M+ meta is not only a numbers problem it is a design problem

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

More numbers tuning on the god comp isn’t going to fix the M+ class diversity problem for the following reasons.

  1. Bear is the only tank that can pull massively due to good defensive funnel. Pull more mobs, generate more rage, more iron fur + incarn CDR + after the wildfire procs, then pull more mobs. This gameplay loop is not only uniquely powerful but is actually very fun to play. This should be the gold standard for tank design. Talents like Brewmaster’s talent anvil and stave read like they do this but got nerfed during beta to have an ICD making the talent worthless. The combination of resource generation as a function of pull size + major cooldown CDR should be given to every tank spec.
  2. Augmentation brings more than just damage to the group. It also gives buffs to the tank and healer on top of many powerful groupwide defensives. This makes certain encounters way more manageable than they would be otherwise. They also provide a multiplicative modifier on the group’s burstiest damage CDs. No other class can bring this benefit to the group currently.
  3. There are too many mindsootheable packs in this season’s dungeon pull and too many dangerous AOE magic debuffs making priest’s utility near mandatory for most high keys. The solution to this would be to drastically nerf the AOE magic effects so that they can actually be healed through. For example, only put out 2 debuffs, heal one and dispel the other, especially if one always goes on the tank. Give more classes the ability to self dispel is another option. Many of the problematic debuffs this season can be dispelled by freedom effects which helps some classes, but the not every class can free itself frequently enough to manage the mechanic effectively which is a problem.
  4. Mage and paladin are probably a numbers problem to be honest. paladin just has better healing throughput and mage after the rework is one of the best AOE specs in the game right now.
7 Likes
2

The bear problem is actually worse than you think it is. Thrash ticks giving 2 rage is just stupid design and needs immediate attention. You don’t even need to incarn a large enough pull because the rage gen is absurd. Wildfire procs are also too strong, I’m seeing like 200k procs, and it’s doing like 70%+ overhealing anyway and still doing huge group healing. Then there’s Dream of Cenarius; I thought Blizzard was trying to reduce off-healing but here bear is with WoG on crack after killing prot pally mana and burying its off-healing talents behind crap.

However, that’s not even the worst offender in the tree IMO. Why does Innate Resolve even exist? Why does bear get a 25s CD (can be talented for 40% shorter) full heal no matter their HP? Why does bear’s personal LoH have no CD in incarn? On paper it functions similarly to WoG where it heals for more when you have less health but for WoG to full heal a pally they need to get a crit AND dump 3 holy power into it. Bears just get a 10 rage, completely trivial, full heal basically whenever they need it and the upcoming nerf to it doesn’t change this at all.

As for the Aug stuff, Blizz didn’t give it healer hooks like they did for DPS. If they did then I think the community would be even more outraged about the whole situation than they are now.

4 Likes
3

30+ roles placed in tiny 5-man groups and tuned to bleeding edge is the design flaw.

too many nails that need to be brought to the same level in all situations.

2 Likes
4

They took away paladins version in BFA that gave us 3% damage and DR (capped) for every mob within range.

5

I disagree with this. Usually when there are only two debuffs they are deadlier and the intent is for the healer to pick the right target to dispel and rotate the appropriate spells to heal the burst on the other target. We saw it last season in Temple of the Jade Serpent. One of the hardest parts of the dungeon was the dispel on the last boss. In every circumstance like this having mass dispel cuts the difficulty inordinately and is as valuable as when it dispels 5 targets.

1 Like
6

I miss that talent

7

Just revert the cooldown on dispel. Fixes most magical issues

1 Like
8

I give alternate take on the situation.

Bliz have structured m+ all around gear and io score, pushing people through a funnel that due to increasing difficulty heavily encourages the community to pursue every advantage they can get. It encourages people to look at other players as things in their way rather than people to have fun with. The result is degenerate and often toxic gameplay including but not limited to the intense focus on meta.

There has been little to no true game dev done with the format. I think about these survivor bullet games that spawned from vampire survivor. A single idea has spawned many great unique takes on the format (and a few not so great ones), all in the space of about a year and a half.

