Pretty much what the title says. Many complain about the long shuffle queues as dps which is more due to proportional lack of healers than it is a smaller player base these days but that is largely due to the players themselves putting off anyone trying out healing for the first time.
Heres my recent anecdote but from what ive seen is largely indicative of what any new healer experiences in shuffle.
Returned to the game 2 weeks ago. Geared up fast and played elemental shaman main. Then decided I would try out healing for the first time ever, did a couple bgs, watched a guide or two, resorted some gear and then went into shuffle.
Went in at 1900 MMR for some reason even tho even my main ele spec was only at 1600 cr in shuffle and same in 2v2. (No 3s because you cant get a team these days if you dont have R1 title or min 2.4 exp⌠another way the players toxic gatekeeping is killing the game btw) and surprisingly won more than I lost.
Think it was the 2nd shuffle match I did as resto where (mostly due to the enemy monk healer also being new/inexperience i think) I won 5 rounds. The one we lost my team mates never once stopped the cc chains on me but regardless it was still my bad, I had trinket+link available and prob other cds but I was panicking a bit and couldnt remember my keybinds for them lol.
Straight after the shuffle finished the guy that died starts flaming me in whisper chats⌠I went 5-1 in my SECOND match as healer ffs and still players flame you. From what I saw the monk healer was getting it pretty bad as well wouldnt be surprised if they dont play again.
While this didnt bother me personally in the least I feel like its important to keep bringing up the fact that as PLAYERS its in your best interest to ENCOURAGE new healers not rage at them for making mistakes. Otherwise all you do is put off more people from learning and make the queues even worse.
7 Likes
Playin SS as healer is an ultimate waste of time, those who play coud probably be diagnosed with masochism
Playin SS is time consuming, most games go into draw for 0 reward, when you lose after draws you get punished for like -70, when you win you get like +15
Right now SS for healer feels like party where anyone have fun but you are the only one who pay the bill.
6 Likes
Yeah i somethimes q soloshuffle too warm up a bit pressing my buttons bevor i Q 2s
But i need too put me in the right mind that it will be a Clown show and a circus
I am sorry you had such a bad experience. Happened to me too on several occasions, some people get incredibly pissy in SS. My best advice, donât engage with them, just insta-report those people. This will make them unable to bother you again, and youâre doing community a service.
Iâd like to mention one observation I made, playing online games for 2 decades. Usually the most âtoxic communityâ, is in the games/modes that are design-wise flawed, and just provide crappy (yet often times addicting) experience. Usual reasons listed below:
- Time investment lost - usually biggest one(long QUEUES, long games, or both. If you spend 30 or more minutes in a queue out of your 1.5 hrs of game time, youâre already on edge coming into the game. +10 to anger if you missed a Q pop due to a quick bathroom break, and had to re-queue, doubling the queue time)
- You have limited agency over the outcome (You are sweating blood and shedding tears trying to carry your team in LoL, dude with 0/16/4 gets baited into ANOTHER 3v1 fight, feeding more points to the enemy team)
- Asymmetrical reward/punisment for the end of a match (takes you 3 wins to get back the rating you lost in 1 game)
I used to play LoL back in itâs early days, it had these exact problems, and the community was the most horrific, toxic cesspit of human garbage I never want to see again. And every game I played that had some of these traits, had similar problems with toxicity. I believe itâs not inherently in the players, sure there are some bad apples, but 90% of the problem is in the design.
The time investment is the worst one. If you know that 1 game of SS is, in total, like 40 minutes of your game time(queue + 6 rounds), you just have little patience for any bullsh!t. If people could just insta Q another, and get back in a fight, in a minute or 2, everybody would be more chill.
2 Likes
Agreed 100%. The long queue time between matches makes people all the more likely to get pissed if it doesnt go well. Going 3-3 and gaining nothing after a 30 min queue is almost worst that losing a match outright in terms of how it feels sometimes.
Thats why we need more healers! Just play healer and get instant queues like me hehe the problem is we need a way that gives players a reward for their non-healer characters when they queue matches on their healer so theres incentive for more players to play a healer sometimes even if it isnt their main.
I enjoy healing but its hard to say just how much of that is because of the instant queues alone. I love playing ele and enh but but waiting in queues for them is painful especially when i know i can just queue as resto and get matches instantly. If queueing as healer which helps everyone for a few matches gave me some sort of queue priority when i play ele or enh that would be awesome and would encourage me to queue even more as resto.
1 Like
I used to play holy priest in shadowlands, and I would enjoy healing 2v2. But in SS i feel like thereâs too much chaos for me to handle 
Hats off to you, sir, for being able to put up with thatâŚ
I like the priority Q idea, and it would probably make me try out my holy priest again, but I worry this would incentify botting. Or people queuing as healer, and just throwing games 0-6 just to get a priority queue on their mainâŚ
I made a post on the subject before, in a nutshell my idea would be to give a player account wide priority queue tickets for however many matches they queued as a healer, but only applicable to characters at or under the rating your healer was at when they played those matches. (So your healer has to same or higher than your dps to benefit).
But the post was filled with a few negative nancys who just recoil at the idea of maybe having a few newer healers in their lobbies, (even tho those healers would have to be similar cr as themâŚ) Or assumed it would mean other people jumping the queue ahead of them as a result, which is true but couldnt seem to understand that anyone jumping queue means they queued that many matches as healer, healer = 2 dps for a match, so net benefit even for those that dont heal at all and can jsut make it so only 1 or 2 spots in a match can be taken by priority ticket holders so as to avoid potential situations where multiple people with priority queue at same time and jump someone thats been waiting a while.
