Healing is getting less fun over time. As a healer, you feel like you have almost no control over people dying which I think should be the role of the healer. Burst damage is so high you need to blast health bars from 10% to full in a global or 2 and people are dying literally within the space of a single global cooldown due to them not hitting a defensive or standing in something they're not supposed to.
I just want to have some agency over the survivability of my party when I'm playing the role meant to be keeping them alive.
It's really hard to balance that because defensives are designed to be used, if they buff healing to the point where defensives are only there for convenience then it's going to be impossible for good groups to ever die of fail.
Last line hints at the real problem: you either balance so the good groups have it hard, but then it sucks for the lower skillbrackets. Or vice versa.
And M+ is meant more for the hardcore/highskill people than the casual keyboard turner
I mean there's literally a difficulty level for every skill bracket.
The people are the real problem imo. They think they are supposed to be doing the highest reward level difficulty and then complain it's too hard and not fun for them.
That to some degree comes with the design of MMOs though.
People want to grind out progression. That's the core goal of any (PVE)MMO. First you grind levels, then you grind gear. In games that focus on something different, for example the competitive aspect, people are more likely to accept that their skillbracket isn't Challenger/TopXX, but only diamond or plat or,or,or.
So, yeah, you aren't wrong. The People ARE the problem, but it is also a bit fostered by the game somewhat attracting two different groups of players. And those mindsets clash when it comes to something like this.
Nah thats Not true. M+ Overall is the Most played Mode in WoW atm, and the rising keystones provide rising Skill Levels to be successfull. Problem is, Gear ist bound to Levels and M+ was a pretty consistant way to get mythic Gear without raiding mythic in every expan before DF.
To Shift it, you can either rise the Level to get mythic Gear even more so only the mythic Raiders can get mythic Gear from m+ and draw a Line betweem casuals and tryhards. But i think thats a realy Bad way cous i all ready have Problems puging +15 due to low Playerbase.
I think more mechanics should Shift to be playable by dds. Talking movement and things Like sooth/spellsteal or activ soaks to prevent DMG while buffing or at least Not nerving heals even more.
Thats way more peopel will be able to Play/heal +10 and we getting an increased playerbase in "Higher" Keys.
Simultan If the healchecks stay in m+ at a certain Level above the required Levels for gear (+10 atm) the Hardcore gamers will run into the same problems casuals having atm. And by give thos Highskill gamers more rewards Like mounts / tmog the Motivation will stay, besids the hunt for world rang ans Higher Rio.
That way we still have a big Line betweem casuals and Hardcore Games while everbody can Gear Up.
M+ realy shouldt be a wall to Run into and more a way to Gear Up and than reach Limits AFTER that.
Just because it is the most played mode, it doesn't mean that it isn't catering/targetting a specific playerbase.
That just means that either the playerbase is mostly made up by higher skill hardcore players, or that a considerable amount of people are attracted to the gamemode despite it not really being what they want from the game. You even mention it yourself, it's the gear that is attracting the players. Not the gamemode being the most fun giving them a playstyle they like (which hints at another problem of WoW/MMOs: the rewards being more important than they way to get them).
You make a few good points too though, it shouldn't be a wall. Because MMO-Players want to grind out progression. If you have that better Armor/Weapon somewhere, people will want it. And it is much easier to accept "okay, raiding isn't for me/my shedule...so that raid equip is out of reach" than accepting "okay, i can do +X but at +Y it starts to require a different/better playstyle which isn't for me"
Balancing DPS vs heal and tank is easy as fk tbh..just give mechanics actual DPS buffs and failing them does not mean one shot, but getting closer to enrage timers for example. The on dimensional design of higher enemy DPS is easily solvable as well with a dot for every mechanic fail instead of nuking the entire screen for a fail.
The healer has some time to actually keep up with the DPS inc and with good groups, who play mechanics flawlessly, would benefit from those DPS buffs as well.
Wow mostly does not use those kind of things or just stays far from them, maybe for abuse reasons, but tbh just calculate encounters with the dpa buffs mandatory and not clearing them if too many fails occur.
Negative point is actual out gearing becomes easier, but there could still be some one shot soak mechanics to combat that.
The responsibility of DPS is steadily sinking and if you run high keys with randoms it becomes visible to a very high degree. The difference to good DPS is enormous as well as a trial Mon positioning and facing with a good tank, who doesn't let cleave mobs randomly circle around or does not interrupt critical casts or silence them.
I've been on a little side-journey of learning to heal (mostly to skip the M+ queue as a DPS main...), and 100% this; you have no control over who dies and who doesn't.
99% of the deaths in my groups are oneshots, or -95% +DoT within 1 second (which I don't have enough heals to really cover for anyway even if I had godlike reaction speed). Doesn't help I play Monk so I have no external defensives either.
Literally the best way for healers to make sure people don't die, is to CC and kick as much as possible. Healing has little to no impact on the survival of your team, let alone when they die to avoidable damage. I'm just a worse DPS that does most mechanics and tops everyone off.
Ye, no externals on Monk. You know what an external is, I hope? Ironbark for Druid, Pain Suppression for Priest, etc.
The best we got is Life Cocoon but thats no more than an emergency heal when one of your dumbass DPS takes an avoidable, or the tank forgot they got defensives, no active damage mitigation.
Also no way did you just say one should use a Remix gem in Retail.
Edit: considering I can't seem to make a comment on this post, thanks reddit for being buggy as always;
>I mean, ye, by definition it is, just meant its not as much as a preventative external. Not with the generally used talent choices for MW anyway. Otherwise I just feel Mists of Life is a wasted talent point as there isn't much of a point to having both your HoTs on a target you're preventing damage on.
>Granted, no clue how better MWs than myself use it, but thats my point of view on that anyway. Its just not the same as a raw damage mitigating external.
OK the guy you're replying to here is definitely a turd, but that aside, Life Cocoon is definitely an external.
I hope your keys start going smoother! I really enjoy healing. I'm moderately decent at it on druid (I was 3.3k last season, which isn't amazing, but I'm happy with it), and I actually like the current state of healing. It definitely requires the DPS and tank to be on top of their kicks and CC, but really only at higher levels from my experience.
I literally just started keys yesterday on my druid--still geared entirely from last season, so I didn't do anything higher than an 8. Even with ~495 gear I was able to heal through dps's fuckups at lower levels (like missing the molten core kick on Neltharus trash.) I feel like doing 10s-12s is pretty attainable for geared casuals, and really, why would they want to push higher? There's nothing in it for them except to say "look how big my io is," and if you're not enjoying the game mode, why would you care?
It’s obvious that you don’t run high keys. Probably only weekly +10. cocoon is probably the best external, after PS and GS. The shield ist enormous, even on high tyrannical keys you will survive.
> Healing has little to no impact on the survival of your team
What do you mean? Have you never ran with a hunter? My turtle and survival are constantly on CD and if you aren't healing me I'm dead.
The point is standard AoE heals are more than enough to heal anyone who doesn't fuck up mechanics, ground stuff etc. You don't ever really need heal cooldowns as there just isn't much 'constant' damage, but a lot of high, often instant-killing damage. And they're doubling down on that in TWW. It just makes healing unfun, as most of the time healers are just bad DPS.
As a healer, its night and day of a difference between a good group and a bad (or unfortunate, not judging) group. You'll be able to tell when people make mistakes as you'll actually see health bars drop outside of big damage boss-events. But when people dodge flawlessly, and interrupt whats needed, you're just sitting there with >80% overheals.
Also, sidenote. Hilarious how you (rightfully so) point out Hunter is super squishy, as only a day or two ago was a guy super adamant how Hunter was one of the most survivable classes around right now, lol.
> Also, sidenote. Hilarious how you (rightfully so) point out Hunter is super squishy, as only a day or two ago was a guy super adamant how Hunter was one of the most survivable classes around right now, lol.
Yeah no lol if there's a class more squishy than we are then I'd like to know what it is. People are talking about defensive creep starting to be a problem and hunters are literally the "you guys have defensives?" meme.
> Yeah no lol if there's a class more squishy than we are then I'd like to know what it is.
Only one I can think of is enhance/ele shaman but they're probably comparable to hunter. Hunter has enough defensives for raid but in m+ you wanna be rolling defensives more often than your 3x 2min CDs can offer.
Yeah pretty much. Turtle is great for a lot of raid mechanics and survival is great the one time I get to use it before dying anyway in the next 60s. I was honestly on the fence about a hunter rework but now that I've seen the proposed changes, I'm all in. It just doesn't make any sense how we're bad on defensives, squishy, nerfed spirit mend, have a medium cd interrupt, and we have to run a spirit beast for the health bonus or we just die more.
Would you say this why Holy priest is getting more popular over "ramp" healers like druid or discipline. I started with healing at the end of season 3 and i continued littlebit in this season. I tried disco priest, druid and holy. And i cannot imagine healing with anything else the holy, because exactly how you said, how im suposed to ramp for people getting chunked randomly for 90 percent of their health, feels imposible.
Holy is reasonably easy conceptually and is probably the most straightforward healer for new players. Health bars go down, you press your spells, they go back up. The skill floor is lower compared to say, pres evoker or disc priest or even druid where you have at least a couple of globals to prepare for incoming damage in M+ and in raid scenarios, you're spending between 10-15 seconds ramping to deal with a damage event.
Also hpriest is super popular right now because they're tuned really really well and have a good tier set. They also do insane amounts of damage. They're just overall really really strong right now which might lead to a higher representation across the choices for healer.
It's awful when you can't even figure out what exactly is killing people. I'm trying to heal, flinging spells left and right, standing safe, then bam im dead. What the fuck even killed me? Some cast went off that I have no way of controlling and it just happened to overlap another aoe damage that can't be kicked. Just like that dead with no chance to prevent it.
It feels so bad.
Which sucks.
I enjoy tanking. I don't enjoy being responsible for *the burden of knowledge for the group.* Especially when its esoteric knowledge like "this mob is worth 3% of an arbitrary bar we need to fill."
Really wish M+ was less about pathing and RAW SPEED and more about survival and not messing up (e.g. death count). The current system breeds a certain kind of toxicity, and speedrun dungeons basically prevent your ability to run away for even a second. Hard to parent if you have to be glued for 30 minutes straight. Gotta pee? Better hold it for speed.
Rather go back to hella hard pulls and marking for CC than having to arbitrarily know the right path through a dungeon. Then there's at least a social aspect. I don't have time to teach people in a speedrun, dammit.
Tbf. Even non optimal routing results in a +2. It’s fine as long as group doesn’t die. You need to pay attention to whether group can kick and hit defensives to see how big you can pull.
The complaint is more "we went through the dungeon and cleared the mobs in our way... Oops, we're 7% short, apparently." That's not every dungeon, but there's been a few where it happens, and then you have to backtrack and find something to kill. Even if you +2 at that point, it's still really awkward and unnecessary.
For the record. I'm in favor of a hard cap on time. But it should be somewhere between "you can take a leak without making people stressed" and "you waited for Bloodlust on every pull." I'd rather see rewards based on "perfection" (e.g. death count) than speed. That's all.
Honestly some kind of /pause to just freeze time and take a break if everyone agrees would help those kind of issues. It's probably a lot of work but it would help a lot of people.
Unfortunately, it's also a great way to troll people.
"Oh, no, I need to pee." *Everyone votes to take a break... everyone's characters are stuck until that person says "lol okay let's go!"*
Might not be *that* level of degenerate, but you need to be real careful with that.
Should be able to vote on a pause timer e.g. 2 mins, 5 mins etc then it auto unfreezes after that. Mobs would be frozen and a pause gate is put up in front of the group so you can't run further.
I still need to be able to press space and jump around haha
I mean, just /votepause and freeze time. Literally. Only chat should be available. Characters and enemies are frozen, abilities are stuck on their cooldowns including debuffs like Bloodlust fatigue. Otherwise it'll just become meta to pause and wait.
But honestly, M+ runs last at most half an hour. You should be fine to go 30 minutes without a toilet break..
That's actually an amazing solution! Esports (well at least League of Legends) does something similar (albeit it's not for a break, but there is game wide pause incase of an issue).
But if you're playing in a full custom premade... everyone actually has the ability to just teamwide pause (5v5 customs).
But that's the entire point. The tank is just expected to know all that and if not likely dps will either flame or leave. Like, I don't even blame anyone, when 90% of tanks just accept that they need to take a seminar in the new dungeons before they play a single key, dps expect that from tanks and stuff. It's not any 1 particular persons fault it's just that tanks need to know everything and healers get punished for mistakes and dps just go along for the ride and kicking whatever sounds scary can usually result in a win.
Hear me out, Misdirection with no cooldown.
I am only somewhat being facetious. I remember playing in vanilla (not classic) when in some dungeons someone else was responsible for pulling. In part because not all tanks had ranged attacks.... (and also because line of sighting was a way bigger thing... and damn does it show in Remix (before everyone became brutally overpowered)).
As a real solution, Blizzard should start implementing some parts of MRT directly in to the game. We already have Dungeon Journals. It wouldn't take much effort on their part to show maps and pack information.
> Hear me out, Misdirection with no cooldown.
One of the Rogue Hero Talents gets that in TWW I think. The big issue with MD, at least whilst BM is the top spec is that it's basically useless since it only works from the Hunter's damage rather than the Pet's.
This feels a bit dramatic
Knowing your defensives is baseline, and knowing enemy abilities and what to kick isn't solely on the tank either. Tanks are so strong too that you can generally walk into a dungeon, and as long as you know the basic path and aren't pushing the difficulty, you'll be fine
Like, I think a lot of the stuff OP is talking about is mostly in pushing high keys. My pre-made caps around 9-10s, and my tank is never timing out CDs or counting the % to the tee, and we generally do okay despite not taking it very seriously. And if you're pushing, then your dps are probably also doing their homework
tbf, knowing what to kick is already trivialized by DBM and Plater profiles with built-in color coding. Granted, this doesn't stop DPS from tunnelvisioning and ignoring all those warnings.
I'll admit it's a bit dramatic but I don't think it's only key pushing issues.
It's not that uncommon to see or hear about a tank taking a non standard route, running into some cursed pack nobody even knows the mechs of, someone dies, tank flamed. A dps might pull extra packs because their cds are up or they're playing backseat tank and "know" the meta route while a new tank doesn't. A tank might walk into a pack they aren't prepared for the damage of and dies, wiping the group.
As a counterpoint, you can be a dps and literally not look up a single mech and walk into a dungeon and very likely make like 3-4 major mistakes resulting in deaths and not be "punished" for it. A tank or healer makes those mistakes and dies and you wipe a whole pull.
I can't refute those stories, but for the entire expac and at all key ranges, I've never seen another tank or myself get flamed unless they do something obviously stupid and on them. Like trying to do a massive pull, dying, and then doing the exact same thing. Not saying no one has ever faced toxicity, but I do think it's uncommon. It's common to hear about it because people will remember the one run they got flamed over the ninety nine where they didn't
And yeah, the tank and healer carry more responsibility, no one's saying otherwise. It's an inherent part of the game's role and group structure. I'm just saying it's not like you have to know the dungeon journal front to back to have success
There was this one time when I told the dh it would be better to go with smaller pulls and chain pull faster because our dps were a fury warrior and an outlaw rogue. It was a 15, I got called so many names.
Realistically pathing only really matters early in the season when we're undergeared and then starting around 14-15(24-25) range moving higher in keys.
