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It’s precedent for every game that I know. It’s a norm, for PvE content that requires precision people usually look up guides if they are joining matchmaking or lfg.
A mix of both, I think. Their existence is a factor but people being less patient feels like a fact too.
I will never, EVER read a guide again.
If I feel I’m underperforming I just check out warcraftlogs and see what everyone else is doing, get some ideas on talent combinations and so on.
If I’m playing something new, I just get a talent build from Wowhead or Icy Veins, look at the abilities I have and put them on my bars. Then I run some lows keys or LFR/normal raid to get a feel for it. If I like it and want to play it more, I then start digging into the talents more, hanging out on the class discord, looking at what builds and gear/stats other people are playing with, and generally getting to know it better.
If it’s a spec I already know well, I still pay attention to what the guide writers are saying, what other people are doing, and what people are saying on the class discord, but I’m much more likely to make my own decisions that deviate from what’s recommended or popular.
I usually start off by just picking my own talents and usually go for as many passives as i can to get used to the class/spec and when i feel more familiar with it i can look up a guide and try to play it the way that is best.
Depends. With talents and rotation I usually follow guides. But I like to get my own gear compositions instead of blindly go with BiS recommendations by spending hours of raidbots simulating of different stats and trinket combinations.
No, people don’t judge top dps of the raid 
When i started i use to figure it out.
Overtime that discovery faded away because is always the same idea with details changing, not very exciting.
It doesn’t help the fact that the whole mechanics behind what makes a character strong is complicated and its just better to sim.
Sure Rextroy can find cool things but he earns money doing that i just have fun doing general content, collecting things.
Let’s say I randomly got kicked out of a dungeon group, the first thing on my mind is how I can do the same to someone else, and the last thing I would be thinking about is to be kind to others.
When negative energy is passed onto you, you must pass it on to someone else, being perceived as a kind person shouldn’t come before your mental and emotional well-being.
Being a kind person improves my mental and emotional well-being. It dispells the negative energy without that energy hurting anyone.
If I have absolutely 0 idea of what I’m doing, then I will look for a standard guide to just get me started, then will usually tailor it to myself and my own gameplay/playstyle.
I usually experiment a lot while leveling, I’ll just pick what seems fun and tweak it to get a nice flow. If I wonder about certain talents or abilities how they work exactly I’ll look them up. At max level I’ll look at guides, compare experiences and results and often learn some new stuff. I enjoy the process.
I’ve noticed especially for pvp it usually comes in handy to have tried things already and to have some idea about utility that’s regularly kept out of more pve dps focused builds. I’m not a great player and don’t engage with more difficult content, in that sense it doesn’t really matter. I do enjoy it tho!
With dungeons or raids I’ll usually look it up beforehand. I know if I’m confused about a mechanic I’m not smart enough to figure it out there and then so I’d rather have an idea of what to expect and how to deal with it before I go in so as to hopefully contribute instead of lying dead on the floor wondering what happened
I usually read guides and go with the cookie cutter builds and when i get comfortable with the class i start to change things to my playstyle.
I mostly look up rares, secret loot, or quests that aren’t highlighted.
For Dungeons/Raids, I mostly put my faith in Deadly Boss Mod. If it’s a raid and I’m waiting, I glance through the Adventure Guide. If not… well… then I just winged it.
I’m not “just” following guides but I check them out more or less regularly. They aren’t often up to date, though, so it’s still usually better to stick to Discord / YouTube channels and Reddit communities where it’s so much easier to share important news.
Guides on Wowhead are usually quite good, but they sometimes do contain significant mistakes. For example:
- Protection paladin M+ talent build doesn’t include Blinding Light, which is way more important than 1 point in Fist of Justice.
- Retribution paladin season 3 trinket ranking was based on PTR tuning for several weeks and claimed that Ashes of the Embersoul is D tier, although it’s really A tier, maybe even S tier for M+.
I’d recommend reading Wowhead guides to learn the foundation of your spec, but then look for potentially more up-to-date information, e.g.
https://u.gg/wow/for talent buildshttps://bloodmallet.com/for DPS trinket sims- Whatever you can find on your class Discord server
I do think that it can be a continuous vicious circle, but people all react differently. I definitely wouldn’t have felt good inflicting that kind of behaviour on others. But that’s me.
I certainly used to see it with PvP realms. Because people always came and killed you on higher characters or simply in bigger numbers, you’d annihilate everyone you saw too even if they were just trying to fish, pass by, level etc. Some would even go and seek out the low levels to annihilate because it had been done to them. I remember trying to get to Tarren Mill and this guy just killed my character constantly every time I ressed. I just further and further away from my corpse and ressed, eventually I managed to ress near enough into the Horde patrol, that I could get to Tarren Mill and log out in an Inn.
In my case I moved to PvE realms at some point in Wrath I think, but I honestly can’t remember. I don’t have a very high opinion about those that set out to ruin someone else’s play time. Ofc they aren’t doing anything wrong, it’s the purpose of PvP realm and when I started in TBC I had no idea what that meant.
Exactly, it’s a win-win.
If someone is having a bad day, they get to take it out on you, and you then dispel it with your kindness.
I’m obviously being sarcastic because it’s ridiculous to me that you think this is actually good for your mental and emotional well-being.
To me your solution seems ridiculous, it would suck for my mental and emotional wellbeing to do that. Why dive into some odd spiral of negativity when you can just shake it off and treat the next person you meet with your own innate good vibes?
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Depends from the season. Last 2 seasons I didn’t follow a talent guide. This season I did because I didn’t have to get Last Resort as there is a trinket doing the same thing. And I changed a bit the build as I didn’t like some of the talent choices.