Boring But Practical / MMORPGs

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• City of Heroes manages to double up on this for some of its support classes. Not only are powersets with healing abilities typically Boring, but Practical to use, even the showier heals are fairly ineffective compared to the efficient but invisible buffs and debuff powers.
  • To the point where somebody "looking for a healer" will often produce a wince from experienced players. Even the most straight-up "healer" class in the game is more useful for their buffs than heals on anything but a low-level team. You'll more often see teams looking for a "buffer/debuffer" for the more challenging expeditions. This is an awesome sauce subversion of the classic MMORPG interpretation of this trope as mentioned at the top of this page.
  • Also, the Fitness power pool, available to all archetypes. The set consists of inherent boosts to basic attributes, namely running speed (Swift), jump height (Hurdle), health regeneration rate (Health), and endurance recovery rate (Stamina). Stamina is by far the most popular power in the game, to the point where it's rare to see a high-level character who doesn't have it.
    • As of Issue 19, the only people you won't see having any part of the Fitness Pool are those that were already existing before its release and never respeced. The pool has become so popular to the point of 'necessity' (in the sense that it makes certain encounters 'just' Nintendo Hard) that the developers are making them an innate ability like sprint, brawl (a simple punch) or rest. It's still up to the player to add slots and enhancements, though.
  • Even in the manual, it states that characters will usually use their first powers later in the game just as much as they were used when they first rolled the character. They are simply the most basic. Entire attack chains used to be based on this principle.
• In Destiny, Often, your Melee weapon can be more efficient to quickly finish off enemies than your guns, especially with hordes of weaker enemies.
• EVE Online has this. Early-on, players will only fly basic T1 frigates for any PvP or low/null-sec ops, since anything bigger might cost too much to replace (as well as the anguish of losing your first BC because of something stupid). However, once you get going, flying T2 Battleships into certain death doesn't become an issue, until you get to Titans.
  • Then there is the attempt to quite literally weaponize boredom: the dickstar. Basically, it is a space station with massive amounts of HP, and electronic warfare that prevents opponents from locking their weapons. This results in players literally being bored off the battlefield
  • Mining. Pure and simple. Dedicated players can make hundreds of millions of isk running assorted combat missions, or attacking hapless transports in low/null sec. But, when it comes right down to it, it's the miners that make the game go round. Without the miners, there would be no ships, ammo, or modules. And yet it's probably the most mind-numbingly boring aspect of the game.
  • Tech 1 Ammo production can also count. Each individual charge may only sell for pennies, but as any combat player will tell you, they can be bought in the THOUSANDS, are vital for any operation, and will sell very easily. On top of that, many of the biggest alliances produce their own ammo either in stations or star-bases, and stock up just in case they're attacked.
• In Final Fantasy XI, there are thousands of items, many of which are extremely hard to get. However, one of the most effective items for its intended purpose is Earth Staff, an item that reduces physical damage by 20% and is buyable for a pittance.
  • Not to mention as a healer once you get Cure III, Cure II is still more of a viable method to keep your party alive, and once Cure II is no long able to keep up. You're just a few levels from Cure IV, which is only a viable option in a very few strategies since it will mostly likely get the monster to kill you. Some of the best healers in the game are those that make Cure III their primary spell with a little help from Cure V and a very little bit of IV. The worst are those who spam the flashier bigger spells constantly. Just to drive the point home, a White Mage gets III at level 21, but still uses it constantly at level 75.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Tanks have the humble Provoke ability. All it does it gives the tank top aggro on the target, but given that a well-timed Provoke can save your healer from an untimely death, it's considered a mandatory ability for tanks to have, and was added to their toolkit verbatim later on. Plus, MT swapping is an intergral part of high-end fights, so learning it can be the differrence between your co-tank's life or death.
