The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
WWS and Graceful Critique Acceptance
by Vonya
Wow Web Stats.
WWS is a nifty tool that will read in your combat logs and parse out the information into human-readable format.
It’s VERY snazzy, and I like it.
However, I submit that it’s simply a bigger, better damage meters.
We all know damage meters are bad, right? You end up with people constantly trying to top each other, pulling aggro, and refusing to use their group/raid friendly spells because their personal dps suffers and they look worse. If you’re looking at a pure numbers came, you’ll end up with a disorganized mess of a raid or group. You’ll have people constantly pulling aggro as they push the limits and never use their threat-wipes. You’ll have people maxing out their damage gear at the expense of their stamina.
It’s all around a great big muddled mess.
And it’s darn near useless for healers. We’ve discussed how useful healing meters are for healers before, and pretty much come to the conclusion that you get such a distorted view of the battle that you couldn’t tell a good healer from a drunken chipmunk.
But they have good points as well. If you’ve got a handful of dps classes that are significantly lower than others (I’m talking well below the tank here) then that’s worth looking at and investigating. And WWS is perfect for that. Are you a shadow priest with less than half of your +spelldamage worth of dps? (I heard a rumor that the basement for caster dps should be half of your +spdmg…if you have +800 damage, you should be breaking 400 dps. PLEASE correct me if that’s wrong. I know my EgoLock cranks out a lot more than that, so I’m not certain how useful of a guideline that is.)
If so, WWS will show you what spells you are casting. With a little research, you can find out what the recommended spell rotations are, try again, and note the next WWS. Did your dps improve? What did you do to improve it? Do you have some ideas on what might help? Are you sporting too much crit gear, perhaps, and you could trade some of that out for pure +damage? Try that, see what happens.
WWS is an invaluable tool for this. For EVERY class. I mention shadow priests because I specc’d shadow last week on Vonya and was doing some TURRIBLE dps. Shadow priesting ain’t as easy as you guys make it look!
Unfortunately, as with damage meters, it can be abused. It’s not a race to the top, it’s a very precise and detailed tool to help you see what you did. Additional research is required to help you find out what you SHOULD do to get better.
That’s all dps though. Healers have a much more difficult time of it. How does a healer use WWS to get better? How can you even use WWS to tell whether you’re doing a good job?
How to tell if you’re a good priest has also been covered here, and the end result was that there is no guideline, there is no mathematical formula to tell if you’re a good healer. You either know your stuff and people live, or you don’t, and people die. (taking out the ability of other people to do dumb stuff and get themselves killed, of course)
If WWS shows SIGNIFICANT healing differences between healers, that may be a sign that the lower healer isn’t pulling their own weight. And maybe you’ve got one overzealous healer that’s just going crazy and doing the work of two healers. They’re not letting the other healers do their job, and they’re probably running out of mana way too often. That’s a sign of either dramaqueen behavior or a lack of trust in their fellow healers.
The problem is, WWS won’t tell you that. It won’t. Only your fellow healers will.
That’s where Raid Leaders come in. Raid Leaders are supposed to look at the WWS and discuss the results with someone whose performance might need tweaking. If your Raid Leader comes to you and says “hey, I noticed your dps was pooled around your ankles last weekend, what’s up?” they’re just doing their job. They’re not attacking you, they’re trying to help you become the best player you can be.
If your Raid Leader comes to you and says, “hey, I got a few comments about you doing too much healing, you’re healing the targets assigned to the other healers even when they have it covered…”
I want you to stop. Just…stop. Take your hands away from the keyboard, take a deep breath, count to ten…
…You are not being insulted. Don’t narrow your eyes and start going through the list of other healers. “Who said that? Who said that about me? What a total bitch, if I wasn’t here, she’d never…blah, blah, blah..”
Don’t give into that. It’s natural to feel defensive when someone questions your skills, especially if it’s something you pride yourself in.
I want you to calm down and try to see if there is a reason. Do your best to avoid sniping or attacking. Think about what was said.
