Solo shuffle DPS queue priority incentive for healers

PVP Arenas
1

Just a random thought but, in an effort to increase healer counts and decrease shuffle queue times as a result, what about some sort of account-wide priority credit system?

Eg. If you queue as healer for X amount of matches, then you get queue priority on X amount of matches for dps specs/classes on your account, but the queue priority only applies to dps that are under or up to +100 (margin debateable) over what the healer they queued with is at.

Eg. You play 10 matches on a healer and get to 1k rating. You now get queue priority for 10 matches on your dps account wide, but only applies to dps that are UNDER the cr of the healer you queued with, +100 for margin, so under 1100 rating your dps get priority queue for 10 matches or until they reach that rating in which case it they no longer get priority on that dps but can still use the remaining priority credits on another dps that is under the cr of their healer.
This prevents low cr healers just spamming and tanking matches to gain faster queues on dps. If your dps is at 2k cr, then you gotta queue above 2k on your healer.

And while this is primarily for shuffle, I feel like many new healers that would do this at first just to get the faster queues for their dps, would end up liking playing as healer and maybe even start proper 2s/3s. Win win.

Revision. People without priority that have been in queue for X minutes cannot be skipped. In addition only 1-2 spots in a lobby can be taken by priority holders.
This should prevent any occurrence of people being skipped entirely regardless of wait time and ensure theres no issues if a large number of priority holders queue at the same time.

The concept of this is to give dps mains that are sick of queues an incentive to try out healing, or just to play their healer more if already doing so that actually benefits their dps and not their healer, since healers already have fast queues.

I cant think of any incentive besides something like this that would that would actually be enough to get someone who normally doesn’t, or has never tried, to start queueing as a healer.

For people worried about queues being longer for people that DONT heal to get priority.
This is not the case. As in order to get a priority match for their dps, they must play an equal number of matches as healer. Since there are 2 dps for every 1 healer, even with the healer then getting priority on their own dps there is still a net benefit for 1 dps for each healer that does this. So queues hopefully would be shorter for everyone, though more so for the priority holders of course.

1 Like
2

Just bin shuffle imho, game mode feels more like a dps check than actually playing as a team.

4 Likes
3

I dont think shuffle nor 2s/3s should get anymore attention at this point. We´ve tried both n both have failed to attract new players or sustain the existing one. Bandaid fixes to try to bribe healers into queing isnt a good solution, either change the format so they enjoy the gamemode more n willingly que starting by fixing the healer MMR.

Enforce 2 healers, 2 ranged and 2 melees per lobby to reduce onesided matchups that are practically unwinnable to reduce the amont of 3-3 lobbies and maybe do something about dampening. I think cutting down on the onesided matchups n fixing mmr would do alot though.

Frankly im overall at the point where im just in favor of treating arena as a whole as a minigame within the minigame, put all effort on balancing BG blitz n call that the new competitive gamemode. That way more people gets to play, BG as a format always attracted considerably more players than arena ever did n we´ve ran out of options that are going to please the existing playerbase for arena might aswell try to appeal to a more diverse audience.

If arena cant sustain its own playerbase without life support just unplug it at this point.

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4

No.

This was a thing in OW.

I had an endless amount of it.

I still stopped playing tank/support due to how bad the game was for playing those roles. The last game I played as a tank in OW1 consisted of:

CP map.

I run to the point on Roadhog. I get pushed and stunned by brigitte. I get frozen by mei. I throw out a hook, get slept. Get woken up from the sleep, I get charged out from the point by the enemy reinhardt. Make my way back and I get punched up in the air and punched out from the point again by doomfist. Then I just pressed alt f4.

WoW is turning into this too. They need to drastically reduce the amount of CC before I even consider playing it beyond getting the rewards I want from it. People should HAVE TO press their interrupts to stop casts, not just spam everything they have at you.

Blizzard can’t make good pvp in their games any more. Their games are about preventing others from playing rather than playing better than their opponent. Pick the right class/hero and you win because you can lock down the opponent harder than someone that doesn’t pick one that can do the same.

One of the last shuffles I played as a healer was my resto druid to get the mog and it went like this for the enemy healer:

Rake → cyclone → cyclone → cyclone → root → his DPS are lining him → dispel root → root → root → bash → shadowmeld → rake → typhoon → he gets polymorphed → polymorph → polymorph → cyclone → cyclone → cyclone → root → dispel root → root → root and then he lost.

The game before that:

Rake → cyclone → cyclone → cyclone → bash → trinket bash → I cyclone the DPS that’s low → I cyclone the DPS → I cyclone the DPS → he gets CCed → DPS dies.

