And tell you a little about why the whole “It’s okay to have hard content that you cannot complete.” thing does not quite work. First I think if the devs have this mindset it is no wonder players are turning away from some content.
I read posts here and talk to players in game, and even when looking for groups I find a certain trait, when an M+ week does not fair well with a certain dungeon it is hard to find higher keys, no matter if you tank or heal, the groups are limited, and almost vice versa when it is an easy week, almost.
There are simply some dungeons are higher keys they unless you have a specific group of classes you can just forget it. Like my Priest, who cannot deal with Grievous unless I group with either a DK or Monk and have 3 ranged DPS. What about that is OK? It is not about me, yes I miss out on say Motherlode next week along with Freehold and if we don’t get past the start of UR I can skip that place also.
Than there is the Bosltering and Bursting weeks in the same dungeons no less. There is Tyrannical on the totem boss in Atal and the second boss in UR, it is the same problem we all face, either go in with a purpose built team or face not finishing the place.
I will give you a bit of information on all this, my guilds top tank (and has been since this guild was made), as a DK is currently raider ranked 1 on our server and 514 in the world (topped out best I seen top 200 worldwide) has had to dual heal the sisters boss in Waycrest on some weeks.
The other day my 370 DK had to dual heal the last 2 bosses in Temple, on Fort week. I also ran a +11 the other week when my DK was 362 iLVL with the 4th best DPS on our server going in as tank, so he definitely knows what is up and a DPS I have been playing with since MoP, first hand I can say he knows what is up, but I had to zone out and go into Blood spec for the second boss and than change back for the rest.
I just don’t think that is OK and kind of breaks the rules of M+ in that we can simply zone out, change spec, and zone back in.
All these examples above were solely guild runs and we can run heroic Uldir in a 20 man group with myself and one other healer for the first 4 or so bosses, skill is not the issue here, 2 healing heroic Uldir with that size group for half the raid and than struggle with equivalent iLVL content on the side?
You tell me what is wrong with that picture.
But yes, I am all for not being able to complete content, never been able to finish a mythic raid yet, even just one boss and that does not worry me one bit, it happens, maybe I am not good enough, maybe the group I got into did not gel and just couldn’t get it together, maybe someone made a mistake, it happens and not finishing some content is fine, if it did not take a very specific group of classes to finish some content.
In short it is quite easy to finish some content that rewards 370 gear, but quite impossible to finish others unless the stars align, now is this fair? Let’s have a look back at just one aspect of M+ that has had a major change due to being so hard that you cannot complete it, isn’t that what the dev said?
Explosives. I think it was the first week this came out, specifically in UR where the boss adds spawned the explosives, this was insta nerfed because it was not OK for everyone to not finish it.
A few more nerfs such as no more orbs from hard CC’d mobs and they are now AOE killable (as long as you target them) unlike previous where no matter what no AOE could hurt them.
These changes came in part due to such a small amount of people finishing, along with what I said above in that you must have a certain group of classes, or at least very specific role for each player, say the Rogue being the only melee being on orb duty, they use no CD’s until the orb shows.
But in doing that I find it may turn players away. Like recently when I done WM, I explained the sisters fight to the group on our way, half way through the explanation someone left, either something came up or they didn’t feel like being in a group who needed to strategise and I think it was the later, a minute later he requested to join my group again only to cancel his invite request, make what you want of that.
Personally I have found more pugs who want their DPS to be top rather than follow mechanics, and that is fine if you out level the place, but when you are pushing keys, it doesn’t quite work all the time.
Most recently it happened on my healer, a +8 TD group, got just past the second boss before the highest iLVL in our group starting giving crap to others about how low their DPS is, but we were doing fine, we had minimal deaths, no full wipes and were on target to meet the time, but the group fell apart after this even after repeated attempts to calm them down and let them know the DPS does not matter, it is more about mechanics and actually staying alive than just pushing your numbers, rookie numbers or not, they don’t need to be in the sky to matter.
One guy was looking at nothing but the numbers while I was watching players actually tackle the mechanics, like that big mob after the second boss and tanking him at the right place for LOS, and the small mobs before the third boss. As the key holder I was happy how we were progressing, it made it quite easy on the heals which meant good progression.
Seriously, I don’t care about the numbers, I care for seeing how well people can play and tackle what is given to them, the issue here in that “It’s okay to have hard content that you cannot complete.” is the issue, because some team comps, some weeks, some classes just cannot complete those dungeons unless they either OP the place or other people in the group do.
And with the fact we cannot kill our keys means we can either hope to get into other peoples runs or just miss out, is that fair? Some of us here choose to run M+ for various reasons, the main being it is repeatable and the other is that there is no real time needed for one run, you get a key, you put aside an hour whenever and find 4 other players and you are off.
TL;DR
I really think some runs on some weeks just isn’t quite right. We should be able to finish any run at any difficulty based more on what our skill can offer followed by what our iLVL is rather than the specific team comp we have and what our class can offer when you combine the modifiers with the dungeon.
I have completed +10’s as a healer and as a tank, this post has nothing to do with what I can or cannot complete, how good or how bad I am. I have been through enough content and have a high enough iLVL to be happy with on both my mains.
Years ago the game was about skill more than anything, now, not so much.
And now one for the road, Shamans. I just looked through all my last completed dungeons on my healer, not even one of them in a completed run, and I cannot even remember the last time I finished a run with one, think about that and look through your history to see what I mean, not specifically with Shamans, but overall what classes perform better than others on certain weeks.