CC > CD > LOS > CC > CD > LOS
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Tell us you dont know how to PvP without telling us you dont know how to PvP
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/10characters
Sure, but then you enter a kiting meta without any heals.
It’s not fun being a DPS that constantly has to kite bosses or get 2 shot and only have a 25% health personal heal on a 2 min CD.
What you’re describing is playing at a high level. The average player isn’t going to know when to pre-pop a defensive. Heck, the average player in a 20 is not going to know when to pre-pop a defensive.
This is the core of the problem. Blizzard now expects everyone to play at a high level, even in low keys
The game is designed to constantly do mechanical checks against the group, regardless of key level
These mechanical checks you are defending are what people are complaining about. The M+ game is now balanced around a very small percentage of players who play at a high level. I personally try to push very hard, so I’m not even advocating for myself here. I can just see that it is incredibly frustrating for most people.
However for me, it just makes the game more annoying that now I have to expect everyone else to play at a high level, even at a more casual level like 16 or 18
Sure I can get behind this as a theory, but still doesn’t change that only about 0.5% to 1% of the population will actually be able to perform and get this right.
This is why healing a 15 is harder than healing a 22 …
This would make sense if the mechanics gradually mattered more as the key level got harder. But as of now there are plenty of things that can wipe a group in a 7
Look, the game clearly doesn’t work well when it is balanced around the skill level of the select top few of players. When it is balanced around that, we have a very unhealthy M+ community. IMO just let the top groups push super high and run into DPS checks instead of healing checks and the rest of the game will have room to be fun.
They are though. 20’s are very easy now. They shifted the scaling back to that 20’s would be about a 16 in Shadowlands once geared. But since they shifted the initial scaling back, they also shifted the gradual key-to-key amount forward. So all the difficulty is condensed into a small band of key levels where before there was a lot of variety. 20 is easier than a 16 in shadowlands, but a 25 is harder than a 25 in shadowlands, just from my experience
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I now DPS on my healer toon. Used to only do heals. When the queues start to get to an hour + because no one is healing anymore, maybe then Blizz will think twice before making healing so terrible.
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I haven’t played recently but I’m really hoping your referring to pvp. Cuz they are stupid strong in pvp right now especially priests
If they don’t know how to pre-pop a defensive, and they’re still doing 20s, isn’t the system fine?
If it was a pre-requisite to success, you’d think they would know.
They are though. 20’s are very easy now. They shifted the scaling back to that 20’s would be about a 16 in Shadowlands once geared. But since they shifted the initial scaling back, they also shifted the gradual key-to-key amount forward. So all the difficulty is condensed into a small band of key levels where before there was a lot of variety. 20 is easier than a 16 in shadowlands, but a 25 is harder than a 25 in shadowlands, just from my experience
So if it was as hard as doing a 16 in shadowlands then people really don’t have grounds to complain on.
Oh wow totally haven’t seen this before such an original troll post wow 10/10. The current state of Mythic Plus PuGs is we barely heal because DPS and tanks are smart and know what they’re doing so not taking much damage if any or we can’t heal because tank and DPS have no idea what they’re doing and are taking massive bursts of avoidable damage every like 4 seconds or usually just straight up getting one shot.
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What do you consider low keys? I haven’t felt too much trouble keeping groups alive in +7s I’ve run with guildies who are brand new to M+ and don’t know anything about the mechanic with healers I’ve barely played.
At present, 21.5% of all characters running M+ have completed all dungeons at +15 or higher in the US/OCE and 25.9% in EU. 3.7% have completed all +20s in the US/OCE and 5.9% in EU. This is certainly not a large portion of the community, but calling it very small seems incorrect. It’s fine to think the game is balanced for too high of a skill level, but the data does not support the representation that keys are undoable for all but the vast majority even in the +15 level.
