I think removing or drastically reducing dampening in RSS would be a positive change and incentivize/allow better healer representation. Dampening is a fine and necessary mechanic for regular 3s where team comps are predesigned/preplanned. In the random environment of RSS, I just don’t think that dampening is necessary and if anything, just makes life arbitrarily harder on healers.
If you consider individual skill expression as the primary driver of rating in shuffle (as opposed to regular 3s where team composition/selection get to play a part), dampening benefits DPS players over healers. Your skill expression as a healer revolves around keeping your team alive (obviously), and dampening arbitrarily reduces your effectiveness as the match goes on, while making DPS skill expression somewhat easier. I do not think that anything close to a “dampening meta” would ever be possible in RSS, even if the mechanic of dampening just didn’t exist. If the net effect of removing it would bring more healers in, longer matches would still be preferable to queue times being what they are. Maybe just remove or drastically reduce it for healing specs and leave it the same for dps/hybrids.
They do this to make the games quicker. It’s not perfect but I also recognize that I don’t know what the perfect answer is. I also don’t necessarily want to potentially commit to 6 straight full length games.
I never looked into it but does dampening only affect a straight heal (ex: flash of light) or also damage mitigation affects that count towards healing such as Priest Shield?
I agree. If an actual dampening meta did come about somehow, a 45m-1h commitment per queue pop would have it’s own consequences.
Traditional dampening comps are actual comps that work around playing very defensively together (think lock/ele/rdruid playing back in the bermuda triangle all match). I think given the randomness of comps and partners in general, this is not as pressing of an issue in RSS. You’ll occasionally match into specs that damp well together but it’s not like every match is going to be a dampening comp like when dampening is the 3s meta.
Yeah, sometimes you get a shuffle with stuff that isn’t super high kill threat and it’s very easy to get the super, super long matches where nobody really wants to put themselves in sketchy situation then somebody dies to a few procs at 4 minutes.
healer tuning is a glaring issue right now, but i don’t think dampening is actually a culprit. the two best healers in rss are both doing most of their healing with hots, whereas the healers whose emergency pressure-relief healing tends to overheal at 0% dampening are bad rn for what seems like unrelated reasons. if hpal and rdruid were actually balanced, 10% dampening would be a massive weight around the neck of the row of hots that keeps pace with damage at 0%, while wogs/melee wings abilities that were going to do 50% overhealing maybe only do 30%, or whatever-instant dampening while the enemy has all their cds would make rdruid terrible
Removing dampening wouldn’t solve or even try to solve healer balance, which is an issue on its own.
A thing that wears good healer players down is being higher rated/experienced than the dps you get paired with and your contribution to the team artificially diminishes as the match goes on, i.e. you cannot “carry” a match as a good healer in the same way that you can as a good dps. The solo mode being more focused on individual skill expression over team comp makes that really frustrating as someone trying to push healers, and i really can’t help but feel like it’s at least part of why overall healer pop is so much lower in RSS than regular 3s as you go up on the bracket.
I like your suggestions as someone who plays a healer. I wonder how would DPS feel if as the time goes by, they do less and less damage. It really doesn’t feel rewarding at all looking health bars that are staying around 30-60% most of the game because healing output can’t keep up with DPS. It just makes the situation for healers who doesn’t have big single target heals, like disc, that much more difficult.
I hear what you are saying but this is no excuse to weaken healers in a competitive arena setting. Besides, it is making healers feel like they are getting progressively worse from the moment gates open and the round starts. There are already issues with attracting more players to try healing and having a set up where you get progressively weaker by no fault of your own doesn’t help.
If anything, it highlights the fact that maybe RSS and Arena design is flawed and Blizzard shouldn’t try to fix it by purposely implementing systems to discourage as well as deteriote healer performance.
Yeah, but I think that by having instant queues and fixing leavers and healers can climb just as quickly or even quicker. Right now if one healer gets gapped (in ability and/or matchup) then they just leave.
I am a fan of fast games, but a lot of rounds don’t end based on plays, but based on dampening in RSS. I think it could be maybe better to remove the dampening in the beginning and to let it start after 2 minutes with 20% each minute. Max time of a round would increase to 7 minutes.
With that, the average round length would become 4-5 minutes, instead of 2-3 minutes. That would allow healer to go in for cc more than now.
To be fair though, we would need to nerf at least Prevoker healing by a flat amount of 15% min, better 20%.
Downside of that change would be, that the average game duration increase, so when we don’t get more healers to queue with it, it would end in even longer queue times for dps. So it’s probably better to find a better working mmr system that rewards healers more, as they often just get 3-3 without anything they could do about.
this is true, but excepting the people who want to slug out dps-only games, 66% of every match wants the game to be longer than 1 minute and shorter than 3 minutes, with room to tank at least some damage so that you can get your own abilities into the mix. and that requires either
dedicated healers reversing incoming damage, without making matches take longer than most people want
dps to get tools that enable them to prolong games themselves, and the implicit eradication of the healer role
if they make healing attract people again i’ll be stoked, but now the ripcord’s out on shuffle i don’t see them fending off the second one forever
Healer balance would still need to be worked on, leaving still needs to be fixed. I think as time goes on, though, regardless of individual spec balance, the mechanic of dampening is just less suited for RSS than regular 3s. It is a knob that can be turned, so maybe don’t completely remove it, maybe make it start later, cut it in half, etc.
Overall though, I think you just have to look at RSS from the individual player level over meta/team comp perspectives. Dampening was created out of an environment when everyone was designing comps specifically to play in a certain way together. Three coordinated players working around one healing spec’s buttons is very different from three random players who can’t coordinate the same way. It just makes the job of that role artificially harder for all of the healing specs and imo is a big driver for overall healer rep being low.
To me, dampening is the problem. 30 percent dampening out of the gate plus most DPS just lining healers and getting killed behind a pillar forcing healers into bad positions for CC/swaps is a horrible feeling for the healer and it’s being strongly outlined in Solo shuffle at the moment. I know why dampening exists cause nobody wants 20 minute games but something has to give. For solo shuffle they need a different solution cause as a healer hate playing solo shuffle and only do enough games to cap conquest and vault then i don’t touch it the rest of the week.
Running out of mana is WAY better than just having your abilities get less and less powerful so maybe they could find a way to make mana expend faster in solo shuffle. I dont like the 2v2 for DPS option cause it just fixes DPS’ problem of slow ques and doesn’t actually fix the healer issue. There’s alot of things they can think about like changing how arena is won idea’s consist of allowing respawns in arena, swaping teams immediately on a death and rapid firing the matches with no countdown.
TBH i dont know what the solution is i just know dampening sucks for healers and it’s particularly worse in solo shuffle.
Yeah, those statements are independent from each other. If dampening wasn’t a thing, you’d still need to balance the healers against each other. Removing or reducing it as a whole in RSS would incentivise more people to play healers in general regardless of healer meta.