Very well said, I totally respect the thought that went into this post.
A lot of people keep saying âit only affects a small portion of playersâ as if thatâs something that we should just take for granted uncritically. âItâs only the top 1% and itâs only a 1% difference in damage/healing/etc.â or âUnless youâre a min-maxer trying for world firsts this doesnât affect you.â
I think intuitively we all know that doesnât matter, though, donât we? Even accepting that that assumption is true arguendo, the meta trickles down.
Casuals and under-performers are the worst culprits, and itâs kind of understandable: Iâm not a cutting-edge competitive progression pusher. I donât have the first-hand experience to judge whether a particular talent is better than another in 90% of parses against a particular affix. I havenât 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 Iâm dependent on the community for guidance on how to optimize.
And optimization is important to me, doubly so because Iâm not a 1% no-lifeing poop-socking bat-phoning hardcore leet raider. [I mean, who has time?] Because I donât have the experience or time-honed skill to intuitively evaluate these options, I also donât have the experience or skill that would make the choices less important to me. I canât make up for a bad soulbind or covenant ability with skill. So I need to choose the optimal option because thatâs the one that increases the likelihood Iâll 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 wouldnât need to sweat a 1% power differential between a couple of covenant abilitiesâI could clear the content regardless. But Iâm not. Neither are any of the people I play with (who, letâs face it, are mostly pugs). They all suck, like me. Weâre a bunch of drooling monkeys geezed up on Adderall who can barely find the button to get inside the dungeon. So if Iâm recruiting fellow monkeys to try and get my run for the week, Iâm 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 theyâll create the biggest crater and hopefully get me a little closer to my goal.
Thatâs just a rational choice. And when you say, âYeah, but you know the content can be finished with a smaller bomb, right?â Iâm not in a position to say youâre wrong. Youâre absolutely right; it can be done with sub-optimal choices. Except, monkeys. So Iâm going to treat it like a numbers game. Iâm going to look at the guides, and if they say that the red bomb is bigger than the blue bomb, Iâm going to be looking for red-bomb-wearing-monkeys. That simple.
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Oh so stooging super hard for Blizz to keep boxing from being banned?
This issue honestly has nothing to do with the top 1% like you said, because they will always have a raid group or M+ group to run with, whereas the rest of us will almost certainly need to pug, and that means respeccing our soulbinds more often to fit with the group we are running with.
Like the other day I was doing ranged DPS in vale, than I ran some M+ as heals, I tanked less than a week ago in raid, yesterday I tanked again in M+, day before I was doing melee DPS in M+.
Thatâs 4 specs in less than a week, I have 3 soulbinds.
The âitâll only affect the top 1%â always has, and always will be a strawman.
You donât need to be getting Hall of Fame each tier to care about character power, you basically just gotta have the tiniest drive to improve yourself at the game.
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In this case it will affect more like the 99% who donât have a set role in the groups they run with. It will do nothing but force us into a role and not allow constant change to ensure we can keep progressing.
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no cuz conduits are locked so you dont change them for m+ and raids, you may choose another soulbind that isnt as efficient but total optimization for all content is no longer allowed on single chars thankfully.
And what happens if I decide I want to change from tanking to DPS and than over to healing? Oh wait, I canât, because I will be locking myself from changing back for a week.
Then you should clearly be using one soulbind for dps, one for tanking and one for healing.
Yeah you wouldnt be as effective as a tank using the main soulbind but thatâs the point, you arent meant to be good at everything but you are still good enough to do content.
So after 16 years I am supposed to just accept that I can no longer choose what spec I want for the content I am choosing and give myself the best opportunity to clear it?
Like I can setup a soulbind to DPS for better AOE to help clear M+ better, but than if I have the other two set for tanking and healing and all of a sudden I want to raid, either I simply donât raid, or I respec for better ST.
Than what do I do for the rest of the week when I want to DPS in M+? Do I just go in unprepared and possibly not do enough damage to even pass the key level I am doing, or do I respec my tank or healing to AOE for DPS?
And what happens after that, I now cannot heal or tank and have to tell my guild âSorry guys, Blizzard wonât let meâ.
It will happen more than people think, someone is going to lock all their soulbinds and wonât be able to do other content because Blizzard have forced us to make a decision, one spec and role, or miss out on content. And even than, if we do choose one role, what if no one needs that role.
What if I decide I am 100% tanking SL, or 100% healing, but my guild does not need a tank for anything. Do I change spec? Do I find a new guild? What happens than for solo content, do I do that as a tank and possibly not be able to get through Torghast as quickly as others and lose progress because I donât want to lock a soulbind to DPS and miss out on tanking?
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Yes, that is how CHANGE works.
You might not like it, but change does that.