That’s fair, but at the same time the max reward for a +16 is only 6 item levels away from the max M+ rewards and only 4 item levels in the end of dungeon. If you get up to a +18 you have max end of dungeon reward potential and are only 3 item levels away from the max M+ rewards. Come 10.1.5, +17 will be all that’s required for reaching the max reward, provided you farm up the crests for upgrades (and since +16 and higher gives the max level crests, you’ve already proven you can).
It’s a worthwhile discussion on where rewards should cap out in M+ especially in comparison to content difficulty. But at present, the level of difficulty you’re talking about needing to expect players to play well are very close to max rewards for the game mode, and the rewards get even better in 2 weeks. I despise the typical raider argument comparing difficulties across the raid/M+ game mode because they are simply different enough that the comparison will never be free of significant bias, but even I will acknowledge that a +17 FH is easier than mythic Zskarn, yet they will give the same item level reward come 10.1.5 when factoring in upgrades.
In addition to yet another reference to how drastic of a minority this is, you are speaking for a lot of people here that may not agree with the assessment that significantly easier balanced content is good. I am nowhere near the top 1% but found Shadowlands key as a healer to be very unengaging. When only mechanics matter and there’s basically no healing required from groups that do even remotely the right thing, it’s very easy to run into keys where 85-90% of your globals as the healer are damage.
To make this clear, I am NOT a “the healer should never have to DPS” person, such a position is absurd. But when I queue healer for a key, I am doing so because I want my primary purpose in the key to be healing the group. When the only source of damage are failed mechanics, and even those typically aren’t lethal even in +20s, it very quickly feels like you’re only in the key to be a 4th gimped DPS that needs to focus up on healing a half dozen times all key.
Further, this reinforces the position that DPS and even tanks to some degree can ignore mechanics. When I have so many free globals and people standing in fire doesn’t kill them, they aren’t dying even when they do ignore mechanics unless I choose not to heal them so they “learn a lesson” since I can easily top them off before the next hit of damage.
I will agree Blizzard has probably swung the pendulum too far and they should dial it back some. There are some pretty insane mechanics checks that also line up with insane healing checks even at fairly low key levels. But this idea that the game should be balanced around players who cap out around a +10 and the infinite scaling system should be how more progressed players are challenged doesn’t seem like the right answer to me.
From a scaling perspective, this statement is completely wrong. Blizzard made key scaling higher from +11 onward in Dragonflight compared to Shadowlands. A +15 Dragonflight key is nearly equivalent to a +16 key in Shadowlands. A +20 key in Dragonflight is between a +22 and +23 key from Shadowlands.
I can’t speak to your individual experience because there are too many variables between the talent system change to tanks being basically invincible to what players you wind up with in groups. It is possible that if the tuning of mechanics plus new scaling is leading to more mechanics being one-shots in lower level keys that this creates a survivorship bias at lower key levels where the only people you encounter that belong in those levels are the ones who can avoid the mechanics and thus aren’t taking as much avoidable damage. But as far as raw numbers go for key scaling, Dragonflight is significantly harder than Shadowlands beyond +10.
I do have a general question based on your responses here in terms of balance. Exactly what difficulty level should the game be balanced for and how much should we care about the experience of players below and above that level? I’m genuinely curious whenever anyone makes the critical statement about a game developer balancing just for the top how they think those better than them should be experiencing the game. Are top level players supposed to have no meaningful progression between the balancing point and the theoretical limits of the unlimited scaling system?
I am not suggesting Blizzard tune the game around the top 1%, but the percentage of impacted players if the game were balanced solely around average play would be FAR greater than just 1%. If the only difficulty in a key is not taking avoidable damage, the point where the avoidable damage can’t be healed up until the point where infinite scaling makes keys mathematically impossible, all progression gets compressed into a single difficulty. If everyone in the group is good enough to avoid the things they shouldn’t get hit by, and the tuning of the unavoidable stuff isn’t threatening, the people who reach that point won’t feel much more difficulty in the entire range until unavoidable damage does become threatening or enemy health is so high the group cannot physically muster enough damage to beat the timer. Would it really be better for the game if every group that could time a +16 can just as easily time a +24 (I’m just making up these numbers for example)?