  • Sure throwing Flare spells around is impressive, but a Dragoon can reliably mop up opponents in PvE or PvP. In PvE, it has two simple combos and some oGCD's to weave. Keep up the combos, always be casting, and you'll hit like a train. In PvP, Dragoon is no less deadly - pair up with a Dark Knight and the DRK can draw in people with its LB, then you can carve off the rest of their health with your Sky Shatter LB.
  • By the same token - Always Be Casting. It sounds simple - but keeping your GCD rolling as ANY class can be the difference between clear and enrage. Even playing your class 'badly' but never stopping that GCD rolling can be better for DPS than someone hunting and pecking the right skills in the right order. Do both together and you are singing. It's not glamorous, it's busy, and it may even be stressful - but keeping that GCD rolling puts you in the top third of randoms.
  • Paladins are effectively the Dragoons of the Tanking role. Do they have Dark Knight's oGCD spam or GNB's 'three-DPS-in-a-trenchcoat' rotation - no! Instead, it has the incredibly niche ability to slap mitigations on both itself and the other tank. While this will kill your mitigation resources it's perfect for early progression where one cooldown can be the difference between that last bit of health.
  • Pure Healers may not have pocket regen like Scholar or Sage, but they do one thing and do it really well - have chunky heals. The Afflatus spells, Cure/Benefic II (forget I, I does not exist above lvl 30), Essential Dignity and Cure III. If you need someone to be dosed with health NOW, simply throw it their way. No fuss. No mess - it's telling that later on, some barrier healers get their own chunky heal.
    • On the same level - DPS'ing as a healer. Since all damage is on a timer, and the only HP that matters is the last one, you can get a lead on damage if you spend spare GCD's throwing rocks/cursing/broiling/shooting lasers at your enemies and keeping each healer's individual Do T up. Sure, it's 1-2 buttons, maybe 3 or 4 if your class is extra fancy, but healers dish out 40% of a DPS's damage output and optimizing to where you can spend the most times bapping the smegger with spells can be the difference between clears and enrages. By that same token - dead enemies don't deal damage. If you kill an enemy, it's not around to deal damage to your charges, and the longer a fight goes on, the more chances you have for things to go wrong or for you to run out of resources.
    • Not only that, but White Mages get Holy, which forces stun for 4s, 2s and finally 1s before not being effective. Except, when spammed, this is SEVEN WHOLE SECONDS of the tank taking no damage. In the beginning of a mob pull, the most dangerous time, having time for your DPS to start softening up the enemies for free is crucial. It isn't fancy, but there's a reason why you should holy while you holy so you can holy while you holy.
  • At the level cap for most expansions, most jobs get spells that both look fantastic and have dramatic effects... and then there's Expedience, the Scholar's level 90 ability, which gives a 20 second speed boost and 10% damage reduction. This is by far the most visually and effect-wise boring skill any job gets at 90, but a free movement speed boost for that long has a significant impact on mechanically intense endgame fights, where positioning correctly and getting to said positions before attacks go off can be a matter of life or death for the entire party, making it the best utilities any of the healers get.
  • For getting around, the Chocobo Porter or similar is much cheaper than using Teleport for regional travel in a region. Sure it's not instant, but most destinations aren't more than a few minutes apart at worst and the most expensive routes are still a fraction of the cost of teleporting. Not only that, but some routes are available via chocobo that you can't get to via aetheryte. This is insane for early game where you might not have the gil for teleporting everywhere and you don't have flight in ARR yet. As an added bonus, you can kick back and relax since nothing attacks you and given the game's beautiful scenery...
• In Ragnarok Online, the most effective weapons for PvP are the most powerful basic weapon with 4 slots. While one can potentially make a 4 slot high power weapon, the cost and risk of losing the weapon (even in private servers) makes the 4 slot basic a good weapon to keep throughout your life as a character. For Mages, Frost Diver and a Lightning Bolt will carry you through most foes without Maya/Garm cards.
  • Double Strafe. It's the first skill you get as a Archer and it's still the main damage skill Snipers/Rangers use.
