I shouldn’t have mentioned Oracle directly. I think people are conflating how oracle priest heels with the reason that it’s fun. It’s nothing to do with shields per se, it’s about having answers in your tool kit to what the dungeon is throwing at you. It’s having the healer being in charge of who lives and who dies. Dropping ironbark to a five second cooldown, for example, so that druids could dispel one target, DR another target and have answers for healing a dot the ticks for half of somebody’s HP pool.
If we’re going to balance everything around tens, then we should just cap mythic plus at 10. If balance in high keys doesn’t matter enough to make sure that everyone’s kit works the same against the dungeon pool, then there’s no reason to have it. Because it creates a game of “haves” and “have nots”.
I realize that I’m making an argument for more homogenization. However, homogenization is a lesser evil, in my opinion, then suddenly being unable to play my character for a season because we’re in a disease heavy dungeon pool or Burst damage season. I’m much more like likely to just stop playing until the physical damage dungeon pool or the healing dungeon pool comes back and I can play the character that I want to play instead of re-rolling to the character that fits the current dungeon lot.
It’s every season. The unique combination of utility required to best approach each pool of dungeons sets the meta and everyone else can just reroll or take the season off.
And then we nerf the outliers at the end of the season just as we change the dungeon pool and start over. Blizzard balances like we’re already in a state of extreme homogenization. So they either need to finish it off and unify the toolkits or I want to see dungeons made with specific healers in mind. A rot damage dungeon, a stacked burst dungeon, a one shot dungeon, etc. so every healer has a place where they’re the best.
For people who don’t chase the fotm, it’s either quit or shut up. I’m not good at either of those things, so what else is there? Post a 1000 times a season to try and get the meta picker to come back around to my favorite spec. That’s about it.
Squeaky wheel gets the oil, so all I can do is squeak. Beats sitting in queue for half an hour trying to get into a 13 as a bear tank. Or can swap to balance in my haste/verse gear and get into 14’s though.
All I want to do is tank high keys as a bear Druid. I want to live in a world where I can apply to groups and get into them playing my favorite spec. That’s it.
What the “people” want is of little consequence. If you had vendors handing out BIS loot, they’d praise the game (and subsequently quit because it’s too much fun.)
I think you have it backwards. What makes people happy is the most important part of game design. People will play what’s fun. Competitive integrity is a distant concern. Probably doesn’t even make the top 10.
Yes I know that. And I don’t care because it’s bad game design. I want every healer to cover everything. It’s not fun being lock out of a certain cleanse.
Being able to put a shield on a player preemptively that is greater than their health bar is idiotic and should not exist. Especially not without a hefty cooldown.