Nihilii

I would just go with "different people have different opinions", especially when it comes to judging an individual. What is nobility to one person will be arrogance to another.

I've seen this kind of comment so many times.

Over the years I must have played with, literally, thousands of different players, and there's maybe 1% of that population that I see playing faster than me, and that's being generous.

Yet, I am slow enough to not stay consistently at 70 Fury while playing.

Much of the time, sure, perhaps even most of time in certain easy missions if we discount time spent out of fights running to the next group, but there's those few seconds at the start of each fight for mobs to react at all and attack and build up Fury, those 2-3 seconds during my attacks are going to hit for less and in a 20 seconds fight, that's a significant part of your time, and the performance hit is worse than rough numbers would indicate as the start of a fight is where you want to do as much damage as possible with your AoE salvo and all.

Then there's soft and hard control blocking mobs from even attacking. Then there's spawns where minions are wiped before they even get to attack. Then there's speeding TFs with objectives that aren't necessary fighting back. Escapee phase. Blue cave. Collecting glowies. Defense missions. The list goes on and on, and more and more that "hold" on 70% seems right up there with those fabled war mace farming tankers hitting 8-9 targets with Crowd Control every single time without losing a split second to reposition.

I'm not saying this is impossible. I'm always open to the possibility that I just haven't seen the light, that they are people playing much better. However, claiming that hypothetical level of playing is the norm just doesn't fly when at least 99% (again, conservative number) of the playerbase out of thousands, thousands that also include some of the very names on the boards who used to claim to sit at 90 Fury all the time before / sit at 70 Fury all the time now, that very wide majority doesn't play at that level. If it is possible to keep 70 Fury consistently, then that is the abnormal playstyle, most definitely not the other way around.

If you take these forums at face value, earning experience efficiently or liking to bash monsters in a game that is mostly centered around these two things is terrible, whereas liking to roleplay makes you an inherently better person in real life.

Now log ingame for about five minutes and take a casual glance around...

... That is why you never, ever want to base your opinion of anything in a multiplayer video game from forum posts alone. A good rule of thumb is to assume the opposite of the forumite consensus to be true, but ultimately nothing makes up for actually experiencing the game yourself.

ON/OFF switch syndrome alert!

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'd go for 8- players trials even if it gave rewards only 50% as fast as the bigger trials.

Yeah, that's BS. I dislike iTrials just as much as any other guy but I've always been able to get (and participate somewhat efficiently, thanks to the very low level at which much of the playerbase plays rather than due to any ability on my own end...) a spot on leagues relatively easily, using fresh level 50 characters who are just alpha-unlocked (not alpha slotted, much less level shifted).

Where it's definitely not casual though is that it can take minutes if not dozens of minutes to get a team going unless you're well-connected (which is by itself the definition of *not* casual). There are low-pop servers, i.e. Vigilance, on which iTrials hardly happen outside of peak hours, and when it happens, you better be willing to put up with anybody and any specific trial because there aren't enough warm bodies to be picky about either.

Heh. Jamming that spacebar isn't going to do you a whole lot of good while your 10 other unfocused windows aren't getting any input.