Are Min/Max'ers common?

Well, im not a Min/Maxer when it comes to the typical factors.I build my Characters for fun, and unlike the majority of players running around, I can make any combonation tollerable, well built, and well played.

As for going the route of a Pure Min/Maxer, no, not one bit.If I like a Power Set combonation, I try to make it work, and if I cant, atleast I tried.(Hasnt happened yet.)

If anything, my builds pretty much wow people, (most players dont care in general, but there are times someone notices im not a common build and asks tons of questions, or gives me props) and go agenst a typical Min/Maxer.However, I am somewhat of a Min/Maxer because of 1 thing, and that is the capability to properly building, slotting, and using various tactics on any given build that I decide to play that really makes the combo shine, where others belive its worthless.

If your on Freedom, and see a Earth/Sonic Controller running around, or a Fire/Fire Tanker, or even a Mind/Cold Controller running around, odds are, thats me.

My current builds comprise of the following.

Defender - Dark/Dark
Controller - Earth/Sonic
Controller - Mind/Cold
Controller - Ice/TA
Tanker - Fire/Fire
Scrapper - Claws/Invln
Stalker - Elec/Energy - No Assassin Strike, High AoE Damage,High Recharge build.Surprisingly Powerful.

None of which, from what iv been reading, classify as builds a Min/Maxer would choose, for any reason, ever.

I do however have a extreem amount of fun playing with combos that no one else will touch.

The bottom line, is theres Min/Maxers out there that only play what is the top notch veiwed numbers in any given build, then theres people like my self, that play whatever they feel like playing, but pay attention to how to play, build, and use the powers they have chosen, and then theres the mast majority of players, that will attempt to copy the before mentioned Numerical Min/Maxers, because they are sheep and dont really know how to be individuals in the first place.

Best example is when someone comes on the scene with the name Electro-Shield, or Techno-Thunder, or even Lightning Shield, and they are SD/Elec Scrappers.They are the ones Copying the Numeric Min/Maxers, and are rather obvious to spot a mile away.(iv seen all 3 of these names in the same area, not a embellishment)

To the OP : Your veiwing copy-cats, who piggy back the builds the Numerically Obsessed Min/Maxers make, making it seem like theres alot of Min/Maxers, when there really isnt.

To the Numerically Obsessed Min/Maxers : Not a single problem wrong with your method, its just widely copied by what we all know as, "Bad Players".

To People like me : Keep truckin on and making people raise a eyebrow with a unothidox combo, and bad spelling!

I notice that a lot of people who are very vocal about "playing for fun" don't care about fun (or they actually mean "only what I play is fun"). Because their definition of fun comes with more fine print than a legal document. Just look at some of their arguments: "You're not really playing the game if you min-max. You're not really having fun if you use Mids. You're not really min-maxing unless you reinvent the wheel. You're not really enjoying yourself if you play popular powersets." Well, all those rules and regulations don't sound like fun, they sound like bureaucracy. When I look at the personal attacks they make against people who dare to play differently, I get the impression they're more interested in feeling superior to their fellow players than enjoying the game.

I like the fact that min/max'ers are uncommon. We're uncommon enough that I still get "wow, i didn't know it was possible to do that" comments occasionally from teamates.

Furthermore, personally, the number 1 reason I've played this game exclusivally for so long is the fact that I can be uniquely exceptional by using off-line skill to min/max. In most other games, being *powerful* means you spent the most time online waiting for the gear you want. If you don't have more time then everyone else to devote to the game, then guess what? By the time you get that gear, you're not really exceptional anymore. This game however, clearly has huge payback for mathmatical/logical planning skills and doesn't require an enorumous timesink to place that offline planning into execution.

Granted, you can still play the "grind to greatness" game if you want by borrowing someone's build and farming AE tickets to buy what you want, but even then, you're only as good as the build you borrowed... since I never post my builds, and I tend to shy away from FoTM combos, I still get that sense of uniqueness everytime I play.

All that said, I still would never say anything bad about the people who seek that feeling of being exceptional by just role playing a person with fun superpowers. This game certainly has all the building blocks of a "sims" witih powers type game, too.

Scrappers, they wanna, wanna have fun, Scrappers, wanna have. They just wanna, they just wanna.

Of the leveling toons in my signature, seven have nearly full set IO load outs (one has two IO'd builds), two are partly setted (one is on a team with lots of defense, so I've been lazy about that), and three have merely plains or (gasp) SO placeholders. I'm not crazy about playing those. The ten 50s I have (and four 40-somethings that don't get much play time) all have substantial kits, though many with frankenslotting (for that particular min-max angle).

But I don't really min-max my 50s because I don't haul them out very often. Only one has more than a couple purples, a couple have HOs, and none have PvP IOs. And none of my toons have more than 3 LotG +7.5rech, which seems to be not quite getting to min-max. But the obsession with putting together frankenslot and +def builds as I go (and often respecking twice or thrice between 20 and 50) is pretty min-maxy.

The folks I know from real-life who play aren't min-maxers that read about the game a whole lot, or understand really how defense works, but they are people who get pretty deep into building with sets. They enjoy the shiny of more +acc and of course more +rech, and sometimes they short-change their builds' output in this pursuit. It's frustrating at times, but fun to chat about the build possibilities, which really wasn't much of a conversation through i8.

Just addressing the exemplar

couldn't you just use that second build to exemplar down for those missed lower level TF's and such ?

What's the definition of min/max anyway? Are we all talking about the same thing?

Here's what urban dictionary says: