Home
About me
Send me a message
Subscribe
SiteA Player’s Secret Weapon: the SWOT Analysis
There is a technique used in the business world that can provide valuable information that is often later utilized in strategy formation and selection. Known as the SWOT analysis, it examines the environmental factors that might influence a company, venture, or project to determine its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By identifying strengths, companies can gain a competitive edge over their competitors while overcoming weaknesses that might prevent them from pursuing future opportunities.
Two months ago, I found myself applying to one of the top raiding guilds on my server as an alternate or sub. While the entire ordeal eventually fell through and my current raid decided to step foot into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple — thereby negating my need to find a raid in those instances — one of the questions posted in their somewhat lengthy application reminded me of a SWOT analysis. They asked:
What do you feel your classes strengths are? Weaknesses?
Now, a cautious individual might have taken a moment to consider her response. Perhaps, wanting to make as good an impression as she possibly could, she might have even done some research in order to sound intelligent, knowledgeable, and correct. Not me! Within moments I had written a diatribe regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the priest class1 that easily dwarfed the rest of my answers on their application. I only reread my response to verify its spelling and grammatical accuracy.
My response2 was more or less as follows:
The healing priest lacks the unadulterated strength of every other healing class in any one specific area: paladins have unparalleled single target healing, druids just blow our paltry Renew away, and shamans frequently outperform us in unspecced multi-target healing. Our heals are slow, ponderous, somewhat efficient, and don’t excel in any one area. Our fastest heal is also our most mana inefficient and suffers from little benefit from Bonus Healing.
However, priests are pretty damn versatile. We have multiple single-target heals, a heal over time, one unspecced group heal, a pre-emptive heal, a heal that allows us to heal both ourselves and a buddy, and the list goes on and on and on. While we were moderately efficient pre-2.4 with some forethought, we’re now mana powerhouses with the change to a Spirit-based mana regeneration system; how many other classes have you come across that can hit the 1,000 mana regen OO5SR mark with full raid buffs? And, like our Restoration druid counterpart, we’re capable of regenning up to 30% of our mana while casting, which allows for greater sustained performance than classes that gain no benefit from Spirit and instead stack MP5 (which typically possesses a high ilevel than both Intellect and Spirit combined).
As a human Holy priest specced with Spirit of Redemption and possessing The Human Spirit, I have reached over 900 Spirit in full raid buffs and have 1,500 mana regen OO5SR with my trinket. With some foresight, thought, and good use of talented abilities and trinkets, I can heal and keep healing past the point many other classes might be begging for an Innervate or hating the mana potion CD.
And that’s all she wrote. In three paragraphs, I managed to summarize what I felt were the strengths and weaknesses inherent in my preferred class. It must have been somewhat well written, given the fact that one member claimed that it was probably the best application that they had ever had the pleasure of receiving. Score one for me!
So, how was I able to fly off of the cuff and easily comment on my class? Because, whether or not I was aware of it, I was performing a SWOT analysis on my class on a regular basis. The power and also the shortcoming of a SWOT analysis is that it is done such that it has information regarding the near — if not immediate — future. So while the information you collect may be correct at this very moment3, it’s probably going to be inaccurate even as close as six months down the future. As a result, they’re supposed to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis.
As an avid theorycrafter, I spend a lot of time reviewing my performance, researching what others have to say about the class, and investigating possible future changes. All that information allowed me do keep a running SWOT analysis in my head. I have to know my class’s strengths in order to utilize my abilities and talents to their fullest potential; I need to know my weaknesses so that I can work to overcome them; I need to find out what changes Blizzard may be implementing in future patches so that I can learn what opportunities or threats might arise that would affect my performance.
I don’t know if I should feel impressed or sheepish that I applied the knowledge garnered while going to college on a computer game. I highly doubt that the parental units would have approved!
