The Hunting Lodge is a World of Warcraft Hunter community website. We’re here to help you improve and enjoy playing your hunter. If you don’t find what you’re looking for on the blog, make sure to check out the Hunting Lodge Forums. Also, make sure to listen to The Hunting Lodge Podcast
WARNING! This post might be considered a rant.
I have been really struggling with the question of “When is good, good enough?” when playing WoW.
For example, when do you have enough gold in the game? Is it when you’ve hit the gold cap on your character? Is it when you’ve earned The Bread Winner achievement? But that’s just gold, there’s other areas that have seem to have gotten a bit out of hand.
What about achievements? Is it when you’ve gotten over 10,000 Achievement points? Or maybe you’re just crazy enough to over after Insane in the Membrane.
For example, what about Alts? There’s even a podcast that celebrates the fun and joy of having multiple alts even to the extreme of having multiple accounts. Now, that’s okay if it’s your thing, but again, I ask when is it enough?
But none of this competes with on particular concept that we’ve all come to just blindly accept. The way you play a hunter from the spec you choose, to your gear and your pet, should always match what has been determined as the “Best” or “Maximum” at that time.
Don’t look at me like I just shot your baby kitten. Hear me out and then you can hate me later. Fair enough? Cool
We have multiple spreadsheets, simulators, websites, guides, calculators, add-ons, log parsers, blogs, forums and podcasts that either promote or support the concept of min/maxing the game. And for the record, the Lodge was the first to step up and keep Cheeky’s legacy alive and until recently . And believe it or not, Shandara’s spreadsheet, Zeherah’s Hunter DPS Analyzer, and even Rawr have all used some of the mechanics or formulas from our work over in The Hunting Lodge Forums. All that means is when needed I can be as hardcore and theorycraft with the best of them. (Okay, maybe not the absolute best as I don’t get into the super high math stuff, but that’s what the Lodge is for, right?)
With that said, when I ask the question have we gone too far, I am asking as one of the people that has consistently helped create and promote the concept “Hunters are a pure DPS class. As such Hunters should do the maximum amount of DPS possible.”
But is that really the philosophy we should be following? Should a player feel compelled to use a spreadsheet, website, or blindly follow the advice or bloggers and podcasters just to achieve some theoretical maximum?
I just can’t see that this is what Blizzard wants for the game. Besides the fact that Blizzard gives us hunters 3 different specs. We’ve also heard on several occasions where Ghostcrawler discounts combat logs and spreadhseets. I used to wonder why, but now I think I may be seeing the light.
Maybe I’m having a crisis of faith in my class, but I really don’t think so. I think the time of having an elitist
“Min/Max” mindset to the game is either rapidly coming to an end or maybe at least needs to change dramatically.
Now before you go and do as a dear departed friend of mine would say, “Get your piss in a boil.” or in laymen terms, get your panties in a wad, listen up. I’m not saying that theorycrafting is bad. I’m not blasting the sites like Elitist Jerks, Warcraft Hunter’s Union.
All of the people involved on those projects and sites are some of the most awesome around. Truly, I can’t say I have ever met anyone in the game or anyone out in the blogging/podcasting community that I can’t say has been an honor to meet.
With that said, it doesn’t answer my question, “When is enough, enough?”
You see, the issue really isn’t the theorycrafters or the elitists. What it really is about, is us players and how we take their advice. It’s also about us bloggers and podcasters, and how we share that advice to you, the player.
Have you ever asked one of us for advice? And what did we say?
I bet, we gave you the same or very similar answer each and everytime. Basically quoting from the same proverbial “Don’t gimp your raid” philosophy.
Interesting statement isn’t it? “Don’t gimp your raid.” What does that mean exactly?
Simply put, it means making that you will need to sacrifice relatively small personal enjoyment for the greater good of of the raid.
And here’s the rub. I can’t tell you how many times I get email or have gotten messages from people on Twitter stating how much they wish they could spec as BM and raid, but can’t because of “Gimping the raid.”
