Your WoWJutsu rank
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 2nd 2008 at 5:00PM
The folks at WoWJutsu provide a great little competitive tool that ranks guilds according to the PvE raid content they've completed. The site is pretty popular, and a lot of guilds use it in their advertising over at the Guild Recruitment Forums. My guild has been known to pay pretty close attention to the number. I have to admit that about once a week I find myself checking our ranking against those of other guilds my friends are in. This got me thinking... what good does basing your progress against other guilds do? Sure, there are the ultra competitive guilds like Death and Taxes and Nihilum. However they approach the game in a way that leads them to needing to care about how close the guild behind them is doing. For most of us, competing against other guilds is only going to lead to unforeseen frustrations. Most guilds have a boss or two that they get hung up on. Back in the days when BWL was hard, my guild spent a long time defeating Razorgore, and after he was gone the rest of the instance fell within a month. This kind of common hurdle in WoW is not reflected in WoWJutsu; all you get to know is that a guild is stuck on a boss, not that they're going to have amazing progress after it.
The other negative aspect of a guilds ranking comes into play with guild morale. Our weekly Officers' Quarters column often deals with this subject in one way or another, and it is always on the mind of a guild leader. Those guild leaders of ours have a hard enough time with making sure the majority of folks are happy, and the last thing they need is another distraction based on a number assigned by a website.
How that number is assigned is often a point of contention as well. Every four days, WoWJutsu trolls the armory and updates a guild's ranking based what everyone is wearing at the time. Okay, sound fair enough. But consider what happens if you don't log off in the gear you've just got form the latest boss kill. Opps, you'll have to wait another four days for the update. And then there is the times when the armory goes does, and WoWJutsu doesn't update for weeks. This happened back in December, and was only fixed recently.
On the flip side to all of this is the benefits provided by WoWJutsu. It does give a snapshot of where a guild stands, within a boss or two. For instance, this can be quite useful in cases where someone is looking for a guild that's downed Vashj but not Kael. That kind of information can save someone months worth of work on a boss they've already killed.
When WoWJutsu does update via the armory, the information it provides can be pretty useful. Seeing how the gear is spread across the guild, if the main tank is geared up well enough, etc..., can provide a keen observer with that bit of extra crucial information before joining the guild. Of course, this leaves out the subjective side of things that can be gained by talking to the guild leader, or that might be reported in our weekly Guildwatch column.
What do you think of WoWJutsu? What does your guild do with its rank?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Frank Smith Feb 2nd 2008 6:32PM
jutsu is frequently just plain wrong. it's a useful tool to look at, but that's about it. if you want factual information, check your realm forum stickies or ask the guild in question :p
theremover Feb 3rd 2008 5:37PM
WoWJutsu is a neat concept but as far as i'm concerned, it's a steaming piece of crap atm.
The progression, NAME and all the info for the guild i'm in is all completely wrong. And some people take the site waaaay too seriously. (Getting laughed at about not progressing through things we HAVE progressed through..etc... is silly.)
chopdoc Mar 31st 2008 4:23AM
Wowjutsu is nothing more then a sick joke. I hear a lot of how its slow yada yada yada. Thats very inaccurate because wowjutsu is not slow, its grossly inaccurate. The guild I am in has been recieving loot from Kara and gruul's since january yet even though we show a weekly scan date, nothing our guild has picked up since january is shown. You can go to armory and see the items but wowjutsu misses it consistantlly.
The sad thing is we have lost people from this site. They want guilds that are better ranked then us and there is no way to have a fair and honest ranking from this pathetic site. Obviously wowjutsu should close down until they can get their act together.
Matt Feb 2nd 2008 6:42PM
Much like any other tool, WoWJutsu is useful only when used correctly. Although that is common sense, your article doesn't reflect that.
Guild morale is only affected by WoWJutsu ranking when you are lagging behind other similar guilds. To suggest that it isn't useful because of that assumes that guild members would be better off without that information, which only serves the lagging guild leaders and not the members interested in progress. This really allows guild members to assess whether their guild is doing a good job of letting them see the content they are interested in. It will help good guilds be great and keep poor guilds from holding onto talented players, both very good things.
While you will occasionally see scoring errors, they are rare in the broad scope of things. The scoring error issue usually only serves to help poor guilds rationalize their low ranking, when at most they might only move up or down a couple ranks.
I usually enjoy reading the articles here, don't poison the well with ill-thought criticisms.
Shinwei Feb 3rd 2008 12:53PM
I agree with Matt wholeheartedly.
Jess Feb 2nd 2008 7:04PM
Wow Jutsu has some benefits. Whenever my guild gets a new boss down it's good to see how much our rank gets bumped and I've used the stats as an argument about which bosses we should be focusing on based on what other guilds were doing. However their ranking mechanisms just kind of baffle me. A lot of guilds get credit for gear that a player recieves after they've left the guild (usually when a good player jumps ship to a higher ranked guild, their former guild gets a bump). Also if a guild disbands the guild still stays on Wowjutsu.
