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  1. #41
    For vast majority of mythic guilds biggest concern is survivability and consistency. Not the dps itself.
    Simply because low dps won't block you AS MUCH as:

    1. Wasting time on reclearing raids - consistency and survivability issues when players dies randomly to mechanics of already progressed bosses.

    This creates a problem when farm is taking too long and you don't have much time left to progress new boss.

    2. Low consistency of certain players when they cannot reproduce the pattern they have done in the past leading to multiple wipes.

    This is a problem when RL/Officers only look at damage not on survivability first. You end up with unreliable people slowing down the progress.

    Long story short

    If you compare raid full of
    top meta classes who dies to shit or have hard time learning mechanics
    vs
    having team that plays whoever the fuck they want BUT are 100% consistent and avoid shit so perfectly healers are going to make tea in the middle of a fight

    2nd team wins hands down in terms of progression.

    Obviously this isn't the case with maybe top 100 guilds where dps is actual bottleneck.

    Been in top 200 guild where dps was the only determinant of a "good raider", playing 4 days x 4 hours.
    And we lost to guild playing 3x3h simply because their team had much higher survivability and consistency. They didn't waste time on farm.

  2. #42
    Old God Mirishka's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by styil View Post
    Whenever there is a discussion about raid performance, the go-to rebuttal is almost always "play what you want to play", as if it handwaves away the genuine performance concerns that are being raised in the argument. Nonetheless, do raiders really get to play the spec that they want to in raids, especially those specs who are always underperforming?

    I can see how there might be some players, who have been veterans in their guilds, can get away with it while the rest of the guild puts up with them due to their authority. But for the majority of players, particularly those who are joining a new guild, I don't believe they have the luxury of truly "playing what they want".

    If we look at the warcraftlogs statistics, the general trend is that the lower the DPS, the lower the total number of parses. For example, the bottom 10 specs have a total of 17,838 total parses whereas the top 10 specs have a total of 54,698 parses, more than 3x as many. This indicates to me that players aren't really playing "what they want", but playing "what is best".

    Based on the above, can we really say that raiders are playing "what they want"?
    I play what I want, when I want, and I don't care how anybody feels about that. Still getting raid invites just fine.
    Appreciate your time with friends and family while they're here. Don't wait until they're gone to tell them what they mean to you.

  3. #43
    I raid lead a very causal heroic guild group and we've always allowed "play what you want" this goes back to when I first started in BC. We've always done fine with this, right now is not any different.

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Tradu View Post
    I think the problem with "play what you want" is that while you absolutely can, it's objectively harder to get into guilds/raids as certain specs(even if the spec in question is actually doing fine performance wise), so that impacts which specs people end up playing.
    Pretty much this, my last 5 years is basically a story of constant struggles to get into guilds even ones ranked well below my past performance peak (which was around world 150 rank), and nope, not guild hopping they just tend to disband / stop raiding due to burnout / roster issues. But yeah, basically because I don't wanna faction change and don't wanna fotm reroll it's harder and harder to find any spots.

    Also constant suggestions / nagging to reroll, constant remarks "top guilds use x class instead"... And tbh it's not just me, I've seen various cases of GM telling a player outright "either you reroll from x class, or you're permabenched". Just recently it happened with guild's shadow priest. In Uldir it happened to our ele shaman. In EP to resto druid.

    Unless you don't raid in a guild that has CE aspirations, then yeah, it may not apply to you. Otherwise be prepared for a lot of declines, benching or bullying to reroll if you play some underdog spec.

    "Play what you want" and "all specs are viable" is a myth and a noob-trap. The fact that "Wordup plays enhancement and he's fine" doesn't mean anyone will want to recruit YOUR enhancement shaman. "We don't need more melee", "we don't have a spot for a shaman", doesn't matter what your logs are, unless you're a god of this game not minding being stuck in a guild 500 ranks below your potential and boosting people who do 30% less dps than you.

    Most people who do rank on underdog specs like windwalker or frost mage are probably entrenched in their guilds and have social leverage to play what they want without scrutiny. A luxury a fresh applicant will never have.

  5. #45
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    "Play what you want" is not a statement on how things are, but a recommendation to how you can play in response to it.

    Yes, players will often switch to what is best in a tier, but that does invalidate the statement, that you can still play the game/raid playing whatever class/spec you want.

    The statement is also something that is rarely said to people, who actually will follow it. Some people feel bad about doing lower dps than other raiders and complain, which often follows with the comment "You can do good with every class/spec, just have fun or get gut". In this situation, people are not looking for encouragement to play what they like, but for some agreement in that things are unfair.

    So yeah, "Play what you want" is still a thing, i just think that too many people write it to people, who aren't actually looking for that answer.
    May the lore be great and the stories interesting. A game without a story, is a game without a soul. Value the lore and it will reward you with fun!