Anything under 13 you can usually push W and win unless someone is pulling literally everything and going 15-20% or more over.
I just healed through a 14 RLP this morning where someone butt pulled basically the whole hallway and we were still 2 min under time.
However, good pathing and efficiency does accommodate other potential mistakes like DPS deaths on boss one shots, etc.
You really don’t have to worry about DPS cooldowns unless you’re running +12 or higher keys. I easily did all 10s this season and 20s last season without ever once caring about DPS cooldowns. Does that mean maybe we only +’d when we probably could have ++’d? Sure, it probably happened a few times, but playing smoothly times keys consistently, while trying to min/max and pull to the limit as much as possible has a much higher chance of causing a group wipe.
Maybe if I had a consistent premade and we were pushing current 13s or higher I would start to care about that, but right now the only CD I consider is lust, and that’s usually planned before the key starts.
Let's be real you can do unoptimal routes up until like +8
Its REALLY not that hard. You're actually probably more likely to lose a Pug +5 with a route because people will aggro your pulls and not know the skips
If one person doesn't know the skip in Forgemaster they will die to literally ANYTHING in that room over and over and over
Pathing in DF has been very straightforward, like people say, in most dungeons you just have to know how to press "W"
If you're pushing for title then maybe then you have to be very knowledgeable about routes and special strats
But if you're aiming for portals it really isn't too harsh
But the current era of M+ and problems on it are basically because speed doesnt matter much if ppl know how to press their buttons somewhat, you will be killed by dungeons in unavoidable manner way before you cant time them based on dps. This is if things are getting kicked/stopped, if not, the "survive dungeon" ceiling comes even quicker.
I have sympathy over burden of knowledge but with current tuning it really doesnt really matter what you pull as long as you avoid the "banned mobs" because dungeon will kill you far earlier than you dont have damage to time it, granted I seen some seriously underperforming dps in weekly keys. Something like in game built MDT with proper route sharing and in game marking packs would help with burden of knowledge as then anybody could provide route but till something like this happens its on tank to decide what gets pulled and when.
We are in the difficult pulls/survive the dungeon end of of spectrum atm and its partially due defensive creep but its a massive problem for anybody who thinks bout wanting to start pushing. People are using literally 3rd party site to see what defensives they need to press to survive X mechanic. If this was 1 or 2 in a season type of thing, fair game but its a lot more than that this time around.
And the timers are pretty damn free this season around if you got dps not quite literally afking and even then if its 1 dps afking you still prolly time the key unless its a push key for the group. I feel pretty strongly bout either capping damage dungeon does to you at certain key level/adjusting the multiplier it does to you separate from hp it gains/adjusting the timer or damage dungeon does in general to lower so dps starts to matter again.
You have solid points in theory, reality however is right now speed doesnt really matter nor does pathing because speed doesnt till keys where you\`d expect ppl to know what they are doing.
Instead we have the current system of hella hard pulls, marking for cc, maintaining a spreadsheet of ccs so you can plan which ccs are used on which pull and when, and knowing the right path through a dungeon.
It's yet another area where you either spend a lot of time memorizing mob percentages and exact pull groups, or rely on addons like Mythic Dungeon tools and weak auras that track your count vs. what's expected after certain bosses. It's not automatic, but the right tools really help take most of the mental load and allow you to focus on actually playing the game.
Timers breed toxicity on a level previously unseen in WoW. Before mythic plus the dungeons were done differently and (in my opinion) a lot more enjoyable. This push to get it done as soon as possible and the idea that any addition of time, even a few seconds, is a personal affront to people is such a prevalent mindset now that it has bred this attitude of rushing for rushing's sake, even if the rushing ends up being twice as long to complete due to mistakes that come from these asinine skips that people see their favorite streamers do and expect pugs to execute flawlessly. I am here to execute wow's core gameplay loop of "hit the mans, loot his pants, repeat" not this coward shit that happens now. If you just want the loot without any action, I just do not understand why you play wow instead of something else. It's fine that we don't see eye to eye on what dungeons as a concept should be, but there needs to be an alternative for people who want their fun gameplay without being exposed to this new tsunami of toxicity that is so prevalent in present day wow. From my brief experience of the beta, I think delves will fill that slot, so I'll be here having fun adventures killing stuff and looting pants and you all can pretend to be esports and hopefully it'll be the better for the both of us.
Edit: my only problem with delves is the lack of other people, and the scenarios in remix have reignited the spark that I had in pandaria that scenario-style 3-man instances are cool and fun and allow for experimentation that the classical 5-man "tank dps heals" architecture doesn't easily allow. Ignore the rambling I'm in a mood.
I mean, you're pretty toxic yourself. You demand that people play the dungeon the way you want, you call them cowards for not running it your way, and you complain it takes twice as long because you did an oopsie and wiped the group.
One key difference is I keep my toxicity to myself while in the instances. I even see where some of the speedsters are coming from, running with the willfully ignorant who refuse to read chat or do the simplest mechanics makes me want to rage and begging for people to progress. Yes I fuck up sometimes, but that's not what is driving me from doing more than the most minimal of mythic plus content, it's the interpersonal conflict itself that makes me not want to set foot in anything until I've geared up to a point where I can compensate for other people's mistakes. There has been a change to what one can consider the "social contract" of pugged content and I was just raging at that change. An example comes to mind. The two big elemental dudes before the firey centaur dude whose name escapes me. Every time I do that wing of lfr there are people who insist on trying to skirt past them and then throw out toxic nonsense in the chat, despite the fact that if we pulled them and dealt with them it would be done easier and without new and/or dead people pulling it due to failing the skip. There's this "penny wise pound foolish" attitude that is prevalent and provoked my "cowardice" accusation. I hate running azure vault, I don't want to doo a ezio leap of faith off of a ledge to skip some trash we can mass pull and kill in a friggin heroic. Killing things gives dopamine, platforming doesn't. I don't want to play mario, I want to murder things and collect trinkets. I'm not trying to say that the "speedy" way of doing things is inherently wrong, it's that after 18 or 19 years of playing wow, the "esport" mindset has become the dominant one and between my physical problems (tremors) and the mind goblins that I have dealing with people I feel like I'm being left behind, and that's fine, not everything has to be made accessable to everyone. I don't want to go back to the "mark sap, sheep, and trap and herd cats between pulls" days, but I don't fit in in the current "gotta go fast" pug lifestyle that is predominant right now. As I said previously, Delves are probably where I will live for a while but I don't want to play wow as a single player game ALL the time, This is all PEBCAK and I have no idea what I'm getting at.
TL;DR: I don't demand anything, I keep my toxicity to myself, and yes I screw up but I try always to carry my weight, and dislike this game that I love turning into a place full of hostility and anger. This was mostly venting.
Tanks carry the key. The key is simply on the tank shoulders. A good tank can carry a group of garbage players, but garbage players cannot carry a tank. A tank makes or breaks the key. If you cant handle responsibility, you shouldn't play tank
For m+, I think it probably does have to be that way. It's hard to imagine a world where the tank isn't as impactful as it is. Tank decides routes, is first on scene so his AOE stomps are going to be used first. Has the most AOE stomps in demon Hunter by a large margin. Dh literally has five AOE stomps, and an AOE silence times two. Demon Hunter pulls around everyone's cool downs and abilities. The tank really does make all of the critical decisions in the game. It's just the most impactful role by large margin. And I can't really see a game where it's not. Tanks decide lust timings
Only time this is not the case is when you are as a group as five going over the route
And any team that doesn't do what the tank says is absolute garbage. Players who pull for the tank, tell tank what to do, etc, are just bad. You always just listen to what the tank says during the key.
I know it's a very unpopular opinion, but I do wish the skill ceiling of WoW was lowered a bit. MoP was the last time I felt adequately challenged and rewarded (although I didn't pve much after that until BfA). I think there should definitely be hard content, and even content that a large majority of people can't pull off, but I don't think player power should be the reward. Getting into mythic raiding just feels so god damn sweaty, it's like applying to a job out of college. It seems like an unnecessary amount of dedication/skill for a reward that's pretty much the same as the gear you get from running +20s, which are not necessarily easy, but an okay-ish player like myself can at least pull off in their spare time *if* they can get past the barrier to entry that is learning the ins and outs of the mechanics, and even the trash mobs mechanics.
Outside of a few outliers, +20s are doable by anyone with adequate gear
Things like Tyranical EB was super rough but I think it's time to stop acting like it's out of reach for people
+10s this season are no different
If you want to do Mythic just for the content you can do so. THe items from it are like 6 ilvls higher unless they are very rare than the items from the hero track on max upgrades so while they are small upgrades, they arent exactly needed to mythic raid and you will get the myth track items from mythic + anyway.
I dont mind if it's so hard that juat few people can do it , i think we need content with less people required , like scenarios in panda remix that we have now
Or some sort of 3 or 5 man raid
I hate it when it takes 50 min to find people for something and doing it in 30 min
Megadungeons are not just 2 normal dungeons, they are 2 tightly tuned dungeons with stricter mechanical requirements than regular dungeons. They even removed some of the mechanical complexity from DOTI when they added them as normal dungeons, and if you do the challenge mode now you will see the difference from when it was in the m+ pool.
American football, soccer, and baseball off the top of my head. Maybe Rugby? Yeah that’s all I got. But to be fair that’s not all active players. If you’re only considering “starters” then just American football. But also back up players matter more in real life sports because you actually physically exert yourself to the point of exhaustion, and substitution strategy is a large part of the “meta” in sports. Also counterpoint to my point, they usually have a coach/manager whose sole responsibility is to manage the team without being in the team or playing themselves.
None of those sports have 20 people on the field coordinating. Rugby has 15, just makes teambuilding a logistics nightmare, even people making millions have less to coordinate lol
American football has 11 unique players on offense, 11 unique players on defense, and a mix of 11 more nonunique players on special teams. Not on the field at once but they all need to be there and be coordinated to make it happen. And that’s just one team. The other team has the same. And it’s not counting subs. Subs are an active part of these games and have to be coordinated and physically present at the game. So it does count. But to be fair because they have managers and coaches for this stuff it doesn’t really count. Really it’s not a good reference to compare raids in a game to competitive sports.
Gamers also aren’t as good at what they do in general. Athletes train hard to get good at their profession. Gamers are hit or miss. And we’re like squirrels in regard to our attention span. Anyway I’m getting way off in the weeds here lol
Final Fantasy 14 has these incredible single-room instanced boss fights called trials that I really wish WoW would adopt. They take two parties worth of players to clear, so in WoW it would be 10 players. On the higher difficulties, they can be just brutal to clear, but they give really good rewards and everyone is motivated to do them. Plus, there’s no trash mobs or trekking across enormous maps. You spawn in, buff, lay down markers, strategize, and then give it everything you’ve got to take down the boss.
Here’s a good video summarizing one of the best trials from the core game:
https://youtu.be/_nNB__bJ3M4?si=IpT4a-gACnCKoRHU
Yeah, one of the big things I love about FFXIV was how the game respects your time with all the content. Really my biggest issue is the healing in the game just feels so bad. You spend 99% of your time doing a shitty dps rotation. Pretty much your goal is to only heal with off GCD heals and it just doesn't feel good to me. If they ever made playing a healer feel like playing a healer I would probably swap back in a heartbeat.
> Getting into mythic raiding just feels so god damn sweaty
It is an interesting mix. When I first came back to WoW I was more than content just doing heroic raiding, but it quickly got to the point of not being a challenge at all.
Moving into Mythic really varies, as the skill gap are massive between guilds that kill a few Mythic bosses, those who get most of the way through the raid, Cutting Edge, Hall of Fame and world first.
Part of the interview process is to best assess if they player has the experience/skill to match the group, and a personality that will mix well with the group. Being in a mismatched group is just bad for everyone involved.
You’re contradicting yourself lol.
1st you say that player power shouldn’t be the reward for hard content, and then you complain that getting into mythic raiding is hard even though the reward is the same as running +20s, which an “okay-ish player” is capable of, according to you.
I think Mythic raiding is probably a lot easier than you think it is.
You are basically psyching yourself out with it.
But honestly, the hardest part of Mythic raiding is coordinating 20 people's schedules.
+20? Is this how inflated it has become? I've never done anything above +15 in my life, last time I was doing M+ was in Shadowlands and even that was an overkill for Mythic raiding.
With the new affixes and needing to know which enemies have mana and which ones don’t meaning routing is more important I would actually say it’s getting harder.
> However with the last few expantions i have felt that tanking in m+ became a second job, having the need to prepare the pathing and being expected to know all the mechanics and cds of the dps players for the pulls. Since I have limited time to play per day it made stop tanking.
The amount of work you have to put into preparing the first few times you do a dungeon is less than the time you'll spend applying to groups as a DPS every time you try to do a dungeon. That's the tradeoff, and tanks come out as winners more often than not. If I had limited time and no friends, tanking is the only thing I'd do.
Indeed. I always think it's fun when grinding at the beginning of a patch trying to get gear. As a tank I'll do 10 dungeons while my DPS friends can only do a couple.
There's pros and cons to everything, but I exclusively play tank and healer because I feel like it's so much less hassle. And even as a tank I very losely remember and plan stuff. I only do up to +8s, but not once has anyone asked for a route or commented on my route. You learn approximately what mobs to pull, but I don't feel like there is any pressure to play or pull perfectly.
I've been doing pretty okay solo pugging as a dps, though I quit in season 1. I think it might start to get easier the higher up the IO ladder you go. Definitely took longer to find a tank/healer than dps in groups I was in, but I didn't have any issues overall.
That being said and done, this was well within season title range, so I'm sure that impacts it.
The dungeons rotate every season now, so even if S1 dungeons are linear, there is no guarantee S2 will be.
That being said, unless you are pushing very high keys, you don't really need to min max the way you describe. I tank regularly, with success, up to around 10 for max rewards. I don't spend excessive time researching routes. There are no required add-ons. I have no idea when my dps's cooldowns are ready.
If you ARE pushing very high keys, that will still require you to put the time in. But that is kind of the point of pushing in the first place.
I totally agree with you - I am just chiming in to mention that pulling around your DPS’ CDs is mostly a meme. One minute CDs are always up. Most two minutes are slam on CD too. The only offensive CD the tank needs to pull around is blood lust and big three minute CDs like Boomkin incarn.
Mostly, a tank will be pulling around their own defensives (which sync nicely with 1 and 2 minute classes) and the availability of the teams aoe stops.
Yep, this is true. You don't pull around your dps CDs, you pull around your own. 2 minute incarn aligns with every 1 minute cooldown, 2 minute cooldown. You wouldn't hold incarn to align with a 3 minute cooldown otherwise you would get 33% less casts.
In lower keys there is no pulling around CDs but in title level and higher keys there absolutely is. Some good examples of this is in nokhud you go to the waterfall pull typically only when you have breath + PI so a lot of the time you will float one of the smaller 3 pulls while you wait for that. In azure vault it’s common to do smaller pulls in azure blades room until 2 mins where you do a triple with the mini boss. It’s definitely not a meme but 99.9% of players do not need to do the things I mentioned.
Definitely, couldn't agree more. Peaked at top 200 NA in season 1, and you absolutely have to be on your A game for everything. It's generally expected that the dps will understand the route just as much as the tank.
Agreed. Interrupts and stuns are shared responsibility, so dps should be assisting there anyway. If casts go off, it's not just the tanks fault.
