WoW: WoW Web Stat Logs
In guild chat the other day I was talking about how in BoV we use WoW Web Stats to analyze overall performance and to a lesser extent individual performance. The logs aren't really used as a "grading" system for players but rather a way to get hard data on what happened during a raid. Sometimes a small spec change, spell rotation or gear change can mean more dps, more healing or better tankage. I cannot stress enough that it's not a contest of who does the most damage or healing. I've used this tool to analyze things such as the effect of +hit for my warlock. Looking at the numbers I saw that I was getting a LOT of partial resists on my DoTs. I've also used it to validate my Shaman's shock rotation based on my current gear. Someone asked me in guild chat what % of my damage was from WF. Well looking at the logs (just click on Bear) I can see that it's about 30%. The data you can analyze is immense and I think it will really help GWJ as they move forward.
I'm posting our log from our very unsuccessful VR attempt the other night. The Void Alarm mod doesn't work anymore and we had a number of 1st timers so it turned into a bit of a wipefest. The big moron spent the evening raining Arcane Orbs on us and really put a dent in our hopes for some phat T5 gear. I'd recommend you ignore the total overall numbers. Those numbers get horribly skewed because of the trash pulls. Trash doesn't matter, killing bosses does. Instead, scroll over "Full Report" and you can pull the data on individual attempts.
I looked at the rogue's data in comparison to my own data from recount and from what I can tell, recount (WHEN IT WORKS) appears to be very accurate.
But the main reason why so many people us WWS over a personal DPS meter is because WWS will process the entire log to determine an individual's DPS, HPS, and TPS. On the fly calculators only can look at the second to second changes. Your actual numbers will go down (or up) when they are looked at retroactively.
And as Bear said, the most important thing about it is that it is a tool for the group and the individual.
"If Blizzard announces a subscription fee for Diablo III we will have to build a second Internet to make room for all the complaining." - muttonchop
I've installed WWS, have an account and run it for a few different raids. One nice thing is that you don't have to run WWS in order to generate the needed log file, the standard WoW client is capable of doing it without modification.
The big things I've found are that
1) You have to remember to start and stop the log generation
2) To get a really good data on what happened, you need to get multiple people running the logs during the raid
If we want to use this more often, we'll want to have a central point to get the data uploaded and aggregated. I'm willing to collect, parse and upload the log files if people are interested in seeing this on a more regular basis. PM me and I'll send you a real email address where you can send the log file.
GWJ Alliance on Blackhand
Lunazul - Rouge & GWJ Paparazzo
Merdee - Hunter
Lunarel - Druid
I remember seeing this a while back and it was eerily effective. But it also pointed out the "dead weight" so to speak, so I didn't follow up on it. Nothing kills the mood more than telling someone they aren't playing well, it makes for some very awkward conversations.
XBL/Swat R2 SPORE/Swatr2 WAR/Nephlokan
Unbound uses WWS as well for every raid and when properly evaluated it is a wonderful tool. Between our first and second Tidewalker kills I tried a new key rotation and had upgraded a piece of gear. According to WWS the new rotation and the new gear works, although I will try the old rotation to really test it next week. I have also noticed a difference of about 80-100dps between Recount and WWS. Not a big deal but when you are chasing the 1k mark on the bosses that we rogues would all love to hit on those nice bosses that don't make you run around it becomes a big deal.
*Bandolique (70 Combat Rogue)
*Amara (70 Fire Mage)
*Zeus the Good Luck Dog making the Lords of Kara/SSC/TK cry whenever he is around
Let's use Bear's post as an example because I'm sure the only people here that are effected by this post would be Thumps and Bear. And they both appeared to do their jobs.
In this case you have a mage just above the tank for damage and a hunter *below* the tank. This sort of thing is not acceptable. DPS plays a part just like the crucial healers and tanks. You just wouldn't notice a dramatic difference between, say a poor hunter and a poor Warrior main tank.
When an MT dies due to a lack of gear or skill (TPS); a wipe is almost ensured. When a healer can't keep a tank up, a wipe is ensured. When a hunter can't or won't push the DPS to the max without breaking threat... you'll never notice the difference until enrage timers if the boss is even still alive by that point.
The stress that is felt from an MT or healer during a boss fight is so different from DPS'ing that until you've done it, you can't quite understand it. Tanking is relatively easy until you start meeting the bosses that are designed to kill the tank as well as the raid. I use all my cool-downs at very specific times during some boss fights. Nightbane my first time was a trip for me. I remember very clearly during the fight that my health was at less than 2K during a fear. I slammed my Pocket Watch, Last Stand, and a Health Pot and then Shield Wall 30 seconds later. Had the healers or I missed a single beat after that fear, we would have been dead.
The last time I fought Nightbane with Shank, I used SND, Blade Flurry, AR, and Rupture. It was awesome.
"If Blizzard announces a subscription fee for Diablo III we will have to build a second Internet to make room for all the complaining." - muttonchop
On 'Lique I have a very specific key rotation on most boss fights. 3point SnD, followed with Blade flurry and Bloodlust if they are up, 5 point rupture and AR at beginning and end of fight. Last night I tried a 2pt SnD with the 5pt Rupture and it worked rather well. Wednesday I will go with the 3s/5r rotation and see if my dps is higher or the same since I now know what I can pump out with a 2s/5r rotation. Of course I would never recommend changing key rotation for any rogue unless you are doing it on bosses that are on farm and you know you will be well within the enrage timer. It would be just silly to start playing with your key rotation, using WWS or not, with any 8 minute enrage timer that you don't have on farm status.
