Skill - How do you see it?

[Kanika]

We were having a discussion in my guild about how skill varies depending on the content you focus on, and I thought it would be interesting to discuss here also.

I think the majority have always been able to differentiate between a skilled player in PVP vs PVE - and that the two aren't always mutually exclusive, but as mythic+ ranking now seems to be a thing, how do you see that skill level transfering in to a raid environment?

I know a lot depends on the person individually, but I am interested to see how people view it.

Would you even look at someone's m+ ranking as a way of assessing whether you might want them as a trial? Or do you disregard m+ acheivements entirely?

[barackohmama]

We were having a discussion in my guild about how skill varies depending on the content you focus on, and I thought it would be interesting to discuss here also.

I think the majority have always been able to differentiate between a skilled player in PVP vs PVE - and that the two aren't always mutually exclusive, but as mythic+ ranking now seems to be a thing, how do you see that skill level transfering in to a raid environment?

I know a lot depends on the person individually, but I am interested to see how people view it.

Would you even look at someone's m+ ranking as a way of assessing whether you might want them as a trial? Or do you disregard m+ acheivements entirely?

M+ score says something if the person has high score. But it doesn't mean people with lower score are worse players. Some people just do m+ to farm AP and don't care to push beyond 12-15 or do HoV with good score etc. Personally I value previous raiding experience higher than m+ score because it takes more commitment to raid unless we talk about +25 in time.

[Deleted]

M+ doesn't really say that much.

I have seen people who haven't finished a +10 in time that are far better players then some people who have done 15+ in time.

Especially as DPS, M+ is easy. You you just need to run after the tank, and when he pulls, you kick, stun and DPS the shit out of it. Thats true for every single affix. I have seen DPS at 15+ who don't even know what some affixes actually do. They never knew what bolstering was and were screaming "gogogo" all the time, not realizing that the tank had very good reasons not to pull 3 groups at once.

On the other hand I've seen people at +9 who never bothered to finish +10 because they don't have the time or don#t want to, but perform really, really good. If you put them into a high key and run it with them, they suddenly shine and do very, very well.

If you want to see wether a person has skill, no amount of statistic will tell you that. Only first-hand experience will tell you that. Get him into voice chat. Run M+ with him. Put him into your raid and raid with him. Only then you'll be able to gauge wether or not there is potential. You can use statistic to rule out some obvious failures, but thats about it.

m+ score says nothing about the player. You can hop into M+ at every time. But will he show up at the start of the raid, every raid? You can#t say that. If someone has raiding experience, you can see that they can commit to raiding x times a wekk and make it in time.

[Deleted]

Mythic plus ranking? Never heard of it. How exactly does it judge a person? Because if it's anything like warcraftlogs "rankings" then I wouldn't trust it one bit.

I can honestly say that damage is something I don't value too highly, I would much rather bring a person who makes use of their utility be it stuns, slows, knock-backs, interrupts, misdirects, damage reductions, combat ress' etc over someone who does nothing but pull damage. A dps who does nothing but pull big numbers is an awful dps in my eyes, rankings be damned.

Played with several dps like that in pugs, all they do is pull big numbers and act all arrogant, but they never interrupted the thundercaller on raging, necrotic, fortified, killing several people in the group, they never helped with a stun or slow to help me reset stacks, making it much more difficult, they never used their crowd control on the additional adds that spawn before the second last boss, leaving me kiting them even more.

Last time I played with a person like that, a death knight, I kicked him after the third boss in BRH. We finished it without him and the run became so much better.

[Deja Thoris]

It's a package deal.

Output / ability to follow tactics and make smart calls on the fly, especially when things don't go to plan are all parts of what makes a "skilled" player.

[Kanika]

Im actually not 100% sure how the rankings are calculated - but as far as i understand its a fairly recent metric on wowprogress.

What I have started to notice (and partly what prompted the conversation with my guildmates) was what seems to be a bit of a shift in ego from some people.
Now im not saying I'm either right or wrong here, but in my opinion, being good in m+ doesn't really mean a thing when it comes to raiding. Knowing how to get a great burst from your class in a 2-3 minute boss fight in a dungeon vs an 8 minute encounter with more mechanics etc dont really match up. Not necessarily saying one player is "better" than the other, just that it isnt really a comparison in my eyes.