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Just give every spec a half decent heal. A lot of them already have it.
I ran some quests in the cavern for gear drops on all eight of my 70s last night.
None of them had any trouble staying healed up except for mage…that was almost dead at the end of the one quest for all those little buggers that kept popping up chasing the falling shards.
So classes like mage get more heals.
Not saying its the direction we should go. I love healing. But if we cant get the math figured out, simplify the equation.
what mog???
You were literally just in another thread lol’ing at players losing gold over tcg items.
I guess it’s cool to say potentially upsetting things as long as you specifically don’t feel called out?
To the point: what I said isn’t isn’t exactly ground-breaking stuff: when healing is difficult, there are fewer healers. When it’s easy, there’s a glut. Even the blanket nerfs to healers early in the expac is nothing new. Anyone that has played at least a few expansions can confirm. But players that are dedicated to healing press on. The fair weather healers looking for quick invites disappear. That’s just how it is.
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You don’t get it. The game being annoying and not very satisfying is different than the game being challenging.
Below 12 or so. I consider a high key something above 22 or 23, depending on the season.
Sure, but that’s everyone. All my crappy alts are included in that. People who play for one week and then quit a month ago. Of the people who spend a little time playing this game once a week, and check their vault regularly I still think my educated guess is still in the ballpark. We currently have people spam-creating evokers to try to get the legendary drop… that data needs cleaning
Yes this is true and I think this is a HUGE problem. This system is hugely flawed. I think a functioning system would look more like an expanded Dinar system, where one could get base-level items, and then upgrade the item via doing the appropriate difficulty.
Mythic raid has a huge extra degree of difficulty that is hard to quantify: getting the group together. I killed mythic anduin when he was current and despite being one of the toughest fights, once learned I could do it pretty easily. Mechanics-wise, the hard bosses aren’t always so hard. But getting a group of 20 people together to do their mechanics in concert? THAT is tough.
This tells me you simply aren’t pushing high enough. If you’re only running +7’s then you sound like you’re really aiming low here. You say you’re bored during keys – have you tried a higher key?
Again, this only applies to lower keys. You won’t have the leeway to let someone learn a lesson in a higher key. They’ll just be dead. This is why hunters are not popular in high keys right now – they have very long CD’s on their defensives. All of these issues you describe simply involve timing your key and trying the higher one.
I wonder, do you run with dps who don’t have the damage to time the 7’s you’re running? This may be your limiting factor – you may simply be more skilled than your group is and that’s OK. But you could try pugging a higher key to get a real challenge
No, you misunderstand me. I am actually referring to this change you are linking as though it would prove me wrong. What you are missing is that the STARTING POINT is much easier now.
What the change doesn’t explicitly say is that with the new talent trees, we are more powerful, so really a +2 right now is like a -5. But then with the bigger scaling, the keys get harder, faster.
So that is why we have another issue – the “band” (think frequency band) of keys we have available is much smaller now, with the combined bigger scaling and beefier talent trees.
This changes every season, the later the season the easier the key. But I would say a good home base could be a first-season 14. Perhaps a range of about 14-18 to include the top 10% of players – that way the game is balanced around the average range of somewhat committed players.
Just like balancing around the very top-end players doesn’t make sense, balancing around the very inexperienced also doesn’t make sense. Since a +2 will always be easy enough for just about anyone with the will to learn, they aren’t so much a concern.
Well good thing I’m not suggesting that.
I think in a 14 something not being kicked should at least make the group’s life difficult but not be a one-shot. Missing 3 important kicks in a row, when people are aptly geared in a 14 sounds like a reasonable wipe scenario to me.
