I’ve given some examples for how DPS checks can look like, but only creativity sets the limit for how they’re represented.
Depending on how frequent they are they can be weaker or harder DPS checks. If they are every 30 seconds they obviously can’t require cooldowns to be up for all those checks. Blizzard would have to test and tune that accordingly, as they do with tank busters and heal checks (like the ascending mob in GB).
Just like tanks and healers have to plan their cooldown usage, DPS will now also be forced to plan their cooldown usage.
I mean yeah, that’s if you KNOW IT and then you STILL opt not to take dispells etc to deal with it yourself.
Some casuals dun even know that’s a thing or how it works, which was my point about them needing to level up, read more and find out how the systems in different game mode works THEN get the solutions to deal with them.
Only way it’ll happen is if they have to do something by themselves. Like if Blizz gave every DPS a self dispel of some sort which most of them do and then made it where devour affix can only be self dispelled.
Then the responsibility for it would shift to the DPS. More design like that is it what I’d imagine to get people trained. You remember quaking affix I remember DPS getting constantly interrupted by that they had to get a weak aura to tell them quaking. They can do the same for dispels
First season ever doing them. Got up to a 1900 before I stopped because they were just not fun. Way to competitive. I tanked most of them and as someone from the outside, the hardest thing to do was to learn the routes. If we could get a 100% with a natural route that would eliminate a learning curve no one else has. Outside of that it was those always trying to rush it. A steady pace gets you there with plenty if time to spare. Had one dps die 19 times because they were focused on dps and not their survival. Missed the timer by seconds. Even had healers and dps pull mobs because they wanted to go faster, lost more time in the wipe had we just took the time. With that said, I would probably still doing mythics and tanking them if I did not feel rushed and not have that extra responsibility.
Sorry to hear that, sounds like it wasn’t a great first experience for you to say the least.
I think having to plan a route is a great thing that adds to the challenge for all players, but mainly the tank as they pretty much always have to shoulder the responsibility of the route. To make it more forgiving for new players it’s good with mob layouts in dungeons such as Mists of Tirna Scithe, where you can just press W and then recover all the missing % after last boss without having to run back too far. It’s by no means the most effective or safest way to clear the keys, but it works for learning keys.
But I got hung up on what you said about tanks having a learning curve that nobody else has, and this serves to combat that by creating a need to learn the bare minimum for the DPS role.
They’re playing a role in which they’re a dime-a-dozen… gotta learn to be patient and wait for the people who are willing to fill those roles, they could swap roles to be part of the solution, but you can’t force people to play a certain way, so they have no right to complain.
Generally there is rarely more than one kick that is vital to the group’s survival. As a tank that’s what I set my focus kick to and make sure to get that kick in pugs and then help stopping filler casts as best I can with grips, stuns, cc, etc.
Seems like what you’re saying is that you want healing the group to depend more on the healer’s skill and less on the group’s lack of skill. And I can understand that.
The water boss in halls of infusion was very much like that. Rot damage during the whole boss fight and you had to pump heals to keep the group up. At any point someone messed up a mechanic they just died so not the healers fault but if someone died slowly it was your fault. Some classes could help with spot healing and everyone in the group could use personals and health pots to help but it was largely on the healer planning out their throughout and cooldowns. It was a great fight to heal. Apparently this next season has a ton of unavoidable damage that are healer checks.
I agree that there should be more dps checks in M+. M+ success has shifted far too much towards survivability instead of doing enough dps to beat the timer. It’s timed content. Success should be about speed, not just staying alive. Ideally enemy health in M+ would be increased without increasing enemy damage. DF started this problem of trash packs that hit like trucks with raid boss mechanics but also die in 10-15 seconds.
