Your Optimal Isn’t Mine

I was going through my feed reader’s backlog when I ran across this post from Blessing of Kings. This is always a topic that will get my knickers in a bunch, so let’s get started, shall we?

High-skill players almost always use the optimal spec or strategy. There are a few exceptions, but they are very rare. The vast majority of the time, someone with a non-optimal spec turns out to be a low-skill player.

Encouraging medium or low skill players to feel that they are a “special snowflake” and don’t need to use more optimal builds dooms them and their group to mediocrity and failure. You have enough trouble with lack of skill, why further handicap yourself with a sub-optimal build?

And even the high-skill player with the sub-optimal spec does her group a disservice. If the high-skill player switched to the optimal spec, odds are she would play at an even higher level.

I always resent the whole “you’re holding everyone else back” flavor these discussions take on.  Sure, in a situation where you’re doing hardmodes, I can understand, and there’s truth to it–in that situation.

But, ladies and gentlemen, World of Warcraft is a game. We play games to have fun.  If I love raiding but the spec/class I enjoy most is (we’ll go with my favorite example) Beast Mastery Hunter, and BM hunter isn’t the current top spec, does that mean I shouldn’t have get to raid?

Of course not.

Does that mean that because I happen to enjoy something not the Flavor of the Month, that I am a less than stellar player?  Not at all.  I  know several people that are very excellent players and chose, at some point or other, sub-optimal specs. If you haven’t been so lucky then you’ve been looking in the wrong place, for there’s plenty of them–in guilds like mine.

My guild is full of people playing non-optimal builds.  For a guild that raids only twice a week, we’re still clearing content at a reasonable rate. I dare you to ask anyone in SiB if they think they are doomed to an existance of mediocrity and failure. 

We may not have a place in your Epic Guild of Awesome Leetness and Hardmodes, but we are not lesser players for it. We’re just over here enjoying playing our game the way we find most fun, and collecting shiny purples for it.

You’re more than welcome to play your perfectly valid interpertation of the game over in your corner, but the holier than thou attitude could do with a nerf.

I need a smaller sense of responsibility.

I am back from Disneyworld and expressing mild displeasure at the Chicago weather once more.  Twenty or so degrees colder here, blah!

Of course this also means I have to dive back into whatever guild messes have cropped up in my absence, and find myself facing down my own disgruntlement.

I love GMing.  I also hate GMing.  It comes down to this deep sense of responsibility I bear for…well, every god damned thing.  On one hand, it pushes me to be the best GM I can.  On the other hand, when other people don’t live up to my inner grandoise standards, I can get…resentful.  Even if said resentment is born of a situation I created my own damned self.

The guild culture in BoO is relaxed compared to some.  Can’t make some raids due to RL?  Okay, cool.  Whatever.  Shit happens.  Join us when you can.  We raid, but not everyone in the guild is a raider.  People sometimes bounce between Raiding and Not Raiding depending on what is going on.  Or by choice.

And you know, for the most part, that’s fine.  A problem crops up when several people say eh, I don’t like 25s as much, and I only want to do 10s.  All around the sane time.  A situation that is definitely brewing, if not already happening, in BoO.

*takes a deep breath*

I’m the GM.  The guild focus is currently 25s.  It will remain 25s until our heads are bloodied against that wall, if my reading of the officer core that runs the guild is correct.  This means that if we loose too many people to do 25s, it’s back to the recruitment/canceled raid grind I hate so much.  This also means that my limited raiding time is locked into those two 25 man days a week, no matter what happens.  I am not the only one who is probably locked into those days either, as people have had to tweak work and school schedules to make those days.  This means that there’s at least a handful of people that are affected every single time a 25 man raid is called due to numbers.  We can’t split into 10s–there’s already guild 10s going during other days of the week.  People are saved.  A canceled ICC 25 turns into a ToC 25 or…nothing.

A canceled ICC 25 means that I don’t get to raid, because I can’t make most of those 10s, or at best, only 1 day of 2.  I don’t really feel that it’s fair to the rest of that group to do that on a regular basis, though I’m glad to step in if they need and ask me to.

I will keep the 25s going as best I can because that is my job.  It is the responsibility that I willingly took on.

But I can’t help but be jealous of others ability to step back and do 10s.  I, too, love the cozier atmosphere of 10s (though I don’t love 25s any less).  I will miss the people that have decided that they are done with 25s becuase…well, now I won’t get to raid with them, and I consider some of them friends.  Meanwhile I’ll recruit and wheedle and beg and fill raids with people who…probably shouldn’t even be there until we’re in a good spot again.   Maybe I’ll make new friends!  But I’ll complain about it anyway.

YES I MADE MY BED AND I WILL LIE IN IT BUT I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO BITCH THE ENTIRE GOD DAMNED TIME. 

But this post has been entirely too bitter.  For those of you who missed the OMG CAPS announcement on Twitter during my vacation, my dear Cranky Tank proposed just after the EPCOT fireworks, and because I’m just as crazy as he is, I said yes.  Everyone who also follows my personal blog is therefore OFFICIALLY WARNED as to future wedding related contents and may now flee before it is too late.

\o/

Oh, and the promised picture of a SMILING Bubbles will be posted as soon as a pry it off the lap top!