LFR -> Flex -> Normal -> Heroic: Why?

[Deleted]

Cute how you think Americans = humanity.

Cute you think pointing out minro errors takes away from the major point.

Download the text of one of those and come to Skype with me. I finished high school this year and I'm sure I'd score more than that. So would probably half my (old) class. (assumption taken by seeing 2012's problems)
The point I'm trying to make is that average is skewed by so many factors that it's not a good indicator of how people are actually performing.

You mean the bulk of humanity is worse than the very bvest and if you want to teach them math you need much lower standards?

OMG FLEXI RAID!!

[Fluorescent0]

You mean the bulk of humanity is worse than the very bvest and if you want to teach them math you need much lower standards?

OMG FLEXI RAID!!

I mean the majority of humanity could be achieving much more than they actually do because lack of effort/dedication/stimulus/whatever you call it. Representing people who don't care in a statistic skews it and no longer makes it useful.

[Deleted]

I mean the majority of humanity could be achieving much more than they actually do because lack of effort/dedication/stimulus/whatever you call it. Representing people who don't care in a statistic skews it and no longer makes it useful.

Good job when measuring raiders we are only measuring people who actually raid then, eh?

Fuck man, if we started including mongolian farmers who barely know about electricity, that's some serious nerfing blizzard have on their hands.

[Raelbo]

Yes, you don't read, so I'll say it one last time although you probably won't read it again.

Maybe we both need to take a step back here.

5 or so pages ago you asked me, in response to my statement that my friends "aren't bad at the game, but..."

Please elaborate what being bad is, then. No, really. I'm curious.

To which I tried my best to give a description of my understanding of the term, which I believe I have defended pretty well since as being a good (by any definition) approximation to the generally accepted English definition.

Unfortunately your reply to me started with sarcasm:

Do I really need to explain again with mathemagic why this is not a good definition at all?

Maybe you are simply playing devil's advocate for the sake of having fun, in which case I see no point in further defending my viewpoint. Either way, I stand by my original assertion:

"My friends perform poorly in raids these days. It's not because they are bad players." If you lack clarity on what I mean, I have explained my understanding of the word "bad". If you think my understanding of the word is wrong, so be it.

What I will say is this: The term "bad" has negative connotations. Calling someone "bad" when they are not is an affront. Defining the term "bad" to match someone's performance is tantamount to calling them "bad" outright (even if you don't call them "bad" directly). The way you presented your argument led me to the belief (rightly or wrongly) that your threshold for calling someone bad is a lot higher than what I would consider reasonable.

tl;dr: you dont compare to your threshold directly as that makes no sense for a definition, since that threshold is subjective. you compare to something else and then apply a threshold.

I think your problem here is you are trying to find a universal definition for the term "bad" when there is none. It requires examination of the context and a reasonable mind to evaluate the data available. Eg: You have an expectation that my definition of "bad" must cover it's applicability to knowledge of string theory, when really, all I am trying to do is define it in the context of WoW.

To that end:

I believe that someone is a bad player of WoW if their results, relative to the effort they have put in, is noticably below that of players who have put in a similar amount of effort.

I believe that someone's performance in WoW can be considered bad if it is below that being achieved by most active players, and again, context is very important. If you say someone's dps is simply bad, the reasonable assumption is that you mean by comparison to the rest of the WoW playerbase at the same level as the person and participating in group content. Normally though, within a conversation, there will be a few more constraints that define parameters.

For example, within the general population of level 90's who are doing world boss fights, anything over 100K dps is pretty decent. Anything below 40K is pretty bad.

However within the heroic raiding community, 100K IS bad. The problem occurs when a heroic raider, without any context simply states that the guy doing 100K is "bad".


In general you can't just say something is bad without having some context. If you don't quote that context, then it requires that the context should be self evident and within reason.

