Is it ever acceptable to play a weak spec you enjoy in PvE?

[YUPPIE]

Mainly for PvE concerns, yeah. Let's just say, I'm someone who's only ever PvP'd and rushed into leveling Artfact power for a spec only really stated to acceptable for that this expac. When I finally discovered PvE is the real game and want to get into it, I'm pretty choked with regret now that I'm stuck with that spec.

That said, there is the option to simply play this spec into PvE but to me, the game is only real at Mythic and I've heard in tryouts they'll reject you on sight based on what spec you are running. But are there ever exceptions? What I have on mind is Frost DK btw, and what I am regretting is likely not going Unholy since I tried tanking on the class and decided it's not for me.

[Pull My Finger]

Well, I personally would never, ever let another person dictate what or how I should play. It's the most ridiculous, absurd thought ever.

The other thing is that there are a lot of truisms in the raiding community about what "works" and what doesn't, what is "viable" or "mandatory". The whole segment is occupied by very small-minded people. That's just how it is. It's often not in tune with the factual reality of the game, but it's the reality of the environment you're getting yourself into. I'd try finding a group that's not being overly stupid about it.

Which might get difficult.

But anyway, since you weren't much of a PvEer previously, where does this thinking come from that the game is "only real at Mythic"?

[YUPPIE]

Well, I personally would never, ever let another person dictate what or how I should play. It's the most ridiculous, absurd thought ever.

The other thing is that there are a lot of truisms in the raiding community about what "works" and what doesn't, what is "viable" or "mandatory". The whole segment is occupied by very small-minded people. That's just how it is. It's often not in tune with the factual reality of the game, but it's the reality of the environment you're getting yourself into. I'd try finding a group that's not being overly stupid about it.

Which might get difficult.

But anyway, since you weren't much of a PvEer previously, where does this thinking come from that the game is "only real at Mythic"?

Because it is? I mean, if you're not setting sights on mythic raiding you shouldn't be raiding since that is the endgame everyone is intended to strive toward. I guess if you PvP, Gladiator is the same but it's insignificant by comparison.

Anyway as for why I'm worried, it's not like in previous expacs where you could switch specs on the fly. Your artifact demands you think carefully, and I didn't, so now I am suffering. If Blizzard had all specs evened out, this wouldn't be an issue.

[Deleted]

I don't know - depends on the content you run, I guess. For hardcore progress I would expect people to use the best possible spec, but if you and your guild are more casual, then why not. As long as you do your best in playing the spec and perform decently, everything should be fine then.

[Karon]

Well, I personally would never, ever let another person dictate what or how I should play. It's the most ridiculous, absurd thought ever.

The other thing is that there are a lot of truisms in the raiding community about what "works" and what doesn't, what is "viable" or "mandatory". The whole segment is occupied by very small-minded people. That's just how it is. It's often not in tune with the factual reality of the game, but it's the reality of the environment you're getting yourself into. I'd try finding a group that's not being overly stupid about it.

Which might get difficult.

But anyway, since you weren't much of a PvEer previously, where does this thinking come from that the game is "only real at Mythic"?

Then gtfo of Multiplayer games.

[Seditian]

Because it is? I mean, if you're not setting sights on mythic raiding you shouldn't be raiding since that is the endgame everyone is intended to strive toward. I guess if you PvP, Gladiator is the same but it's insignificant by comparison.

Anyway as for why I'm worried, it's not like in previous expacs where you could switch specs on the fly. Your artifact demands you think carefully, and I didn't, so now I am suffering. If Blizzard had all specs evened out, this wouldn't be an issue.

Gladiator is endless amounts of harder than mythic raiding. Just FYI. As for your argument: it's stupid. That's like saying it's useless to drive a car to work, because you should be striving to compete in the formula 1 races in the world championships and as long as you're not #1, you're shit and shouldn't even try.

[Deleted]

Being totally honest. You won't ever get a spot as a frost DK in a mythic focused raid group unless they drastically get buffed. If we are talking at a casual level i.e mythic dungeons (not pushing high key mythics) and heroic raiding, playing frost is fine. Play the class you have the most enjoyment out of is what I always recommend bit if you are seriously wanting to raid mythic then frost is not the option currently.


I can't post links I think because I barely comment but frost DK are currently bottom of the list in dps Sims in T19
I don't see blizzard ever making specs equal and I hope they dont. They like how some classes and specs are better in some situations and others better in different situations.

Don't want to be harsh, but all this information was out there before legion launched. How classes were performing. How the artifact system works for specs. If you just focused on PvP and didn't research anything then only yourself to blame and not blizzards.

