So are WWS and WoWmeteronline useless?

#0 - Jan. 27, 2009, 5:18 p.m.

Just wondering if anyone can comment on whether both these number generating reports are even useful.

The reason i am curious is because Blizzard(GC) stated that RET Paladin dps was fine and may even be very high, yet both these websites report completely opposite numbers.

I went on to Wowmeteronline and RET dps is second last on patchwerk. This was measured using the top 50 ret paladins against the other top 50's, with the averages given.

Then i went to wws reports and looked at the top 50 patchwerk kills and it says the exact same thing. REt Paladins are last or second last in almost all reports.
Furthermore in the top 50 patchwerk kills there isnt a single ret paldin in the top 5 and only 1 in the top 10 for dps.
So 1 Paladin in the top 10 dps out of 50 wws reports?

So i am questioning the validity of wws reports and wowmeteronline since GC has said they are basically wrong, even though they both say the same thing.

I just want a calm discussion on this, ret pallies should not be top dps or even top 4 (thats pure territory)
but they should be equal to the other hybrids. I realize some hybrids are very high still and will be adjusted but ret is usually behind by 10 to 15% thats alot more than the 5% the developers have said they would like them to be at.
This really confuses me because it would seem vengeance stacking to 5 was a totally valid buff and i cannot understand why it was yanked at the last minute?
Are the numbers of the top 50 ret pallies and numbers of the top 50 guilds killing patchwerk really that off?

I think we are looking at PVP affecting PVe right now, for some reason RET (even though it isnt any higher represented than almost all classes) is being kept down in PVE because of people complaining about pvp, i believe rogues are suffering the same fate.
If anyone has evidence otherwise i would love to hear it. I know GC pointed out that one Paladin i n the world was doing great dps with the 5 stack of Vengeance but the dps he was doing was actually right where he should have been for one of the best players in the world.

I hope this was clear, i would like a civilized conversation on this matter to clear up some things, if the numbers were all seeing are wrong then so be it.
All i know is that the numbers(we have access to) have consistantly placed ret in the bottom 2 in 25 mans and yet our much needed buff was axed. We are using aoe spells (consecrate) and holy wrath just to stay in the same 20% as the rest of the dps yet we dont see buffs? its so confusing.
Shaman were buffed because they had a spec doing similar dps to ret pallies yet our simple buff was dropped....i just do not understand.
Some kind of explanation would be nice, i realize this will not happen from GC but maybe someone else in the community can explain it to me.

Ghostcrawler

#22 - Jan. 27, 2009, 7:47 p.m.

We like numbers. It's awesome when players post them.

However, understand that if it was as simple as players just posting WWS or other stats, then all you are really doing is linking to data that we can go gather ourselves.

The reason we like seeing players discuss numbers is the discussion. It's great when someone says "Yeah, I get numbers like that too," or "Hmmm. Those numbers look suspicious," or "Wow, were you exploiting a bug?" or "Yeah, I can get those numbers but only if I am really lucky with a complex rotation," or "I can do that with this spec but not some other spec, so picking these talents may mean a 20% dps increase." That is all information we can use that goes much deeper than just "Ret pallies do 4000 dps" (or whatever).

It's not realistic to expect the community to come to a consensus on anything, even what dps various specs can achieve. But you can see trends. You can see the issues that come up. You can see when things are controversial or confusing.

Q u o t e:
Yeah it's pretty clear GC was referring to the damage being done on the PTR

In our case, it resulted in ret doing 5900 dps on patchwerk.

Exactly.

Another issue I have hinted at before is that a lot of Rets will claim "Naxx is full of undead. We should win the meters or otherwise we never will." While it is logical to reach that conclusion, we don't actually like the design of Ret doing great dps in some instances and not on others based on the type of creature. Assume that the damage you do in Naxx is what we want you to do all the time.

Ghostcrawler

#61 - Jan. 27, 2009, 9:59 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I think the issues is this: Why don't you USE these numbers because they are representative of what is really happening in the game. They're not your spreadsheets or your figures on a napkin or your projections or equations, they're reality.

We do. But look -- in this exact thread you see players saying "Ret is at the bottom" and "Ret is exactly where it needs to be." Clearly the numbers are not always consistent or else something else is going on. So it isn't just an issue of plugging in new numbers. We have to understand why players are having different experiences. Is it a matter of skill? Gear? Other raid buffs? Are some players exaggerating? Sandbagging? Comparing themselves to broken classes? Are the reporting tools themselves inconsistent? We know what we think Ret's damage actually is. Does that compare to what players are finding? If not, why not? Are our assumptions of skill invalid? Is there some difference in the data between our builds and live?

Rarely in this game are things so cut and dried. When they are we can usually make changes quickly (assuming there isn't a technical limitation or the fix won't make some other problem worse).