A lot of people keep saying “it only affects a small portion of players” as if that’s something that we should just take for granted uncritically. “It’s only the top 1% and it’s only a 1% difference in damage/healing/etc.” or “Unless you’re a min-maxer trying for world firsts this doesn’t affect you.”
I think intuitively we all know that doesn’t matter, though, don’t we? Even accepting that that assumption is true arguendo, the meta trickles down.
Casuals and under-performers are the worst culprits, and it’s kind of understandable: I’m not a cutting-edge competitive progression pusher. I don’t have the first-hand experience to judge whether a particular talent is better than another in 90% of parses against a particular affix. I haven’t been raiding with a bunch of experienced professional entertainers since the first time the gates opened prior to launch in order to ferret out the absolute optimal composition of classes to clear the content. By consequence I’m dependent on the community for guidance on how to optimize.
And optimization is important to me, doubly so because I’m not a 1% no-lifeing poop-socking bat-phoning hardcore leet raider. [I mean, who has time?] Because I don’t have the experience or time-honed skill to intuitively evaluate these options, I also don’t have the experience or skill that would make the choices less important to me. I can’t make up for a bad soulbind or covenant ability with skill. So I need to choose the optimal option because that’s the one that increases the likelihood I’ll be able to clear the content, and as a non-upper-tier performer I need every edge I can get.
If I were the best in the world at my class, I probably wouldn’t need to sweat a 1% power differential between a couple of covenant abilities–I could clear the content regardless. But I’m not. Neither are any of the people I play with (who, let’s face it, are mostly pugs). They all suck, like me. We’re a bunch of drooling monkeys geezed up on Adderall who can barely find the button to get inside the dungeon. So if I’m recruiting fellow monkeys to try and get my run for the week, I’m going to choose the monkeys that at least have the biggest bombs strapped to them, because even if those monkeys run in circles screaming, eventually they’ll create the biggest crater and hopefully get me a little closer to my goal.
That’s just a rational choice. And when you say, “Yeah, but you know the content can be finished with a smaller bomb, right?” I’m not in a position to say you’re wrong. You’re absolutely right; it can be done with sub-optimal choices. Except, monkeys. So I’m going to treat it like a numbers game. I’m going to look at the guides, and if they say that the red bomb is bigger than the blue bomb, I’m going to be looking for red-bomb-wearing-monkeys. That simple.