• Want to make loads of money in RuneScape? Learn what some reliable commodities are, collect or manufacture them, and sell them on the Grand Exchange. Pick potatoes. Spin bowstrings. Buy feathers and harpoons from the NPC fishing shops. Tedious? Absolutely. Hundreds of thousands of gold per hour? Entirely possible.
  • The elemental staves are also this, their stats aren't the greatest but they allow to use magic without wasting runes from certain elements, wanna produce money and train magic at reasonable price? use an elemetal staff.
• S4 League has available a wide variety of special skills to augment your character. While these abilities range from Invisibility and Flight to zipping around on a grappling-chain mounted board, the most effective is simply the ability to have more SP, which allows you to perform your acrobatic techniques.
• If you want to reach massive lengths in Slither.io, you should just make the biggest loop you can and keep circling around once you get big enough (25000 in length usually, depending on the leaderboard). It may be boring but you are practically invincible. Your head will spend most of its time over the tail, meaning that no one can cut you off. Plus, you will most likely have many small snakes right beside you, making it difficult for snakes of similar size to coil you. 100000 or more in length is definitely possible with this method.
• In Spiral Knights, the Spiral Order weapons and armor, also known as the Cobalt set, do not have flashy elemental powers like other weapons and armor, but each tier of the set is strong and dependable for their level, you can get the recipes for each upgrade via the Rank Missions (so no need to grind crowns/needing to get lucky with Basil), and the ultimate upgrades for the set's sword, the Leviathan Blade and the Cold Iron Vanquisher, are widely considered some of the best weapons in the game.
• Star Trek Online introduces all manner of exotic weapons never used by the Federation in the TV series' or movies, like plasma, tetryon, polaron and antiproton beams, and transphasic, chroniton and tricobalt torpedoes, all with their own special powers like slowing down enemy ships or passing through shields a little better, but their skillpoint cost is very high. Not to mention, all beam weapons do the same base damage anyway; plasma, transphasic and chroniton torpedoes take very long to reload, their special abilities are not that useful and some can even be shot down before they hit. Plain old phasers, disruptors, photon and quantum torpedoes get the job done very effectively, the torpedoes reload quickly and require the least amount of skillpoints invested in them to yield their maximum potential.
  • Mitigated somewhat in an update that completely redesigned the skill tree and did away with weapon-type-specific skills, but the fact that the exotic beams are usually harder to find and/or more expensive combined with the fact that their special powers aren't really that special at all means that the trope still applies.
  • Overlooked by panicked players freaked by the change made by the expansion Delta Rising, normal T5s and T5-Us can be considered this. They don't have the special seating the T6 does, they don't have fancy Starship Traits, in some cases they're quite cheaper than a T6. If you have the right skills to pull it off, you can get away with just about anything without letting something as bad as the inability to get nifty stuff get to you!
• In Toontown Online, you start with the Throw and Squirt gag tracks, both of which are basic attacks that hit a single cog. Sound targets all cogs, Drop and Trap do more damage at the respective costs of being less accurate and requiring lure, Toon-Up heals the party, and Lure stuns any given cog. But Throw and Squirt are accurate (moreso for the latter track) and deal respectable damage on their own, making them valid choices for lategame battles. Furthermore, both tracks deal extra damage against lured cogs, to the point where a Birthday Cake in tandem with a Whole Cream Pie is all you need to destroy a lured level 12 cog.
• World of Warcraft mages can rain ice and fire on their enemies, freeze them in place and even steal their status buffs. Far less impressive, but nonetheless very practical, is their ability to conjure food and water out of thin air (which restore health and mana, respectively). Not that you can't buy or loot comparable items, but getting it for free is way better, especially for a class with no innate healing.
  • Warlocks can summon various demons, some of which look quite awesome... but in a normal group setup, the most useful demon for a Destruction/Affliction Warlock is the Imp, a weak green creature that is mostly used for its aura and ranged damage. In solo, you will nearly always run around with the Voidwalker, a tanky damage sponge that is your pocket meat shield. Nearly everything else, while cool-looking, is situational and/or time-restricted. And, of course, the Summoning Portal that allows teleporting your group members to you, not wait for them to come by themselves from the other end of the map.
