First of all im just air’ing an idea that i though of to combat the situation of e.g. Bosses in M+ that on Tyranical starts to 1-shot you with abilities on a higher key lvl. And also maybe giving healers a chance to save people from oopsies.
Its fairly simply…
If an ability hits you, it checks if the damage of the ability is greater then 70% of your max hp. If its true then it would trigger a stagger event instead, where you would take damage equal to 70% of you max hp and the rest as ticking damage over an period of e.g. 4 sec (more to this later).
Lets say you have 100k hp and an ability hits you for 100k damage. Then you would instead take 70k upfront damage and 30k over 4 sec. If no healing is done, you still die
Lets say you take 200k instead (with your 100k max hp). Then you would instead take 70k upfront damage and 130k over 4 sec.
This period is something i cant decide on if it should be like 2sec or 6sec.
I definitely dont want want to make this overpowered and everyone to be invincible in any way. What im aiming for is a way to make healers matter and give them a sense of “Oh, you messed up by standing in swirly… I can save yoooou!” by spam-healing this person. Obviously the person shouldnt have stood in the swirly in the first place, but instead of just getting 1-shot, it gives the healer player a CHANCE to save them. And that being said, maybe the damage from the stagger event is just to big to be out-healed that the person dies anyway
Also also… this whole stagger idea could also just only be for unavoidable 1-shot/burst abilities like “Chrono-Lord Deios: Wing Buffet” and not swirlies. Many options… many paths…
Its obviously there is some tweaking here and there and what % should it trigger at and duration of dot tic. It could be if an ability actually 1-shots you at 100% hp or it could be at lower % to combat the "all players must be at 100% hp to survive and thereby make all healers do big burst healing only. But thats my idea to make healing fun and interresting, by giving healers a chance to save people from getting 1-shot at higher difficulty key lvl.
Worth mentioning that this would probably only apply to M+ and NOT raid…
I also find 1-shots something that isent fun. I want challenge, I want difficulty. But 1-shots bore me. And especially the degenerate ways to deal with them : Defensive stacking and buying tank trinkets.
In the system you suggest you would still run into 1-shots in an infinitely scalable system.
In a system like that you have to ask yourself the following question: What is the “limit” to M+ ? There are 2 options:
(A) The limit is mob HP. So the limiting factor is DPS.
(B) The limit is player HP. So the limiting factor is incoming damage.
Historically, the wow devs have been swinging from one side to the other. And they have never managed to find a sweet spot in between. Its impossible.
So. If you want to end 1-shots, you have to end that dichotomy of M+ profiles.
I propose 2 ways to end the “vicious cycle” of healer power in M+ :
Option A : Instead of linear scaling, do a targeted scaling. So… mob damage and HP raise by some amount. But at one point, damage is capped. That cap should be “almost a 1-shot”. But… HP% scales at double the rate from that point onward.
Result : You still make healing challenging. But by excluding 1-shots you keep it challenging and fun. And you still need a healer in your party. But… the “limit” of M+ would be DPS. Not damage.
Option (B) : You allow for dynamic player HP pools, instead of fixed ones by transforming all over-healing into a shield. This would require an complete overhaul of healing as a concept.
(Note: your proposition of staggering damage is a variation of this concept: Dynamic HP pools)
Result : Healers would need to heal all the time. Not just after some burst damage event. The main advantage is that one can balance healer raw HPS to incoming damage on a 1-1 basis. Just like DPS. Unlike now, that HPS increases are meaningless.
hehe i see your point, but also would like to argue that it actually makes defensives a little bit stronger and also help players that is 0.5 sec to slow hit that defensive, since it would then reduce the stagger damage instead (although i ofcause have been thinking how double dipping into a defensive in that scenario might be “to strong”)
Yeah, i agree that at some point you will hit another wall. But this way the stagger allows the healer to really test a healer check at the highest highest, and overcomming that wall slowly. But yes. Just like if there would be a dps check that is numerical impossible to beat, its the same with this system and healing check at some point.
I was playing around with this idea aswell at some point, that damage events should deal a max of 90%-ish of your max hp at all times. I love the way you describe it. My concern with this system alone, is that we end up having another “burst healing scenario” and “Players must be kept topped at all times to avoid insta death”, which is what is a lot of the healing profile we have currently to avoid 1-shots. But i do like the idea that damage just caps at some key lvl and trash and bosses only get more hp from there on and out. Which makes pulls longer and therefore makes healing harder by dealing with it for longer.
I can kinda see where you are going with this, but cant say i really like the idea of this. Then i probably would rather have the stagger event i talked about, since its more of a reaction and “save the person” instead of overloading a person with overhealing to prevent upcomming damage. Planning to do overhealing also prevents you somewhat from using that time to dps.
You have people where it builds up slowly to one shots, not press defensives when it reaches one shot levels of damage. Like the bird boss in algethar.
We don’t need more keystone terrorists than already exist.
we just need bosses with less frequent one shots.
sometimes the events occur so frequently that you run out of def cds quickly.
the frequency dictates then also comps that include classes that have more personal defensives and even have external (hi, mage?)
things like mass barrier should not exist then
it is easy, one shots can still exists and at the same time you could reduce one shots in an infinite scaling system if abilities hit for % hp instead of a fixed number.
of course it means that low keys would get a lot more difficult because no people would die the same way in a +2 as in a +17
you just need less dmg and less dangerous pulls to time the key
it forces players to play mechanics and use def cds then alrrady in a +2 key
And the DPS comes from a healer that knows how to use CDs effectively to do it as fast as possible.
But here is the catch, by doing so you can balance HPS and damage on a 1-1 basis which would include downtime to dps. Today you cant. You can buff healers all you want, but once you reach 1-shot area more HPS will not translate to better outcomes.
But. I have to agree. Staggering damage, or applying a shield is just different sides of the same concept : Heal for 20s before bigD to make a shield, or heal 20s after the bigD to deal with the stagger.
Either way, it would be a solution to the healer throughput problem.
This is not an issue IMO. Its part of the healer skill in M+.
The issue is the unintended ramifications of not capping damage in M+ : Eventually, no amount of burst healing will save you. So much so, that having a healer in the first place is put into question.
