As I wrote, Blizzard designed an ingenious mechanic for heroics: there is huge pressure on tanks and healers to do great job, while little pressure on damage dealers. While good damage dealers can speed up the fight, killing the boss before healer is OOM, can avoid damage to make his life easier and watch aggro, if they don't do it, the immediate reason of the wipe will be healer OOM or healer unable to keep the party alive. So arthasdklol, while wipe to red, can maintain the self-image of "l33t guy" who just wiped due to that noob healer. The same way he can't raid but blame the tanks and healers for not being in his guild or leaving it. Arthasdklol will keep playing as he feels good about himself while losing (and feels bad about the healer or tank).
Like every "help the M&S" move, it surely has exploits. I'm proud to announce that I found one, using it in a guild team that barely passed the gearscore barrier (ilvl 329 min) we devastated Vortex Pinnacle. No wipes (besides obvious idiocy like running into packs alone). On the endboss, no one's HP was below 80% and my mana was always above 70%. Most trash pulls were without CC, just "charge and AoE" like we did it in WotLK. What is the magic trick?
If Blizzard designed the DD job to make it possible that the team carry 1-2 M&S, then what about replacing one DD with a healer? Simply with cheap heals everyone can be kept topped for eternity in most Cataclysm Heroic encounters by two healers. Most encounters have no DD-responsibility, if the DD sucks or missing, the boss dies slower, so what? Killing them slowly is faster than wiping. I emphasize "most" as there are some encounters when adds must be burned down (like Stonecore first boss). However most healers have DPS spec, so on these bosses he switch back and do the fight "properly". Any fight without add-burn or other hidden-enrage mechanic is facerollable with the 1 tank, 2 healers, 2 DD setup. I believe every trash fight can be trivialized with 2 healers (CC might be still needed on healer, knockback, whirlwind or other way annoying ones).
This is a design-breaking result! The whole "hard Cataclysm" is standing on the foundations that DD must get it easy or at least have someone else to blame. The healers and tanks must carry DD or they don't get loot either (save for those tanks & healers who are in an "elitist" guild where M&S activity is not tolerated). My result means an easy way out for them: a tank just grabs a dependable healer and they queue up together, the healer as DD. This way the team will have 2 healers, the DD-healer will switch back DD on burn-bosses. Currently the healer:DD ratio is 1:3, if it changes to 1:1, the DD queue will grow unbearably long. The M&S will recognize that he will not get into the heroic today, unless he can queue together with a tank/healer combo, which is impossible as he sucks. He is no longer automatically carried, he is at the mercy of the "elitists"!
So if you want some easy (granted, bit slow) heroics, form a pre-made party that has the two necessary ingredients: the tank, the DD-healer, and a good DD who can kill the boss before everyone fall asleep. LFD can give you another healer and DD! Please note that you don't need to have 1:1 healer:DD ratio in your guild. You can queue with tank, 2 DD, healer-DD and get a healer from the queue! This way you get gear, achievement, experience, fun, while the M&S gets what he deserves: "5 hourz wait time WTF FFS ROFL"!
The other thing is the cursed gearscore barrier. Blizzard officially implemented of its own version of gearscore, disallowing anyone below average ilvl 329 to queue up in LFD. Of course it doesn't check gems, enchants, talents or the gear being useful. I can't tell how much I despise this choice. However QQ is not goblinish, being smarter is! You can get the desired "gearscore" easily if you equip all kind of crap that you get as quest rewards, reputation vendors, dungeon drops. Dodge/stamina sword? it's mage loot if it has high ilvl. Spi/int cloth: definitely hunter loot" And everything is DK loot! They can't even call you ninja as you really need that drop to get the needed gearscore! The only way Blizzard could fix this is checking for proper items, enchants, gems, locking out the M&S from the HCs forever. Note: you should not equip the nonsense you collect, just have it in your bag. You can get rid of it when you get an item to the same slot with equal or better ilvl.