  • Ask any mage and many of them will say one of their most useful skills is that they can teleport (or open portals for party members) to any capital city. Zero combat use? Yes. Saves a ton of time traveling around the world collecting rare materials or running old expansion zones/raids? Definitely.
  • Taken even further in high-end raiding. You may have eighty different tools and eleven distinctly different ways to kick ass, but at the end of the day you'll be using the same one or two high-damage abilities over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
    • The entire Arcane Mage specialization is built around this. In a normal fight against a single foe (normal mob or boss, no matter), the entire Arcane damage routine is repeatedly casting Arcane Blast at 4 Arcane Charges until your Mana runs out, using Evocation to restore it, and repeat. Starting with Cataclysm, it was so common that the whole meme of facerolling appeared: that it, bind Arcane Blast to every single keyboard button, and roll your face on the said keyboard, giving pretty good damage per second in result.
  • Even healing involves this. The most powerful healing spells heal more for every mana spent and tick for massive numbers, but the casting time means there's rarely a chance to use them in heated combat unless you're using a special ability to speed them up. Most healers will spam a specific fast spell, interspersed with one or two other instant ones as necessary.
    • One of the best spells in healing? Battle rezzes. Countless raids have been saved from a wipe by someone resurrecting the tank. One of the most useful abilities the Warlock class brings to groups is the Soulstone, which grants the soulstoned party member the ability to resurrect immediately after death.
  • Heirloom items made for leveling fit this perfectly. They look pretty generic because so many people use them and are re-purposed items from the original vanilla game, but will outperform ANY item your character can buy, craft, loot or obtain as a reward until you reach maximum level.
  • Also, playing the auction house to generate cash. It takes some additional add-ons to do it well, and it can easily consume a couple of hours a day, but it can get you gold (for those very expensive things, like some of the crafted mounts, or their components) relatively quickly compared to other options.
  • Most druids agree that their most useful ability (outside of combat) is their flight form. Unlike other flying mounts, it has no cast time so it can be used while moving (say, falling). And since the the druid isn't actually riding anything, they can loot bodies and pick herbs without landing, thus bypassing any nearby enemies.
  • Racial ground mounts and faction flying mounts are easily this compared to the more fantastic mounts. While there are amazing (and badass) mounts like motorcycles, dragons, phoenixes, golems, and bears, none of them are any faster than the humble gryphon/wyvern players can buy relatively cheaply from a vendor, getting the same speed for a fraction of cash.
    • Regarding mounts, while having flying mounts is cool-looking, most players put plain old horses or similar simple mounts, as well as mounts with special abilities (like herb gathering) on their action bar. They may look dull and/or ridiculous, but for precision maneuvering and resource farming, speeding up the process and making for easier control is way more important than awesome appearance.
  • Warlords of Draenor introduced Garrisons, bases which players can fill with various buildings that give unique bonuses. The buildings that are almost universally used are the Barracks/Armory whose bonuses tend to seem rather dull. Allowing players to have a bodyguard with them in Draenor (especially useful for the Squishy Wizard to have a tank protecting them), providing followers with items and raising the cap on active followers from twenty to twenty-five seems boring, but it gives you a near-invincible army of farming bots that get currency for you while you relax in the back yard.
    • Others include the Storehouse (allows access to bank, guild bank, and a transmog vendor), the Inn (adds profitable missions and new followers) and Trading Post (gives a buff to reputation gains and trading resources for trade goods or vice versa).
    • As far as the Garrison naval missions go, none is more boring and more useful than the Oil Rig mission. It gives no experience to your fleet, gold, or epic loot. However it gives you 400 Oil which is needed to both make new ships and to run missions. So long as players do an Oil Rig mission daily (or more often with buffs that reduce mission time), they'll never have to worry about not having enough Oil.
