The Taste Problem

 The concept of taste is easy. If you have good taste you pursue are that is good for you. If you have bad taste, you pursue art that is bad for you. 

 The problem is this is a very noisy system with long and longer feedback times. It's common for the effects of art to take decades to manifest. It's also common for it to be context dependent; the perfect art is the enemy of actual individuals, who are sufficiently often seeking art because they can't handle the truth. You can't make them handle the truth by giving them true art. There's steps in the middle.

 The worst part is that even someone with good taste will regularly have no idea why their taste is good. 

 

 Let's talk about World of Warcraft, because fuck you I guess. 

 

 Nobody has done clean tests on what makes a warrior level fast. (They did for the shaman, it's enhancement to 40, then elemental after, but at no point is any spec truly terrible.) Certainly not 600 hours worth of intensive experimentation. 

 Warriors have okay taste. Arms probably is better, but none of them will point to sweeping strikes as the major difference-maker. Nor will they point to [big numbers game], which is the other major candidate for making arms feel good. I personally find 3.5+ swing wait times to be utterly mind-numbing. Yes let me play the videogame now plz. Mob hits me. I wait two full goddamn seconds. Mob hits me again. Still waiting to swing, so I can get rage, so I can do....anything. I finally hit. It's not enough rage yet. 3.5 more seconds...
 Not as bad as paladins, at least...wow that standard...
 At least on a rogue, where I'm also waiting 2-4 seconds for energy so I can do anything, I can watch the stream of dual-wielding numbers. 

 Sweeping strikes (and tac mastery + whirlwind) make up for nearly everything, or perhaps even more. SS is seriously overpowered. Not as strong as a rogue's blade flurry, but has a 30 second cooldown instead of 2 minutes. Cleave is one of the strongest warrior buttons (before whirlwind) and SS is three times as strong. 300%. Normally white hits are 80% of your damage, but with SS and cleave your rage meaningfully contributes to the damage output. Fighting two at once will make the warrior take more damage, but deal much, much more damage. Not to mention it's harder to accidentally pull an extra mob (and die) when you're pulling an extra mob on purpose. Just pick up the one that might have pulled anyway.
 There's also the guaranteed blue two-hander ~40, which augers for arms. 

 Warriors were clearly designed with huge lag spikes in mind. It's not like you're going to overcap on rage, and even without your abilities you're doing most of your damage. If the everything pauses for 10 seconds every twenty minutes or whatever, the warrior is going to be fine almost all the time. 

 Even if you have someone with good taste, and ask them what makes their tasteful art good, they will probably give you bad advice. He has no idea why he likes the things he likes, even if he's not a perverse degenerate. You can't learn to make art in better taste by talking to someone about taste. It should be possible, but if so, then they were all called 'snobs' until they died out. Perhaps snobs still exist but they lie about why they like what they like. Or, at least, are smart enough not to post on the internet. 

 

 Is arms fast? Or does it just feel good? Fury does more single-target damage. Naturally warriors will dispute this. Sogol. They've decided to go arms, therefore arms is better, see? 

 Warcraft is supposed to be a game, though. Even if it were a race, there's no prizes. Don't work it, play it. Choose the one that's engaging to play, not the one that gets you out of levelling the fastest. 

 Unfortunately Warcraft is fundamentally a bad game, and the classic warrior is unquestionably the most miserable class to level.

 

 Someone did do 600 hours of testing for the warlock. Apparently the fastest way to level a classic warlock is really dumb. Immolate, curse, corruption, wand. With the imp. All day, every day. You're gonna kill something like 25,000 mobs...and every single one killed in exactly the same way. Maybe one guy can do the run once to prove it's fast, and then never again. Otherwise, clearly bad taste.
 (Caveat: he probably didn't test drain life after it gets better than wands, and assumes the tryhard has top-tier wands at all times.) 

 The best way to level a mage is even worse.