Monday, May 31, 2010

Selling Myself Short

I don't know if other people who have multiple 80s ever run into this problem, but I've been habitually regarding my feral druid's dps as "crappy."

This is the first expansion I've had more than one max level character with a main spec as dps, and being that I raid, I have a good idea of what feels like good dps and what feels... underwhelming. I know meters aren't everything, but they're a good tool for evaluating one's own performance and as a feral druid I've gotten used to feeling inferior to when I'm on my moonkin.

But then again, it's inevitable that given less gear and less time invested, that whatever my feral does should feel pretty "poor" against my main.

Then today I went on an ICC 10 pug on my feral. It was a good run, clearing out two wings before people failed on Blood Princes (between a lagging healer and an inexperienced range tank it wasn't so good). One-shotting Putricide was definitely a highlight though. After the raid was over and people were leaving, the raid leader thanked me for my "leet dps."

I was stunned.

My crappy dps alt? The one with virtually no drops from ICC until that [Whispering Fanged Skull] dropped today?

But going by Recount I had set a new personal best for dps on Saurfang. I was either #1 or #2 on almost every fight, even crappy ones for cats like Rotface. I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn't the worst geared in the raid, but not the best either. Definitely middle of the road in that pug.

On a whim I decided to take my dps and compare it to the benchmark of my own guild, using the World of Logs report for our most recent raid. As in, if I was applying for an open feral spot in my own guild, would I take me?

I stack up better than I thought I would, but I can't say my feral compares to our rogue and our ret paladin, her gear still isn't there yet (get rid of those ToC 5 leather boots!), but I think if she was full ICC 10 geared she could be competitive. I would consider her as a backup raider if someone wasn't able to make it.

So maybe I'm not so bad after all. Maybe for my gear I'm actually doing just fine.

2 comments:

Klepsacovic said...

The trick to never selling yourself short is to constantly respec the moment you figure things out. That ensures that you're always as bad as you think you are.

Hana said...

Hahaha. I actually should respec her. She's PvP specced since when I originally leveled her I thought I would be doing BGs just like I had done when she was my level 59 semi-twink.

Hm... I guess that's another level of fail for raiding in PvP spec.