I would que multiple healers in shuffle all the time if blizzard just made it somewhat equal to 3s or dps shuffle to get mmr. It’s a complete waste of time. But even despite this I still WOULD heal shuffle just to play the game and for practice on healers except… there’s not actually a shortage of healers in actual 3s even as low as 1800+.
Dps are all busy sitting in shuffle que and healers don’t want to play it so they go to 3s. So if you want to heal 3s its actually unironically hard to find dps because they can’t get practice on dps.
This creates a no win situation by having deflated healer mmr. You can’t even chose to fix the problem yourself by healing because all that brainpower practicing healer is wasted if you want to play 3s too. This is probably intentionally to draw healers into 3’s but the effect is way too strong because the player pool is small, even if the rating is only 1800+. Look at the population graphs for rating distribution. It’s crazy how sharp the drop off is and at such low ratings.
Anyway. I’d actually like to heal shuffle blizz so I can play the game as I please without ques or lfg. It’s totally pointless to commit so much time and effort mastering a healing spec just to be at a disadvantage for no reason at all.
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The popularity of shuffle is due to the sheer amount of dps players without willing healers.
Okay, but what purpose does rating itself serve if you already have the generic rewards
Like if you push 2100-2400 on Warlock then you already have the illusion, weapons and tabard. The only thing left for alts is 1800 or r1.
If it’s about practice/improvement then flat CR isn’t really meaningful, just where you fall on your spec ladder.
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because it gatekeeps a huge portion of the playerbase from rewards from solo queing if they happen to play healer. The negative feedback loop of incentives that I personally encounter is not uncommon but if you want to argue about it, It’s just my personal feelings towards it.
It also obfuscates and feels bad to not have agency as a healer to go in solo shuffle and get to a competitive rating first then go in lfg and bypass the riff raff and previous season players claiming 3k xp and it’s a total mystery who you are playing with most of the time. Except for their shuffle rating from the current season. Healers don’t get to participate in that to nearly the same degree.
Fixing this won’t stop healers from going to lfg once they get their shuffle rating. Or stop them from pushing rank 1 and spamming games all season. Literally punishing healers for no reason at all just because you think shuffle is a meme bracket.
The popularity of shuffle is due to the sheer amount of dps players without willing healers.
as he goes on to sandbag healers and say they should shut up about having lower rating than him playing arms with the other 25% of the playerbase. Actually a bad person the most I think about it the more I get angry about it and how obnoxious you are. Imagine playing arms and talking to people like this.
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People are…“bypassing the riff raff” with their shuffle rating?
I mean, there’s already little to no reason to play shuffle if you’re doing well in other brackets. Especially for healers who usually have a friends list of people who they enjoy playing with.
You’re saying that like it’s not a fairly balanced spec right now.
I personally think healer mmr is fine in shuffle. The healers I’ve played with are relatively where they should be. The issue is there are way more dps queues so gaining mmr at higher ratings is harder because you get paired against lower mmr healers. The lack of participation seems to be the problem, which you addressed.
They tried to add a title for healers, but that won’t do much for healers trying to hit elite +. Maybe a reward for hitting 2400 might be a good idea?
Either way, adding more mmr for healers might have unintended consequences.
Is that right
Do you still recommend offering them free advice on what they could’ve done better
You’re trying to derail the thread. This isn’t about me.
For every healer spec outside of rdruid you need to be in like the top 30-40 to be above 2400 right now. That’s absolutely insane. Just for legend title. People aren’t stupid. They see this and they don’t que healers in shuffle. They go to 3’s. So no matter what you play dps or healer you lose no matter what if you want to actually play the game.
like people playing healers? seriously?
It could possibly do that, but what if it doesn’t and the only people who benefit are the ones who are already healing?
I’ve seen a lot of priest, hpallies, rshamans around that mmr. I haven’t looked at the actual statistics, but this is the same with dps specs.
Are dps players real people? You are literally advocating that the game stay in a bad state just to avoid the off chance we reward people who play specs that enable YOU to also play the game.
