gearing up stage for now).  The Rogue ended up getting the nod being he is also a skinner / leatherworker so having him geared is not a bad thing when I am bored and feel like farming some skins.

The thing with the Rogue for me is, I like playing it to an extent, but I suck at it, so playing it with others makes me feel as if I am making them do all the work.  If I can not do my part I do not join in on a random, it is as simple as that.

So first things first, I basically just threw points where they looked good while leveling, I needed to get myself an actual spec.  I look up some of the top assassination specs at all the usual places and to my surprise, my assassination spec, the one where I just threw anything where it looked good was 100% the same as the top assassination DPS spec, at least in the assassination part of the tree.  The other points I needed to move around.

Being I just mentioned I suck at being a Rogue this goes to prove one thing I said early on, these smaller specs leave you with no choice but to choose the top spec.  As long as you read the skills you will never have much of an option.  And they changed it to this so it would not be cookie cutter.  It does not get more cookie cutter when someone that knows nothing about being a Rogue picks up the perfect spec without even thinking.

Back to the story however.  So I fixed those points in the extra things and read over my rotation, which seems to be what it has always been and I set out to do some normals.

I did a few normals and did decently.  Even reached a high of almost 12K DPS in the last fight of HoO, well, it is a gimmick fight so that was not all me.  I was pulling 5.5K-7K on trash and 8K+ on bosses.  Not all that bad but still not heroic ready.

But enough about me.  Everyone else in the normals was rocking it.  Even when I pulled out all the stops and had some nice crit streaks and reached 9K+ on some fights I was still dead last.  Yeap, 9K and dead last.

This was not in only one normal, this was in five of them.  I was always dead last in DPS, often behind the tank even.  Personally I do not want to try a heroic until I can pull at least 8K over all and 10K+ on bosses for a dungeon.  I believe that should be the minimum any one does, at least if they have any self respect.

Lets flash forward to another character, me helping a friend start to gear up.  We queue for heroics, me as a healer, him as a DPS.  We spam a few of them, four actually.  Outside of my friend who was only doing around 7K over all himself but at least 9K-10K on bosses, there were no other players in any of the dungeons we did that could pull that much.

He was top DPS in heroics doing roughly what I was doing in normals, as bottom DPS, below even tanks.

I was seeing a better selection of DPS in normals then I was in heroics.  Something seems a little off here if you ask me.  Heroic dungeons means you usually have more gear, which in turn should mean you have more skill.  How come the over all that I have seen in the normals and heroics I have run in the recent weeks seem to always have the DPS in normals, on average, doing more DPS then the people in heroics?

Perhaps there is a telling factor here.

People that care about doing their part, like me on my Rogue, shine their skills up in normals.  Hence the reason for so many good players in normals.  Whereas people in heroics are rushing it just to get more gear because they are under the false assumption that gear = DPS.

The few and far between, those people that are learning and honing their skills in normals, will enter heroics and enter the mix of half wits, no wits and dim wits, that think they can pull 4K in a Zul heroic and they are doing their job well.

Perhaps blizzard should introduce other ways to determine how and when you can get into a heroic besides item level.  It is giving the false impression to those morons that if they have the item level that means they can do the job.  This is wrong 100 times over.  Gear is a means to an end, skill gets you to the end.

At the moment the state of DPS in dungeons, to me it seems at least, is that there are a great deal of very good players coming the way of heroics soon.  They are just working out the kinks in normals.  Like everyone should.  Maybe this is a good sign.

There are a lot of bad players out there, they all seem to be in heroics, but you should be happy to know that there is a group of people coming up that are much better then the people we see in dungeons now.

The end question is, with my Rogue, I could easily do better DPS then I see from most people in heroics, should I start doing them?  Nah, until I can do 8K over all with out even thinking about it I won't.  I do not want to be another person that is part of the problem.  I want to be part of the solution.  A good DPS that waits until they can actually do the job.  Maybe when I finally hit item level 329 (I can cheat my way in now) I will be doing at least 8K easily.

How can I manage almost 8K on a character I suck on yet that boomkin that says he has been playing since the family and friends beta still can only pull 5K in item level 356 and he thinks he is good?

The game isn't the problem, it is the people that play it.

The state of DPS is, people will always try to skate through in doing bad DPS because there are two other DPS in the group they are hoping will make up for their short comings.

They will not get better, unless we as players, start kicking, or at least least mentioning it to them, respectfully, no need to insult people.  Blizzard is not going to do anything to fix the problem, only we can.

Every time you run a heroic and there is someone doing 5K DPS but the other two are doing fine you let it side, well, that makes you part of the problem.  Mention something, kick them, do not let them do 5K.  Who cares if the other DPS are 22K and 18K and they are not really needed.  They will never get better until they know they are not doing good to begin with.

This is the mentality that wrath gave us all and I am guilty of it as well.  I would do a random and did not care if the other two DPS sat at the entrance picking their nose.  I did not need them, at 80 I could solo almost all the heroics.  I only needed other people to get my points for a random.  I let it slide when the DK did 800 DPS or the hunter did 500 DPS because in the end I did not even need them to do anything.

That DK is now the DK doing 5K in Zul, that hunter is now the hunter wiping the group because he is screwing up every step he makes.

Maybe if I said something back then they would not be as bad as they are now.  Lets all hope those people that I see in the normals are going to be joining us in heroics soon.  Heroics need them.