[Khiyone]

Cute how you think Americans = humanity. Download the text of one of those and come to Skype with me. I finished high school this year and I'm sure I'd score more than that. So would probably half my (old) class. (assumption taken by seeing 2012's problems)
The point I'm trying to make is that average is skewed by so many factors that it's not a good indicator of how people are actually performing.

I cited 2011's problems. The test was changed significantly post-2011 and became much easier, the average is now more like a 4. Just pointing that out :P
Also, it probably is better than 99.9% of humanity, considering the selection process~

Of course it's extremely good. You cannot objectively label someone who is better than 99.9% of the rest of humanity as being bad at something.

I can, and I would in this case. Anyone who's experienced with problem solving would pull more than a 4~

[Deleted]

I cited 2011's problems. The test was changed significantly post-2011 and became significantly easier, the average is now more like a 4. Just pointing that out :P
Also, it probably is better than 99.9% of humanity, considering the selection process~



I can, and I would in this case. Anyone who's experienced with problem solving would pull more than a 4~

We aren't measuring "anyone who is interested in problem solving" we are measuring everyone. "Anyone who is interested in problem solving" is a post facto addition to the data to preserve your viewpoint, it's not drawn from the data itself.

And so it is with raiders. If we measure all the raiding players, then people like Minelol and Firefly are completely wrong about what does and does not consititute skill at the game.

[rjparker]

Before I rant --- I love the idea of flex - I think it should be implemented for all difficulty levels.

I hate having multiple difficulty levels. Does anybody seriously enjoy killing the same damn boss 100+ times per tier?

Solution: One difficulty (heroic) with flex. Every month, any bosses that have been killed by at least 100 different guilds take a 10% nerf. Top end guilds can still push for rankings without worry, and the casuals can still see all content before next tier, and EVERYBODY gets excited when they kill a boss (if anybody even remembers that feeling)....

And who cares about perfectly balancing flex --- let the top end guilds play around with the numbers & compositions themselves.

OK develop your own game, you choose how YOU want to make it work. If you only want one level that's YOUR decision, Blizzard CHOSE this and since they have been doing it for almost 9 years now I *THINK* they know more than you.

Just do the game that you want, but don't think you know better than the developers of THIS game just because YOU *PLAY* the game, it hardly makes YOU an expert at ANY Level.

[Fluorescent0]

Good job when measuring raiders we are only measuring people who actually raid then, eh?

Fuck man, if we started including mongolian farmers who barely know about electricity, that's some serious nerfing blizzard have on their hands.

Except that you don't know how much effort these people are putting in. Most could be just entering the raid once, kill a boss and give up on their first wipe and never look back, and you'd never know and still include them in your statistics.

[rjparker]

Maybe we both need to take a step back here.


However within the heroic raiding community, 100K IS bad. The problem occurs when a heroic raider, without any context simply states that the guy doing 100K is "bad".


In general you can't just say something is bad without having some context. If you don't quote that context, then it requires that the context should be self evident and within reason.

Same goes for heals.. someone ASSUMES that since heals aren't on par with other healers you aren't doing what you can or keeping up, so they kick based solely on numbers.. but I use a mistweaver, I use other abilities to PREVENT damage and since we don't die I figure we are doing pretty well, yet my numbers for heals don't add up, so I don't get invited back..

Poor judgement.

[Fluorescent0]

"My friends perform poorly in raids these days. It's not because they are bad players." If you lack clarity on what I mean, I have explained my understanding of the word "bad". If you think my understanding of the word is wrong, so be it.

Either undergeared or bad if he's performing poorly, really. And if it's undergeared it's either due to an incredible lack of time or just lack of effort. So yes, it's probably you not understanding what you imply in that sentence.

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Same goes for heals.. someone ASSUMES that since heals aren't on par with other healers you aren't doing what you can or keeping up, so they kick based solely on numbers.. but I use a mistweaver, I use other abilities to PREVENT damage and since we don't die I figure we are doing pretty well, yet my numbers for heals don't add up, so I don't get invited back..

Poor judgement.

Mistweavers don't have damage reducing cooldowns outside of a 400k bubble every two minutes, not sure what you're implying here. They're balanced about basically bringing only heals.

