after being pointed to this topic by someone, i feel as though i will make an attempt to shed some light upon the whole "dps meters are teh suck".
data from raid 15/11/06 - Molten Core
"Damage Done (S)
EGROUP
1 Genii 1721665 (6.7%)
2 B--- 1541282 (6%)
3 M------- 1466212 (5.7%)
4 Z----- 1402789 (5.4%)
5 H----- 1306526 (5.1%)
6 H---------- 1256154 (4.9%)
7 D----- 1208520 (4.7%)
8 T------ 1170363 (4.5%)
9 G----- 1155391 (4.5%)
10 T---- 1029772 (4%)"
this is total damage done over the whole raid
this data was collected by 8 members of the raid
addon used: SWstats - Synced
SWstats has a whole host of useful information about what people are doing during a raid and is used by many good guilds to assess players performances
for example
Skill Details (NotS) Genii
PC
"Normal (522 - 34.8%) 713430
Backstab (1609 - 60.1%) 695149
Eviscerate (2510 - 28.7%) 168577
Ambush (2047 - 42.1%) 62809
Blade Flurry (1574 - 0%) 32445
Instant Poison VI (192 - 0%) 23388
Shoot Bow (662 - 19.2%) 18008
Sinister Strike (659 - 23.8%) 6920
Kick (166 - 50%) 248
First Aid (250 - 0%) 16750
Holy Strength (124 - 0%) 12820
Major Healthstone (1200 - 0%) 4800
Healing Potion (1428 - 0%) 2575"
skill breakdown
"Dpsmeters don't mean sh-- as u can not tell what someone is doing in the meanwhile. It is a snapshot of a fragment of a much bigger picture. It is however a nice way to see if you could improve yourself. If you see yourself @ the bottom of the list and someone of the same class @ the top you can start a conversation asking their point of view and tips / tactics." (yorga)
by using the skill breakdown function you can properly compare yourself to your similar equiped guildies, and by doing that it shows how you can improve your playing style or spec. if one rogue is getting backstabs for 1000 and another for 1500 then he could seek advise from the rogue directly conserning the damage of the single move, this is how you can learn alot about your class
"To be honest Cass, I don't think damagemeters say anything.
I have a damagemeter running also and my results are a lot, and I really mean that, different then yours." (liz)
use sync channels with your dps addons and you should find that your results start matching up, the more people you sync with the more accurate the data is, also, will syncing cause massive lag? no it wont. All it is is the addons comunicating with each other through a chat channeland collecting data from your already constantly runing combat log
"(like I said before, people have to do other things then damage sometimes)" (liz)
in this case use a decurse meter function
"Decurse Count (S v1.5.1+)
PC
H------- 529
T------ 279
D-------- 239
M------- 183
I----- 174"
again this is very useful for seeing who is and isnt doing their job because in all honesty raiding is fun and all but having wasters will just make people not want to raid and you wont get far if you dont try to activally increase your raids potential, you dont need to be a *bad word* about it but you can be polite and im sure they will try harder, if not come down more harshly
also, you dont need to be the best geared to be the top dpser, learn your job mechanics, get your hands on some basic potion dps increase/tank pots/caster pots (mongoose, giants, brute, fort, arcane elixer, mageblood, troll blood etc) i dont have the best gear (4/8 ns random blues from zg/aq, random zg/aq epix) but i can still beat people with t2 head and 8/8 ns. how? pot buffs, weapon consumeables and a knowledge of your classes mechanics (what gives atp, whats the crit/atp balance, etc)
good luck and try swstats, it can tell you a lot about your playing style and who u really need to improve, this may seem harsh and unnessicarry but to advance you need to activally improve upon the raid members as a whole.
good luck in future raids
Genii
(names been blanked out, dont know why just seemed like the thing to do)