Dave Feb 2nd 2008 8:32PM
If a player bails on a smaller guild and joins a more progressed guild, the new guild gets nothing out of it. I'm not sure why you think it does, but it doesn't seem to do that. Same goes for a more progressed raider dropping to a smaller guild. If they have their T5 token from Kael, as long as they got scanned wearing the T5 BEFORE they joined the new guild, then old guild gets credit, new guild does not.
The exception is server transfers where someone changes their name, but there's really no way to account for a brand new player in the system other than just giving them full credit for a kill for the gear they're wearing.
and fully dead guilds go away.
http://wowjutsu.com/faq.html
I'm really not sure where you're getting everything from, it's like you went through the FAQ but decided to just say the opposite of everything in it...
klink-o Feb 2nd 2008 8:42PM
I know on my server it's horribly inaccurate. There are several strictly PVP guilds that don't do really any organized raiding that are still listed highly due to a few members who still raid with other guilds.
Charlie Feb 2nd 2008 9:02PM
its not perfect, but its a nice reference point. You gotta give it some margin of error (+- 100 rank depending on how far you are in progression, deeper you go the smaller the margin of error).
The best way is of course the realm forum, which is why months after wowjutsu has launched, those stickies are still around.
The biggest benefit, which wasnt mentioned, is to be able to compare your guild across all US server, not just your own. Its kind of neat to know that you are the 5000 progressed guild on the server, or that only 30% of raiding guilds are as far as you, etc etc.
jaxson_bateman Feb 3rd 2008 12:49AM
Simple. It's automatic - and not automatic with high precision and accuracy. It scans armory and makes a guestimation based on the gear of a guild's members.
It's ok as base reference, but don't take the rankings as completely solid. If you want to see really where a guild stands (on a singular realm at least) go to their official WoW realm forum. Just about every realm has a progression thread that *isn't* automatic, and thus much more accurate.
b3ck Feb 3rd 2008 1:18AM
We still are using their page, I don't know why though.
The site has never updated correctly for our guild. There are several officers in our guild that show up on the page, but are marked as not associated in the guild ranks. This is strange, as the members have never been in another guild, and have their tracked achievements recieved while on guild runs. Our main tank, and one of the best geared members is not counted for our rankings, and we are just to busy to take their rank link down off of our page.
Again, with error's such as these, we don't put much stock into their site.
Jess Feb 3rd 2008 1:32AM
Dave I did not go through the FAQ and decide to be contrary. I can only speak from my experiences and on my server I notice that a dead guild (as in full g-disband. doesn't exist on the armory) is in 12th place.
Zuqual Feb 3rd 2008 3:50AM
Your analysis about how wowjutsu doesnt acuratly reflect how guilds can get stuck on one boss doesnt reflect that the TBC instance arent linear like the old instances where. With the exception of the final bosses, you can kill all the bosses in SSC/TK in whatever order you want. If guilds hit a wall on a boss, they just work on a different boss.
Hoggersbud Feb 3rd 2008 5:12AM
My guild has fully cleared Karazhan. For months, it still thinks we haven't done Nightbane or Shade of Aran.
frank Feb 3rd 2008 8:12AM
jutsu is realy sucky it updates the guild and the next time we lose most of the kills it happend now 4 times
they dont even react on a email quistion or a bug report
Edgeonline Feb 4th 2008 9:52AM
WowJutsu is a 'neat' gadget, not to be taken seriously when it comes to fact. I'm fairly certain those who have read the faq have realized this.
You MUST wear the item at some point to get credit during the Jutsu scan. Being a druid tank with tanking gear on 99% of the time, I am not wearing most of the the drops I've gotten from Kara so they are not reflected on the site. I'm sure other classes have the same issue.
It's a nice tool, but not the complete picture.
dilfred Feb 21st 2008 4:03AM
I am one of the many whom have more that 1 entry in the wow armoury due to it not updating correctly when I changed to my new guild. This means all the gear i'm getting with my new guild in new progression is actually being given credit to my old guild. So they have gone on the rankings from a kara only guild to now 3/5ssc and 2/4 tk :/ Not too fussed as my current guild also has those kills recorded anyway, but it peevs me that
1) I cannot get wowjutsu to correct it, as I cannot find anyway of reporting it
2) That a guild is getting artificially bumped in the rankings when that does not reflect their true status
Drasal Mar 4th 2008 2:18PM
The lag on guild updates seems to be hampering the usability of wowjutsu. The guild I am in first got scanned in late December, at which time, for what ever reason, very little of the members gear got attributed to the guild. This in and of itself is of little consequence. However, it is now late February and the only other scan only scrapped together a score of around 5 even though the guild is all the way through Kara, and has downed the first boss in Gruul's.