Then the game before that:

I get brought out of stealth → lol → shadowmeld → rake → cyclone → cyclone → cyclone. Nobody stopping the cyclones. Root him. He dispels. I root him again. His DPS lines him. I root him again. I typhoon him. DPS is dropping but he’s gonna get into los on him. Cyclone the DPS → cyclone → Cyclone. Bash the healer → cyclone → cyclone → cyclone. I win again.

Like, this is beyond dumb.

5

hell no, that thing is a disaster and people will realize once it becomes more popular in TWW

6

Would never work

Because

  1. Not everybody WANTS to play healer
  2. Not everybody CAN play healer
  3. This would force the above 2 kinds of people to do it
  4. Queues would be full of clueless healers who ruin your game
  5. Even more people would quit
  6. This would do absolutely nothing for queues except on the very bottom end where those first-time healers would remain, or at least 95% of them would
  7. Another chore that forces 1 person and ruins 4 others’ experience

No DPS would rather get 10 garbage quality games in a row where they go negative cause of bad healers than 3 decent games where they have all the chances to go positive

7
  1. No one would be forced to or has to. The idea is that any dps player that does queue a healer means two other dps got a match. So even though that player then gets priority in the queue themselves as dps, there was still a net benefit to one dps that never healed at all since there are 2 dps for ever healer needed to get a match.
  2. Same as above essentially, also how would you know if you’ve never tried? Or never had incentive to push past the initial initial awkwardness that comes with playing someone new as there is higher pressure on healers.
  3. Answered.
  4. How so? As stated in order to get a priority on their dps their dps would need to be at or under the CR on the healer they queued with. So while yes hopefully there would be many new healers in shuffle it would be at the starting rating… Are people at super low rating now allowed to be new lol? And since the healer needs to be at or higher cr than their dps there is every incentive to gear up, practice in bgs or whatever and then queue shuffle when reasonably ready, since going in just to lose 6 matches every game will give them zero benefit unless their dps is even lower cr than their healer.
  5. Why? Shorter queue times helps everyone. Some of those new healers will actually like it and maybe start finding proper 2/3s teams which helps LFG, especially for the lower end dps players that are gatekept by the requirements for High exp by existing players. Even if some try healing and dont like it whats the issue, no ones forcing anyone. The ones that do stick around are still a net benefit for every player.
  6. Probably true at least partially, but why is that a problem exactly? Players at low ratings would get faster queues and those new healers will eventually learn and improve, might be a small proportion that go on to higher rating eventually sure but more healers is still more healers.
  7. Answered in previous but again, it sounds like the typical toxic gatekeeping attitude that causes this problem in the first place. You expect every healer you play with to be experienced and good. These healers would be at the starting rating so if your a high rated player yourself and so actually have some right to expect people in your lobby to know what they are doing then why does it affect you? PvP is dying in general because we continually lose players over time while we get almost no new ones to replace them, especially healers. This whole idea is to fix a problem caused by lack of new players, and a completely disproportionate number of dps to healers in shuffle by giving some of those existing dps that are sick of long queue times an incentive to try, learn, and possibly even like and stick around on a healer for the first time giving a net benefit in shortening queues for everyone else.
8

As long game feels like party where anyone have fun and healer is only one who pays bill there will be no peace with healers.

-Draw games makes game feel like big waste of time for healer, specially because your MMR tank down during draws and then even when you win you get rewared with miserable +15, but if lose at any point punishment is always -60+
-Paying heavy ratting price for other people BIG mistakes is unacceptable (Example: paladins which die with bubble unused, mage which never iceblock, hunters wihich never turtle, guys who die with ALL defensives aviable, locks which use shieldwall on 2% hp and other diamonds)

To play healer player must be masochist right now, because in SS healer suffer matyrdoom, conditions for us are terrible, not to mention that dampening also decrease our impact on field and make our carry potential almost zero, so basicly there is so much situations where game is out of control for us, but we are always punished.

Fix this two issues and you will see low que time paradise, no other solution help.

9

Maybe, i´ve found myself doing quite alot of blitz mostly because normal BG´s is premade infested so i see blitz as a the only way to que bg´s now a days n find it quite enjoyable. The only thing i wish they´d add would be duoq for double dps as opposed to just healer-dps so i can bring a freind along.

The problem im seeing with arena as the primary gamemode is that we´re going circles endlessly n thats a playerbase issue n not a blizzard issue. Shuffle gave me alot of hope when it was announced that it would revive the interest in PvP n in season 1 it did just that, then the 3v3 playerbase whined on twitter intill blizzard murdered the gamemode in season 2 in an attempt to keep 3v3 alive, then shuffle was unmurdered in later seasons but none of the problems were actually fixed at all n que times are still abyssmal.