Oh look, time to pretend not having the optimal build or talent makes it likely you cant even do a decent key level xD
You might not be able to do a 30, you ll be fine on a 26, and for blizzard as long as you can do a 15, they ve succeeded in their goal.
But plz go on into more hyperbole about how suddenly you cant do content cuz you are only 85% optimal for that content instead of 100% D:
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Oh no having to make a decision with consequences , todays youth will be hiding in their rooms , cant have that , MUSt have it all , Must have it now and it Must just be given to us without us having to do a anything to get it
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you still will be able to clear , stop being so dramatic .
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You may not realise, but 90% of all keys completed in season 4 of BFA are BELOW an M15 level. And you wonât believe me, so go check out the raider IO site and have a look at how many have been completed total and how many have been at M15 or higher.
So even in 8.3 where power is completely and utterly blown through the roof, there are still only 10% of all runs done at M15 or higher.
There are only a few of you who truly believe this to be the case, and in your case I donât think you believe this at all considering you still havenât even completed some dungeons at all, you have no KSM achievement, nor do you even have the Keystone Conqueror from any season in BfA.
And your IO score, that puts you currently ranked in the lower 40% of all characters worldwide across all servers in all countries. You have no idea what it takes to complete higher level content.
Having been in the development atmosphere for 15 years (almost) I can assure you directors do not make up 80% of the direction software takes.
Directors primary responsibility is to make sure the company vision remains intact. Thatâs not really about what content goes into the game but instead hitting market share values and reporting MAUs to the executives. Itâs also about deadlines and communicating dev team needs versus executive desires to save money. This is typically what directors are responsible for.
Ion relies on the designers around him to provide the whys of what goes in and what comes out of the product. He may take a hard pass on some of it if he believes that itâll hurt the MAUs and I know he reads a lot here but very often it can feel like an impasse and better to do nothing than anything scenario. Do you take the advice of randoms on a forum or your guys whoâve worked under you for years? It may take some serious financial harm for Ion to side with the forums over his own guys. Sadly thatâs how it goes.
As for the designers I would be surprised to find that they read the forums. We are often at odds with their wants for the game.
It also can take serious financial harm to not listen to us. You cannot ignore the fact this game has a lot more complaints than praises and a lot more people defending those complaints the saying there is nothing wrong and look were we are.
The game almost collapsed in WoD such was the ramifications of not listening to the players.
That are suprisingly low numbers indeed but that doesnt stop the fact that m15s are a joke for anyone decent, and being decent doesnt mean meta build, it means knowing your class and how to use your toolkit.
It is clear if people arent timing 15s that the issue is not lack of ultra optimal meta build but far more important things such as actual skill, maybe gear or many people who just dont care and just do low keys.
The fact remains that if you are good at the game (Does not mean being a meta slave) you can easily do any content in WoW without optimal builds.
Letâs say player A chooses ST covenant and first soulbind is best for both ST and AoE. That player now excel in ST encounters but he also wants to do m+
He could do mythic + in the same build like I do, I never change builds cuz my classâ toolkit has enough base aoe, if they want to tryhard they can change to soulbind 2 with aoe conduits, will they be as optimal as having the 1st soulbind and aoe covenant?
No but that is the point, you chose to be better at ST so you wont be as good as you could have been in AoE. And anyone who has done wow content knows lack of 100% optimality doesnt stop you from doing m+ or even mythic raids unless you are in the world first race which like Ion said, they are a completely different story.
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Wow that high , considering I didnt do M+ regularly and when I did it it was to get gear for low Ilvl guildies with no intentions of timing the runs then thats not too bad .
And yes I do believe what I said , good players who want to clear the content and are capable of clearing the content ( ie : are as good a player as they think they are ) will have no problems clearing them regardless of soulbinds/covenants.
to put it another way , people will clear up to their skill level , if soulbiinds/covenants were easily swapped then players of lesser skill would be able to clear using that crutch .
You get 3 soulbinds that you can swap between indiscriminately. Couldnât you set one for pvp, one for m+ and one for raiding? I havenât played the beta yet, have only looked at what youtube has to offer and am hearing all of this outrage but it isnât making much sense. I actually like the idea of how this has been playing out and having meaningful choices in how you build your character. Seems like for the first time in wow history we are being forced away from the extremes of the min/max culture by having to make a real decision with (albeit minor) consequence.
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I mean, theoretically sure.
Except not all Soulbinds are equal, so the chances of your BiS Soulbind for one spec or the other, or different forms of content are pretty darn likely.
Youâre going to be disappointed by Shadowlands, I think.
Making min-maxing more annoying wonât mean people wonât do it. Itâll just make it more annoying.
People arenât going to care if you picked the Covenant for story, if itâs an awful choice, youâre going to get invited to groups less because of it.