This thread is still going? Who would have thunk that it's so difficult to realize that different people enjoy different things. :)
P.S.: I mean no offense to anyone. I just think it's mind blowing that other people try to tell me that a way of enjoying a game - the rules of which you cannot break or change - can be wrong.
It's still going because its a complex topic. This is a game, you should play what you enjoy first and foremost (this goes without saying - games are for fun). That being said, by opting to play something suboptimal, you will limit some of your opportunities. For some players, choosing something optimal will make leveling and getting into a guild a lot easier than by being a meme (allowing them to have fun by participating in content). Part of having fun for some players will be attending content. This is where the conversation gets a bit more nuanced. Choosing something optimal will allow someone to find a group of players to play with easier and it will lead to a positive experience. I think its disingenuous to tell everyone "be what you want to be, everything is viable!" While this is true to an extent, their journey through the game will be drastically different. In regards to OP's title, the difference between the bottom performing specs and the top performing specs is massive from a performance standpoint. This is why you will often find top players switching their main throughout the course of Classic (I will start as a hunter and swap later on as hunters fade). I would never tell someone not to play something on a personal level. If I am part of a raid, and one person is pulling terrible throughput I WILL intervene and make every effort to have them switch their spec to fix their performance. If they are not willing to make decisions that increase our performance as a team, they are not a team player and I would be in favor of removing them from the team. There is a huge difference between making personal choices that impact your experience and then joining a team and making decisions that impact everyone else's experience.
As a player, YOU have the right to have fun. You should do WHATEVER you want to get enjoyment out of the game. As soon as you join a team, you should now make decisions that are best for that team. You should be a team player. If you are not capable of being selfless and being a part of the team, you should not signup to be a part of a team. There are casual guilds that will allow anyone to roll anything, but even in these circumstances, poor performing specs that are limiting raid progression are still guilty of being selfish. Perhaps they wont call you out on it, and perhaps they will be willing to carry you... Perhaps even though you are an awful performing spec, there will still be people who are SO incompetent in your casual guild that you will outperform them regardless of the fact that they are playing a high performing spec... None of this changes the fact that you are making choices to be suboptimal. That mindset is selfish.
Viable VS Optimal... How do we define Viable? Capable of working? Where do we draw the line? What spec is not capable of working? Technically EVERYTHING can work... You could have a rogue as a bandage main that runs around tossing bandages on raiders... I tend to look at viable in terms of what is worth doing. Is this worth doing? No? Its not viable. You have people who dismiss ANYTHING that is not optimal. I dont think this is the right mentality. I sit in the middle, I am okay with ANY class or spec assuming it can provide value. As soon as it can not provide value and pull its share of work, its useless in my eyes. Then you have the other side who aim to play anything and everything that are unique. They dont care how much extra strain it puts on their team, they just want to reinvent the wheel and play something special that enhances their own experience. These players are not willing to compromise for their team.
Ex. ele shamans in raids are not viable. They can by definition work as you can complete all content with 39 players. They can occupy a spot and do nothing while still completing content and thus may be deemed as viable by some players. This class will not provide value to your team considering the other options you have available. So what do we say to the would-be ele shaman player? Play what you want? Stick to PvP where you are valuable? Dont worry about your viability, just join up and have fun?
The difference between a top performing spec and a bottom performing spec is the difference between being benched and receiving a raid invite. Linking videos to outlier players who have taken an awful spec, min/maxed the shit out of it, found a group of enablers to support their suboptimal choices and made it circumstantially function, does not help the new players who are seeking realistic information.
Gear and content is gated behind value. Consider your value. Do you know someone who will run a successful guild? Are you an influencer who can leverage your influence to accomplish content? Will you be buying a ton of gold and paying for carries to complete Naxx? The game is not won by effort... Every piece of content in Classic WoW can be overcome by value. Provide value and leverage that value for a reward. You can pay for your character to be leveled and to be carried through Naxx by using your real life money to provide value to other players.
Sub optimal specs provide less value in the game. If you are looking to achieve anything in this game, playing a suboptimal spec immediately puts your value into a deficit. You can overcome this, but you are handicapping yourself and your team.
Play what you want. Play how you want.
At the end of the day, what makes this game so successful is the player. You choose your own fun in this game. If you genuinely enjoy min/maxing because you’re a goal oriented person, then you’ll love what you’re doing. If you mim/max because the internet told you to, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Also, do NOT fall for the “fall behind” bullshit. If you don’t care about world/server firsts, I encourage you to take your time and smell the roses a bit when leveling. It’s absolutely amazing.
Lol just sayin if ur trying to raid ret pally or druid other than heals... you can either leave the raid or we can kick u out! Just how it is mates
Lol just sayin if ur trying to raid ret pally or druid other than heals... you can either leave the raid or we can kick u out! Just how it is mates
I wouldn't mind that if the player was good. But only one.
I wouldn't mind that if the player was good. But only one.
