It’s the same thing. When a Paladin says “I want to Ret” - they’re basically saying:
“Instead of being the literal best healer and support on our faction, I want to be the absolute worst ranked DPS and cherrypick gear from people who could use it much more”
Why is that suddenly a problem when the best DPS/Tanks decide that they want to be the absolute worst ranked healer?
It’s fundamentally the same problem. Everyone is indignant that Paladins are being told “No” - yet everyone would laugh at a Warrior who decides to try his awesome new “not a meme” healing spec.
Don’t you discuss and decide on how the loot will be dispersed before the raid? If you’re the main tank, for example, wouldn’t you be getting deferential treatment for loot that benefited you?
If it’s need before greed, then they can pull loot from people who need it way more than them
If it’s DKP, same thing
If it’s loot council: they have literally zero chance of seeing loot, and I hope their guild would have the common sense to say: “Play Holy or leave” -
which is basically the only reasonable assumption you can make once you delve down to the insanity of Paladins and (to a lesser extent) Cat/Moon Druids.
Your spec sucks at this. Either do things your spec is good at (PvP / farming etc) or swap specs.
You could spend 40 hours a week farming to be below a raid logging mage - or you could spend that 40 hours a week benefiting literally everyone else.
If their spec isn’t likely to be capable of contributing meaningful DPS, it clearly serves an informative purpose to make sure they know that before they devote potentially thousands of hours to that character.
Not sure where you get the idea that I would bother to min/max a group for speed runs. I’m not a raid leader and even if I were, I would be pretty laid back, but I would also be truthful to people who want to DPS as a Ret Pally so they have reasonable expectations regarding how often they might be invited to the raid group and what their limitations would be when they are.
I think people often hear what they want when they don’t like the content of the message. The number of people in this thread who have assumed I am some kind of elitist player telling people how they have to spec when I have said nothing of the kind is pretty clear evidence of that.
I don’t know considering that I have never made any such attempt.
I think that some of them will. I also think some will be told they have to spec Holy by their raid leaders. I also think some will become discouraged when they try it and discover just how poorly the spec is tuned and reroll. Frankly, a lot of people who like to DPS derive their fun from pushing themselves and competing on the damage meters. Anyone who is in that group is going to hate running as Ret because pushing themselves to the max is still going to leave them significantly behind other melee DPS who aren’t playing as well as they are.
I’m with you on oomkin. Even though I still love playing it, there’s really not much “lesser extent” when comparing it to retpally (unless the old exploit that let you get off two wraths at once pre-2.0 still exists, which I’m pretty it sure does not.)
Cats, on the other hand, are fully capable of being chart-tops, even if only on alli-side.
That works as a definition of a group being viable, but not an individual. The way I know is because groups can succeed with a dead AFK player taking up a raid spot and dead AFK players are obviously not viable DPS.
No one dictated it to me. I saw what I was capable of and realized that trying to DPS as enhance (especially because the guild I was raiding in was way behind and not populated with the best players on the server) wasn’t realistic.
Sure, but maybe also have realistic expectations of what particular specs can and cannot do so that you don’t end up regretting the choices you made after putting thousands of hours behind them.
I’m not under any illusions for myself; I’ll play what the group needs, which might be several roles during one raid. I’ll spec to be able to tank and heal and have a healing set with me. If the group invites a pure feral dps also to the raid, all the power to him/her. If they invite a ret pali - great. I’m not to bothered with all of that. What bothers me is shaming actual human beings because they don’t conform with the FoTM. Screw conformity.
It’s a definition that matters. A group went in, the boss died, everyone was a viable part of the raid. Everyone played what they wanted, phat lootz were to be had… everyone wins.
As opposed to your definition… where maybe a dozen people couldn’t play what they enjoyed… boss died, phat healing lootz given to a player who enjoys playing their class as DPS. Yeah lots of fun.
I agree with you one one thing only… if a person measures their MMO success by a damage meter… by all means play a Fury Warrior or Mage. Period.
But if you play a game for years on end and look back and say “I could’t play want I really liked because my guild wouldn’t let me.” Well that’s on you.
