Okay sure. I do this pretty much once every three months when this thread crops up and it usually ends the arguments.
Here's the post again though:
SKILL CEILING is the maximum skill level at which a character can be played. In other words, at an inhuman, robot pace of play where no mistakes are made, which class will be the most complex and the hardest to master?. A low skill ceiling would be something like a warrior, where even a tunneling warrior (if geared) is only marginally less effective than a "skilled" warrior.
SKILL FLOOR is the lowest limit at which the class is still effective. In other words, if you are playing a warlock and you are really, really bad (you don't know how to position, you don't fear, you don't keep DoTs up) you are going to have an incredibly bad time (read:useless). On the other hand, a hunter, who is just as bad as our warlock friend, will still be okay, and might even be effective! That means the warlock has a low floor and the hunter has a high floor.
Illustrated in picture terms:
[....................SKILLED....................][AVERAGE][........................................NOOB]
[...........................Hunter's Effectiveness Bar.......................... ]
[.............Warlock's Effectiveness Bar................ ]
As you can see, the warlock's "floor" or point at which he or she is effective skillwise is clearly higher than the hunter. So now we know what those mean.
Why does that mean a hunter is more complex at 20 than a warlock or a mage?
Let's think about it analytically. Name the RESTO shamans off the top of your head that are really good. Maybe you thought of Riptides, Mindy or Phrontistery? What about those shamans impresses you? Take away their gear, take away their ability to FC - focus only on the shaman abilities. What makes them good? It can't just be healing - anyone can predict damage and pre-cast a heal. It can't be positioning and the like; that has nothing to do with the class, it has to do with the player. Here is the question: What about THAT CLASS makes them so much better than other shamans?
Here I think you can figure out at least a little bit about where I am going. What makes a good shaman? I would argue that those three shamans, or a good arena player like myself, Wizkidone, Veinte etc. are going to be more or less at the same level of shaman play. They might have more experience playing 20 shaman and so they might be more natural at it, but overall, you won't be able to tell the difference. I think this has been proven quite often with many, many "good" players rerolling to just about any class at 20 and being one of the elites no matter what they roll. A good shaman knows not just to shear, but when to shear. A good shaman purges, but knows what to purge (the 24 priest is rebuffing Fort? STOP purging it off of everyone and don't go OOM!). You get my point. There's not a lot.
That's the easy way to think about it. Think about the "good" hunters. Lil, humbly submitted, myself, Wizkidtwo, Felix etc. All the hunters that make you miserable. There's 5-10 hunter's a game in WSG. Why do you remember these hunters? Here I think there's a lot more that you can say. "I was killing his pet but he kept dismissing it." "That god-damned 5% crit that he refreshes on everyone." "Scatter, Moth Silence, absurd damage, kiting, keeps SS or Hunter's Mark on me so I can't stealth" etc. There's a lot more. That's because a hunter has a high SKILL CEILING AND a high SKILL FLOOR. That means a shitty hunter can be decent in WSG but it also means that there is a HUGE difference between an average hunter and a god-tier hunter. If you look at my list: Hunter > Mage > Priest > Ele Shaman, you'll notice that the same element is true for most. The difference between poor and average is high, the difference between average and good is higher still, but the difference between REALLY good and good is far, far more obvious and stark.
That's what being complex means. That's why a hunter is complex and a warlock is not. Any good player can play a warlock, focus fear, know DR"s and DoT everything. What's hard about that? Nothing. On the other hand, I guarantee not every good player can play a hunter. I've already seen it happen over and over and over again. Yeah, any good player can beat the garbage players in the gulch. They won't beat a good hunter in arena or a duel.