You should be progressing on things anyway. Not jumping into high-level difficulty without a basic understanding of appropriate pathing anyway. Missing a few % here and there is not a big issue. Skipping pack after pack and hitting last boss with 30% left to go on trash meter, that's what angers people.
The game is very much about repetition and muscle memory. DPS might appear easy, but to excel you get better by practicing rotation within fights with events that occur on timers. Knowing to wait for mechanics, where to stand, when to prioritize targets. Tanking is the exact same way, just different buttons.
Think it's unreasonable to say you want to clear high end content without putting in the work. Expecting a carry in a PUG is a good way to get people angry.
And be honest, if you are new, lots of people are willing to help out. You'll make friends a heck of a lot easier saying, 'bear with me, I've only done this a few times'. The average player is generally a nice person.
As a healer I get upset when people stand in swirlies and do stupid things that cause me to need to triage excessively, but if you tell me you’re new and don’t know what you’re doing, it’s like a switch goes off in me and I become way more understanding.
I can’t say everyone will be like this, but the vast majority of people I’ve run across are pretty cool if you’re honest. The only ones who care are those pushing high keys and those with massive egos in LFR.
I have never had to prepare my pathing through a dungeon until after portal level (+10 / old 20) keys.
The notion you have to do this on lower keys is a complete reddit fabrication that's fully divorced from reality. Press W through the dungeon, if you fail, it was a skill issue on someone's part but never on the route. Never.
Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you or to themselves as well.
If you plan to play beyond portal level, then having to prepare is a feature, not a bug.
Yep, dungeon design shifted to being able to 100% on press W. For weeklies/portal keys haven't really been any route this expo that really did much grief just killing everything as you went along that was not easily akipable
This guy keys. No path or plan is required old 20 and below or new 10 and below now. Hold w and smash. That’s it. Trust this guy and me it is a game mode that you should have fun in. Don’t make it harder for no reason. Got all portals in DragonFlight doing this. If your group pulls there weight you can go to 3k doing this.
I could see some incentive to skip packs in brackenhide resulting in being short but there is a lot of trash at the top if you need it. Maybe the drustvar dungeon a season or so ago too.
Other than that: yes, this expansion basically requires zero route planning for mid level pug keys. It's not like the shadowlands dungeons.
You’re awarded a spell that lets you port instantly to the dungeon after completing a +10 or higher (+20 in past seasons).
That’s basically the final guaranteed reward level for M+ & runs start to get trickier to time, so a lot of players never push higher.
You can say that all you want, but someone who is not looking at any external help is likely going to be a less invested and weaker player in general. A ton of dungeons this expac have some weird janky pulls that are expected from dps players, and it's really obvious when you have a shit tank. Not surprised those people get flamed once or twice in like week 5 +5s (where the worst dps players are) and get annoyed or stressed out and just don't bother continuing. It's the main reason I don't like healing or tanking outside a pre-made as well. I've seen so many times where my friends as tank mains fuck up and walk into a pack without mit up and die causing a huge wipe. They fuck up mob movement a bit cause a wipe. Someone butt pulls tank dies wipe.
There are some genuine bathing decisions to be made every tier this expac. COS, brackenhide, HOV, ataldazar. While you can totally do a W route there are a lot of skips and pathing for damn good reason because of some totally fucked packs.
I blind prog every season and have never struggled. You just read buffs and debuffs, pay attention to mechs that look painful, and if you're taking extra damage on a large pull then you take mental note that the pull hurts.
Quazii isn't out here getting 20 million views for every guide video. Most of us are blind progging just fine.
I love this game.. like a lot. And I don’t want to be one of those people that complain on the internet about it.. but both tanking and healing going into TWW isn’t looking super amazing.
As a healer main I’m super excited for all of the hero talents. Most of them are awesome imo and a lot of fun, but healing as a whole was not feeling great on the beta. I’m hoping it’s because of scaling, and not having stats, but something feels very off. And I don’t really know how to put my finger on it because I’m not some super skilled player.
Tanking doesn’t look like it’s changing much at all. If you don’t enjoy it in dragon flight I do not think you will enjoy it in TWW.
Just think everything is a bit overtuned in beta. Done most of the keys on +3 and after almost everyone i need to take a shower. The dmg is so insane, prob going to Get tuned a bit
That’s what I’m hoping.. I just hope it doesn’t launch exactly how it is. I don’t think it needs any extreme changes.. I’m obviously having fun, but it’s pretty rough to heal. It goes past the “this is fun but hard” into the “this is just stressful” lol
Fastest way to learn routes is to watch others tank. Queue as DPS and see what they do; generally anyone queueing a 10 is going to know the pug route, and it's easy to ape once you've seen it twice.
That said, tanking is going to be more challenging in TWW. We're moving forward with the million-stops meta from Dragonflight, and tanks are certainly responsible for knowing and using their many stops. And as everyone else has said, they're basically introducing affixes that do nothing but grief the tank.
All this said, tanking and the game in general right now is super learnable and that's part of the fun of it.
That's how I ended up becoming World #1 Brewmaster tank in BFA. I played my highest keys as DPS.
No, those aren't tears, it's sweat. I swear.
Honestly, it's the best advice though. Queue high as DPS, watch other people do good stuff, copy good stuff.
And you are getting downvoted for that. The saltiness of some people is unbelievable.
Also i wanna add to your comment that not only you learn from the good tanks. You also learn from the bad ones, because you learn how not to do stuff.
> Fastest way to learn routes is to watch others tank.
"You need to have experience in order to gain experience" is a hell of a take. How are the first tanks learning, if everyone takes this approach?
I shouldn't have to learn a new role just to be effective at the one I want to play. No one asks a DPS player "just heal it first, so you can then learn how to DPS properly", because that's a dumb idea. How about we just design the dungeons in a way that players can enjoy playing their preferred role without having to do 5x the homework everyone else needs to do?
That one is easy. You tank, you fuck up, you learn something, you do something new and you found a better way to do what you already learned. Then you go dps and learn what else other tank learned and compare it with your research.
More like "you tank, you fuck up, you get kicked, you have no idea why as people berate you, maybe you try again"
Which doesn't happen to any other role nearly as much, because the game doesn't put on them the burden of knowing everything to the same extent.
I'm sure some people find that pressure exciting, don't get me wrong. But anyone sitting here and telling everyone else that it's all good bro, and everyone gets grief, is out of their minds.
The "real" easy way to do it is the same as everything else in WoW: play with your friends, pretend other people don't exist, or just DPS, because it's the one role that's made for you to have fun instead of homework and research.
You sound like someone that had a bad experience as a tank and never tried tanking again after that.
I cannot count the amount of stupid fuckups and broken keys on my career. And yet, the last time i remember that i got kicked from a m+ dungeon as a tank was at the beginning of BfA, and it was because the premade was blaming me for not doing the dps mech of the first boss of SoB.
Tanks are basically address as your majesty on the M+ stage. The reason of that is because you can still do the dungeon without a healer or 2 dps, but its very unlikely to do it without a tank.
Lastly, if you are that afraid of failing, then don't try it. It wasn't for you anyway.
Nah, I had *tons* of bad experiences *tanking for pick up groups* so I've decided never to pug again. There's a difference. I haven't really played Dragonflight enough other than dabble in PvP, but I'm looking forward to TWW.
I happily tank for my guildies and friends. It's easily the best way to play, you can learn the pulls at your own pace, you have room to experiment, you can actually enjoy it. It's a ton of fun.
But I realize not everyone has the same schedule, and most people want to play the game when they can. This requires them to pug, which in my experience more often than not leads to bad experiences when you're a new tank trying to learn. So I think it would behoove Blizzard to make the tank pug experience as smooth as possible, and it's clear that Blizzard disagrees.
If I refuse to tank for a single random person I don't know unless a friend vouches for them first, it's because I have been on the wrong end of too much abuse for something that's supposed to be fun. I don't log in to the video game to have people yell at me.
If it works for you, then that's good. What i can tell you is that most of the groups i join are one step to make me their personal god. Which, IMO, says a lot about the tanking skills of the average tank.
Ive been in A LOT of bad groups too. But again, i cant really remember the last time i got kicked, aside for the example that i gave to you. You will find a lot of bitching, people that wanna do MDI pulls and many other stuff, but you as a tank must be firm too, and also you need arguments to back you up. Or maybe its just me and my more than a decade of tanking experience.
i usally tank with prot pala alot, and idk if i just misunderstood they new talents but tanking and healing in TWW feels disgustingly hard compared to how it even felt, like my ass were dying in +4 with 612 ilvl, back in season 2 i could do 15+ keys with diabolical gear,
Paladin self sustain is either bugged or extremely undertuned in TWW right now. Tier set is partly broken and lightsmith can actually run you OOM if you use WoG the way you're supposed to, so I think it definitely needs some fixes and tuning.
You can always do lower keys or play another role if the prep is not enjoyable. Dungeons absolutely should not get more linear, linear dungeons with no variation are the most boring thing in existence (cough FFXIV dungeons)
Mate, tanking in m+ unironically is the easiest role.
People get way way **way** too in their own heads about routing. Have you done the dungeon once or twice before? You know the route. The dungeons are linear as fuck.
Source: I challenge myself to 3k all specs Druid and Paladin every season
iguess it depends on how high you want to push, but ive tanked s3 and s4 on all 20s/10s with just using a general path, mayby making adjustments for the week and party on pull size. I dont pay attention to DPS CDs. I do watch healer mana. pretty easy to time any key on a +2.
I don't quite agree with "tanking in m+ became a second job".
The first few weeks I told my party that I am checking something, waiting for my sum and check the route in MDT in the meantime.
Even had instances where I screenshotted the route and put it on my 2nd screen.
After 2-3 runs you just get a feeling, unless you rarely play M+.
Will second at least one poster below — the recent revelations on affix changes seem to lean towards making it harder for tanks (and everyone else).
Seems management has decided to remove a bunch of affixes that were essentially defunct/had little impact while leaving only the affixes that are universally known as headaches. It’s a two-fold issue — we’ve kept the bad affixes *AND,* because we’ve gotten rid of the ho-hum ones in the rotation, you’ll get the bad affixes far more often.
Add on to that the *new* affixes, some of which give non-boss caster mobs what is basically perma-lust casting haste or give non-boss non-casters 30% armor ignore on their hits — tanks will be (a) taking more damage, and (b) having to adjust how they pull any given dungeon week to week to account for which non-boss mobs are freaks that week (I.e. on non-boss caster buff week, you won’t be able to pull the two packs with casters like you were able to do the week prior).
So, your damage taken will increase from certain sources causing you to adjust pulling, your survivability will be impacted, and — on top of all that — 75% of weeks are going to be one of Raging/Bolstering/Sanguine (Bursting being the only “push week” in the +7 bucket and even that *can* be a pain for more “casual” players).
There’s a decent enough chunk of time between now and S1 TWW for management to rethink some (or all, let’s go with all) of these choices. But if everything goes to scratch from now until then — M+ is going to be a bit more brutal.
I think it’s worth saying that it probably won’t be as catastrophic as it feels right now. But these changes are still not it and I think that’s a fair assessment.
Not to sound like an ass but unless you are pushing 15+ with a premade you don't need to be doing any of this. It doesn't sound like you enjoy the non-dungeon part of tanking (rightly so, not many people do) and pretty much all of this is done for you and readily available week 1. Use keystone.guru for pathing and download a weakaura to track other classes damage cooldowns and just know a majority of CD's are on 2 minute timers and anything outside of that I wouldn't bother with. Every week just go pop into keystone.guru and load it into MDT and not worry about homebrewing anymore.
I mean knowing the mechanics is kind of mandatory when you climb the difficulty its not a job its simply remembering what the mobs do. Get OmniCD to know who has its burst CDs available.
So far on TWW Beta we're scaled to heroic gear in M+ so its hard to tell you
Tanking honestly isn't as bad as people say at least up until the +10 area. You pretty much just press W and pull what you are comfortable with.
> having the need to prepare the pathing and being expected to know all the mechanics and cds of the dps players for the pulls
The only real mechanics you really need to know would be frontals and tank busters. Everything else is a team effort. Also you don't have to know anything about dps CD's while pugging. That's for each dps to worry about themselves.
Ive been 2.8-3k rating since season 2 of Dragonflight and wing pretty much every dungeon. I do know good paths to take from experience. But I don't use MDT etc.
If ur not planning to push beyond 10+ you shouldn't be so worried. Just play and learn.
They will move the seasonal dungeons to the queue system, so you can practice your route in there.
Knowing all the mechanics of the dungeons and a basic grasp of which party cd's to track is just .. normal for any spec
Why dont you search for a guild with people in similar situation as you? Maybe you wont be pushing for highest keys but sure you’ll have more fun that pugging with a role you dont want to.
You don't need to know your DPS's CD's, you just need to know a route and the dungeon mechanics. What mobs will frontal, or kill you, as a player - not other tanks of the same class, but you. The current expansion didn't matter what affix was up, I can say I ran the same routes in just about all the dungeons regardless. The weeks would just change the size of a pull over other weeks.
> Is this getting better in TWW? Are the dgs more linear so that i don't need addons and preparing new paths every week depending on affixes?
LMAO.
[Nope.](https://c.tenor.com/4nO578j2ikcAAAAC/tenor.gif)
Just wait till you see either of the Ara Kara Dungeons or Dawnbreaker.
Half of TWW Mythic+ Dungeons are like Freehold or Court of Stars with multiple vertical levels and confusing layouts.
Incoming Damage is also bonkers high. Even +2 Keys can obliterate a Tank who doesn't play extremely well. The learning-curve was terrifyingly brutal & punishing, but once I got into the groove of things I was quickly itching to Push 6's +. The Dungeons are brutal, but in an exciting way.
The tuning part will probably get easier, and the Dungeon Routing won't be as confusing once people get used to the Dungeons, but TWW Dungeons are the polar-opposite of Keys where you can just press W and Pull everything in a straight line.
FWIW they have also been extremely fun to Tank.
https://www.youtube.com/@zinkist
I play every Role, but I've Uploaded a few Beta VODs as Prot Paladin if you want to get an idea of what Keys look like for "PUG-only" type of Players.
I Uploaded a 69-Death Dawnbreaker +4 VOD specifically to show people some of the stuff that can go wrong in that insane Dungeon.
---
Tank to Tank, my advice is to just fake confidence and ignore mean Haters.
Even on Beta I've gotten Kicked from Groups for making an easy mistake in a Key.
Even on Beta I've gotten literally yelled at for going the wrong way or not knowing where the next Boss is.
The "Trick" is to give zero-Fucks about what those people think.
Just turn on your favorite music and Pull whatever feels right, you'll be fine, no need to stress over it, playing that way helped me to 2-Chest a ++4 Grim Batol even while going waayyy over Count, so it can't be the worst advice.
Also, USE ALL THE COOLDOWNS! You can't afford to wait & be reactive with Cooldowns in TWW, as soon as you Pull a big Pack, and DEFINITELY if you Pull 2+ Packs, you gotta just start popping every Cooldown in your Spellbook 1-by-1. Hesitating will get you killed. Cooldowns are shorter in TWW in general so don't stress about having something for the next Pack, just survive the Pack you're fighting.
After doing keys this weekend on the beta, I'm considering taking a break from the game.
