Synergy was a term I learned years ago when I was just starting to play Magic: The Gathering. Most people when they first start playing a game like Magic, or any other collectible card game, their instincts is to build decks based off individual cards that they think are the most powerful. They do this to the point where they ignore the rest of the stuff in their deck.
As they learn more and more about the game they learn it’s not just about which cards are capable of standing on their own, it’s the ones who stand with the rest of your deck. The same principles are applied to selecting talents for any class in WoW, Arena teams, and raid compositions.
With a lot of the talents, Blizzard made it very clear which talents worked together. They connected them with a line and said “You can’t take this talent if you don’t take this one first.” Other times they just put that connecting line for limitations.
For example, Survivalist links directly into Hunter versus Wild. A talent that increases your stamina followed by a talent that increases your attack power based off of your stamina. Synergy.
I still see lots of folks in-game who ignore the synergy concept. The other night I was running a heroic on my Death Knight and one of the PuGs we found happened to be a Hunter. After inspecting his talents it was quite apparent that his talent selection was based around what “looked cool” when the time came to click in his talents.
I suggested that finishing talents like Mortal Shots and removing points from things like Concussive Barrage would help his DPS. His response was “Not everything is about min/maxing you know.”
Ok then, I left it at that. We finished heroic Nexus with him bringing in 750 DPS, out-DPSing Warbull/Freshmaker, who happened to be our healer.
The advice I provided that night wasn’t about min/maxing. It wasn’t about speccing Survival over, well . . . his three-tree hybrid spec. It was more about making sure you had talents that worked with each other, provided a benefit to anything you were doing and overall being a more effective player.
When I played competitive Magic I remember a saying that was used on the tournament scene a lot. It was “Build for the format or build to beat the format.”
At any given time there is a dominant deck type in the Magic tournament scene. Usually it’s just a certain combination of cards from the current rotation that works so well that it beats everything else. If you wanted to be competitive you played that same kind of deck. In Magic people refer to it as the metagame.
If you didn’t, the only other option was to build a deck that was designed to beat the most popular deck in the metagame. Sure, if you came across any other lone wolf kind of deck you would probably lose since your deck was so specialized. But you were counting on having enough of a knowledge of the tournament scene to know that most of your match-ups would be against the popular deck type.
You can see this principle in Arenas too. There is the most popular Arena team compositions. It was RMP, right now on the tournament realm you see lots of DK/Warlock/Paladin. In fact that team is so strong 8 out of the top 10 teams on the tournament realm were this composition last time I checked.
Is it that those 3 classes are the most overpowered in the game currently? Some people would say yes. But others would say no. In a one-versus-one scenario I haven’t come across a Warlock in a long time that gives me any trouble, in Arena or anywhere else.
But now consider the tools that the 3 classes bring to the table and you are looking at the metagame of Arena. How many diseases/DoTs/curses will be loaded up on a person from a Death Knight and Warlock. How many silences, interrupts, or other tools they have to deal with their opponents. Put them together and you have a most dominant 3v3 team.
Switching back to PvE, most raid leaders deal with synergy anytime they put a raid together. Do you have Fort? Mark of the Wild? People with Replenishment? Do you have someone with the 10% AP effect?
Constructing a balanced raid is all about not just what an individual class brings to the table, but what they contribute to the raid. Fan of Knives on the Fire Elemental adds during Sartharion if you need it? Misdirecting Kel’thuzad’s adds during the end of the fight?
Blizzard has come a long way in making sure classes bring more than just DPS, healing, or being a meatshield to a raid.
In the end, not everyone is going to min/max to the extreme. Not everyone will spec Survival. Not everyone will switch to the dominant spec when the patch hits. But it’s important to be effective at whatever you choose to do.
I’ll share one last story. This was a story I read about after the first WoW card game championship. When you build a deck for the WoW card game, you pick a hero, and then build a deck filling it with equipment, allies, abilities, etc.
The current metagame showed that the most dominant deck type was a deck that used a Rogue hero and had no allies but was filled with equipment and abilities. Solo Rogue was tearing through the tournament.
One person opted to build against the current metagame and built a Paladin deck designed to do nothing but control the Rogue deck.
During the first day of the tournament the Paladin had a rough time against the variety of decks in the field, but pulling off enough victories he advanced to day 2.
And sure enough day 2 of the tournament was filled with solo Rogue decks that demolished anyone that didn’t build for the current metagame during day 1. 5 of the top 8 players in that tournament were running a solo Rogue and every match the Paladin played was against what he designed his deck to do. Beat the popular Rogue.
He saw how the the tournament was shaping up, he knew what was popular and he came to the tournament prepared. And what’s why the world’s first WoW CCG champion was a guy who put a Paladin deck together just to beat the popular Rogue.
Well that’s my story. Thoughts, comments, your own stories, share em!
Drotara (or BehemothDan) considers himself a geek on many levels. A web developer and programmer by trade, he has no shortage of geeky hobbies. Whether it's trying to stay current in World of Warcraft raiding, playing competitively in the WoW TCG, Magic: The Gathering with friends, or a night at the local shop playing DnD, it's all good to him!
I come bringing trouble.
Interesting post! Very Sun Tzu.
I really don’t PvP much, but lately I’ve been intrigued by Arenas. This gives me something to mull over regarding which of my ‘toons to team up with who.
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I remember my Magic days. This one time I played, I won because most people were playing 5 colour decks. I was sneaky and put in a Sundering titan, a card that wiped out enemy lands. 1 land per colour. that was a 5 turn knockback when I played the thing.
