Progression Race - Serious Question.

[Vakna]

The only thing that I think really matters is time since the raid became available to access. So for example, if a US guild gets world first on a boss, then EU guild gets world second 2 hours later - imo the true victory is for the EU guild, since they killed it quicker.

That being said though, there is an innate respect in all of us I think when we look at a guild who progress extremely well in a tier and yet raids just a fraction of the time the hardcore guilds do, it's just a natural thing to admire people who do extraordinary things in your favourite game/sport whatever.

Other than those two points, I do agree with OP about it being a race and whatever you do is up to you. That's part of what makes the race interesting, no boundaries.

[Takeada]

I personally don't believe time spent raiding is the factor we should be considering when a guild gets a world first. The mitigating factor on who is best should be how many ATTEMPTS it took before a boss was defeated. Just being the first guild to kill something does not equal being the "best" guild. Blood legion wiped something like 450 times on heroic lei shen before they got a kill. Method wiped approximately 100 less times @ 350 attempts (3rd hand info, may not be accurate.)

Wow progress should rate these guilds by several factors, not just the speed in which they cleared the content. A nice way to separate all the guilds who are 13/13 right now would be by attempts made before a kill. Those who have the fewest attempts with the boss dead deserve rank 1, in my opinion.

The speed of who downs content first is the only accurate judge of this though. Attempts isn't an accurate way to measure, as guilds operate differently and some guilds operate by pushing attempts to get players to learn the encounter while others may have more strategy and preparation involved per attempt. Furthermore, who is to say what is a higher priority in these circumstances when taking more factors than simply first to down the boss? If say Method downed the boss first, but Blood Legion downs it an hour later with 10 less attempts who gets world first? Silly things like that which over complicate things don't add anything vital to the point of it being worthwhile.

No, keep it simple and how it is with the order of boss downings being the order of guild rankings - based on when each guild has access to their content.

[zeropeorth]

They won't matter in terms of "absolute" world firsts, but there are definitely brackets that people judge themselves by, 3*3hr, 5*4hr etc. It doesn't mean anything in the long run vs Method/Paragon/BL etc, but it's a way of explaining to new recruits what your guild is about.

If your the type of guy who would look at your server and say "Yeah but they raid 5 days a week and we only raid 3", you're probably a not very nice person.

While the overall race, the winner is the first across the set line.


I would be interested, and if it could only be accurately accounted for, in actual time spent raiding vs progression ... and who would rank highest in overall efficiency and effectiveness in total time spent raiding. This could make the 70 hour a week, world first guild, rank lower than a 10 hour a week raiding group by a different standard ...

Such a system could never exist, the restrictions you would have to place on people to verify, just wouldn't work in the real world, so there is no way it wouldn't be exploited; if there was some reward, even notoriety, from that form of ranking.

I wouldn't say I'd respect the one who took 20 less total raiding hours to down the same bosses, but I also don't dole out respect for those who raid 14 hours a day either ... either way, it is a simple kudos, and move on with my life. It would be pure curiosity. I would see the skill level as being similar, even though the less time a week people may be hundreds or thousands + down the race rankings.

[gynshon]

While the overall race, the winner is the first across the set line.


I would be interested, and if it could only be accurately accounted for, in actual time spent raiding vs progression ... and who would rank highest in overall efficiency and effectiveness in total time spent raiding. This could make the 70 hour a week, world first guild, rank lower than a 10 hour a week raiding group by a different standard ...

Such a system could never exist, the restrictions you would have to place on people to verify, just wouldn't work in the real world, so there is no way it wouldn't be exploited; if there was some reward, even notoriety, from that form of ranking.

I wouldn't say I'd respect the one who took 20 less total raiding hours to down the same bosses, but I also don't dole out respect for those who raid 14 hours a day either ... either way, it is a simple kudos, and move on with my life. It would be pure curiosity. I would see the skill level as being similar, even though the less time a week people may be hundreds or thousands + down the race rankings.

Too difficult to compare just on gear differences from 1 week to the next. The metas were huge this tier when people could get them and get past those dps checks. Another week of tier drops, wpns, trinkets, etc. But interesting thoughts nonetheless.

[Freese]

Currently, my guild is ranked World 1st for 3 night 25 man guilds. We definitely believe that raiding is more about quality than quantity except perhaps when it comes to the world first guilds. Obviously, that is a different beast, and I believe that those guilds are still "the best" because they are clearing content before the hotfixes, undergeared, etc. To give an example: it took my guild a mere 15 attempts to kill Heroic Durumu, but it took most top guilds two full raid days because they were undergeared and the maze was harder to see, among other reasons of course. Does this mean we're better than BL or Midwinter because we killed the boss "faster"? Absolutely not.

