Some thoughts about potential improvements to Solo Shuffle aside from already mentioned in the starting post. Some of these are based on suggestions from the EU forum, but I’m not sure whether Blizzard would even see them there (as they don’t have Community Council).
Make every shuffle lobby 2 casters / ranged 2 melee 2 healers. It should not increase que times much, since they are mostly based on healers queing and would not increase que time much for healers as well, since the ratio of dps to healers queing is high enough already. This change would prevent the most stressful lobbies of “1 caster into full melee lobby trained all game” and “1 melee into full caster lobby kited / destroyed all game” and can make game experience more enjoybable for both dps and healers that would heal said dps.
3-3 and higher lobby results should always award rating increase for healers, simply because if there is even 1 not good enough dps in lobby both healers are likely to end 3-3 or close to that. As a result, waiting a que and healing a stressful match just to get 0-14 rating increase or even a decrease is an additional negative factor for them.
More communication from Blizzard on issues, even if they know that they will get flamed the moment they try to post on PVP forums. If they are waiting for a week after everyone gets 4 set to monitor and continue class tuning, they should communicate that and not stay radio silent. If they are working on a solution already, they should write about that. Even if they for some reason think that “everything is fine”, they should try to explain that. Radio silence, especially when holidays are approaching, would cause more harm than trying to communicate even with bad reactions to that simply because silence cements players suspicions that PVP playerbase is being neglected and that would cause the most harm to their game.
The number required for games sounds too much. I also play Mythic +, so trying to achieve these numbers would be impossible, but I do like the proposed changes regarding MMR and the ambulance inspired mount.
Have my comment. Rated pvp needs to get with the times. Pvpers gotta keep making noise and/or hit them in the wallet (unsub). Read your forums blizz. You can have your allowance back when you listen and obey.
As someone who uses chatgpt to make a lot of meme stuff, this post to 100% generated. Easy tells is the formatting and uses words like “call to action”, “unified stand”, and “ultimatum”. I agree with the issues, but those are some wacky incentives lmao.
Hard disagree. People complain about “having to play against glad/r1 players” when they are not that xp. This would frequently have healers playing lobbies theyre not experienced and comfortable enough to handle. This has all the potential to frustrate players and make them miserable by competing out of their depth.
I think this would bring in a some healers, but 1000 rounds is INSANE and still wouldnt be worth it won’t mean anything to most players.
Cool idea! 2000 rounds seems way over the top, but i like the concept!
I dont think this is feasible. TP coins are intended to NOT be grindable.
I think that you can start with in-game gold. If not youre literally paying healers to play, which seems cool at first, until you realize people will just do it at uber low ratings and not care about success, its just for the gametime.
That is a little too much. that’s 167 games while above 2400. and that is if you are wanting rounds to be considered “games”
I am a healer. I have always healed. I love pvp, but there are healer issues that stem back to the base game.
Problem 1) Basic heals do nothing. Power word: Shield, Holy shock, Riptide, etc all do no meaningful healing. For example PW: S does 76k in damage absorb every 6 seconds thats not even a 10th of my healthbar and will last not even 1 hit.
Problem 2) Damage is too damn high. I recently had an experience in a shuffle lobby where I got stunned and Immediatly Pain supped a ret who had shield of vengeance on… He still died in 1 global to a DH rogue. He wasn’t even low he was 75% hp with a fresh shield of vengeance.
Problem 3) CC is still out of control. Not having All CC on DR’s with each other is insane. I’ve had games where I’ve literally been CCed 2/3 of the entire match because I am Constantly in some sort of CC. Each class should get 1 CC and it shouldn’t be spammable and it shouldn’t be below 1 min CD and it should DR with every other Crowd control.
Bicmex is right about this. CC isn’t the problem. There was a time where you could be in 20-30secs of CC and the person would not die… I do agree with that.
It’s the damage. Nothing more or less. Just straight hot out of the oven in your face damage in 2 globals with stacking modifiers.
I think the problem is definitely damage and MMR at this point. People complained heavily about long damp games back in bfa i think it was and the result was blizzard shortening games by increasing damage to get 4-6 min games instead of 10-12. The issue seems pretty clear, its damage output being insane and mmr/cr in solo shuffle for healers. I don’t think they should touch cc anymore, they have done enough in that regard.
When healers are extremely strong (look at Rsham in 10.0.7 or Hpal in 10.1.5, could look at fistweaver when it was insane as well) healer participation goes way up because it becomes far less stressful to handle the insanely high damage going out. It makes sitting in cc feel far less frustrating as well because when you get out you have the healing to recover. I remember dps queues getting much shorter when hpal was overpowered because so many were queueing. That is a sign damage is the issue if healers have to be overpowered to have fun/enjoy themselves.
Aside from that, climbing as a healer in solo shuffle sucks. Its actually terrible. It was an issue in every single season, the only one where it didn’t matter as much was S1 because rating was so inflated it was actually fun to push and rewards were obtainable by more than 1,000 people lol. I stopped queuing solo shuffle last season at 2k when I spent an afternoon going 5-1, 4-2, 3-3, 3-3, 3-3 and actually lost mmr and a bit of CR. Not only is healer gameplay stressful (which could be fun) but you get nothing for going 3-3. We have seen by now that dps have more sway over games than healers, both healers can be insane but if 1 bad dps is in the lobby then its mostly an auto 3-3. Healers need to gain a small bit of mmr/cr for tying, it just really needs to happen.
Here’s my 2 cents for what they’re worth… Healing in SS is stressful. For multiple reasons, some that are just innate challenges that you face with the lack of communication, and playing a less organized version of the game 3v3 arena game mode. That being said, I would much rather deal with SS than return to the alternative of LFG. I haven’t touched LFG since the introduction of SS and I think revamping that system would do a lot for the game as a whole, not just pvp. (I understand that does nothing for SS, but might be better for pvp as a whole.)
My ideas for “fixes”
A daily or weekly healer SS quest, much like the ones currently available for BG Blitz.
Rewards could include those account bound conquest tokens
Healer balance. An ongoing thing I know, but if we have 7 current healer specs but only 2 or 3 are viable, that has to hurt the healer population. Some people just play the meta healers but I’m sure others only play one specific spec.
The issue is the gameplay for healers, It just feels awful. The damage is so insanely high you cannot breathe for a moment. Setting up plays, dispelling, purging, crowd controlling etc. has become way to difficult to weave in. Resulting in a standoff between healers max outputting while trying to avoid CC and that basically it. There is nothing enjoyable about that. I’ve literally had people die through multiple major defensive plus heals. On top of that you mix in dampening and mortal strikes and you’ve got yourself unhealable mechanics. As a healer it’s not enjoyable and nobody want’s to deal with it.