For ALL non WL raiders

[M1r4g3]

truth be told, most of the "competitivnes" in game is done by players, not by blizard

Yeah because the game is designed/balanced like that, obviously people are going to interact accordingly. Putting timers/ratings on content, making raids fights undoable unless every single person is alive for 90% of the fight, all the seasonal systems related to power etc. players just react to stuff.

[Nalam the Venom]

What progression? You're playing a spreadsheet by the sound of it.

As you increase in numbers you see progression in your character power.

Kill times on bosses also go down to mark your progression in power.

[Saltysquidoon]

so people are sooo obsesed with performance they ignore everything else, but they take week to rerol? riiiiiight, totaly makes sense...
btw nice goalpost move "data prove it" well data dont prove it "wait, they will ...someday"
not to mention if people didnt rerol yet, it doesnt matter, it still shows your "85+%" for every spec is still bullshit, it would just be different covenant with 85% for some specs...

I just checked the wowhead dps spec guides pages (which have API scrapes from 15 june till july 1) from that those scrapes suggests that:
- In 17/24 specs the most played covenant is what the wowhead guide suggests is the 'best';
- In 5/24 specs the most played covenant is not what wowhead suggests is the 'best'; and
- I classified 2/24 as special cases because Enhance's most played was venthyr which was the strongest aoe but not the strongest st and Shadow where nightfae was the strongest but most played venthyr by a margin of 0.4%.

Like everything, there is obviously more going on here than raw numbers. While for example, Nf is the best druid covenant and one would imagine druids would be drawn to it, the same can't be said for locks and NF, where every single lock spec overwhelming played NF. Further, fully 3/5 guide opposed specs where hunters and the guide seemed to imply that before 9.1 NF was the superior hunter convenant (replaced by kyrian in this patch) so there may in fact be some lag time there (or hunters just don't give a shit).

And while all that is very interesting it seems to me this narrative that there is no evidence that at least a large minority of players are playing what's strong based on the stats available is unsustainable.

[Revamp Man]

very much this, some people cant grasp that just bcs in OPTIMAL conditions and while performed PERFECTLY one clas/spec/talents/covenant combo is "best" it doesnt mean they will do best with it, and use it even if they actualy underperform with it as they cant utilise their spells properly...

breath build for frost DK is perfect example, THEORETICALY its "best" so everyone and their grandmother run it, yet half of the people using it would do better with obliteration bcs they cant hold the breath long enough or use it at wrong time, or loose WAY too much dmg due to moving...

It’s partially why S2M was killed for priests

You had the high end breaking it for a couple fights then you had people going on the forums complaining that it killed them while leveling

[Crimson Spears]

I just checked the wowhead dps spec guides pages (which have API scrapes from 15 june till july 1) from that those scrapes suggests that:
- In 17/24 specs the most played covenant is what the wowhead guide suggests is the 'best';
- In 5/24 specs the most played covenant is not what wowhead suggests is the 'best'; and
- I classified 2/24 as special cases because Enhance's most played was venthyr which was the strongest aoe but not the strongest st and Shadow where nightfae was the strongest but most played venthyr by a margin of 0.4%.

Like everything, there is obviously more going on here than raw numbers. While for example, Nf is the best druid covenant and one would imagine druids would be drawn to it, the same can't be said for locks and NF, where every single lock spec overwhelming played NF. Further, fully 3/5 guide opposed specs where hunters and the guide seemed to imply that before 9.1 NF was the superior hunter convenant (replaced by kyrian in this patch) so there may in fact be some lag time there (or hunters just don't give a shit).

And while all that is very interesting it seems to me this narrative that there is no evidence that at least a large minority of players are playing what's strong based on the stats available is unsustainable.

For the 5 outliners has their best covenant recently changed and/or is their bis specced towards their main spec? It isn't uncommon for tanks and healers to log off as dps after questing.

[Lolites]

Yeah because the game is designed/balanced like that, obviously people are going to interact accordingly. Putting timers/ratings on content

is it though? who do you compete agains when doing raid, or m+ or outdoor content?
literaly only competitive part of game made competitive by blizzard is PVP, and thats understandable, everything else is on players...
M+ is only real content with timer (i dont count enrage) and that is not realy competitive in itself, you dont compete against anyone, someone else doing the dungeon a minute faster than you makes absolutely no difference to you...
as for rating, they added rating to M+ now after 2 and something of expansion with M+ without rating, and why? bcs PEOPLE made and used their own rating since the very begining...

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all the seasonal systems related to power etc. players just react to stuff.

how exactly do seasonal power system make the game competitive?

[Gaidax]

Crucible of Storms CE?

If you're able to pick a suboptimal covenant in a top 2k guild, I'm not really surprised. Top 500? Someone is afraid to ask you to pick the better choice.

We're like w350-ish give or take, and we most certainly did Crucible CE famed if that's a big metric for you and we most certainly don't police people neither specs nor covenants, ever and guess what somehow we get CE each and every tier for many years now at our 2 night schedule.

You vastly overestimate what is really needed to get CE nowadays. At risk of doing same mistake as you, I'd say anything outside w100 doing this kind of policing BS is just silly.


Now sure I'm not exactly living in a dream world either, for some specs some covenant choices are noticeably bad and for sure if you compare absolute top optimal choice to the total dog bottom choice, there will be a gap. But best choice vs let's say next best choice? In most of the cases differences there are pretty negligible and boil down to utility or very specific cases.

