The Build Mine: June 2007

Friday, June 22, 2007

Just under 2.5M characters and Europe info

The armory has been acting wonky for the past few days, so I've suspended data acquisition for now. I've got just under 2,500,000 characters in place, and that's just enUS. I'm in the process of tweaking things to support the EU armory so I should get even more data from there. I'm also redesigining the schema somewhat to improve performance. While I'd like to put up web pages with live queries, I think what will actually happen is daily or weekly runs with result pages. This weekend I'll start running comparisons between the 1M checkpoint and where the data is now.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

New Build Shop up - Hunter 5/13/43

WoWInsider's Build Shop has a new build up, conveniently enough a hunter build. Let's take a look.

Well, I'm up to almost 2 million characters, and guess what: no one's got this build. In fact, only 45 characters even have this *spec*. Needless to say, none of them share a build. This leads me to believe this build was submitted either as a theory or a joke.

So what have we got? Part of me questions putting points in BM at all if you're going for an uber-CC build, since why do you need to worry about attack speed if your enemies are always under control? I would think those 5 points would be better off in either Mortal Strikes (otherwise why did they bither putting 5 points in Lethal Shots?) or horror of horrors, Imp Stings to pump up Wyvern Sting.

And since we're getting into the MM tree, why no points in Efficiency? Mana's a concern, since you're going to be tossing lots of spells around, so I would think Efficiency would be a priority. Go For the Throat is fine, I guess, but again, given the implied intent of the build, we don't care about damage, we don't care about pets, so putting those points in Imp Feign Death seems like it might be better (I know, Imp FD is bogus, I'm just saying) for dealing with loss of control when 4+ enemies are involved.

Tier 1 in SV is an exercise in trying to get to higher tiers. Sure, two points in Savage Strikes, but the other 3 points can go wherever. I'm guessing Humanoid Slaying was chosen for the same reason Eliah guessed, for PvP. For PvE I'd probably pick Hawkeye too. :P Tier 2 and Tier 3 are more of the same, Entrapment, Imp Wing Clip and Clever Traps are necessary. 5 points in Survivalist is tier fodder and extra health can't hurt. Trap Mastery is key to the intent, Survival Instincts and Killer Instinct are tier fodder but are the best of what's available. Resourcefulness is key for long fights. Lightning Reflexes gets you to Wyvern Sting, so you might as well grab Expose Weakness for more damage and to get you up to Master Tactician and Readiness. I would think that filling out Thrill of the Hunt would be useful (again, the whole mana thing) but overall I feel this is a build to mess around with and not a particularly serious one.

Monday, June 11, 2007

1st Million - Warriors

44,771 level 70 warriors in the first million. The largest represented class. Not hunters, not mages... warriors:

4 Arms specs, 1 Fury spec, and 5 Protection specs. Being a tank class, this breakdown is expected.

Arms - 16708 (37.3%)
Fury - 6466 (14.4%)
Protection - 21472 (47.9%)
Nospec'd - 125 (0.2%)
Unspec'd - 7 (0.01%)

1st Million - Warlocks

Warlocks! There's 34,001 of them in the first million. Here we go:

7 Affliction specs, 2 Demonology specs, and 1 lone Destruction spec. Ok, let me see if I can say this right: So far, of all the classes, the Warlock top spec has the lowest percentage of any other class. This can be a good or bad thing. Either the warlock talents are so good, characters can spec a number of different ways and still be very effective, or warlocks are nubs and don't understand their own class and are top notch at PvP by accident. I'll go with the latter just to piss off Inowar. I note with amusement that his spec is not in the top 10.

Anyhoo, here's the spec breakdown:

Affliction - 15384 (45.2%)
Demonology - 10887 (32.0%)
Destruction - 7501 (22.06%)
Unspec'd - 229 (0.6%)
Nospec'd - 4 (0.01%)

Update - Yeah, that second spec was a typo, it's 20/41/0.

1st Million - Shamans

19,581 shamans, the least represented class at 70. Here we go:

2 Elemental specs, 4 Enhancement specs, and 4 Restoration specs. Unsurprisingly, the only single tree spec is in Restoration (go go healer!). Overall the spec breakdowns are:

Elemental - 5145 (26.2%)
Enhancement - 6565 (33.5%)
Restoration - 7852 (40.1%)
Unspec'd - 19 (0.09%)
Nospec'd - 3 (0.01%)

1st Million - Rogues

38,128 rogues. 90 more rogues than hunters in the first million. Check out the specs:

A reasonably healthy distribution (that is to say, all three tree are represented) of specs. Combat rules the board with 6 specs, followed by 2 each of Assassination and Subtlety. 9886 rogues are spec'd Assassination. 18267 are spec'd for Combat and 9042 are spec'd for Subtlety. 933 rogues are unspec'd and 9 rogues aren't spec'd at all.

1st Million - Priests

Healers! Every party needs them. Out of the first million, 36,205 level 70 priests exist. Let's take a look at the numbers:

5 Holy/Discipline specs, 4 Shadow/Discipline specs, and the scourge of the priestly nation, the full-on Shadow spec. Unsurprisingly Holy/Disc takes the tops spots, but Shadow makes a strong showing as well. And when looking a specs overall, Holy keeps the lead with 17,376 priests (48%) with Shadow coming a close second at 14,054 priests (38.8%) and Discipline crossing the finish line a few minutes later with 4,602 priests (12.7%). That leaves 173 priests who can't make up their minds, and 2 who are completely out of the loop with no talent points spent.

