Constantly switching spec/talents/trinkets is not fun?

[T-34]

Playing a Shaman, raid leaders demand I switch from Ele to Resto for certain bosses. Yes I want to be helpful but I chose Ele, not Resto.

The right corruptions for every situation. The right essenses for every situation.

How is that fun?

1. Nobody forces you to be in that raid. If you don't want to do as told by your RL then you are welcome to make your own raid with your own rules.
2. Some people find it fun to be as good as possible. I know this is alien for people like you who take pride in not being good.

Just remember that there are many definitions of fun.

So what can you do? Find like-minded people and play with them. Anything else is a waste of your time and energy.

[Ragnarohk]

So yeah you don't raid very high especially if your only at that point in this extremely long patch... Why should we take balancing advice from someone who will never kill a road block boss this tier?

Your never going to scratch the requirements for cara much less z'noth.

The game shouldn't be balanced around mythic raiders. They are a minority

[dav5037]

And that's what the definition of choice is.
I choose these gear/talents/traits/etc. for this boss, and I choose other ones for another one.
Removing the option to do that is actually depriving the player of choice.

A bit off topic but personally I think the 'puzzle' of what to choose becomes a LOT more interesting/complex when you change literally one word of your statement above....
I choose these gear/talents/traits/etc. for this instance, and I choose other ones for another one.

I think the whole concept of making these choices on a per boss basis actually restricts the encounter designers rather than giving them the freedom to use different bosses to counter balance each other. For example talent A is optimal on boss 1 but talent B is optimal on boss 2. Now you may say if 7 bosses favor A and 3 favor B then its straightforward just take A but what if they tune it so that if everyone takes A then you cant succeed on boss 2 because your whole raid is suboptimal. It makes you work with your raid group to determine what's optimal for the raid which could often be different than what's optimal for you the individual.

Just a thought

[Thorcall]

This is the rule for mm+, it work well here but only because the difficulty is evenly distribute throught the instance. The hard thing in every raid is the last boss (yes i know, emeral nightmare, that a very specific case, probably not gonna happen again). If something like this ever happen, the only viable choice gonna be to take what's optimal on the last boss.

[Rayzen17]

Sounds like maybe people will have to either build around one covenant, or they can build four toons *if they want to min-max that much*. Their choice if they *must have* every possible choice set exactly right. If you're in a top 100 mythic raid guild, sure. If you're not, you're really not all that, and don't need it anyway.

Which means most of this forum, doesn't need it anyway.

Do you even need to use talents? Or would you be fine without picking anything?

[goldlock]

The game shouldn't be balanced around mythic raiders. They are a minority

Shouldn't it be balanced around them?

Well that or 2400+ pvpers I suppose... why would you balance the game round the part where it doesn't matter.

[Vdub4133]

In BfA it's even worse with the azerite traits resepcing people do. Some are good at AoE, some are good at single target, some are good for PvP... And you keep them all switching all the time by respecing in the city, or, even worse, have bags full of them. Playing a Shaman, raid leaders demand I switch from Ele to Resto for certain bosses. Yes I want to be helpful but I chose Ele, not Resto. Noone asked me to switch from Resto to Ele on a certain boss in TBC. It was way too big of a hassle, and the gear would not fit at all either. And that was a good thing.

I completely agree. The gear flexing to your spec and the ability to change your spec on the spot really took the "individuality" out of certain specs. Your Ele example is perfect. I miss the days of healers stacking spirit. Back in the day a geared ele could never switch to resto and not burn through their mana instantly.

[NineSpine]

Shouldn't it be balanced around them?

Well that or 2400+ pvpers I suppose... why would you balance the game round the part where it doesn't matter.

Your belief that balance only matters at the high end is completely wrong.

[Saltysquidoon]

I completely agree. The gear flexing to your spec and the ability to change your spec on the spot really took the "individuality" out of certain specs. Your Ele example is perfect. I miss the days of healers stacking spirit. Back in the day a geared ele could never switch to resto and not burn through their mana instantly.

Do you actually have a reason to miss spirit other than OLD GUD NU BAD. Literally all spirit did was not let heals geared players dps and not let dps geared players heal, it had literally no other function. At least the tank stats did something.

[goldlock]

Your belief that balance only matters at the high end is completely wrong.

How so?

Not asking to be insincere but honest curiosity. What needs to be balanced outside of the high end? I could see pvp but that is always a mixed bag balance wise.

[NineSpine]

How so?

Not asking to be insincere but honest curiosity. What needs to be balanced outside of the high end? I could see pvp but that is always a mixed bag balance wise.

People at low to mid levels don’t want to be wildly imbalanced. It doesn’t feel good to poorly balanced at any level.

[Vdub4133]

Do you actually have a reason to miss spirt other than OLD GUD NU BAD. Literally all spirit did was not let heals geared players dps and not let dps geared players heal, it had literally no other function. At least the tank stats did something.

