On one hand yeah I get it. Optimizing the run should be everyone’s goal since everyone benefits when a chest is timed. I’ve been managing this week but it’s not fun for myself and quite a lot of other people (that should be the most important thing in a game). When I saw it was exploding this week, this was actually the first time I’ve ever experienced the affix but I fell into popping them right away.
I want to emphisize that I like healing, dpsing and supporting the group in any way that I can whenever I actually get a chance to play. If I didn’t want to interrupt, dps, cc ect why would I play a mistweaver?
People need to remember where the average player is actually at. Quite a large segment of the playerbase is either in a dad guild or pugs exclusively and these groups are not always as coordinated as they should be. Unnecessary damage goes out, silences are overlapped or missed entirely, dps is low → encounter times are long and all of this falls on the shoulders of a healer who is probably not very good.
Conversely When you’re consistantly timing 18-20s you’ve probably got a good grasp of your toolkit, are properly geared and have a wide variety of trinkets to swap for different situations because you play more. You also likely play with other like-minded players who are interested in pushing and play their role very well. This actually leads to the run being much easier for healers because things are being interrupted, players are using defensives and dispelling themselves, dps is maximized so shorter encounters, so on and so forth.
You could say ‘git gud’ and I could concede that if each week was the same and players had months to adapt to a concrete strategy like in raids. The wow player base by and large are very casual and strategies change week by week in mythic +. Consider all i’ve said about the former group and then add in that one week there is an affix where you have to now add in target swapping as a healer, and it’s a recipe for unnecessary frustration.
I like the hectic nature of healing and if I had the time I would push further because I love all the responsibility. Explosive has not caused me any major issues, but I can empathize with people who are frustrated.
Recommendation:
I would argue that not every affix should be the healer’s responsibility. Every week healers must adapt to the new inconvenience of the week in a way that no other role has to. Perhaps blizzard could make these orbs spawn far less frequently but have maybe 400k hp and a longer cast time so the dps have to deal instead. If blizzard wants to make healers do something, maybe make the orb do high ticking damage if the group does fail instead of instant damage so high performing healers can recover.
Being honest… just like the tank.
The role of healer and tank are the most complicated for different reasons… now add a plus to the issue of affixes that now make the job harder.
The only ones that I haven’t seen suffer much are the dps (I’ve even been a dps), the bad thing is that when I say this… many people come out to defend the dps, without knowing what it feels like to be a healer or a tank in these moments where literally you are asked for many more things than it seems… such as:
Tank: Good routing, good stamina/survivability, utility, control over affixes, last until death (in case your party died), good dps, etc.
Healer: A good resistance/survival, utility, control/management over affixes, save the party in case of failure in some mechanic or due to extremely high damage (many times due to lack of kicks or for X reasons), have a good dps and have good hps.
The dps is similar, but many factors are removed, leaving only:
Good stamina/survivability, utility, control/management over affixes (which are few affixes to deal with) and having good dps.
I think this is a good point. I have done every role at some point over my 14 years playing this game. Tanks do have quite a lot of responsibility as they determine the overall pacing of the group (making adaptations for healer efficiency). So it is true that to a certain extent tanks are affected by affixes because they control the size of pulls, especially on bursting fortified weeks.
DPS on the other hand are not supposed to just perform their rotation. They are supposed to make decisions about when things die. Target swapping extremely important. It is one of the unique foundatonal pillars that seperates a dps who contributes from a carry. This is why I suggested that dps take care of an orb with more HP. Tanks and healers should still always contribute whatever they can. With this change in mind I would even argue that healers should still help. I think moderately coordinated groups would perform far better with this change, because most dps have learned this concept.
What a joy to read the issues you brought to light. The bigger joy I personally have is that I decided not to do mythic plus this expansion because it isn’t fun dealing with tanks rushing and dps not caring where they stand etc etc. I hope it all works out for you, I know it’s working out great for me. Hopefully they will fix things but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Clear.
Each role has its function…
The problem is when the players do not fulfill that role…
Even healers, tanks and dps.
