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"?
In that case, Feign Death and Misdirection essentially become a part of your rotation, so you're no longer just spamming Steady Shot.
No... that's not what a "rotation" is. The term refers to a sequence of offensive abilities. I say in this comment that
... to say that hitting that one button repeatedly is the only thing you needed to do to win was a bit of a simplification. True, your rotation was as simple as can be; but there are other aspects of correct play, both in-the-moment (DPS cooldown timing; mana management; positioning and other things to do with fight mechanics; pet control) and during-downtime ...
You can have a rotation of Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, ..., and use FD and MD when appropriate. You can also have a rotation of Serpent Sting, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, ..., and likewise use FD and MD when appropriate. FD and MD do not take up "slots" in the rotation; they don't replace offensive abilities (because one is not on the global cooldown and the other is cast pre-fight).
But in this case, there might be some other rotation that outputs more damage than "Steady Shot, Steady Shot, nothing". Or there might not be, I don't really know, since I'd quit WoW long ago, as I said.
No, there is not, which has been my entire point.
In a more general sense, this ties in to my other comment on the thread: it's easy to say, "this action is worse than worthless", but it's not nearly as easy to say that and be right about it.
I don't agree that it's hard. It seems pretty easy, actually. If your complaint is that my statements were insufficiently precise ("Ah, but surely you have to hit your arrow keys to move your character! That's something other than Steady Shot!"), or "technically incorrect" in some other way, then... I think you're being somewhat pedantic, and missing my point. If you're saying that my claims are actually false, in the sense that the opposite is true, then... you're incorrect.
Just because they did not claim this as the reason, does not mean that this was not, in fact, the reason.
Granted. I find this unlikely, however. The people in question almost always maintained that their way of doing things was more effective, or at least least as effective, than mine (and blamed evidence to the contrary on having inferior gear, on bad luck, on other players... on anything but their own technique). Furthermore, as far as I could tell, said people never actually tried my way. (I say "my way", but it's not like I came up with it; all hunters in high-end raiding guilds used this approach.)
Here's another formulation of my hypothetical instructions to underperforming hunters that you might find more to your liking:
"If you're using Serpent Sting in your rotation, you're doing it wrong. If you're using Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, Concussive Shot, or any other shot or sting in your rotation, you're doing it wrong. Any time you consider pressing any of those buttons in your rotation, don't do it; press your Steady Shot button instead. When I look at the damage meters after this fight, the only entry I want to see on the list of damaging abilities used by you is Steady Shot. So much as a single Aimed Shot showing up on that damage meter will tell me that you missed at least one opportunity to use Steady Shot. That is bad. You should have used Steady Shot instead. You would have done more damage that way, thus increasing our chances of success."
I believe that should avoid accusations of imprecision or technical inaccuracy. If I have misread the nature of your disagreement, please elaborate further.
No... that's not what a "rotation" is. The term refers to a sequence of offensive abilities.
Fair enough; I always thought that "rotation" included any abilities, both offensive and defensive, but your terminology works too. That said, if you have an ability that builds up aggro faster than the tank can compensate for it, then you will end up either casting FD periodically -- and while you're casting FD, you're not casting Steady Shot. This is all that I meant. That said, I was unaware that FD was off the GCD; I don't remember if it w...
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: