Important info: Dampening should be in arenas. I’m proposing just that we change how it is implemented. Like a higher initial value with a slower ramp. This evens the field between healers while keeping matches short.
I’ve been playing more 3s lately over shuffle and games are actually about the same length, but I feel like healers can do more. The playstyle is significantly different for me at least.
One of the very few healer expression outlets still available is mana management. This aspect is non-existent in shuffle, but I can make it our win condition against certain matchups in 3s.
What is the point of ultra dampening, anyways? This just means that the bracket will always arbitrarily favor some specs over others for no real good reason; namely specs that rely on damage reduction instead of raw output (healthstone, renewal, fury warrior shenanigans, resto shamans, mistweavers, etc.)
We have already established that we can’t balance shuffle individual of 3s, so why make matches that much more different?
A counter argument I can think of is “matches would take longer”. But what about mana costs? What about CC? What about letting healers have a bigger impact in the matches? Dampening would still be there for sure, but instead of going up to 50, 70%, matches would end at around 20%-30%. Even a higher initial dampening could be ok, like starting at 20% but ramping up the same as 3s
I know this thread won’t go anywhere because people like to PVE even when they say they don’t and no blues ever read this but yeah the dampening thing is annoying and reduces skill expression for all roles in shuffle, while fundamentally making balancing 3s and shuffle impossible.
People gotta die somehow and healers complained about CC so now it comes down to this. Mana could be an option but it severely favors the ones that can get out of combat easily and/or night elves. Plus I think winning on mana is just a lame win condition. Personally i’d think healers would like to get rewarded for landing cc chains on the enemy healer and/or avoiding getting cc’d as it gives them a lot more agency over wins. It just feels REALLY bad for healers that are well…really bad at PvP and Blizzard caved in to their demands.
healer opinions should be disregarded as fast as humanly possible
(except mine)
technically not an issue right now because you actually can’t drink in shuffle
that is for sure and I would rather we had some kind of setup required but at the very least this would accomplish a more unified balance between 3s and shuffle
I think shuffle damp is mostly the only way. With 6 rounds you need them to be -reliably- fast, not just dependent on comp. In 3s you can get damped out to 6-7+ mins with some comps right now, and if that happened in shuffle far less people would play. The best thing about it is how fast it -always- is, reliably.
I dont think there is any other reliable way to get games to a very specific length. Healer mana will not work unless they homogenize it and make it so all healers have the same mana regen and no other way to regen mana inside of arena (which might end up working but would prob be hated by healers for a good reason), outside of that there really isnt anything. With how many specs there are in the game, damp is the most reliable way to get this to work.
Stupid take? Yea wanting a MS on every spec except the one and only spec that actually needs it is a stupid take. You obviously dont play the game higher than the 1200s bracket to actually take in the effects of MS effects on classes that dont need it