[Super Kami Dende]

Play what you want, everything is Viable. You can do all content with ANY spec. Morons just tend to think only specs which make it easier for them are the specs that are "viable"

[Otimus]

Gladiator is endless amounts of harder than mythic raiding. Just FYI. As for your argument: it's stupid. That's like saying it's useless to drive a car to work, because you should be striving to compete in the formula 1 races in the world championships and as long as you're not #1, you're a shit human being.

More to the point, though, Blizzard themselves designs Heroic as the baseline difficulty. They have said so. LFR is the easy version and Mythic is the hard version.

This is like nagging people, and telling them to return a game to the store for playing any other game on easy or normal because the "real game" is on hard. Games don't work that way.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Only way to win this game is to have fun. That said, which spec you pick and how you can perform may determine your acceptance into some groups. As long as you're grouping with like-minded players, it shouldn't be an issue.

I have some alts I optimize for raiding, and others I just goof around on. The latter are always whatever spec looked fun at the time.

[Temp name]

Then gtfo of Multiplayer games.

He's playing a game the he enjoys in a way that he enjoy with people who're fine with that. Why should he stop playing multiplayer games because he doesn't want to play in a way that he doesn't enjoy?

To OP: Play the game the way that you want. Just expect that if you're not playing the best spec for your class, you won't get into the very best guilds. You can likely still complete mythic, but it'll be a bit slower. That said, if you don't enjoy Unholy, it'll probably be better to stay Frost and take it slower and enjoy the road there, than simply the destination

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Gladiator is endless amounts of harder than mythic raiding. Just FYI. As for your argument: it's stupid. That's like saying it's useless to drive a car to work, because you should be striving to compete in the formula 1 races in the world championships and as long as you're not #1, you're shit and shouldn't even try.

The reason Glad is harder than mythic is that, by design, only a very small part of the playerbase will ever get it. If we compare mythic to top 10% of the pvp ladder, it'll be roughly the same

[DevoutChaos]

I would always make the point that if you enjoy a spec, you are more likely to be good at that one than the one you detest playing. You are more likely to spend time learning the little nuances which let you squeeze that little bit of extra DPS/Healing/Survivability out of it. While some specs may be drastically undertuned, they *should* be buffed at some point in the future so that at the very least every spec isn't viable, even if one is "the worst" on simulations.

[warlockiii]

You can put points in two specs in such a way that you hardly impact your "main" spec. Check out this chart for some perspective. It comes from here.

[YUPPIE]

I would always make the point that if you enjoy a spec, you are more likely to be good at that one than the one you detest playing. You are more likely to spend time learning the little nuances which let you squeeze that little bit of extra DPS/Healing/Survivability out of it. While some specs may be drastically undertuned, they *should* be buffed at some point in the future so that at the very least every spec isn't viable, even if one is "the worst" on simulations.

Doesn't Blizzard officially hate certain specs though?

[Callypso]

Gladiator is endless amounts of harder than mythic raiding. Just FYI. As for your argument: it's stupid. That's like saying it's useless to drive a car to work, because you should be striving to compete in the formula 1 races in the world championships and as long as you're not #1, you're shit and shouldn't even try.

That rather depends on how you define 'mythic raiding'. Guilds that only manage to clear half the mythic raid before the end of the patch? Sure, that's probably not as hard as getting glad. Top 10 world mythic raiding? Probably about on par with it (although the difficulty is in different aspects so you both types of players will likely say 'their' type of gameplay is harder).

Back on topic: 'acceptable' depends on the group you are playing with, but also on how 'weak' the spec is that you want to play. In the raids i've led in the past (not bleeding edge mythic, but still serious progression) I typically went with whatever brought the best results. I had fire mages outperforming arcane mages in a time where arcane was supposed to be 'best' by some margin, simply because they enjoyed fire more and as a result, were better at it. Could I have forced them to respec? Sure. Would that have benefitted the raid? No.

At the same time if those mages wanted to play frost, it would have been quite impossible for them to perform at a dps level that was not gimping the raid. Not that anyone wanted to play it at the time, but if they did I would have had to bar them from progress raids as a result if they insisted, as it would seriously hurt the progress of the rest of the group. You can't beat enrage timers if the dps simply isn't there.

Playing in a guild who aims for lower end progress / casual play (i.e. 'lets go into the raid and see how far we get, don't bother to prepare too much) it is likely far more types of gameplay are acceptable. Mostly because you then do not NEED everyone to play optimal in order to still defeat the bosses.

[Seditian]

He's playing a game the he enjoys in a way that he enjoy with people who're fine with that. Why should he stop playing multiplayer games because he doesn't want to play in a way that he doesn't enjoy?