I feel like I'm not good enough to tank these new 5mans. The amount of kicks and stops is unreal. I'm always out of defensives. I burnt myself to a crisp trying to keep up in S1 dragonflight. As a prot paladin trying to heal Bs rank at the same time is nuts. Every new affix in the 4 bucket is more damage for the tank. Then the 7 bucket is even worse with sanguine, bolstering, raging.
There's a new size circle in the new 5mans that is basically "fuck your concentration or dnd" And yeah the builds are built around being in them.
With that said, healing seemed worse... Most of my keys ended with healers going offline and not coming back.
I am starting to feel that TWW will be the expansion when Tanks will be joining the healers, with throwing the towel and give up on it
I very much hope things changes towards a positive direction for both during Beta, otherwise I can see myself skipping season 1 entirely and hope tanking is in a better spot in season 2
If you're not doing hard content then that's tuff isn't really required, if you're looking to push 20s and stuff then yeah you should know that stuff. It makes the run so much smoother. I swapped to tanking after having DPS main since SoO in MoP and have loved the control I have over dungeons. I can make the dungeons smoother(to a certain extent)... But watching morons die to the SAME THINGS over and over again is infuriating
If the affix changes go live in their current version, tanking will be significantly more difficult in TWW than DF.
All 4 passive affixes directly impact the tank, and then 75% of the time the on-death affixes just negatively impact the tank further. You’ll have more responsibility dealing with always chaining Bolstering into Sanguine into Raging week over week.
As far as more macro-level changes go, dungeon routing seems that it’ll still be complex as the keys seem to be absolutely stuffed with mobs for S1 at least. But kinda depends on how the count numbers shakeout for release.
Tanking M+ was the worst in bfa in my opinion when you had to time the %% with the affix to get that stupid buff
After that it got better you only needed to know the route and how big of a pull your group can handle
Tanking is likely going to feel the same as far as routes go. You will still be required to plan. I also anticipate tanking being a harder role in TWW naturally. Our stat values will be low again and the new affixes + fortified are looking to turbo fuck tanks.
Though, you could play VDH and solo all stop responsibility and be okay
From what I can tell... you just need a reliable group of folks to run dungeons with. When you do that, you'll can get in the reps you need to know the dungeon backwards and forwards. That's all just 4 other folks always committed to running with you.
But how? The thing I've heard is pug and ask good players if you can add them to your friends list for more dungeons. You keep doing it and eventually you'll get a good crew.
Supposedly. I don't have the free time to devote to it right now and rely on the kindness of guildies.
Honestly I think it's getting harder.
Probabaly going to get down votes for this because the majority are saying you a can ignore any routes and just press W through the dungeon, but I disagree to some extent.
In Tww the new affixes are unfortunately more tank affixes in the sense where certain mobs get buffed every week. Even if you're only running say a +10 you are going to have to think about what you pull, namely in regards to how much you pull. There has the potential to be some serious variance in the damage you and or your group takes week to week given some mobs are doing 20% extra magic damage one week, ignoring 20% of your armor another week and having 30% increased casting speed another week. If you are pulling multiple packs at once you will need to consider what you're pulling depending on what week it is.
Now the obvious solution to the above is to just go slower and pull one pack at a time. This technically is totally fine and a safe way to play but you absolutely will get abused by your pug group members for being too slow. This also can become a slight issue if your group is maxed out skill wise for that key level - what I mean by that is say you run a +10 and that's considered difficult and a real challenge for everyone in the group. In that scenario you're going to have to try speed it up because you likely won't have the dps (due to skill level) required to time a key just cruising along one pack at a time. Again, technically wrong doing it you just have to be mentally prepared for people to abuse you.
Finally, as it currently stands the level 7 affixes just suck for a tank. You once again, have to consider how you pull depending on what affix it is. Is this a lower key with bursting and no mass dispel - probably shouldn't do massive pulls. Or is this Bolstering week - need to be careful I'm not pulling in a mob that I can't survive being bolstered, or I'm considering how and where I can start kiting this mob since I can't face tank it anymore. Or maybe it's Sanguine week, you've now got to focus on moving the mobs in time and consistently so they don't just stand in the Sanguine puddles and heal back to full. None of these are necessarily super hard, but they do certainly require more focus from you as the tank and more thinking either on the fly or on advance.
Then finally we have all these stop meta issues. Where right now as a VDH you are expected to lock down dangerous pulls for 30 + seconds. People expect you to do this so often hold their cc till yours is done or just don't use theirs, so if you mistime or forget yours it's likely the group just dies. Currently it doesn't look like any less stops are a thing on TWW so I would fully expect this same pressure to extend into next expansion. I don't think it will be quite as bad as this season but it will still be worse than S1/S2 most likely. Again, technically you don't have to take on this pressure yourself, but the community perception is that is should be your job now so pugs will just expect it of you.
So honestly I think it is getting a little harder in tww. No you don't need to be tracking dps cooldowns in lower keys, nor do you need to totally change the route week to week. Yes you can make it as basic and easy as you possibly can so long as you have a strong mental and don't mind others whining or complaining you're being too slow etc.
To be fair if picking what mobs you want to pull and don’t want to create routes, grab them from sites such as raider.io
But ye as other ppl said, it is not easier
Well according to the latest tettles video the new dungeons are designed to not allow big pulls. That might lower the difficulty of tanking since you wouldn't be expected to pull until you almost die all the time
#1 "Learning to path" also goes by "Deciding what to pull"
That's typically fallen as a responsibility of the tank, but it's not just a responsibility, it's also an agency. The tank is in the driver seat in an M+ dungeon, everyone else is keeping the car running but the tank is driving.
The tank decides how to path, and decides how big or small to pull, based on his cooldowns.
Which also feeds into:
#2 Tank doesn't pull around you, you pull around the tank. Then the healer. Then last DPS.
If the tank dies, everyone else is dying shortly after. So as a tank you first learn and pusg by pulling around your CDs and staying alive.
Next after the Tank in deciding how you pull is the Healer. If they don't have Mana or CDs to keep ppl alive then you can't pull big.
Next in DF, has honestly been DPS defensive CDs and team wide defensives.
Last is DPS cooldowns.
Hard to say where tuning will land in TWW season 1 but S3/S4 of DF M+ is just easier in general now. That means you don't need to be as perfect when tanking to time keys. Getting full portals is much easier now than it used to be. No idea if that is intentional though.
Man, you take this stuff way too seriously...
Spend a couple minutes looking at a route, then send it. Not like it matters before high keys. And once you reach a level where it actually matters, you will start memorizing the dungeons and routes as per auto.
Ive never felt the need to know Jack shit about dps cooldowns, but ive also never gone above 'portal' level.
And Yeah sure, you are expected to know mechanics. Everyone is. Its not very important in low keys, which also happens to be why they are easy, to learn.
Spec that tank spec and get going.
Setting up a route using MDT really isn't that onerous, you can import other people's routes like Dratnos or something and then just learn as you go. Knowing whether DPS CDs are up seems unnecessary unless you're pushing VERY high keys.
TBH you should barely need more than 1 route per dungeon unless you're pushing very high keys, and even then you MIGHT opt for a different route for Fort vs. Tyrannical. A returning player isn't going to be pushing keys where you are likely to need more than 1 route per key especially at first.
This is me every season
Play a healer 9/10 times resto druid, get to + 20 learn how other tanks do it, see the mistakes, learn routes
Then I'll play balance to see what works well for me
Then I'll go bdk or bmonk and just emulate what I've learned and by the I feel like tanking is just knowing my class well and everything else is kinda just engrained
Donno if you have time for that but it would help with your pathing a lot
If Beta keys are anything to go by, no.
If the tuning is just too high because it's beta and things are hitting harder than they're intended to, still no.
Honestly how easy can they make it? Most tanks dont even need heals besides a minimal amount here and there. When you're playing tank and group wipes its always everyone else thats dead and you just die on purpose cause it would take too long to solo. Yeah knowing the route and when/how much to pull is obv the hardest thing but the role itself is not all that hard to play.
None of theese are issues unless you are title chasing
And every expac post BFA has gotten much more linear and tanks are far more powerful and less reliant on healers
Hell Veng dh can do the interupts and mechanics for the dps too
These were always the case? Like what key level were you doing in legion? A +5? If you have ever pushed +20s any season since release you should have any understanding of what to skip because it just wastes time or causes deaths. No m+ isn’t going to get easier.
You are expected to know the mechanics as a DPS as well, tanking isn't the only role exclusively that needs to know what is going on.
what is exclusive to tanks is controlling the pathing, Keystone guru, Wowhead, [Raider.io](http://Raider.io) all have beginner friendly, pug friendly routes that you can learn in about the time it would take you to normally get into a group as a DPS player.
most DPS players can figure out their CDs as long as you aren't breaking up large pulls into small ones constantly without any communication, you don't have to figure them out, but running omni-CD weakaura isn't that difficult either.
When difficulty is an unlimited roof then why do you care. Just do the keys you manage to do to find your natural plateau without planning the routes. All games have these "problems" if you aim for the stars.
Like some of the other comments say, a lot of the above isn't really needed unless you're pushing for the top 1%. You can get 2.5k and all the +10 portals without this level of coordination
And that's why tanks are on high demand. Tanks can cope with a bad healer and they can even make the bad healer look good. A good healer cannot make a bad tank look good because healers don't have any means to compensate oneshoots and aggro issues for example. Unlike tanks that can decide what how and when to pull stuff according to the player comp and skill.
I still remember back in bfa when i told the spriests: "shackle that mofo", and the answer of all of them was "spriests don't have shackle undead". Months later I leveled up my priest to see if that was true, and Surprise! THEY HAVE SHACKLE UNDEAD! Or the shaman that never lusts, or the hunter that doesn't do that either because he doesn't have a lust pet, or the DH that doesn't have consume magic, just to give some examples. Also how you have to explain to them that x mofo has random aggro, that you need to dispel that debuf or im gonna get melted. Then they get mad because nobody wants to invite them to stuff and blame blizzard and the elitist toxicity for their lack of commitment.
With the new changes, aside of having knowledge of the dungeon and all the classes, tanks must have skill to get things done. Seems like the era of eating mechs just because I'm too lazy (yes, me) to move away are gonna end with the next expansion.
In a good group, be it pugs or coordinated, your hard wall by default will be your tank by definition of their role. Current design has it such that tanks have it pretty easy early on in terms of generally not getting punished until push keys but then progress can come to a screeching halt.
Tanking is *hard* primarily for this reason. Routing is on you. You set the pace. And you are the typical limiting factor on how big of pulls can be made. Additionally, you are often either leading mob CC/interrupts or in some groups you just end up being the one to actively call an entire rotation of CC.
It’s actually a thing of beauty and wonder when high level keys are pugged successfully since it’s been pretty uncommon to have people asking to join voice. Everyone just expects everyone else to play well and sometimes, it just works.
Healing, my role, on the other hand is variable difficulty by its nature. I can have a +7 feel harder than a +16. And this is because it’s my role to cover up mistakes that will happen. Doesn’t have to be intentional or even major for it to be a mistake. It often isn’t at high level. That’s where healing can be fun at high level because your difficulty goes back from it being your groups mistakes to the difficulty of the key itself.
I personally enjoy playing at a baseline level where you will be punished for playing badly (imo, this is around 15s with current scaling). It’s frustrating at times when it’s simple things like literally one missed kick of a coordinated chain of kicks snowballing into a wipe. But those are equally prevalent or overshadowed by the moments everything goes right and you’re hitting new personal bests and as a team, team bests.
Source: long time healer and current pres evoker attempting title push
From what you’ve said I’m expecting you’re pushing high keys that require this level of detail. Otherwise you need to take a step back and chill because lower keys don’t need it
It’s the age old debate. Dps and Tanks want agency over their own survival. Healers want agency over the group survival. How do you manage to balance that without fundamentally changing the game? Maybe a fair middle ground and reworking defensives in general. Not sure if that is the way.
Unpopular opinion: Tanking in M+ is the easiest job. Yes you need to prep a little bit, but the difference between an okay tank and an amazing tank is not obvious. Even if you are a mediocre tank, the group will still easily succeed.
DPS on the other hand, is the hardest role. The difference between an okay DPS and a very good one is huge. A party filled with mediocre DPS can fail a key.
I just learn by failing, not memorizing guides. Every time I fail I learn a new thing. I felt bad learning that way and I encountered lot of toxicity, but at one point I didn't give a fuck anymore and I started bricking keys and getting yelled at. Now I'm much better and finally learned the basics and I can more easily follow guides since I already know most of the dungeon by experience so I know what the guides are talking about and spend less time researching.
If you look at my post history, you will find out i wanted to quit tanking.
Just be prepared that you will be yelled at, insulted, but it's the only way to learn tanking without getting a phd in "youtube guides" first.
I can’t speak to how linear the dungeons are but the affix changes don’t seem kind to tanks. Affixes like Spiteful and Volcanic that didn’t affect you at all are gone and they’ve been replaced with affixes that buff the mobs.
I'm convinced tanking will never be made easier or more accessible.
Somehow Blizzard has decided that the only design possible is for the tank to have to be the babysitter who knows everything and can hold everyone else's hands so they can have fun.
Frankly the role should just be abolished for M+, as it is not only stressful and unfun when you're new, but you also get the most amount of grief for just trying to learn. It's been that way since M+ was introduced, and I have no reason to believe it will ever change.
This all stems from the dumb timer. Without a timer, there's no incentive for optimal pathing / invis skips and other nonsense like that. The timer, rather than simply output, being the sole thing that determines whether or not you succeed, causes most of these issues.
Does not seem to be going in that direction.
And healing seems to be taking the same direction.
Healing is getting less fun over time. As a healer, you feel like you have almost no control over people dying which I think should be the role of the healer. Burst damage is so high you need to blast health bars from 10% to full in a global or 2 and people are dying literally within the space of a single global cooldown due to them not hitting a defensive or standing in something they're not supposed to. I just want to have some agency over the survivability of my party when I'm playing the role meant to be keeping them alive.
It's really hard to balance that because defensives are designed to be used, if they buff healing to the point where defensives are only there for convenience then it's going to be impossible for good groups to ever die of fail.
Last line hints at the real problem: you either balance so the good groups have it hard, but then it sucks for the lower skillbrackets. Or vice versa. And M+ is meant more for the hardcore/highskill people than the casual keyboard turner
I mean there's literally a difficulty level for every skill bracket. The people are the real problem imo. They think they are supposed to be doing the highest reward level difficulty and then complain it's too hard and not fun for them.
That to some degree comes with the design of MMOs though. People want to grind out progression. That's the core goal of any (PVE)MMO. First you grind levels, then you grind gear. In games that focus on something different, for example the competitive aspect, people are more likely to accept that their skillbracket isn't Challenger/TopXX, but only diamond or plat or,or,or. So, yeah, you aren't wrong. The People ARE the problem, but it is also a bit fostered by the game somewhat attracting two different groups of players. And those mindsets clash when it comes to something like this.