This is my point. People are now being made to feel guilty for choosing a spec that isn’t “the best possible”. Heck, if you’re in a raid with a cat, I’m sure you’ll hear from someone complaining that you’re a noob because you’re not using a Wolf.
To me this is very similar to hearing about people not being included in Naxxramas raids if they’re not geared out in Crafted Epics. WTH? Really?
Well I’m ranting a bit much. And by now some are you are probably saying, “Sounds like someone can’t get in a raid and has sour grapes.” Not even. I’ve raided before and will do so again. I’ve even helped guildies, improve their performance and qualify for primary raid spots. That’s not the issue.
Also, for you casuals out there that are thinking, “HURRAY!! Finally someone that feels I should be able to do whatever I want and still raid!”
I wouldn’t go to that extreme either. You have to meet performance minimums. That will always mean having enough Armor to last in a fight and enough RAP to down bosses.
See the game is built on the concept of a minimum threshold. Meaning, it is every players responsibility to achieve at least perform at the bare minimum of X in order to guarantee success. This still means that you need to gear up. Choose a viable, not necessarily optimal, spec. And be smart, don’t bring a tenacity pet like your bear or turtle, but maybe you can bring your Ravager or Cat.
That’s the point I see we’ve been missing. We always give the “Optimal” recommendation. We tend to forget that you don’t always have to raid optimal in order to down bosses.
And isn’t that the true measure of success in a raid? Are you downing bosses?
Now on the other hand, I’m not saying talking about what is optimal is wrong either. We really need to know what is good, better and best. If we don’t understand that, then aren’t we letting the game play us instead of us playing the game?
Anyways, I hope you see the difference. I’m not saying it’s wrong to shoot after your maximum potential. I’m not saying min/max is wrong. And I’m not saying show up in quest greens and blues and expect to raid Ulduar. I’m just really wondering if we’ve gone too far and no longer really realize that “good, is good enough.”
So what say you? Should we only worry about what our maximum potential? Should we forgo our favorite specs in our favorite class just because they’re not top on the dps meters? Tell me, I’d like to know what you think.
Brigwyn is the owner/operator of The Hunting Lodge. He created The Hunting Lodge blog and Hunting Lodge Forums in response to players requesting a safe spot to talk about their class. Recently Brigwyn has started The Hunting Lodge Podcast that you can find broadcasting live on Ustream each Sunday at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Also, if you want more of Brigwyn check out his columns over on WoW.com. You can always contact Brigwyn at brigwyn@brigwyn.com.
Brig has played pretty much hunters exclusively since about the end of December 2004. In that time he’s leveled 3 hunters to max level and raided end game content. He’s currently leveling his 4th hunter from scratch and is planning to raid it when he hits max level.
Eddie “Brigwyn” Carrington is often known as being that crazy dwarf on Twitter.
He's also a blogger, podcaster (Hosts Brigwyn's Corner, Co-host of Everything Blah! and of course Redneck Geek and Cajun Gamer with his good friend Andy "Daewin" Dino. 
As with anything in life, we should strive to be the best we can be, especially if we are committed to being part of a team that has goals. Even if it is our 15 bucks, we are affecting the play of other people who invested their 15 bucks. Isn’t that why we chose to play an MMO, to be with other people? But just because we have committed to a team doesn’t mean we can’t fiddle with our spec, gear, and pets to try and make the best we can do also a lot of fun. In the end, I agree, a few hundred dps is no big deal if the team is meeting its goals.
Now.if your fun is min maxing the crud out of your character, enjoy yourself. I think I’m gonna throw away Carlotta’s stinky wolf that she only took because of his howl, and find her another cat. Perhaps she may even let Loque out of the stable again.
I absolutely agree. You can’t expect to be pulled around getting handouts. That’s not what I’m trying to say. Players have a responsibility to learn their class and make sure they’re not the cause for wipe and failing to down the boss. If they are the reason, the by all means fix what is wrong.
But as you said, you should feel comfortable in taking Loque out of the stables and enjoy his cool lasers.
My opinion of this is that you should make sure your raiding with like minded people. I personally am only interested in raiding with people doing the best possible DPS they can and when they don’t I get annoyed. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to play how you want, just that I don’t want to raid with you if, for example, your BM or gem for haste over agi.
The level of content your running should also be taken into consideration. In my opinion if your looking to do heroic/hard modes and are not min/maxing then your doing the wrong content.
Also in terms of PUG’s expect to get comments if your doing something considered inferior, it’s just the nature of the WoW player base.
Making a decision based on someone’s spec is silly. Make a decision based on their *ability*: Figure out whether they can perform up to the standards that you have for their performance. If they have killer gear and are doing 2000 DPS, it doesn’t matter if they’re Survival. If they have crap gear and clearly outperform, then there’s no reason that their spec should matter.
If someone doesn’t perform to the standards that you have for them, that’s an issue, and they should be raiding different content. If someone does, it doesn’t matter what their gem choices are, or their spec choices.
Player skill will make a much larger difference than any min/maxing, in the end. Let the player make the decision on how to maximize their performance. If they succeed with their choices, how they get there is unimportant.
@Viperm – Although I kinda see your point, i don’t entirely get it. I’ll try to be brief and explain.
Why get frustrated and refuse to raid with people that don’t do the maximum amount of DPS possible? Does this truly matter? I don’t see the point really unless you’re trying to go for World of Server First achievements. In that case it makes some sense. But or 99% of the raiding community, min/maxing stats to that degree just seem a bit too elitist for me to understand why? Like I said in my post, if the bosses go down, what does it matter?
I do agree that if you’re going to raid, you need to understand your class. That means making sure you’re stacking the stats, know your shot rotations, and in general be a “good” raiding hunter. But to be forced in to min/maxing? I don’t know it seems a bit wrong.
Finally, you talked about heroic/hard modes requiring you to min/max. I think we’ve seen it proven that you’re not really required to min/max to the Nth degree. Back in September we saw Windwalkers had taken down Yogg down in nothing but blues (http://www.wow.com/2009/09/02/yogg-saron-in-blues/). True this wasn’t heroic mode but if you can take a boss down in blues, I’m sure there’s ways to do it without having to min/max to the BiS level.
Well that’s my opinion anyways. Thanks for the feedback. I’m always interested in other’s thoughts and opinions.
If you are doing heroic/hard modes, you should definitely be focusing on the player’s ability rather than their spec. Let’s say someone has been playing as BM for years, because that is the play style they like the most. If you were to “require” that they change their spec so that it meets the “min/max” standard, then you should also be required to expect they will likely be less effective at what they are doing (in this case DPS), which actually hurts the raid.
TLDR: If you are happy with your spec, and it is not negatively affecting the group, then don’t worry about it.
well I won’t get started on what I think bout blizzards current raid design philosophy, but me wanting people to maximize there dps is not wanting to waste time in content that is a joke (see ToC10/25). And yes skill does matter, but not choosing the right spec and doing x dps doesn’t mean you’re right when you could be doing x+1000 as a different spec. I also don’t mean to be min-maxing to the point of say professions, but someone should be using proper spec/chants/pet/gems.
Again find a guild that agrees with your point of view, most guilds that are looking to clear hard-modes (not over-gear them) expect their members to min-max, as they should if they want to clear them in a timely fashion. As for yogg in blues that’s more of an issue Blizz needs to address, but Yogg10 is really not that difficult.
I have always raided primarily as BM. With the exception of a small number of fights, where I use Marksmanship, I use BM for everything. I have since I hit 80, during patch 3.1, and have seen BM’s performance buffed bit by bit through each patch. I did it because it was the play style I liked, and it also gave me some unique tools for helping the raid.