If your tank does very small pulls, its stamina is low or it loses aggro, it hurts the whole team.
In the case of the healer, it is very similar. If his performance is mediocre in healing, he dies for everything and only heals like a bot obviously the key will fail.
And dps… well, a little of what has already been mentioned.
The bad thing is that you can mostly find bad dps than healers or tanks :S
PS: You can also find players who demand you as a healer or a tank… but they can’t comply with something you ask of them but sometimes it happens
I think that’s a common thread for pugging in general. Most players are DPS who only dps and most just follow the tank. Don’t get me wrong, there are quite a lot of healers out there who aren’t very good and my main position is that those healers should be taken into consideration. Otherwise we all suffer because many will choose to hang up their hats rather than devote more time to the game they play to relax.
If we can’t acknowledge that the game has become less friendly to these players they will disappear, many without saying a word. Everyone on here will wonder where they went.
the rotation isnt diverse enough and you end up with silly boring weeks where activity dwindles. not a good idea in a game where the numbers are going downwards. should at least try to make every week decently fun.
having ppl sit out complete weeks is probably not good for the health of the game.
I think the lack of stuff to heal in previous expansions and the excessive amount to heal at launch in Dragonflight, along with the affix design is all proof that Blizzard really struggles with figuring out how to make the game fun for healers.
One of the beautiful things about playing different roles and classes is that you broaden your understanding about the needs other people have. Playing healers has made me realize just how important it is to hit personals, use health pots, and avoid damage. Playing tanks has made me realize how important it is as a dps to maybe not blow all CDs and burn down one single enemy 0.001 seconds after the tank pulls because aggro can be annoying to establish at the beginning of a pull. Playing dps has made me a better tank because I realize how annoying it is to be a melee dps when the tank is jittering around, causing the enemies to run everywhere.
Likewise, I question whether or not the leadership for encounters / dungeons / enemy design / affixes have much experience with healing. If they did, I think the damage enemies do would be more complimentary to the kind of healing healers ideally want to do, and the affixes wouldn’t primarily punish only the healer.
Hahahaha Just HEAL BRO! It’s your job! XD or ask the tank for slow pulls, or make it an alt week where you only do lower keys. That’s my options for ya
I would argue that not every affix should be the healer’s responsibility. Every week healers must adapt to the new inconvenience of the week in a way that no other role has to. Perhaps blizzard could make these orbs spawn far less frequently but have maybe 400k hp and a longer cast time so the dps have to deal instead.
You try doing a key with no dps getting orbs. To that, I say good luck. Healing still takes globals.
It’s not the healer’s responsibility. It’s the group’s.
People on the forums are ready to tell you to just go play a different game. They want their game to be killed and they also aren’t open to changing anything, they don’t care if everyone leaves it. I guess they would be content to just walk around an empty world with empty instances?
When they hear change, they jam their fingers into their ears and scream at you “DONT PLAY THEN, PLAY A DIFF GAME” and then they do this until the game population dies, then they change tune at the end, just like Shadowlands.
I’m also a healer and I have yet to find a single group that thinks this is a healer affix.
The affix doesn’t need changing because groups are making it harder on themselves by deciding they don’t want to do mechanics.
If you’re in a group where the DPS is saying “the mechanic I can easily address that will wipe us is the healers responsibility and I won’t help” then you’re probably not going to time the key anyways at higher levels
I don’t mind it at all, it’s not hard to throw an instant cast spell on them. What I don’t necessarily enjoy though is when large multiples come out at once. Some pulls have lots of small mobs (i.e. spiders - I think - in SBG) that can spawn like 6 explosives. I really think there should be a hard cap of 2-3 at any one time per groups of mobs like that. Between the poison/disease debuff they throw out that needs a decent amount of healing and so many explosives, it’s can be problematic to juggle those. I don’t even want to think about killing them without a mouseover macro.
Unless we’re going to make this affix not primarily a healer’s responsibility. Because there’s only so many GCDs I have available and that above-mentioned scenario can quickly cause multiple deaths or a wipe if you get bad RNG or don’t have DPS that are willing/capable of helping out.