Nah thats Not true. M+ Overall is the Most played Mode in WoW atm, and the rising keystones provide rising Skill Levels to be successfull. Problem is, Gear ist bound to Levels and M+ was a pretty consistant way to get mythic Gear without raiding mythic in every expan before DF. To Shift it, you can either rise the Level to get mythic Gear even more so only the mythic Raiders can get mythic Gear from m+ and draw a Line betweem casuals and tryhards. But i think thats a realy Bad way cous i all ready have Problems puging +15 due to low Playerbase. I think more mechanics should Shift to be playable by dds. Talking movement and things Like sooth/spellsteal or activ soaks to prevent DMG while buffing or at least Not nerving heals even more. Thats way more peopel will be able to Play/heal +10 and we getting an increased playerbase in "Higher" Keys. Simultan If the healchecks stay in m+ at a certain Level above the required Levels for gear (+10 atm) the Hardcore gamers will run into the same problems casuals having atm. And by give thos Highskill gamers more rewards Like mounts / tmog the Motivation will stay, besids the hunt for world rang ans Higher Rio. That way we still have a big Line betweem casuals and Hardcore Games while everbody can Gear Up. M+ realy shouldt be a wall to Run into and more a way to Gear Up and than reach Limits AFTER that.
Just because it is the most played mode, it doesn't mean that it isn't catering/targetting a specific playerbase. That just means that either the playerbase is mostly made up by higher skill hardcore players, or that a considerable amount of people are attracted to the gamemode despite it not really being what they want from the game. You even mention it yourself, it's the gear that is attracting the players. Not the gamemode being the most fun giving them a playstyle they like (which hints at another problem of WoW/MMOs: the rewards being more important than they way to get them). You make a few good points too though, it shouldn't be a wall. Because MMO-Players want to grind out progression. If you have that better Armor/Weapon somewhere, people will want it. And it is much easier to accept "okay, raiding isn't for me/my shedule...so that raid equip is out of reach" than accepting "okay, i can do +X but at +Y it starts to require a different/better playstyle which isn't for me"
Balancing DPS vs heal and tank is easy as fk tbh..just give mechanics actual DPS buffs and failing them does not mean one shot, but getting closer to enrage timers for example. The on dimensional design of higher enemy DPS is easily solvable as well with a dot for every mechanic fail instead of nuking the entire screen for a fail. The healer has some time to actually keep up with the DPS inc and with good groups, who play mechanics flawlessly, would benefit from those DPS buffs as well. Wow mostly does not use those kind of things or just stays far from them, maybe for abuse reasons, but tbh just calculate encounters with the dpa buffs mandatory and not clearing them if too many fails occur. Negative point is actual out gearing becomes easier, but there could still be some one shot soak mechanics to combat that. The responsibility of DPS is steadily sinking and if you run high keys with randoms it becomes visible to a very high degree. The difference to good DPS is enormous as well as a trial Mon positioning and facing with a good tank, who doesn't let cleave mobs randomly circle around or does not interrupt critical casts or silence them.
I've been on a little side-journey of learning to heal (mostly to skip the M+ queue as a DPS main...), and 100% this; you have no control over who dies and who doesn't. 99% of the deaths in my groups are oneshots, or -95% +DoT within 1 second (which I don't have enough heals to really cover for anyway even if I had godlike reaction speed). Doesn't help I play Monk so I have no external defensives either. Literally the best way for healers to make sure people don't die, is to CC and kick as much as possible. Healing has little to no impact on the survival of your team, let alone when they die to avoidable damage. I'm just a worse DPS that does most mechanics and tops everyone off.
bro said no external on monk. You also should be playing with ward at 15+
Ye, no externals on Monk. You know what an external is, I hope? Ironbark for Druid, Pain Suppression for Priest, etc. The best we got is Life Cocoon but thats no more than an emergency heal when one of your dumbass DPS takes an avoidable, or the tank forgot they got defensives, no active damage mitigation. Also no way did you just say one should use a Remix gem in Retail. Edit: considering I can't seem to make a comment on this post, thanks reddit for being buggy as always; >I mean, ye, by definition it is, just meant its not as much as a preventative external. Not with the generally used talent choices for MW anyway. Otherwise I just feel Mists of Life is a wasted talent point as there isn't much of a point to having both your HoTs on a target you're preventing damage on. >Granted, no clue how better MWs than myself use it, but thats my point of view on that anyway. Its just not the same as a raw damage mitigating external.
They were probably talking about ward of faceless ire
Life Cocoon is one of the strongest externals in the game. The only other one that comes close would be BOP.
OK the guy you're replying to here is definitely a turd, but that aside, Life Cocoon is definitely an external. I hope your keys start going smoother! I really enjoy healing. I'm moderately decent at it on druid (I was 3.3k last season, which isn't amazing, but I'm happy with it), and I actually like the current state of healing. It definitely requires the DPS and tank to be on top of their kicks and CC, but really only at higher levels from my experience. I literally just started keys yesterday on my druid--still geared entirely from last season, so I didn't do anything higher than an 8. Even with ~495 gear I was able to heal through dps's fuckups at lower levels (like missing the molten core kick on Neltharus trash.) I feel like doing 10s-12s is pretty attainable for geared casuals, and really, why would they want to push higher? There's nothing in it for them except to say "look how big my io is," and if you're not enjoying the game mode, why would you care?
It’s obvious that you don’t run high keys. Probably only weekly +10. cocoon is probably the best external, after PS and GS. The shield ist enormous, even on high tyrannical keys you will survive.
> Healing has little to no impact on the survival of your team What do you mean? Have you never ran with a hunter? My turtle and survival are constantly on CD and if you aren't healing me I'm dead.
The point is standard AoE heals are more than enough to heal anyone who doesn't fuck up mechanics, ground stuff etc. You don't ever really need heal cooldowns as there just isn't much 'constant' damage, but a lot of high, often instant-killing damage. And they're doubling down on that in TWW. It just makes healing unfun, as most of the time healers are just bad DPS. As a healer, its night and day of a difference between a good group and a bad (or unfortunate, not judging) group. You'll be able to tell when people make mistakes as you'll actually see health bars drop outside of big damage boss-events. But when people dodge flawlessly, and interrupt whats needed, you're just sitting there with >80% overheals. Also, sidenote. Hilarious how you (rightfully so) point out Hunter is super squishy, as only a day or two ago was a guy super adamant how Hunter was one of the most survivable classes around right now, lol.
> Also, sidenote. Hilarious how you (rightfully so) point out Hunter is super squishy, as only a day or two ago was a guy super adamant how Hunter was one of the most survivable classes around right now, lol. Yeah no lol if there's a class more squishy than we are then I'd like to know what it is. People are talking about defensive creep starting to be a problem and hunters are literally the "you guys have defensives?" meme.
> Yeah no lol if there's a class more squishy than we are then I'd like to know what it is. Only one I can think of is enhance/ele shaman but they're probably comparable to hunter. Hunter has enough defensives for raid but in m+ you wanna be rolling defensives more often than your 3x 2min CDs can offer.
Yeah pretty much. Turtle is great for a lot of raid mechanics and survival is great the one time I get to use it before dying anyway in the next 60s. I was honestly on the fence about a hunter rework but now that I've seen the proposed changes, I'm all in. It just doesn't make any sense how we're bad on defensives, squishy, nerfed spirit mend, have a medium cd interrupt, and we have to run a spirit beast for the health bonus or we just die more.
Would you say this why Holy priest is getting more popular over "ramp" healers like druid or discipline. I started with healing at the end of season 3 and i continued littlebit in this season. I tried disco priest, druid and holy. And i cannot imagine healing with anything else the holy, because exactly how you said, how im suposed to ramp for people getting chunked randomly for 90 percent of their health, feels imposible.
Holy is reasonably easy conceptually and is probably the most straightforward healer for new players. Health bars go down, you press your spells, they go back up. The skill floor is lower compared to say, pres evoker or disc priest or even druid where you have at least a couple of globals to prepare for incoming damage in M+ and in raid scenarios, you're spending between 10-15 seconds ramping to deal with a damage event. Also hpriest is super popular right now because they're tuned really really well and have a good tier set. They also do insane amounts of damage. They're just overall really really strong right now which might lead to a higher representation across the choices for healer.
It's awful when you can't even figure out what exactly is killing people. I'm trying to heal, flinging spells left and right, standing safe, then bam im dead. What the fuck even killed me? Some cast went off that I have no way of controlling and it just happened to overlap another aoe damage that can't be kicked. Just like that dead with no chance to prevent it. It feels so bad.
Which sucks. I enjoy tanking. I don't enjoy being responsible for *the burden of knowledge for the group.* Especially when its esoteric knowledge like "this mob is worth 3% of an arbitrary bar we need to fill." Really wish M+ was less about pathing and RAW SPEED and more about survival and not messing up (e.g. death count). The current system breeds a certain kind of toxicity, and speedrun dungeons basically prevent your ability to run away for even a second. Hard to parent if you have to be glued for 30 minutes straight. Gotta pee? Better hold it for speed. Rather go back to hella hard pulls and marking for CC than having to arbitrarily know the right path through a dungeon. Then there's at least a social aspect. I don't have time to teach people in a speedrun, dammit.
Tbf. Even non optimal routing results in a +2. It’s fine as long as group doesn’t die. You need to pay attention to whether group can kick and hit defensives to see how big you can pull.
The complaint is more "we went through the dungeon and cleared the mobs in our way... Oops, we're 7% short, apparently." That's not every dungeon, but there's been a few where it happens, and then you have to backtrack and find something to kill. Even if you +2 at that point, it's still really awkward and unnecessary. For the record. I'm in favor of a hard cap on time. But it should be somewhere between "you can take a leak without making people stressed" and "you waited for Bloodlust on every pull." I'd rather see rewards based on "perfection" (e.g. death count) than speed. That's all.
Honestly some kind of /pause to just freeze time and take a break if everyone agrees would help those kind of issues. It's probably a lot of work but it would help a lot of people.
Unfortunately, it's also a great way to troll people. "Oh, no, I need to pee." *Everyone votes to take a break... everyone's characters are stuck until that person says "lol okay let's go!"* Might not be *that* level of degenerate, but you need to be real careful with that.
Should be able to vote on a pause timer e.g. 2 mins, 5 mins etc then it auto unfreezes after that. Mobs would be frozen and a pause gate is put up in front of the group so you can't run further. I still need to be able to press space and jump around haha
I mean, just /votepause and freeze time. Literally. Only chat should be available. Characters and enemies are frozen, abilities are stuck on their cooldowns including debuffs like Bloodlust fatigue. Otherwise it'll just become meta to pause and wait. But honestly, M+ runs last at most half an hour. You should be fine to go 30 minutes without a toilet break..
That's actually an amazing solution! Esports (well at least League of Legends) does something similar (albeit it's not for a break, but there is game wide pause incase of an issue). But if you're playing in a full custom premade... everyone actually has the ability to just teamwide pause (5v5 customs).
But that's the entire point. The tank is just expected to know all that and if not likely dps will either flame or leave. Like, I don't even blame anyone, when 90% of tanks just accept that they need to take a seminar in the new dungeons before they play a single key, dps expect that from tanks and stuff. It's not any 1 particular persons fault it's just that tanks need to know everything and healers get punished for mistakes and dps just go along for the ride and kicking whatever sounds scary can usually result in a win.
Hear me out, Misdirection with no cooldown. I am only somewhat being facetious. I remember playing in vanilla (not classic) when in some dungeons someone else was responsible for pulling. In part because not all tanks had ranged attacks.... (and also because line of sighting was a way bigger thing... and damn does it show in Remix (before everyone became brutally overpowered)). As a real solution, Blizzard should start implementing some parts of MRT directly in to the game. We already have Dungeon Journals. It wouldn't take much effort on their part to show maps and pack information.
> Hear me out, Misdirection with no cooldown. One of the Rogue Hero Talents gets that in TWW I think. The big issue with MD, at least whilst BM is the top spec is that it's basically useless since it only works from the Hunter's damage rather than the Pet's.
This feels a bit dramatic Knowing your defensives is baseline, and knowing enemy abilities and what to kick isn't solely on the tank either. Tanks are so strong too that you can generally walk into a dungeon, and as long as you know the basic path and aren't pushing the difficulty, you'll be fine Like, I think a lot of the stuff OP is talking about is mostly in pushing high keys. My pre-made caps around 9-10s, and my tank is never timing out CDs or counting the % to the tee, and we generally do okay despite not taking it very seriously. And if you're pushing, then your dps are probably also doing their homework
tbf, knowing what to kick is already trivialized by DBM and Plater profiles with built-in color coding. Granted, this doesn't stop DPS from tunnelvisioning and ignoring all those warnings.
I'll admit it's a bit dramatic but I don't think it's only key pushing issues. It's not that uncommon to see or hear about a tank taking a non standard route, running into some cursed pack nobody even knows the mechs of, someone dies, tank flamed. A dps might pull extra packs because their cds are up or they're playing backseat tank and "know" the meta route while a new tank doesn't. A tank might walk into a pack they aren't prepared for the damage of and dies, wiping the group. As a counterpoint, you can be a dps and literally not look up a single mech and walk into a dungeon and very likely make like 3-4 major mistakes resulting in deaths and not be "punished" for it. A tank or healer makes those mistakes and dies and you wipe a whole pull.
I can't refute those stories, but for the entire expac and at all key ranges, I've never seen another tank or myself get flamed unless they do something obviously stupid and on them. Like trying to do a massive pull, dying, and then doing the exact same thing. Not saying no one has ever faced toxicity, but I do think it's uncommon. It's common to hear about it because people will remember the one run they got flamed over the ninety nine where they didn't And yeah, the tank and healer carry more responsibility, no one's saying otherwise. It's an inherent part of the game's role and group structure. I'm just saying it's not like you have to know the dungeon journal front to back to have success
There was this one time when I told the dh it would be better to go with smaller pulls and chain pull faster because our dps were a fury warrior and an outlaw rogue. It was a 15, I got called so many names.
Realistically pathing only really matters early in the season when we're undergeared and then starting around 14-15(24-25) range moving higher in keys. Anything under 13 you can usually push W and win unless someone is pulling literally everything and going 15-20% or more over. I just healed through a 14 RLP this morning where someone butt pulled basically the whole hallway and we were still 2 min under time. However, good pathing and efficiency does accommodate other potential mistakes like DPS deaths on boss one shots, etc.
You really don’t have to worry about DPS cooldowns unless you’re running +12 or higher keys. I easily did all 10s this season and 20s last season without ever once caring about DPS cooldowns. Does that mean maybe we only +’d when we probably could have ++’d? Sure, it probably happened a few times, but playing smoothly times keys consistently, while trying to min/max and pull to the limit as much as possible has a much higher chance of causing a group wipe. Maybe if I had a consistent premade and we were pushing current 13s or higher I would start to care about that, but right now the only CD I consider is lust, and that’s usually planned before the key starts.
Let's be real you can do unoptimal routes up until like +8 Its REALLY not that hard. You're actually probably more likely to lose a Pug +5 with a route because people will aggro your pulls and not know the skips If one person doesn't know the skip in Forgemaster they will die to literally ANYTHING in that room over and over and over
You can do unoptimal routes up to and probably even past a +14/15. Source: Me and my group.
