WoL Ranks

[Redpanda]

Do wol ranks really mean anything anymore? I mean if you look at it now its pretty much fire mages, locks, and tanks there. I was just browsing random boss fights and I was how is this even possible youve got to be letting alot of adds spawn on this fight to get more damage out, etc. Is there any real value to wol ranks anymore? All I have to say tho is when you see a long enh shaman or a lone boomkin, or a lone feral in a sea of fire mages and locks I got to my fist up.

[Belloc]

The top 10-100 spec rankings give you a good idea of where you are compared to other players of your spec and how much you could improve.

The very top ranks mean very little because, as you said, they are pretty much gamed or otherwise brought about by methods that guilds would not use on a progression kill.

Aside from that, they have meaning in that they give players a goal to shoot for, making the game considerably more enjoyable for those that have already cleared all content.

[Deja Thoris]

Yes there is. You can see how you compare to your class and if its not a "cheese" parse you can learn from it.

I think its a silly question.

[Deleted]

Do wol ranks really mean anything anymore? I mean if you look at it now its pretty much fire mages, locks, and tanks there. I was just browsing random boss fights and I was how is this even possible youve got to be letting alot of adds spawn on this fight to get more damage out, etc. Is there any real value to wol ranks anymore? All I have to say tho is when you see a long enh shaman or a lone boomkin, or a lone feral in a sea of fire mages and locks I got to my fist up.

WoL ranks is great for your class, so you can see how you do among others who can do similar things.

WoL should mostly be used as an analyzing tool, however.

[Redpanda]

Yes there is. You can see how you compare to your class and if its not a "cheese" parse you can learn from it.

I think its a silly question.

well yeah its a learning tool but you have to be able to dissect logs as well to know if its not a "cheese" log. I recall a guild I was in for ds, yor'saj was the rank boss. "who wants to rank tonight? let 3 or 4 blacks get to the boss and have fun"

[Rucati]

WoL top 10 means very little. Even the top like 20 doesn't mean much. It's too easy to cheese it, like on Horridon the top ranks are all people who just ignored adds and killed Horridon all fight, which would never be done in a real attempt, but when you have a 540 ilvl fighting bosses that require a 515 ilvl then it's doable.

[Raiju]

WoL top 10 means very little. Even the top like 20 doesn't mean much. It's too easy to cheese it, like on Horridon the top ranks are all people who just ignored adds and killed Horridon all fight, which would never be done in a real attempt, but when you have a 540 ilvl fighting bosses that require a 515 ilvl then it's doable.

In previous expansions the quoted cheesing was considered "efficient", because you didn't waste dps with people switching who didn't need to.

For most fights you can see straight off if ranks are a reasonable thing to look at. Fights like Lei Shen and Horridon are bad because of how often the parses are invalid. Primordius isn't fantastic because of fight-to-fight RNG with the buffs you get that pull. Most other fights aren't too bad.

WoL's were a lot more reliable when we had ICD's as oppose to RPPM's. A good RPPM streak can line you up for a top 10 rank, not getting your RPPM's almost at all in the fight can see you not even able to breach top 200.

[Deleted]

Overall top rankings mean very little - they always have. It's just like comparing 25 with 10 man You can't. Class rankings are a lot more useful, however you do need to take them with a grain of salt, depending on the boss (horridon and primordius for example).

[Deleted]

WoL itself - a great tool
WoL ranks - a combination of who devised the best 'whoring' method and Epeen stroking.

It is good I guess to check what these players do to gain high ranks but more often than not it means taking risks and ignoring parts of the fight to achieve said ranks.
Adds a little fun to the lolfarm content I guess when you try and compete for them but mean very little (imo).

[kilj]

I'm sorry but you cannot base off where you should be at on WOL rankings. A lot of those top rankings are fixed by the raid to let that person pad the meters to hit that certain ranking. You cannot really rely on them as such.

[Woobels]

I love parsing for boring farm stuff.

Also if you understand how to look and how to use it, things like epeenbot (which is often shunned) and class-rankings can be useful to see if someone is decent, it's just that you have to take it with a grain of salt and have to know what fights etc to look at.

If someone scores high 80s to 90s on every fight, and not just Horridon/whatever pad fight, chances are he is atleast a good player.
It also shows how often players die if all their fights get logged, because those logs stand out like a sore thumb.

[Deleted]

The top 10-100 spec rankings give you a good idea of where you are compared to other players of your spec and how much you could improve.