So this becomes an issue. It feels nice to say "play whatever you want!" but the reality is that there will be a limit. Min/maxing is optimizing. Every raid will need to be optimized to a certain extent. There will always be a threshold where meme specs can no longer be brought. In Faendor's case, he intends to be in a VERY hardcore guild with only 1 meme allowed! I'm not even this hardcore... Whether you are a full fledged hardcore min/max guild or a casual guild, there will be a limit to how much meme you can bring. This is why it becomes counter-intuitive to say that everyone can/should play whatever they want. This idea that you can play whatever you want, needs to be held within reason. You CAN play whatever you want, until you want to participate on a team. At which time, you will need to provide the team with value. Playing a suboptimal spec reduces your value, so you will need to be prepared to offer value in some other way. In Faendor's guild who gets to meme? How do you determine which soul will be allowed to play as they want while receiving a carry? You can begin to see how this is a very contentious issue among guilds and how a lot of guilds will simply opt to follow a strict min/max policy to avoid dealing with the MASS amounts of drama involved in balancing a sub optimal raid team. Imagine pressuring 39 players into min/maxing while allowing 1 guy to be a full blown memetard? How will this make the other raiders feel? A raid is a team. This is my issue with threads like these. As you can previously see in the thread Faendor is happy to encourage others to play as meme, yet he also states that he is only willing to bring 1 meme to a raid... Do you see how this causes false expectations for players? I would rather be the voice of reason.
Fun. How do you have fun? Do you only want to play an elemental shaman? Be one and have fun! What about the player that wants to play an ele shaman, but also wants to raid...? This becomes a bit more challenging. He wants to play as a specific spec that brings him joy, but playing as that spec will do harm to his raid team. This is the point where we need to intervene and let players know that their choices WILL matter. Everything will not be viable. Can an ele shaman find a raid spot? Without a doubt! It wont be easy though... And you wont be in a very competitive guild... Your desires need to be held within reason so that you will have a realistic outlook on your journey through the game.
edit: bare in mind that many of these guys chanting that you can play what you want, are only willing to bring 1 meme to a 40 man raid. It feels nice to be inclusive until its raid time. When its raid time, many of these guys will be real with you and you wont like what they have to say. I made an effort to show this hypocrisy to outline a point. I'm not trying to nitpick others, but I am afraid that forums like this can become a bit of an echo chamber. We can all sit here and circle jerk eachother until its raid time. When its raid time things change quite a bit.
edit 2:Understand that these forums are composed of some of the most open and diehard fans that love the game and love the idea of playing it. These forums are flooded with some of the most accepting players you will find in Classic. You can bet that people on these forums are FAR more tolerant than the users you will find in Classic. If you are facing any pushback on these forums for your spec you can expect to multiply that by quite a lot when you are interacting with people in Classic. The min/max retail attitude and the min/max private attitude, which is further amplified by content creators who are mostly min/maxers, will influence the majority of people you are interacting with.
Or dont plan to raid like me! :D
Stfuppercut I meant one for each of those specs. Poor choice of words, mb.
Even if I myself were to play in a guild with little toleration for meme specs, does that mean that I cannot encourage others to do otherwise?
Even if I myself were to play in a guild with little toleration for meme specs, does that mean that I cannot encourage others to do otherwise?
Yea, it means that you probably shouldn't. Encouraging people to play as memes when you have a low tolerance for them in raids is a pretty shitty thing to do to be honest. A lot of people on these forums have never played Classic, they're looking for legitimate advice. They come from retail where everything is ACTUALLY viable. They use the term viable a bit different than we do... Those classes are all competitive. Then they go to forums like these and see people saying "play whatever you want! Everything is viable!" Some of these people will put 240 hours into a character and then need to face the reality that they cant accomplish the goals they wanted to accomplish while being the spec they had planned. All of that can be avoided if we are candid with people right away.
Playing and having fun involves a lot of factors. How does your class play in PvP? How does it play in raids? How does it play solo? How do you plan to make gold to fuel yourself? Etc etc etc. Depending on the individual, they may not want to do all of these things. In a thread that is comparing the top and bottom classes, we are looking at performance. Threads like these are implying a comparison in raids, because lets face it, if you're playing solo, your individual performance wont matter to anyone. It becomes disingenuous to come on a forum like this and encourage others to play as meme when you have a low tolerance for memes and know the reality of their fate. Just be straightforward with people. You don't need to walk on egg shells to avoid offending the memes we have here. Most of our old memers KNOW the struggles that are associated with choosing the path less traveled. They wont bring it up themselves but they also aren't going to shed any tears if we tell people the truth.
So to specifically answer your question, it could be very damaging to advise someone to do something when you understand that their opportunities at max level will be very limited. Additionally, it becomes a bit slimy to tell people to play whatever they want in a forum that is specifically comparing the performance of the top and bottom classes/specs. The difference is massive. The difference will be so large that it will be a factor in your receiving a guild or raid invite in some circumstances.
Getting into the raid is only the beginning*. You show up, put time in, and... the gear goes to a class pulling more weight than you. Maybe you get some gear when they were about to turn it into a Nexus Shard anyway. Sure, this wouldn't happen in a guild of 40 friends (I'd hope), but these aren't the people I'm talking about here. Things happen in guilds, and you want to bring bargaining power with your performance. When you say you want an item you don't want the class leads to laugh.
I don't want to see this happen to anyone (unknowingly, at least) and for them to have to level another class to 60 or just quit the game entirely out of frustration.
Even in a casual guild, this will likely still happen. They aren't out to hurt you specifically because of your spec, but they are certainly at that raid to get gear for themselves and with 39 other people that can make a better argument for why that piece of gear will benefit the raid more (short of longevity and loyalty arguments), it may look a lot the same way.
*In a DKP guild they likely won't let you into the raid, precisely because people don't want to carry people that are receiving equal points. In that case getting into the raid is the end of it if you can manage it, unless they decide to give you reduced points or roll restrictions.