If you're not in the world first race or top world rank race, there's no need to raid 5 nights per week in this game anymore in my opinion. The content doesn't require that kind of hours anymore. We get A LOT of apps from people who are in 5 night a week guilds that are ranked near us or above us. Under the "Reason For Leaving Your Current Guild," most say something like, "You guys are the same/similar rank as us and raid less. Why am I raiding 5 nights a week?" Unfortunately we have to turn most of these down because we keep a super tight roster.

I hope that this post doesn't come off cocky because I am not trying to argue that 5 night per week guilds who above or below ~5 ranks from us are bad. They certainly aren't. I guess my mindset has changed completely because I joined Refined two years ago after raiding 5 nights per week in various guilds and I have never looked back. If this guild broke up, I don't think I could join a 5 night per week guild around our US rank because I know that you don't have to raid that much anymore to be competitive (unless of course you're going for World Firsts).

I think if a lot of 5 night per week guilds dropped down their schedules to ours, they would make their raid time count more and still be able to achieve the same or similar world/US rank. I have an RL friend who is in a Top 25 US guild, and they raid 5 nights per week but are ranked lower than us. He complains about how most of their 25 hour raid schedule is spent just sitting around in between pulls because they know they have the time. We often joke about renaming our guild "Efficiency" because if you watch our streams or check our logs, we make all 12 hours count. This means few breaks, few mistakes on farm (except this week blah), and being extremely prepared for progression.

[DakonBlackblade]

I seriously think it would be alot better (both for the guilds involved and for the "audience") if there were some rules to the world first race, like total time per week spent raiding, cause it has got to a point where ppl are kinda equally skilled and they decided theyd get the best of the competition by increasing raid time and tis really getting to a insane level, there are guilds raiding like 16 hours a day 7 days a week, wich is kinda of what exodus was talking about in theyre farewell post.

The really hardcore scene is getting kinda stupid and newcomers are non existent cause of that, the word first raider is a dying breed and will go extinct if ppl dont tone it down a bit, raiding 16 hours a day isnt healthy really.

[nightfalls]

I seriously think it would be alot better (both for the guilds involved and for the "audience") if there were some rules to the world first race, like total time per week spent raiding, cause it has got to a point where ppl are kinda equally skilled and they decided theyd get the best of the competition by increasing raid time and tis really getting to a insane level, there are guilds raiding like 16 hours a day 7 days a week, wich is kinda of what exodus was talking about in theyre farewell post.

Not gonna happen in my books. Beyond anything else such "rules" can't be enforced.

The really hardcore scene is getting kinda stupid and newcomers are non existent cause of that, the word first raider is a dying breed and will go extinct if ppl dont tone it down a bit, raiding 16 hours a day isnt healthy really.

Perhaps but someone will always get world first, the matter is how soon will they?

[cyqu]

Currently, my guild is ranked World 1st for 3 night 25 man

I feel like there's about 10 guilds claiming this

[nightfalls]

I feel like there's about 10 guilds claiming this

His is at least US first, dunno (and tbh, could give a fuck) about world first.

[Freese]

I feel like there's about 10 guilds claiming this

http://www.wowprogress.com/rating.ti...=&class=&spec=

There's still two bosses left this tier, so a lot could change

[djtravitrav]

My suggestion got a lot of replies, I'd like to refine it, if possible.

There surely is some fashion in which wowprogress could develop an algorithm which would assign weights to specific criteria, such as (boss killed) (world rank in which boss killed) (number of attempts boss killed)

There would be ways to balance out the fact that maybe a guild kills heroic lei shen a week later than another guild due to higher Item Level and access to legendaries and such. OK, then the amount of advantage would lead to a lower overall rating with this system.

I suppose my greater point is this: There are a lot of guilds out there that do a lot MORE with a lot LESS, (less time, less attempts.)

Perhaps rating guilds in this way would lead to a more secretive hardcore raiding community where loose lips about strategy won't be as common.

This I think would be good, guilds should be figuring out the best way to do fights on their own, it leads to more innovation in raiding and multiple solutions to the same problems. When all you do is copy what method or blood legion do in their fights because they released their videos first, it's ends up being nothing but an endless chain of plagiarism for the rest of the raiding tier.

Who really knows what the right answer is. I am always fascinated watching the world first races every tier, knowing I'd be bored out of my tits doing what some of these people do during "progression." It ends up being nothing more than an exercise in repetition until finally no one makes a mistake and you win.

So in that situation what classifies a particular guild as "the best?" Is it the ones who had bad players fucking up mechanics over and over forcing them to repeat the same encounter 450 times, or is it the players that refined a strategy and killed the same encounter in 276 attempts but a week later?

I think it's the 2nd, but again, I'm just an observer and someone that classifies data for a living.

