smarter than the average bear

Well only just… I’ve got some results from my attempt to divide up the feral druid population into cats and bears. We started from the fact that there is no “form” tag in the armoury XML – no direct way to count the thing we want to count. The only way to get an insight into this is to find a proxy for each of the forms – something that is in the data which can be used to separate the sheep from the goats, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor.

Talents seem to be the obvious choice, so long as there is one talent that bears will take and cats not and another talent that is vice versa. Glyphs are the other possibility. Whatever we choose just has to be i) something that players are highly likely to take  and ii) something that is orthogonal; something that definitely points in one direction for bears and another for cats.

But the basic problem is that there are a lot of um… how to put this politely… there are a lot of left-of-centre specs out there. Talents and glyphs are both less orthogonal than I was hoping for – many specs look a bit bearish and a bit cattish at the same time. And there is a big group that takes none of the talents or glyphs that we want to use.

That’s why I decided not to make the queries very complex – adding more talents or glyphs into the selection criteria  just increases the number of toons that fall into the grey area. Also I’ve counted specs and not toons since the original question was related to the number of druids specced for tanking.

Thanks to the commenters who made suggestions on possible talents and glyphs that might fit these criteria. I’ve run two queries against the data.

The first query counts feral druids who have Natural Reaction versus those who have Predatory Instincts. A druid with some points in Natural Reaction and none at all in Predatory Instincts might be a bear; t’other way round for cats. Those with points in neither are marked as “unknown”; those with some points in both are the “could be either” group.

The second query counts druids who have a Glyph of Maul versus those who have either a Glyph of Shred and/or a Glyph of Rip. Equipping Maul but not Shred or Rip indicates bear; Shred or Rip but no Maul indicates cat. Again we have groups with a mix of these glyphs, and, unfortunately, a huge group with none of them.

Anyway this is what we’ve got:

(Patch 3.2.2 data; sample size 16327 level 80 feral druids with 28970 specs).

Talent-based spec count:

• Bear: 30%
• Cat : 33%
• Could be either: 5%
• Unknown: 31%

Glyph-based spec count:

• Bear: 18%
• Cat: 9%
• Could be either: 15%
• Unknown: 58%

Frankly I’m still not sure how valid these numbers are, but I hope they provide a bit of insight. The talent-based count may at least provide a low-water-mark indication of the number of bearish specs in there.

updated for patch 3.2.2

The Google AppEngine site should now be up to date for patch 3.2.2. I’ll be moving on to the druid forms problem, hopefully over the weekend.

earth to druids… come in please…

There’s a post over at wow.com that has set me a bit of a challenge. The post is about bear tanks, but makes the valid point that we don’t have any clear data on the popularity of the various druid forms. There’s a pretty simple reason for that – the armoury data doesn’t provide any direct way of getting such a count.

Still, we don’t let little obstacles like that get in our way. What we need are some data items that can be used as proxies for what we want to count. Unfortunately I’m far from being a druid expert, so I’m looking for suggestions on what items to use.

What we basically want is a talent, or a glyph (or maybe a gem) that bears will want to equip and cats not. And then something that’s vice versa – something that cats will have and bears not. One talent or glyph, or several… whatever makes the most sense. All suggestions on this are most welcome.

(Thanks to the commenters who have already made suggestions on other threads; I’ll be taking those comments on board.)

If I can get suggestions for both talents and glyphs then I can run more that one query and see how well the numbers match up.

I’d imagine that, with dual specs, players who liked both forms would have a spec for each. In any case, going from specs to forms and getting a count against the total druid population should tell us something interesting.

ebony and ivory

Thanks to reader Armagon who asked for a consolidated report on race distribution. This subject is covered by a variety of other sites, but there is some doubt about whether those sites are maintaining a representative sample.

It’s easy enough to produce a couple of simple tables that give us the information we need. (The data is from the patch 3.2 scan.)

Race	Popularity
Human	20 %
Blood Elf	17 %
Night Elf	16 %
Undead	10 %
Draenei	10 %
Tauren	9 %
Orc	6 %
Gnome	5 %
Dwarf	4 %
Troll	4 %

That seems to be a reasonable match to the Warcraft Realms data. There will always be some degree of sampling error in this work so everybody’s numbers have to be treated with a bit of caution.

Tables like that always make me shake my head a bit but… the fantasy RPG where everybody wants to roleplay the cute kid next door… Hey, trolls are people too you know!

Anyway, if we want the distribution of race and class then we get this. (Percentages here are based on the total population so the popularity column adds up to 100%.)