In bg blitz i atleast spend more time playing the game than i do sitting in que. I just feel like we´ve expired all options to keep arena alive as a gamemode long term.

10

I don’t think you realize this has already been attempted in a different way by Blizzard.

During the first stages of Shuffle in S1 - early S2, queues were long and people complained. What Blizzard did was put low rated healers in higher rated DPS games all the time to “fix” this problem. This caused an absolute outrage.

A healer that’s 1800 would get into a game with 1500 DPS, panic press CDs, next game healing 2300 DPS, panic press CDs THE SAME WAY and end up letting people die because it’s a completely different environment.

Let’s say I queued a char on 2400, I’d get a 1800-1900 healer and a fast queue. If my char’s spec was healer dependant in any way, let’s say a Warlock, and the rest of the DPS were all melee zugs, well, I don’t get to survive for longer than 20 seconds because my healer is completely clueless and doesn’t belong in this game.

This results in me as a Warlock getting “fast queues” with bad healers, leading to a consistent rating loss.

The same applies to many other DPS specs. A lot of DPS specs are healer dependant and require the game to go to a 2nd burst window (meaning reach the 2-2;30 minute marker to win, such as Moonkins getting a 2nd Incarn, etc).

They rarely do. There is nothing to learn from spam playing low-rated games as healer.

Why? Because you don’t know who is going to play like a human and who is going to play like an NPC.

Shuffle is NOT the place to learn and improve your spec from scratch. The RNG of teammates makes this absolutely impossible. Is my teammate going to press their CDs? You don’t know. Are you supposed to press before them? You don’t know. Overlap of CDs? All the time. And this is a trend up to like 2400 CR.

I have personally played thousands of Shuffle rounds on 11 different specs (including 3 healer specs), from ratings between 0 and 3150. Not a single game taught me anything with which I can play my class better. All it taught me was “this player doesn’t like pressing X button, so I have to compensate” or “this player is going to try to cheese kill”

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11

To take some examples from playing healer in shuffle:

Playing holy priest: I use ray of hope on a DPS on my team because he got bursted hard, he’s at 15% hp when I applied it. I pump him up a bit beyond his max hp and then get CCed, “Oh well, he’s already at full hp so it doesn’t matter”. Just as ray of hope is going to full heal him, he pops all his defensives. I do mean all. Then he dies because he’s got nothing left later.

What is there to learn from this?

Playing holy priest: Shadow priest is stunned, doesn’t press dispersion and not using trinket. I don’t have anything left except swap. I swap him and he instantly trinkets and swaps me and dies because he swapped back.

What is there to learn from this?

Playing holy priest: Hunter places trap under my spirit, I grip a DPS to get rid of it so I don’t get trapped as I leave spirit. He trinkets just as I dispel him. Bro, why. Then he dies to getting duelled because he can’t press his defensives because he trinketed the trap. If he had trinket for getting stunned in the duel he likely would’ve lived it.

What is there to learn from this?

Playing resto druid against a holy priest: I cyclone just as ray of hope is going to trigger, to deny the healing from it. My DPS switches off, to the holy priest that I’m about to cyclone. Why. Kill the DPS that has no HP(he was at 10% when I cycloned the ray of hope) because I stopped ray of hope from healing him. Nope, they run over to the priest who is in cyclone while lighwell is healing the DPS up, I try to kill him but didn’t manage to and then the priest gets out of cyclone and guardian spirits him and uses pw:life.

What is there to learn from this?

Playing holy paladin: Retri paladin on my team. “I won’t bop him because that will give him forebearance, he gets to decide when he wants to use his immu—” Well, he just died without pressing bubble. Ok.

What’s there to learn from this?

12

not necessary no.

not true. All depends on your MMR. I got points for winning only 2 rounds on my holypriest too if my mmr was higher than my CR.

dps players are paying the price when the healer is not pressing buttons too.
That is literally the case in every single soloq game mode with teammates in any game. If you dont want that play with your premade friend who never does any mistakes.

have to disagree here. Of course shuffle also helps you learning your spec.

Getting better at the rotation, using defensives, knowing when to push in for CC and positioning are equally important in shuffle.

And at higher ratings there is quite some unspoken rule where dps most press their defensives first.

Of course “real” 3s demands other things too that are not taught in uncoordinated shuffle but saying shuffle isnt worth to learn your spec is far from the realiity in my opinion.

just dont play ray of hope. Dont see people play it at high rating and of course in shuffle when players are not used to holypriests playing it, they dont see the buff and press cooldowns.

stuff like this happens even in coordinated 3s. Atleast the swap was done lol.

i bet you play flawless all the time and never do any mistakes?