If it’s such ez mode to get 2.4 on healer then play a healer alt yourself. You guys are ridiculous.
I’ve seen a lot of priest, hpallies, rshamans around that mmr. I haven’t looked at the actual statistics, but this is the same with dps specs.
You can go to the official blizzard website and look at each spec yourself no need for statistics on drustvar. Even rdruid is only a little over 100 people over 2.4. The top end is also way lower so the margin and odds of you playing against literal awc healers is way more likely at 2.4 mmr games compared to dps. You have to be 10x better to get the main reward as healer and that’s literally not fair.
I’m not completely against it. I’m pointing out why they might be hesitant to increase mmr for healers. They’ve already explained how they want 3s and solo mmr to be similar. A lot of healers I’ve seen at 2100 are also 2100 in 3s.
And I said hitting 2400 as a healer is harder because people at that rating aren’t queueing and the mmr system pairs higher rated healers with lower rated healers.
There could be different approaches you’re not looking at when it comes to possible fixes.
You should look at some dps specs. For enh the top 50 goes to 2100. Almost 20 of those spots are the same person.
Yes, and the poor souls are forced to heal 2k shuffle (1600 3s) players. 
It’s literally the opposite you clearly never tried playing healer. There’s too many healers in lfg at 2100 and you are forced to play with the mediocre dps that haven’t been above 2.2 in shuffle all xpac but still put 3k xp in their title.
dps willing to sit in shuffle que 45 minutes all day long and or lfg is more rare than a healer who gets instant pops to learn a spec and then pop in lfg trying to get carried to glad
and for both players that experience sucks
You should look at some dps specs. For enh the top 50 goes to 2100. Almost 20 of those spots are the same person.
Yeah but there are way more dps specs than healer specs and enhance is one of the worst specs in the game right now. Meanwhile both other shaman specs are A+ or S
This is a great idea, people should do this more often.
Shaman is a weird class where we don’t really switch on what’s good. Restro doesn’t really play ele, ele doesn’t really play enh, etc.
The issue has to do with a mixture of some healing specs being worse than others, and the top rated healers aren’t queueing much, so there’s no rating to distribute up there. That to me are the biggest reasons as to why healers have a harder time hitting 2400.
Why that is, I don’t know.
I can understand some players want to stick to only melee or caster but all 3 shaman specs are pretty fun. You can’t expect all 3 to be meta at the same time. Maining a single spec on a single class every single season despite it’s non-viability is rare in the wow community. I wouldn’t say it’s the norm.
if there’s one thing we know about the wow community is they respond to incentive and play what’s good/fun in the meta and they play what gets them rewards. Everyone knows playing healer in shuffle is hard to get CR compared to other things they could play, so they simply don’t do it.
Yes, it’s easy to get into lfg groups below 2k as healer with an infinite amount of low rated dps signing up. But above 2k it’s not easy to find dps as a healer. Because everyone is responding to the incentive structure. And because the population overall is extremely small past 2k in general. Dps players have to sit in 45 minute ques at high rating and nobody is good at arena without constant practice, even the awc players are constantly queing shuffle for practice when their team isn’t around.
Restro is kind of fun…ele is painfully boring. It’s an apply flameshock simulator.
This falls along the lines of the path of least resistance.
Yup. What most people forget is that this was an issue before shuffle. Getting queues has always been hard beyond a certain point, even if someone has btags(because of schedule issues or whatever else).
Few people are at that skill level and there is a lot of tension when playing the game at a competitive level, so it’s hard to maintain teammates.
Overall, this is an issue that probably will never be fixed unless the structure of the game is changed. And Blizzard will never do that because that would push away the legacy players.
I mean there is, and always has been honestly. But it just feels different because you can go looking for healers in 3s instead of waiting for them to queue for RSS.
If you couldn’t flame shock pets ele would be more fun because you wouldn’t be at such a big disadvantage compared to the people botting. Keeping 3 targets flame shocked isn’t hard. I would say make the damage rotation more complex somehow but shamans have a lot of keybinds.
Have you tried winning more?