Its been seven years since Legion and M+ has arguable de-volved. Flavor things like failure detection device and gear swapping are gone. My hope has been that some studio would do a Riot Games, free the format from WOW and give it the love and attention it deserves. There are so many things that could have been done with the format and yet it has remained stagnant.

Also I don’t understand why the goals in m+ are so singularly focused when you have a game base that is so divergent. Divergent in skill, in the way they consume the game, in what they want from the game.

Higher keys were so much healthier in Legion primarily because the people doing them genuinely wanted to be there. Now with the focus on rewards for high keys you have people playing them who don’t actually enjoy the experience. They would have much fun blasting lower level keys with specs they actually enjoy. Bliz have become so dependent on carrots to get people to play the game and ignored why people play games, for therapeutic value and fun.

The top end of M+, like the top end of everything in this game will always be heavily meta focused but the lower levels need not be like this. Broadening what M+ offers for low to mid keys, not just rewards but experiences, would make the format so much healthier and would give upper keys the space it needs to be its own thing.

3 Likes
9

It’s a combination of factors.

  1. Tuning was way off. Mages prior to 10.1.5 were fairly rare in high keys unless you were playing with a push team that played around Fire. Almost every mage I played with was doing 10-15% less dps than everyone else.

Once the patch launched, Fire Mages overnight were 20-30% higher AOE dps than everyone else, and when you combo’d them with Aug Evokers they did insane AOE dps. On Week 1 it was an immediate 150 IO gain for me as Fire Mages could basically hard carry keys.

Holy Paladins were incredibly overtuned as well being 20-30% ahead of everyone on dps/hps in keys. They also gave them literally everything that a healer could ask for in M+ (group damage mitigation, external, spot+group heals, external dps cooldown, etc).

  1. Aug Evokers were just busted out the door. They give a primary stat increase to everyone in the group including the healer while have 4 AOE stops and a group absorb.

  2. Bear Tanks are either OP or they’re weak. How strong bear tanks are now is exactly how they were in Season 2 in Shadowlands. In Season 1 Shadowlands they were incredibly weak and got one shot by boss mechanics even at 100% hp if they had no defensive available.

  3. Shadow Priests were already fotm prior to 10.1.5 because of high AOE damage and utility. Now their AOE dps has been nerfed to the group and all they have is utility.

So the TLDR is that Blizzard dropped the ball by introducing 3 major class revamps mid-season that weren’t properly tuned and it took them a month to finally bring them down.

If they had spent you know 2-3 extra weeks ironing the classes out on the PTR they’d probably release in far weaker states than they are in now.

10

It’s so funny seeing people talking about bear like this since literally all of this was there in season 1 and bear was considered garbage tier. For some ridiculous reason everyone went Thorns of Iron and no Ursoc’s Fury and then complained about how squishy bear was. Of course it’s squishy when you don’t take a major defensive talent.

11

More than that, bear have a massive shield absorb from spamming Thrash and Raze in a big pulls. They have very shorter Incarn CD because their rage is capped in a big pulls and can spend more Ironfur / Raze. Bear doesn’t die to a massive pull while the other tanks just die very fast. They should have nerf Blood Frenzy and be done with it.

1 Like
12

I didn’t see gear swapping in Legion M+ as flavor at all. It was just another thing that became a tedious min/max component if you wanted to optimize at a high level, just like other things players are discovering now.

I agree the format has barely evolved, with seasonal affixes being the only flavor that was still being tried as “different”, but gear swapping is a bad example.

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13

It wasn’t all there though and it wasn’t all selectable at the same time. Innate Resolve was completely resigned for 10.1.5 for example. Most things were in hard to reach places before so the combo of talents wasn’t possible. They shifted everything around with a complete disregard for balance.

A couple more examples of what changed; Raze used to replace Maul (huge ST DPS loss), Dream of Cenarius was down on row 9 (one of the outlier off-healing talents), Rend and Tear was lower so it was harder to take (huge passive defensive and DPS boost).

1 Like
14

It was all there before, the only difference is you couldn’t take Dream of Cenarius and Rage of the Sleeper. Otherwise the Raze build is the same.