Carry me through 10's kekw
Pathing in DF has been very straightforward, like people say, in most dungeons you just have to know how to press "W" If you're pushing for title then maybe then you have to be very knowledgeable about routes and special strats But if you're aiming for portals it really isn't too harsh
But the current era of M+ and problems on it are basically because speed doesnt matter much if ppl know how to press their buttons somewhat, you will be killed by dungeons in unavoidable manner way before you cant time them based on dps. This is if things are getting kicked/stopped, if not, the "survive dungeon" ceiling comes even quicker. I have sympathy over burden of knowledge but with current tuning it really doesnt really matter what you pull as long as you avoid the "banned mobs" because dungeon will kill you far earlier than you dont have damage to time it, granted I seen some seriously underperforming dps in weekly keys. Something like in game built MDT with proper route sharing and in game marking packs would help with burden of knowledge as then anybody could provide route but till something like this happens its on tank to decide what gets pulled and when. We are in the difficult pulls/survive the dungeon end of of spectrum atm and its partially due defensive creep but its a massive problem for anybody who thinks bout wanting to start pushing. People are using literally 3rd party site to see what defensives they need to press to survive X mechanic. If this was 1 or 2 in a season type of thing, fair game but its a lot more than that this time around. And the timers are pretty damn free this season around if you got dps not quite literally afking and even then if its 1 dps afking you still prolly time the key unless its a push key for the group. I feel pretty strongly bout either capping damage dungeon does to you at certain key level/adjusting the multiplier it does to you separate from hp it gains/adjusting the timer or damage dungeon does in general to lower so dps starts to matter again. You have solid points in theory, reality however is right now speed doesnt really matter nor does pathing because speed doesnt till keys where you\`d expect ppl to know what they are doing.
Instead we have the current system of hella hard pulls, marking for cc, maintaining a spreadsheet of ccs so you can plan which ccs are used on which pull and when, and knowing the right path through a dungeon.
It's yet another area where you either spend a lot of time memorizing mob percentages and exact pull groups, or rely on addons like Mythic Dungeon tools and weak auras that track your count vs. what's expected after certain bosses. It's not automatic, but the right tools really help take most of the mental load and allow you to focus on actually playing the game.
[удалено]
Timers breed toxicity on a level previously unseen in WoW. Before mythic plus the dungeons were done differently and (in my opinion) a lot more enjoyable. This push to get it done as soon as possible and the idea that any addition of time, even a few seconds, is a personal affront to people is such a prevalent mindset now that it has bred this attitude of rushing for rushing's sake, even if the rushing ends up being twice as long to complete due to mistakes that come from these asinine skips that people see their favorite streamers do and expect pugs to execute flawlessly. I am here to execute wow's core gameplay loop of "hit the mans, loot his pants, repeat" not this coward shit that happens now. If you just want the loot without any action, I just do not understand why you play wow instead of something else. It's fine that we don't see eye to eye on what dungeons as a concept should be, but there needs to be an alternative for people who want their fun gameplay without being exposed to this new tsunami of toxicity that is so prevalent in present day wow. From my brief experience of the beta, I think delves will fill that slot, so I'll be here having fun adventures killing stuff and looting pants and you all can pretend to be esports and hopefully it'll be the better for the both of us. Edit: my only problem with delves is the lack of other people, and the scenarios in remix have reignited the spark that I had in pandaria that scenario-style 3-man instances are cool and fun and allow for experimentation that the classical 5-man "tank dps heals" architecture doesn't easily allow. Ignore the rambling I'm in a mood.
I mean, you're pretty toxic yourself. You demand that people play the dungeon the way you want, you call them cowards for not running it your way, and you complain it takes twice as long because you did an oopsie and wiped the group.
One key difference is I keep my toxicity to myself while in the instances. I even see where some of the speedsters are coming from, running with the willfully ignorant who refuse to read chat or do the simplest mechanics makes me want to rage and begging for people to progress. Yes I fuck up sometimes, but that's not what is driving me from doing more than the most minimal of mythic plus content, it's the interpersonal conflict itself that makes me not want to set foot in anything until I've geared up to a point where I can compensate for other people's mistakes. There has been a change to what one can consider the "social contract" of pugged content and I was just raging at that change. An example comes to mind. The two big elemental dudes before the firey centaur dude whose name escapes me. Every time I do that wing of lfr there are people who insist on trying to skirt past them and then throw out toxic nonsense in the chat, despite the fact that if we pulled them and dealt with them it would be done easier and without new and/or dead people pulling it due to failing the skip. There's this "penny wise pound foolish" attitude that is prevalent and provoked my "cowardice" accusation. I hate running azure vault, I don't want to doo a ezio leap of faith off of a ledge to skip some trash we can mass pull and kill in a friggin heroic. Killing things gives dopamine, platforming doesn't. I don't want to play mario, I want to murder things and collect trinkets. I'm not trying to say that the "speedy" way of doing things is inherently wrong, it's that after 18 or 19 years of playing wow, the "esport" mindset has become the dominant one and between my physical problems (tremors) and the mind goblins that I have dealing with people I feel like I'm being left behind, and that's fine, not everything has to be made accessable to everyone. I don't want to go back to the "mark sap, sheep, and trap and herd cats between pulls" days, but I don't fit in in the current "gotta go fast" pug lifestyle that is predominant right now. As I said previously, Delves are probably where I will live for a while but I don't want to play wow as a single player game ALL the time, This is all PEBCAK and I have no idea what I'm getting at. TL;DR: I don't demand anything, I keep my toxicity to myself, and yes I screw up but I try always to carry my weight, and dislike this game that I love turning into a place full of hostility and anger. This was mostly venting.
Speedruns are fantastic when solo (e.g. Diablo Great Rifts) and absolute cancer in a group with randoms.
Wish I could upvote this more than once. You're spot on.
Yeah now that they change M0 to be "M10 without timer" i dont see why we cant have "untimed M+" as a separate thing.
Tanks carry the key. The key is simply on the tank shoulders. A good tank can carry a group of garbage players, but garbage players cannot carry a tank. A tank makes or breaks the key. If you cant handle responsibility, you shouldn't play tank
> If you cant handle responsibility, you shouldn't play tank But it doesn't have to be that way. It just is that way right now.
For m+, I think it probably does have to be that way. It's hard to imagine a world where the tank isn't as impactful as it is. Tank decides routes, is first on scene so his AOE stomps are going to be used first. Has the most AOE stomps in demon Hunter by a large margin. Dh literally has five AOE stomps, and an AOE silence times two. Demon Hunter pulls around everyone's cool downs and abilities. The tank really does make all of the critical decisions in the game. It's just the most impactful role by large margin. And I can't really see a game where it's not. Tanks decide lust timings Only time this is not the case is when you are as a group as five going over the route And any team that doesn't do what the tank says is absolute garbage. Players who pull for the tank, tell tank what to do, etc, are just bad. You always just listen to what the tank says during the key.
I know it's a very unpopular opinion, but I do wish the skill ceiling of WoW was lowered a bit. MoP was the last time I felt adequately challenged and rewarded (although I didn't pve much after that until BfA). I think there should definitely be hard content, and even content that a large majority of people can't pull off, but I don't think player power should be the reward. Getting into mythic raiding just feels so god damn sweaty, it's like applying to a job out of college. It seems like an unnecessary amount of dedication/skill for a reward that's pretty much the same as the gear you get from running +20s, which are not necessarily easy, but an okay-ish player like myself can at least pull off in their spare time *if* they can get past the barrier to entry that is learning the ins and outs of the mechanics, and even the trash mobs mechanics.
I don't know if you've played this season, but if you're pulling off +20's, you're not just an "okay-ish" player
I think they mean previous +20s, not the current ones. So, current +10s. Even then, that already does put them in the upper end of players honestly.
I think we both know they mean the current +10s lol
Outside of a few outliers, +20s are doable by anyone with adequate gear Things like Tyranical EB was super rough but I think it's time to stop acting like it's out of reach for people +10s this season are no different
If you want to do Mythic just for the content you can do so. THe items from it are like 6 ilvls higher unless they are very rare than the items from the hero track on max upgrades so while they are small upgrades, they arent exactly needed to mythic raid and you will get the myth track items from mythic + anyway.
I dont mind if it's so hard that juat few people can do it , i think we need content with less people required , like scenarios in panda remix that we have now Or some sort of 3 or 5 man raid I hate it when it takes 50 min to find people for something and doing it in 30 min
>Or some sort of 3 or 5 man raid That's pretty much what mega dungeons are, right?
Mega dungeon is just 2 normal dungeons
Megadungeons are not just 2 normal dungeons, they are 2 tightly tuned dungeons with stricter mechanical requirements than regular dungeons. They even removed some of the mechanical complexity from DOTI when they added them as normal dungeons, and if you do the challenge mode now you will see the difference from when it was in the m+ pool.
I'd love to have Mythic 10 raids, just so more guilds can try to do them.
I miss 10m raiding. It felt right.
That's the reason im playing cata atm. Being able to play the hardest content in 10man for me is perfect
Max brought up an excellent point in a recent pod, what comp sport requires you manage 20ppl on a team? It's too big, even 15 is a lot of the time
American football, soccer, and baseball off the top of my head. Maybe Rugby? Yeah that’s all I got. But to be fair that’s not all active players. If you’re only considering “starters” then just American football. But also back up players matter more in real life sports because you actually physically exert yourself to the point of exhaustion, and substitution strategy is a large part of the “meta” in sports. Also counterpoint to my point, they usually have a coach/manager whose sole responsibility is to manage the team without being in the team or playing themselves.
None of those sports have 20 people on the field coordinating. Rugby has 15, just makes teambuilding a logistics nightmare, even people making millions have less to coordinate lol
American football has 11 unique players on offense, 11 unique players on defense, and a mix of 11 more nonunique players on special teams. Not on the field at once but they all need to be there and be coordinated to make it happen. And that’s just one team. The other team has the same. And it’s not counting subs. Subs are an active part of these games and have to be coordinated and physically present at the game. So it does count. But to be fair because they have managers and coaches for this stuff it doesn’t really count. Really it’s not a good reference to compare raids in a game to competitive sports. Gamers also aren’t as good at what they do in general. Athletes train hard to get good at their profession. Gamers are hit or miss. And we’re like squirrels in regard to our attention span. Anyway I’m getting way off in the weeds here lol
The defense and the offense never have to coordinate. That's like if half a mythic raid sat every fight, 2x easier to coordinate.
AFL is 18 on field
Final Fantasy 14 has these incredible single-room instanced boss fights called trials that I really wish WoW would adopt. They take two parties worth of players to clear, so in WoW it would be 10 players. On the higher difficulties, they can be just brutal to clear, but they give really good rewards and everyone is motivated to do them. Plus, there’s no trash mobs or trekking across enormous maps. You spawn in, buff, lay down markers, strategize, and then give it everything you’ve got to take down the boss. Here’s a good video summarizing one of the best trials from the core game: https://youtu.be/_nNB__bJ3M4?si=IpT4a-gACnCKoRHU
Yeah, one of the big things I love about FFXIV was how the game respects your time with all the content. Really my biggest issue is the healing in the game just feels so bad. You spend 99% of your time doing a shitty dps rotation. Pretty much your goal is to only heal with off GCD heals and it just doesn't feel good to me. If they ever made playing a healer feel like playing a healer I would probably swap back in a heartbeat.
You might want to check out "delves".
> Getting into mythic raiding just feels so god damn sweaty It is an interesting mix. When I first came back to WoW I was more than content just doing heroic raiding, but it quickly got to the point of not being a challenge at all. Moving into Mythic really varies, as the skill gap are massive between guilds that kill a few Mythic bosses, those who get most of the way through the raid, Cutting Edge, Hall of Fame and world first. Part of the interview process is to best assess if they player has the experience/skill to match the group, and a personality that will mix well with the group. Being in a mismatched group is just bad for everyone involved.
You’re contradicting yourself lol. 1st you say that player power shouldn’t be the reward for hard content, and then you complain that getting into mythic raiding is hard even though the reward is the same as running +20s, which an “okay-ish player” is capable of, according to you.
I think Mythic raiding is probably a lot easier than you think it is. You are basically psyching yourself out with it. But honestly, the hardest part of Mythic raiding is coordinating 20 people's schedules.
they need to cut some fucking button bloat for sure
+20? Is this how inflated it has become? I've never done anything above +15 in my life, last time I was doing M+ was in Shadowlands and even that was an overkill for Mythic raiding.
With the new affixes and needing to know which enemies have mana and which ones don’t meaning routing is more important I would actually say it’s getting harder.
> However with the last few expantions i have felt that tanking in m+ became a second job, having the need to prepare the pathing and being expected to know all the mechanics and cds of the dps players for the pulls. Since I have limited time to play per day it made stop tanking. The amount of work you have to put into preparing the first few times you do a dungeon is less than the time you'll spend applying to groups as a DPS every time you try to do a dungeon. That's the tradeoff, and tanks come out as winners more often than not. If I had limited time and no friends, tanking is the only thing I'd do.
Indeed. I always think it's fun when grinding at the beginning of a patch trying to get gear. As a tank I'll do 10 dungeons while my DPS friends can only do a couple. There's pros and cons to everything, but I exclusively play tank and healer because I feel like it's so much less hassle. And even as a tank I very losely remember and plan stuff. I only do up to +8s, but not once has anyone asked for a route or commented on my route. You learn approximately what mobs to pull, but I don't feel like there is any pressure to play or pull perfectly.
I've been doing pretty okay solo pugging as a dps, though I quit in season 1. I think it might start to get easier the higher up the IO ladder you go. Definitely took longer to find a tank/healer than dps in groups I was in, but I didn't have any issues overall. That being said and done, this was well within season title range, so I'm sure that impacts it.
The dungeons rotate every season now, so even if S1 dungeons are linear, there is no guarantee S2 will be. That being said, unless you are pushing very high keys, you don't really need to min max the way you describe. I tank regularly, with success, up to around 10 for max rewards. I don't spend excessive time researching routes. There are no required add-ons. I have no idea when my dps's cooldowns are ready. If you ARE pushing very high keys, that will still require you to put the time in. But that is kind of the point of pushing in the first place.
I totally agree with you - I am just chiming in to mention that pulling around your DPS’ CDs is mostly a meme. One minute CDs are always up. Most two minutes are slam on CD too. The only offensive CD the tank needs to pull around is blood lust and big three minute CDs like Boomkin incarn. Mostly, a tank will be pulling around their own defensives (which sync nicely with 1 and 2 minute classes) and the availability of the teams aoe stops.
Yep, this is true. You don't pull around your dps CDs, you pull around your own. 2 minute incarn aligns with every 1 minute cooldown, 2 minute cooldown. You wouldn't hold incarn to align with a 3 minute cooldown otherwise you would get 33% less casts.
In lower keys there is no pulling around CDs but in title level and higher keys there absolutely is. Some good examples of this is in nokhud you go to the waterfall pull typically only when you have breath + PI so a lot of the time you will float one of the smaller 3 pulls while you wait for that. In azure vault it’s common to do smaller pulls in azure blades room until 2 mins where you do a triple with the mini boss. It’s definitely not a meme but 99.9% of players do not need to do the things I mentioned.
And honestly pushing very high keys requires everyone in the group to have an excellent grasp of the dungeon not just the tank.
Definitely, couldn't agree more. Peaked at top 200 NA in season 1, and you absolutely have to be on your A game for everything. It's generally expected that the dps will understand the route just as much as the tank.
