Are you a min-maxer?

Y'all know what it is. Min maxing, trying to squeeze everything possible out of what you got while playing WoW. Trying to reach the best figures, gear pieces, level rates, you name it, people min max it!

In the long run, being a min max'er for me, has been frustrating at times, and everytime I get frustrated while playing WoW I deliberatly just move away from the PC a minute. Let it sink in, realize it's just a game and continue without frustrations. But why then, I ask myself, do I still keep on min max'ing. Knowing full well I will run into snags at some point and get frustrated again. Whilest if I just look at it from a more casual point of view. The game is perfectly playable without all the min max'ing too. Well, high rated PvP it's probably a must, and in that regard I'll probably keep doing it. But I'm also doing it PvE, or anywhere else for that matter. Where it really isn't that neccesary.

So I wondered, with a bit of a psychological twist, why do you keep on min max'ing everything you can while playing? (I'm not saying all multiboxers min max. But I would be amazed if the ones that don't outweigh the ones that do. Multiboxing, in a way, is about min maxing itself. Sort off. :P )

I'm min-maxing my new PvE group. A lot of the later talents in some trees just don't seem useful to me at all, so I'm speccing deeper into other tress. Also, I'm leveling professions atm on them simply for the sake of min-maxing PvE performance. It's not something I've done intentionally before, but it seems like the thing to do now. What I'd like to know is if people here are more willing to min-max in certain situations as opposed to others.

lol, this topic brings me back to some good ole D&D days. Sometimes it's almost impossible to truly min/max. Also it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, certain perameters limit your min/max potential. For instance, in my mixed group I had a BE Lock and Mage, but I decided I wanted to make my group be completely mixed... Affirmitive Action kinda thing. So ... I wondered how could I include every race? In the end, I decided to take my BE Paladin and make him the tank, reroll the Lock and Mage as an Undead and Troll respectively (Troll being best candidate for a PVE mage anyway because of Berserking). Tauren Druid, and Orc Shaman. This gave me a full group of completely different classes, and completely different races. However, that old min/max mentality came back gnawing at the back of my mind: If I made an Orc lock, I'd have a built in trinket, but then I'd have 2 Orcs. In the end, absolutely none of it matters. Least not to anyone but me. So eventually you have to just step back and ask yourself what's most important to you, and how you're going to enjoy the game most.

Min/max is kinda the game in the game for me. its funny too because I like to figure out how to maximize xp/hr but will run an instance 10 times trying to get a piece of gear upgrade that isn't going to last long before I have to upgrade it and doing the instance drop's my xp/hr!

It changes for me. When I sit down I decide what I'm doing today - gear upgrades? Testing new specs/dps cycles? Lookingfor new grind spots that will yield higher xp/hr? (I don't always grind)

It definitely adds to some frustration for me and even causes me to quit playing for a day or two sometimes. I think a day or two away is good for me though.

Right now, I'm developing my plan to get 25 classes available. At this point I have 10 and can quite literally make a group with any combination of classes I want.

But its not enough! I need to have each character dedicated to a specific spec!

Now i just have to decide if I would rather hit 80 first, or get my other 15 characters to 60 and start leveling them around.

min maxing is a type of competitiveness some people really like doing. As for me, I am a bit of an OCD min/maxer.
When I single box my prot warrior, I am min maxing my tanking gear for best mitigation or best tps or highest hp. depends on what I'm doing. I also religiously check the EJ forums for the latest theory craft.

When it comes to other characters I min max the highest possibly profitability rate for my characters. Almost every single one of my alts have some sort of profit reason for me to level them. I rarely if ever level a character that doesn't benefit me in the financial sector of world of warcraft.

I min/max as much as possibly in all aspects except attempting to obtain gear in full raid groups. I go to them casually - 6-8 hour raid duration really grind away my faction level with my wife, so I have my limitations there.

My favorite is the min/max of X/hr. My mage friend was always talking about best xp/hr while leveling and now it's best gold/hr while 80.

The funny part about it is he spent hours release night flying from place to place and doing math and testing on XP/hr and finally said over vent "Alright, I found the best place to get xp/hr at 70." I replied "good thing cause I dinged 71 waiting for you to figure it out!"

min/maxing is a big part of what I enjoy about mmorpgs :)

I really enjoy being able to min/max my solo toons differently in comparison to min/maxing a group of 5. Theorycraft FTW!

if i was a true min-maxer i'd be 80 now instead of spending half my time hanging out in org or dalaran
i like doing a lot of things that some people would call a "waste of time"... it's a game, do what you think is fun.
i do like having awesome gear, but i'm content to have not-quite-awesome gear because often the difference is several hours of raiding several nights a week. i don't want to have a set schedule for my game time.

That term also reminds me of D&D. My main, Coltimar, is based on my favorite D&D character =)