Introduction:
There was/is a constant lack of healers queuing for ‘Solo Shuffle’ (arenas) , so my assumption is, that Blizzard is trying to prevent the same problem from happening, by allowing duo queues as healer/dps. What sounds good and fun, is extremely dangerous and could potentially ruin the entire RBG experience without solving the underlying problem.
The healer problem in Solo Queue Arena:
While I personally enjoyed Solo Shuffle Arena overall (playing every single healer class in solo queue), I can see why a lot of healers didn’t enjoy it. One problem here is that as a healer you only have 1 opponent - the other healer. When you queue up as dps your opponents are 3 other dps.
But probably one of the biggest problem for healers are one of these scenarios:
A) 1 dps outclasses all the others
(1. by skill) (2. and/or is favored to out-perform due to team comp rng) and goes 6:0
B) 1 dps plays extremely bad
(1.by skill) (2. and/or is doomed to under-perform due to team comp rng) and goes 0:6
Both cases happen a lot, leaving both healers with a 3:3 and just hopes that the other healer has a higher mmr to at least grab some points.
What makes the above constellation even worse. (happens too many times tbh) if one healer gets the 0:6 dps for the first 3 games straight. This also leaves one healer at 0:3 for the first 3 games. Then the under-perfoming dps rage quits and leaves the healer losing a decent amount of mmr - this is extremely frustrating and can currently only be fixed by hoping for more luck in the next round of 6 games. (another 30 mins. down the drain for no gain)
The above problem affects the majority of healers up to ~2300 rating (from personal experience).
The healer problem in Rated Battleground Blitz:
Obviously it’s extremely hard to single carry a Blitz game, as a single healer it’s probably close to impossible.
As certain dps classes using your big arsenal of cc abilities snatching a base or with the correct burst returning flags is a lot easier.
Unfortunately as a healer you’re usually somewhat bound to where groups of teammates are fighting which makes it harder to perform game winning moves outside of keeping said group of people alive. If the group is unable to set up a cc/kill-chain and deliver proper damage it ends up in endless/meaningless fights. Not even to mention that sometimes these fights happen in completely irrelevant places because the dps are not playing objectives.
Main concerns of allowing duo queue:
- Duo queue opens all routes for pure win trading
- It adds even more to imbalance to an already pretty imbalanced game mode
The actual problem:
The main problem is the calculation of the player’s MMR
Unfortunately how it is exactly calculated is opaque. It seems to be done in a traditional way, of which I’m not sure is the best way how to calculate it, especially for lower brackets.
Potential solution:
My solution would fix both problems - both ‘solo queue arena’ and ‘solo queue blitz’.
It’s all about more sophisticated MMR calculation for the losing players AND the winning players. So that over-performing players in either team are rewarded a tiny bit more while under-performing players are rewarded equally less - equally because not doing it equally would generate mmr inflation.
(The higher the average mmr gets the lower the impact of the above bonus/malus correction would be) - to make this feature have less or almost no impact on top 10% rank games but a meaningful impact on 1500 games)
This would lead to outperforming players in losing team lose less (or in some occasions even win mmr) while the total of points lost for the entire team remains the same - other, heavily under-performing teammates therefore lose more points than with the current system.
The formula to calculate an adjusted MMR would be:
currentMMR * currentGamePerformanceFactor = adjustedMMR
The tricky part would obviously be how to exactly calculate the performance factor for the current game. In most cases it should be in the (0.9 - 1.1) range. In more rare occasions (0.8 - 1.2).
Just some examples on top of my head. The final factor should include ~10 different individual performance sources added with different weights:
- Overall healing / damage
- flag captures / capture assists (assist = within 20 yards of flag while another teammate captures the flag which I don’t think is currently tracked by any aura I know of)
- uptime in cart circles
- raw kills
- cc’ used / broken
- add more
There’s a plethora of additional factors and a lot of them are already tracked by Blizzard for achievement reasons and damage/shield auras. In my opinion it shouldn’t be that hard to implement a more fair MMR calculation.
A better MMR system would help a lot in lower brackets of Solo Queue Blitz, so it can remain Solo queue Blitz - NOT duo queue blitz - while still being enjoyable to queue for both dps AND healers because you’re rewarded more if you outperform.