Traversing The Rotation

Download an external application to check your stats? You may be a min-maxer!

You’ve probably heard the term min-maxing if you’ve been coming to Lorehound with any regularity. It’s a system for putting in minimal effort for the maximum gain. In effect, you ignore any statistic that won’t improve the outcome of other desired statistics. The clearest example is any physical class, say a World of Warcraft rogue, ignoring traits associated with magic, such as intelligence in favor of dexterity. This system can get incredibly complex itself for the hardcore. For instance, at what point does additional dexterity become moot in the face of attack speed? This can negate the benefits why min-maxing was devised in the first place, to help our brains easily understand and optimize what can be perceived as challenging equations. In other words, a life hack.

I have adapted min-maxing to a multitude of situations outside of role-playing games and MMOs. Incredibly, I’m talking about real life experiences from managing my weight and stress to gardening. Okay, I originally came up with garden min-maxing by ruining Farmville for my sister-in-law only to realize I could apply the same logic to my South Philly patio garden! The point is, I adopted a system to help achieve my goals.

Having recently looked back on 2017 and forward for 2018 I asked myself what system have a I used to be successful, or unsuccessful, in hitting those targets? Simple, it’s a rotation. Shocked that it’s another system from gaming? I was up until the light bulb moment.

Polite society would frown upon me spamming Ambush followed by Saber Slash clicks into Run Through to achieve my desired outcome. My IRL rotation have been adapted to this suffocating society. Equally awesome is that my book and gaming rotation is essentially the same. Instead of recklessly driving forward with the latest, greatest and most expensive I traverse the breadth of options, new, classic, recommended, unexpected. Rinse and then repeat. This ensures I’m getting through my backlog without adding too much to it, taking in recommendations from friends, the community or critics, and have freedom to pick up anything on a whim.

I’d have been successful in 2017 if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. How do you select what to play next? Do you have an IRL rotation?