Fantastic article, looking forward to the part 2 you mentioned above :)
You missed the point pretty much, the whole point of this article is about m+ and raid meta (and also PvP sightly mentioned).The "majority of content" is everything that isn't world first 1000 mythic progress raiding or pushing +20 keys.But congratulations to miss it the questing and island expedition meta is pretty strict too I guess...
Why would I not invite a blood dk over a vengeance dh for any kind of pve content? It doesn't matter if I'd do "just fine" either way when one way is so much less stressful.
The largest problem with the “meta” is people’s unwillingness to play their class. You are a Druid- not a feral. You are a warlock, not an affliction. Ability to adapt as DPS should be part and parcel of the role. Your FotM spec won’t stay top forever.
A "meta doesn't really matter" article, written by mostly meta class players. Ironic
I begun reading this article not knowing what 'the meta' was, with sentences like 'What we define as “strong”, and therefore meta, changes for each situation where the meta exists' not really helping. What makes a favoured spec 'meta'?Now, I understand what it means with regards to arene substitution patterns in organic chemistry, but I'm still not clear how that helps here.
This article...Never in my life have I needed something so much, and never known until I received it.
> The effect of this is that the 95th percentile of Frost will contain, on average, objectively better players. If we were to look at the average rank of these players compared to all Death Knights, Frost would rank significantly higher.Note that we're not going to look at this "objective" player skill ranking, because it doesn't exist and OP is literally just making things up.Skilled players are more likely to ignore circlejerking morons and play specs like Unholy vs Frost.The real reason a popular spec will show higher than an unpopular one is that RNG is the true determination of outcome. If your procs come at the wrong time versus cooldowns, you're screwed no matter how good you are. If you have a lower end of the bell curve for procs in general, you're screwed no matter how good you are.A popular spec has more parses, and therefore more chances for RNG to go "right" to get a good outcome. That's why bulk data analysis will favor the popular spec.For example, I play a very unpopular spec. I can get a 99% overall parse that is, say, 60% for ilvl. But a 60% ilvl parse for a spec with 900 parses is very different than a 60% ilvl parse for a spec with 30,000 parses.
And this is one of the reasons why I hate how M+ works. On top of not wanting to see the same 5man for two years, or the cliques that cause guild problems, or the farming. They are horribly balanced in a game where the devs want everyone to bring something different. Bummer when your difference is useless, and you are melee! Our guild is melee heavy, no idea why they keep adding melee other than most everyone would be the new ranged. I also don't know why they can't make hit boxes better.
There's an easy solution, the game allows you to quit a guild if you want.
This changes nothing. Fotm slaves will stay fotm slaves.
Insta-decline any surv-hunter. Why should I bother for melee hunter, when I could have at least range hunter and rogue and dh?You can perfectly fine close your key with no meta specs. I would perfectly fine close my key with meta specs and less efforts.End of story.
This is why the game and others like it need true positional/directional combat (like Guild Wars 2), combo mechanics, and dynamic mob combat AI. True positional/directional combat:The target lock, which is nice, is also rigid and lazy. An arrow that is flying through a group of mobs should hit some of the mobs. Combos? Have an AoE down that is fire based? Shoot arrows throw it to have your arrows empowered. Awesome! Dynamic mob combat AIDynamic mob combat would be to have bosses have a pool of availability from which to draw upon. Which abilities (and their timing) might correspond to group size, combined item level (or potential DPS), and group composition with different factors affecting how the boss encounter will actually play out. Lets be honest with ourselves, having boss timers and mods tell us precisely what to look out for isn't that challenging or interesting. Sure, people still have to act on those warnings, but it still isn't challenging anyone to react to what is going on around them. The meta as things seem to operate now really makes the game feel more like a process. Meet these criteria, react this way, and you should "achieve" success. Thats fine if that is how they want the game to be played and if it is what players want. I just am suggesting what I think would bring interesting changes.The biggest bummer to playing an MMORPG and your favorite class and build is finding out that you may not ever enjoy some content because that content appears to favor other classes and builds. In a world built around fantasy, it kind of puts a reality check on you. Again, its fine. But imagine knowing that any group (within reason: we still need healers and tanks and we should still expect minimum capabilities of our gear) could potentially defeat an encounter if we worked together and figured out what about our specific group make up will allow us that victory.