This is basically a repost of my post on Reddit
Before I dive in, I’m going to say a bunch of **** that people who actually enjoy healing will not agree with. I’m going to be stating things from the perspective of “The Average Person”, which may not align with you and that is okay. I myself share a ton of opinions that people in general do not agree with, so please do not be offended when I say what I say.
Healing Is Not Fun (For the Average Person)
Healing is not fun for the vast majority of players. That doesn’t mean you, MR Healer Main since mommy shat me out during Vanilla and mana still existed, but you are an outlier and I have nothing against you (and may relate to you because I mained RDru during BFA and SL). Solo Shuffle Queue times support this claim. Healer vs DPS queue times in Overwatch support this. LFG as a Healer vs LFG as a DPS in both PvP and PvE support this.
Healing in WoW arena is essentially playing a Goal Keeper, if the Goal was actually attached to every player on your team, moved with them, and you were allowed to trip the other Goalie as well. People like playing Goalie, but in every sport there is maybe 1 Goalie per 5 - 10 other players on the field per team. Being a Goalie is psychologically difficult. Google “Sports Psychology Goalie” vs “Sports Psychology of Striker/Center Forward” and see how much research and focus is on the psychology and mental fortitude of Goalies.
Why is that? Think about it. A Goalie is actively participating in every LOSS CONDITION for your team, but they are almost NEVER involved in VICTORY CONDITIONs for your team. In WoW even if you scored a game-winning CC on the enemy healer, it is ultimately not you scoring the final kill most of the time, because healers lack the punch to do a quick burst DPS combo to take opportunities of moments of calm. However, as a healer every time your team lost, someone on your team died which is YOUR JOB to prevent because you’re the only class that can take Health Bars from low back to High.
Human psychology is dumb when it comes to processing rewards, the less of a mental leap you have to make about how you “won” the easier it is to make you feel good about something you’ve done. It’s a lot easier to feel a rush of dopamine when it’s your FULL MOON that scored that last 50% of someone’s HP while the enemy healer was CCed, whereas it actually takes game-sense to realize that your CC was the only reason the other player died. When you play with consistent teammates some of these downsides are negated since you and your teammates build similar consistent patterns that you can read off of each other, and making connections of how you contributed to victory is a lot easier.
**The Math behind Healer Rating is **ed
To understand this, you have to think about how MMR works when comparing multiple players. (I am making some assumptions with how this works, but I cannot imagine it working in any other way with Blizzard allowing such a LARGE MMR discrepancy between Healers and DPS in a single match).
- Imagine 4 players at the following MMRs: [1225, 1325, 1350, 1400], this establishes a spectrum of performance that allows you to figure out how good a player is based on their performance relative to the players in that match.
- Imagine the 1225 player did better than both the 1325 and 1350 players, but worse than the 1400 player in that match. This means the 1225 player is probably somewhere between 1350 and 1400 MMR as a result of that match.
- However if they only did better than the 1325 player, it means that they could be anywhere between 1325 and 1400 MMR as a result of the match.
- Now Imagine 2 players at the following MMRs: [1225, 1400]. The only 3 possible outcomes are, the 1225 player beats the 1400 player, the opposite or a Draw.
- If the 1225 player beats the 1400 MMR player, the 1400 MMR player is technically considered <=1225 MMR now, and the 1225 player should now be >=1400 MMR (Talk about a massive swing)
- If the 1400 player beats the 1225 MMR player, what did we learn? Well we learned what we already knew, they are different skill levels and the losses can be adjusted by just how BADLY the 1400 player won.
- If they tie, the 1400 player loses MMR and the 1225 player gains MMR to bring them closer together in the middle.
What this all comes down to is the fact that as a DPS player you have 3 other players to compare yourself to. Your ride is much smoother than a Healer because at EVERY MATCH even if one of the players complete outclasses you, you have 2 other players to compare yourself to, so there are far more possible outcomes out of your matches. Every time you go 6-0, you tell the game that you are just that much better than the other 3 players in the lobby, it’s statistically significant because for the game you didn’t just outplay one player, you outplayed all 3 other contenders, that is 3 Data Points.
When you play a Healer there is only one other healer, and you either beat them, lose to them, or Tie them. When you go 6-0, you tell the game that you beat that one player, just that one player, a single Data Point. Sure maybe your victory was 4-2, 5-1, or 6-0, but remember the same spectrum exists for DPS players as well just among 3 other players.
This means that every Solo Shuffle match has a 3x data input into the ranking system for a DPS class vs the Healers. It means that after 10 matches of Solo Shuffle the results of a healers stats are much more noisy than the results of the DPS’s stats. This means that Healer games will potentially swing harder, while on average DPS games will let you climb more consistently.
**The Math behind Healer Rating is even MORE **ed
Since we’re now at a point where the MMR of DPS and Healers in a single SS match can be 400+/- difference, this must mean that Healer and DPS ratings are independent of one another, it means that when a 1800 Healer wins a 2100 DPS match, their MMR is not compared to the DPS they played with. This means that Healers must be compared only to other healers. Why is this a problem?
- Because MMR/Rating is on a Bell Curve, the curve with less players takes LONGER to make sense and for the players to distribute throughout it.
- Because DPS and Healer Bell Curves are completely different, an 1800 DPS player is not the same skill level as an 1800 Healer player despite getting similar rewards.
- Because there are less players in the Bell Curve and because it takes longer to distribute, it means every game’s statistical significance is EVEN MORE reduced because you do not have the same faith in your data, compounding the NOISY DATA problem I mentioned in the prior section.
Is this fixable?
I don’t think so without changing the identity of WoW as a whole. If I was implementing a Solo Shuffle-style game outside of World of Warcraft I would never include purely healing classes in my game. I would essentially only have Hybrids with some healing capacity, but no true “Goal Keeper” class to avoid this issue to begin with. Maybe figure out how to fix the Healer MMR vs DPS MMR separation that we seem to have as a starter, but I honestly don’t know what the **** Blizzard should do here.