Friday, March 25, 2011

Addon Review - DrDamage

With the coming of 4.0 and the loss of basically all my addons, there were a few I undoubtedly missed alot more than others. One of those was DrDamage, one of my favorite addons. What it does sounds fairly simple in theory, but is very complicated in practice (for the addon authors, not the users), which meant it took them several months to get the addon up and running again. Rejoice, it is back and I am happy like a pig in dirt.

So what does it do? I am glad you asked. Simply put, DrDamage will tell you just about any information you'd like to have about your damage and healing skills. Hps, dps, hpm, dpr (damage per rage), average damage, highest/lowest damage, how various gear/talent coefficients affect the skill, how a stat affects you hps or hpm and so on. Whenever I write a post on how some healing skill works and bring up numbers about hps, hpm and the like, I've based most on my maths on numbers from DrDamage.

Because I like to play around with numbers and experiment with output and throughput, this addon has proven to be invaluable. One good example was when I was leveling a rogue and by using DrDamage I could see that whether it was worth opening a fight with Garrote or not, whether I should use Eviscerate or Rupture, completely depended on which rank of the skill I had. Even at endgame, even if there is a best way to deal with a situation, a rotation if you like (especially if you're dps), DrDamage is the tool you need if you like me like to tweak your play to be optimal for each encounter. It is especially useful if you play alot of different chars and want an easy way to keep track of how to use your skills. With a simple mouseover I can tell that Fireball has a higher dps than Scorch and draw conclusions from that, instead of having to sift through various forums on the internet for the same information. Instead of having to sit down and count the numbers for each skill manually, DrDamage will give you a nice breakdown of all the information you want about your skills.

Many choices to add, of which I've only chosen a few myself. Easy usage, you need only to tick the information you want displayed.
Easy comparison of skills. This is an example of how the tooltip looks with my above choices (scorch has no dpm, because I'm fire).
Comparison of skills between classes (you have to switch character though), also shows different settings for different characters (if you want it to).
Displays average damage/healing of your skills on your hotkeys (which includes crit damage), if you like. No mocking of the skill setup.
 I want to hand out a big thanks to the addon authors for taking their time with collecting all the necessary data for this awesome addon! The addon can be found here.

1 comment:

  1. Zinn,
    Thanks for the addon tip. I think it will definitely help my piss poor pvp game lol. Anyways, good info!

    ReplyDelete