What I have seen in recent recruitment for our mythic team though is people using their m+ ranking as proof of them being good. Or having an attitude of "well im rank 1 x-class so im better than all of you anyway" when they set foot in the raid.

It's a stange thing...

[Ribesal]

WoWprogress rankings are based on time
for m+ the time needed for the run
for raids its based on guilds that killed a boss before your guild did (more or less based on time)
for warcraftlogs simply DPS/HPS

But these rankings are achieved by the group as a whole, not the single person alone, you will never get a precise picture of a person with these things.
If you're looking for a m+ group, look at m+ rankings, if you're looking for a raidmeber, look at rankings from these raids.
But keep in mind that the most damage possible in some situations is not what you want, people at top of dps rankings often ignore mechanics if they could do more damage instead, bomb everything to death thats available, even if it would be better to not. Or do other risky shit if it would be better to play safe and actually kill the boss, but their wish to do the most damage results in a wipe instead. We have a few of these people, was funny during il'gynoth progress...
You don't want the "best" ones, but also not the worse ones.

Look at these rankings if you want a roughly picture, but don't over analyze them.

[dilemma900]

M+ score is very important once you start reaching hard affixes and keys above +18

A healer, doing Eye of Ashara bosses on +18 and beyond tyrannical, took way more individual skill then what i've been experiencing in any raids.

your cool downs have to line up perfectly, and you really need to watch timers to compensate for the next upcoming damage.

you have to play top notch when the group is so much smaller, there is no room for mistakes. In raiding you can get by some bosses by coasting.

If i know you can complete an HIGH key with tough affixes, then i assume you can clear some of the harder bosses in Mythic NH.

That being said, if you are under 1000, or have 1-2 +15 completed, I don't want you in my group. You obviously don't have the time, effort, or skill to compete and should work on building your character until then.

[Kennyloggins]

Skill in this game is mostly determined by your ability to play consistently without making egregious mistakes or being horrendous at damage/healing optimization. If you have 20 people who don't make mistakes, you'll slay the hardest bosses in the game with ease. Any other metric, like parses or whatever bs people like to spew as evidence of skill, will likely not yield as strong of a raid. It's difficult to measure someone's mistake-free-gaming score offline.

[Nutri]

Skill is of course measured by item level and an Ahead of the Curve achievement.
It's has been since WotlK.

/s

[Deleted]

Skill in this game is mostly determined by your ability to play consistently without making egregious mistakes or being horrendous at damage/healing optimization. If you have 20 people who don't make mistakes, you'll slay the hardest bosses in the game with ease. Any other metric, like parses or whatever bs people like to spew as evidence of skill, will likely not yield as strong of a raid. It's difficult to measure someone's mistake-free-gaming score offline.

100% this. 99,x% of all wipes are due to players mistakes and not missing HPS/DPS. And players that can play hardly making any mistakes are also very likely to execute a DPS/heal rotation to a very high degree. It is not hard to do so, if we are honest.

[Deja Thoris]

100% this. 99,x% of all wipes are due to players mistakes and not missing HPS/DPS. And players that can play hardly making any mistakes are also very likely to execute a DPS/heal rotation to a very high degree. It is not hard to do so, if we are honest.

If its not hard to do why do you consistently rank awfully on some bosses according to the logs in your signature? I'm not asking to be snarky. I'm genuinely curious as to why theres such a big disparity between what you say and what you actually do.

[Deleted]

For whatever the main contribution of your role is (damange for DPS, healing ofr healers, mitigation for tanks), you're able to maintain a high output whilst dealing with whatever mechanics have to be dealt with, be in class-neutral mechanics or mechanics your class specifically have been assigned to deal with. Furthermore, being able to deal high damage on farm bosses is usually meaningless, since you just brute force it for the most part anyway. What matters is high output on progression kills.

[Spoonman]

Im a PvE Player

and personally I would only say that to measure any kind of skill in this game its mostly about 3v3 Arenas
Ive always said to new players that the best way to learn your class is to play arena

Other than that if your playing in a world top 5 guild I would say your probably a good player but there is always shit players in every guild I have ever been in

And oh yeah, also the boss called Hexos in Brawlers Guild, if u can handle it I would def call you a good player

[Wenoxar]

I believe if you combine solid attitude, manual skill, ability to possess and develop knowledge, time and intelligence you can be #1 'overall skilled'.

