Every person I have brought up this suggestion to has said they would absolutely love the change, and it wouldn’t make the M+ meta at high keys so toxic and strict. Instead of just giving the M+ title to the top 0.1% of players, make it class, or ideally spec specific! I’m currently a 2950 BDK who wishes I could play my paladin, but the 28s I have tried on him are exponentially for difficult than on DK. I play with the World 18 Shadow Priest in my push group, and he is 100 points below the current cutoff for title. In what world does a world top 18 player NOT deserve a title?
Idk, maybe I’m missing some negatives, but I think it would be overwhelmingly positive for the community to make this change.
Just make it top 5 of the class, not spec. I don’t think 24s should get 1 person a title and 32s for someone else. That said, I’m willing to compromise that stance only to encompass classes. If resto is the meta for druids in high keys, play resto for your chance. If hpal is the go to for paladins, make it that.
I don’t like the idea of a solid destro lock needing to reroll aff to get a title.
P. S. There would absolutely be giga hpriest who are good enough to play shadow if you made this change and your friend would find himself at 200 or 300.
Yeah the meta would basically shift from people playing good meta specs to people playing underplayed / underrepresented specs to get titles. That doesn’t make for healthy gameplay, and if anything it breeds more toxicity imo.
Lemme pug these keys as Arcane when it’s performing 10-20% lower than the other mage specs, and I don’t even know how to confidently play it let alone push with it into the higher keys. I’ll brick a lot of keys, but if I queue enough (since rating doesn’t degrade) I’ll eventually get into title range purely off the backs of players who are capable of pulling the numbers required to chest a key with someone dragging behind.
That’s stupid, it’s already enough of a pain as it is when you see boosted players popping up into the 20 bracket.
I’m fine with the way it is now, but I do see how it’s frustrating to not be able to achieve title without playing the FoTM.
I’ve been in top world / server rankings in the past, I didn’t get anything from it. That’s just the way things go, collect your participation trophy and rerollmage.
I mean, I’m the rank 19 Feral in the world right now and I don’t think I deserve a spot because I haven’t been pushing keys at all (because a couple members of my group re-rolled for keys specifically and we just missed the most recent good push week).
My alternative take is that Blizzard needs to do an infinitely better job tuning specs in M+ content so that re-rolling fotm isn’t the only option.
If you look at the overall damage, he’s barely beating out his tank. He’s not a bad player by any metric, but he plays hpriest/demo/survival/bdk - if he played a meta class this team would be able to push much higher keys than they do now, and the reason they are probably failing to time most keys is because Feral damage is awful.
We’re not going to count the deaths in this run, which is a lot of avoidable damage.
This is just one reference point, I can pull more, but as a long-time top ranking Feral main, I can tell you the damage profile of current Feral will never keep up with any of the current meta specs unless they are just playing poorly.
I rerolled to play meta for this reason. Once you get into title range, your ability to play a class is less important than the class you play and the routes you take. Those are the key differentiations between the rank 200 Mage player and the rank 1 Feral player. Feral player could be insane, but the Mage is still more viable and will bring far more value.
One way you could do this is to cap key levels. I would say maybe 27 or if you prefer round numbers 25 and then the leaderboard is about speed running. Kind of closer to MDI. You could ensure that every class can complete and compete in a set level.
But, if it remains infinite, this is a pipe dream. They could also abandon the idea of spec identity.
But it isn’t about being solid, it’s about being the best. If feral becomes meta, it’ll push out some other spec. It doesn’t solve the larger issue.
Guaranteed, we’ll follow the trend of the last several expansions and poor scaling specs will be op in t1 and the specs that scale will catch up later.
I disagree, since Feral AoE is still almost entirely tied to 4 set borrowed power and pull duration. I could see a world where it would be helpful, I just don’t see it outclassing the other DPS that are currently meta.
Haven’t played Feral on beta yet, just speculation.
Feral strong point is ST damage, literally bite spam and hoping it crits, and even in that regard they are out classed by a lot of other DPS that also just happen to rip in AoE as well with half the requirements.
Would you rather keyboard piano a melee cat DPS or do double the damage by just hitting infernal and spamming your RoF key on Lock.
Edit -
If we’re looking at changes that would bring Feral into the light again, 2m cd on Zerk and actually making it a real CD rather than a 3m joke would be the play imo. Put it back on the energy cost reduction, keep the CP gen, then make it a 2m CD. Free and easy.
I’ve played enough Feral to know how the class will play by looking at a build 10 years of almost exclusively playing a class and theory crafting will do a lot.
I like the idea of a reward from deviating from meta, but as it was said above–making it where people intentionally play off-meta would defeat the purpose. Maybe like a tabard or something for being in the top X of your class. That way it’s not valuable enough to coerce people to switch because it’s not ‘the big show,’ but still a trinket to show for being really good at something and making it work?
