Robot Logs

Askmrrobot.com has a really cool new feature - it now automatically parses your fights and organizes it into a very handy and digestable infographic.

An old guildie of mine used to parse all our fights and upload it to world of logs, but he is no longer with us.  And those logs weren't always the most informative - mainly just a lot of numbers that were hard to puzzle out.  But the logs on mr robot are simple and easy to figure out as they display everything in chart form.

Best of all, it compiles the data and lets you know how you and your raid are doing compared to the "average" - ie, how good your dps/hps is compared to others at your gear level.  It's really handy!

I've always been dps but due to a shortage of healers of late (a problem common to many guilds and pugs these days, it seems), I've gone over to healing.  And after looking over the logs for the past few attempts, one thing became very clear: people can't dodge fire.

It almost made me laugh when I saw just how much damage our healers were eating - all of it avoidable damage, mind you.  The number of times hit by stamp on Hanz & Franz, the times stood in Gruul's cave-in, the times pinned by Darmac's spear...yeah, a LOT of avoidable damage.

And yours truly?  Almost none at all.  I was lowest (of the healers) on avoidable damage taken.  Hell, I was doing better than most of the other dps too.  On some of the logs I didn't even show up because I didn't take ANY avoidable damage.  None at all.  And I think I know the reason - because my main is a dps toon, and always has been.

As a dps, you'r always told to dodge shit.  It's implicitly agreed on that for any fight, the job of the tanks and healers are always much harder than that of the dps (something I agree with 90% of the time, I do think there are fights where it's equally stressful for everyone and maybe even harder as dps).  Therefore, the dps should always be dodging the bad stuff, not only because their task is the easiest (stab boss), but because it makes the healers work less.

As a healer though, you're already doing a stressful job, so the task of dodging the bad shit is somewhat secondary.  This is not strictly from personal experience, but what I assume to be the default attitude of main-spec healers.  And I think overall the raid tends to feel more forgiving towards a healer who stands in the fire than a dps - that's something I've certainly observed first-hand.  Dps is replaceable, healers less so.

And so there it was - me, having been told to dodge fire for years, managed to do so, even though I was playing a healer.  And the other healers sat there and ate it.  It struck me as rather funny that the very people who are always screaming at me to move out of the fire were doing the exact thing themselves.  And that I had never noticed this pattern until the logs made it abundantly clear.

To be sure my healing needs some practice (not to mention gear, as I'm quite a few ilvls behind our main spec healers).  But dodging fire?  Apparently I'm already a pro.