Min-Maxing absolutely takes some fun out of multiplayer games.
As an example: I went with the Leaper legendary as my first. This is a legendary that gives no DPS boost, it just lets me jump around like a maniac using Heroic Leap. I’m actively hurting my parses by using it… but a Warrior with this talent, combined with a couple of PVE/PVP talents is stupidly fun.
I can only get away with this nonsense because I’m not playing competitively, and I will lose every time to a warrior who is. It’s sad you have to choose between power and fun so often in min-max situations since fun will lose almost every time.
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Every rpg gets min-maxed, even single player ones. There’s always a optimal build, it’ just how it is.
Personally, I just wish there was more choices. In league, they made a item rework and there’s a good amount of choices now in how you want to build depending on what you’re facing. I hope the talent trees will change that in the new xpac.
it’s terrible for the game and y’all know it cause it trickles down into all content you do on any endgame. people asking you to do dumb things from normal and low keys is hilarous. the min/maxing in classic nowadays is truly laughable.
It makes the high-end gameplay more interesting. But it is damaging to a game that is unintuitive and like wow many things are not on the tooltip. Everything has to be simulated to get an accurate representation or close to it I should say of whether an item is an ability, if a spell is worth casting in a situation or not. Whether something is not working as intended and should be not used until they fix it.
Then you got some things that are not intuitive like diminishing returns on cc, or some mechanics. Some mechanics let you stun and blink out of. Some stun mechanics don’t. The inconsistency in gameplay pushes people toward min/maxing too.
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Depends on the type of player you are, and the extent of minmaxing.
Some people really get off on excel sheet stuff in their combat, but it doesn’t do much for me. I’m more in the camp that prefers abilities to be mechanically interesting at the cost of being top DPS.
If “minmaxing” includes e.g. planning routes in zones with questing that’s freeform and not drip-fed (unfortunately uncommon these days), then yeah I minmax. But that’s more of a light, low commitment minigame that I can do without referring to third party sources or spending hours at target dummies trying N permutations of a build.
More problematic than minmaxing itself is the insistence that everybody of all walks of content adhere to a particular “best” build. That’s pure nonsense. No, your +5 key does not need or even benefit from your group running MDI specs, I’m sorry.
I think it does take the fun out of the game. I see so many people chasing it, swapping to whatever is supposed to be the “best” and then becoming frustrated because they don’t preform as good as they thought they would.
I see raid leaders comparing what classes they have in raids with what the “meta” is and making decisions based on that instead of just enjoying raiding with the team they have.
I see people being passed over in M+ dungeon queues because they are not a “meta” class/spec.
But I understand why Blizzard has developed this type of system in their game. In all these cases, people spend real money to boost, and buy tokens so they can quickly gear what they think the current “meta” is. It makes good business sense - but I think it is bad for their longterm health of their game. 
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