Not bad, this would help players who are really serious when playing as heal, no use botting or throwing gamesâŚ
But for people like me, it would probably do more harm then good, I donât think I can make the same rat on healer as I can do on a rogue, even if I tried⌠Maybe you get a âgolden ticketâ for wins above, like 1500?
You would be surprised how quickly you gain rating on your healer even if new, since your getting instant queues all the time, way more matches means way more experienced gained in a much shorter time frame. Plus at least for me personally, I find i play better when there isnt half an hour of downtime between matches for the rust to set back in :P.
I came back to wow just 3 weeks ago, maining ele, after 1 week switched to resto because of the queues. Even though im by no means a good player and its my first time healing, and on a resto shaman which is generally agreed as the hardest healer for shuffle, my rating on resto overtook my ele in just a few days simply due to how fast you get matches.
Fair point, probably true. Just being able to play and get that practice in does a lot.
Not sure is it great idea, players want to play what they want. If pushing to do chore as healing and player wont enjoy, attitude will be bad and a lot of crying.
Players play for fun, not for keep game going or do chores for a chance to play.
Blizzard have to sort it out, not players.
I would bet cos of rated bgs, dps pool in SS will reduce, but will see maybe healers will give up on SS also.
Ss as a healer is like being a nanny and the kids critisize u on how u take care of them
8 Likes
Thatâs only if you play healer the wrong way.
Itâs not about spamming games as healer, but get a decent rating, sit and let the mmr grow and than play if you have a high mmr to rating difference.
Also only play the top meta healer and itâs chill. As even a 2:4 doesnât throw you back 3:3 are okay and 4:2 are fire.
Aslong as your winrate is between 55-60% itâs fine.
However playing on same mmr/ cr is not worth the effort, just play some 3s until inflation kicks in as 3:3 will hurt you.
That was another point that kept getting brought up but its totally irrelevant since no one is âforcedâ to play healer in that situation. Those that do get rewarded for it so your adding incentive for more people to queue healer, whether they have a healer already or dont, but since theres 2 dps for every 1 healer needed any extra healer queueing is a net benefit for 1 dps that doesnt play healer not just the healerâs own dps.
I like playing all 3 shaman specs myself but the two dps queues are just too long, still play them but not as much as healer. If i could get quicker matches on my dps specs as a reward for queueing as healer for a a few matches, (lack of healers IS the reason the queues are long after all) , that would be awesome and I can imagine there must be more than a few players in a similar situation.
The healer role in WoW PvP was never meant for something like Shuffle
95% of healer mains who push 2v2 and 3v3 for titles and ranks do it with classes that are good for their class, make their life easier, overall solid comps
Not every healer spec can heal every DPS spec easily, which contributes to the misery factor in Shuffle
Resto Shamans cannot heal Mages, Priests usually cannot heal Warlocks, Fistweavers cannot heal casters, etc - thereâs a lot of other examples
Another factor is how bad some DPS players are - remember, many of the DPS you have to heal in Shuffle are people who never get invited to groups or get kicked from groups because of being too bad, thus having only Shuffle as something to queue
And the final factor is that Shuffle rarely teaches any of these healers to do anything better. It canât - because you donât know IF your DPS will play good or not.
In theory, youâre not supposed to trinket to heal your Mage who still has Ice block. But will he press it? Will the pala bubble? who knows
It is impossible for a player in WoW PvP to improve while permanently playing with similar or worse players. This is the sad reality. You are not going to improve unless you play with good people who also show you what to do.
This is why Shuffle is full of people with over 4000 games played on ratings like 1500. This was never an issue in 2v2 or 3v3, because for every 4 bad players you get to play with, the next 5th person you invite is somewhat good or very good and makes you better too.
Its will create mindgames for players, I have to heal to get play my dps.
But I may be wrong and its may work.
Again I dont understand why people take what i suggested to somehow mean âim forced to heal if i wanna play dpsâ. It doesnt mean that at all. Its just an added incentive to get more healers queueing in shuffle that would benefit everyone. Not everyone wants to play healer, but im sure theres plenty that would if they got a benefit for their dps, its optional. And plenty of those (like myself) will end up enjoying healing.
I personally dont take it mean 
You just enjoy healing and dps, same as I do, but I can see others will feel forced into role what they dont enjoy, psychology.
Its worth to try I guess.
You can add there player behaviour, i know losing hurts but sitting in the middle of an Arena like a kid who didnât get a lollipop isnât proper act in this game. Then running in and not using CDâs because you had a stream on and you wanted to get some views, even that isnât proper class act. I mean players can do better ton of times. Also this: Using cdâs that the other players classified as: Healers can too play the game and cc, because thatâs part of the game. Orsuul i agree with you and i have played maybe more Shuffle rounds than anyone actually have. So i have seen a lot.
And before you say: Oh you are so bad at playing the game, somehow still hitting into 1.5 % of player base. I donât call it bad. Usually iâm not this upfront but iâve met also some forumers from here in an arena and well won games with them and gained respect even from AWC players. I love that feedback, i also get criticised and i love that too. Thatâs how i have improved. What hurts my eyes is the execute range 35-20% where classes are the most vulnerable, reaching this threshold is always hardest for an healer if dps wonât trade immediately before execute range itâs a clean death.