The only real difference now is dungeon design. Running a bear with the Raze/UFR build in Algethar was amazing with the huge pulls and mostly physical damage. And again, for some reason the “meta” decided that the build you had to play was Thorns of Iron which skipped UFR, Rend and Tear, and Tooth and Claw in favor of more damage. Then complained about bear being squishy?

15

Aug stops/buffs is what ruined the game. the buffs to fire mage and any other class literally means nothing. You run a key without the stops/buffs that aug brings you are suddenly 5+ mins slower and using cds u didn’t have to on the exact same pulls. Augentation Evoker is the SOLE problem with the meta, anyone claiming it isnt is playing it or is playing with one consistently. Noobs that could never ever get title in their life are suddenly timing 27s. Delete Aug

16

It’s definitely a numbers thing, in the sense that theres a certain number that will make it change even if you don’t change anything about the design

Theres always a ton of discussion around how much utility the meta specs have for the current M+ season and theres always a ton of people saying “its not the numbers, its their kits!” about them, but at the end of the day the reason the specs are meta is always their numbers and then you work around the utility you have in the group

You say “bear is the only tank that can pull massively” but thats specifically a numbers thing, if there was other tank overtuned enough to do those same pulls and survive while doing the same (or more) dps, then it would be just as meta (or more) even if the gameplay sucked. Bear is not meta because its fun its fun because its overtuned which also makes it meta

If shadow priest was doing tank levels of dps it wouldn’t really matter that it has mass dispell and mindsoothe you would bring a spec that actually does damage and then work around the utility they bring. Teams used to run 5 night elfs to skip things and if shadow priest becomes bad so you stop having mindsoothe then people will just go back to that

TL:DR; if you want a spec to be meta it just has to do a lot of dps or heal a ton, or maybe both at the same time, everything else is just extra

1 Like
17

TLDR: The only things the meta comp is missing are bonuses that cost more to get than they bring.

I disagree specifically based on this season.

The sum total of the meta comp right now is just a clear winner in every regard.

Bear isn’t the only tank that can pull big. You can work around that just like in the past. But it’s the best class/spec combo to bring Mark of the Wild, the most popular stat in the highest keys, and comes with a side of poison/curse dispel, vortex, typhoon/disorient, aoe speed boost, stealth, brez, soothe, single target external heals and accessible group heals.

Other tanks are close in damage, DH and Monk might be higher in a lot of cases.

Almost everything that other tanks could bring can be provided by another spec in the meta with a few notable exceptions. Spell Warding and Deathgrip/Grabby Hands spring to mind. Ring of Peace is also great but none of them outvalue the total contribution of the Druid. Otherwise, you can cover Pally auras and utility with HPal, Monk buff and DH debuffs are the two damage sacrifices that the comp makes, indicating those classes having powerful buffs doesn’t equal enough total value to outweigh the other buffs/debuffs.

Monk utility in the form of Tiger’s Lust and Dispels are covered by HPal and Druid/Pally/Priest/Aug.

DK brings value but lacks practically everything that Bear brings. No external heals, no cleanses, no group buff and they’re slow. Their best utility comes in the form of AMZ and grip which are both very strong, but again, don’t amount to enough value to change the meta comp without giving up too much elsewhere.

Except for Battle Shout and Rallying cry, Warrior doesn’t bring anything that even remotely approaches Bear in terms of value. No cleanse, no rez, no external heals, no soothe, no magic dispel (remember when that was a thing?), no shoes, no shirt, no service.

You’re not replacing Aug until you put it 6 ft under. Period. It brings more utility than any combination of 2 or 3 other dps classes could bring. Which is important because it perfectly fills the gaps that Mage and Spriest can’t and doubles a few of them giving the group redundant cooldown like 2 soothes, 2 lusts, 2 bleed removals multiple offensive dispels.

The crucial things is I don’t believe you can get that kind of coverage with any other combo of classes. You move one piece around and you lose quite a bit.

Swap in another tank and you have to get a Boomy to cover Mark of the Wild and your second curse dispel. That means Spriest or Mage is out. Who’s giving up PI? Correct, nobody, so mage goes, but now you lose Arcane Intellect, Ice Block, Invis, Spellsteal, decurse, big doinks and portals to Stonard. Just so you can bring in a DK, or a Monk, or Warrior. Newp.