Currently we have some kicks that if missed could cause a wipe in a 7, that doesn’t seem right.
Requoting here to emphasize
BLIZZARD NEEDS TO MOVE AWAY FROM ONLY DAMAGE AS PUNISHMENT
I really hope someone at blizz sees that
Can we have more things impact our dps instead of just trying to outright kill us? Losing haste from failing incorporeal was actually a great idea. It’s a new, different challenge.
Losing damage in keys instead of dying can easily be a cause of the key not getting timed so it is still a powerful reason to do mechanics.
AND since DPS are so dead-focused on doing good damage it might actually be more motivation to not stand in the fire if they lose dps from it
No. That would be horrible and I’m not sure how that could be the case with any of my suggestions here
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When you get to 2500 you get an item that adds additional effects to Helm/Shoulder tier for the season.
Also earned through Elite Arena and M: Sark iirc.
It seems in this season those added graphical effects only apply to helmet
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Blizzard’s focus seems to be to curb the Key carry/selling crowd by making keys more difficult at appropriate levels. Seems to have worked quite well, you rarely see key sellers anymore.
And really, why should a 15 ever give max reward comparable to M Raid loot? You can do a 15 in your sleep. If players aren’t able to compete in content which will give them the max reward, maybe they don’t need the max reward. If we get M Raid ilvl loot out of M+ 18-20s then the dungeons should at least have some challenge to them and not be braindead sleep fests like Slands M+ was
To me playing a good game in M+ requires a group effort instead of 1-3 people carrying the whole group. Those are the runs that are fun to me.
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ohhh yeah i just remembered that item…dont remember the name tho
As a healer I am going to have to disagree with you here, big time. I can’t even believe someone would think this lol.
I think you are both right and wrong. For all in intents and purposes it could be more difficult, but it is also easier. I’ll explain, starting out on how they are easier now.
Current 16’s seem incredibly easy, easier than I’ve ever seen them IMO. I feel like with a halfway decent group running a 16 it might as well be a 2.
However a DF 22 feels very challenging compared to how a SL 22 felt.
The best way I can explain it is that the area of dilation where keys are in that sweet spot of being fairly easy and also giving good loot has shifted, from the 13-16 range to the 18-20 range. This is how they are tuned, with a tuning knob being how easy the M0 is which is tuned lower, and the knob of scaling which is now turned higher.
It seems like the majority of friends who were running 15’s and I often helped before, are now running 20’s instead for their vault. They just shifted towards the gear. And the system was balanced around the gear.
This is why I think we see backpedaling to where 16’s will give gear that is upgradable to max level, and I approve of this actually.
Now back to your anecdotal experience on how it could be harder. The reason for this is IMO 99% chance that it is the groups you are with. It is super easy to +2 a 20 and have people barely take damage for the right group, but if you’re just pugging or don’t have super skilled friends and they aren’t doing doing good execution it can feel really difficult.
NOW the big difference is that before, when you could get max vault rewards from a 15, you didn’t have these gear-oriented players trying to run 20’s. 20’s were for people who wanted more than gear … score, bragging rights, portals. Most people don’t view portals as important and don’t worry about getting them.
It’s not that the keys are more difficult – they are easier! It’s that now more casual players are in them. And this is possible because … they aren’t that difficult! Not until 22+
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Interesting take. I would believe more that “casuals,” are in them for vault, not because they are easier. I know that that is why I pushed hard for them at first.
I have been in so many groups where it seems like people have no clue about healing checks because they have referred to certain bosses as “easy.” Maybe you are one of those people 
Must be nice!
Your experience is anecdotal too btw lol.
And I agree, the degree of difficulty rests on your group comp and how skilled they are. A good/bad group can certainly change your key experience.
I finally got my HOI portal in a group full of 3k io people dragging their fresh 70 friend though. Was the smoothest group ever, even with a 390 ilvl dps lol.
But, that has always been the case in keys in every season. This isn’t new.