[Keoren]

For the overall rankings and race of each raid size the only thing that really matters is who killed the boss first. Arbitrary limitations such as the amount of raid days are not that important on the large scale of things. They affect the more secluded races (f.ex "World top 5 2-day raiding guild") and are factors to things such as recruitment and maybe some personal standards. In the end people will remember the gold medalist even if the person winning silver spent less time training.

You can also bet your behind that a majority of the top guilds that do not officially raid seven days a week still push extra hours and even days, especially in the very beginning of a tier and when close to a kill.

There surely is some fashion in which wowprogress could develop an algorithm which would assign weights to specific criteria, such as (boss killed) (world rank in which boss killed) (number of attempts boss killed)

There is no way to make such a ranking algorithm objective.

[Deleted]

If you're not in the world first race or top world rank race, there's no need to raid 5 nights per week in this game anymore in my opinion. The content doesn't require that kind of hours anymore. We get A LOT of apps from people who are in 5 night a week guilds that are ranked near us or above us. Under the "Reason For Leaving Your Current Guild," most say something like, "You guys are the same/similar rank as us and raid less. Why am I raiding 5 nights a week?" Unfortunately we have to turn most of these down because we keep a super tight roster.

I hope that this post doesn't come off cocky because I am not trying to argue that 5 night per week guilds who above or below ~5 ranks from us are bad. They certainly aren't. I guess my mindset has changed completely because I joined Refined two years ago after raiding 5 nights per week in various guilds and I have never looked back. If this guild broke up, I don't think I could join a 5 night per week guild around our US rank because I know that you don't have to raid that much anymore to be competitive (unless of course you're going for World Firsts).

I think if a lot of 5 night per week guilds dropped down their schedules to ours, they would make their raid time count more and still be able to achieve the same or similar world/US rank. I have an RL friend who is in a Top 25 US guild, and they raid 5 nights per week but are ranked lower than us. He complains about how most of their 25 hour raid schedule is spent just sitting around in between pulls because they know they have the time. We often joke about renaming our guild "Efficiency" because if you watch our streams or check our logs, we make all 12 hours count. This means few breaks, few mistakes on farm (except this week blah), and being extremely prepared for progression.

One thing you don't consider is the fact that some people actually like to raid a lot. I do, for instance. I'd be definitely bored in a 3 nights/week (during progress) guild. Now, I may indeed be able to play in a higher-ranked guild, but some (and, from my experience, quite a lot, though the number constantly lowers) just want to raid a lot without necessarily the pressure (or whatever, idk) needed by a top guild.

My second point is, people in this thread are discussing the worth of time spent in rankings, and the idea of guild's kill is never far away. Another issue you could add to those already mentioned are time put in preparation. Say you are comparing a 5-nights guild versus a 3-nights guild, which would have a similar progress. Sure, during raid time, the later is more *efficient* than the former, whether it is because the 5-nights one is playing much more relaxed, as your friend told you, or because its players are less skilled, or whatever other possible reason. But the 3-nights guild has potentially more time to examine and analyze logs, more of its players would watch videos or read forums, its raid leaders would have already established working tactics for bosses while the other guild's raidleaders might tend to do things once in front of the boss, etc.; and in fine this guild would have put more time preparing raids than the 5-nights guild.

tl;dr: Imo, time spent is a really bad factor when it comes to comparing guilds, mostly because it can imply way too many possibilities to draw conclusions from it.

The really hardcore scene is getting kinda stupid and newcomers are non existent cause of that, the word first raider is a dying breed and will go extinct if ppl dont tone it down a bit, raiding 16 hours a day isnt healthy really.

It might not be "really healthy" but there's about a gazillion less healthier situations in this world. Most of hardcore raiders are grown ups and there's nobody's place to tell him how many hours they can put in this game (not even Blizzard's place, hence the common hate towards limited attempts or gated progress).

[NeverStop]

http://www.wowprogress.com/rating.ti...=&class=&spec=

There's still two bosses left this tier, so a lot could change

I like how Method is in that list you just linked.

[kaiadam]

Is it the ones who had bad players fucking up mechanics over and over forcing them to repeat the same encounter 450 times, or is it the players that refined a strategy and killed the same encounter in 276 attempts but a week later?

I think it's the 2nd, but again, I'm just an observer and someone that classifies data for a living.

As a member of that 2nd group, I think I speak for basically all of our guild when I say that the 450 attempt group is the better guild.

[Freese]

I like how Method is in that list you just linked.

Heh. It wasn't when I linked it earlier. There goes Method stealing all of my Thunder!

