Thank you for providing feedback on Solo Shuffle. A lot of the issues you brought up are important to us as well and we know solving them is important to making this game mode fun and satisfying for all involved. Part of the reason we elected to implement this feature as a Brawl first was to discover issues like the ones you described firsthand and iterate a bit on our solutions to these problems.
With respect to people leaving early, this is certainly a big threat to Solo Shuffle’s success. Our current plan is twofold. First, if a player leaves the match early, all rounds will be resolved as if that person lost every round (even ones they’d already played). So that person will go 0-6 while the other participants will go 3-3. If the mode was rated, this would be extremely bad for the person who leaves the match early and essentially a wash for everyone else. In the case of an unrated Brawl, we don’t plan to reward anything to someone who leaves the match early. Second, we’ll be using a pretty hefty Deserter penalty that prevents people from queuing that will stack with repeat departures. The first time you leave early may be 15 minutes. Subsequent early departures within a certain timeframe (perhaps 24 hours) will increase the duration by 5 minutes. We need to provide some grace for the occassional internet disconnect, but repeatedly leaving matches is a detriment to everyone.
When it comes to Tanks in Solo Shuffle, Protection Paladins have a distinct advantage due to the potency of their off-healing. Our current plan is to have Protection Paladins only match up against other Protection Paladins, while other Tanks can square off against each other.
Finally, when it comes to Rewards, for the Brawl version of Solo Shuffle, we’re planning on making it pretty efficient when it comes to Honor. When available, Solo Shuffle should be the most efficient way to earn Honor for 9.2. Also, Solo Shuffle’s availability will be independent of the rest of the Brawls in 9.2, including its own button on the PvP pane (similar to Korrak’s Revenge).
Again, thank you for the valuable feedback on Solo Shuffle. We hope you’re excited to give it a try.