I dont even understand the point you are trying to make. Just because your teammates in shuffle played bad doesnt mean you played good and there is nothing to learn from your rounds.

Of course you might have a perfect round and still lost but thats shuffle. It happens.

If you are playing alot of consecutive perfect rounds you end up being one of the best at your spec in the ladder so whats the problem?

I dont get it. Why even look at your teammates mistakes all the time? You cant prevent them anyway. Focus on yourself.

Everyone has teammates that do mistakes. Every single player has to deal with that.

13

I can’t help but notice you didn’t actually answer what there is to learn.

So, answer that.

14

maybe not from that particular situation and obviously you dont learn from every single round because sometimes your mates make a bad play and you lose the match.
dont play dumb. come on.

I doubt you are in rank 1 range with your holypriest so i guess there is alot to learn in most rounds or am i wrong? And even the best players learn alot all the time.

You can always link a VOD of your gameplay im sure we find stuff where you made a mistake to learn from.

15

Sometimes is an understatement.

Shuffle is like healing pugs in m+ keys below 10 except magnified because if they die, you lose. Nobody kicks properly, nobody CCs when they should and they expect the healer to just carry them through it all.

I had an evoker go off on me for telling him to stop giving the enemy healer precog. “You know people can get faked???”

Bro. There was no faking. He was chastise stunned. He literally can’t fake you. There’s absolutely no reason for you to interrupt him in a chastise and thus giving him precog. But this guy just kept doing it. He gave me precog too when I was CCed when I was playing against him. I guess I faked him while not being able to even cast.

If I played like that as a healer, I wouldn’t get anywhere. I’ve met people at 1500 in 2v2 that play better than this guy.

Healers don’t queue shuffle, because too many games you’re just screwed over by the system because you’re basically forced into a 3-3 because there’s a DPS that have no clue how to play the game and go 0-6, while the other DPS go 4-2. While you might have fast queues, the nature of shuffle makes it take a lot longer to gain rating as a healer than as a DPS, provided you’re not the 0-6 DPS.

16

Pretty much all of these replies are pretty much irrelevant and basically just boil down to people blaming other players for their losses. This is an mmo ffs. If you dont want to play with randoms then dont whether its pve or pvp. Its this general attitude of “F you for not being a pro” that makes the game utterly inaccessible and outright hostile to newer or more casual players that try to dip their toes in higher end game content.
It also should be said that I have a hard time believing everyone that blames other players this way never ever makes any mistakes themselves.
Even when I play as DPS I make it a point to tell others in a shuffle to not be a an a**hole when they start complaining about losing cos someone on their team, especially if its a healer, made mistakes because its exactly that toxic elitist gatekeeping mentality that puts people off. If your happy excluding and berating players this way then just watch. The game is nowhere near replacement rates and will continue to die then all your years of invested time will mean squat.

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17

dont expect extraordinary players at moderate ratings. I can tell you that at top ratings players actually do all that stuff mostly. Of course there are also alot of mistakes made but thats pretty normal for a lobby with no communication.

Also as i said i bet you never missplay? You play flawless all the time? So you are rank 1 range on your priest arent you?

i mean thats just not true at all. I leveled an evoker, played the class for the first time last week. Started with playing shuffles. This is my games history:
A single 3:3 in all my lobbies.

Im also terrible for my standards on preservation evoker, forgetting to spells and keybinds all the time.

Idk where this mythos is coming from that every game is 3:3 when playing healer. Its just not true. Could also link my holypriest stats and its the same.

Its just another lame excuse to not take any responseability.

18

I don’t know either, I don’t get 3-3 very often as healer

Maybe it’s a thing on very low mmr where one guy is green gear or just completely new and force feeds 0-6, but otherwise I just don’t see it

19

2300-2400 rating isn’t “moderate ratings”. There’s literally only a few hundred players above them.

I really don’t get where this idea that this is low or “moderate” rating comes from.

If you run into people in m+ that are in the top hundreds of their class, they will be a loooooooot better than some random pug that’s doing +10s at most.

Idk, maybe you should go take a statistics course or something.

20

how should i knpw what rating you are playing at?

2300 is top 450 holypriests in EU. So if you are 2300 on holypriest there are 450 holypriests with more rating than you. Of course thats still way above average but you cant except people to make no mistakes at this rating. And im be honest if you would make less mistakes you would not play at 2300…

I hit 2400 on holypriest a 2 months ago and im far away from consistenly good. Just have some self awareness.

2300 is actually TOP 6000 on the soloq ladder.

maybe you should check the statistics before you say something like that.