But if you want to have fun, and enjoy playing Ret paladin, and success to you means being the BEST Ret pali YOU can be… and not give a damn if you ever top the meters… then just do it. No regrets man!
I find it very sad you wanted to play enhancement… but felt you had to play resto. I mean that’s really, really sad.
There’s no FoTM in classic. Everything is defined until TBC or Classic+ comes out. Classic is also about constructing groups/communities to complete progress which requires some people to sacrifice what they want for themselves for the sake of the group.
Sorry, no. It’s a definition that is internally invalid. It literally erases the meaning of the word it is trying to define. By that definition, “nothing” is viable DPS because a raid group can succeed with an empty raid slot.
That definition is not merely poor, it is objectively invalid.
I’m not really certain what you believe my definition to be, though elsewhere in the thread I have said that when most DPS specs say they want their spec to be viable they mean that they want their spec to be competitive with other specs played by players of similar skill level.
That said, I have never once said that anyone couldn’t play any particular spec. I have repeatedly said that if they want to play it regardless of its limitations and they have a raid group that wants them to come along regardless of their spec’s limitations they should absolutely go nuts and have fun. Group success does not depend on every individual within the group being viable at their role given the current level of difficulty.
It would be equally unfortunate to play a class for years and look back and say, “I couldn’t play what I really liked because I was totally misled about the capabilities of the spec I wanted to play…gee I wish someone would have been upfront with me about the limitations of that spec.”
Lots of people who DPS derive their enjoyment from pushing themselves to be competitive on damage meters and find it extremely frustrating when they are in the 90th percentile of their spec and cannot beat mediocre players of other specs on the damage meters. Wouldn’t it be great if those people knew what they were getting into before they rolled a class that puts out half of the DPS of other classes in its only DPS spec?
It was reality. What was sad was how much time and effort I put into leveling the class before first realizing I was going to need to spec resto and then later realizing I didn’t really enjoy that role as well as DPS.
This is very true. As an Enhance Shammy in Vanilla I carried heal gear and did a very respectable job healing. My other raid was on my Priest. That said sometimes DPS sacrificed (if you want to call it that) and let me run enhancement.
It was for the good of the group because it was give and take and everyone wins. Sometimes I healed, sometimes I dps’d.
And yes I know… IT WASN’T OPTIMAL- YOU were carried11!111!!!
No. I wasn’t carried. I contributed DPS, I contributed raid consumables, I contributed healing as needed to keep a DPS alive so healers could focus on others.
More importantly my stepping out of healing allowed someone else who wanted to heal a slot.
We finished raids including Naxx. We had fun, we got gear, and we sometimes got drunk and wiped.
Not optimal but hella lot of fun.
There’s no “winning” this argument some people want the statistical best. Some people want fun and as long as the end goal is done, let the tank wear a dress who cares?
And the warrior healer red herring… If there was a heal spec go for it. There isn’t so your comments hold no logic or relevance to the discussion. Proving your point through absurdity rarely works.
“Max” is short for “maximum.” When you say it adds “max” 3 seconds to the length of the fight when you replace a rogue with a Paladin, what you are saying is that in the worst case scenario, the most it will ever add is 3 seconds. That claim is objectively false.
Had you said, “Under a nearly ideal scenario where the raid group has mastered the encounter, vastly overgears the content, is capable of putting out more than double the required DPS to down the boss, and nobody dies, it only adds 3 seconds to the boss fight,” that would have been truthful, but also nowhere near as relevant.
The difference between what your calculation actually shows and what you originally claimed is huge.
When you keep things even and do the math, it will nearly always be a lot more unless the content is completely irrelevant for your raid group. You still seem to be in denial about just how absurd your hypothetical scenario is in terms of representing a realistic raid group. The hypothetical group you assumed massively outclasses the content to the point that it is totally trivial. That group could literally suicide half of its DPS in the first 10 seconds of the fight and still down the boss. Of course they can afford to bring a couple of non-viable DPS without meaningfully altering their chances of success. That does not represent the typical guild trying to progress through Naxx.