One more goblinish trick today: your team sucks so much that you want to leave but deserter debuff forces you to stay? Undress naked, pull 3 packs, "/yell LEEEEEEROY" and you'll be kicked no time. No deserter debuff! The only way Blizzard could stop you is placing debuff on kicked, but that would harm their precious M&S who was just been kicked by mean elitists who has no life therefore expected him to do more damage than half of the tank.
Tomorrow some evil business tricks incoming, this time from my girlfriend who made 20K since Cata start, without professions, long hours or stockpiles, beating me on my own turf badly.
PS: the team was Tizzle, Niigl, Hartog, Degrizmyster, me. By checking the achievements you can see that Vortex HC was firstkill for all of us, it was first normal kill to for 2, and our gear sucks. So we are not some Paragon-level players who outskilled the instance (we wiped on Stonecore first boss to red because exploding crystals + borers + underground boss is too much for some of us). We are just ordinary players who facerolled a heroic. Why just one? It was getting late and I had to write this post! More to come.
Like every "help the M&S" move, it surely has exploits. I'm proud to announce that I found one, using it in a guild team that barely passed the gearscore barrier (ilvl 329 min) we devastated Vortex Pinnacle. No wipes (besides obvious idiocy like running into packs alone). On the endboss, no one's HP was below 80% and my mana was always above 70%. Most trash pulls were without CC, just "charge and AoE" like we did it in WotLK. What is the magic trick?
If Blizzard designed the DD job to make it possible that the team carry 1-2 M&S, then what about replacing one DD with a healer? Simply with cheap heals everyone can be kept topped for eternity in most Cataclysm Heroic encounters by two healers. Most encounters have no DD-responsibility, if the DD sucks or missing, the boss dies slower, so what? Killing them slowly is faster than wiping. I emphasize "most" as there are some encounters when adds must be burned down (like Stonecore first boss). However most healers have DPS spec, so on these bosses he switch back and do the fight "properly". Any fight without add-burn or other hidden-enrage mechanic is facerollable with the 1 tank, 2 healers, 2 DD setup. I believe every trash fight can be trivialized with 2 healers (CC might be still needed on healer, knockback, whirlwind or other way annoying ones).
This is a design-breaking result! The whole "hard Cataclysm" is standing on the foundations that DD must get it easy or at least have someone else to blame. The healers and tanks must carry DD or they don't get loot either (save for those tanks & healers who are in an "elitist" guild where M&S activity is not tolerated). My result means an easy way out for them: a tank just grabs a dependable healer and they queue up together, the healer as DD. This way the team will have 2 healers, the DD-healer will switch back DD on burn-bosses. Currently the healer:DD ratio is 1:3, if it changes to 1:1, the DD queue will grow unbearably long. The M&S will recognize that he will not get into the heroic today, unless he can queue together with a tank/healer combo, which is impossible as he sucks. He is no longer automatically carried, he is at the mercy of the "elitists"!
So if you want some easy (granted, bit slow) heroics, form a pre-made party that has the two necessary ingredients: the tank, the DD-healer, and a good DD who can kill the boss before everyone fall asleep. LFD can give you another healer and DD! Please note that you don't need to have 1:1 healer:DD ratio in your guild. You can queue with tank, 2 DD, healer-DD and get a healer from the queue! This way you get gear, achievement, experience, fun, while the M&S gets what he deserves: "5 hourz wait time WTF FFS ROFL"!
The other thing is the cursed gearscore barrier. Blizzard officially implemented of its own version of gearscore, disallowing anyone below average ilvl 329 to queue up in LFD. Of course it doesn't check gems, enchants, talents or the gear being useful. I can't tell how much I despise this choice. However QQ is not goblinish, being smarter is! You can get the desired "gearscore" easily if you equip all kind of crap that you get as quest rewards, reputation vendors, dungeon drops. Dodge/stamina sword? it's mage loot if it has high ilvl. Spi/int cloth: definitely hunter loot" And everything is DK loot! They can't even call you ninja as you really need that drop to get the needed gearscore! The only way Blizzard could fix this is checking for proper items, enchants, gems, locking out the M&S from the HCs forever. Note: you should not equip the nonsense you collect, just have it in your bag. You can get rid of it when you get an item to the same slot with equal or better ilvl.
