After doing all 10+s and a few +11 I just wanted to share the experience I’ve had. The runs have been mixed with both pugs and premades.
Since the release of the keystone system in Legion there has been a gigantic variation of ups and downs in each patch dungeons (now so-called Seasons). From trash mobs and some bosses in Legion doing almost nothing to roller coaster ride in TWW. I want to point out here that that I somehow agree that Legion trash mobs (and some bosses) were lame… BUT what on earth have we gotten into today?
I understand Blizzard wanted trash mechanics to be more…I dont know, relevant? Interacting? Intresting? But holy cow… Let me start by saying:
There is so so soooo much unavoidable damage taken its absurd. A clear example when you dont stand in that “swirlie” the entire group STILL take a ton of damage. You moved out of swirl on ground? Good you avoided death, but here - your whole party take a minimum of 40% of your hp. I know swirl is an old design and “easy” to avoid, but come on… it feels there are no rewarding moment when playing well and avoiding hostile spells. Almost every big scarab doing Slam + Swarm neither you can avoid. Bosses doing dmg on entire party frequently - Looking at you, last boss in CoT.
Big AoE slams, pulsating AoE, DoT’s thrown all over players, swirls you avoid but still dmg you. I know the M+ design from Shadowlands and on has been to cater high-end gaming level along with E-sport MDI so they keep viewers and those gamers “interacted and intrested” with damage going on 24/7. There isnt a single boss in the 4 TWW dungs we have in the M+ pool now that are a “softball boss”. Looking at the Shark Ogre boss in Freehold, put a boss like that in the mix doesnt hurt.
I can totally understand a healer + tank shortage with this amount of damage going on. In my group of 7-8 friends Im the only healer. They have seen the amount of damage output the mob+bosses do. So either they cant heal - and or simply avoiding to heal at all.
Outro:
This is all before Xal’atath Guile comes to play too. I dont even think Im motivated to go into a City of Threads on +12 and above to even try. I want to but when Guile tag along to add EVEN MORE damage I think Ill pass. Is Guile affix there to create some kind of a wall?
Finale:
I wish the next 4 dungeons of TWW + Floodgate coming in M+ play next patch doesnt have this much damage but they probably will. But when making dungeons going forward - don’t make every boss or trash have something bringing you down 50% or more of total hp because “reasons”.
Well the M+ is an Aoe-feast where the best Aoe’rs (meta) rank 1st …
Look at shamans …they don’t complain about healing they complain about priest because they do more dps^^ . That’s the main problem … everyone want to be at the same spot doing the same things over and over .
(I played shaman healer as main since tbc~ i enjoy healing …and that’s the point ~but the elit or wannabe heroes want to change to rank 1st…i don’t care* )
There is a reason why classic has such a appeal . There is no mythic + there are dungeons where you play with 100% of tools you have .
M+ bleed your hand with your 3/4 aoe abilities and don’t bother at anything else
I’m pretty sure this is the result of healers crying about others demanding them to dps in past seasons. People didn’t know the bigger picture.
Every player during the run has to contribute. If there’s no damage to heal, healers shouldn’t stand and do nothing, because they ARE able to deal damage so they should do it. If there are lots of damage healers won’t have time to dps.
So because healers complained they have to dps as healers, Blizzard increased incoming damage and now they’re on cutting edge.
Solution: bring back previous system of less damage taken and make healers be able to contribute dps freely. It allows to >choose< whether to pull more, whether to dps as healer. It was good design.
It was exactly this. Non-healers complained healers didn’t do enough dps by their standards. They had even no ducking clue what the healer was doing…
Top hilarity was needing a Venthyr holy paladin for their weekly +10 key because it did the most damage, while wiping on bosses because it lacked actually healing. But no; people wanted a dps-healer.
Prime example is last boss of Darkhearth Thicket. He does have 1 big AoE when reaching 50% hp + that channeling dmg on 1 player. That is on that players responsibilty to throw a defensive + ofc recieving heals from the healer.
BUT! - At the same time, if you play by his abilities you can be flawless and be perfectly fine.
I don’t know…on the one hand, yes, some damage has a too funky profile (super heavy front-load, with a high dot afterwards…SoB last boss is a nice example here, otherwise DB mid-section), but when the party know all the tricks, and uses their mitigation appropriately, it actually becomes close to boring to heal.
At least, that’s what happened to my Resto Shaman (around 625). It just got boring. 99% was easily healable. And 1% was either a one-shot, or a dot so heavy ticking that even 1GCD was too significant to have spent “inefficiently” (no, I’m not perfect).
All in all, just tune down those heavy hitting dots a little. That’s it.