[Deleted]

Except that you don't know how much effort these people are putting in. Most could be just entering the raid once, kill a boss and give up on their first wipe and never look back, and you'd never know and still include them in your statistics.

They still count.

You are just adding on more things to try and exclude some of the actual data to justify the point of view you started with.

Long way from objective. Loooooong way.

[Fluorescent0]

They still count.

You are just adding on more things to try and exclude some of the actual data to justify the point of view you started with.

Long way from objective. Loooooong way.

Wrong. Content isn't overtuned, they aren't trying. Those are two completely different things and I'm sure you actually understand that despite trying to defend your point.

[GiveMeANameX]

Because the playerbase is very diverse. That's why.

this is why i wish this was lowered to 7/8 man

[Deleted]

Wrong. Content isn't overtuned, they aren't trying. Those are two completely different things and I'm sure you actually understand that despite trying to defend your point.

No, you are just adding an extra element "effort" to try and justift your viewpoint.

It's not in the data, mate.

Neither is having glasses, being left handed or being an aquarius with a moon in capricorn. Data says of the player who raid, shit is overtuned. Suck it up and welcome to factland.

[Deleted]

This whole good and bad discussion is quite hillarious to follow. The first misconception some people seems to be having, is that some of the people, that I am sure they consider to be "elitists", think that only the top 1% is good, and all the rest is bad, that is far from true. Still, defining good and bad in WoW is often quite easy. That entire test example, if you have a test with 20 questions, sometimes answering 4/20 can be good, and answering 18/20 can be bad. If you do not know what the test is, you do not know if the result is good or bad. For WoW however, you know what you can expect from players. If you talk about dps you know how much a player can push out.
Now there are of course exceptions, some fights have very varying tactics that may alter your dps numbers, maybe your gear is extremely terrible, etc etc, there are always exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions rather than a rule. And the more data points you set the better your presumption gets. If someone is pulling 50k dps on a fight where similarly geared players are pulling 200k dps with the same tactic then the player that is pulling 50k is plain bad. Simple as that.

To display this with some images using epeenbot. For those not familiar, epeenbot collects the results from all WoL reports available, and compare your own results to your own spec. It displays the results of the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 95th percentile of players with your own spec and how you compare with those. Just checking a fight for myself, that does not involve any meter padding or weird tactics. The results look like this.



The blue line is basically the median result, does that make anything above that good? and everything below that bad? No, of course not. The answer is not that simple, the definition of good and bad is not better and worse than the median. You can clearly see that the 95th percentile is pulling more than 100% extra dps over the 50th percentile. Though you can clearly see from that, the the 95th percentile is hardly the roof, as I am pulling between 60-80% more than the 95th percentile on most fights. This means that I am doing about 300% more damage than the 50th percentile. Can you honestly say that the 50th percentile is even good then on this fight? I can play the first 33% of the fight, and then go afk for the rest of the 66% of the fight and still do more than 50% of the players of my class on this particular fight.

On this fight you can clearly say that anything below the 50th percentile is bad. There can be some unique exceptions, maybe you are in 470 ilvl, maybe you died, but there are no real valid reason to be below the 50th percentile on multiple occations. One time and it didn't happen, twice and it is a pattern.
Personally I would like to say that on this fight for my spec, 0th-50th percentile, extremely bad. 50th-75th percentile, mediocre at best. 75th - 85th percentile, acceptable. 85th-95th percentile good. 95th-100th percentile, great.

If I would be kind and took 10 steps back, I could possibly say that the 50th-75th percentile is "okay", and 75th-95th is "good", but my gut says that I cant consider someone performing at 33% of their capacity is okay to be completely honest.

If you take a look at another fight, it looks like this.



Wanted to highlight in this fight was the parse at red star. That was a fight that I died on quite early but we still took the kill. What I wanted to highlight with this, is the exact reason why any WoW comparison needs to be taken into a bigger perspective, you can have a bad week for whatever reason, even so, while dead for a large part of the fight, I still got far above the 75th percentile.

