State of DPS is not the Bible of spec ranking.

[commanderbeatdown]

State of DPS is not the Bible of spec rankings. It is hardly useful as more than a general tool with a tenuous grasp on reality.

Its sample sizes are horridly small. ~120 parses are a not large enough n value to reliably reflect numbers in the real wow population.

The class/spec combinations are not evenly represented. People tend to play what others tell them are the highest DPS specs. As such, the supposed "higher DPS" specs are over represented, and the "lower DPS" specs are starved. This is evident in the variance column. To speak very simply, variance is directly proportional to, and can be considered a measure of margin of error. The "lowest DPS" and therefore least represented specs, for example, Beast Mastery, have around 50% variance, which is CRAZY unreliable. Also if you notice, the variance/error increases inversely with DPS/Spec Representation. Looking at the extent of this swing, THIS IS A BAD SIGN. TLDR, class/spec combos are not all well enough represented for the data to be useful.

Lastly, the sample sizes do not reflect the play experience of normal players. It reflects the South Park ganker crowd; the distant outliers who play far more than the average player. Assuming many thousands of parses are submitted to the wow logs, using the top 120 parses only means that the info gathered is more than 4 standard deviations away from us normal human beings. We are being judged as a whole by a fraction of 1% of an already skewed sample.

State of DPS has its uses, but its data DO NOT reflect anything close to reality for practical wow players or even the <1% of us that the data supposedly represent.

If I could give them some advice, rather than using only the top 120, I'd integrate as many parses as possible and let the chips fall where they may.


Also let me say, please reply with constructive, informed input. When it comes to these kinds of threads, there are trolls out there with limited understanding of the subject matter who have a compelling drive to prove people "wrong" by any means necessary. Such behavior does not make you appear more intelligent, and is not welcome here. Constructive criticism is perfectly ok.

---------- Post added 2011-01-12 at 05:37 PM ----------

No views at all? Did I scare people away with the word Bible?