Quote Originally Posted by HeavenlyArmed View Post
Nice of you to completely ignore the part of what you said that I actually replied to. You know, where you claim that players will only take people who do the mathematically best thing in all cases into content? Remember that part? The bit I quoted? You wanna try responding to the thing I'm talking about? No? Okay. But if you did, you'd understand that the rest of your post here fails for the same reason the last one did. Yes, there will always be a mathematically best thing. But as long as things are even slightly well balanced, you will not be discriminated against for being slightly below optimal. And just so you can see that, yes, my original post on page seven did have this, here it is again.

You also misunderstand the potential of a Mastery-like stat. It's not just a direct buff, because something like that can change how you play. If I manage to get my Gierskogul penalty below 8 seconds or something maybe I can do an extra one per minute or something. Or with the Fire IV suggestion it may not be enough to be worth stacking early in the expansion, but then with values available later on take a very big lead over other options if you stack it. These are interesting gear options. That is my point. And if it's a standard stat on gear, it will be treated like any other standard stat on gear as long as it's properly balanced. No one will be discriminated against, and an interesting stat will exist.
Okay, I missed something. You can cut the attitude.

Nonetheless, we've now circled back to "what purpose does this serve?" You won't be discriminated against for being slightly below optimal, but you will be told what the best options are. Not choosing them at that point is you simply being stubborn for no reason other than to be unique. An example would be a tank wanting to meld Parry on their raid gear because they like the potential mitigation. It's passable in most content, but why would you do it once you know Crit/Det are better? The same applies to a buff on a weapon.

Yes, but we're still arguing optimization. People will always pick the best option once they know which it is. That doesn't necessarily mean you couldn't add an effect to weapons for some bit of flavor. It does, however, mean people will inevitably gravitate to whatever the community deems the best weapon.