As mentioned already, there are other ways to directly improve the social design in ways that doesn’t bring consequences.
That is a different problem, and it’s caused by the dislike for the healer role. Which, again, would be mitigated if people could pick what to play in the lobby after having been matched, but noo, PvE would never allow that.
Anyway, so to fix the healer role, they need to make the healer role more enjoyable. But there are deep roots as for why the healer role isn’t enjoyable in shuffle.
Imagine if healers had the power to carry that. But at the same time, nobody wants rounds to last forever, so the typical role of just “preventing a loss” isn’t good enough.
Of course, fistweaving is performing much better right now, but this isn’t about the specifics of the number tuning. It’s about the concept.
So imagine playing that lobby, as a healer, with the power to carry by pushing back their DPS with your damage output as a healer while also healing enough to prevent an instant loss, and then be part of landing a kill. It creates more possibilities, and it grants more independence to the healer role.
They can’t change that. A ladder can’t be a ladder if common statistics sends too many to the top. In other words, they can’t make healers climb with average results without making the lower ratings into empty deserts.
Hence, why skill has to be what makes people climb. But skill isn’t making healers climb as it should in shuffle, because healers, as a role, can’t carry that much. Which is why the design needs to change, to let healers carry.
Tbh I wonder if it’s possible to have healers be healing the way that they they’re designed to do, in a solo queue deathmatch.
Because if you think about it, there’s a scale of offensive power, and defensive power. While DPSers are designed to be more about the offensive power output, healers are by design more about the defensive power. But defensive power can’t win games in a solo queue, it can only be utilized to prevent losing.
So following that logic, healers are less able to make decisive moves because they’re designed to not be doing such things. They’re designed to mainly prevent a loss.
In the normal arenas this isn’t an issue in the same way, since strategies can be made in detail through a lot of communication, but the same isn’t really catching on in solo shuffle even though it’s technically possible to do so. It’s just not catching on as a social trend, because it’s not very convenient.
So healers ends up struggling in weird ways in shuffle that DPSers don’t really need to deal with as much, due to the fundamental nature in how the roles are designed as a whole.
As such, wouldn’t it make more sense to change the way healing works as a whole? For example, fistweaving now, and melee wings in the past when it was good, would fit better into the way the dynamics of how it all works in a solo shuffle format.
TL;DR:
It’s better to solve it at its root and make the healer role more enjoyable. The most shared complaint I’ve seen since the start, even since the SL unofficial beta on live realms, has been that “healers can’t carry”. While that isn’t an absolute and there are some points where a healer can be that point of difference making it into a win, it’s certainly not a common occurrence at least.
And we all know any good solo queue game of any genre, makes it possible for star players to shine no matter what role they play. And yet, even star players, the ones with insane experience, have been suffering in shuffle as healers and taken them more games than it should for them to climb. Some have even been saying they’ve been stuck for an insanely long time at low rating because it’s too random which side wins since they can’t carry it themselves. The game doesn’t let them.
So to fix it at its root, to make healers more popular, they’d need to be redesigned into something that fits a solo queue. Conceptually speaking, hybrid designs such as fistweaving and melee wings and so on tends to do better at that, since it’s less reliant on complicated teamwork that isn’t really happening in shuffle, and gives the healer more chances to be carrying. Which is what a solo queue should let people do, right?
So what if all healers could do damage and heal at the same time, since that seems to be what fits better in a solo queue setting? Healing would definitely become more popular and be a big step towards solving the healer shortage problem and queue time issues. Which is the goal, no?
For the record, number tuning is a different issue. For now, this is just about how to conceptually fix the healer role to better fit a solo queue deathmatch.
I just quoted 'em all, and you can just pick what you think explains it best. But that’s why the healer role isn’t popular.
And the reason healers can’t just “get more rating” inb4 anyone mentions that again, is because the ladder would become a huge mess if healers climbs every time they get 1-3 wins in a shuffle. It needs to be about what people can do to turn a round into a win, but healers are by design less capable than DPSers to accomplish that, which makes it inherently less enjoyable and more frustrating.