Okay, so every mate of mine I talk to who plays DPS, no matter at what rating (low or high), tells me about the long queues. Now me, I only play healer, we get the sweet instant queues, so things must be peachy, right?
Well… no. And here’s why:
- Leavers. So you happily queued and play the games, have fun, and you’re outplaying, you’re winning more games than losing, maybe even made a streak! 4-0, wow, and the opponent is even a resto druid, which is a top dog now, you’re on a roll baby! 5-0! Oh… the other person left the game, you get 0 rating, congrats…
I cannot begin to describe how bad it feels to play, with 4-5 games, and then get nothing for your efforts because some person on the other side rage quitted. You won if they do that, right? Not in this poorly designed system, apparently. You’re not allowed to be the better player, better not win by a higher margin than 4-2.
True story time: I’ve had 4 games in a row when someone left when I had 5-0. I stopped playing beyond the minimum required amount to get 3 rewards after that point.
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Imbalance. Nobody will ever have that much fun in a competitive game competing in a race against a Ferrari with a VW Up. It is how the game feels now playing against resto druids and evokers. Not blaming people playing those specs, they didn’t design them and I wish them all the fun in the world, so don’t get me wrong on that. Having healers so imbalanced between each others is… well, limiting to the available pool of healers in the game. And it’s not just the balance with other healers, but how the game is going. The game is extremely bursty and high damage, and if you play something like a paladin healer or holy priest healer, your spells, even when outplaying your opponents, simply do not have the necessary throughput to outheal the damage. This makes the game just feel unfun, and fewer people will queue as a result. I don’t exactly mind my class not being the best one, someone always has to be the bottom of the food chain, but the fact that it’s a numbers thing that my class does 25-30% less healing? That’s not ok, and is a very easy fix. Balancing changes cannot come soon enough.
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Feeling like playing for no gain. It’s not okay for 50% win ratio to provide nothing. The system itself will always tend towards 50%. If you get more than 50% win ratio, you will advance to the rating where you get 50%. I’d advise the devs to give even a minor rating gain for people who win 50% of their games, even if it’s only 5-6 rating, and even if this stops being a thing after 2100 rating.
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Incentives. The incentive to get healers to play more is all wrong. Right now, we get a “holding out for a healer” buff, that’s giving us more honor and conquest gains in solo shuffle. Trouble is… that’s incentivizing me to play less, not more. Because of the other problems I outlined, I stopped playing beyond minimum required amounts for the 3 rewards from weekly vault, waiting for fixes and changes to be enacted. This buff makes me get 3 rewards in fewer games, so it has the adverse effect, making me play less. Want to make it enticing? Give me a bag with gold and augment runes, like tanks/healers get from queueing dungeons.
Long queues are not because people don’t want to play healers in pvp, but because playing a healer is being made to be unfun by the game systems and balance. Please consider some fixes.