People think of the Trinity and they think of a Triangle with the Tank basically being the point. Everyone has one job in their minds which is partly true. But that’s not the design. The design should be more a circle or as everyone playing a supporting role. The tank makes pulls and builds agro so mobs don’t attack the other group members, the healer supports the tank so he doesn’t die, the tank supports DPS by keeping agro so they can kill the mobs and DPS supports the tank and healers by making sure the excess mobs are not beating on them killing them.
So the Trinity is actually a design that needs CC to be used to its fullest extent. CC also makes the DPS job a lot more useful than just who does the most DPS. CC helps keep that random chance somethings breaks away and goes to kill the healer or tank. This is also why tanks had a hard time with holding more than 3 mobs. Everyone could handle 2 but 3 and 4 was pushing the ability to keep agro on them.
I realize some prefer the Pew Pew Zerg everything play. But mythic + five thousand wasn’t always needed because under the older play style you could die to a single mob in heroics anytime the group didn’t do it’s job. It made it so almost every pull could be a wipe if you didn’t learn to play your class.
Seeing as how blizzard has lost so many players of late I personally feel that it would be a good idea to get back to the drawing board and remember why your hardcore players loved this game so much. And being hardcore isn’t Mythic + 8000, that’s lazy game design. IMO.
It use to be that every pull was a kind of MOBA style event a little bit. You had strategy and understanding of the group your about to pull.
You had 3 tanks that did their jobs differently but effectively.
Warriors required more CC because holding 2-3 was the average warriors tanking capability (really good players 4 if absolutely needed) but less healing
Druids had the largest health pool so they needed healing less often but took more DMG spikes and and holding 3-4 was their capability with more healing needed during spikes because no block but armor was extremely high reducing dmg. As they are an armor/avoidance tank.
Paladins had the smallest hit pool and the hardest time gearing (but that gearing was fun). They could hold 4-6 mobs with easily but not a good idea because once inside your consecration they will not come off. They have the highest block and reduce damage a lot. They are a mana tank that you can’t afford to let get to low because of the smaller pool if HPs.
So they all worked differently but all needed some CC because of the fact that in heroics and raids mobs can hit that hard. CC is a forgotten mechanic and something I’d like to see comeback. Just remember that the people who made your game huge are probably still playing it even though Blizzard went for the bubble popping crowd of puzzle lovers we have stayed. They keep hoping that Blizzard will get it back together.
Remember that we are the people you screwed over in design to get all those new players and we are the people still playing because we just hope the magic returns. I have been playing TBC of late because I always wonder was it as fun as I remember it and was the play style as much fun as I think it was??
YES IT WAS. Which shows me how degraded Live has become and why I stopped having much to do with it years ago. Go back and going forward from this expansion remember 10 man runs that have ordinal content are loved by your players and that auto grouping is crap and just combine some servers.
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i promise you, that’s still the case if you go a bit higher than heroics
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Here’s my take…
On the one hand, I’m with you. I actually really love the dungeon crawl style of how vanilla was played. It’s engaging to tackle every pull like a puzzle, using CC abilities to allow your group to take on groups that you can’t just go at head on. It felt challenging, and rewarding when you executed things properly to beat it. Those 3+ hour scholo or UBRS runs when nobody really had any idea what they were doing, so we just used CC to overcome it… those were a blast! Back when the game was more about the content and less about the gear. I long for that style of gameplay…
On the other hand, I actually enjoy M+ very much. It can be very challenging to push your group up in keys. You have to know your class and mechanics very well, and execute with precision in order to succeed. It’s a bit like speed running old video games, where you make small tweaks to shave small amounts of time off and make your runs overall better as a whole. Additionally, while hard CC has absolutely zero place in a M+ run, softer CC is absolutely important. Slowing/stunning mobs so your tank can move away and clear necrotic strikes or raging, or stuns/interrupts to mitigate critical abilities at the right times… these are engaging!
If anything, I wish that the two paradigms weren’t so mutually exclusive but they are. The game is so reward driven right now that the old style of slow, methodical runs simply have no place in the game. The player base has been conditioned to play for reward, and to maximize participation in that reward cycle. If you are sub-optimally pursuing rewards, you won’t be able to get your stuff and progress to the next tier.
It’s a shame, because that old style of tackling content for the sake of content was a blast.
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Damage players don’t play like their part of a group until 18+. Cc is only required to take a dangerous enemy out of a super big pull. I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from the title “heroic”. They should be renamed amateur at best.
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CC is certainly required, dungeon probably require much higher mechanical skill to execute than ever before (so knowing what you’re supposed to be doing at proper ilvls remains relevant), and more strategy is required than before m+ existed as affixes rotate and change pulls.
Odd post to be frank.
FTFY
Yea, 95% of damage players are bad. Idk what to tell you.
Oh God please don’t go back to needing CC and single group pulls
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the thing is, people can still do that if they want to. i don’t know why they don’t all form groups together and spend as much time as they like. a 3 hour dos run? go nuts, guys!
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It’s not the content that changes. It’s you. Us.