When evaluating dps or HPS for that matter, you always have to take into account the fight. My dps on two of our Tide attempts last night were orc poo(675 and 591). In both cases I spend more than half the time in a watery grave and healing up from one then died 3rd grave into the fight. We had one of our best healers nearly constantly in a watery grave and his heals where much lower than we have ever seen. So looking at raw data without looking at the rest of the percentages (time in fight, time in graves, etc) would be just silly.
One also has to look at the type of fight and the role of the people in the fight. Of course your rogue/shaman dps will be low on fight were their primary goal is to interupt. And your raid healers, as opposed to your MT healers will probably top the meter on fight where there is a lot of AOE raid damage. But overall, every 25man should be running WWS rather than recount. OR at the very least using recount for the instant "Woot look at us go" or "Who is the honorary mage tonight" meter and WWS for looking at were the raid or the player may need to tweak a bit.
*Bandolique (70 Combat Rogue)
*Amara (70 Fire Mage)
*Zeus the Good Luck Dog making the Lords of Kara/SSC/TK cry whenever he is around
Not only are you not necessarily likely to notice slow DPS without Recount/WWS/whatever, it also tends to make the tank and the healers look bad. If fights go long, healers go OoM and the tank's ever more likely to get beaten down without a particular cooldown available to save himself.
WoW Blackhand Alliance
70s: Nukanatrix (M), Braun (P), Boreali (War), Heckfire (Lock), Jergen (Pal), Erissar (D)
Grumbar - 65 Hunter
A couple of additional points that are worth mentioning.
We all tend to focus on the dps numbers because, well frankly everyone likes big dps. There are a lot of things happening during a raid that have dramatic effects on where people finish in total damage. The Void Reaver fight involves a metric buttload of movement from the ranged classes where's the melee can just stand there and beat the bejeepers out of his butt. In Kara you get a lot of trash pulls were AoE is king and mage dps skyrockets. Just as a side note, I did over 500,000 damage during one Illhoof fight just spamming SoC. It made my overall numbers look great but in reality they really weren't. Also, different spec's withing different classes can greatly skew where people finish so the dps is only part of the equation.
The key is to look at the report in total. If you're a caster how much resist are you seeing? If you're melee how's your miss rate? Are you getting parried at all? You shouldn't be if you're attacking from behind
What's your dps time? Healers look at overheal etc... All of these factors effect the overall outcome of the raid. Use this tool as a device to work with each other and improve. if you have the same gear and same spec and do 1/2 the dps of someone else in your raid you might want to have a conversation with them. There's no shame in trying to improve. The most effective guilds constantly look for ways to improve.
Everyone likes killing bosses and adding phat lootz to their inventory, WWS just helps you get there.
I like anything that will help me learn where the weak points in my gameplay are and improve them. Whether it's a teammate pulling me aside and pointing out some stuff that I am either doing flat out wrong or just not as efficiently as I could (which I may or may not be doing for a good reason), or something like this helping with determining where to shore up my stats or such better, or reading strategies on sites.
Heck, reading a thread on EJ recently, I liked the idea of getting enough spell haste down the road that I could possibly utilize a lower rank Holy Light in place of Flash of Light as my primary quick-spam heal.
So that's something I'm aiming to try out once I have the gear for it.
Luna,
Can you post some of the logs you've made? Preferably for a raid I was in...I'm curious to see how I'm doing.
That which does not kill you, still hurts like Hell. - Anonymous Soldier
None of us is as dumb as ALL of us. - Anonymous Staff Officer
Veni, Vici, Ridebam, Discedebam - "I came, I saw, I laughed, I left"
This is a great tool and strongly suggest we start using this for each Kara and Gruul's we run from now on. A tool such as this will only help us for our quest to find our weaknesses and our STRENGTHS as we move forward. I do take a long hard look at Recount data after each run and break apart what I do and find ways to improve. Since our last Gruul's run, I have done some tweaking on spec and moved some equipment around to try and maximize what I do. Hell...my rotation has also changed and my pet has taken a Raid-retirement in favor of my new Raptor because of Recount data I didn't like.
Just imagine what could happen if everybody looked at their own data and sweaked out another 20DPS....or moved gear around to get another 10k healing. I firmly believe it is everyone's own job to look at how improvments can be made it what we each do. Somtimes gear upgrades can help, but sometimes you can do more with less.
WOW Web stats is needed.
The key to victory is to not suck as bad as the other side.
Sweet mercy, dude! I hope you mean 1 k healing, 'cuz I don't think I'll hit 10k healing until raiding in Wrath of the Lich King, if even then!
Once you start really pounding on the progression raids everything you can do squeeze more out of your toon is essential. 20 more dps doesn't sound like a lot initially but then apply that to a 10 minute fight times 12 players. It's a LOT more dps.
For the most part, players > gear but if your spec or rotation is crap you'll get crap performance out of it.
I think he means increase healing done by 10k.
XBL/PSN: zeroKFE | BHA: zeroKFE | Spore: zeroKFE
Exactly....I should have said overall and avoided the confusion.
The key to victory is to not suck as bad as the other side.
Oh! ok, understood. That makes a lot more sense.