Perhaps you and your opponent were simply optimizing for different goals ? For example, it's possible that your goal was "defeat the opponent as quickly as possible", whereas his was "defeat the opponent while looking as good as possible (in order to derive maximum enjoyment from the task)" or "defeat the opponent whose challenge level falls within some optimal range, handicapping self if needed (in order to derive maximum enjoyment from the task)" . Your opponent may or may not have been aware of his true goals at the time.
My point is, it's kind of tricky to declare an action "worse than worthless" without having very detailed information about all of the actors involved.
If I am about to go and fence a bout, the color of the shirt that I wear under my jacket is of no concern to me-- but if I had spent significant time before the bout debating over what shirt to wear instead of training, it would become a damaging detail rather than a meaningless one.
Unfortunately, worrying about whether you should worry is also harmful for the same reasons. Luckily, that question should resolve itself more quickly, so it should be a net benefit.
However, in more difficult cases, worrying about whether your should worry is harder to resol...
Despite being at +13, this post has been somewhat controversial, with a positive vote ratio of only 73%-- I'd be interested in hearing what caused some people to downvote it.
My current feeling is that this comment should have been part of the original post-- I thought it was implicit, but evidently this was not the case. Therefore, I'm especially interested in hearing comments from downvoters who downvoted the post for reasons other than the above.
I've had many just such experiences in various sorts of gaming (World of Warcraft, D&D), attempting to teach less-experienced players how to play effectively. (I can elaborate if anyone wants.) I can attest that there's definitely a common attitude of "well, at most this is doing no good, and it's how I like to play".
In fact, one particular aspect of this is that people seem to place value on personalization — doing things their way. The problem is, if there exists some optimally-effective way of doing things, then most deviations are likely to make performance worse (quite often because, as the OP says, the modified/added action consumes resources or otherwise has an opportunity cost).
Here's an example from World of Warcraft:
In group content in WoW (i.e. teaming up with other players to kill big monsters — the high-end, maximally challenging game content), one of the key roles is the damage-dealer, or "DPS" (damage per second). One of the DPS classes is the hunter, a ranged attacker. The hunter's job is to deal as much damage to the enemies as fast as possible.
Like all DPS classes, hunters have a wide variety of damage-dealing abilities, with names like Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, etc. Traditionally, damage-dealing classes use their abilities in complex, shifting sequences, called a "rotation", to maximize DPS. (The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this discussion.)
At one point, I was playing a hunter in high-end raid encounters, and consistently performing very well (doing significantly more damage than anyone else). I would often group with other hunters, who were not performing nearly as well. I often had conversations that went like this:
Other hunter: Hey, how are you doing that much damage?
Me: Oh, I just use Steady Shot over and over. Nothing else.
OH: Haha (they think I am joking)
Me: No, seriously. Look at the damage ...
I wonder what is the equivalent of the Steady Shot in real life that I keep ignoring...
Perhaps "exercise, go out to meet new people, and keep smiling"?
Your entire post is rendered moot by:
However, I'll take the time to respond in detail anyway.
This part is for WoW players:
Feign Death, for anyone who understands WoW but hasn't played a hunter, instantly clears 100% of your threat. Misdirection transfers[1] all threat you cause for the next several seconds to another party member (typically you'd use it on the tank). For these two major reasons, and a couple of minor ones, hunters don't have to concern themselves with pulling aggro by doing too much DPS (unless of course your tank is really bad, but then you have many other, larger problems).
[1] This is how it worked at the time I wrote about; it's a bit different now.
This part is for everyone:
Yes, you don't want to things that cause you to fail, such as (in this case) drawing aggro (i.e. causing the monster to hit you instead of the designated tank). If your relentless mashing of the Steady Shot button is causing you to do too much damage, then the answer is to stop mashing that button for a bit — not switch to some more complex and inferior rotation. Then, after some appropriate pause, you start Steady Shotting again.
After all, I didn't say that the correct rotation was necessarily "hit Steady Shot constantly; never take your finger off that button even for a second". My point was that using abilities other than Steady Shot was always inferior to using Steady Shot. Always. Steady Shot was provably the optimal ability to use, in 100% of cases where you wanted to be doing damage to the enemy.
It also goes almost without saying that the aforementioned less-competent hunters that I sometimes played with didn't have anywhere near enough damage output to have the slightest aggro issues. No, there is no construal of the situation under which their behavior was sensible in terms of effective play. They might have found their play style "more fun", while understanding that it was less than optimal — but as I mentioned previously, I've never heard anyone actually claim this as the reason for their behavior.
For these two major reasons, and a couple of minor ones, hunters don't have to concern themselves with pulling aggro by doing too much DPS...
In that case, Feign Death and Misdirection essentially become a part of your rotation, so you're no longer just spamming Steady Shot. You say:
If your relentless mashing of the Steady Shot button is causing you to do too much damage, then the answer is to stop mashing that button for a bit
But in this case, there might be some other rotation that outputs more damage than "Steady Shot, Steady Shot, nothing&q...
There are things that are worthless-- that provide no value. There are also things that are worse than worthless-- things that provide negative value. I have found that people sometimes confuse the latter for the former, which can carry potentially dire consequences.
One simple example of this is in fencing. I once fenced with an opponent who put a bit of an unnecessary twirl on his blade when recovering from each parry. After our bout, one of the spectators pointed out that there wasn't any point to the twirls and that my opponent would improve by simply not doing them anymore. My opponent claimed that, even if the twirls were unnecessary, at worst they were merely an aesthetic preference that was useless but not actually harmful.
However, the observer explained that any unnecessary movement is harmful in fencing, because it spends time and energy that could be put to better use-- even if that use is just recovering a split second faster! [1]
During our bout, I indeed scored at least one touch because my opponent's twirling recovery was slower than a less flashy standard movement. That touch could well be the difference between victory and defeat; in a real sword fight, it could be the difference between life and death.
This isn't, of course, to say that everything unnecessary is damaging. There are many things that we can simply be indifferent towards. If I am about to go and fence a bout, the color of the shirt that I wear under my jacket is of no concern to me-- but if I had spent significant time before the bout debating over what shirt to wear instead of training, it would become a damaging detail rather than a meaningless one.
In other words, the real damage is dealt when something is not only unnecessary, but consumes resources that could instead be used for productive tasks. We see this relatively easily when it comes to matters of money, but when it comes to wastes of time and effort, many fail to make the inductive leap.
[1] Miyamoto Musashi agrees: