Surprised ? It happens every season ? At the point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was blizzard’s intention.
I apply for key range 14. 9 out 10 keys I apply for are declined. Every time I get declined, it’s always a DH tank invited to that group. I also witnessed on stream that the key holder preferred a VDH with 100 io less over me.
Anything higher than 12 seems not worth the stress.
see tho, 14s are where it kinda starts to make sense tho. especially when talking about prot warr vs VDH. if they pref a lower io vdh, im assuming it was a magic comp. boomy, ele, mage, ret to a certain extent. chaos brand adds huge value. battle shout doesnt. likewise in a melee comp, prot heavily preferred.
i dont really see that as the problem. the problem is that the ppl NOT running 14s see that as “oh i can only bring a VDH and everything else is unplayable garbage”
thats completely subjective tho. if u dont like pushing keys, then theres no point. but for those of us who do, pushing is the whole point. but this whole topic isnt even about key level, its about the LFG as a whole.
this is just incorrect. very very rarely are meta specs “so powerful” and thats why theyre brought. they are typically the strongest, yes, but by a much much smaller margin than ppl like to make it seem. at bleeding edge level, that small margin matters. anything less, and it doesnt matter. the community just thinks it does because thats the mentality. “meta is the only way to time a key at any level”.
any playing a meta spec is only a small part of the LFG problem. u could be applying to keys your adequately qualified to do as the top meta spec. but theres 20 other ppl in the queue also playing that spec. and if they have 1 more ilvl, 1 more io, 1 more timed run in that bracket than you do, you’re not getting the invite. the overqualifications are the bigger problem. the problem is MUCH more apparent in the 7/10/12 keys due to the farming break points, but it exists at every level. if you have all timed 11s, and want to queue into a 12, you will not get invited simply because theres multiple other ppl applying that already have some 12s done, or have 13s done, or w/e that are just there to farm crests. that person will always be taken over you.
this is kind of the whole point. blizzard cant fix this. its an entirely community driven problem. yes blizz can balance even more, homogenize specs so every1 brings equal utility. but there will ALWAYS be a perceived meta, and there will always be an overqualification problem. thats not something blizz can fix.
2 Likes
There’s a button that allows you to change that. What button do rogues, warlocks or hunters press?
thats a pretty dumb take. i dont play veng because i dont like tanking and im not good at it. but by that logic, rogues, hunters and warlocks can also press a button to change that. “Create Character”.
I disagree. We regularly have some specs performing 50% better. We had Aug, for example, for what – 4 straight seasons of being meta? I wouldn’t say that is “very very rarely” That is the norm.
That’s pretty defeatist, no?
I played survival hunter during S3 of shadowlands. At one point I tried my ret pally, which I had been playing for my entire WoW career up until that point. I had no skill as surv, and more ilvl as ret, but in the same dungeon my ret did literally HALF the damage of the surv. Again, that’s me with no skill on surv, and fully read up on ret.
Then we have fire mage, aug, spriest all of dragonflight.
last season we had enhancement a full head and shoulders away from the rest.
It is absolutely possible for blizzard to bring all of the specs within about 10% of each other. There would still be a meta, and it would be more like what you describe here:
This would only be true if the meta were something like 10% apart. Not the 30-50-100% we typically see.
A 30% edge in a key is HUGE. that is like a 2+ key level difference.
yeah but Aug is an outlier, and also was meta for entirely different reasons as any other spec would be. Aug was meta because 1. it provides insane utility with zephyr, rescure, wingflap and tailswipe, etc, and 2. it buffed your already strong dps to be stronger AND made your tanks tankier and healers “healy-er”. also just adding constant group tankiness with vers buffs. it was unique in that way, and thats why it was meta.
i dont see how thats defeatist. its simple fact. blizzard cannot “fix” how the community treats metas. Surv hunter in SLs s3 and s4 was yes, and example of when a spec does 20%+ more than any other and thus is meta. also an outlier. especially when talking about TWW, where balance IS very close, despite the community saying otherwise. and yes, i have said multiple times in this thread, there will always be a meta, no matter how balanced things are. and thats exactly the point were in right now. balance IS good. but the “meta” specs have been disproportionately hyped up by the community as IF they are doing 20%+ more damage, when they are not.
if you’re seeing a 30/50/100% difference in performance with meta specs in your keys right now, that is 100% a skill issue with the ppl in your groups. the gap is not even remotely close to that.
1 Like
Citation needed. And I’m not talking anecdotes about someone’s personal experience. Show us hard data with a spec being 50% or more better in performance, not representation.