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  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    Pretty much this, my last 5 years is basically a story of constant struggles to get into guilds even ones ranked well below my past performance peak (which was around world 150 rank), and nope, not guild hopping they just tend to disband / stop raiding due to burnout / roster issues. But yeah, basically because I don't wanna faction change and don't wanna fotm reroll it's harder and harder to find any spots.

    Also constant suggestions / nagging to reroll, constant remarks "top guilds use x class instead"... And tbh it's not just me, I've seen various cases of GM telling a player outright "either you reroll from x class, or you're permabenched". Just recently it happened with guild's shadow priest. In Uldir it happened to our ele shaman. In EP to resto druid.

    Unless you don't raid in a guild that has CE aspirations, then yeah, it may not apply to you. Otherwise be prepared for a lot of declines, benching or bullying to reroll if you play some underdog spec.

    "Play what you want" and "all specs are viable" is a myth and a noob-trap. The fact that "Wordup plays enhancement and he's fine" doesn't mean anyone will want to recruit YOUR enhancement shaman. "We don't need more melee", "we don't have a spot for a shaman", doesn't matter what your logs are, unless you're a god of this game not minding being stuck in a guild 500 ranks below your potential and boosting people who do 30% less dps than you.

    Most people who do rank on underdog specs like windwalker or frost mage are probably entrenched in their guilds and have social leverage to play what they want without scrutiny. A luxury a fresh applicant will never have.
    It's a player perception problem, they don't care WHY people say something is lower, or even how much lower, or even look into if the person they are listening to has any knowledge on the subject. They just heat "enhance sucks! " And run with it.

    In legion shadow was very low in m+ (understandable considering their design) at the start and no one took them, but guess what... When shadow became pretty good in m+ people still didn't take them because the weren't good before. It's bullshit but maybe some day it'll change.

    Look at how easy classic is and people STILL want to bitch about dps. We cleared aq40 and most of naxx (tier was super fucking short) in vanilla with meme specs...

  7. #47
    ''Play what you want to play'' is relevant for ~80% of the WoW playerbase.

    You don't need to be meta slave to do HC or below +10 keys (and I feel comfortable in saying that's the limit and extend of ambition of most players).
    However, this game is not an E-sport where everything is measured to the last pixel so as to be balanced and fair.

  8. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by Voidwielder View Post
    ''Play what you want to play'' is relevant for ~80% of the WoW playerbase.
    Pretty much this. It's only at the extremes that things become very pronounced, one way or the other. The higher you go in content, the more streamlined it becomes. Method doing world-first kills is not going to go "ah well just play what you want", just as some random weekend normal-only raiding guild isn't going to say "sorry you have to play fire mage instead of frost because numbers". In the middle, where most of WoW happens, there's varying degrees of one or the other depending on where you move.

    And that's fine. Communities come together and impose restrictions on themselves. The gatekeeping that happens is because people value their time, and want to maximize what they get out of it; there's an implicit understanding about this in contexts like mythic raiding guilds etc. They expect you to perform as best you can because that context is ABOUT performing as best you can. If you don't want to do that, then perhaps that type of content isn't for you. It'd be a little selfish to demand other people sacrifice their time for your personal preference. Imagine going to, say, a track & field relay meet and telling your relay team "actually I like running in sandals" - if they're okay with it, no problem; but you can't EXPECT them to be okay with it, because the context you're in presupposes a certain ambition that you're not fulfilling. If you want to stick to that ambition, you need to find a different context where that ambition is acceptable.

    All that being said, there ARE balance issues at play of course. It's a bit of a wonky problem since the rules change a lot, are largely arbitrary, and up to Blizzard to modify. That makes it a somewhat complicated conundrum to unpack.

  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Video Games View Post
    I have mythic orange logs as frost back in bfd, but i dont think you understand how broken fire is right now and in 2 weeks with the cape proc, it will get more broken

    - - - Updated - - -



    No good ce guild, then
    I understand very well. I just disagree. There are guilds who go for the best wowprog rank they can achieve, if you are in one of those, you haven chosen to join this guild, and therefore accepted you should play the best spec. There are also guilds which do not try to get the best possible rank, and just achieve CE.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Wilfire View Post
    If you aren't playing the best available spec for your class, you are holding your team behind. If you are holding your team behind, you'll get benched. 100% of raiders have to play meta specs / builds. People who don't and claim to be "raiders" aren't actually raiders and wouldn't be raiding at all if Blizzard didn't make 3 faceroll difficulties for them.
    So... How's your mythic guild coming along? Oh, still struggling in normal? How adorable.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by Nite92 View Post
    There are guilds who go for the best wowprog rank they can achieve, if you are in one of those, you haven chosen to join this guild, and therefore accepted you should play the best spec. There are also guilds which do not try to get the best possible rank, and just achieve CE.
    False dichotomy. I know a guild that's hardstuck on mythic Hivemind atm and they care A LOT about their server and wowprogress ranks, and they nitpick at people for random crap instead of focusing on the important parts (like finding safe spots to minimize the chance to be hit by roller ballers cuz that's what's wiping them atm not players' lack of min-max). Oh, btw they didn't even get CE in EP, got hardstuck on Zaquul.

