MMO terms, once again!

Caroloces

Once again, another edition of "MMO Terms that Puzzle Me."
These 2 should be pretty easy because I see them tossed around so frequently.

1. What is "Block Casting?"
2. What is meant by "min/maxing?"

Thanks to anyone who can explain these terms to me, and help me in my slow progression towards MMO Mastery!

Artemiisia

Block Casting, means you hold block and cast spells at the same time

Nestor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min-maxing

Basically, the people who make spread sheets to analyze all facets of the game to squeeze the most performance they can from a character or a build.

Block Casting is not liked because it removes the "Tells" that show the player that the other player is casting a spell. If your in PvE, it's not a big deal really.

It's kind of like Animation Canceling in that you use a Heavy Attack but trigger a spell as soon as possible. This stops the visual of the Light or Heavy Attack but still gives the damage from the LA or HA then gives the damage from the spell. Again, for PvE, cool to use, PvP, some don't think it's kosher.

Caroloces

Thanks Artemiisia and Nestor. Now I understand, and I realized that I do a lot of block casting myself, not always successfully. It seems like the one combat mechanic in which you use both magicka and stamina resource pools simultaneously.
As far as min/maxing is concerned, I'm a long way from that level, but I do find the practice intriguing. I like the quote from the wiki article -

Min-maxing in video games is considered expert-level play as it requires a perfect understanding of the game's mechanics and systems, but once it is achieved, a game is no longer challenging.

KerinKor

Min/Maxing is a very old term from the early days of RPGs when you literally (or figuratively) rolled dice to determine your character's stats then distributed them so that you maximised the stats beneficial to your character by minimising those you put into stats that were irrelevant.

In the world of MMOs it's meaning isn't really literal, it simply refers to people of the same mentality as the min/maxers of old, people who worship at the altar of 'efficiency' and 'optimal' and most importantly tell others how to play by dictating the 'acceptable' builds .. it isn't a term usually used as a compliment.

In an off-line game only the min/maxer was affected, in MMOs their influence is usually toxic and makes the game degenerate into cookie-cutter builds using flavour of the month class/skill setups.

The cry for race changes we're seeing is classic min/maxer behaviour.

[edit]

That quote you took from the Wiki is a great summary, min/maxers are really looking to play eZmode and avoid all challenges so they can 'win' the game with the minimum of effort.

Nestor

I have always used the Min Max term to mean creating a character with maximum power with the minimum amount of time/effort.

Of course, being efficient with the character you do have, like using spell rotations in the best order to stack effects, letting DoT's run their course before activating again, things like that are not Min/Maxing in the traditional sense, just maximizing the destruction for a minimum amount of resources used. That's different, that is just being efficient.

A classic example of this would be the Zombie Road outside of the Vile Lab. You use the same amount of magic to kill a 3 mob as you do to kill 20 mobs, so why not gather them together before you start using spells?