[M1r4g3]

is it though? who do you compete agains when doing raid, or m+ or outdoor content?
literaly only competitive part of game made competitive by blizzard is PVP, and thats understandable, everything else is on players...
M+ is only real content with timer (i dont count enrage) and that is not realy competitive in itself, you dont compete against anyone, someone else doing the dungeon a minute faster than you makes absolutely no difference to you...
as for rating, they added rating to M+ now after 2 and something of expansion with M+ without rating, and why? bcs PEOPLE made and used their own rating since the very begining...

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how exactly do seasonal power system make the game competitive?

Other people....?
Im confused, do you only think something is considered ''competitive'' if it has a pvp sticker on it? Like for example if you're playing a game with some people against a team of bots you don't consider that competitive?

[Indigenously Abled]

I'd say anything outside w100 doing this kind of policing BS is just silly.

How is expecting your team to make optimal choices either policing or silly? In your case, a 6-hour, two-night HoF-caliber guild, you probably don't have to police anything. Your guild's Wowprogress profile post stresses optimal talent builds and consumables.

You vastly overestimate what is really needed to get CE nowadays.

You don't need anyone playing optimally, or making optimal talent choices, to achieve CE. I never made that assertion.

My point, ultimately, is that if your group expects everyone to make optimal choices, it's silly to choose to be the one that isn't.

[sam86]

1- the list of hardcore raiders is actually big, since each server at least have few hundreds of hardcore raiders, now multiply that by number of servers by realms
2- even casual pvp players will get effected since in pvp every difference can be massive, some abilities flat out shit in pvp like being non kyrian pally or necro warrior

[Crimson Spears]

We're like w350-ish give or take, and we most certainly did Crucible CE famed if that's a big metric for you and we most certainly don't police people neither specs nor covenants, ever and guess what somehow we get CE each and every tier for many years now at our 2 night schedule.

You vastly overestimate what is really needed to get CE nowadays. At risk of doing same mistake as you, I'd say anything outside w100 doing this kind of policing BS is just silly.


Now sure I'm not exactly living in a dream world either, for some specs some covenant choices are noticeably bad and for sure if you compare absolute top optimal choice to the total dog bottom choice, there will be a gap. But best choice vs let's say next best choice? In most of the cases differences there are pretty negligible and boil down to utility or very specific cases.

Depends on your class and some cases spec. Some it really isn't that big of a deal for others its rather massive. In some cases picking the wrong covenant does invalidate bringing you to raid and if enough people do it I doubt your passing dps checks later in the tier.

[Biomega]

Raiding is a team effort. I'm investing my time into this, so are many other players.

You shouldn't automatically assume that it's okay for you to not perform as well as you could, which the rest of the raid group then has to compensate for.

Is it a nice thing if the raid group is fine with you sacrificing performance for enjoyment, and will they usually be entirely willing to do so? Probably. But don't go ahead and simply ASSUME so, and don't give people heat for not assuming so.

On your own time, do what you want. If you're taking up other people's time, make sure they're okay with your choices.

[Benjen666]

Calm down and enjoy the game! Dps isn't a KPI of enjoyment.

[confety]

People who dont do ANY group content have fun with whatever.

People who do ANY group content can have fun, and also can feel bad for their lesser performance compared to that other guy that picked the correct covenant. Even more when they chose to just be worse. You know the group is performing worse because of a choice you made.

OFC some people dont give a fuck and im happy for them, because i tried and i ended up making the "Meaningful Choice" of being more useful for my friends even if i was not required to do so. Some people dont like to handicap themselves on purpose.

[cparle87]

It is mostly because the content is tuned around having it. Sure you can make the argument that with extremely specific comps and months of gearing you can overcome it and ignore it but if you have to resort to that argument I would say you don't have much of an argument.

Its a balancing act for blizzard. They are trying to annoy their players just enough so they don't quite.

They've never said anything of the sort. Whenever they've had a system like this, like the artifacts, they made it clear what level of progression the content was tuned around. And it was never maxed out or even close to maxed out. Even mythic Gul'dan they said was tuned around having 10 of the 20 bonus points on the artifact, something easily done within a month of patch launch.

As for your second paragraph, are you really so jaded that you think they're trying to annoy their players?

[Saltysquidoon]

Calm down and enjoy the game! Dps isn't a KPI of enjoyment.

What if you enjoy bosses being dead?

[bigbleach]

PLEASE stop the constant QQ about not liking your cov choices - play whatever you like as if you are outside the top 10, even the top 100 famers, it and your performance do not matter.

Enjoy the game!

I've tried to tell people this type of thing for years. Like, unless you are absolute cutting edge, absolute top progress, absolutely perfect and on top of every aspect and mechanic of your class... Racials, professions, etc, will never be enough of a make or break for you for it to matter. There are more than likely other areas of gameplay that you could improve on and increase your effectiveness than the minor differences those options provide

I can't say for SL, as I haven't played it. I'm sure there is an absolute worst choice for a role. But how far off, honestly, is the top pick vs the 2nd?

Back in cata I played survival on an alt. I stacked haste instead of the prefered stat at the time. I think it was crit or mastery? Idk. I got my haste breakpoint to my GCD being 1 second, so when the fight started, I had my haste cooldown and not long after that, we would lust, and not long after that, I'd have my haste buff back. It was a nasty little setup that let me do some serious DPS for my ilvl at the time. However, I was regularly told I was reforged incorrectly and several times blew other hunters out of the water who followed a cookie cutter build instead of learning their rotation better. I learned not to clip ticks of explosive shot, small things. Those added up for my sub optimal build.

TLDR: I agree with you. But people are still going to minmax the fun out of the game for themselves and complain about it.