    Back in WOD I was also declined from several heroic, not mythic, guilds for the class I play. Even though in my opinion in hc progression guilds it doesn't matter what class you play and you can clear hc with nearly any setup, as long as it's within reason. But the mentality in majority of guilds even less progressed ones is "why take a tier b class when we can wait until tier s class applies", only guilds that don't do it are guilds that are pressed with roster and have to fill the spot asap.

    Tbh on the current patch feral or enhancement aren't really underpowered, yet people still don't want to invite them and think they're "meme specs".

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    In legion shadow was very low in m+ (understandable considering their design) at the start and no one took them, but guess what... When shadow became pretty good in m+ people still didn't take them because the weren't good before. It's bullshit but maybe some day it'll change.
    Yep, it often requires spec to be overbuffed to oblivion or a lot of time to pass for people to change their minds.
    Last edited by Marrilaife; 2020-02-18 at 07:26 AM.

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Marrilaife View Post
    False dichotomy. I know a guild that's hardstuck on mythic Hivemind atm and they care A LOT about their server and wowprogress ranks, and they nitpick at people for random crap instead of focusing on the important parts (like finding safe spots to minimize the chance to be hit by roller ballers cuz that's what's wiping them atm not players' lack of min-max). Oh, btw they didn't even get CE in EP, got hardstuck on Zaquul.

    Back in WOD I was also declined from several heroic, not mythic, guilds for the class I play. Even though in my opinion in hc progression guilds it doesn't matter what class you play and you can clear hc with nearly any setup, as long as it's within reason. But the mentality in majority of guilds even less progressed ones is "why take a tier b class when we can wait until tier s class applies", only guilds that don't do it are guilds that are pressed with roster and have to fill the spot asap.

    Tbh on the current patch feral or enhancement aren't really underpowered, yet people still don't want to invite them and think they're "meme specs".
    So what? Just because I intend to reach the best rank possible does not mean that I act towards that. Just because some people eat chocolate instead of vegetables to live healthier, does not mean that their diet is now healthier.


    Achieving the BEST rank possible for a raid team is mutually exclusive with allowing players to stay in not optimal specs.

  13. #53
    So let me guess... This is just one of those many threads where the OP makes a dumb claim, everyone repeating each other to correct him, and the OP is never heard from again after realizing how foolish he sounded.

    Just another day in the life of the internet.

  14. #54
    As a "serious" raider you don't get to play what you like unless the content is irrelevant. You play what's performing the best.

  15. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by Very Tired View Post
    So let me guess... This is just one of those many threads where the OP makes a dumb claim, everyone repeating each other to correct him, and the OP is never heard from again after realizing how foolish he sounded.

    Just another day in the life of the internet.
    As though he posted in his own threads to begin with.

  16. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by kranur View Post
    As a "serious" raider you don't get to play what you like unless the content is irrelevant. You play what's performing the best.
    Lol, if that were true there would be zero point in raiding. "Don't raid and play the game for fun, play for meta"

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Lol, if that were true there would be zero point in raiding. "Don't raid and play the game for fun, play for meta"
    That is precisely true. You can't just play the worst spec and constantly underperfrom in mythic raids for example just because you like it, not while also being successful anyway. Some may get carried for a while but most won't. Heroic raids and below don't matter, that's the whole point of having multiple difficulties.

  18. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by kranur View Post
    That is precisely true. You can't just play the worst spec and constantly underperfrom in mythic raids for example just because you like it, not while also being successful anyway. Some may get carried for a while but most won't. Heroic raids and below don't matter, that's the whole point of having multiple difficulties.
    People clear mythic all the time in the "slightly worse spec" nothing is incapable of doing enough to clear mythic

  19. #59
    Bloodsail Admiral Micronetic's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Video Games View Post
    If i bring up playing frost over fire, my gm says hell kick me
    If a gm would say this to me I would say him he can pay for my sub so I'll play what "he wants".

  20. #60
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    As with many things in life: You can't always have your cake and eat it.

    If you WANT to be super competitive then yes, you need to choose the best spec.
    If you WANT to be able to choose your spec then you need to accept that you're going to be a little less competitive.


    Ultimately it all boils down to what is most important to you. There is nothing in the game that dictates what spec you must play in order to participate in the content, although it does have some impact on your ranking if you're playing at the high end.

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