A character is a very personal thing. You gain a certain kinship to your little creation over time. After all, you watched this little collection of pixels grow from a level one weakling mage into a level eighty killing machine. You've invested years into your character, studying each patch that comes out, each new change to the talent trees, each new gear addition, and taking more time to plan out his little future than you did your own kids. He is, by all other means, an extension of your dedication.
So, you pick your favorite talent spec. As a mage, you've tinkered with frost builds, fire builds, frost and fire builds, and have probably spent thousands of gold and hours on respec'ing alone. You've finally figured out exactly what you want your mage to do. You are happy.
One day you see a guild who is recruiting and they are going to be doing the latest uber-awesome raid dungeon and are look for a few good mages to fill their ranks. Surely, you feel your skills and gear could easily accommodate these nice fellows. You apply on their forums and await your obvious entry into the guild. Clearly, they'd be crazy to pass you up.
Well, a little later that day, you receive a whisper in game telling you that while they appreciate your application, you didn't make the cut.
"Wha?? How could this be?"
As it turns out, their officers took a look at your armory page and looked over your currect spec. They were puzzled by what they saw.
"Why would you put talents in there? And why spend those in that? You're not doing your maximum DPS!!"
Many people have been convinced that the only way to play this game is to so called min/max their characters. Min/maxing is the process in which you minimize downtime and cost and maximize damage or healing. This gets to the point of literally stripping your character down to the bare minimum talents needed to function as a coherent life-form and dumping the rest of your points into damage talents.
Imagine a car build for speed, being stripped down to it's bare metal frame, with the engine bolted into place and four wheels. They'd go with three wheels if they thought they could get away with it, just to make it a tad bit faster. That's essentially what's going on with min/maxing here.
People are spec'ing their characters in such a way that they can only do ONE thing. Sure, they do it well, but it's all they can do. Throw them into a situation where they have to do something slightly different, just slightly, and it's off to the trainer to respec. (even with dual spec'ing)
See, if you were a druid, you might dual spec damage and healing. If the raid leader asks you to heal, no problem. You've got it covered. If he demands some UBEROMGWTF DPS, again... no problem. Your Kittycat-o-Doom is all set! But... UH OH! Mr. Druid, we might need you to off-tank this one guy here! Now you start to panic. You didn't get a single bear talen in your feral tree. You went ALL kittycat-o-doom for maximum UBERWTFOMG DPS. No time to go respec now though. You're gonna have to just grin and BEAR it. (haha, see what I did there?)
Needless to say, that poor druid is going to be in for a tough time. If only he would have sacrificed one hundred or two hundred DPS, he might have been MORE valuable to the raid as a handy on-call off-tank instead of trying to top the damage meters.
Raiding isn't always about who can transform their character into the biggest cannon and fire the fastest. Sometimes sacrificing a little from the damage department to help your fellow raid members out is far more valuable.
So, you pick your favorite talent spec. As a mage, you've tinkered with frost builds, fire builds, frost and fire builds, and have probably spent thousands of gold and hours on respec'ing alone. You've finally figured out exactly what you want your mage to do. You are happy.
One day you see a guild who is recruiting and they are going to be doing the latest uber-awesome raid dungeon and are look for a few good mages to fill their ranks. Surely, you feel your skills and gear could easily accommodate these nice fellows. You apply on their forums and await your obvious entry into the guild. Clearly, they'd be crazy to pass you up.
Well, a little later that day, you receive a whisper in game telling you that while they appreciate your application, you didn't make the cut.
"Wha?? How could this be?"
As it turns out, their officers took a look at your armory page and looked over your currect spec. They were puzzled by what they saw.
"Why would you put talents in there? And why spend those in that? You're not doing your maximum DPS!!"
Many people have been convinced that the only way to play this game is to so called min/max their characters. Min/maxing is the process in which you minimize downtime and cost and maximize damage or healing. This gets to the point of literally stripping your character down to the bare minimum talents needed to function as a coherent life-form and dumping the rest of your points into damage talents.
Imagine a car build for speed, being stripped down to it's bare metal frame, with the engine bolted into place and four wheels. They'd go with three wheels if they thought they could get away with it, just to make it a tad bit faster. That's essentially what's going on with min/maxing here.
People are spec'ing their characters in such a way that they can only do ONE thing. Sure, they do it well, but it's all they can do. Throw them into a situation where they have to do something slightly different, just slightly, and it's off to the trainer to respec. (even with dual spec'ing)
See, if you were a druid, you might dual spec damage and healing. If the raid leader asks you to heal, no problem. You've got it covered. If he demands some UBEROMGWTF DPS, again... no problem. Your Kittycat-o-Doom is all set! But... UH OH! Mr. Druid, we might need you to off-tank this one guy here! Now you start to panic. You didn't get a single bear talen in your feral tree. You went ALL kittycat-o-doom for maximum UBERWTFOMG DPS. No time to go respec now though. You're gonna have to just grin and BEAR it. (haha, see what I did there?)
Needless to say, that poor druid is going to be in for a tough time. If only he would have sacrificed one hundred or two hundred DPS, he might have been MORE valuable to the raid as a handy on-call off-tank instead of trying to top the damage meters.
Raiding isn't always about who can transform their character into the biggest cannon and fire the fastest. Sometimes sacrificing a little from the damage department to help your fellow raid members out is far more valuable.