I always kinda figured arena was like that. It’s certainly more winnable, but it’s not easy.
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synergy.
i think out of all the posts you’ve done, I like this one the most.
This post should be posted on Wizards of the Coast, and Blizzards HQ in big bold letters on a Wall reminding them how it all Boils down.
now that I’ve said that, my brother and I have played magic on and off for the last 15 years or so. I was never that competitive but my brother would play in the old type 1′s for mox’s and such, just this year my good friend Pat went too Japan for a worlds.
You really hit the nail on the head with your It was “Build for the format or build to beat the format.”
i guess my next question is..what beats DK/lock/priest?
^_^ i remember laster year it was War/mage/priest or druid
you mentioned 1v1 you can take a lock. I have too agree with that….locks don’t give me nearly as much trouble as they did pre-BC but now for the life of me i couldn’t kill a pally for the life of me. any help?
Drotara for president!
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“Not everyone will spec Survival”
This is true, because there are some of us who make BM look good. And still beat MM and Surv Hunters. ;)
@Indigo While there are plenty of great BM and MM Hunters right now, it is anecdotal evidence. Mathematically Survival is top DPS. While topping DPS meters is great, especially as a spec that’s not cookie-cutter at the time being, look beyond who you are beating, and more at the numbers as a whole.
But as I said in the post, people will play what they want. The goal is to take your chosen spec, raid comp, or Arena team and making sure you have the synergy to make it work to the best of your abilities.
The guy who told you “Not everything is about min/maxing” is missing the point…
Min/maxing is paying a large sum of extra gold for the extra 2 points on the chest enchant.
Spec’ing into talents that work well together is just making your life EASIER.
Enjoyed this post. No matter what spec we choose, picking talents that work harmoniously with each other is just good practice. Period.
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@ Drotara “Take what you have and kick arse with it” is one thing, but there’s also the issue of “Have a clue”.
So far most of the people that I’ve ran into that are “Good Player”s don’t have the FotM setup for their character. They’ll be close to it, but it has some tune/tweak for them. Most everyone that I see with the FotM talent setup can’t do what they’re supposed to do. You can have the most OP setup in the game, if you don’t know how to use it then it’s worthless.
But that is a separate question…. which is the ‘better’ situation: Having a clue or Having the Gear/Spec. I know what my mind goes to but I know there’s enough content out there that’s just raw numbers to overcome… Does the Raid Leader go with the “Good People” who are under geared or go with the FotM crowd who have all the epics? Of course assuming equal quantities of each are available, etc, etc, etc.
A setup is OP only if the dumbest of the dumb can do acceptably well with it. Survival may be the best spec at the moment, but how many hunters with a cookie cutter spec do you run into who have no clue about shot priority and itemization?
Specs are still largely skill dependent. I remember a time when my guild made me go SV for replenishment, and after a week spent learning the shot rotation I was back on top of the meters (with rank 1 explosive shot). That was when 50/21 still ruled the world.
I am glad that you left that guy alone after he rejected your advice. Its great to help people, and one of my favorite things is helping young hunters bring thier a game to raids. But if someone doesnt want your advice, it’s best to leave them alone. This game is chock full of people who know their stuff and love to set others straight, so chances are if you (generic ‘you’ here) critique someone, you aren’t the first one to do it.
Some people just want to ‘have fun’, and the thing is that to them, having fun is not ‘having a powerful character’, but just tooling around without much thought, or focusing on the lore or the graphics or the rp side of their character.
Me, I like a bit of both. I like to number crunch, but I also fall in love with the other aspects of my character, and will spend inordinate amounts of time on non-DPS aspects of my char.
So to sum up, it is always refreshing to see tempered advice. Kudos
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The point Drotara is trying to make regading BM/MM vs SV is that while they both are capable of producing great numbers and apexing SV in some situations as a whole they are inferrior spec’s given the mechanics of the game in its current state. So, any hunter attempting to bring 100% to the table for himself or his guild owes to both himself and his guild to be spec’d whatever is the “best possible DPS” at the time. Currently this is SV, I got a lot of support when the SV changes were made and I stick with marks trying to prove it is still viable and what not but the bottom line was, the peaks weren’t high enought and far to infrequent to make up for the valley being as deep as the they were.
This is not to diminish the value of thinking outside the box or anything, I was marks for a number of our first Nightfall titles before and after its “nerf” so yes, it was still viable and in many cases now is still viable if you can play it well and your raid is missing the TSA buff. Just like BM might prove necessary if your raid is lacking a ret pally *shudder at the thought*. But the absolute bottom line is, SV is the best spec for raw output a hunter can be right now.
Great post Drot.
@ihlos, I agree that there are lots of people that play the game just to “have fun” or dont take it nearly as seriously as some of us. But, if i were in Drots shoes I would have politely asked that hunter to leave and I would have looked for someone else. Having fun for me is having fun in instances clearing the quickly and efficiently and I refuse to play with people who prove incapable of doing so demonstrating so through their spec, gearting etc. Although it might have been fun to save a SS of that hunters DPS to show new hunters what not to do =).
You got a nice topic here and put it well. And I think Fitz put it well above. I do some min/maxing for a couple extra dps, other times I don’t. Utility is also good to have sometimes. But none of that should sacrifice synergistic talents and abilities. Some talents just work better if you have other talents. Some classes mesh with other classes.
Taking “fun talents” and sacrificing synergy doesn’t end up being fun for your party. A hunter should put out more dps than something in-between a companion pet and the tank.
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