Yes. Drives me nuts to see it, but to each his own I guess.
My secret thought is that most of the min/maxers are 15 year olds who treat this and obsess over it like a job, who will have trouble holding a real job when they grow up. I don’t know why I think this or why it comforts me, it just does. :)
Sorry, but I have to say this.
When I first saw this thread, I misread and thought it was about Catholic controversy arising in World of Warcraft.
-Kitsune
It isn’t truly a gamebreaker, but it makes a big difference with Onyxia. Can Horde use an undead tank on her for the same reason? It also is very useful near the end of a Dire Maul tribute run, and against the banshees in EPL/Strat.
To me it isn’t so much min/maxing as it is avoiding disappointment later on. I didn’t really understand the usefulness of Fear Ward until it was too late, and I was really grumpy once I learned what a lifesaver Desperate Prayer is (instant cast, zero mana 1500 point self-heal). Every time I looked at my Elune’s Grace and Starshards buttons, it pissed me off more. Dwarven priests basically get two more spells than NEs (and one more than Human, since they get Desperate Prayer at least), and it sucks to see someone else with these useful abilities that you don’t get because of your long-ago choice of toon.
Desperate Prayer is Dwarf-only ability? Cool. And you get it at level 10 I think, that seems quite early. In what little time I’ve played my level 20 dwarf priest, it’s been incredibly useful but I had no idea it was a dwarf racial.
Human, too, I believe.
Woah there, I’m a Min/Maxer and I’m 23. I think a lot of the community not inside the min/max sub-culture adopts the same viewpoint as you. That’s a pretty nasty perspective.
I think the only issue I have with the Min/Max community is when they demand that everyone else plays the game to their desired level of perfection. That is impetuous, I agree.
I don’t obsess over this like a job or anything, but it is something that gives me warm fuzzies. When I discover a new and clever way of doing something, then that’s what I get excited about. I don’t just Min/Max in MMO’s either. I do it when I play RTS’ (unit combinations), and FPS’ (flag capturing routes and sneaky strategies). It’s just my fun.
I think there was a thread by Jim Preston a while back about griefing. Half of the stories there, I considered clever Min/Max stories. Oh well! Maybe that’s why the folks who enjoy looking at the numbers get so much hate.
<- Minmaxer, 24, erstwhile griefer!
I have a real job, but as I’ve shown on Qt3 I can be pretty childish on the internets.
Actually, that is all I needed to hear, and I agree. It’s exactly what sets me off. Feel free to min/max all you want. In fact, everyone does it to some degree; most people are looking at the DPS on their weapon, for example, and taking the higher DPS if they have a choice between two.
But I’m not a fan of excluding people from raids because, “LOL, he made a voluntary choice that causes him to do .02% less damage, N00b!”
That happens because raids inspire evil!
But I’m not a fan of excluding people from raids because, “LOL, he made a voluntary choice that causes him to do .02% less damage, N00b!”
Yes, normally I would agree with this, but the Dwarven Priest racial ability of fear ward is just way too valuable in the end game. It’s absolutely mandatory that at least one or two priests have it when trying to fight Onyxia, Magmadar, and Nefarian. It alone can make the difference between a successful kill and repeated wipes.
So to anyone with a lowbie human or NE priest (at a level where you don’t have much time invested in your character): if you’re even remotely interested in ever going to Onyxia, Molten Core, or Blackwing Lair, I’d highly suggest rerolling as a dwarf priest.
OTOH, if you know for a fact that raiding will never interest you, play whichever race you like.
Fear Ward isn’t even close to being the best racial ability of a dwarven priest.
It’s the way a female dwarven priest’s braids will twirl around in the air when she’s casting a spell. It doesn’t get any better than that!
That is a very very good point.
Actually I think a lot of it comes from normal people who are innately frustrated that they don’t have the time/inclination to be among the top 3-5 cutting edge guilds server-wide, but really wish they were. If they can’t actually do the content so razor-thin that they need to min/max, at least they can still min/max anyway and feel that much closer to being on the edge.
I’ll take my guildmate 31 holy priest who does, in fact, have holy nova, and uses it, yet still knows how to outheal everyone else around her over someone with the right talent spec and better gear who somehow underheals folks by 10% comparitively any day of the week. Sticking to the prejudices of the 1337 doesn’t actually make one any moreso, it just kinda makes them look sad and prejudiced.
(If you’re fighting things where, indeed, that 1% difference in maximal effectiveness is being reached, all bets are off. But unless you’re currently pushing through the AQ 40 man right now, chances are, you aren’t. Whatever difference a few spec points might make could be made up for by playing a tighter game.)
Heal meters are stoopid. Overhealing is nothing to be proud of.
I’ll agree that a player who thinks out their own spec is likely to outperform someone who parrots a popular spec from the forums.
I agree with this too. I wish that they would make greater efforts to balance things so that there are not “superior” builds, however. I’d almost like to them to look at the existing player base, and do some research. If too much of a portion of players ends up using one tree as opposed to the others, I would consider taking that as a sign that it either needs to be nerfed, or the others need to be buffed. It seems to me that you should not need to rely on player feedback for this, but probably have the data just in the way the average build lies.
Sort of like a Planetside idea - if the factions aren’t even, underrepresented factions actually receive an XP bonus (or something similar).
Adding in-game bonuses to unused trees would be hilarious. +10% health to warriors with 31 points in something other than arms! +20% damage to the least-played class!
At the very least I’d like to see the talents that hardly ever get picked given a major buff. It’s really annoying when:
a) I have to take 2/5 or 3/5 in a talent that really does nothing for me just to meet the prerequisites for a tier two or three talent.
b) I decide I don’t want to be a forum lemming so I make my talent picks based on the in-game description and the talent turns out to be gimped or bugged – there goes five levels of wasted time.
Unfortunately, Blizzard seems to prefer nerfing the overpopular talents to fixing the broken ones. Look what they did to Paladins, for example… so if I were playing a priest, I’d be very nervous about what Blizzard will be doing to “fix” the class with the next major update.
This is why I leave “Show Helm” unchecked. Except when I have my Crimson Felt Hat on. Well, actually when I have my Crimson Felt Hat, Robe of Winter Night, and Stoneflower Staff on for ultimate pimpin’.
I am nervous after seeing the treatment of paladins, but the tiny bits of information we do have seem to be pointing in the right direction. Inner Fire may actually become helpful. If they can achieve their stated goal of making Greater Heal useful in raids, that would be nice (especially since there is no extra rank of Flash Heal in AQ). Maybe Spirit will do more. PWS might scale somehow. Maybe Improved Fade or some other aggro management skill won’t require 17 points in shadow when it’s most useful to PvE healers. Or, they will screw that all up and we will all reroll druids.
This would be huge. I’ve always been miffed by the apparent non-effect of spirit in the game.
Now if the humans would just STOP SIGHING all time!
Supertanker, you’ll miss the rez.