Oh, and make like a “Boss ability timeline” baseline in the game. You cannot have a “Dispell X right before Y” while not (base UI) indicating when Y comes…(E.D.N.A.).
A big solution is to bring the previous model of Classic-tbc-wotlk for healers.
Intelligent = mana (more intellect more mana )
Spirit or mana regen on gear= more resources to spend by getting more respective stats .
Right now the model is that since 1st day you have a set up on total mana and mana regen .
I have done more than 100 dungeon with my healers an i never had an issue with mana …
The problem start when they add more gamestyle to a respective spec like healers and because of that some are perfoming better …aka priest with dps
I wished the game telegraphed certain abilities way better. Like tankbusters on trash are often instants with 0 indication (for example soulcleavers in Mists). How is a tank even able to press a defensive when you have no idea when it comes… And then blizz decides to put 2 of those mobs often in 1 pack. And then everyone wonders how the tank flopped 100 to 0.
As a healer since TBC I used to do DPS to keep busy and that’s fine but now it’s deemed necessary which I don’t think it should be…
At a guess ( because I don’t do M+ ) I would say high keys would be impossible without healers doing DPS right ?
I am a firm believer that a players role should be exactly that, healers heal, tanks tank and DPS do their thing…
Healers DPS’ing should be an option and not a necessity.
Aren’t most at least some sort of (uninterruptable) cast? Just, it’s not always clear that it’s a tank-buster. So you have to memorize most names. And I’m quite terrible at remembering names, so it’s a surprise at every pack for me…over and over again;p
Yeah most have a short cast time. But without certain addons you arent in time to press your defensive since they are on the gcd. The soulcleavers in mists do not have a casttimer though. It is just instant hitting the tank for 3.5M x2.
True, true, but then, defensives shouldn’t really be on the GCD anyways (imo).
Mhm, dispelling the debuff will prob help there (and it’s a cue to pop cooldowns). Soul Split leaves a 20% debuff on the tank. Otherwise, does it really do 3.5M? Haven’t really noticed that before.
However when doing a decent high key and say the party are at full hp most of the time, I do not become bored as I assist with CC / slow / dmg as much as I can when group dont need healing.
If I remember correctly, the reason why there is so much unavoidable AoE dmg is to make healers mandatory.
In DF, there was a lot of avoidable dmg and the little unavoidalbe dmg there was could be handled by DPS’ defensives and some off-healing. So players who played perfectly didn’t need a healer.
Blizz obviously didn’t like this and decided to fix it. So now, we are in a situation where the healer must be 100% active (which is good) and DPS also need to be on top of their defensives and off-healing.
Which is the core of the current difficulty. Surviving is a team effort now, not just a healer’s job. Honestly, early in the season, I wouldn’t even dare attempt +10 CoT without an Augvoker and a Paladin.
I’ll go to the absolute extreme and suggest that, in order to make healing less hectic while still requiring proper knowledge to ensure a healer’s healing performance has significant effect on the ability of a group to speed through dungeons, healers should be redesigned to be required to check only the health bars of the group and not target enemies throughout instances:
Every healer will have a baseline mana-neutral ability that restores a small amount of health to a target. By mana-neutral I mean that spamming it at 0% haste then the mana bar does neither deplete neither replenish. By small amount I mean around 1%-2% of one non-tank character’s hp of equal item level as the healer.
Abilities that restore more mana than the above are exponentially more expensive. An ability that restores for example 10x the hp of the mana-neutral ability would cost noticeably more than 10x mana.
All damage-dealing, crowd-control, offensive dispels and interrupt abilities become expensive mana-wise.
Failed mechanics either shield the enemies, or punish the damage dealers with reduced damage output or add a heal-absorb effect on them instead of outright dealing extreme damage.
What is the purpose of the above:
Healers will no longer want to have everyone topped off. Instead they will want to have them at close to topped-off to avoid overhealing while getting them close to topped off with the mana-neutral ability.
Using the mana-neutral ability will be better / optimal instead of contributing to damage.
It will no longer be optimal to assign non-healing to a healer. This combined with the above will eliminate the need of the healer to always need to monitor every enemy and the group, alleviating a lot of burden from healers and pushing it on the damage dealers.
A good healer will be one that reduces the amount of mana-breaks needed, which in turn means less idle time and therefore more chances of making the timer.
Failed mechanics will no longer stress the healer the most or cause deaths. But they will still be causing a slowdown which lets the group understand that something needs to be improved.
I dont think healing is too bad actually. I just think they should look at certain overlapping unavoidable damage income together with the constant paying attention to the tank. And obviously it is bad design to have moving/dodging mechanics during the burst-damage moments.
