tl;dr:
1. Nobody is forcing you to "minmax". There are tons of casual guilds that will accept anyone just to fill a raid group.
2. "minmaxing" is not black and white, it is a spectrum. There are various levels of "minmaxing". Not all of them are bad.
3. There is no "correct" way to play vanilla.
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I constantly see people crying about "wahh elitsts, wahh minmaxers!!" around every Classic forum, usually in topics discussing viability of classes/specs. Every time someone points out that Ret paladins are awful raid DPS, it is met with cries of "REEE ELITIST MINMAXER REEE" and such.
Uh...there's a big difference between "minmaxing" and "not wanting to bring an awful DPS". There are various levels of "minmaxing", it's not black and white.
To give some examples of how minmaxing is a spectrum:
Looking up the best talent spec for your class/role and BIS gear list
- Kinda minmaxing
Not bringing hybrid DPS to raid, making sure everyone is properly specced
- Decently minmaxing
Using full consumes on every boss, even farm content, getting DM buffs and world buffs for every farm raid
- Really minmaxing
All healers are Priests or Paladins/Shamans, only 1 druid in the raid for mark of the wild, only 2 warlocks in the raid for curses, only 2 hunters in the raid for tranq, all other DPS are warrior/rogue/mage
- Insane minmaxing
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See what I mean? You can "minmax" and still be reasonable with it. "minmaxing" does not automatically mean going to insane lengths of no-fun-allowed. In my experiences on private servers over the past 4 years, most guilds are just "decently" minmaxing. They might have ONE enhancement shaman / ret paladin with Nightfall, but that's about it.
On top of this, why is it a bad thing to want to play your character to its fullest potential? I don't understand why striving to be the best you can be is now "elitist" and deemed a bad, negative thing. This type of anti-improvement rhetoric tends to be thrown around by people wanting to play awful meme DPS, claiming that ret paladins and elemental shamans and balance druids are good DPS and should be brought to every raid.
Again, I really don't consider it "elitist" or "minmaxing" to not want a Ret paladin in your raid. It's not just a matter of DPS, but also a matter of utility. Ret just doesn't bring anything that a Holy paladin can't. Same with Enh/Ele Shamans. A Resto Shaman can bring all the same buffs/totems, in addition to Mana Tide which is a huge boon to the other healers. Feral does okay DPS, but also buffs the melee with 3% crit and is an extra brez/innervate as well as an emergency offtank. Shadow Priest at least benefits the warlocks and can still bubble/dispel/emergency heal.
In vanilla, you have to work as a raid/guild to clear the content, and as such, you should consider what is best for the raid group as a whole, not what is best for yourself. Shadow Priest at least benefits the warlocks and can still bubble/dispel/emergency heal, and Feral druids can do some decent DPS and also offtank, but Ret/Enh/Ele/Balance just can't really do enough DPS to justify their raid spot. Your only hope for raiding as Ret/Enh is to get a Nightfall and find a casual guild.
And I know, a common response is going to be:
"but vanilla raids are so easy, you don't need to have max DPS! a couple ret paladins won't hurt you!"
Probably true, but the point is that by bringing a ret paladin, you are consciously choosing to bring a DPS that's going to do less than half the DPS of a warrior/rogue/mage/warlock, while bringing nothing to the raid that a holy paladin can't. If you're struggling to fill your raid, sure, a ret paladin won't hurt you, but if the choice is between a ret and a warrior/rogue/mage/warlock, there's really no reason to choose the ret, if all other variables are equal. Also, once you're in AQ40/Naxx, you're really going to want as much DPS as you can get. Having bad hybrid DPS is only going to make things harder.
Just tired of people throwing around "minmaxer" as some kind of derogatory term, implying that people who strive to improve themselves and play to their fullest potential are wrong and bad.