Race	Class	Popularity (%)
Blood Elf	Paladin	6.1
Blood Elf	Death Knight	3.2
Blood Elf	Priest	1.6
Blood Elf	Mage	1.6
Blood Elf	Hunter	1.4
Blood Elf	Warlock	1.4
Blood Elf	Rogue	1.3
Draenei	Shaman	3.9
Draenei	Death Knight	1.6
Draenei	Paladin	1.2
Draenei	Priest	0.8
Draenei	Hunter	0.7
Draenei	Mage	0.7
Draenei	Warrior	0.5
Dwarf	Hunter	1.3
Dwarf	Paladin	1.2
Dwarf	Priest	0.7
Dwarf	Warrior	0.7
Dwarf	Death Knight	0.4
Dwarf	Rogue	0.2
Gnome	Mage	1.7
Gnome	Warlock	1.4
Gnome	Rogue	0.9
Gnome	Death Knight	0.8
Gnome	Warrior	0.5
Human	Paladin	5.3
Human	Death Knight	3.3
Human	Mage	2.7
Human	Warlock	2.5
Human	Warrior	2.4
Human	Priest	2.1
Human	Rogue	1.7
Night Elf	Druid	6.2
Night Elf	Hunter	3.3
Night Elf	Death Knight	2
Night Elf	Rogue	2
Night Elf	Priest	1.5
Night Elf	Warrior	1.3
Orc	Death Knight	1.5
Orc	Shaman	1.3
Orc	Warrior	1.3
Orc	Hunter	1.1
Orc	Warlock	0.5
Orc	Rogue	0.3
Tauren	Druid	4.1
Tauren	Shaman	1.4
Tauren	Warrior	1.4
Tauren	Death Knight	1
Tauren	Hunter	0.6
Troll	Shaman	0.9
Troll	Hunter	0.8
Troll	Mage	0.5
Troll	Priest	0.5
Troll	Rogue	0.4
Troll	Death Knight	0.3
Troll	Warrior	0.2
Undead	Rogue	2
Undead	Warlock	1.9
Undead	Priest	1.9
Undead	Mage	1.7
Undead	Death Knight	1.3
Undead	Warrior	0.9

I’ll add this to my set of reports over at my Google site, so that it stays updated with each new scan. But it does seem that the other sites that cover population are doing a reasonable job of reporting what is really going on.

a scan darkly

I’m doing a fresh scan now, so I should be able to update my reports in a week or so. I must admit I’m not following patch 3.3 all that closely, but if it comes along then no biggie…

patch 3.2.2

Just a quick note to say that I’m not gone… Things are quiet here for various reasons – one of which is that I’m taking a break from playing the game. But I’m happy to keep these sites going and to keep them up to date.

I’m fully intending to update my reports once patch 3.2.2 has had a bit more time to work its way through the system.

And I’m working on a new set of reports, using a different database technology, that may end up producing interesting results. No promises on when we might see those results, but we’ll get there in the end.

beggars banquet

Ok, Patch 3.2 data is up. You know where…

professional opinion

There’s a post up over at Wowenomics which speculates about the most profitable crafting professions and how that might have changed between patches. There is no armoury data that helps us relate professions to profits, but the post prompted me to have another look at the distribution of professions in general. This is the current state of play:

	Patch 3.2	Patch 3.0.8
Mining	20%	20%
Herbalism	12%	13%
Enchanting	11%	10%
Jewelcrafting	9%	5%
Skinning	9%	13%
Tailoring	8%	9%
Alchemy	8%	8%
Blacksmithing	7%	7%
Engineering	6%	6%
Leatherworking	6%	7%
Inscription	4%	3%

There’s a lot less change in there than I was expecting, give that professions get worked over with the nerf bat just as classes do. I’ve marked the two most dramatic shifts: jewelcrafting and skinning. Jewelcrafting may indeed genuinely have been buffed to the point where people are more enthusiastic for it. The decline in skinning I’m not so sure about.

There has been a significant decline in some of the leather-wearing classes such as rogues and hunters; perhaps that has affected the crafting demand for hide. Certainly the classes that are flavour of the month want heavy metal and not the skins of small furry animals.

head ‘em up and move ‘em out

I’m scanning for patch 3.2 now. Looks like the armoury is behaving itself which is good news.
More soon…

sign o’ the times

Patches and rumours of patches… But it looks like patch 3.2 really is upon us. I’ll be doing my usual thing of waiting a week or so for players to get their heads around the new stuff, then starting the next scan.

All the new data will be posted over at my Google app site and the report pages here will be removed.

The other significant change is that I will only be collecting data for the x9 levels and for level 80. This will allow me to get a lot more x9 twinks into the sample which is important since my twink reports are some of the most popular pages now.

That means the class stats report tables will only have figures for these levels, and not for every level as they do now. To compensate for this, I’ll put the graphs back so you can make a guesstimate of what values should apply between x9 levels. Stats increase in a pretty linear fashion prior to 80, so you can read the values you want off the charts.