The very top ranks mean very little because, as you said, they are pretty much gamed or otherwise brought about by methods that guilds would not use on a progression kill.

Aside from that, they have meaning in that they give players a goal to shoot for, making the game considerably more enjoyable for those that have already cleared all content.

From a tank 10 man PoV about top logs (I had quite a few rank 1's myself)

Jin'Rokh - It says something, but any top ranks killed it in 1 lightning storm, so if you kill it in 2, pretty much no chance.
Horridon - Doesnt say so much, I kept rank 1,2,3,4,5 as prot paladin myself for a long time (think I still got it havent checked), simply by having bad raid dps which allowed me to do more dps in the final phase. Also, some people cheese this by the entire raid going afk in the burn phase and letting 1 player solo kill the boss for rankings. Obviously it says something about rankings, I did not get top ranks by luck here, but checking damage done on gate 1-4 says more than checking entire fight
Council - Doesnt say much, depends so much on strategy used
Tortos - Doesnt say much really, I once beat the previous rank 1 by 180k dps as tank, simply by having 3 dps dieng on the fight, which meant we could not keep up with bats. I got 3-4 waves of bats on my, riding at 400-500k vengeance ending on well over 500k dps with 80% of it on the boss (was in full single target spec).
Megaera - Actually decent benchmark fight for tanks
Ji-Kun - Says you took a feed young buff and killed the boss fast, still good benchmark fight
Durumu - Great benchmark fight
Primordius - Says which strat you used and that you got lucky with buffs
Dark Animus - Says which strat you used
Iron Qon - Good benchmark for tanks
Twins - Good benchmark for tanks
LS - Good benchmark for tanks

So a lot of fights are kinda bullshit, but some fights are good, especially those single target fights.

[Hypasonic]

I don't mind them but yeah you're right in the sense that most fights are just overpowered a certain way (as in out geared), or solo healed etc for ranks but that's to be expected. When farming this is the only thign to aim for for fun really, I'm still quite happy with my best rank thus far in ToT which was #3 on megaera as a holy paladin, wanted to go for rank1 this week but our disc priest got some more gear+used inner fire this time haha so ye

[felcommander]

they mean pretty close to nothing especially when looking at heroics when the content has been out a while. The "issue" with them is as people get more gear and farm the content more they can do different things, like trying to get people ranks, such as allowing them to sit on horridon for an entire fight, basically doing things that you won't do over the normal course of the fight.

I'd say the best thing to use for a judge of "where you are" is raidbots epeen bot, as its a nice 1-99 percentile ranking, which means 50th is average, anything above is above average, anything below is bad. Its obviously not that simple, but I think its better than looking at wol rankings.

[cFortyfive]

Also if you understand how to look and how to use it things like epeenbot (which is often shunned) and class-rankings can be useful to see if someone is decent, it's just that you have to take it with a grain of salt and have to know what fights etc to look at.

Definitely agree. Certainly it doesn't mean the ranked one player is the by far the best player there is. But if you consistently only hit white to green range on epeenbot chances are not too low that you are actually pretty bad. It's just important to know what to do with the information given.

[Berianther]

Depends on what you're looking for. Good luck getting top 10 ranks as healer if you heal with a disc priest or if you're not 1 healing fights.

[Deleted]

Definitely agree. Certainly it doesn't mean the ranked one player is the by far the best player there is. But if you consistently only hit white to green range on epeenbot chances are not too low that you are actually pretty bad. It's just important to know what to do with the information given.

Epeenbot's system is actually kinda lol. Being on the 96th percentile with a #1 log is funneh.

[Inthislzon]

Epeenbot's system is actually kinda lol. Being on the 96th percentile with a #1 log is funneh.

That's because epeenbot counts all parses to calculate percentiles, or do you mean you have a #1 global log and still 96th?

[Deleted]

WoL is a great thing, it allows players to get better by viewing spells used, buff up-times and so on. But global ranks are a bit of boring to look at because certain specs and classes can cheese some great dps on most of the fights (Tanks, Warlocks and Mages). But your own class parses are great thing, it gives you information how well you perform in comparsion to other same class players around the world, but then again there is fights where you can cheese dps and RPPM affects ranks greatly so I personally wouldn't say player who got rank 1 is alot better, if even better than player who got rank 15-30, but of course there is a difference between players who got rank 1 and 250

As Faylo stated, it should be used more as an analyzing tool to improve your playing by looking out mistakes you are making, and you can help others with it too.

[Masochist]

Not unless you have heroic gear or play a spec that is viable, but not competitive.