I was just wondering if there has ever been an expansion where the same healer was meta every season? With two seasons of disc meta so far and most high level healers predicting season 3 being disc again, we might be seeing the same healer being on top for an entire expansion. Second question - is this good game design?
I’m not going to dig into history that you could just as easily dig into to answer your first questions, but the answer to your second questions is “it is fine”.
Contrary to what many obviously believe, the “meta” is not some definitive list of specs capable of clearing keys while all the other struggle like a fish out of water. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary that FOTM meta rerollers are objectively terrible players who should be avoided once keys reach double digits and mistakes/poor play becomes incredibly difficult to overcome until gear caps are maxed/raised. Unless you are pushing title level keys or just under, the objective tuning differences in specs is NOT what is killing your key/groups and I can guarantee you that you and the players you are running with is leaving significant output on the table with suboptimal pulls/plays.
Personally, I like to keep tabs on what the easy to play specs are based off my own knowledge and prioritize those specs when I host keys because honestly picking players who can easily/simply do most of their potential while effectively braindead trumps a potential higher performing spec that really needs to have high knowledge on top of the skill expression/demands of the pulld/dungeon.
But if you see some madman rocking an objectively super hard to execute spec with high gear and IO and number of clears? You snatch them up because it’s as close to a guarantee as you’ll get that you got a skilled player. A meta spec with no past season score and is otherwise unremarkable from the other applicants? Hard pass since there is way too high a chance said player actually doesn’t know or is well experienced in how to play that spec in the way that makes it meta in the first place…or even if “I”, as the tank, am going to pull the dungeon in a way that spec needs to play that way (namely specs like fire mage which are basically augvoker trash tier if you aren’t lining up pulls around their CDs).
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Doesn’t matter to me, I will be playing what I like, and that’s this guy.
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Heck yeah! totally agree on taking great gamers on off meta specs!
I might contend that there are social impacts that you might not have listed. Just because say, a resto druid CAN do the higher keys, most people avoid taking them and other non-meta healers after a certain key level. A good reason to play the meta healer is for higher rates of invite acceptance. Coordinated groups often have a strong preference for it too.
I play all of the healers so it doesn’t impact me directly - I enjoy them all! I just wanted to spur discussion on stale metas on the health of the game/community. There have been so many great changes for the “midcore” community and I wonder if this is one where there might have been a small miss.
It’s practically impossible to balance perfectly at all levels of an infinitely scaling game mode without completely removing class identity.
What needs to change is the community thinking the theoretical mathematical output limits of a very specific simulated environment in a +20 apply to their pug +7. AKA: Unless you’re pushing for title, the meta doesn’t apply to you.
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Personally I prefer disc healers being meta because of their shields.
They can actually prevent one shots on a regular basis and no other healer can do that.
“no other healer can do that” - to say this about exactly one healing spec for an entire expansion is kind of the part I’m questioning. I don’t disagree with you though! It feels nice having a disc when I’m dpsing lol. Shouldn’t it, at some point in the expansion, feel the best to be healed by another spec?
I like that they finally tried to let mitigation disc be a thing again and showed that more people liked it than DPS disc.
Hopefully a decent lesson learned moving forward.
Sad to see that they’re trying to gut priest mana efficiency though. Hopefully they don’t go through with that. Garbage mana efficiency doesn’t make the game more fun for anyone.
Buff up the lacking healers.
Stop ignoring caster MW also and give them something. Eternal Barrier disc gives up damage in exchange for mitigation. Caster MW gives up damage in exchange for nothing currently. They also shouldn’t have nerfed fistweaver damage. I think voidweaver/fistweaver/melee pally should bring more damage as part of their kit as long as other healers bring something else instead of direct damage (whether it’s indirect damage via more buffs or mitigation or significant utility).
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That’s the problem with mythic plus - once you get to a certain level, players just start getting deleted by every mechanic without enough defensives to guard against it.
You start need to a healer that can prevent one shots on a regular basis and unfortunately only disc currently fills that role.
So blizzard would have to design healers to all have the same tools to prevent random and frequent one shots.
I personally don’t care which healer is healing my group as long as that healer can keep people alive.
If I had my way, I would give every class more defensives and significantly stronger self-heals and just remove the healer role entirely.
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Too early to know for sure, but the safest bet in the world is disc.
It would have to get nerfed to an unreasonable degree, or have a full spec overhaul to knock it out of first place. Good mobility and a strong toolkit to keep the party from dying will never be wrong. Actual healing numbers barely matter once somebody is out of death range.
And if damage output becomes more important than healing, disc can do that too.
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No it’s certainly bad that the default answer is always disc near the top, hpriest always in lulz tier, paladin forgotten, and mw/resto/resto/pres jostling for middle positions based on who got a rework last.
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I think community perception is the problem. All healers are doing fine past 3k. When you get high enough key levels, there’s no way a class is gonna beat out Disc because of how the class works-not because they are so much better than others. Someone said it above me but when disc can buff stamina and give massive shields at max health (both of these just increase the size of the hit you can take), it’s gonna win every time.
I don’t think it’s a problem because I’m not sure any healer has problems doing 15s or so. Title range people will immediately reroll to whatever spec has the most strengths anyway. It’s not like the people who NEED to use the meta healer for the content they’re doing have any attachment to the class or spec that’s on top.
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Glad it’s not your way, it’s the only role in the game I really enjoy.
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It used to be that way in shadowlands and shadowlands had much higher mythic plus participation than dragonflight and war within combined.
Druid for BfA.
Yeah, being Meta doesn’t mean that others healers cant push all the way to high keystones.
Community enforcing the meta is a community problem.
No it isn’t.
I switched to full-time disc this season because S1 holy was such an awful experience. Of course it “can” do keys above KSH, but the amount of effort and hair-pulling it took was completely unreasonable. Hpriest is trash in M+. Hpriest combined with S1 dungeon design was even worse.
Disc is flat-out better at preventing deaths in all situations.
If the meta healer spec is defined purely by how much damage it can pump out then that’s one thing, but S1 hpriest and brewmaster couldn’t do their primary job well enough.