That's simply not true. Spirit provided mana over time. It was extremely useful in an era of the game when mana pools ran out more frequently. As a healer in the current state of the game, what is the point of mana if it never runs out? Spirit was rewarding because when you really started to get better gear as a healer, you FELT it. You could last longer in fights(pve AND pvp), and felt invincible at points due to the Mp5 you we're receiving in combat. And yes, spirit was pointless for dps... so those greedy dps (mages cough cough) kept their hands off my gear.

[Saltysquidoon]

That's simply not true. Spirit provided mana over time. It was extremely useful in an era of the game when mana pools ran out more frequently. As a healer in the current state of the game, what is the point of mana if it never runs out? Spirit was rewarding because when you really started to get better gear as a healer, you FELT it. You could last longer in fights(pve AND pvp), and felt invincible at points due to the Mp5 you we're receiving in combat. And yes, spirit was pointless for dps... so those greedy dps (mages cough cough) kept their hands off my gear.

Yes, I know what spirit does. Which was the point of my post literally all spirt did was act as an artificial barrier to healing because without it you arbitrarily couldn't heal. Hence my comment about tank stats, they were also arbitrary but they still actually did something.

It's still very possible to go oom on live as a healer. Further, it was always, always the case that after a certain point in the gear cycle healers would stop going oom and spirit became a dead stat, there are multiple blue posts and dev watercoolers about spirit making gear feel bad for healers after a point. I remember clearly at the end of ToC and early ICC tanks were just stacking stam because it was impossible for a healer to oom just spamming them.

[Tharkkun]

People at low to mid levels don’t want to be wildly imbalanced. It doesn’t feel good to poorly balanced at any level.

Unfortunately player skill varies wildly from the top to the bottom. You could give 1000 players the same gear and do all 3 difficulties and 75% of them would've survive the fights. Awareness plays a huge part yet they love to blame it on gear or class imbalance.

[goldlock]

People at low to mid levels don’t want to be wildly imbalanced. It doesn’t feel good to poorly balanced at any level.

I am not really sure how you avoid that... Well not without having the same class copy pasted over and over again. Some specs and classes by their very nature are simply easier to play at a average level then others. A average DH and a average warr even with perfect balance won't have the same results as dh is just easier to play.

Same with arcane mages and other casters.

While I could see it being annoying I think its folly to try and balance around the mid tier and lower the skill level of players are so wildly skewed as to make it impossible.

[Vampyrr]

actualy usualy it comes down to if you want to kill boss in 10minutes or in 9 minutes and 55seconds...

Eh more like 10m vs 6m

[Saltysquidoon]

You balance the skill ceiling around the top end of play and the floor around an average skill level (not a poor skill level). This is the balance goal of basically every game that requires ongoing asymmetric balance, this isn't hidden arcane knowledge that should come as a shock to anyone.

[jellmoo]

Being optimal to me is the most meaningful a choice can be, if i know im suboptimal in one aspect by having to choose a semi permanent build then that lessens the meaning and enjoyment of the game for me.

Except the meaning of "optimal" isn't set in stone. Right now, optimal just means the absolute best choice per encounter with no restrictions. There is no decision making involved. If it's locked for the Raid, you still have the opportunity to pick "optimal" choices. You just have to prioritize what you feel is optimal overall. This requires actual decision making and balancing pros and cons, not just taking the best path all the time. If there isn't a meaningful choice involved, Blizzard may as well just program the game to automatically change your loadout per encounter automatically giving you the best options each time.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Let me try to explain to you. The reason people will never decide to use a ground mount if they have the ability to use a flying mount is because it is 210% faster.

So your argument is people lack self-restraint, so everyone else should suffer because of the people that lack self-restraint.

That seems incredibly petty and spiteful.

[Triden]

I have even seen people switch for trash mobs then back to boss talents. How is choosing a talent a choice, if you change them around every fight?

The irony in this statement is real. How is choosing a talent a choice if you change it all the time? This is sort of like claiming choosing what you're eating isn't really a choice because you change what you eat every meal. What? If I were forced to choose one meal to eat for every meal each week -- would that somehow increase the number of choices I have in that week? Sure, it would sort of make the choice a bit more meaningful since it impacts the rest of the week -- but let's not pretend being forced to make that choice wouldn't suck. Analogy aside, let's be real. If you're trying to argue that not allowing change makes the choice more meaningful -- you're kidding yourself. People just look up the "best" spec on icey veins or wherever and use that. If you make it harder to change that choice, then people will be even MORE fixated on making the "right" choice and will not bother playing around with different things that might work. So, all you do is a) reduce the number of possible choices people can make and b) ensure that even more people all make the exact same choice.

That aside, back when you could change gear in M+ whenever you wanted -- how many people do you think actually did this on a per trash or trash vs boss or even just per boss basis? I'd wager maybe 5% of the playerbase? I would maybe swap out a legendary on occasion (e.g., swap in a Prydaz if it was a heavy damage fight and we were having trouble). Outside of that, I almost never did. BUT it was cool that I could when I needed to. I could make that choice and it was fun. People who want to optimize around every trash pull do it because it's fun for them. The number of players who would do that because they "have" to is minuscule. This was the very definition of solving a problem that didn't exist.