How to Achieve the "Less Spike Damage" Goal in M+?

Community General Discussion
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I’m positive about the developers’ stated goal for the next expansion: reducing damage spikes and moving away from the “one wrong GCD means death” style of healing. But while this sounds like a good direction that would make healing more about cadence and resource management, we’ve heard this before…
To be honest I feel the problem has only gotten worse in Dragonflight… So sorry if I don’t fully trust Blizz this time.
Anyway, I believe there’s a fundamental reason for Blizz to be failing in the implementation of this supposed “design goal”. The core design of Mythic+, specifically its infinite scaling, works directly against the goal. As key levels increase, all damage scales up. Mathematically, there will always be a point where unavoidable damage simply exceeds a player’s health pool, resulting in a one-shot. This forces the exact “spike healing” gameplay the developers want to eliminate. No amount of “cadenced” healing can save someone from an unavoidable one-shot. It’s a mathematical certainty of the system.

So I know many of you will disagree, or even hate the idea that I’m talking here about, but seriously, I don’t believe there is any other way… The core idea of what “fails” a key NEEDS TO CHANGE. The primary wall for pushing keys should be the damage check (the timer), not the survivability check, else, again, mathematically, there will always be a point where unavoidable damage simply exceeds a player’s health pool, resulting in a one-shot…
A group attempting a very high key should find themselves failing because they simply cannot output enough damage to kill everything before the timer expires. Their failure should be a clear DPS check. If enemy health scales much more aggressively than enemy damage at higher key levels, you create a system where the timer becomes the real challenge long before unavoidable damage becomes lethal.

In short, if the developers are serious about this new vision for healing, I really believe the solution is in the M+ tuning philosophy itself. And while I can understand everyone hating this fact, it is still a fact. If a key fails due to a lack of damage rather than a lack of impossible healing, you create the space for healers to perform their role in the strategic, cadenced way that developers say they want. Make the timer the wall, not the health bars.

There is another point to consider here, and that’s how we measure the performance of DPS versus healers. For a damage dealer, their metric is straightforward. More damage is almost always better, and their DPS numbers are a good reflection of their contribution. For a healer, HPS is a much trickier, and often contradictory, metric. We can only heal up to 100% of a person’s health, and more importantly, a healer’s HPS will often be higher in a bad group that takes tons of avoidable damage than in a great group that executes mechanics perfectly. A high HPS can be a sign of a struggling group, not necessarily a skilled healer. IMO this fact also reinforce the idea that damage done should be the real metric for the scale, not healing.

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Easy, more unavoidable “rot” damage. Remember Khajin in Halls of Infusion? Kind of like that.

I mean, there have to be survival checks somewhere. It can’t just be super slow purely reactable damage at the highest of content because then nobody can die and it’s just a matter of having the comp that does the most damage.

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Word. The contradiction in the design is the fact that it is supposed to scale infinitely. At some point, what starts as “rot” damage, becomes “spike damage” due to the very nature of the scaling.

Solution? Making the scale hit harder somewhere else, not in the damage received. Can’t see any other way than enemies HP.

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Ye. I think some of the frustration comes from heroic and +10s just 1 shotting you if you stand in bad, and healers can’t fix this, so you either do nothing with a good group or watch people get spam 1 shot on cd in bad groups

Idk if there’s anything to be done about that :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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Better AI targeting by ranged mobs, for one, coupled with fewer high-damage casters/ranged. The number of times I’ve seen teammates get nuked by being focus-targeted is mind-boggling.

Yeah, if you’re doing multi-pack pulls with a bunch of casters in them and you lack interrupts, you’re asking for it (but it’s also required in high-level keys). However, three mobs with casts that do more than a quarter of your HP in damage shouldn’t gang up on one target either.

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True lol. At 12s some casts already hit for almost 50% hp, so being targeted by 2 of these in between healer GCD is almost always a guaranteed death.
But IMO, even with fewer of these, at some point, due to the very nature of the scaling, the damage received will be nearly one shooting people.

I can’t see a way for Blizz to remove spike damage, in a design that scales infinitely, unless they take the scale somewhere else (meaning, not scaling the damage received as much). Can’t see any other way, while I also don’t like the sponge effect this creates. Either that, or we accept the spike damages.

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It may be time to separate M+ from non-infinite-scaling content in the PVE sphere. That way they can design something that fits their philosophy for everything else, and come at M+ with a feasible philosophy for the infinite scale.

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I’m sort of already seeing that in the 15 range with some abilities. While I like the fact scaling makes it challenging and forces groups to change tactics, there’s a point where RNG will roll against you, three casters look at your healer funny, you have no more stops or interrupts, and suddenly the key’s dead.

Maybe change how certain caster mobs behave. Like, X mob in packs of two or three will never all target the same player.

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Yeah, one of my initial thoughts on the their healing design changes is this flies in the face of the very basic concept of infinite scaling.

I really hope Blizz doesn’t ruin classes in midnight. I’m feeling a very “pruning” vibe, which it seems like we just got back from.

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You sweet summer child. They couldn’t care less about it. They’ve mouthed that phrase for two expansions now. They’ve never done it, they’ve never even tried. It’s just something they say to try to keep more players subscribed.

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This does not appear to resolve the problem totally, this might work in the +15 and if it does work well, ppl will simply scale up to 16 17 18 19 and then say +23 that singular one shot is gonna catch an unlucky person and then he’s dead to that spell cast and even if he does survive with verse and defensive good play, he will scale up to 26 where he starts versing every single piece of gear just to survive with a defensive then he will scale up to say +31 where finally maths decides it’s the end of the road becuz he’s not gonna survive even with an external + defensive.

Infinite scaling is a monster that will never be slain, it just comes back stronger.

Having different monsters not targeting the same target is just kicking the can down the road.

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That is exactly my point… And why I believe the dungeon needs to start failling due to “not enough DPS” before the damage received can ever scale to that point. Meaning the scale to the HP of enemies should be aggressively bigger, to a point that before we can start to be hit killed by mechanics, the dungeon is already breaking due to the lack of DPS.

M+ infinite design will make players hit a wall at some point. That is the key, because you can’t actually reduce “spike damage” if damage received is scaling the way it is today. Is just a matter of time till the scale make the spikes come again.

Errr… I know? That is why I said:

o.o???

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Yep. Their stated goals often sound good. Their execution, or lack there of, often leave a lot to be desired. They are pruning a lot of defensives, which is a start. They need to go all in on it though or else they will just end up making healing awful.

I actually like the idea. Doesn’t seem Blizz’s style though.

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The infinite scaling nature of the system guarantees we’ll definitely hit a wall at some point unless our gear scales infinitely, too. You’re right that any changes made will kick the can down the road, but that’s the best we can do (i.e. make the trip last longer before people get one-shot by a single, errant cast).