I have never met a similarly-geared hunter who is able to beat me on the meters. And in some cases, I beat out better-geared players of many types: last night was one of those.
Min/maxing is great to a point. Spreadsheets and simulations are handy “Should I take Siren’s Cry or Giant’s Bane?” tools. But taking this to extremes, especially when it leads to a playstyle you don’t enjoy, is useless, because the differences in reality even out. Once you get to the point where you’re min/maxing your fun out of the game, you’ve missed the point; and even if you haven’t, there’s still a chance that going to that extreme is going to cause *your* DPS to go down.
Play what you know, and what you love, and you’ll play better than those who don’t.
If you’re not having fun because your raid team is forcing you to change your build/talents even if (and this is the big if) you are successful with the build/talents you’ve chosen, then it’s time to find a new raid group. One with, like Viperm said, like minded people.
Our motley guild raids 10-person content. Some of our players’ talent choices would make “The Community” cry. (Three words: Instant. Ghost. Wolf.) But you know what? We still down the content, and we have fun doing it. We don’t do it first or fastest or best. We’re not in this to distribute awesome videos or be profiled on WoW.com. We’re in it to have fun and to be laughing when the boss hits the floor. That’s our success.
Not to say there aren’t some rough spots that’d be easier if we min/maxed. We just adapt.
“Also, for you casuals out there that are thinking, “HURRAY!! Finally someone that feels I should be able to do whatever I want and still raid!””
Owie. It is difficult to be a member of the online WoW Community if you consider yourself casual. We’re not all knuckle-dragging troggs with entitlement issues.
@Kimberly
I like the mindset of your guild. It’s amazing though how many other guilds out there aren’t willing to work and adapt to down the boss. It seems as if everyone (yes, I know I’m generalizing here.) wants to take the easy road and blow through the content. (Probably another good idea for a post sometime.) Anyways, it is great to see that there are guilds and players willing to take up the challenge and play the game and not force their members into using specific game mechanics just because it’s “easier.”
Also, regarding Casuals being “knuckle-dragging troggs with entitlement issues.” I didn’t mean it to be that harsh. I really was speaking only to those players that do come to the game with a sense, “If my guild wants me to get gear, they’ll carry me through the content.” It’s those “casual” players I was speaking about. Of course there are players out there that are “Casual,” enjoy the game and actively work/participate in helping their “Raid” or “Guild” be successful.
My apologies for it sounding otherwise.
No worries! I do see a pervasive “Casuals suck!” attitude through many many WoW blogs and I guess it’s starting to get to me. Making me paranoid. (bubbles)
And my guild rocks. \m/
I’ve never been one to tell someone what spec they should play for any class. Look at me – I’ve been raiding Arms since Burning Crusade.
No, the spec doesn’t matter, but the effort the person puts into it does. Are you still putting out 3500 or better in an off-spec? Are you taking the time to learn more about it, and trying your hardest to stretch every last DPS point you can?
If you are, you’ll always have a place in my raid. If not, I’ll tell you so, and tell you WHY.
I’m always open-minded toward someone who is showing a genuine effort, and a desire to constantly improve.
It’s the people who don’t care that I’m not the least concerned about; they won’t be with me when that final boss goes down.
@Pixelated Executioner -
A first I was a bit lost when I read your comment. You put down specifics that may or may not be required to down a boss. (I’ll be honest, I think we need to do more work to find what is the exact minimum DPS to down a boss for each type of fight.)
Then I got to your last sentence. “It’s the people who don’t care that I’m not the least concerned about…”
I think we agree on this point. But I really think you’d be hard press to find may players that don’t care. More often than not, they care.
I just wonder how often our expectations are off because we set a level that may or may not actually be required. That’s the sticking point for me at the moment. Hence the question, “When is good, good enough?” Is it when you’re doing 3,500DPS in you’re off spec? or is 2,500 DPS good enough? *shrugs* I don’t know that answer, but it’s one I really want to find out.