One more goblinish trick today: your team sucks so much that you want to leave but deserter debuff forces you to stay? Undress naked, pull 3 packs, "/yell LEEEEEEROY" and you'll be kicked no time. No deserter debuff! The only way Blizzard could stop you is placing debuff on kicked, but that would harm their precious M&S who was just been kicked by mean elitists who has no life therefore expected him to do more damage than half of the tank.
Tomorrow some evil business tricks incoming, this time from my girlfriend who made 20K since Cata start, without professions, long hours or stockpiles, beating me on my own turf badly.
PS: the team was Tizzle, Niigl, Hartog, Degrizmyster, me. By checking the achievements you can see that Vortex HC was firstkill for all of us, it was first normal kill to for 2, and our gear sucks. So we are not some Paragon-level players who outskilled the instance (we wiped on Stonecore first boss to red because exploding crystals + borers + underground boss is too much for some of us). We are just ordinary players who facerolled a heroic. Why just one? It was getting late and I had to write this post! More to come.
41 comments:
Just a small point that needs to be said.
In all fairness, VP heroic is pretty easy. And by pretty easy I mean 'WOTLK trivial' easy. The first boss tactics are: "Hug Boss".
Second is a bit trickier, and third is easy again.
Stonecore is hardcore, at least first boss.
Deadmines Heroic is probably the best example of a difficult, but not impossible heroic.
With regards to Blizzard's gear score requirement, you don't even need to equip it; just having it in your bags is good enough for the gear checker.
Well Cataclysm heroics are not that hard at all. Boss fights are mostly a joke. The only hard thing is getting to them past the trash. For me damage taken on recount is much more interesting stat now when damage taken is massive and fail players are easy to spot by.
Current state of the heroics:
Vortex Pinacle - easy mode all the way
Deadmines - the werewolf boss can be pushy. Easier than the trash before it.
Hall of Origination - hard trash, average bosses.
SFK - the only place we were a bit pressured was the baron - adds can overwhelm the tank.
Lost city - the third boss is unpleasant. Everything else is not hard at all.
Black rock caverns - easy mode till the third boss. Never manage to progress past him with pug. Not that hard but requires very precise execution.
Throne of the tides - the hardest thing in the whole instance is getting to the brain boss. Small ones just obliterate the tank.
Grim batol - can't say never got it with random dungeon.
And when we make guild runs even with average ilvl 337-8 it begins to feel like we are overgearing the instances. We did the tol barad boss yesterday and even with people in greens there were few seconds left on the enrage timer.
Please could you use the term DPS, when referring to damage dealers (DD). I'm aware it's not entirely accurate, but it definitely makes the article far easier to follow.
Do that with dead mines or the halls of origination I will be impressed, still its worth a try. Thanks for the tip.
Worst M&S I've seen so far was a Random PuG which wiped once on the first boss in HoO, and figured 'We can't do this with our gear' and decided to quit. So I guess the real M&S will stop doing heroics until they get carried through them anyway.
Taking extra responsibilities in a group is hardly revolutionary. Most recently, when Heroic Halls of Reflection first came out, taking dual tanks made the Frostmourne room much easier. Towards the end of Wrath, dropping the tank or healer role altogether was also fairly routine.
It happens, it just isn't encouraged by the LFG tool.
On our server, Neptulon-EU, the DD queue is ~40 minutes. I havent started to level my DK (tank) yet, but i'd like to know, how is the queue as tank usually?
Thanks
@Daniel:
"Black rock caverns - easy mode till the third boss. Never manage to progress past him with pug. Not that hard but requires very precise execution."
This goes to show that you have no idea what your talking about, or god forbids, you talk to sound cool "lolz tis bos iz EZ".
'Precise execution' as you so elequantly put it is the very definition of a hard boss. The only other option being a gear check, which is pretty much obsolete in this era when M&S get charity gear.
The pressure on the tanks & healers is so great these days, that as a tank I've reached a point that I don't queue for randoms anymore. I wait for a guild group.