Is your dps really low? Have you researched the spell rotations for your class? Do you know the difference between being mana efficient and doing stupid-crazy dps? Is your gear out of date? Are you really stomping on the heals of other healers?
The Raid Leader isn’t trying to accuse you, and they’re not trying to tell you that you suck.
What they’re doing is helping you become better. If there’s a problem, they need to find out what’s going on. And it may take a few weeks for you to find out what can be done to fix it. If they recommend a macro to up your dps, TRY IT. Just try it. One week. Is your dps any higher? Is it SIGNIFICANTLY higher? If you still hate the macro, find out what the macro does and learn how to do that by hand. Every macro can be recreated with button presses.
If you’re used to click/healing everyone with low health, FORCE yourself to wait. It’s hard, I know. But if you KNOW that nothing else is going on and the tank you aren’t assigned to is dying…WAIT. How far down does their health fall? Do they die?
If you notice them getting perilously close to death after a week (if your compatriots are used to you doing all the healing, they’ll need a few scares to remind them to pay attention), talk to your Raid Leader. Say, “Look, I’ve stopped healing people who aren’t my targets in non-panic situations, and the other healer just isn’t picking up the slack, I don’t know what to do.”
Let THEM decide. If they need to go tell the other healer to pay more attention and have a faster reaction time, then fine. But it’s THEIR job. Not yours.
If your Raid Leader isn’t doing their job, then you’ve got a whole new ball of wax to sort through. But give them a chance.
Take criticism as gracefully as you can. If you know you’re likely to fly off the handle, tell the Raid Leader that you need a rain check on the conversation and go for a walk. Calm down. If they have even a kernel, even a grain of truth to what they’ve said, accept that. It doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to tell them why you think it’s not your fault, but they’re not attacking you. They just want the problem fixed.
Also, if WWS is posted for your raids or guild — don’t wait for a Raid Leader to tell you that you need to improve. You know your class, and you know how to read all those spell names and soforth. Be proactive. And if your Raid Leader comes to you, say “Yeah, I noticed that too. I’m doing X to see if that fixes it.”
I love WWS. I think it’s an amazing tool. I think it’s more useful for dpsers than healers, but even healers can learn a thing or two. Glance around at the tabs of the other characters - how much healing did your Prayer of Mending REALLY do? Maybe you should use it more often. Did your Lightwell actually get used and do a surprising amount of healing on other players? The answer might surprise you. (It might not, I still haven’t tried it)
What I’m saying is that tools like WWS can make evaluating your performance much easier. Be proactive and try to fix your own problems before someone has to come talk to you, and even though it may be the most difficult thing in the world, try not to take criticism personally. If they didn’t care about you or want you there, they’d just kick you off the team. Instead, they think you’re worth the time and possible drama to help you become a better player. The least you can do is squash that initial natural reaction to lash out at the person who you perceive to be attacking you.
Giving a healer a good critique is difficult, and becomes more and more difficult as you add more healers to the mix. Try to critique yourself first.
And if you figure out how to do that, let me know.
September 27th, 2007
Cool post. Our guild has recently begun using WWS ourselves. For some, it’s come as a bucket of ice water to the face that their spec/performance is suboptimal. When struggling with content like Gruul (a DPS race), I think it can be a really helpful tool.
One thing I wanted to correct. A Tree Druid’s overhealing will not show up on meters. HoTs ticking away superfluously do not get counted by meters (at least, no meters that I’ve found). For this reason, a Druid’s healing should have VERY little overhealing (I was at 7% last night). Naturally, this figure is quite misleading. I’m sure my OH was probably 60% from rolling Lifeblooms. =)
September 27th, 2007
@Phaelia
Really? That’s very interesting…but it makes sense, now that I think of it. I don’t recall seeing green numbers flash when I was low health and had a hot. I shall remedy this!
