Balancing in M+ content

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
41

There are some heavily generous presumptions going on in those claims you’re tossing in off the cuff.

First, the “unless it wasn’t going to be fine anyway”. That’s not how those 2 work - the benefits Lust and Bres bring can essentially remove that possibility entirely. A Lust on an encounter like Cragmaw, or Talondrus, can effectively remove the hardest part of the encounter. Even in raw numbers, Lust and Bres when they’re used can effectively add/remove multiple minutes worth of forgiveness into the dungeon, even in a +12, or +17. Even if a group is going to make the timer with, say, 30 seconds to spare without Heroism or Bres, the added time saved or forgiveness, has a non-negligible impact on how you can approach the most difficult pulls in the instance, whether you feel like you need to take a risk at a certain point, how much you need to optimise in a certain point of time, etc. Your premise is disingenuous.

Then on top of that, the vast majority of us is doing some lifting. Who’s “us”? Is this including you and me? We can probably roll up into +15’s or something blindfolded and be fine, but that certainly doesn’t represent or mean anything about other people in the PuG scene.

Ultimately, you’re circling back to the same framing of pitting class considerations with personal improvement as if they’re mutually exclusive. They’re not, of course. People can bring the Lust healer, or the Brez healer, whatever, and help themselves play better.
One could even make the argument that learning how to optimise your play with Lust, especially so for specs whose cooldowns or abilities change during Lust, or learning to be effective using Brez (as opposed to wasting Brez) is itself a skill that’s part of “playing better”.

That’s a dishonest representation of what was going on when Feral was unpopular. It’s not like Feral was suboptimal at +32, but the community didn’t realise they were really good actually at +12. The community’s response was in reaction to Feral’s numbers and toolkit being in an objectively bad place, especially in comparison to Boomkin. They could play with Ferals and see them doing lower numbers than an even worse Havoc DH or whatever. The few veteran Ferals who are good, and could keep up, doesn’t even negate those experiences for the rest of the playerbase.

We’ve extremely rarely come across situations where classes are good actually, but they’re perceived poorly by the community. Those examples would be actual community issues.

Those are not the thing you’re debating. It’s not like people are in the spot where Hero is actually outshined by, idk, Mistweavers at +12. No, Mistweavers are in a bad place, Hero is good actually, Resto Shaman brings a lot of other good things and is therefore Meta, while Mistweaver is sitting at D-tier, so people in +12 will go “Yes, gimme that Resto SHaman”*. Throwing in hypotheticals about class not being effective in a +27 but could be a top performer in a +17 to situations where it’s not even applicable is just sidestepping the convo.

*Excepting the situation of healer shortage and accepting the inferior option out of desperation.

42

Offhand, the only “meta” dps that brings Hero is Enh Shaman right? No tank brings Hero, so that also affects the situation.

43

Mages, Evokers, Shamans, and Hunters.

Most high key groups try and stack Rogues, Shadow Priests, Prot Paladin, and usually a Boomkin/Ret Paly and expect the last spot to be a Resto Shaman/Evoker.

44

Below 20s, if you aren’t timing keys because you didn’t bring lust or meta specs, it is overwhelming more likely failure points were due to wipes/bad pulls/skill mismatch for the difficulty.

Bringing a better player than a meta class or a specific buff will always be more valuable. It’s a shame people tend to gauge skill based on IO and ilvl in keys below 20 as those are the worst possible identifiers to create groups with.

2 Likes
45

Which is not nearly as much time as not dying and requiring a brez, or losing people on various pulls to bad play, that in addition to the actual time penalty is opportunity cost in the lost dps while they’re dead. I understand that lust and bres are helpful. I’m just saying that players spending an extra half an hour waiting for the perfect comp to do their 15 would be better off going without one or the other and just getting in the dungeon and learning to play it better.

