The thing is there’s “playing optimally” and “optimization to the extreme”. There doesn’t seem like there’s a difference but there is, and I think the confusion/conflict over that difference is the root issue.
For example I would wager that most people have a limit they’re willing to go to sacrifice flavor for optimization. It varies per person; someone may really like the lore of Tauren for example and want to always play a Tauren. This limits certain things (classes, for example) but might be acceptable. Someone may really enjoy how a particular talent synergizes with their abilities and that’s their limit; for instance, there was a period where I really liked the synergy of Blade of Justice + Expurgation and wanted to build around that, regardless if it was the most optimal at the time because liked the concept.
I think that D&D 3rd edition provides a good comparison to this. You had optimization which was simply “I want to do X and be as good as I can at it” and then you had munchkins who were “I want to do anything and everything I can get away with to make X super powerful, potentially breaking the game”. The munchkin type of approach was almost always pure theory and nobody ever was actually expected to use it because it was so ridiculous, expected optimal everything (the D&D equivalent of BiS gear) and would very easily break a game. It provided a good outlet for the theorycrafters to illustrate combinations and hypothetical things but most people accepted that it was a ludicrous extreme.
The issue in WoW is that the balance, despite them trying (I’m going to give them credit where credit is due) to get it right, is often so wonky that there is a big gap between builds such that one is always “viable” and one is always “not viable”. Part of the issue is the community’s focus so much on being “the best” that there’s no place for different pieces, it’s all or nothing. So something that is 10% less than something else is lambasted as wrong/bad/etc. even if it’s perfectly capable of doing any content.
That perception I think is the main point of concern: People are so caught up in min-maxing that they treat it as binary and don’t look at what’s needed in the name of making everything easier. If you need 7k DPS to defeat an encounter, people will still not take someone who can do 7k DPS if they can get someone who does 9k, even though the 7k DPS person is perfectly capable.
It makes me wonder how many people actually play with people they care about and are friendly with versus treating their guild as basically co-workers who are just working together. I say this because most people I’ve seen who genuinely want to be friends with people the play with are less concerned about raw effectiveness as long as the content is doable. What I mean is they’ll take the 7k DPS person (remember 7k is perfectly capable of doing the content) because they like that person, rather than shut them out in favor of the 9k DPS person in the name of effectiveness. But you always read how this is bad and it’s somehow insulting your “friends” to be the 7k DPS guy and not doing whatever to get the 9k DPS when I’ve never ever met anyone who felt that way. It reminds me of the people playing D&D who had no qualms about building a character that made other people at the table feel useless and I questioned why would you do that to your friends, even if you can?
I really wonder sometimes if the way the game is built is fundamentally wrong and fundamentally flawed since it encourages the extreme even as the devs claim they want to avoid it. I get that’s just how it is, but it seems flawed at its core when you make something the focus that causes so much hostility even among people who may be friends. That just feels wrong.
I can’t think of a way around it though. In a scripted encounter your damage is going to be one of the most important things no matter what you do.