As a DPS, constantly queuing up for 30-70 minutes at a time is completely ridiculous and unhealthy. There are either not enough healer, or too many DPS… or both.
Looking at WHY? that could be, well healer is an absolute headache to play in pvp.
There is way too much happening on top of the massive amount of personal responsibility a healer carries that a dps carries less of. If you look at other games, more so in the MOBA scene like League or even HOTS… supports are actually attractive.
They come in all sizes too, the philosophy MOBAs take to this supportive role trumps WoW 10x over
Of course, MOBAS are different genres of games entirely, however in a pvp sense, WoW’s system of healers clearly just does not work. Few want to play it.
Solution? Im no game designer. But I am a radical.
So I would advocate to shift away from a healer role in the game entirely and hone moreso in on a support role. This can come in the form of augvokers, fistweavers, or really any healer in the game. Maybe even tanks
I’d also cut like… half of the cc in the game… Getting feared into a horrify into a stun into an mc into another small stun into a silence is just really?
But anyway, these are just my thoughts. Feel free to disagree or share your own thoughts. At the end of the day I want to see the pvp community grow, but as time goes on it becomes more and more unattractive to players for reasons like this. And if nothing changes, the future of pvp looks very grim my friends.
That no one wants to heal in solo shuffle because the pvp community is toxic, the game for pvp is awfully imbalanced, and its brutal and unkind to any new people entering the scene causing the population to stagnate and decline.
While I agree the pvp community is very toxic, I do not think this is the main reason. People are just as toxic to DPS honestly. its a whole seperate conversation
The actual reason is that 3v3 demands more healers than any game ever has players interested in playing support roles. This isn’t a WoW-specific issue.
Healing shuffle is a perfectly fine support experience, and among the support gameplay available it’s pretty top tier and unique. Support roles are just fundamentally unpopular. It is highly unlikely that WoW’s devs are going to figure out the secret to changing that.
The only solution without de facto removing the healing role is to heavily incentivize DDs playing healer games. Out of the possible incentives, the only one that is likely to have a significant impact is to put in a quest which awards a token for every 4-5 healer rounds you win, and which allows you to skip the line as whatever DD you use it on.
It wouldn’t solve the issue completely, but it should considerably reduce it as we don’t need that large of a shift in the average ratio of available roles. You could further stack up more marginal incentives to eek out the last bit of possible shift. Shuffle probably won’t ever get down to 1-2 minute queues, but keeping things within the 5-10 minute range is likely possible.
This tbh, It’s great that people treat it as a main aspect and the game and there is no problem to them that is fine to do. However, the game really doesn’t have the capabilities to really do good pvp. It’s great for like a mini-sports thing though.
Healing Solo shuffle is the hardest, most thankless activity in this entire game.
It sucks that it died, but as someone who healed it, I’m kinda glad too lmao.
Battleground Blitz should 100% replace it.
WoW wasn’t meant for arenas/small deathmatches imo, it brings out the worst in people, there’s little teamwork in Solo, just whoever is the burst-iest wins lol.
Battlegrounds are more of what WoW is about, teamwork and objectives.
I just don’t enjoy healing in arena settings, not even a little bit. One of the big reasons I stopped playing was because of the long queue time though, had a blast playing but I ended up quiting the whole game as the wait was so long.
I’m glad they are trying out BG’s finally, should have done that over arena IMO. I mainly DPS but I would not mind healing in a BG from time to time.
When I started playing around with Arena last season (modest goal to get my 1800 priest transmog set), I googled a bit to see the best ways to get to my goal. After very little time, it became apparent that solo shuffle is believed by tons of healers to give worse MMR gains than it does for DPS.
I don’t even know if that’s really true. But I heard it a lot, that it had something to do with the fact that a healer in practice was just being compared against 1 other player in the match in essence (the other healer), while the DPS had three other contenders against whom they were being compared to by the system.
That reputation doesn’t help solo shuffle against the competing arena formats of organized 2v2 / 3v3.
Didn’t Blizzard do this because the matches would be unfair if one group had a healer and the other didn’t . The result of that was obvious massive queues times which you experience now but I believe they chose the lesser of two evils there.
