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  1. #1
    Blademaster
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    WoL Rankings - How useful are they.

    I was having a discussion with some guildies who were of the opinion that WoL rankings don't mean anything. While I agree they might not be the best metric, they are atleast some sort of metric and relatively effective in discerning top performers from average performers atleast. I didn't get very far into the discussion though so I thought I'd pose the question to my fellow MMO Champion forum goers.

    1 - Do WoLs ranking matter?
    2 - How effective of a metric are they?

    Cheers!

  2. #2
    The only metric you should be concerned about is: did you kill the boss? If not, do you reasonably think it is due to poor performance. Make necessary changes. Is that not the role of raid leader?

  3. #3
    Ranking aside it is an invaluable tool for monitoring damage intake/output, buff up-time, cd management, healing intake/output, boss specific mechanic failures or mishaps, the list goes on.

    Just because your raid isn't ranking doesn't mean they aren't playing to top standards.

  4. #4
    Our dps like to drop healers/have tanks equip almost full dps gear just to get better WoL's after we have killed a boss a few times, it is where the fun in the game is for them. Our healers do not really ever get a chance to place on the healing done meters because of this as our kills are generally quite fast. Our HPS is also lower for some reason, probably because our blood dk tank does massive healing/absorbs on himself.

    ---------- Post added 2011-11-26 at 10:37 PM ----------

    Oh and remember one thing about WoL right now (might not matter for your guild, or it might, I do not know) there are a LOT of "Cheese" parses being put up right now. People merging bosses, merging people, blah blah blah. we have someone that has been number one on every boss in heroic firelands as his spec, but people cheese the rankings and have other classes abilities listed under there own damage (Report and move on)

  5. #5
    WoL rankings on their own are iffy sometimes. It's common for top parsers to get buffs they may not get on a normal fight. Things such as a Tricks of the Trade to a non-rogue, Unholy Frenzy from an Unholy DK even though Frost DKs are technically better, Dark Intent, excess legendaries in the raid, and Focus Magic are all buffs that skew results. Add to the fact that sometimes a guild's strat can affect results. People doing Deluge, who goes up on Beth/Alysrazor, padding on Ryo and Shannox, soakers on Baleroc and Majordomo, and just general positioning can affect rankings. Personally, I don't think WoL rankings always tell the extent of how good someone is.

    To judge a person's DPS, I use raidbot's epeenbot: http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/

    It parses every WOL parse a person has and compares them to all of the parses out there. It does a step by step breakdown of how good a person is compared to others that play their class instead of just giving a ranking number.

  6. #6
    WoL rankings make farm raids more fun!

  7. #7
    Mechagnome ZaneBusby's Avatar
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    Extremely useful. How else would I know I was the ~90th best Destruction Warlock at DPSing Heroic Alysrazor 10man in the world, when I killed her on Tuesday?

    On a serious note: It's extremely useful for those "Fix my DPS" threads, and similar ones. You post a log, and people are able to see how well you manage DoT/buff uptime, and what spells you're using more of, and whatnot, then tell you how to improve.

    It's also good for guilds, as it shows peaks and troughs in the graph to show where the DPS jumps up and down. It's a good way to see what areas need improvement. DPSing while moving, sustaining good DPS while switching targets, etc etc. A lot of people will just stop DPSing while they run around, and not bother (or not remember) to use instant cast filler spells, or refresh their DoTs, or whatever. It's a good way for the guild to pick up on that, and tell them it'd be a good thing to work on, if they're not far off a boss kill or something. Times it could be extremely vital would be stuff like Heroic Baleroc, in which case you need every ounce of DPS you can get. If someone stops DPSing while they run over to a crystal, or across to someone else for a countdown, and Baleroc normally enrages, and wipes the raid, like 5 seconds before you would otherwise kill him, those spammed instant casts could have made the kill.

    It's also useful for seeing things proc, how much damage they do, and how often they proc. That's perfect for working out what gear (generally trinkets) are Best in Slot pieces, and also the usefulness of some talents, so that theory crafters (mainly Simcraft, but there are some others) are able to work out the best rotation to get maximum DPS/HPS/survivability/threat output.

  8. #8
    The OP is asking how useful WoL rankings are, not WoL. Some people seem confused by that and are answering based on that misunderstanding.
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  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Vigilate View Post
    WoL rankings on their own are iffy sometimes. It's common for top parsers to get buffs they may not get on a normal fight. Things such as a Tricks of the Trade to a non-rogue, Unholy Frenzy from an Unholy DK even though Frost DKs are technically better, Dark Intent, excess legendaries in the raid, and Focus Magic are all buffs that skew results. Add to the fact that sometimes a guild's strat can affect results. People doing Deluge, who goes up on Beth/Alysrazor, padding on Ryo and Shannox, soakers on Baleroc and Majordomo, and just general positioning can affect rankings. Personally, I don't think WoL rankings always tell the extent of how good someone is.

