To be honest. dps + heal meters should only be shown when needed, which is after any boss wipe err fight.
Disagree. Makes it way more fun to play when you can actively see the competition. Makes it way more interesting to look back at the fight if you record it. And you may very well learn something about your class/the encounter if you see someone going off during certain parts of the fight. It's also more efficient to see if someone falls behind on damage or is dpsing the wrong targets.
As I said; it's more efficient to see it in real time.
It does make it harder to get a clean looking interface. After so many years of it though, you get used to it. My biggest gripe these days about it is the variable raid sizes. Sometimes you need room for 40 people, sometimes for 20, sometimes for 17 or 11, then there are rows that are short people because it's an odd number. It's really hard to design unit frames that present the needed info AND look good AND accommodate the constantly fluctuating raid sizes without interfering with other UI elements.
On my DK I do use that nice tidy minimalist down the side look, but as a healer that's just not efficient or sufficient.
I honestly find it more efficient to heal with smaller frames. less mouse movement. Placebo effect probably.
Science the shit out of it!
If you are needing that "poke", then it means you aren't playing at your best before that point.
If you know you are already performing as well as you can, then no meter is going to improve your result there.
It isn't like everyone is on an equal footing anyway, even excluding gear between the same specs there is the random element.
If way behind someone who should be comparable, then all it does is potentially highlight that you were screwing up.
At which point you have another issue.
I prefer them to be compact also, the ones in the original pic quoted in this convo were larger than I prefer. I like them to be slim little rectangles! =) I just don't like that it can't always look the same depending on group size.
re: visible damage and heal meters: i like watching the meters sometimes during the fight, it's fun to watch them even as a healer. sometimes i will watch who is getting the most dispels or interrupts, and have a little competition with that. it's just an extra layer of fun during combat for me. pretty subjective topic.
Whenever there's a new encounter nobody knows if they're playing at their best or not. You think something's best in theory but often times it's different in practice. And it's not about improving your personal results as much as it is about improving others'. If you see someone fall behind on the meter you can immediately take a look at what they're doing and tell them in voice chat what they're doing wrong. See someone spike when there's an aoe pack that should be ignored? Tell them immediately to focus on the right things instead.
You'll only see if someone is doing something wrong when they're falling behind significantly. It can also alert you of missing buffs, broken armor, forgotten spells on the actionbars, etc. Although there are other ways to alert you of that, there's no real reason to not have your dps meter showing. You could argue looks and clutter, but you can do the same for minimaps and other aesthetics. Agree to disagree?