1st Million - Paladin

If hardcore raiders are to be believed, paladins are the new priests. There are 27,538 level 70 paladins, and without further ado, the breakdown:

Well, well, well. The top 10 specs represent 46.4% of the class, and not a single Retribution spec to be seen. Apparently the 3,713 Retribution paladins (13.5%) left aren't much in agreement. The only one that's not Holy is in 10th place, with a focus on Protection. And speaking of Protection, there's only 3,981 Protection paladins (14.5%), and 19,691 pallies (a whopping 71.5%!) are Holy-spec'd. 153 paladins have no spec at all, and 4 people either haven't realized they got a free respec some time ago, or are so hardcore they don't need talents to crush.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

1st Million - Mages

Mages, or as some would say, the real "glass cannons" make up 42,448 of our level 70 pool. Let's get right to the numbers:

Some interesting numbers pop out from the builds. Only 3 of the 100 builds here exceed 1% of the class in size, and 2 of them are 10/48/3. The only difference between those 2 builds is a single point in Fire. The top build takes 1/3 Improved Fire Blast, and second place goes to a 1/2 Blazing Speed. And to even further show consolidation, third place puts that point in 1/5 Impact.

The third build that exceeds 1% of the class size is 0/0/61, full on Frostiness. You really can't get much deeper than that. (only Frost Warding and Frozen Core are skipped)

In terms of spec, the top 10 leans towards Arcane. 23.4% of mages have a top 10 spec and focus on Arcane. Only 7.5% are Fire, and 14.4% are Frost. As compared to all level 70 mages, of which 40% are Arcane, 31.1% are Fire, and 28.6% are Frost. The remaining 67 of you mages have no specialization at all. (and 8 of those had no talents chosen at all!)

Sunday, June 3, 2007

1st Million - Hunters

The number of level 70 hunters? 38,030, not the least, but far from the most, as detractors would have you believe.

The amount of variance in the Beast Mastery "cookie-cutter" spec alone is pretty staggering, although 23.6% of all Beast Mastery hunters have it, suggesting not much variance at the spec level. Humorously enough, BRK's current spec is not represented at all in the top 10 builds for this spec. I guess I haven't crawled Madoran yet, so it will be good to see how his build fares when all 3 million or so characters I have get pulled in. The top two builds differ only in the ubiquitous Tier 2 Marksmanship decision: Efficiency or Improved Hunter's Mark? Solo or Raid? 8 out of 10 builds put 2 points in the much maligned Spirit Bond (version 2). Another point of contention seems to be where to put the 5th point for Tier 7 in order to get to Serpent's Swiftness: Bestial Discipline is the most popular resting place, or else a token point Animal Handler or Catlike Reflexes.

As for the rest of the specs, they are completely dominated by Marksmanship builds. From the rather confusing 0/41/20 to the PvP-oriented 0/43/18 to what I consider to be even more degenerate than the "glass cannon", 5/53/3.

I don't even know where to begin. Less than 4% of the hunters that chose 0/41/20 are represented in its top 10, so I can only conclude those that chose this spec are either deluded, misinformed, or just plain ignorant. Diversity is a good thing, but when your top build is shared less than a percent of your spec-mates (as it is with two other specs in the top 10), it's overdoing it. Either that or I'm missing something that might present itself in a PvE vs. PvP server breakdown. Look for that in a future post.

5/53/3 is just plain offensive to me. (Warning, religious zealotry ahead) We as a class are not complete without our pet, so why go so far out of our way to gimp ourselves by gimping our pet? And please, repeat after me: Hawk Eye is a crutch. I'm far from the best hunter around, but I can function just fine without it. There are plenty of other talents that give you more bang for the point. (pun only partially intended)

Ironically enough, it is 5/47/9, the last of our top 10 specs, that has the highest percentage sharing a single build. 21.42% of the only 579 hunters that went this spec chose it, practically 3 times the most popular build of next in line, 7/45/9. (figures. :P)

Am I biased? Hell yeah. I am (well, will be, someday :P) part of the most popular spec for hunters, yet it only represents a small (yet extremely vocal) minority of hunters overall. (68.56% of level 70 hunters are Marksmanship, as opposed to 24.65% opting for Beast Mastery, and a whopping 6.52% are Survival. Even more frightening is the remaining 0.25% (90 of you, and 8 who cleared their talents and haven't respecced yet!) that are of no spec at all, with no possibility of a 31-point, much less 41-point talent.)

A lot of numbers here. In the end, you can't just look at the spec, or at the build level. Context is everything. Hopefully everyone's not too confused to comment.

1st Million - Druids

There are 30,791 level 70 druids in the first million (and change) characters. I'm going to present build information a bit differently this time, by showing the most popular specs, then the most popular builds within those specs. Afterward I'll highlight the most popular build overall, which isn't always what you would expect. The tables are here, with embedded Wowhead talent calculator popups. Unfortunately, I can't get them working on Blogger, probably because of security concerns. For the lazy, I'll summarize the top 10 specs:

The top 10 specs collectively account for 14,630 characters, almost half of the level 70 druids. Feral takes the overwhelming majority, accounting for 11,562 characters. Restoration takes up the remaining characters, as Balance gets no love at all. Out of the 3 builds that actually put a point in Balance, only 1 build put a point in something other than Nature's Grasp. Apparently a few people want to get their Wrath and Starfire on a little bit faster. Looking at the full Restoration spec it's pretty amazing just how much variance you can get out of 68 points, Though only 1 build so much as even scratches Furor.

1st Million - Quick Stats

The first million characters (1,008,406 to be exact) are in so I stopped things long enough to crunch some numbers:

311,493 level 70 characters (just under 31%)

Class Breakdown:

Druid - 30791
Hunter - 38030
Mage - 42448
Paladin - 27538
Priest - 36205
Rogue - 38128
Shaman - 19581
Warlock - 34001
Warrior - 44771

Tomorrow (er, after I sleep) I'll start posting information on the most popular specs and builds within those specs.

The Build Mine