Cassandri decided to challenge me following my last post
"Now, what would be even more interesting: go through from most progressed to least progressed the top 50 (Alliance only if you want to half the work) guilds on Cael and see which ones reject applicants based on gathering professions."
Never one to shirk away from a challange I did as she asked. Taking 25 man content data from GuildOx I reviewed the top 50 guilds on Cael - hunted down their websites and checked whether there was a raiding profession requirement. The results are erm open to interpretation.
Of the top 50 guilds on Caelestrasz - 30 are alliance and 20 are horde.
I tracked down websites for the majority but 13 eluded me - so I have 37 guild recruitment/guild rules.
Of these 37 guilds - the number of guilds where raiding profs were required to be considered for the guild - ONE
Yep just one.
Where the interpretation of these results becomes a little trickier - that single guild is SOS - the top guild on the server.
So I await the comments -"So there you go - Professions maketh the top raiding guild" etc.
Interestingly the second place guild Inexorable (top Horde Guild and also 11/12 HM ICC 25) explicitly states:
"You are not expected to min/max your professions specifically for raiding; however, having two gathering skills on your raiding character demonstrates that you care less about performance than you could."
So there you have it Cass - interpret as you wish.
And in response to your other comment:
"Yes, it's a small thing. Yes, even done right it's a tiny boost to your healing/DPS/tank stats. But buff food is a tiny buff. Using Potions is a tiny buff. Hell, using an Epic gem over a Rare gem is a tiny buff. Having the Exalted Sons of Hodir enchant over the Honored SoH enchant is a very small thing.
But all these small things add up. And multiply that by 25 people and that's how you beat tight encounters - especially those DPS checks like Festergut, Patchwerk or even Blood Queen."
You are of course correct. And even MTRs will get members to review gear and enchants and specs and gems before moving them into the progression teams. We also have the addons which tell us when someone isn't flasked or well fed. But I still feel that professions are a little different.
Specs and gems and enchants are all designed for one purpose - to either kill npcs or other players. Optimising them to better allow you to do said killing makes sense. But once you are back in Dalaran - flasks and gems and enchants mean nothing.
But professions have uses outside of the raid or the battleground. Used correctly they are also a source of income - and the engineering profession that is best for a caster class is not making you rich. Gold pays for repairs, flasks and food. A decent profession allows you to save time which can be better refocused on practising on the dummies and tweaking specs - and thus improving your DPS way beyond where it would have previously been.
I still agree that number crunching shows that some professions DO improve your DPS - and I can understand why some top end raiding guilds are so focused on squeezing every last DPS from their members. Yet I find it interesting that SOS - who feel profs are so important - have a night elf priest and a human warlock in their top 4 ranks - which would automatically make their heals/dps lower.
If you intend to talk the talk then I expect you to walk the walk.
"Now, what would be even more interesting: go through from most progressed to least progressed the top 50 (Alliance only if you want to half the work) guilds on Cael and see which ones reject applicants based on gathering professions."
Of the top 50 guilds on Caelestrasz - 30 are alliance and 20 are horde.
I tracked down websites for the majority but 13 eluded me - so I have 37 guild recruitment/guild rules.
Of these 37 guilds - the number of guilds where raiding profs were required to be considered for the guild - ONE
Yep just one.
Where the interpretation of these results becomes a little trickier - that single guild is SOS - the top guild on the server.
So I await the comments -"So there you go - Professions maketh the top raiding guild" etc.
Interestingly the second place guild Inexorable (top Horde Guild and also 11/12 HM ICC 25) explicitly states:
"You are not expected to min/max your professions specifically for raiding; however, having two gathering skills on your raiding character demonstrates that you care less about performance than you could."
So there you have it Cass - interpret as you wish.
And in response to your other comment:
"Yes, it's a small thing. Yes, even done right it's a tiny boost to your healing/DPS/tank stats. But buff food is a tiny buff. Using Potions is a tiny buff. Hell, using an Epic gem over a Rare gem is a tiny buff. Having the Exalted Sons of Hodir enchant over the Honored SoH enchant is a very small thing.
But all these small things add up. And multiply that by 25 people and that's how you beat tight encounters - especially those DPS checks like Festergut, Patchwerk or even Blood Queen."
You are of course correct. And even MTRs will get members to review gear and enchants and specs and gems before moving them into the progression teams. We also have the addons which tell us when someone isn't flasked or well fed. But I still feel that professions are a little different.
Specs and gems and enchants are all designed for one purpose - to either kill npcs or other players. Optimising them to better allow you to do said killing makes sense. But once you are back in Dalaran - flasks and gems and enchants mean nothing.
But professions have uses outside of the raid or the battleground. Used correctly they are also a source of income - and the engineering profession that is best for a caster class is not making you rich. Gold pays for repairs, flasks and food. A decent profession allows you to save time which can be better refocused on practising on the dummies and tweaking specs - and thus improving your DPS way beyond where it would have previously been.
I still agree that number crunching shows that some professions DO improve your DPS - and I can understand why some top end raiding guilds are so focused on squeezing every last DPS from their members. Yet I find it interesting that SOS - who feel profs are so important - have a night elf priest and a human warlock in their top 4 ranks - which would automatically make their heals/dps lower.
If you intend to talk the talk then I expect you to walk the walk.
2 comments:
"A decent profession allows you to save time which can be better refocused on practising on the dummies and tweaking specs - and thus improving your DPS way beyond where it would have previously been."
ooooh! I couldn't disagree more! The best activity you can do to improve your DPS is to practise it - in a raid!
Vitare do not at any point say that applicants/raiders must have 0 gathering professions but it's a unspoken requirement. If you were to read through our applications and how guild members rate them you'd see that this is part of the process, even if it's not a strict rule.
Props to you for going to all that effort though :D
Maybe I'll go through all the Alliance guilds on Barthilas and run the same test, citing example applications that were rejected because of their gathering profession... or told to change their profession.
BTW I asked some of our Alchemists about the value of Alchemy as a raiding profession and I think it turns out that Mixology (with a very vague "improves the effect of your flask" tooltip) grants Flask of the Frost Wrym users with an additional 47 spellpower or so. This is on par to double spellpower enchantments on rings. I imagine that tanks get +stamina on their flask and melee/hunters get +AP (about 100 more I believe) on their flask.
This is an awesome argument nonetheless!
"The best activity you can do to improve your DPS is to practise it - in a raid! "
Oh absolutely - I was only talking about this with our guidls top DPS today. I did Rotface Heroic for the first time this week - and within 3 attempts I was pulling the same DPS as I would on Rotface normal. When you know a fight your DPS increases.
But we cant raid 24/7 - well at least I can't. And my comment about time better spent on dummies was related to dropping inscription and getting skinning - the 5DPS gain is more likely gained spending time with the spreadsheet than the time spent leveling skinning to 450 :) Plus I make more gold with inscription than I would selling borean leather/arctic fur.
Remember gold gets me gear - and getting an heroic cloak or another token gets me waaay more dps than the perfect raiding professions
And finally - as for the kudos for putting in the effort - now I can pop over to HotsAndDots sometime and lay down a similar challenge and you'll have to take me up on it ;)
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