The second thing I wanted to highlight was the parse at the blue star. That parse is more than 100% higher than the 95th percentile, almost 200% higher than the 75th percentile. On a fight like this, can you even claim that the 75 percentile is good? I would say that the 75 percentile on this fight is okay at best. When I am doing more than 100% more damage than 95% of the players of my class, I do not even know if I can call the 95th percentile good on that fight. The stars might have aligned with RPPM procs for that particular kill, but does not explain that difference. Sure, there are always exceptions why someone is lower, but as a generalised statement, even the 95th percentile is quite bad performance here. So for this fight I would have to say that 75th-95th percentile is "okay". And above 95th percentile you reach "good" to "excellent". Anything below 75th percentile on this fight is in all honesty a bad performance.

Clearly, what is good and bad is not defined by the average, rather than what is possible for you to do with your currrent tactic and gear. That said, that does not mean that unless you are doing 99% of your limit you are bad. I would rather say that doing 95-100% of what you could be doing is excellent, doing 85-95% of what you could be doing is good. Doing 85-66% of what you could be doing is okay. Doing 50-66% of what you could be doing is bad, and anything below that is quite honestly, awful. As said though, you need to take your gear and tactic into consideration. Which is why comparisons in WoW is often a dirty business, since you often need to dig deeper. Basing your definition of good and bad from data of what that person could do, is as close as you are going to get to an objective definition as you are going to get.

Still, there is no question however that a majority of even WoWs raiding population are performing at a bad level.

[Fluorescent0]

No, you are just adding an extra element "effort" to try and justift your viewpoint.

It's not in the data, mate.

Neither is having glasses, being left handed or being an aquarius with a moon in capricorn. Data says of the player who raid, shit is overtuned. Suck it up and welcome to factland.

It's not that simple. You read data, don't analyse it at all and just take it for gospel. It's no wonder that people instead pay billions for statistical analysts. It's because oversimplifying doesn't bring any concrete result and misleads instead.

[Deleted]

Oh! Ay up, Firefly has used his "huge post about nothing related to the basic point" tactic again.

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It's not that simple. You read data, don't analyse it at all and just take it for gospel. It's no wonder that people instead pay billions for statistical analysts. It's because oversimplifying doesn't bring any concrete result and misleads instead.

it is that simple. or if it isn't, you certainly didn't start by doing an in depth stat analysis, did you?

No, you started with an elitist "people are bad" mindset and are now working backwards to make it ok.

[Deleted]

Oh! Ay up, Firefly has used his "huge post about nothing related to the basic point" tactic again..

It was related to the current topic few minutes ago. Writing a long and thought through post takes time. By the rate that piles of manure is being spewed up in this thread, it is likely to be a page late when it actually hits the thread.

Injin uses avoid a post with logic and reason, it missed.

[Nobleshield]

It was related to the current topic few minutes ago. Writing a long and thought through post takes time. By the rate that piles of manure is being spewed up in this thread, it is likely to be a page late when it actually hits the thread.

Injin uses avoid a post with logic and reason, it missed.

Off-topic, but thanks for reminding me about epeenbot. Now I can gauge just how bad I am

[kaiadam]

Tank parses can't really be an objective comparison tool. I know the vengeance mechanic has corrupted our mindset somewhat, but a lot of tanks play to survive and progress, not to smash damage on the meters. Sometimes doing a lot of damage is the best path towards progression, but most times it is not - there is a reason Method & BL are world first/second and none of their tanks are especially high on damage, but it's not because they're bad (they are very good.)

It's not really relevant to compare parses from a full main run with the leeway to allow you to single tank fights that every other guild dual tanks for safety against a tank in a position to receive lesser vengeance in a split run, for example. Even if the second guy performed at 95%, he'd be at best a third of your damage.

DPS parses are definitely better, but you also have to watch out for the extreme outliers.