I blame the demographic of growing up watching streamers and how they play, watching the pros and how they play. It creates a limit factor.
It makes people not want to explore anymore because they want to compete, the focus on damage meters, active logging, etc…it stops people from learning their class and just paint by numbers of what their favorite streamers say to do because numerically it works.
I mean yeah, I hate the time gating too. But I don’t play WoW like that anymore. I basically only log on if my friends are on now. I’m already time gated by my IRL circumstances, so them slowing it down doesn’t matter in other words, I would still be gearing up slowly.
The only reason aoe unavoidable damage in m+ is so high is because every dps has multiple defensives now. Blizzard has to put in unavoidable dmg otherwise dps, if played well would never die unless they misplayed or the healer misplayed and because its infinite scaling content they have to add barriers, one of which is unavoidable damage to hinder dps and make healer’s focus on dps more than tanks. Mage alone has 2 iceblocks or 70% dmg reduc that also heals, double barrier, party barrier, fire mage has cauterize on top of that, dmg reduc after blink, alter time, can reduce cds with shifting power. And thats a pure dps, not a hybrid. 
Healer CDs were worse. When you popped Season 1 Flourish you basically had an invincible raid. Ancestral Guidance for Shamans used to be insane also, that thing has been nerfed multiple times, not just when they did the “healer CD nerf” across the board.
Yup. Scroll up and you can see everyone in this thread calling me an idiot for claiming the same thing.
Both definitely are a problem, but healer CDs were more egregious. At least DPS has to time the CD properly and they still take damage.
Healer CD was like press a button and everyone is immortal now for the duration.
Can you show me where anyone called you an idiot?
If you don’t think tank power was an issue idk what to tell you.
It won’t though. Good players will still be fine.
Bad players will stop being at key levels they shouldn’t have been at to begin with.
Again good players will bad players on the other hand won’t be and that’s how it should be.
Every class and every spec is capable of 15s.
Pre-nerf Cata heroics were peak dungeon running in this game.
Until people couldn’t understand mechanics and “run out of big giant circle” on the second or third boss of stone core was pure lol
I had to uninstall Cata Classic because I kept getting vote kicked as the healer even though I’m sitting there in full Heroic gear lol. Like I’ve cleared everything multiple times and was still getting groups who wanted to kick me, usually because the tank either couldn’t hold threat or couldn’t be kept alive because bad.
I’m a Druid, if you die through all my HoTs, while I’m spamming my biggest heal, that’s out of my hands at that point.
Even now Ozruk is one of those bosses where 90% of the time, somebody is going to die because they didn’t understand not to stand in the bad circle.
It’s funny to watch.
I remember early cata and people dying left and right in stonecore when the first boss burrowed someone always died.
And when the second boss did the crush ability you had to run out people died to that too.
I may have baited that one just because of feint/recuperate usage and other people didn’t run out.
I played Blood in OG Cata and I didn’t understand how busted it was at the time, I thought all tanks were that good lol. The dungeons felt easy on BDK.
I don’t think they are trying to make tanking worse. I think they are trying to prevent 2 things, 1) people running without healers and making healing more impactful and 2) making use of other damage profiles.
For the entire history of M+, it’s always been about what 3 dps do the most AoE damage, what utility they have and having Brez and Bloodlust.
Yeah Theun (popular shaman) has a good video about this.
The design of the trash is dungeons is specifically to slow down the high keys. The reason stops no longer work on casts is specifically because the “meta comp” was targeting specs with the most stops. The reason each mob has 2+ lethal abilities, same thing.
It’s not just about class balance.
This happened a few times in S1 with prot paladin (at the absolute highest IO scores in the world). It also happened a few times at very very high IO this season with a few first pulls in the dungeon. Because of how the API works, raiderIO lists the key as 4 DPS.
So, like I said, they are changing the game based on the 0.1% of the playerbase.
Stops never worked to act as interrupts UNTIL DF. That is a very recent change to the game they made from their interview. It’s not how WoW worked for the vast majority of its life, and in TWW it’s going more to how it worked in every single expansion except DF.
DPS do not have too many defensives. Idk why I keep seeing this take. And a lot of current defensives aren’t strong enough imho.
healing isnt any better lol
Okay.
Here’s the problem:
The developers are stupid and don’t know what they’re doing. As you pointed out.
When the developers’ “balance decisions” are basically the same as a fish flopping around on the floor, being worried about anything is a pointless exercise.