Where's The Beef?

I might be dating myself there but does anyone remember that little old lady in the Wendy's commercials that used to look at the competitors hamburgers and yell "Where's The Beef?"  Of course the concept of the commercial was that Wendy's had the beef in their burgers.

When it comes to raiding the DPS is the beef.  The tank and the healers make up the rest of the burger but without the DPS as the beef it is really a shitty burger.  A burger without a good slab of beef might be okay, but one with a nice hunk on beef is so much better.  Same goes for a raid.  A raid with all 4K DPS might be able to get the job done but a raid with all 8K DPS is so much better.

Lets not even get into the fact that 8K DPS gets things down in half the time that 4K DPS does, that should go without saying.  What people do not realize is that getting things down in half the time makes the tanks life easier and the healers life easier.  Good DPS, just like good beef, makes things better. 

So my question is, Where's The Beef?

In the various raids I have been on in the last month I am left wondering where the DPS was?  I've been in 10 mans where people had sub 3K DPS.  In ICC.  With the 30% buff.  Excuse me?

I do not care that you are "geared" enough for ICC there is simply no excuse for doing 3K DPS in ICC with the 30% buff.  Even a horrible DPS should be doing at least 5K in ICC with the buff.

Lets not talk about ICC because that has the 30% buff and that throws numbers off some. Lets talk about some of my other runs.  The perfect case and point for a DPS check is the fire boss in VoA.  It requires very limited movement for everyone so it should be a fight that everyone can do at least close to their top DPS.

Now lets just look at me because, well, I know what I did there and in each time I went in, I was a constant, I was me, I was in the same gear and I had the same skills.  So I can easily use me as a test subject.  The others around me where different people, in different gear and different skill levels.

Over the last few times I was there in 10 man my numbers looked something like this.  8.4K, 10.6K, 9.8K and 10.1K.  The lowest one I was still top DPS on and I know why I was lower.  The tank could not keep aggro off me so I had to FD a couple of time and MD every time it was off cool down and basically auto shot sometimes.  Also you have to remember the raid buffs where different in each make up as well but you could fairly accuracy say that I do "around" 10K DPS.  I am not even at a 6K gear score and have had the same gear for a very long time.  I don't win rolls.  Oh well, bad luck on my part.

So to look at that and know that I do not have uber gear and I am most definitely not a top skilled Hunter, I am still learning, and I can do 10K DPS single target without the ICC buff you would have to figure that people with better gear then me, or at least with more skill then me, should be toasting me.

Thing is I am always #1.  I am #1 and I am not extremely geared or extremely skilled.  So that brings me to the question again, Where's The Beef?

The one run that I was on where I got the 9.8K DPS the second highest was 7.7K DPS.  Someone whispered me after the fight telling me how good I was.  They said it was funny that the only person there under 6K gear score was #1 by more then 2K DPS.

The more concerning fact was that there were two DPS that were under 4K DPS.  How is it even possible to be under 4K DPS on a fight with almost no movement with over a 6K gear score?  Auto attack only?

This is not an isolated incident either.  One 25 man VoA I was in we had nearly a dozen people of various classes and gear scores doing DPS in the 2K range.  How the hell do you get gear when you are that bad?  What is even sadder is that some of them had better gear then me.

Another 25 man run on the ice boss this one hunter whispered me after the fight saying he was proud he beat me being he had ran before with me and never was able to beat me.  I looked at his gear.  He out geared me big time.  He had all his frost gear upgraded, 2 at 277 and 2 at 264.  I have 251s.  Not to mention he had a better weapon and a better bow.  I had not looked at recount in detail so all I saw was he beat me by 800 DPS.  I just thought of it as, well he should be able to get a little extra DPS out of that gear.  I said, nice work to him and went to walk to the fire boss when I looked at the recount while waiting on everyone else.

Do you know why he beat me by 800 DPS?  He never switched to the orbs, not even a multi shot to try and hit them and the boss at the same time.  He stayed on the boss the whole time.  I whispered him back, could not resist, and told him that the reason he beat me is that he did not switch to orbs like he was supposed to.  Maybe we can have another go at it next time, competition is fun, it makes us all better.  His response was that I need to get better, he beat me fair and square, I was the one that was not smart enough to stay on the boss to get more DPS.

How the hell does this guy even get invited to raids to get that gear with an attitude like that?  He is not a team player for sure.  I would never consider adding him to one of my raids with an attitude like that.  If I ever hear someone say something like I don't want to do that because it will hurt my DPS then they can go find another raid to be in.

But that is getting off the point of Where's The Beef?  You see the issue here is that no one is doing the DPS they should be doing and some of them, like that guy, know that and do something that could wipe a raid in an effort just to get higher DPS.

I am sick and tired of being in raids where I am #1 DPS by a long shot when I know I am not that good.  I am sick of beating out people that should be making a laughing stock of my DPS.  I am sick of running with people doing under 4K DPS in ICC with the 30% buff. 

Is it really everyone in the game?  I occasionally run into someone that can beat me and sometimes beat me by a nice margin but it is not that often.  Some fights it happens even with bad DPS around depending on the fight.  Like the ice boss, melee DPS should be beating me.  Sadly they do not most of the time.  I had one run where I did 7.5K on the ice boss and was top DPS, top... while switching.  Where's The Beef?

Is it because it is so late in the game that no one really cares any more so they do not try?
Is it because we have become so willing to accept mediocre players just to fill spots?
Is it because I am on a low population server?
Is it too much to ask that I can get all 8K+ DPS for ICC with the buff?

I am convinced that 90% of the time that we go into some raid and wipe that it is not the tanks fault.  It is not the healers fault.  It is the fault of the DPS.  They are not doing enough damage to shorten the fight.  They are tanking to much damage and over working the healers.  They are not switching and moving and positioning when they need to.  Well, the positioning part is healers and tanks too, but the rest isn't.

So I want to recruit some new DPS.  I am content with our tanks and our healers and would like to have back ups for them but I want to get better DPS so I can finally finish this ICC run and get my Kingslayer like nearly every other player in the world seems to have already.

I do not care if I am last in DPS, last with 10K is a million times better then first with 10K by a 2K margin.  I would gladly be last.  It would make me happy to be last.  It would mean we can finally down some new bosses.

I've said it once and I will say it again.

DPS is more important then tanking and healing.

Old raids do not become cake walks because you can tank more then you did back then or heal more then you did back then, they are a cake walk because you down everything so damn fast.  Proof positive that DPS is more important to making raids easier.  You can live with better then average tanks and better then average healers but you can not live with only better then average DPS, you need quality DPS.

Where's The Beef?

How come I can not find any of those people?