I disagree that skill and carries has anything to do with why there are more dps players than healers or tanks. The reason for that is simple and doesn’t require a dozen paragraphs. Most players find dps to be more fun. Trying to gatekeep more players from higher content won’t fix that. It will just cause them to stop playing earlier into the season.
yeah, i mean you understand what i want perfectly lol. i just want very defined roles. in a perfect world, we could ALL get stops, kicks, use defensives, and its a great experience, and i have absolutely had many runs where that was the case. but bad outweigh the good, even at relatively high rating. heck, i dont even care if they made all the stops the healers job, as long as it was possible for all healing specs, and didnt cause gcd pressure beyond what it already did in dragonflight.
dragonflight healing with the affixes was absolute adhd chaos. i was literally running healers with double cc to deal with incorp, i was dispelling aflicted, healing afflicted, dealing with bursting, it was an absolute nightmare, but i did it, while dps and tanks quite literally just pressed w the whole expansion.
I like that you took the time to post this, so I took the time to read it throughly.
A couple of issues I see with the post in its entirety are as follows:
Bad tanks can time keys. Your post read like tanks do no wrong. When you and I likely know this is the case. Yet there are no tank checks in place. You can have the top of the top in a group with a bad tank and brick the key because their route is all over the place, they don’t use defensives etc.
You going through the whole explanation of why a tank or healer has to be “good” is only that way because you have three dps. If we dropped it down to 3 men groups then the same could be said about DPS. If they die it will take you and the healer far to long to kill the boss to time a key. Even now with the way it is if all three dps die the tank and healer could likely kill the boss but they would need 5 minutes to do it.
Point one could be said for the healers as well. There are no “heal” checks, and you didn’t mention them so I can only assume all healers are amazing. When again that just isn’t the case.
I believe people pick what they want to play based on their personality as an individual. I for one play a tank at almost 2900io, a healer at 2800io, a monk at 2800io, a hunter at like 2500io, another tank at 2600io, and a warlock at almost 2500io. The prot paladin, monk, and shaman healer are my mains and the reason I play each other them are: paladin tank, because I like the idea of protecting people and being a leader, resto shaman because I like keeping people alive, and windwalker monk because I think it feels good to beat up the baddies. To suggest that I can’t play one of those in a higher key because I lack the skill too means I would be hard locked at 5-6 keys in your example.
With all of that being said I understand why you said everything you said. When I play my windwalker monk and go back through details at the end of the dungeon I am always in the top of interrupts, hard cc. I also use my defensives a lot. I use heal pots soul stones what ever I can to help my group while not sacrificing to much of my dps.
I don’t believe there is any way to check dps are doing those things.
The current system we have is raider io. It simply tells us how many keys a dps has done at what lvl range. We have to assume they got there by not being carried.
If they had an add on that showed me in your last key how many interrupts you had, how many defensives you used, how many times you preformed hard cc then I would get it and that would be your dps check
Thanks for giving it a read, and thanks for the feedback. I’ll adress it the way I see it right here.
Bad tanks can absolutely time keys, but afk tanks can’t. Afk DPS can time keys though.
Tanks can do much wrong, there’s no denying that.
Tank checks come by design as tank busters. Either use a defensive or some other mitigation (paladins consecration aura and sotr buff for example) or die. There’s also artificial tank checks in the form of pulling multiple packs. I would agree about there being no tank checks if only:
It was perfectly fine to pull 1 pack at a time, even going as far as cc’ing mobs to reduce the size of the pull further. We both know it ain’t because the timer puts pressure onto the group to go bigger.
There were no tank buster that the tank had to plan their defensives for. DPS can use their offensive cooldowns off cd, no strategy is needed (although in first boss of mists it’s encouraged to be strategical with your offensives.
Yes, that’s absolutely correct. If you’re entering a dungeon where everyone is of equal ilvl, you shouldn’t pass tank/healer/DPS checks with the tank/healer/DPS being dead. If you’re vastly overgeared it makes sense to have more margin of error and being able to compensate for it.
If the tank dies, you wipe. If the healer dies, you wipe. If all 3 DPS wipe, you take longer to finish the fight. That means there’s DPS can’t truly fail (yeah I know you won’t time the dungeon with 3 afk DPS, I’ve been over that).
Depending on the comp a healer isn’t needed, agreed. I wouldn’t mind nerfing off-healing capabilities (as they do going into the next season) to make sure all comps need a healer.
Current heal checks are:
Alerting Shrill. Ara’kara.
Dark pulse. City of Threads.
Shadowy decay. The Dawnbreaker.