OP, about m+ score, back in the days I was rank2 world rogue @ m+ score, it took me literally two days of playing. That sort of proves m+ score worthless, it does not indicate skill at all (well, depends what do you mean by skill and compared to whom you measure that skill; guildies? world first players? skill is a wide term). To achieve top-high m+ score you have to either get lucky or stay determinated in longer time frame (affixes, keystones), not be potato and have right people to play with. Raiding content is complex compared to M+, which is not complex at all and relatively easy as well. Top M+ players can easily be awful raiders.

[Deleted]

If its not hard to do why do you consistently rank awfully on some bosses according to the logs in your signature? I'm not asking to be snarky. I'm genuinely curious as to why theres such a big disparity between what you say and what you actually do.

because he literally said that you can be awfull at ranks but still kill the boss as long as you don't make mechanics mistakes? whers the disparity?

also what is "bad"? 50% ranking isn't bad, it's normal (by definition). More so on a boss with small sample sizes like tichondrious on star augur. All it really says is if you are playing at your skill ceiling or not, not unlike win rates in competitive games.

[Deja Thoris]

because he literally said that you can be awfull at ranks but still kill the boss as long as you don't make mechanics mistakes? whers the disparity?

also what is "bad"? 50% ranking isn't bad, it's normal (by definition). More so on a boss with small sample sizes like tichondrious on star augur. All it really says is if you are playing at your skill ceiling or not, not unlike win rates in competitive games.

Yea thats my bad then I read it as "not hard to parse high" I should read more carefully ^_^

[Socialhealer]

when they titanforge all their gear to 910+ without doing mythic content, that's just skill you can't beat.

[Deleted]

If its not hard to do why do you consistently rank awfully on some bosses according to the logs in your signature? I'm not asking to be snarky. I'm genuinely curious as to why theres such a big disparity between what you say and what you actually do.

Because I have 750k SimDPS for Krosus mythic (for example) and am taskted to soak the furthest away pools there. So doing 740k is about as high as it gets with my gear if I lose like ~20 seconds of uptime on the boss. But I have no problem with that since we always had enough DPS for the boss and I know that I always do my job reliably in contrast to some other players we had/have I get tasked with a lot of special "jobs" during nearly all fights because our raid lead know I will do them properly and not whore DPS when it is not necessary. And I still max out what DPS I can do.

And for the other bosses, for example Botanist, Star Augur, there are ways to push overall DPS in favor of doing the most DPS during the most critical phases. Good for parsing high, bad for killing the boss. If you have the legendary belt, you can use it to do more overall DPS on Star Augur but they come during the first, literally meaningless, phase. I could also stay on the boss in the last phase as long as my Nemesis debuff is up on him (+25% damage) and ignore the adds, but I don't etc.

On Tichondrius, the highest parses for Demon Hunters are players with the Eye Beam build that do more than a hundred million damage to the adds while they still heal up to 100% HP. I rather play a spec that does equal/more damage to the boss without the padding (and ofc have to switch away from my Nemesis target as always ).

Parses don't mean anything for first kills and especially not on bosses with relatively few kills on them. For heroic (or the first 3 easy mythic bosses), it is way easier to parse high because all the "worse" and "worse geared" players post logs there, too. For the hard bosses, you generally have players that know what they are doing and if you don't have better gear (or have to do a "worse" tactic), you won't parse higher than others.

It was no problem to have top10 logs when I had the BiS legendary at a time where people only had 2-3 legendaries, because the number of players with 2 BiS legendaries was really, really low. Not top parses for (I guess) every class are dominated by RNG-outliers (was the case before but very rare ofc) and players that simply have better legendaries that make up 4+% of your overall DPS.

[klaps_05]

Warcraftlogs is pretty good at measuring performance, the problem is with mythic+ you have: Mythic level, Players spec, players ilevel, combination of 3 affixe and the amount of people who actually log. Combining all of these, in some situations there are barely 10-50 parses per combination.

What could be interesting to see is, on a Volcanic week, how much dmg a player took from it, as a very basic "does this guy know not to sit in shit" skill metric.