You can neuter any class or spec in the current meta until it so undesirable that it’s a liability, but that is neither clever nor cool to the players of those classes.

I don’t believe for a second that the problem is numbers, but just a coincidental conjunction of class design that’s resulted an ideal solution to practically every problem presented by M+ at the moment.

Critically this is not a comp that brings a bunch of advantages while also challenging players to cover for missing utility.

It brings massive utility, 2 at a time even 3 at a time, like 2 brezzes, 2 soothes, 2 this, 3 that.

3 Likes
18

A huge amount of lies (green ego ?).
If the Warrior Fury did the usual damage of Shasow Priest (and it’s very close) would you take it instead of the same? Obviously not and only because he has no real utility in M+.
It’s not just a problem of numbers (easy to fix) but quite the opposite: utility!

1 Like
19

Let’s play a game of “Will it Exodia?!”

Does the current meta have an answer for these affixes? I’m sure I have made mistakes. Some of the spells like Repentance aren’t taken often, but it’s ok, the comp has 2 or 3 or 4 other alternatives in most cases. I’d be glad to edit my post in response to any corrections.

Incorporeal

  • Paladin: Turn Evil, Repentance(If necessary)
  • Druid: Hibernate
  • Mage: Polymorph
  • Priest: Shackle Undead, Dominate Mind?
  • Aug: ?

Afflicted

  • Paladin: Yep
  • Druid: Aha
  • Mage: Indeed
  • Priest: Si, dos typos.
  • Aug: ohsureyoubetcha times two

Entangling

  • Paladin: Freedom
  • Druid: Shift, but we won’t count it for tanks
  • Priest: Fade lol
  • Mage: Blink?
  • Aug: Hover? Verdant Embrace? Rescue?

Volcanic

  • It’s my favorite affix for a reason.

Storming

  • Is DK the only class better than Paladin for soaking Storming? Maybe Feral?

Bolstering

  • Not really sure what the best counter to Bolstering outside of precise target management.

  • External DR is probably the most valuable, which Paladin Auras, Mass Mage Shields and Augs just so happen to bring.

Bursting

  • I mean, Mass Dispel just wins Season 2 MVP at this point. When they nerf it in a week or three it will just be a massive nerf to every group in M+ that might restrict the key limit as much as the recent damage nerfs to the meta comp specs.

Sanguine

  • Probably the meta comp’s weakest affix…kek
  • Druid: Typhoon, Vortex (pre-emptive)
  • Aug: Wing Buffet
  • Priest: Fear sometimes? Dominate Mind sometimes?

Spiteful

  • Druid: Typhoon, Vortex
  • Aug: Tail Swipe, Wing Buffet, Upheaval? Landslide?
  • Paladin: Repentance, Blinding Light?
  • Priest: Dominate Mind, Fear?

Raging

  • Druid: Soothe
  • Aug: Oppressing Roar

Now, tell me again about that Bear damage…

The only time that damage actually made enough difference in MDI, ergo, well beyond anything we mere mortals could possibly need, was boss damage in the world record Neltharion’s Lair where Warrior spell reflect was the difference between defeating the last boss before the add overlap caused a wipe.

20

This is kind of a ridiculous list when many different group comps have been meta over the last 7 years of mythic+. And each time players spouted about how it was their “toolkit” yet later different specs and classes came up.

Guardian was the worst tank just a few months ago, now it’s toolkit is so good it’s 100% required on that instead of the fact it has a strong positive feedback loop of more targets = more rage = can pull more = more rage so it can survive the larger pulls.

I still remember BF season 1 when the cries were how Blood DK toolkit was just too good for mythic+ and they would always be the meta tank because of battle rez, grips, and self healing. Then a few months later prot warriors get gigga damage and unseat them the entire rest of the expansion lol. Then of course blood is back to being on top in SL seasons 3/4 due it’s…gigga damage piled on with its very high survivability in large pulls.

Many seasons went by where rogues were considered a forever locked slot. Especially in BFA when there was a brief period of outlaw rogue x3. Where are they now? Where were they in shadowlands, especially seasons 3 and 4?

1 Like