Erosive spray. The Dawnbreaker. (Although this barely qualifies as a heal check as it’s rather mild, been too long since I healed this in the recommend ilvl to truly attest to this being an actual heal check. Feel free to ignore this one if it doesn’t cut it to you.
Fiery richochet. Siege of Boralus. (Also a rather mild heal check).
Tortured echoes. Necrotic wake (Also a rather mild heal check).
Void surge. Grim batol.
Beyond that there’s:
Twilight lavabenders’ Ascension where they start pulsating AoE damage in Grim batol.
Drust boughbreakers’ Furious trashing (minor check, ignore if you don’t think it qualifies) in Mists of Tirna Scithe.
Zolramus gatekeepers’ Wrath of zolramus in Necrotic wake.
Void bound despoilers’ Void outburst in The Stonevault.
Ascendant Viscoxrias’ Shadowy decay in The Dawnbreaker.
Manifested shadows’ Dark floes in The Dawnbreaker.
Nakt’s Call of the brood, Ara’kara.
I might have missed some, but there’s definitely heal checks in the dungeons. I don’t think there’s enough since there’s still plenty of time for healers to weave in damage in their rotations (not just mw and disc, but all healers) but that’s off-topic.
You’re free to play whatever you like in any way you like. The only reason this would lock you out of higher keys is if you can’t pull your weight with them.
For example, let’s say there is a DPS check that you have 15 (arbitrary number, can be anything) seconds to clear as a group. You and everyone else in the group is at the recommended ilvl (619), and they’re all doing 70% of their theoretical maximum dps over a 15 second period.
Let’s say the general DPS maximum is 1000k single target for a 15 second period at 619 ilvl and that this DPS check requires exactly 70% performance by everyone (healer and tanks obviously have other theoretical maximums to relate to) to pass.
This means that your ww monk now must hold 700k dps for the group to pass the DPS check. If you’re only able to dish out 600k dps, the group wipes. The group would be able to help you out by them performing higher, allowing you to fail slighty. This is much like how group members can use defensives to help healers out during heal checks.
So yes, if you lack the skill for a +10 on whichever character you mentioned, that character would have to play in a lower key level more fit for your skill level.
Indeed, you can’t realistically add “Patty cake” mechanics, as those doesn’t promote teamplay and overcoming challenges together, it’s just a bad mechanic in general.
They have WoWOP,io that largely helps with this. It’s an addon that’s still in it’s infant stage, but it lets you see a summary of a players performance according to available logs about that player. It’s far from great, but if you see someone parsing green or grey on all aspects, you can safely assume they’re going to be a deadweight in your group.
The addon is currently not very useful as warcraftlogs recently blocked access to their logs for the addon though.
That would be more of a performance measure rather than a DPS check to be honest.
I generally love the description of your problem I think it describes the situation perfectly.
But I don’t necessarily agree with the solution, I predominantly pug and play both heals and dps regularly. It would be extremely frustrating as a dps player to be unable to time a dungeon based on 1 of 3 role teammates failing their check. It would be punishing and reflect on my play poorly when it’s a shared role and that would be frustrating.
Without any changes to the system checking logs would perform the same function or solve the same problem that OP is describing. Tbh I am a bit neurotic and I individually check the wcl of all m+ pug applicants. People will hate me and think I’m excessive for this but I’m very simply “first come first serve within reason for comp and have reasonable dps in m+ wcl” in this way the hard carries are having their access limited
In this example of a dps check, the amount of single target dps in 15 seconds someone can do will fluctuate wildly based on what cooldowns they have up.
So, do you assume full cooldowns or none? If none, many specs could probably solo the check by themselves even at the appropriate gear.
Instead of quoting each of your replies in general.
The way I read your original post was that we need dps checks. Something along the lines of if you hit this number on the target dummy then you can queue for this key type thing. But when I read your heal check comment I realized that you are literally talking about encounters in a dungeon.
So yeah there are heal check that we can agree on. However, as you get into higher keys they become heal, tank, dps checks are to argue otherwise is foolish in my opinion. In higher keys if, as a dps, you don’t pop a defensive even with an excellent healer you might die. So while instant it is a dps check.