It was mostly just arbitrary numbers. I was trying to make an example, and apparently failed at it. Let me try to respond a little more here.
I’m less concerned about the exact minimum DPS to down a boss. Personally, on my DK, I can usually break 6k easily, and sometimes much more depending on fight mechanics. I have no problems making up for the gap.
I do know that just about any DPS spec can pull 3k or better in decent gear, provided that the player behind the toon cares enough to give their effort to their raid. To me, that’s important. The raid leaders I want to smack are the ones who say, “You have to keep up at the top” and don’t take spec or gear into account.
I want to see people contributing. If I’m running Hard Mode encounters in Ulduar, or a Sarth + 3 10-man zerg, I want to see all the DPS doing 4k or better. If the raid is a little more relaxed or has more people in it, you can afford to have a few folks fall behind because the better players will make up for the difference.
Only Blizzard will know for sure if there’s a “minimum DPS allotment” for boss fights. The rest is for us to figure out on our own, or if you’re like me, to set a number for people to aim for.
Brig,
Good is good enough when you are happy with where you are at.
If you are OK doing 3000 Dps when you know your class and gear is able to do more then that is fine, you are happy with where you are at.
BUT, what you are happy with the people you play with might not be happy with. I know if one night i just decided to be happy with 4000 Dps i’d be looking for another guild by the end of the week.
What you consider good is fine, but don’t expect others to share your definition of good.
TL;DR: We each establish what is “Good” for ourselves, but we can’t expect our “good” to carry over to everyone else.
Holy crap, this turned into a wall of text.
TL;DR= Pug raid leaders are out of control with their expectations; if your guild is trying to work on new content for them you should do what you can do put out the best dps you can; Blizzard is killing their own content.
To the matter of pug raid leaders having high expectations (full sets of crafted epics for Naxx), I agree with you, it’s completely out of control. Between being able to get a full set ofT9 just by running the daily heroic and having all the 226 and lower gear available just by spamming heroics for Conquests, its gotten easier and easier for any random idiot to have a set of pretty nice gear. That means that a lot of random idiots (especially the terrible ones) expect everybody else to have as much time to waste being bad as they do to get a whole set of the best gear you can get without raiding without paying attention to how good the person might be. It’s completely possible to be in heroic blues and epics and out-dps mains in Ulduar gear (did it on my feral druid alt all the time!), but with the help of addons like GearScore nobody knows or cares.
In the same vein, since most of the T9 content is so incredibly easy, people who have no business being in those instances expect to get carried along. Sure, maybe you’re a great mage who’s awesome at staying out of the fire, but you’re not hitcapped and you’re gonna go oom halfway through Koralon’s health because you’re only doing 2k dps and you don’t have enough mana to support it. This even happens within my own guild, people wanting to bring melee alts with BoA weapons and expecting to be carried through. Blizzard has said that they want to make the game friendlier to casuals and people without nearly unlimited time to raid, but they didn’t say that every person who’s too lazy to try to improve their gear to the best of their ability deserves to kill all the bosses.
The emblem changes and vault and easy content are killing their older content. How many people do Naxx anymore, even right after they’re 80? I’ve helped friends take their fresh 80′s through reg ToC-5, and H ToC-5 till they were in just about full epics, then done OS and Maly-10s with them, and Ulduar-10′s, and then they’re geared up and doing almost as much dps as some of our mains, but how many people really put that much effort into it?
As for min/maxing to extremes, if you’re trying to work on progression content (for your guild, not necessarily server firsts), then I’m of the opinion that as a hunter you should be doing as much as you possibly can to improve your dps, within reason. I’m not saying you should switch between epic armor pen and agi gems depending on whether a fight has movement or not, but do you really hate marks or sv so much that you can’t tolerate it to see new content?
