Boring but Practical/Video Games/Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game


 * Healers in MMORPGs are often this. Fiery doom or big swords are a lot cooler, but you try getting anywhere in a dungeon without a dedicated healer in your group. (However, a lot of video games try to circumvent this by giving healing spells effects just as spectacular as their offensive counterparts, such as big shining lights, summoning gods, or massive plant growth.)
 * 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. Warlocks can summon various demons, some of which look quite awesome... but in a normal group setup, the most useful demon is the Imp, a weak green creature that is mostly used for its aura and ranged damage. And of course, there is the whole issue with healers.
 * Since the last expansion, the Imp is the best pet only for one talent tree of warlocks (or in a situation where the minion would die easily, as it can stay phase shifted). However the fact remains that one of the most useful abilities the warlock class brings to groups is the Soulstone. It allows one dead person (usually a healer) to resurrect.
 * 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...
 * Even healing involves this. The most powerful healing spells heal more for every mana spent and tick of 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 spell, interspersed with one or two others as necessary.
 * The next expansion, Cataclysm, aims to remove "boring" talents from the trees and replace them with ones that offer some flair. As is, most players have to spend 10-15 levels adding points to talents that - while practical - are just flat boosts to damage or defense. Those bonuses will remain in some form (integrated into the new meta-talent "mastery" system), but the dev team plans instead to let players create earthquakes, align their chakras for extra healing, and disarm foes so forcefully that they actually cower in fear.
 * Heirloom items 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. Their usefulness nearly reaches Game Breaker level.
 * 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. Your 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.
 * 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.
 * After Issue 19, the only people you wouldn't see having any part of the Fitness Pool are those that were already existing before its release and never respecced. 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 made 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 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.
 * Two words: Double Strafe. It's the first skill you get as a Archer and it's still the main damage skill Snipers/Rangers use.
 * EVE Online has this and its big brother. 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
 * 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 a recent 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.
 * 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.