Yes. You need to min/max

Community General Discussion
1

One of the common thing I see thrown around the forum is that “Unless you are mythic raiding, pushing for world first, you don’t need to min/max”.

This is a gross misconception.

This game has multiple difficulties, and allows every single player to play the game at their maximum ability level. For elite players, that level might be a world first race. But for everyone else, that level settles all over the game’s difficulty spectrum.

A group of friends tries but have difficulty consistently timing their +10 keys. Had they all did their homework and min-maxed their char, they would been far more consistent at their 10 keys.

3 friends languishes on 1700CR and would like to make rival. Min-maxing their char would probably be enough to push them over the line, granting them the sweet mogs they were after.

Your standard heroic guild’s on a smaller server just got their 2 carries poached. the remaining group now have difficulty hitting the AOTC, stuck on the last boss, with a tiny recruitment pool. Spending some effort min-maxing their entire raid, a bit of luck with the mechanics would be enough to push them to the finish line.

Some say, “Just Git Gud”. well… “Git Gud” involves… “Optimizing your character”.

Crux of the story is that whatever your skill level. If you are interested in achieving the highest result you can achieve, you need to Min-Max.

Any Impediment to “min-max” will end up hitting FAR more players than just the top 0.1%.

The only people who truly do not need to “min-max” are the players who don’t care about their progression results what so ever.

I’ll end by leaving this masterpiece.

5 Likes
2

Every single time I’ve attempted to follow someone else’s rules to “improve” my dps has gone down. I’m beginning to think it’s all a conspiracy to keep specific styles of play in the hole.

I’m in this game to have fun. If I want to pour over spreedsheets I will go back to work TYVM.

11 Likes
3

Not uncommon at all. When changing play style, your performance would likely suffer until you get used to the new setup.

Perhaps this new technique has a higher skill floor, but much better performance ceiling.

This type of result is common. not at all any conspiracy. executing a better technique at 30% will likely result in worse result than executing a worse technique at 90%. the idea is to know why, and work on the better technique. Its highly likely that once you are able to execute this “better” way at 80%, not even perfectly, you’d be able to surpass your previous performance.

2 Likes
4

Which I think is the issue.
In legion I thought I was going to move into ‘real’ raiding from LFR.
I did all the stuff I needed to do to maximize my output.
And then some mouthy mythic raider wannabe foamed for 5 minutes at some newbie players who stepped in the bad and got nailed causing us to have to wipe and run back. Other players had to step in and shut the little boy up.
I tore into the little runt and quit.
I havent played anything outside 5 man randoms since then and have NO interest in doing anything beyond just picking up half decent gear.
keeping it casual on purpose so i dont have to deal with a repeat of that incident.
I have absolutely zero interest in anything that makes me overly think about numbers again.
so no…not ALL of us ‘need’ to do it.

4 Likes
5

That’s due to the what may work for one person may not work for another rule.

2 Likes
6

I disagree. At the +10 or Heroic raid level, you’ll benefit far more by learning the mechanics, anticipating what will happen, and doing the fights properly, than min maxing your gear and practicing your rotation on a dummy.

This is extremely evident even with mythic guilds. When we first pulled Mythic N’Zoth we used every dps cd, 2nd pot, etc and still couldn’t get 1st Psychus down in time. After 30-40 pulls we used only 1 dps cd, no pots, and sometimes had to stop dps because we were killing too fast.

5 Likes
7

Oh i assure you that EVERYONE had ran into one of those crazy toxic types before. With the size of the community, just go and find another group. and i assure you that there are plenty of number obsessed mythic raider wannabes who are actual sane, normal, well adjusted individuals.

1 Like
8

I would guess that far more than half of WoW players do not play the game to compete outside of their own self-selected goals. Such players don’t need to min/max at all.

5 Likes
9

It’s true, some bosses get scary if you take them down to fast. Sometimes a nice gentle pace it what it takes.
However most internet strats simply involve zerging past the hard ones and booting the low dps.

10

Maybe I’m not following you but as I understand it, when people say you don’t need to ‘min/max-ing’ they are talking about maximizing dps/healing whatever to an insane degree. For example, when during one of the World First races, an entire guild race changed because trolls (or whatever it was) because it would give a slight dps increase.

Does any normal player need to do that? No. Plenty of guilds have a mix of races on both factions and can raid just fine. They even do mythics! Plenty of raiders don’t have the best gear, enchants, pots, elixers, food, and still raid just fine.

I do agree players should at least attempt to properly build their characters. If you have noticeably less dps that other similarly geared people in the group, you need to fix THAT. But does everyone need to make sure they get every small boost they can so their dps increases by another 200dps? No.

4 Likes
11

This Point is redundant. Of course you have to be your best to achieve the “highest result” possible.

I’ve timed a 15 where nobody did over 60k dps. Not impressive, but enough to get a 475 loot box.

You only have to min/max if you want to push mythic raiding early on, or if you care about getting that 3k io score. The rest of us will have fun playing a game.

4 Likes
12

Only works if the play style matches your own.

2 Likes
13

You are completely correct, when viewed from a viewpoint of a mythic raider. But there are players out there who are not THAT skilled. Player who might lose track of what they need to kick in the heat of a pull in +10. We are talking about achieving the best one can achieve, not the best there is.

1 Like
14

My wife asks if people are getting crazier, lol.
I told her its likely just because there are MORE people and so we see more of the nutty ones than we did when we lived in a small town area.

Im trying to enjoy my game. That apparently means having to limit my exposure to certain types in game.
The alternative is to just go play solo games like skyrim again and leave MMO’s behind entirely.

15

Lately i see the “don’t need to min-max” used to defend covenant lock of MASSIVE power differentials. This is the primary reason I am targeting. Truly 0.1% DPS bonus is actually for the world firsters.

1 Like
16

No, you don’t.

If you choose to not raid or do mythic+ etc. Gearing is pointless. Min maxing is pointless. There are those who don’t enjoy those things.

One of my favorite old sayings came from FF14. “You don’t pay my sub!” Basically it’s my $15 and I get to choose how I want to spend it. If I want to fish 24/7 I can.

2 Likes
17

and i am not talking about “highest result possible in the game” as well.

I am talking about the “highest result a specific player is capable of achieving”. that might be Cutting Edge and 3k IO. that might also be end of patch AOTC and 1 timed +15 for the entire patch.

For all these players, you need min-maxing.

18

you don’t. problem is people are not playing at the highest potential the classes offer thus why you got issues.

take for example say a lazy coworker. because of that 1 or multiple lazy coworker the team is already doomed to fail. only so much the other can carry load wise. where as you got a group of subpar workers and maybe 1 or 2 good ones but they all work hard and do what they can. more work would get done from that group versus the first.

that is the issue with this game imo. you have a lot of casual players who want to do harder content then they can handle and expect to just face roll their key boards and get carried when it doesn’t work that way. nobody is perfect and yea we all make mistake but it shows who puts in work into their class and learning versus who just wants to get carried

19

And correct. I had mentioned in OP.

If that describes how you play? Be my guest. Enjoy your game. Stay out of my progression groups.

20

Wrong. I just told you I’ve timed a 15 where everybody did below average dps. That’s not “maxing” as I do 90k on my main (who also doesn’t min/max. I don’t use Rune of Power on my mage and still post good numbers.)

There is only one “min/max” way to play your guy. One set of gear, one set of corruption, one set of essences, one set of azerite traits, and one set of talents. Thank goodness we all don’t feel like you, or we’d all be clones.

3 Likes