    To judge a person's DPS, I use raidbot's epeenbot: http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/

    It parses every WOL parse a person has and compares them to all of the parses out there. It does a step by step breakdown of how good a person is compared to others that play their class instead of just giving a ranking number.
    That just makes me feel good. 90th+ percentile for all fights when I have terrible gear and have only done them like 2 or 3 times total. This was back in february though (was using a lot of blues at this point still).

  10. #10
    WoL rankings make farm nights a lot less boring and pointless.

    But most top parses are cheesing the meters, so it's not really "useful" information.

  11. #11
    The Lightbringer Siri's Avatar
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    They're very useful as long as they don't just show people doing things like multi-dotting or cleaving on heroic shannox.

  12. #12
    It's useless. The only purpose of it is to let those who want to see their rank, and who have nothing better to do rather than try to beat everyone at doing more damage, when actually nobody cares at all.

    But it's basically just a ranking system outside the game so people can try and be #1.
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  13. #13
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Krooner View Post
    I was having a discussion with some guildies who were of the opinion that WoL rankings don't mean anything. While I agree they might not be the best metric, they are atleast some sort of metric and relatively effective in discerning top performers from average performers atleast. I didn't get very far into the discussion though so I thought I'd pose the question to my fellow MMO Champion forum goers.

    1 - Do WoLs ranking matter?
    2 - How effective of a metric are they?

    Cheers!
    To answer your two question(the way I feel about them atleast).
    I feel both questions can be answered in a very simple way, depending on the type of encounter the rankings(or a persons damage/healing output compared to the ranking players) can mean a lot. Take Baleroc where it's just a single target fight which pre-nerf had a very very tight enrage on 25 man heroic, there was nothing to this fight except nuking as hard as you can essentially, for this WoL rankings are a great tool to see how someone performs in this fight, if a dps consistantly ranks high chances are they are getting some outside buffs they normally wouldn't get but also essentially are able to perform their rotation properly with very minimal mistakes.
    But then you can also look at a fight like Shannox heroic where all top parses are people who just dot anything in sight which essentially does nothing for a kill and this makes the ranking matter less(to me that is).

    So judging someone based on their rankings on it depends a lot on the type of encounter and how good your class can cheese the meters essentially and if that person does it. To use a T11 example take V&T and AC, in both fights double dotting was great for ranking AND taking the boss down quicker which is the goal of course. So this is a great way to show that the ranking are a great way to measure someone aslong as ranking for the fight involves staying within the fight mechanics and a higher ranking means you did the fight without wasting damage on targets where it's not needed.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Mionelol View Post
    My thoughts as well. For that reason, I tend to value the T11 rankings (bar Sinestra/Nefarian) a lot more than T12 rankings, which for some reason can nearly always be cheesed for nearly every boss.

    On t12, Shannox means multidotting, Baleroc is kinda okay but there's always the retarded countdown RNG which can screw amazing DPS parses, Alysrazor is cheesed by people tanking hatchlings/flying, Rhyolith is RNG lord (and depends on whether you're AoE'ing, dps'ing Sparks, or the legs?), Domo depends too much on guild strategy (how many cat leaps = how many cats you can cleave down), Ragnaros can be fucking RNG as hell (depending on trap location, whether you can always melee the boss while staying in breadth or not, parryRNG in phase 2, whether you are on taunt duty for traps if you 1-tank it, deluge, etc).

    All in all I thought Omnotron, V&T, and Cho'gall to be perfect encounters for WoL rankings, and they haven't been topped in Cataclysm. But hey, to each his own.
    maybe not omnotron.....poison puddle+buff pool thing.....i remember my first kill had all the buff pool exploding >_> and geting lightning conductor(shadow) plus poison dude

    and VnT had englufing magic for caster that with bloodlust oh sweet potatoes :P

    but chogall yea i agree maybe chimaeron as well(stupid hit debuff :P)
    Last edited by Soulstrike; 2011-11-27 at 06:05 AM.
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  15. #15
    They're useful from a motivation perspective. They are also useful to find out who the best players are.

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Competing for logs during farm is the only fun thing about farm.

  17. #17
    Legendaries spoiled the fun this tier anyways.

  18. #18
    WoL ranks are just silliness that reflect more how your guild does the fight than anything else. On tank 'n spank fights they come closer to reality but still wind up showing who receives the most love via buffs like tricks more than anything else.

    I'm ranked #3 on Shannox right now, but I've never even come close to breaking the top 200 for Rhyolith. Neither of those are accurate depictions of my skill relative to the rest of the Demo locks in the world.

  19. #19
    This tier my guild will often let one or more person per boss fight get all the 'love' and we'll see how high they can get ranked. It's fun to do and as others have said it makes the raid more exciting. As a caster who still doesn't have the legendary it does suck sometimes though. :P

    Do WoL rankings matter? Not unless having more fun with farm encounters matters.

    Are they effective as a metric? No. Almost all parses are cheesed.

    /imo

  20. #20
    Deleted
    Rankings are not useful, their tools for tracking what happens during the fight are the best i've ever seen.

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