That doesn’t really solve the problem because fastest time still means highest DPS wins. So lower dps specs wouldn’t be in the running anyway just like currently. It all comes down to Blizzard needing to A. actually test class balance B. Quickly(days not weeks) respond/hotfix any balance issues not caught in testing. I find it mind boggling that we have websites that can Sim DPS and Blizzard either doesn’t have anything similar internally or ignores what the data is telling them. Sure sims aren’t 100% accurate to real world but they are pretty big indicators. When you can sim one specs AOE at 40k dps and and most other classes are ~20k there is a massive issue. No class should be doing 100% more dps than another dps spec, that’s just a flat out balance failure.
The only way someone rerolling to an underrepresented spec would find it easier to make the title is it they were outperforming all the most dedicated players of that spec. If they can do that, they probably do deserve a title. If you just rerolled Feral today, you’re not just magically going to be good enough to beat out the best Ferals in the region lol.
Why is it OK if a Bear has to reroll Resto, or a Holy Paladin rerolling Prot, but you then you somehow don’t like the idea of someone Destro switching to Aff?? If anything, having to switch both role and spec just to be able to compete is significantly worse.
The whole “deserve” part of the discussion is a bit irrelevant. No one deserves a title. But if you’re going to put in competitive titles for a content mode or game, it only makes sense that everyone should at least be able to complete for it on an equal footing, rather than some groups of people being advantaged by sheer luck of what class/spec they play. Otherwise, your competitive integrity is gone.
You may disagree with the design philosophy, but currently they are using niche partitioning. Where these things are falling apart is that ST specialists, such as feral, aren’t allowed to stand out. Aoe/cleave specialists are far too close on ST so there isn’t any trade off.
Either way, though, if you listen to top end players, it’s not about the classes who can get the best overall dps. In the highest key levels, it’s about killing disparate mobs evenly, so there’s always room for ST specialists that inherently look worse on overall.
True but if you rerolled Feral as someone who’s just shy of title range on something meta, you’d get into title range pretty easily, assuming it’s still an underplayed spec.
Class knowledge and ability can only take you so far, if you’re good at the game you’re good at the game and that will translate across whatever class you end up playing.
So make the title account bound? Current TGP and MDI are basically cookie cutters of the same comps / pulls, it all comes down to execution. There’s room for diversity, but it’s not a wide berth of potential classes like we see in live.
It’s hard to justify class titles without the degen gameplay of class titles, just like it’s hard to justify that in PvP.
I like Sack’s idea of capping key levels and making it based on time, but that drops the need to do super high push keys. To that end, maybe it’ll add more excitement? There’s always a better route or a faster time, doing a higher key is sometimes hard locked to what you bring to the key.
It’s completely dependent on how Blizz wants to handle it, and if I had to guess, they won’t do anything
Pretty much this yeah, like if I was going to degen for title I’d pug my keys but sign-up as meta, then swap to off-meta right before the key was put in just so I could get my points as the other spec.
It certainly would remove “can this class survive this cast” from the equation. If you listen to Meeres about TGP, fire gains a lot from having 3 cheat deaths. I can also see a world where an Arcane mage has some weird interaction that somehow shaves 2m off a key.
If you’re a player who’s great at the game, you may or may not be able to get into title range on another spec. The players who are in title range as a Feral are also extremely good at the game, and also in just as much of a position to have their skills translate across. The variables involved are likely things like how good your teammates are. You also may just not be as good at playing another spec as you think you are; you might be adequate enough, but not the GoAT.
If you’re that extremely good at the game, you’re good at playing multiple different classes/spec, and you end up performing better than someone else and getting the title, it’s not exactly some major problem or flaw in the system. If “deserve” was actually part of the convo, that sounds like someone who “deserves” a title, or who can make the case that they “earned” it through their own efforts and skills.
Perhaps you’re a very marginally worse Feral player with better teammates and you’ll edge out and get a higher rating than someone else. That’s just as true right now.
There’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to why the TGP and MDI work the way they do, but you wouldn’t get much argument from me for titles being account-bound.
Ultimately, any “competition” comes down to what conditions you lay down for it, and what that means. If only 3 Shadow Priests in the region quality for the title, do I think that means the 4th best Shadow Priest is a worse player than the #2000th Survival Hunter? Of course not. If that’s what you want your “competition” to be about, it’s on you to create the conditions where the better player, regardless of class or spec, will win. Rather than the player who benefits from YOUR failed balancing.
I have no idea whether the title is in range of anyone pugging. I highly, highly doubt it. No one I know who’s gotten or will be getting it pugs (for rating, at least). Even if the titles were class-specific or spec-specific, the people who are the best in the region, playing with friends they’ve been playing with for decades who are also the best in their region, should absolutely blow you or anyone else pugging out of the water.
