Percentile vs. All-Star Points vs. Ilvl Bracket

Open your character page on Warcraftlogs and you are immediately hit with several numbers that all look like rankings: a big percentile, an all-star score, a rank within an item level bracket, and a best-perf average. They are not the same thing, and people argue past each other constantly because they are quoting different ones. Here is what each measures.

Boss percentile

The boss percentile is the per-fight number most people mean when they say "my parse." It ranks your throughput on one encounter, at one difficulty, for your spec, against the full population of logged kills for that boss. It answers a narrow question well: how did this specific performance compare to everyone else who killed this specific boss? It is the right number for reviewing a single fight, and the wrong number for judging a player's overall tier because a single great or terrible pull can dominate it.

All-star points

All-star points are a season- and region-wide ranking that rewards consistency across the whole raid rather than one big fight. You earn points based on your best percentile on every boss in the tier, and those points place you on a global ladder for your class and spec. Crucially, all-star points are about ranking position, not just raw percentile — climbing the all-star ladder near the top requires strong parses on every boss, not a single legendary parse and a pile of greens. If you want a single number that represents a player's overall tier performance, all-star points are far more honest than any one percentile.

Item level bracket

Every boss percentile also has a bracketed version that ranks you only against players who killed the boss at a similar item level. This exists to answer a fairer question: given the gear I had, how did I do? Early in a tier, a bracket parse can be dramatically higher than the overall parse because you are being compared to other under-geared players rather than to people in full Mythic gear farming a boss months later.

Bracket parses are the right tool for tracking your own improvement week to week, because they strip out the gear variable. They are a poor tool for bragging, because everyone understands that the unbracketed parse is the "real" one and a bracket-only flex reads as exactly that.

Best perf average vs. median

Warcraftlogs also shows a best-performance average — the mean of your single best parse on each boss — and a median performance that reflects a more typical pull. The best-perf average is flattering by construction: it only ever counts your career-best attempt on each boss. The median is much closer to how you actually play on a normal raid night. When someone shares only their best-perf average, remember it is the highlight reel, not the season.

Which one should you actually use?

It depends on the question. To review one fight, use the boss percentile. To track your own progress while gearing, use the bracket parse so gear does not mask skill changes. To judge overall tier performance or compare players honestly, use all-star points, which reward consistency over a single spike. To set realistic expectations of someone's normal output, look at median rather than best-perf average.

The mistake almost everyone makes is quoting whichever number is highest for them and whichever is lowest for someone else. Pick the metric that matches the question first, then read it. For the throughput numbers that feed all of these, see DPS, rDPS, aDPS and nDPS Explained, and for the big picture see What Counts as a Good Parse.