It’s a case of ignorance is bliss. Even the most harmless mechanics can be engaging when you don’t quite understand them. Once you unlock the code, the magic is dispelled.
I think everyone deserves to have content that caters to their desires, but I think a lot of players don’t understand what they’re asking for.
We have players on the last level of Sonic while players stuck on the first few levels are complaining that the difficulty keeps getting harder and that every level of Sonic should be as easy as the first few.
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You still use CC all the time in dungeons. Your issue is that you’re choosing to play on easy mode and then complaining it isn’t hard enough.
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We’ve also evolved much further in how CC is actually used. It used to be that basically anything important was CC-immune, and nothing on bosses ever involved CC. They actively put more effort into making sure that CC was part of dungeon and raid strategies, and gets featured in bosses as well.
That said, I don’t think the game does a particularly good job in educating players on how to play the game well, or how to approach dungeons well. Those of us in the know already know how to play the game well, or do smart things or creative things, but a brand new player to the game or genre does not.
Which sort of leads to a spiral of “Until you need to bother, no one learns it” followed by “Everyone expects you already know it”
This is true if you’re jumping into content for the first time that everyone else has already been doing for 8 months, but pretty sure at the start of every expansion, everyone learns things too.
You’re being too generous to the OP, they are obviously one of the crowd that only ever does queued content.
idk what you’re on about, when I’m in m+ people use CC all the time.
The game shifted away from long-duration CCs that break on damage a long time ago. But stuns, interrupts, slows are all forms of CC and are hugely important.
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i mean, there are definitely groups that don’t bother with any of that stuff. but they’re bad groups, not good ones
I mean, as far as that attitude is concerned, people act like that on the Beta (which is super weird), or within the first week of the expansion. Hell, I remember on day 1 of the expansion people in Necrotic Wake Normal at lvl 52 or whatever were scolding others that they shouldn’t be queuing without looking up a Youtube guide. Whether they’re justified in that is another story, but that’s part of how some people behave in the playerbase. I’m NOT saying majority, but I’m also not saying minority.
Then there’s the more obvious example of new people picking up tanking/healing. Levelling content doesn’t exactly prep you for anything resembling what it actually is, then you come to actual content and if you mess up while learning, people rage.
When talking about a 2-year expansion cycle or whatever, if content is only considered “new” for 1 month or so of that time, and anyone jumping in fresh outside of that window finds a turnoff, it’s not exactly ideal.
I think my bigger point was more about how CC and other tools are now at least considered in dungeon design, where they weren’t actually done so previously. Having every fight devolve into some form of CC or Kite would also be boring, but I think it’s in a better place now than what it used to be. The separate part is that designing for it won’t mean players can do it, if the rest of the game does leave newer players occasionally unaware. Maybe one area of improvement could be the Dungeon Journal. Half the things that are in there don’t tell you anything remotely useful about what you’re trying to do.
Yeah, but M+ content is a lazy sloppy design. And you get high enough and you’re timed. No one ccs at that level on any run I’ve been in. My pally tank has done plenty of 15+ and beyond. It’s actually worse than bringing back an old dungeon. And nothing personal but they didn’t use that ratchet up in tbc and WoTLK and so on, and yet with badges and drops we had plenty of gear and didn’t beat our heads against a wall, nor did we worry about dropping people for not meeting a gear score. Those with ten man runs gave you easy asses to raids and such.
Go ahead and post on your pally tank that’s tanked +15s “and beyond”, because I think you’re straight up lying.
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Translation, “I don’t like speed run content”.
There are plenty of things that are not designed for me, you don’t hear me calling it bad design. (Outside of maybe the tank mechanics in a raid).
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Just look at my shaman Skylar. I didn’t say this expansion, but after doing it so long it’s boring. I seldom play that character so you can get your buddies to spam him and not my current Druid and Pally I’m playing. Secondly.
I’m still right. A tank is a CC class, Heal is a Control class and DPS is a control class. Only now CC is a half thinking control class.
It’s harder and requires thinking and to pay attention. It also adds verity to DPS beyond pew pew. Which I assume you love. So be it to each his own, if you like not thinking and playing easy mode then I guess that’s why you probably don’t truly get TBC. And Raids have ALWAYS USED CC.
Even when everyone knows the runs in dungeons like in TBC you still need that CC. It becomes more forgiving yes, but there. And I used to have a hunter friend we took on Reid’s and especially 10 man runs, because he could be counted on to CC w mobs and occasionally a third for about 2 minutes by himself.
So having CC in my opinion opens you up to having Basic CC heavy classes and support. A support that can CC keep mana up and help in other areas can be super useful. Some shamans did this very well. So you could make Enhancement shamans lean that wat, some locks and mages, rouges had a cc style. But just saying you got classes with 3 DPS classes. No reason some can’t be move support or even some CC and DPS (as normal) ice mages could lean that way. Support should assist in life(small) mana regen, buffs (heroic from shamans) etc, can all add excellent buffs and assist plus some cc and cc breaking. I think a hunter could easily be given a major pet for each spec that Tanks, DPS’ and Cc/Support. And get a pet to help with that. No reason a Hunter can’t work a little more through his pet but let him choose the ability.