  • Even before racial traits were reworked to balance out the various races, humans have always had one racial ability that made them quite popular: diplomacy. Diplomacy increased reputation gains by 10% which was a godsend for anyone trying to increase their reputation with a faction, whether for gear or simply for an achievement. The boost was especially useful for reputations that were tied to dailies, which could only be increased by a certain amount each day. Battle for Azeroth made diplomacy even more important due to the introduction of allied races, who can only be unlocked after completing a series of achievements, one of which is always maxing out reputation with a given faction.
  • Every class has an ability that you will be using all of the time, but has little to no special effects (Shadowbolt for Warlocks, Frostbolt/Pyroblast for Mage, Arcane Shot for hunters, etc.)
  • At one point, the most common tactic for mages wasn't the long-range elemental attacks they were supposedly all about, but to simply jump wildly around the enemy while spamming the upgraded, instant-cast version of Arcane Explosion (which caused damage to every enemy close to you). It looked absolutely ridiculous, but it was brutally efficient, especially against other players, who often had trouble maintaining the right aim and range for landing useful attacks of their own.
  • The new hero class Demon Hunter has the ability to Double Jump and glide, both of which make getting from place to place much easier at times. While other classes have some form of Slow Fall or can at least use a goblin glider, the former doesn't let you change directions and the latter has a limited duration and a cooldown longer than said duration.
  • Artifacts in Legion each have three golden traits that either give powerful new abilities or modify existing ones in amazing ways such as summoning a trio of Infernals or calling down a Draco Lich to bombard your enemies. But overall, the various regular traits are more useful in general questing as they simply boost your basic abilities in simple ways. A skill that hits every nearby enemy for a million damage once every five minutes is impressive, but you'll likely get more mileage out of one that simply boosts your damage by a flat percentage. A later patch introduced the best trait across the board and one everyone invests in first: one that increases health and damage by 10%, worth at least ten other traits combined.
  • Bodyguard followers in Legion are nigh universal as they both make questing easier (especially for healers and squishy dps) but they can be given equipment so players can earn gold, resources, or even artifact power with every single world quest completed. They may not burst out a massive damaging and/or healing ability when used like some followers but their constant support is generally agreed to be more useful. As a result, players tend to build their class hall roster around their bodyguard of choice.
  • When it comes to WoW addons, Deadly Boss Mods is by far the most common. While some can make it easier to farm gold, help maximize your damage, or give your interface an exciting new look, DBM alerts you to boss fight mechanics such as spells you have to interrupt, abilities you have to dodge, or times you need to move away from party members. Simple and so incredibly useful that most raiding guilds make its usage mandatory.
  • WoW offers you expensive mounts and purchased mechanisms that can summon all kinds of vendors to you, either on the back of your mount or into your home location (Garrison, Class Hall, etc.): having your auctioneers, transmogrifiers and bankers with you, instead of going back to the capital every time, can save you enough time to justify the price. However, even simpler is stacking plain old bag space: get 4 30+ slot bags, open a reagent tab in the bank, organize them well, and the problem of overclogging your bags with items you wish to sell will disappear.
  • Active abilities and trinkets, gear swapping, gem swapping, different Essences and talent swapping for minmaxing your performance in a given situation is a must-have for endgame... But for a normal player, who'd never go above Mythic-0 dungeons, Casual battlegrounds and Heroic raids, it is simply too much. In fact, most characters in WoW carry a single universal layout of abilities and talents that passively boost their main skills, passive trinkets that don't need to be activated manually, gems focusing on one crucial stat, all-around easy-to-acquire Essences that work in every battle (the first of which, Concentrated Flame, is in fact given from the start), and a single item with one all-spec trait in every slot just so they don't have to go into the whole add-ons stuff. Yes, they are weaker in result, but they don't have to micromanage a ton of stats and items half of their playtime.

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