To OP: Play the game the way that you want. Just expect that if you're not playing the best spec for your class, you won't get into the very best guilds. You can likely still complete mythic, but it'll be a bit slower. That said, if you don't enjoy Unholy, it'll probably be better to stay Frost and take it slower and enjoy the road there, than simply the destination

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The reason Glad is harder than mythic is that, by design, only a very small part of the playerbase will ever get it. If we compare mythic to top 10% of the pvp ladder, it'll be roughly the same

Top 10% is very easy though, that's Rival territory, not even Duelist. You're right though, it's specifically designed to be only obtainable by a certain % of people (0.5% for the uneducated). But even ignoring that fact, players and the meta are ever changing, mythic raiding doesn't. Other than some nerfs/buffs via hotfixes.

FYI: I haven't seriously PvP'd since MoP, had gladiator before but I barely hit top 5% in MoP. I still think PvP is way harder than PvE, if only because you have to know what every single spec in the game does. And not just "roughly", you need to know their CD's on every important cooldown. Unless you're a raid leader, you don't need to know these things whatsoever in mythic raiding. Hell raid leaders don't even need to know it, apart from a few things from a few classes.

That rather depends on how you define 'mythic raiding'. Guilds that only manage to clear half the mythic raid before the end of the patch? Sure, that's probably not as hard as getting glad. Top 10 world mythic raiding? Probably about on par with it (although the difficulty is in different aspects so you both types of players will likely say 'their' type of gameplay is harder).

That I can agree with, the top mythic raiding scene (top 10-25) is brutal. I never said the top mythic raiding race was easy though. I'm just saying that killing Archimonde on Mythic on the very last day before the next expansion starts, is not even close in comparison with landing in the top 0.5% in arena.

[Darkeon]

Of course it is. You shouldn't let anyone dictate how you play the game. It's your time, it's your obligation to get the most fun out of your buck.

That said, the above will also leave you open to criticism and you risk being kicked out due to efficiency issues; And completely within other people's right to do so. It's their time and they need to get the best out of it too.

The trick is to play with like-minded individuals.

[Vorkreist]

If you are that interested in mythic raiding then grinding out for the best pve spec shouldn't be a problem.
And yes its exactly like that, mythic guilds won't even consider applications from sub par specs. Don't listen to the lfr heroes on mmo-c saying its fine to play any crap spec you enjoy.

[I Push Buttons]

Depends on the guild mate. High end guilds that kick bads, no its not acceptable, but they actually down stuff. Casual guilds that have some soccer mom baddies mixed in with the good players, its probably acceptable, but they won't get much down beyond the first few bosses.

I like to play the spec I enjoy over the spec that's best, but I am not looking to raid mythic. If I were I would probably have to force myself to play what was best... If for no other reason than to not hold other people back due to my own personal preferences.

I look at it from other people's perspective. If you are getting a boss to like 5% and wiping, and you look around and see three people in your group playing specs that you know are 10-20% or whatever weaker than the spec they could be playing... You probably won't feel too good about that. As the extra damage from those people would literally make all the differences and no matter how well you play, how hard you try, you are already playing as efficiently as possible so you can't do anymore to make up the difference while they can and choose not to.

[SirBeef]

Mainly for PvE concerns, yeah. Let's just say, I'm someone who's only ever PvP'd and rushed into leveling Artfact power for a spec only really stated to acceptable for that this expac. When I finally discovered PvE is the real game and want to get into it, I'm pretty choked with regret now that I'm stuck with that spec.

That said, there is the option to simply play this spec into PvE but to me, the game is only real at Mythic and I've heard in tryouts they'll reject you on sight based on what spec you are running. But are there ever exceptions? What I have on mind is Frost DK btw, and what I am regretting is likely not going Unholy since I tried tanking on the class and decided it's not for me.

Mythic is only for the top 1-2% of players. The "real" game is what you want to make of it. However if you plan on doing mythic progression on a team interested in realm firsts and shit like that you play what is optimally the best. If not, you can play whatever you want to. We are running two mythic teams and we all play what we want. Some choose to play the top performing specs others not. We are not reaching for firsts or rankings just to have fun with difficult content.

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If you are that interested in mythic raiding then grinding out for the best pve spec shouldn't be a problem.
And yes its exactly like that, mythic guilds won't even consider applications from sub par specs. Don't listen to the lfr heroes on mmo-c saying its fine to play any crap spec you enjoy.

Complete horseshit and you know it. The mythic guilds interested in ranking and pushing for firsts do. That is not close to all of them by the way. Not to mention many heroic guilds venture into mythic eventually. Not all of them that do are running the best specs and optimal talents.