It is a performance issue…. But if you look through a lot of long you will find that the people who have high numbers on what you are calling performance, also do some of the best dps. There is a direct correlation between the two.
Let’s face it there are two type of what you yourself would consider bad dps. The ones that don’t know and the ones that do know and don’t care, the ones that don’t know can be taught the ones that do know and don’t care are the issue.
Either way there is no solving any of this. Even if you put a mob that the script literally read something like this:
The mob targets dps players, those who can’t reach 1 million dps will slowly have their life drained away until they perish or they reach 1 million dps. Even in that situation you will have the groups that can carry that 1 dps or you will have groups who can’t.
Your suggestion/solution solves absolutely nothing.
Except in the event they put training dummies and you have to actively score at least once the recommend dps. And thought that would say you can do that. It doesn’t mean I can’t join your key meeting all the prerequisites and just not care or have something going on in real life that is distracting me.
What this all goes back to is simple. When you pug you put yourself at risk by simply not knowing who you are playing with, their motives for playing, their mental stay while playing etc. form a group of people you trust with like minded goals.
This is a player created problem, and players have solved it more than blizzard ever could by creating discord channel to find like minded people, forums where people can discuss stuff etc.
I came back to WOW after 13 year break, never ever having played a healer before. Primary reasons was to be able to take advantage of the lack of healers in the game, and get instant queues, constant dungeon invites and to find a guild quickly. Let me tell you it paid off big time>
I reached M+ 11s across the board (purely with pugs) on my Preservation Evoker very quickly and almost maxed out my gear. Got tired of the limitations to positioning, and switched to priest mid season. Now my priest scaled up to 10s quickly in the mid teens Item Level category and I’m still farming out my gear with friends who are all 3K + players who I have the privilege of playing with nightly now.
So ill keep my 2 cents short. The problem with finding healers is no one wants to play. The skill gap between someone who heals and someone who plays DPS is quite large in my opinion. DPS can tunnel vision (to an extent) up to 10s and not really need to play defensive and rotation properly. Healers on the other hand NEED to know the ins and out with all the trash packs, bosses, all their mechanics, and understand when and how to rotate through their tool kits. I find that to successfully heal right now, you need to be far more proactive then reactive.
The other issue is the toxicity of people. It is absolutely astonishing how everything gets blamed on the healers. I legit will have pug +4 groups mouth off about healing output, when they don’t realize that if I am pulling double the HPS numbers in a 4, then I do in a 10-11, thats a group issue, not healer issue.
I have all cooldown and kick trackers, and in general most people really don’t either understand OR care to learn how to use their defensive toolkits along with CC and interrupts effectively. I ran a + 11 Mist at Ilev 612 as a priest with my friends, barely needing to scratch 500K overall HPS, but sometimes struggle to heal a +8 pug group with double the output.
Another issue is DPS checks. It’s crazy how bad the DPS is from people rocking 626-635 gear. If it takes your group 10 minutes to down a pack or boss, im sorry but eventually most healers will run out of CDs which is compounded by DPS not using their own toolkits.
Point is, I understand why healers are in short supply, it requires much more focus, understanding of the dungeons and mechanics, and they are constantly getting crapped on by BAD players who blame them for their own short comings. A lot of low rated players don’t understand just how punishing having to jump out of healing sync with a rotation, to waste a couple of globals on trying to fix YOUR mistake, can have on the group and healing overall.
Now the positives of healing are substantial. I have become a MUCH better WOW player by taking up healing as its forced me to improve my game knowledge, and situational awareness. But as long as DPS stay toxic, your not going to find many decent or GREAT healers play in your pug groups, as its like smashing your head against a wall arguing with bad players why they cant complete keys, which 9 out of 10 times is a result of poor play from the group, not the healer.
Now if there is 1 takeaway ive learned that I can share with anyon who is considering trying healing its this… Healing is actually VERY easy up to where Ive gotten this season +11s. providing you have a compentent group of players who have amazing DPS output, and are well coordinated with their CC and defensives. Don’t let the pug experience turn you off cause that is NOT a true representation of how healing goes in a good group.