I don’t often use the spreadsheets for individual items, but I do theorycraft the wider issues, and I’ve also helped a lot of people with fairly noobish questions. And despite me taking the cookie-cutter max-dps specs and gearing strategies, I always tell people that ask me for help that you should play what you want, unless you’re trying to get the most you can out of your character. I don’t know about all of you, but I have an obscene amount of /played on my hunter, and I just don’t want to be anything less than the best I can be at something that I’ve put that much time into.
The other day I saw another hunter sporting the BoE tanking ring from Obsidian Sanctum, the crafted frost-resist chest (gemmed for expertise), and a spec that defied all logic. On the one hand, my theorycrafter “hey, what the hell” response was set off. On the other, I realized that crunch all the numbers you like, it’s a game and is supposed to be fun. If that poor misguided soul is having fun, bless their heart, I wish ‘em well.
Similarly, when I get really deep into weighing specs against one another and reach that point where variant spec #1 is indistinguishable from variant spec #2 I have to stop and remember that I’m playing a game and I do this for fun. Is the spec fun to play? Can I do things with it that make me giggle? If so, it’s time to stop agonizing and play. Less thinkie, more killie.
When you have met your goals, whatever they may be.
If your goal is to be a respected raider, then when you can walk into a raid and have people that you respect act happy to see you. Same thing if you want to top the chart, or be the last one alive, or have the raid listen when you give your input.
If your goal is to have strangers stop and stare, then when you have that mount or pet or whatever bling makes people stop and stare.
If your goal is to have a full friends list and always, always have an invite waiting, then enough is enough when you can log on and be hailed by your buds.
We each get to decide when we have enough alts, golds, friends, pets, and points. The trick is that Blizz will keep changing the rules, and if we feel the need to keep up then what was good enough yesterday won’t be good enough tonight.
Being humans, we need to reaffirm constantly, so even tho I have a dragonhawk mount I may want the next cool toy. The secret is to decide for yourself, not let the rabble decide when you have won.
BTW, I still roll with a cat. I got Scrurachi in Winterspring at 60, and he’s enough.
Come back with me to TBC. You looked over your raid party and saw the following hunters. One Surv (if you had a hunter that was geared enough) and the rest were BM hunters with a Cookie cutter 41/20 spec (think that was it) all crushing something equivelant to Manito’s macro and doing amazing DPS. Everyone wanted to do the maximum DPS they could and this was acheived by going cookie cutter BM. I recall trying to find a end game raiding MM hunter and couldn’t find one.
There’s a point your reach where using a sub-optimal spec will get you sat out in raids. In TBC this was normally enterring TK and SSC. There was only one real raiding spec in TBC and this was BM. You brought along a sufficently geared Surv hunter to give everyone EW and that was it.
The distinction between each spec has closed alot since then. Surv and MM are very very close with BM still slightly behind. But I would say that if you are suficently experienced and know yur stuff that you could keep up with a less experiened Surv or MM hunter.
What your describing isn’t new but has been around for a long time. Maybe it was less prevelant back then as it is now becuase the gap between each spec has closed. It’s a part of the game but depends on what type of game you play. If your in a social guild with friends then you’ll get by with whatever spec you want to play with. If you are raiding end game content and going for HM and Ach then you aren’t going to get far with BM before someone calls you out (there are always exceptions to that rule Yogg +0). It’s crossing that line between social and serious that changes expectations.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing or bad thing. It just is.
F
Welcome to the world of casualcraft. Great rant btw. Anyone who has stood on the bleeding edge of content knows how frustrationg a 1% wipe can be. This is what drives the min/maxers to their extremem thinking. Generally when you wipe at 1% it can be attributed to something that didnt or did happen early on in the encounter. A simple miss heal or your haveing a bad night with the rng gods. Enough is never enough when it comes to how min/maxers think. I saw someone the other day with 2500+ agility and over 6kRAP. I looked at my meager gear(Ulduar Stuff) and thought Christ im way behind. But this is part of the reason i stopped raiding to begin with. It kind of consumes everything you do. For the min maxers enough will never be enough until they have evaluated what it has done to their lives.