September 27th, 2007
One of our other feral druids was outdoing me on damage last night and i can’t figure out why. His description of his technique sounds the same as mine and his gear is ever-so-slightly less powerful than mine, but he was, on occasion, doing a lot more damage than i was, although on other occasions i was doing more. To be honest, though, over the entire night, i think we came out even.
Maybe he was just getting a lot of luck with crits and i was taking it personally when he outdid me a few times. I get very competetive with other people who are filling the same role as i am. I don’t [i]want[/i] to feel like the other feral druids are all out to get me, but there’s some kind of paranoia trigger in seeing somebody else trying to push their own stats past mine in a directly comparable manner.
I need to start running WWS and look at these logs. >:/
September 27th, 2007
Oops, forum tag there. I meant want.
September 27th, 2007
@Mel
Yup! WWS is super-easy to get started, and it would let you see where his damage is coming from. Is he getting more because of bleeds? Maybe he’s doing a different finishing move…could be anything! WWS will let you compare apples to apples there, though, and it’s a good way to learn someone else’s dps secrets!
September 27th, 2007
I’ll mention though, that if you take the time to parse a WWS log, it can provide incredibly useful information for healers. If you look at each person, it shows who they healed, and what damage those people were taking and what heals they used. It can be useful if used the right way.
Obviously, healer types won’t be looking at the WWS log the same way DPS types do, but they can compare what spells each person used and how much of each spell they used, and perhaps if there was a priest who didn’t use renew as much vs a priest who did who were healing the same/similar group, they could compare notes to their respective healing styles. (Clearly a MT healer would be using different heal spells than a whack-a-mole raid healer, so that’s keeping those differences in mind.)
September 27th, 2007
@Lauchis
Definitely. If you’re in a situation with another person of the same class and purpose as you, it’s a huge help to compare and see the different styles.
I find myself healing with a variety of different healers, and I’ve not used it on an actual raid run yet, so I’ll be learning it next week, I think.
September 27th, 2007
One thing to note about WWS is that you NEED to extend your combat log range to 200 yards (or even better, use the log roller function to combine several peoples logs into one merged uber log). If you keep it at the default value of 40 yards you will miss a lot of what’s happening. There are some addons that can do this for you, or you can type in the slash commands yourself. Personally, I use loggerhead on my combat logs because you can set it up to a) extend your combat log range to 200 yards and b) have it turn logging on and off when you enter/leave instances.
On the subject of looking at WWS reports, one great feature of the site is that you can look at other people’s combat logs. Curious as to what spells/rotations the “elite” guilds are using? Look them up on WWS! See what they are doing and try doing it yourself. Between this tool and the armory you can pretty much see what everyone’s spec is, what their gear is, and what spells they cast. That’s a whole lot of data you can use to improve yourself…I know that I have!
September 27th, 2007
You know I agree with what is here. I would like to point out, though, that people should really just use these things to judge themselves and not themselves against others. Let’s face it, if you’re doing 300 DPS one week and someone else is doing 800 DPS. You’re not going to make up 500 in a week, or hell probably not even in a month… but if you keep building your own DPS, to go from 300 to 320 to 360 to 400. Before long you’re at the very least doing better, and that is what is most important — self improvement.
Re-gem if you have to, change talents around, do whatever. But don’t accept the status quo if you know you’re the bottom of the ladder. I mean, being middle of the pack isn’t a bad thing, not everyone is intended to be the alpha… so long as you put effort into striving for something better than you did the week prior, you’ll be a good raid component in your own right.
September 27th, 2007
@Melli
Very true, the range is very important, regardless of whether you’re melee or ranged.
@Ves
Nobody’s going to believe me, but I actually wrote this BEFORE the discussion on the guild board.
But you’re right. You do best by comparing yourself to yourself. If you find yourself in the envious position of having someone else of the same class/type as you, and they’re totally smoking you, it can be worthwhile to see WHY. But it’s not a race to the top, it’s an opportunity to better yourself, whether you are dps, tank, or healer.
It’s only the amazingly clueless who are likely to see a huge dps spike from learning a simple strategy or swapping out a piece of gear or two. Most people know enough to do well, and tweaking that to be BETTER is an incremental process.