I’d have to say that depends. If there are frequent checks we obviously can’t demand full cooldowns as they won’t be up all the time, but we can demand some cooldowns. If there’s one check in about each third of the dungeon, there would be a need for full cooldowns (but not bloodlust). It’s hard to describe a perfect implementation in short as there’s multiple way to approach it. In general I think that one good example would be mobs like the Manifested Shadow in The Dawnbreaker, who casts Dark floes after a while. Just make Dark floes do increased damage for each pulse and have it go on until the mob is dead and tadah - you’ve got a DPS check rather than a heal check.
Ideally I’d like checks where you can roll your offensive cooldowns to pass, just like a tank can roll their defensive cooldowns. Not having to use any cooldowns at all eliminates a lot of the skill requirement as you don’t have to plan ahead for anything.
Foolish take. All roles are both hardest and easiest depending on what key level you’re at.
This is mainly presented with the perspective being on lower keys. I’m well aware that you need to use all available resourcers to survive these “heal checks” later on because of scaling, and likewise you will have to use all available damage to pass the DPS checks too (which means that tanks and healers MUST be helping out with a certain amount of damage, but that is as you reach world first keys). I explained how people can make heal checks easier by popping defensives, and as you go into higher keys you’re forced to pop defensives to survive heal checks because of the scaling. DPS checks would work the same way.
Absolutely, there’s no denying that.
Indeed, it’s not meant to solve anything. The suggestion puts a direct pressure on the DPS to perform, effectively making it much harder to keys where they aren’t pulling their weight. They CAN of course get into those keys by being carried by other player of more skill/better gear, but it’s not as easy as it currently is where you can just /afk as one of the DPSers.
Sure, but if this makes it that much harder for you to reach a level where I would consider inviting you to my key, it lessens the likeliness for me to run into people like you. I just wanna clarify that I don’t mean you personally, I mean you as you described your hypothetical self with this example.
Yes, that is the foolproof solution, but it is the solution to a problem that shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.
I’m personally fine with carrying bad players, that’s why I play a tank and that’s why I play a prot paladin specifically. It allows me to pick up so much slack when it comes to interrupts, defensives, and positioning. The damage is a nice bonus too. I’m advocating for this because the lack of responsibility for DPS draws people to play them in content that there’s constant whining about tank/healer shortages. People naturally take the path of least resistance to achieve their goals, in this case 10s and BiS gear.
Agreed, but even if it’s a player created problem I can see this as a way of tackling that problem. Not solving it, but at least reducing it.
Thank you, this is what I’m trying to lift and combat with this suggestion.
I believe we’d see less flaming on healers (or worst case scenario equal flaming on DPS) if DPS failing actually lead to the group failing. A healers failure to heal means a dead group. 3 DPS failure to deal damage means the target takes more time to die.
Agreed. I’d even go as far as saying healing can be the easiest role in the game, given you have a group that knows what they’re doing. As you reach high enough keys where a misplay by anyone means certain death, healing is technically the easiest, as there’s no mistakes left to salvage.
In a perfect run at key levels around +10s, the healer is more of a mascot rather than the MVP.
This is 100% accurate I can confirm. I was very fortunate to become great friends with a group of 3k-3300 M+ players who have been helping me fastrack my priests gearing so I can get back to the Ilev of my preservation evoker and most of the 10s we do I sometimes wonder why I’m even there.
Compare that to a pug 8 and I have to change my underwear after each run.
I really do think that the true measure of a groups success falls more on DPS and the tank up to 10s. Once you get to 11s-12s and beyond it becomes an equal burden to share among everyone.
A competent group also allows me as a healer to learn my rotations properly as I’m afforded time and space to plan my CDs efficiently vs just mashing buttons trying to heal my rear off in pugs trying to blast through all the short comings of the other players.
I also think that yes it’s true, there is a shortage of healer, I do believe there are more of them around then we are led to believe. The reality is most decent or great healers will not queue up for random dungeons due to the issues all mentioned above. We don’t want to be yelled at by DPS who cant dodge mechanics, don’t interrupt and don’t do good damage, because we were unable to keep them alive.