Unless you’re pushing into the highest levels of keys, then yes, including you and me. The “us” is anyone doing keys that are low enough that the presence or absence of lust could actually be the difference in timing or not. I’m not doing keys at that level, I don’t think you are, no one doing up to at least 20 isn’t, and most of the people who post here aren’t living that experience.

Of course they’re not, but I’m addressing the issue of people who don’t think they can play without all of the “mandatory” class considerations covered. In almost all instances they can.

We probably can’t make that argument in reference to people that don’t actually have a lust or brez. That’s ultimately the real point that I’m trying to address. A 3 dps group doesn’t need to sit in group finder for 2 hours hoping to a get a Pally/DK tank and shaman/evoker heal to do their key. They can take whatever is available at those spots with the experience they’re looking for and be fine. If they focus on improving their damage and improving their execution, the lust and bres becomes a luxury instead of a necessity, except at the very upper end.

1 Like
46

Those are the classes that bring it, yeah, but not all of them have specs that are considered “good” or “meta” right now.

I’ve observed the same thing for group comps. When you have something like Shadow Priest, a tank, Sub/Ret, the way you approach those last 2 slots takes on a more limited view.

Those aren’t mutually exclusive propositions though. If you could just snap your fingers and bring a better player, there’s nothing stopping you from bringing a better play who also brings Lust.

And you’re correct about score and ilvl to judge applicants to a group, but it’s not like people have that much more information given to them by the game. Even people who do weird analyses on number of timed runs or whatever using the Raider-IO addon are trying to speculate inferences and hoping their guesswork bears out.

47

I don’t think anything like that is actually the case that’s happening on any regular basis at all, or required for players to be discussing imbalances the way I’ve seen them discussing them (e.g. in this thread).

48

So you missed the original post, where he said that a tyrannical key is broken if there’s no lust? That key is broken with no brez? Or later posts that said there are hardly any healers, and even then, only 1-2 classes are wanted anyway? Or how you HAVE to have a tank with brez and you HAVE to have a healer with lust?

This is the type of nonsense I’m pushing back on, and now you’re telling me it’s not part of the discussion, and all of this is from this thread.

49

The point STILL being, for the vast majority of the player base it is more important to use whatever means you have to bring a better player then bringing lust or a meta spec. Drums are more than viable 20 and below, lust is absolutely not a requirement.

I’m not sure as to why you continuously write novels to say anything but.

50

The OP mentioned “higher Mythic+ keys” in that OP, and in a later post was talking about +20 and +21 keys in the first and third week, and then talking about what they’re doing for groups above +20, so that’s some context as to what they mean (they’re not just calling +10 a “high key”).

They certainly weren’t talking about waiting 2 hours to do a +15, or whatever.

51

Yes they are completely timetable, but I seriously doubt you’re pugging 23s+ and are probably doing guild groups, which aren’t what I’m talking about in the first place. Last season there were no healer comps, still are, but you cannot do that without communication and practice. 100% pug groups cannot time keys and have to go for completion at 20-22 levels and that should not be the case since our vault and character progression depends on it. Also there’s just leavers after a single wipe. Leavers for not having lust. Leavers for not having brez.

52

Which is always relative, and hasn’t completed anything higher than a 19 in tyrannical and a 20 overall. He falls in the camp of people for whom none of this stuff matters, like most of us.

I’ve almost exclusively pugged this season and have timed several at 20. Saying pugs can’t time 20s is just flat out wrong.

Vault doesn’t depend on timing anything, and ‘character progression’ is your own responsibility. If you don’t like the rate while pugging, then find a group. If you don’t like the rate while in a group, find a better group. There are plenty of people who pug higher than 20.

Part of pugging. Get over it.

These leavers didn’t notice the group comp before you put the key in? Wow, that’s hard to believe. Or is it possible they’re leaving for different reasons that you’d rather not confront?

53

You never clarified in the OP an actual key level or specific range.

