Min/maxing:
The practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the “best” character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones.
Why are people up-in-arms about this? Isn’t every player trying to be the best they can be? I don’t know of, anyone that intentionally wants to be 3rd or 4th best.
A Mage will likely out dps a feral Druid, but that doesn’t mean everyone should be mages. Be the top Teir BiS feral there is, and you are now max for your class.
Pally tank? Okay, know your class, work your @$$ off for gear, do good research and then get out there and MT raids.
If you’re not looking to upgrade yourself or others, I don’t understand why you are even there.
Min/maxing isn’t the problem. It’s people only accepting those builds that things get messy. 1 talent point out of place and suddenly you’re a meme spec or not able to pull your weight or in need of being carried or a noob, etc…
Min Maxers vs role players is the classic tale
Tale as old as time … etc. etc.
Two reasons to play a RPG character (computer or even table top) and it’s the joy of the character (Role Play) or Murder Hobo (min/max) .
As an avid Role player (mainly table top) I look down my nose at min/maxers .
Maturity levels/priorities. Believe it or not, videos games are a hobby. Even these online beggars aka streamers. When they become irrelevant and the next big thing comes, they will either take a huge income hit or go back to a real job.
You are permitted to do whatever you would like only if I am permitted to do whatever I like.
Some people don’t like to min max because we get a bigger sense of acconplishment when we tackle a hard task with a bigger disadvantage and still come out on top.
Some people like to wear their class sets and not a hodgepodge of the best in slot gear.
I always had a unusual spec even when I went to hard core raiding guilds. Though having that did give some pause, I generally didn’t get any further beef when I dominated everyone else of the same class on the dps meters.
Granted I was a min/maxer I just tried out a lot of different things and did the math to try to see how well I could make it do. Anytime I got someone telling me how to spec, my general answer was “You can tell me how to spec when you can out dps me”.
Just because everyone says x is the best spec doesn’t mean it is.
On the casual guild side most guilds don’t care (especially in 40 man raids, where just getting that many was challenging at times).
On the hard core side, the guilds don’t care as long as you’re better than the others looking to get in. They may question your spec, just know your stuff, be honest and be confident that you can pull your weight(You’ll likely need to justify your spec). There will be limitations on what specs can actually work though, but it’s not as rigid as many here seem to think.
sarcasm comes across so badly in typed form
Oh well, I’ve played in both heavy role play groups (which is my personal preference) and heavy murder hobo groups also and both are valid and both are ways for people to play. I’ve also ran D&D sessions with both types of groups.
my post was more to show why min/max is seen as ‘lesser’ , I can enhance my character through role play things (in game things like pets etc.) or min/max … both are valid ways to play but only one will be in the top guilds and it’s not us role players so we have to pretend to be murder hobos.
The more approved modern RPG term (and the one that I prefer) is “optimize” over “min/max”.
Min/max implies that there is only one axis of choice and that all characters should be built the same. This is simply not true. Optimize better reflects that, when doing so, you should have a goal and you should make your choices towards that goal.
Optimizing for max burst DPS, for example, will lead to different choices than optimizing for maximum infinitely-sustained DPS, which in turn will lead to different choices than optimizing for self-healing which will have different choices than optimizing for EHP.
It’s a more nuanced approach that understands that it is impossible to be the best at everything at all times and you need to pick and choose what you want to focus on. Even for people who enjoy making their character the best they can be (which isn’t everyone and that is fine), you can’t just expect there to always be a single obviously best choice. If there is, that’s a failure of game design.
What I found more funny were raid leaders who demanded certain specs, but actually never played your class or spec that they are demanding you play.
It’s as if they read up on how others should play and that cookie cutter is the norm, either adhere to it or you are benched type of mentality.
Honestly you could take your 20/40 man raid team with each player in their class gear and do raid content just fine.
Why? Because raids were never built around some min/max guide or need, the devs would never have the time to figure that out and yet your min/max hard core players somehow believe that it can’t be done any other way.
What if the person is role playing with min/max as someone who is trying to prove himself but thinks people who compliment him and his success are “just being nice” and he has an inferiority complex?