My second point is, people in this thread are discussing the worth of time spent in rankings, and the idea of guild's kill is never far away. Another issue you could add to those already mentioned are time put in preparation. Say you are comparing a 5-nights guild versus a 3-nights guild, which would have a similar progress. Sure, during raid time, the later is more *efficient* than the former, whether it is because the 5-nights one is playing much more relaxed, as your friend told you, or because its players are less skilled, or whatever other possible reason. But the 3-nights guild has potentially more time to examine and analyze logs, more of its players would watch videos or read forums, its raid leaders would have already established working tactics for bosses while the other guild's raidleaders might tend to do things once in front of the boss, etc.; and in fine this guild would have put more time preparing raids than the 5-nights guild.

I think you bring up some good points here. We definitely don't spend 8-10 extra hours per week looking at logs and watching videos, though. If I had to guess, we collectively spend no more than 1-2 hours discussing boss strats, watching videos, etc. per week. I do think that you point out something interesting: preparedness defines how well a non-World First guild will do. I say that it's not necessary to raid 5 nights a week if you aren't going for top world ranks like Blood Legion, Midwinter, etc. because there is so much information out there now about fights that one can essentially "know" the fight before pulling it the first time. Although, just because one watches a video and looks at logs does not necessarily mean that he will be able to apply all of that knowledge in practice.

Top ranked, world-class raiders are much more willing to share strat ideas now, especially if you are respectful of their time and keep the questions short and concise. I remember back in Vanilla I got banned from Death and Taxes' forums because I asked a question on their forums about Vael tank swapping in BWL. That doesn't happen much anymore. You can cut out a lot of raid time by utilizing these resources and talking to people who are in better guilds. Kaiadam (the poster above me) has excellent videos from his PoV that have helped me learn the nuanced tank strats for most of the fights this tier.

As a member of that 2nd group, I think I speak for basically all of our guild when I say that the 450 attempt group is the better guild.

Curious as to why you think this. Is it because you all had an extra week's worth of gear? Given that Lei Shen IS a huge gear check, I can understand where you're coming from if this is your argument. I do think it is remarkable that you all killed it in much less attempts, but you seem to want to downplay your accomplishments. Any particular reason why?

[Deleted]

Remember too, that many world race chasing guilds will spend the first week taking their time to bastardise every single aspect of a fight ready to minimise their learn phase during progress. Thats on top of PTR raiding too.

Is it too much? Ask yourself, if you could raid more would you?

[ripponesan]

To reliably and comparably measure a guilds performance in this complex scenario is kinda impossible, thats why people dont even try.

Even knowing the fact (spys or whatever) that guild A tried X and wiped may give you an advantage. At least in the attempts category since you dont need to try that out yourself, if you reconed that it wasnt wiped due to unability od raid A.
Hell even a disconnect or stuff like a barking dog may cause a wipe. So you cant create a controlled atmosphere where all raids start with same conditions.
Even if you could measure a raids performance somewhat, you wouldnt be able to do it comparably and reliably. So people go for "who is first, no matter how they did it (well at least without cheating).

[Deleted]

I would not call it a "race". There are too many factors in this competition to really be an equal race. Just to name a few:

1. Gear- a raidteam can get extremely lucky in the first week with the right drops for your raid composition
2. Time- there are limits for people in time investment
3. Optimal class composition and gearing
4. Hotfixing from Blizzard that can minimize time investment.
5. Bonus Roll luck (that can actually be a really big gap)

I will leave out preperation on the PTR, Boss strategic preperation, number tweeking etc.


But really, IF you want to make it a race, you'd have to set a specific time amount on every raid, the raids would have to drops the exact same loot table for every raid in the world and the exact amount and item pieces on bonus rolls. Then and only then you could call it anything close to a fair "Race" because it would factor in skill of players, strategic gameplay in parts of boss strategic, equip strategic, setup strategic.


I do believe there are players in top500-1500 guilds that can definately compete with top100 players skillwise, because let us be honest... WoW ist not that hard to play if you really have your rotation going and know what to use in which situation. Number tweeking is really smple nowadays, these players just do not have the time or do not want to spent it for this kind of progression which is absolutely fine.

I DO believe that BL, Method, Paragon would still be in the top brackets because the have very good raiders and players, but I also believe that the gaps between TOP100 guilds would not be that big.

I really would love to see something like this:

20 Hours per week raiding time, you start the raid like challange modes with a timer once it starts the clock starts ticking down. The raidleader can pause the raid for breaks, strategic discussions. He can quit the raid aswell so the clock stops ticking. That way even trash pulls get important, fast raidwipes get important to have more time. The clock could stop during loot distribution.

That would be a real race. I'd love to even see that on screen.

[djtravitrav]

The reason blood legion and method will always remain on top is because they will always have a massive pool of potential candidates to replace anyone in their raid. It can be seen with the implosion of Exodus, Blood legion scooped up the players they felt were the best, the rest went to other places farther down the trough. Everyone wants this "world first" credibility.

And we all know Midwinter would be US 1st if they were horde. Should transfer to Mal'ganis, obviously.