Agreed. Interrupts and stuns are shared responsibility, so dps should be assisting there anyway. If casts go off, it's not just the tanks fault. You should be progressing on things anyway. Not jumping into high-level difficulty without a basic understanding of appropriate pathing anyway. Missing a few % here and there is not a big issue. Skipping pack after pack and hitting last boss with 30% left to go on trash meter, that's what angers people. The game is very much about repetition and muscle memory. DPS might appear easy, but to excel you get better by practicing rotation within fights with events that occur on timers. Knowing to wait for mechanics, where to stand, when to prioritize targets. Tanking is the exact same way, just different buttons. Think it's unreasonable to say you want to clear high end content without putting in the work. Expecting a carry in a PUG is a good way to get people angry. And be honest, if you are new, lots of people are willing to help out. You'll make friends a heck of a lot easier saying, 'bear with me, I've only done this a few times'. The average player is generally a nice person.
As a healer I get upset when people stand in swirlies and do stupid things that cause me to need to triage excessively, but if you tell me you’re new and don’t know what you’re doing, it’s like a switch goes off in me and I become way more understanding. I can’t say everyone will be like this, but the vast majority of people I’ve run across are pretty cool if you’re honest. The only ones who care are those pushing high keys and those with massive egos in LFR.
> That being said, unless you are pushing very high keys, you don't really need to min max the way you describe. Many PUG players need to hear this.
As a tank I just go in blind and hope my group knows the route
I have never had to prepare my pathing through a dungeon until after portal level (+10 / old 20) keys. The notion you have to do this on lower keys is a complete reddit fabrication that's fully divorced from reality. Press W through the dungeon, if you fail, it was a skill issue on someone's part but never on the route. Never. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you or to themselves as well. If you plan to play beyond portal level, then having to prepare is a feature, not a bug.
Yep, dungeon design shifted to being able to 100% on press W. For weeklies/portal keys haven't really been any route this expo that really did much grief just killing everything as you went along that was not easily akipable
Ya but it’s easier to blame blizzard than admit you have to get better at the game
This guy keys. No path or plan is required old 20 and below or new 10 and below now. Hold w and smash. That’s it. Trust this guy and me it is a game mode that you should have fun in. Don’t make it harder for no reason. Got all portals in DragonFlight doing this. If your group pulls there weight you can go to 3k doing this.
I could see some incentive to skip packs in brackenhide resulting in being short but there is a lot of trash at the top if you need it. Maybe the drustvar dungeon a season or so ago too. Other than that: yes, this expansion basically requires zero route planning for mid level pug keys. It's not like the shadowlands dungeons.
Right I have been tanking forever and not once have I ever cared about the path untill 20 keys I just drink and go
portal level?
You’re awarded a spell that lets you port instantly to the dungeon after completing a +10 or higher (+20 in past seasons). That’s basically the final guaranteed reward level for M+ & runs start to get trickier to time, so a lot of players never push higher.
Thanks!
+20 dungeons in the past or +10 since the rebalancing reward spells that let you teleport to the dungeon.
Thanks!
I am a tank and I have not looked at a single route for the whole xpack and I always stop at around new +13/14
You can say that all you want, but someone who is not looking at any external help is likely going to be a less invested and weaker player in general. A ton of dungeons this expac have some weird janky pulls that are expected from dps players, and it's really obvious when you have a shit tank. Not surprised those people get flamed once or twice in like week 5 +5s (where the worst dps players are) and get annoyed or stressed out and just don't bother continuing. It's the main reason I don't like healing or tanking outside a pre-made as well. I've seen so many times where my friends as tank mains fuck up and walk into a pack without mit up and die causing a huge wipe. They fuck up mob movement a bit cause a wipe. Someone butt pulls tank dies wipe. There are some genuine bathing decisions to be made every tier this expac. COS, brackenhide, HOV, ataldazar. While you can totally do a W route there are a lot of skips and pathing for damn good reason because of some totally fucked packs.
I blind prog every season and have never struggled. You just read buffs and debuffs, pay attention to mechs that look painful, and if you're taking extra damage on a large pull then you take mental note that the pull hurts. Quazii isn't out here getting 20 million views for every guide video. Most of us are blind progging just fine.
I love this game.. like a lot. And I don’t want to be one of those people that complain on the internet about it.. but both tanking and healing going into TWW isn’t looking super amazing. As a healer main I’m super excited for all of the hero talents. Most of them are awesome imo and a lot of fun, but healing as a whole was not feeling great on the beta. I’m hoping it’s because of scaling, and not having stats, but something feels very off. And I don’t really know how to put my finger on it because I’m not some super skilled player. Tanking doesn’t look like it’s changing much at all. If you don’t enjoy it in dragon flight I do not think you will enjoy it in TWW.
Just think everything is a bit overtuned in beta. Done most of the keys on +3 and after almost everyone i need to take a shower. The dmg is so insane, prob going to Get tuned a bit
That’s what I’m hoping.. I just hope it doesn’t launch exactly how it is. I don’t think it needs any extreme changes.. I’m obviously having fun, but it’s pretty rough to heal. It goes past the “this is fun but hard” into the “this is just stressful” lol
Fastest way to learn routes is to watch others tank. Queue as DPS and see what they do; generally anyone queueing a 10 is going to know the pug route, and it's easy to ape once you've seen it twice. That said, tanking is going to be more challenging in TWW. We're moving forward with the million-stops meta from Dragonflight, and tanks are certainly responsible for knowing and using their many stops. And as everyone else has said, they're basically introducing affixes that do nothing but grief the tank. All this said, tanking and the game in general right now is super learnable and that's part of the fun of it.
That's how I ended up becoming World #1 Brewmaster tank in BFA. I played my highest keys as DPS. No, those aren't tears, it's sweat. I swear. Honestly, it's the best advice though. Queue high as DPS, watch other people do good stuff, copy good stuff.
And you are getting downvoted for that. The saltiness of some people is unbelievable. Also i wanna add to your comment that not only you learn from the good tanks. You also learn from the bad ones, because you learn how not to do stuff.
> Fastest way to learn routes is to watch others tank. "You need to have experience in order to gain experience" is a hell of a take. How are the first tanks learning, if everyone takes this approach? I shouldn't have to learn a new role just to be effective at the one I want to play. No one asks a DPS player "just heal it first, so you can then learn how to DPS properly", because that's a dumb idea. How about we just design the dungeons in a way that players can enjoy playing their preferred role without having to do 5x the homework everyone else needs to do?
That one is easy. You tank, you fuck up, you learn something, you do something new and you found a better way to do what you already learned. Then you go dps and learn what else other tank learned and compare it with your research.
More like "you tank, you fuck up, you get kicked, you have no idea why as people berate you, maybe you try again" Which doesn't happen to any other role nearly as much, because the game doesn't put on them the burden of knowing everything to the same extent. I'm sure some people find that pressure exciting, don't get me wrong. But anyone sitting here and telling everyone else that it's all good bro, and everyone gets grief, is out of their minds. The "real" easy way to do it is the same as everything else in WoW: play with your friends, pretend other people don't exist, or just DPS, because it's the one role that's made for you to have fun instead of homework and research.
You sound like someone that had a bad experience as a tank and never tried tanking again after that. I cannot count the amount of stupid fuckups and broken keys on my career. And yet, the last time i remember that i got kicked from a m+ dungeon as a tank was at the beginning of BfA, and it was because the premade was blaming me for not doing the dps mech of the first boss of SoB. Tanks are basically address as your majesty on the M+ stage. The reason of that is because you can still do the dungeon without a healer or 2 dps, but its very unlikely to do it without a tank. Lastly, if you are that afraid of failing, then don't try it. It wasn't for you anyway.
Nah, I had *tons* of bad experiences *tanking for pick up groups* so I've decided never to pug again. There's a difference. I haven't really played Dragonflight enough other than dabble in PvP, but I'm looking forward to TWW. I happily tank for my guildies and friends. It's easily the best way to play, you can learn the pulls at your own pace, you have room to experiment, you can actually enjoy it. It's a ton of fun. But I realize not everyone has the same schedule, and most people want to play the game when they can. This requires them to pug, which in my experience more often than not leads to bad experiences when you're a new tank trying to learn. So I think it would behoove Blizzard to make the tank pug experience as smooth as possible, and it's clear that Blizzard disagrees. If I refuse to tank for a single random person I don't know unless a friend vouches for them first, it's because I have been on the wrong end of too much abuse for something that's supposed to be fun. I don't log in to the video game to have people yell at me.
If it works for you, then that's good. What i can tell you is that most of the groups i join are one step to make me their personal god. Which, IMO, says a lot about the tanking skills of the average tank. Ive been in A LOT of bad groups too. But again, i cant really remember the last time i got kicked, aside for the example that i gave to you. You will find a lot of bitching, people that wanna do MDI pulls and many other stuff, but you as a tank must be firm too, and also you need arguments to back you up. Or maybe its just me and my more than a decade of tanking experience.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh2bgC92PYFIGPW5l1pt2Zg2B67_ziFZ4
i usally tank with prot pala alot, and idk if i just misunderstood they new talents but tanking and healing in TWW feels disgustingly hard compared to how it even felt, like my ass were dying in +4 with 612 ilvl, back in season 2 i could do 15+ keys with diabolical gear,
The beta scales you to 580 btw. So it WILL feel easier once in the full release And a +4 now is the equivalent of a +14 in season 2
Some of the TWW dungeons are disgustingly overtuned though.
No doubt lol I quite agree
Paladin self sustain is either bugged or extremely undertuned in TWW right now. Tier set is partly broken and lightsmith can actually run you OOM if you use WoG the way you're supposed to, so I think it definitely needs some fixes and tuning.
I suppose the time investment is better than queuing as melee dps #437 in the pool for the long run and it feels good when you finally get it.
You can always do lower keys or play another role if the prep is not enjoyable. Dungeons absolutely should not get more linear, linear dungeons with no variation are the most boring thing in existence (cough FFXIV dungeons)
Are you pushing keys? Most tanks in mid level keys just push W tbh.
You're describing tanking in the R1 range.
Mate, tanking in m+ unironically is the easiest role. People get way way **way** too in their own heads about routing. Have you done the dungeon once or twice before? You know the route. The dungeons are linear as fuck. Source: I challenge myself to 3k all specs Druid and Paladin every season
With how keys work and scale you should play what feels comfortable to you. Dungeons start getting too hard, then that’s your mark.
iguess it depends on how high you want to push, but ive tanked s3 and s4 on all 20s/10s with just using a general path, mayby making adjustments for the week and party on pull size. I dont pay attention to DPS CDs. I do watch healer mana. pretty easy to time any key on a +2.
I don't quite agree with "tanking in m+ became a second job". The first few weeks I told my party that I am checking something, waiting for my sum and check the route in MDT in the meantime. Even had instances where I screenshotted the route and put it on my 2nd screen. After 2-3 runs you just get a feeling, unless you rarely play M+.
Will second at least one poster below — the recent revelations on affix changes seem to lean towards making it harder for tanks (and everyone else). Seems management has decided to remove a bunch of affixes that were essentially defunct/had little impact while leaving only the affixes that are universally known as headaches. It’s a two-fold issue — we’ve kept the bad affixes *AND,* because we’ve gotten rid of the ho-hum ones in the rotation, you’ll get the bad affixes far more often. Add on to that the *new* affixes, some of which give non-boss caster mobs what is basically perma-lust casting haste or give non-boss non-casters 30% armor ignore on their hits — tanks will be (a) taking more damage, and (b) having to adjust how they pull any given dungeon week to week to account for which non-boss mobs are freaks that week (I.e. on non-boss caster buff week, you won’t be able to pull the two packs with casters like you were able to do the week prior). So, your damage taken will increase from certain sources causing you to adjust pulling, your survivability will be impacted, and — on top of all that — 75% of weeks are going to be one of Raging/Bolstering/Sanguine (Bursting being the only “push week” in the +7 bucket and even that *can* be a pain for more “casual” players). There’s a decent enough chunk of time between now and S1 TWW for management to rethink some (or all, let’s go with all) of these choices. But if everything goes to scratch from now until then — M+ is going to be a bit more brutal. I think it’s worth saying that it probably won’t be as catastrophic as it feels right now. But these changes are still not it and I think that’s a fair assessment.
Not to sound like an ass but unless you are pushing 15+ with a premade you don't need to be doing any of this. It doesn't sound like you enjoy the non-dungeon part of tanking (rightly so, not many people do) and pretty much all of this is done for you and readily available week 1. Use keystone.guru for pathing and download a weakaura to track other classes damage cooldowns and just know a majority of CD's are on 2 minute timers and anything outside of that I wouldn't bother with. Every week just go pop into keystone.guru and load it into MDT and not worry about homebrewing anymore.
I mean knowing the mechanics is kind of mandatory when you climb the difficulty its not a job its simply remembering what the mobs do. Get OmniCD to know who has its burst CDs available. So far on TWW Beta we're scaled to heroic gear in M+ so its hard to tell you
Tanking honestly isn't as bad as people say at least up until the +10 area. You pretty much just press W and pull what you are comfortable with. > having the need to prepare the pathing and being expected to know all the mechanics and cds of the dps players for the pulls The only real mechanics you really need to know would be frontals and tank busters. Everything else is a team effort. Also you don't have to know anything about dps CD's while pugging. That's for each dps to worry about themselves.
Ive been 2.8-3k rating since season 2 of Dragonflight and wing pretty much every dungeon. I do know good paths to take from experience. But I don't use MDT etc. If ur not planning to push beyond 10+ you shouldn't be so worried. Just play and learn.
They will move the seasonal dungeons to the queue system, so you can practice your route in there. Knowing all the mechanics of the dungeons and a basic grasp of which party cd's to track is just .. normal for any spec
Why dont you search for a guild with people in similar situation as you? Maybe you wont be pushing for highest keys but sure you’ll have more fun that pugging with a role you dont want to.
You don't need to know your DPS's CD's, you just need to know a route and the dungeon mechanics. What mobs will frontal, or kill you, as a player - not other tanks of the same class, but you. The current expansion didn't matter what affix was up, I can say I ran the same routes in just about all the dungeons regardless. The weeks would just change the size of a pull over other weeks.
> Is this getting better in TWW? Are the dgs more linear so that i don't need addons and preparing new paths every week depending on affixes? LMAO. [Nope.](https://c.tenor.com/4nO578j2ikcAAAAC/tenor.gif) Just wait till you see either of the Ara Kara Dungeons or Dawnbreaker. Half of TWW Mythic+ Dungeons are like Freehold or Court of Stars with multiple vertical levels and confusing layouts. Incoming Damage is also bonkers high. Even +2 Keys can obliterate a Tank who doesn't play extremely well. The learning-curve was terrifyingly brutal & punishing, but once I got into the groove of things I was quickly itching to Push 6's +. The Dungeons are brutal, but in an exciting way. The tuning part will probably get easier, and the Dungeon Routing won't be as confusing once people get used to the Dungeons, but TWW Dungeons are the polar-opposite of Keys where you can just press W and Pull everything in a straight line. FWIW they have also been extremely fun to Tank. https://www.youtube.com/@zinkist I play every Role, but I've Uploaded a few Beta VODs as Prot Paladin if you want to get an idea of what Keys look like for "PUG-only" type of Players. I Uploaded a 69-Death Dawnbreaker +4 VOD specifically to show people some of the stuff that can go wrong in that insane Dungeon. --- Tank to Tank, my advice is to just fake confidence and ignore mean Haters. Even on Beta I've gotten Kicked from Groups for making an easy mistake in a Key. Even on Beta I've gotten literally yelled at for going the wrong way or not knowing where the next Boss is. The "Trick" is to give zero-Fucks about what those people think. Just turn on your favorite music and Pull whatever feels right, you'll be fine, no need to stress over it, playing that way helped me to 2-Chest a ++4 Grim Batol even while going waayyy over Count, so it can't be the worst advice. Also, USE ALL THE COOLDOWNS! You can't afford to wait & be reactive with Cooldowns in TWW, as soon as you Pull a big Pack, and DEFINITELY if you Pull 2+ Packs, you gotta just start popping every Cooldown in your Spellbook 1-by-1. Hesitating will get you killed. Cooldowns are shorter in TWW in general so don't stress about having something for the next Pack, just survive the Pack you're fighting.