One other thing about solo shuffle matches just in terms of actual gameplay. At least early on, for people just joining and probably into the mid-ranks of rating, the first round would be a total unknown. By round 2 or 3 of the match, the DPS would identify the weakest link. The poor soul with the worst gear and lowest HP. You’d see them type out in /say “target the hunter” or “target the mage” or whoever it was.
The healer gameplay isn’t JUST dealing with the general dynamics of healing Arena. It’s also dealing with the fact that you’re going to through six rounds in succession where a weak link is correctly identified by round 2 or 3, and keeping that person alive is going to be exceptionally hard.
I don’t know what to do about that, but it’s a dynamic that is unique to solo shuffle, and uniquely frustrating, of course, to that poor player who is the target (usually it is another DPS player, and it is also not uncommon for THAT player to get frustrated and quit the match, robbing everyone of the gains for full completion of the solo shuffle).
lets not forget how bad the win trading, boosting, and botting is in pvp as well including game modes like Ranked Solo Shuffle which were meant to be a way for casuals to play ranked. But in reality, its just as bad. The elitists have found a way to queue lobbies with their alternative accounts by queueing at same time, just to boost certain characters or customers.
anyone can look in trade / services chat and see the bots selling 2.4k rating in any bracket, including shuffle. When you whisper them, they immediately respond and tell you to join their discord, where I imagine they request you to pay them anything but wow currency for their services.
PvP in retail is monetized so heavily now, especially with 1600 rating granting PvP Tier gear from emerald dream vendor.
GG.
Blizz should do something about this, its actually ruining the integrity of the game as we know it. There was a lot of hype coming into this new season, just for people to realize its all a scam. MMR, Ratings, Ladder, everything about it.
Hard working players who just want to enjoy rated pvp are scrutinized and bashed for their low cr, because they aren’t willing to pay to win. Any of the boosted players from previous season have their MMR escalated, cause its never actually hard reset, just deflated. Thus leading to the same problems over and over each new season.
Its actually a huge problem. Most of us just waiting for SoD to drop soon, just to quit retail all over again.
don’t forget the cheating with the modified scripts that will instantly auto interrupt people casting. So you can’t bait interrupts with fake casting. On top of needing like 5-10 addons just to stay competitive or have a chance of climbing the ladder.
Without a massive rework and a mega crack down on services, it will only get worse till its dead.
healing in arenas is not even about healing. its about fighting cc the entire game. micromanaging trinket use and then cycling cc onto the opponents in hopes its long enough for dps to land the kill.
Meanwhile you go 2-4 and lose double the amount of rating you would have won by going 4-2… because of MMR. But those with skyrocketed MMR from boosters, from previous season have it incredibly easier to climb.
Blizzard needs to address boosting, botting and win trading along with updating MMR system, which will in return help casual players actually feel some satisfaction for their efforts and this would ultimately reduce the queue times, because people would actually feel some satisfaction with playing.
No one wants to go 3-3, 4-2, 3-3, 2-4 and be at lower rating than they began the session, but its happening and forcing players to quit.
Why is it like this? Blame the corruption, those selling pvp services in trade chat, ruining the game for all the players who aren’t willing to pay for it and so ultimately you’re seeing a decline in players which relates to higher queue times for everyone else still playing into it.
whats even worse, those of us contending the corruption are met with roasts and bashing of rating, we’re being met with trolls who say get good and are defending the corruption rather than actually sticking up for what every player comes to see.
so let’s not pretend like the corruption of bots, boosters and win trading isn’t a thing in wow pvp, when its always been like this.
As someone who usually pushes for the elite set. I can tell you the experience of healing solo shuffle is disgusting.
And not because of the community behavior, but because how the system is designed.
It’s extremely hard to climb up because you’re constantly facing the other healer’s rating instead of the entire group’s like everyone else, and your skill can only take you so far.
There is a HUGE incentive to not play healer. Other than faster queues. And it should not be like that.
Blizzard has a ridiculous amount of feedback in these forums about this issue, last season people were complaining non-stop, and they didn’t do anything. In fact, this season feels worse somehow.
That bs they keep repeating about listening to feedback makes me sick tbh.
Perhaps there are not a lot of people who like PVP? During those 30-70 minute queues, do you ever spend any time trying to find people to do arenas with, perhaps even on a regular basis?