If you find one, of course the next task will be to find data supporting this kind of imbalance over multiple seasons to support the assertion that this is the norm.
exactly. surv hunter in end of SLs is the only instance i can think of where a spec simply did 30% more than anyone else. an absolute outlier, not the norm in terms of metas.
None of this explains spriest’s performance during S2, S3, and S4 of DF and enh’s performance last season.
100%, not 20%.
This is your opinion, but I disagree again. Even a 10% difference is significant – 10% is the same as the dungeon scaling. My math shows a spread of 35% between the top and bottom this season. So you think that is balanced, I do not think that is balanced. We’ll have to agree to disagree here unless you can show me hard data.
I am looking at aggregate log data. What are you looking at?
EDIT: checking my work, and trying to find the most favorable-to-your-argument calculation, and also cutting out aug the lowest spread I can calculate this season is a 24.1% difference between the best and worst specs. That’s two key levels. That’s someone with the same skill running a 13 vs a 15.
Blizzard can definitely do better.
Now now ,everything will be ok , here pop open a cold one while you wait. 
neither of those were anywhere near the 30/50/100% marks you were boasting earlier. did they perform better than other specs, yeah. 30%+? no.
if you genuinely belive that surv did 100% more damage than any other spec in the game, i feel sorry, because you were definitely playing with complete garbage ppl who didnt know how to play their spec. if your surv hunter was doing 100k dps (arbitrary number) and your other 2 dps were doing 50k, those 2 dps players sucked absolute beans at their specs.
can you show where you’ve collected this information from? ill admit im not great at reading/navigating warcraft logs, but im not really seeing anything of that sort.
Vengeance. Discipline. Unholy. Fire. Balance. This is the current god comp. Can swap the DK for an ele shaman as a close second.
and thats the problem right there. community perception. why do you think thats the “god” comp?
just in the 10 top runs on the leader board there is:
Tank - VDH, Prot Warr, Bear
Healer - Disc, Rdruid, MW
DPS - Fire mage, Boomy, Unholy, BM, Frost mage, WW, Ele sham, Fury, Outlaw, SP
if you expand that to the top 40 runs, you can add in Arms, Ret, MM and Dev
if there’s 16 out of 39 specs just in the top 10 runs, and 20 (half the total specs) in the top 40, i dont see how anyone can call something a god comp. and this is exactly the problem. some content creator has probably made a vid or streamed a tier list with vdh, disc, boomy, fire, ele in S tier, and now the community reads that as “god comp”.
compare it to DF season 3 where the top 40 runs was VDH, rdruid, fire mage, SP and Aug, with only 1 run having a MW, 1 run having a disc, and 5 runs having a boomie in place of the healer. that is what a god comp looks like. all runs had the same tank, same 3 dps, and same healer, save for 2 runs.
1 Like
There is no class that is game-breakingly overpowered, nor is there a comp that is. The whole god comp thing doesn’t even matter until the highest keys. The problem is that WoW’s playerbase worships tier lists and apes what they see their favorite streamers say.
No, I did not believe that at all. That is you smoking something or lacking reading comprehension.
What I am actually talking about, if you can pull your head out of your rear, is the difference between the top spec and the bottom spec. It wasn’t even performance – that season ret paladin also simmed at 50% of the damage of surv (since it sounds like you don’t know how percentages work that means surv was 100% more damage than ret as well)
I don’t think I’ll be responding to you in the future, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about, but you can use a log aggregate site like u dot gg or mythicstats to more easily see this.
so does the community ever fix any of Blizzard’s problems?
just a moment here. lemme pull it up
ah, there it is. i guess this is me lacking reading comprehension. this definitely doesnt say 100%. oh… wait a sec.
toxic way to end a discussion lol. saying i dont know what im talking about, while you yourself have been speaking out of opinion, not fact, and ive been providing specific references throughout this entire post to dictate my points, is pretty wild. i even clearly stated when i DIDNT know something lol. but feel free to not respond, even tho we both know you will =)
You know I will because you have forced me to clarify what I meant, lest you succeed at twisting my words.
As I said earlier, It was doing 100% more damage than ONE more spec in the game. A few. not any other. It was not 100% ahead of the rest of the dps. In fact destro lock was on par if not better. How can I say this more clearly so that you will understand?
There is a whole paragraph describing what I meant already.
not twisting your words. just making you clarify, since you are retroactively changing what your words mean, based on how the discussion progresses.
point and case. i said:
you said:
it wasn’t until after i said:
that you “clarified”:
even though at no point until after i called BS on youre 100% did you “clarify” you were talking about top vs bottom spec.
so please, I invite you to retroactively “clarify” more of your points so that you may insult my reading comprehension some more.