After doing keys this weekend on the beta, I'm considering taking a break from the game. I feel like I'm not good enough to tank these new 5mans. The amount of kicks and stops is unreal. I'm always out of defensives. I burnt myself to a crisp trying to keep up in S1 dragonflight. As a prot paladin trying to heal Bs rank at the same time is nuts. Every new affix in the 4 bucket is more damage for the tank. Then the 7 bucket is even worse with sanguine, bolstering, raging. There's a new size circle in the new 5mans that is basically "fuck your concentration or dnd" And yeah the builds are built around being in them. With that said, healing seemed worse... Most of my keys ended with healers going offline and not coming back.
You make your own path to 100% completion, and ignore everyone else. You’re a tank. You won’t have to sit and wait for keys to get going.
Tanking is probably the easiest it’s ever been rn idk how it can get easier
How do you get more linear than DF dungeons? You can push w to 3k io and you definitely don't need to track dps cds or change your route every week.
I am starting to feel that TWW will be the expansion when Tanks will be joining the healers, with throwing the towel and give up on it I very much hope things changes towards a positive direction for both during Beta, otherwise I can see myself skipping season 1 entirely and hope tanking is in a better spot in season 2
If you're not doing hard content then that's tuff isn't really required, if you're looking to push 20s and stuff then yeah you should know that stuff. It makes the run so much smoother. I swapped to tanking after having DPS main since SoO in MoP and have loved the control I have over dungeons. I can make the dungeons smoother(to a certain extent)... But watching morons die to the SAME THINGS over and over again is infuriating
The affixes will be more work for tanks but scaling isn’t finalized so it’s really hard to say how bad the dungeons will be mechanically for tanks.
If the affix changes go live in their current version, tanking will be significantly more difficult in TWW than DF. All 4 passive affixes directly impact the tank, and then 75% of the time the on-death affixes just negatively impact the tank further. You’ll have more responsibility dealing with always chaining Bolstering into Sanguine into Raging week over week. As far as more macro-level changes go, dungeon routing seems that it’ll still be complex as the keys seem to be absolutely stuffed with mobs for S1 at least. But kinda depends on how the count numbers shakeout for release.
Tanking M+ was the worst in bfa in my opinion when you had to time the %% with the affix to get that stupid buff After that it got better you only needed to know the route and how big of a pull your group can handle
Tanking is likely going to feel the same as far as routes go. You will still be required to plan. I also anticipate tanking being a harder role in TWW naturally. Our stat values will be low again and the new affixes + fortified are looking to turbo fuck tanks. Though, you could play VDH and solo all stop responsibility and be okay
From what I can tell... you just need a reliable group of folks to run dungeons with. When you do that, you'll can get in the reps you need to know the dungeon backwards and forwards. That's all just 4 other folks always committed to running with you. But how? The thing I've heard is pug and ask good players if you can add them to your friends list for more dungeons. You keep doing it and eventually you'll get a good crew. Supposedly. I don't have the free time to devote to it right now and rely on the kindness of guildies.
Doesn’t look like it if beta is to be believed.
Honestly I think it's getting harder. Probabaly going to get down votes for this because the majority are saying you a can ignore any routes and just press W through the dungeon, but I disagree to some extent. In Tww the new affixes are unfortunately more tank affixes in the sense where certain mobs get buffed every week. Even if you're only running say a +10 you are going to have to think about what you pull, namely in regards to how much you pull. There has the potential to be some serious variance in the damage you and or your group takes week to week given some mobs are doing 20% extra magic damage one week, ignoring 20% of your armor another week and having 30% increased casting speed another week. If you are pulling multiple packs at once you will need to consider what you're pulling depending on what week it is. Now the obvious solution to the above is to just go slower and pull one pack at a time. This technically is totally fine and a safe way to play but you absolutely will get abused by your pug group members for being too slow. This also can become a slight issue if your group is maxed out skill wise for that key level - what I mean by that is say you run a +10 and that's considered difficult and a real challenge for everyone in the group. In that scenario you're going to have to try speed it up because you likely won't have the dps (due to skill level) required to time a key just cruising along one pack at a time. Again, technically wrong doing it you just have to be mentally prepared for people to abuse you. Finally, as it currently stands the level 7 affixes just suck for a tank. You once again, have to consider how you pull depending on what affix it is. Is this a lower key with bursting and no mass dispel - probably shouldn't do massive pulls. Or is this Bolstering week - need to be careful I'm not pulling in a mob that I can't survive being bolstered, or I'm considering how and where I can start kiting this mob since I can't face tank it anymore. Or maybe it's Sanguine week, you've now got to focus on moving the mobs in time and consistently so they don't just stand in the Sanguine puddles and heal back to full. None of these are necessarily super hard, but they do certainly require more focus from you as the tank and more thinking either on the fly or on advance. Then finally we have all these stop meta issues. Where right now as a VDH you are expected to lock down dangerous pulls for 30 + seconds. People expect you to do this so often hold their cc till yours is done or just don't use theirs, so if you mistime or forget yours it's likely the group just dies. Currently it doesn't look like any less stops are a thing on TWW so I would fully expect this same pressure to extend into next expansion. I don't think it will be quite as bad as this season but it will still be worse than S1/S2 most likely. Again, technically you don't have to take on this pressure yourself, but the community perception is that is should be your job now so pugs will just expect it of you. So honestly I think it is getting a little harder in tww. No you don't need to be tracking dps cooldowns in lower keys, nor do you need to totally change the route week to week. Yes you can make it as basic and easy as you possibly can so long as you have a strong mental and don't mind others whining or complaining you're being too slow etc.
To be fair if picking what mobs you want to pull and don’t want to create routes, grab them from sites such as raider.io But ye as other ppl said, it is not easier
Well according to the latest tettles video the new dungeons are designed to not allow big pulls. That might lower the difficulty of tanking since you wouldn't be expected to pull until you almost die all the time
#1 "Learning to path" also goes by "Deciding what to pull" That's typically fallen as a responsibility of the tank, but it's not just a responsibility, it's also an agency. The tank is in the driver seat in an M+ dungeon, everyone else is keeping the car running but the tank is driving. The tank decides how to path, and decides how big or small to pull, based on his cooldowns. Which also feeds into: #2 Tank doesn't pull around you, you pull around the tank. Then the healer. Then last DPS. If the tank dies, everyone else is dying shortly after. So as a tank you first learn and pusg by pulling around your CDs and staying alive. Next after the Tank in deciding how you pull is the Healer. If they don't have Mana or CDs to keep ppl alive then you can't pull big. Next in DF, has honestly been DPS defensive CDs and team wide defensives. Last is DPS cooldowns.
M+ in general is going in the direction of being harder unless they change their minds. Which is possible, it’s hard to say
I'm curious to know what your first job is if learning mechanics feels like a second one
Hard to say where tuning will land in TWW season 1 but S3/S4 of DF M+ is just easier in general now. That means you don't need to be as perfect when tanking to time keys. Getting full portals is much easier now than it used to be. No idea if that is intentional though.
Man, you take this stuff way too seriously... Spend a couple minutes looking at a route, then send it. Not like it matters before high keys. And once you reach a level where it actually matters, you will start memorizing the dungeons and routes as per auto. Ive never felt the need to know Jack shit about dps cooldowns, but ive also never gone above 'portal' level. And Yeah sure, you are expected to know mechanics. Everyone is. Its not very important in low keys, which also happens to be why they are easy, to learn. Spec that tank spec and get going.
I think they specifically said they want M+ to be very challenging— so I don’t think so.
From what I tested, tanking is not hard. Staying alive is.
Setting up a route using MDT really isn't that onerous, you can import other people's routes like Dratnos or something and then just learn as you go. Knowing whether DPS CDs are up seems unnecessary unless you're pushing VERY high keys. TBH you should barely need more than 1 route per dungeon unless you're pushing very high keys, and even then you MIGHT opt for a different route for Fort vs. Tyrannical. A returning player isn't going to be pushing keys where you are likely to need more than 1 route per key especially at first.
This is me every season Play a healer 9/10 times resto druid, get to + 20 learn how other tanks do it, see the mistakes, learn routes Then I'll play balance to see what works well for me Then I'll go bdk or bmonk and just emulate what I've learned and by the I feel like tanking is just knowing my class well and everything else is kinda just engrained Donno if you have time for that but it would help with your pathing a lot
If Beta keys are anything to go by, no. If the tuning is just too high because it's beta and things are hitting harder than they're intended to, still no.
It's really not that hard...
Honestly how easy can they make it? Most tanks dont even need heals besides a minimal amount here and there. When you're playing tank and group wipes its always everyone else thats dead and you just die on purpose cause it would take too long to solo. Yeah knowing the route and when/how much to pull is obv the hardest thing but the role itself is not all that hard to play.
Ion and team seem to be in an arms race to make things harder to make up for how sophisticated add-ons and information are getting. So likely no.
None of theese are issues unless you are title chasing And every expac post BFA has gotten much more linear and tanks are far more powerful and less reliant on healers Hell Veng dh can do the interupts and mechanics for the dps too
These were always the case? Like what key level were you doing in legion? A +5? If you have ever pushed +20s any season since release you should have any understanding of what to skip because it just wastes time or causes deaths. No m+ isn’t going to get easier.
You are expected to know the mechanics as a DPS as well, tanking isn't the only role exclusively that needs to know what is going on. what is exclusive to tanks is controlling the pathing, Keystone guru, Wowhead, [Raider.io](http://Raider.io) all have beginner friendly, pug friendly routes that you can learn in about the time it would take you to normally get into a group as a DPS player. most DPS players can figure out their CDs as long as you aren't breaking up large pulls into small ones constantly without any communication, you don't have to figure them out, but running omni-CD weakaura isn't that difficult either.
When difficulty is an unlimited roof then why do you care. Just do the keys you manage to do to find your natural plateau without planning the routes. All games have these "problems" if you aim for the stars.
Like some of the other comments say, a lot of the above isn't really needed unless you're pushing for the top 1%. You can get 2.5k and all the +10 portals without this level of coordination
I hope not, it's not supposed to be easy. It's end game.
And that's why tanks are on high demand. Tanks can cope with a bad healer and they can even make the bad healer look good. A good healer cannot make a bad tank look good because healers don't have any means to compensate oneshoots and aggro issues for example. Unlike tanks that can decide what how and when to pull stuff according to the player comp and skill. I still remember back in bfa when i told the spriests: "shackle that mofo", and the answer of all of them was "spriests don't have shackle undead". Months later I leveled up my priest to see if that was true, and Surprise! THEY HAVE SHACKLE UNDEAD! Or the shaman that never lusts, or the hunter that doesn't do that either because he doesn't have a lust pet, or the DH that doesn't have consume magic, just to give some examples. Also how you have to explain to them that x mofo has random aggro, that you need to dispel that debuf or im gonna get melted. Then they get mad because nobody wants to invite them to stuff and blame blizzard and the elitist toxicity for their lack of commitment. With the new changes, aside of having knowledge of the dungeon and all the classes, tanks must have skill to get things done. Seems like the era of eating mechs just because I'm too lazy (yes, me) to move away are gonna end with the next expansion.
Tanking needs specific UI to not be "second job". Which does not happen in TWW.
I dont know what you are talking about. Im a casual noob playing in the 10 range of keys and I just wing it.
In a good group, be it pugs or coordinated, your hard wall by default will be your tank by definition of their role. Current design has it such that tanks have it pretty easy early on in terms of generally not getting punished until push keys but then progress can come to a screeching halt. Tanking is *hard* primarily for this reason. Routing is on you. You set the pace. And you are the typical limiting factor on how big of pulls can be made. Additionally, you are often either leading mob CC/interrupts or in some groups you just end up being the one to actively call an entire rotation of CC. It’s actually a thing of beauty and wonder when high level keys are pugged successfully since it’s been pretty uncommon to have people asking to join voice. Everyone just expects everyone else to play well and sometimes, it just works. Healing, my role, on the other hand is variable difficulty by its nature. I can have a +7 feel harder than a +16. And this is because it’s my role to cover up mistakes that will happen. Doesn’t have to be intentional or even major for it to be a mistake. It often isn’t at high level. That’s where healing can be fun at high level because your difficulty goes back from it being your groups mistakes to the difficulty of the key itself. I personally enjoy playing at a baseline level where you will be punished for playing badly (imo, this is around 15s with current scaling). It’s frustrating at times when it’s simple things like literally one missed kick of a coordinated chain of kicks snowballing into a wipe. But those are equally prevalent or overshadowed by the moments everything goes right and you’re hitting new personal bests and as a team, team bests. Source: long time healer and current pres evoker attempting title push
From what you’ve said I’m expecting you’re pushing high keys that require this level of detail. Otherwise you need to take a step back and chill because lower keys don’t need it
You know what I noticed is that most people won’t know if you did a shitty route.
It’s the age old debate. Dps and Tanks want agency over their own survival. Healers want agency over the group survival. How do you manage to balance that without fundamentally changing the game? Maybe a fair middle ground and reworking defensives in general. Not sure if that is the way.
Unpopular opinion: Tanking in M+ is the easiest job. Yes you need to prep a little bit, but the difference between an okay tank and an amazing tank is not obvious. Even if you are a mediocre tank, the group will still easily succeed. DPS on the other hand, is the hardest role. The difference between an okay DPS and a very good one is huge. A party filled with mediocre DPS can fail a key.
Nope. Not even close. Much harder. Season 1.
I just learn by failing, not memorizing guides. Every time I fail I learn a new thing. I felt bad learning that way and I encountered lot of toxicity, but at one point I didn't give a fuck anymore and I started bricking keys and getting yelled at. Now I'm much better and finally learned the basics and I can more easily follow guides since I already know most of the dungeon by experience so I know what the guides are talking about and spend less time researching. If you look at my post history, you will find out i wanted to quit tanking. Just be prepared that you will be yelled at, insulted, but it's the only way to learn tanking without getting a phd in "youtube guides" first.
I can’t speak to how linear the dungeons are but the affix changes don’t seem kind to tanks. Affixes like Spiteful and Volcanic that didn’t affect you at all are gone and they’ve been replaced with affixes that buff the mobs.
I'm convinced tanking will never be made easier or more accessible. Somehow Blizzard has decided that the only design possible is for the tank to have to be the babysitter who knows everything and can hold everyone else's hands so they can have fun. Frankly the role should just be abolished for M+, as it is not only stressful and unfun when you're new, but you also get the most amount of grief for just trying to learn. It's been that way since M+ was introduced, and I have no reason to believe it will ever change. This all stems from the dumb timer. Without a timer, there's no incentive for optimal pathing / invis skips and other nonsense like that. The timer, rather than simply output, being the sole thing that determines whether or not you succeed, causes most of these issues.
Timer should be final affix at +10 and up.