I have been in pug keys for UR where a hunter ended up being our lust. A warrior and I did 135k overall, the hunter did 90k overall. Imagine now you had a 3rd dps instead of that hunter, without lust, that matched the warrior and my dps.

G1 total overall is 360k

G2 total overall is 405k

Heroism/BL vs Drums you may lose 5% overall roughly accounting for how little lusted time makes up the overall portion of the dungeon. Without a lust class in this scenario you’d still have roughly 7-10% more throughput.

Sure if all players were equal in terms of overall, you’ll be better off with heroism/bl instead of drums, but even at a 22-23 with a good group of players true lust is not mandatory. When you are on the absolute bleeding edge (25+), certain things within the meta become a requirement, but for 99% of players this is not the case. This thread is a good example of stigma/blaming external factors when it is absolutely not true that lust and picking meta classes is a 100% a requirement.

A lot of people would benefit more from spending an hour reading class guides, actually learning proper rotations, and reading a tricks & tips guide than coming to the forums and saying something is impossible.

2 Likes
54

You’re also a warlock that can handle all the mechanics that us melee classes cannot. You also have a brez which most melee do not. You also have the best PI target, which only DK can compare.

Your pugging and my pugging experiences are not equal dude. Idc wtf you think or how right you feel you WILL NOT compare a range warlock experience with a rogue melee experience and call it equal footing.

I promise just because you’re a cutting edge raider does not mean you can just come into posts and look down on others and give them the “look up a guide so you can play the game” speech. How about you get out of here lmao. you’ve also only timed 21s? A cutting edge raider? only timing just over the max level that you can get from vault? wow. From the way you talk I would have thought you would already be doing 30s by now.

In no way did I ever say that doing a 20 was impossible. I’m saying that pugging a key and only having 1/3 of an already diminishing population due to the game balance being terrible and Diablo 4 release is beyond the time for a combat overhaul. I think you should be doing more with your time than trying to argue your point of view when others clearly have experienced MY point of view. It doesn’t even matter what key I’m talking about you just aren’t understanding anything so I’m done trying to reason with a bigot.

55

My main is a prot paladin. I don’t do many keys on a lvl 60 warlock…

So? You said a tyrannical key with no lust is broken. You’re wrong, except at higher levels than either of us do. That has nothing to do with how different our experiences are.

Great attitude in a discussion. Btw, you’re the one using your own experiences to try to claim things are a certain way. They’re not, you’re just wrong.

You should do more listening and being less defensive. Everything he said was correct and none of it was condescending to anyone without small wee energy.

You said pugs can’t time 20s and have to settle for completion. You’re wrong. I’ve pugged all 8 portals and I know I’m not the only one.

Your point of view is wrong. He’s trying to help you. If you listen instead of digging your heels in and being combative you could learn something.

1 Like
56

Nothing I said was to be condescending and or rude, nor specifically targeted at you. That’s why I tried my best to phrase everything as more of a generalization.

I was mostly trying to point out that people need to stop falling victim to the meta is always the only way mentality, when it really doesn’t matter.

57

Fire Mage, Devastation evoker

Though tbf, while fire is meta at the highest of high keys, it’s pretty bad at the weekly +16 level

58

There are very few people who think they “can’t play” without lust or bres.

But the issue is that people don’t need to make that choice. They will just wait in the queue until they get the class they want, so the problem of classes without these buffs getting into groups is very real.

On my warlock I do not even bother applying to groups that don’t have lust in them yet. They will never invite me and everyone knows that.

59

This is great and all but you have no way of knowing how much DPS that person is going to do before you invite them.

For all anyone knows that hunter would do more DPS than you AND bring lust.

60

Sure, I already pointed that out. Either way, you’re best off finding a better player to fill a slot in your group than worrying about being hyper specific about buffs/comp. Both situations end up being a coin flip. *Also that having lust vs using drums will almost never be a failure point

For the content 99.9% of people are playing, none of what the OP mentioned is mandatory.

2 Likes