Not realizing that your steady shot clips your auto shot, for example. (THAT TOTALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ME, NO SIR) That’s a pretty big key to the really spectacular hunter dps that can be seen.
The game obfuscates enough key mechanics that pretty much every class or spec needs to do some research to learn how to maximize their utility.
I just wish it was easier for healers, as reactionary classes, to fuel that growth.
September 27th, 2007
“…that you couldn’t tell a good healer from a drunken chipmunk.”
You mean there is a difference….
September 27th, 2007
“We all know damage meters are bad, right?”
No, no we don’t. Damage meters are *essential* to good DPS. It is the only form of feedback they have, the only way they can measure their performance on an individual level. Without that feedback, they can’t improve.
Those of you who condemn damage meters are dooming your DPS to mediocrity.
DPS in Kara and Gruul should be capable of pulling 500-600 DPS at minimum. If your DPS is lower than this, they are doing something wrong! They’re usually using a sub-optimal ability rotation or gearing strategy. It’s not a matter of getting better gear, it’s that they are not performing to the full potential of their current gear.
I agree that healers don’t need damage meters, because we have more effective forms of feedback. Did I run out of mana? Did my tanks die? Healers know when they make mistakes, in a way that DPS simply does not have.
September 27th, 2007
GSH, I’d agree, except that’s not how they’re used.
I could point to the number of times I got laughed at in PUGs (and, till I switched to shadow and taught people why it mattered, even guilds) when I’d post DPS in response to the extremely typical total damage.
I could ask you how many times you’ve seen other people post dps vs total damage.
Yes, total damage matters. But dps is both more important and, for the extraordinarily large majority, never used.
They’re an important tool for improving performance. They’re just… used incorrectly so often that they are worthy of ridicule.
September 28th, 2007
I never understood the whole amount healed business—back in the days of MC and BWL. There, as a Druid, I was mostly “competing” with 1.5 sec Flash of Lights and Flash Heals.. with my lovely 2.5+ sec (had Nature’s Grace) Healing Touches and subpar HOTs (no one would ever let them tick full for spot healing purposes).
(Ignore the following if WWS or some other mod already has this type of data and I haven’t figured it out.)
Far more interesting for healers (IMO) for example, would be how much DPS does Rogue #1 do when he’s at 80% health, 60% health, 40% health? Through the course of the fight, how many min/sec was he in each particular range and was there a drastic difference?
I know personally that when I’m at a certain point of health, I play a bit differently then when I’m fresh 100%—it’s not panic, it’s just my inner self survival mode ticking in (learned very early on in Duskwood when dying in the western part would mean an incredibly crappy runback). I’m a big believer of death = 0 DPS, so when I’m at a certain mark of health AND I know the healers are having rough times themselves, I turn it down a notch and play conservative.
How much TPS does your Tank pump out at different health levels, etc. In this manner, for a healer, you can pinpoint which DPS starts stressing and panicking (leads to suboptimal play) at various points, and which remain indifferent to their health—and could potentially put them at the back of the line if there’s multiple targets that need their meds. I think average DPS across the raid would increase in looking at healing this way.
September 28th, 2007
“We all know damage meters are bad, right? You end up with people constantly trying to top each other, pulling aggro, and refusing to use their group/raid friendly spells because their personal dps suffers and they look worse.”
Actually, the thing I love about WWS is that it actually catalogs all that stuff. Back in the day, you’d just have guess at which players were topping the dps meters but not doing their job on any given night. With WWS, you can actually check how much a dpser is sheeping, dispelling, innervating, decursing, taking too much unnecessary damage, etc.
October 1st, 2007
We’ve been fiddling with this and I for one like it.
I discovered this weekend that you can also tell who is not moving fast enough to avoid killing raidmates from Grull’s Shatter
Of course that could mean that some people are running into the range of other players about to shatter.
Neat thing about stats; They’re so interpretable.
True Story - Eloi