That pressure is mostly a result of the pressure on the healer, if you make a mistake.
I can only imagine how much bad it is for them.
This idea might change it, as all it needs is one healer I trust to queue. I'll definitely give it a shot.
As Blizzard make some effort to create challenging dungeons so the players find ways to make it a face roll - inevitable but sad.
Blizzard reported that we will need to use crowd control again, so you come up with "two healers".
Blizzard try and introduce a minimum capability (albeit inadequate I agree) so you suggest wearing the wrong gear or just have some better i-level in your bag.
All the contributors who are listing how easy it is are merely exacerbating the problem. Readers who have never tried these dungeons will now have the impression that they're merely an extension of the WotLK "gogogo" travesty "No skill required" which will result in them taking that approach. As you rightly point out Gevlon, they won't stop and consider that they're causing the problem, they'll merely find someone to blame.
It's idiocy by the way rather than idiocity
I see neither Gevlon, nor any of the commenters so far have done Grim Batol HC. Try it - its the third heroic I've done (after BRC and SFK) and it was so hard, that after completing it with a group avg ilvl of smth like 330 (took like 4h) I consider it my greatest achievement in WoW (for comparison - I was 10/12 on HC ICC 10)
Although the 2-healer approach will probably help a lot with at least 2 of the bosses, it still won't trivialize it, because 3/4 bosses have some sort of "unhealable with 5 healers" mechanic and the 4th (well the 2nd actually) is just stupidly hard to begin with.
We had to use everything available of all of our classes and only managed to down the final boss when priest had to leave and we got a rogue with their imba slow (70% vs 50% of the others made all the difference)
P.S. Blizzscore counts the highest equippable item in your bag - you don't actually have to equip them. Still, at least with Grim Batol you really do need that 329 average.
I did my first Heroic on my Tank-DK yesterday. It was Stonecore. If we would use no CC we would pretty much wipe on any trash group of 4-5.
Damage comming to the tank (me) is pretty much unhealable for the fight durations that we have these days. I don't know if it's easier for your warrior friend, but I'm obliterated in a pull of 5 mobs there as soon as my IBF + Bone Shield + Vampiric Blood ends.
I have to check the idea of going with 2 healers.
My toughts about new heroics:
Trash fights are way more difficult than the boss fights.
As most of the time I agree with you. While Stonecore hc was an absolute bitch to do Wednesday Night it was just another hc Instance on Friday. I especially find it very sad that there seems to be a very small cap on everything.
While heroics are somewhat challenging in 329 Gear they get easier to the Point of “Screw CC lets just kill’em” when you have around 349. I think as soon as we hit 359 and above, it will be as boring as it was before in wotlk.
The same goes for Raids. The only reason no Guild was able to down Nefarian so far is him being buggy and despawning in Phase 3 of the Fight.
It will be very interesting to see how the heroic Raids turn out next week and if they will be as “brick-wally” as they were in the Beta.
On a side note. Try to go and do Al’Akir as soon as you can. This Boss has been changed from a Wipe-o-Ton to a absolute Fun Encounter. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not so if you get the Chance, go and do TofW as your first Raid.
I agree with the "Can't do with that gear, bye" thing. Many random heroics I did as disc priest ended like this yesterday. Either there will we see nerf or m&s will abandon heroics.
You don't need to EQUIP the items , just have them in your bags, please please please.. do not encourage people to wrongly equip items which are NOT ment for their class!
I think you're being a bit harsh on Blizzard here.
Firstly, several fights do require good DPS, either because of adds, or because of unavoidable damage that will make the healer OOM. Complaining because on some fights the DPS doesn't really matter seems rather unfair. Different mechanics emphasise different aspects of the game. Some fights are more about healing, or tank add management.
Sure, the new design isn't perfect. I'd like to see enrage timers for dungeon bosses, or other ways for bad DPS to cause wipes, but it is a start.
Secondly, they have increased the complexity of bosses. Most fights in Wrath had very minimal mechanics. Even the trash have more complex mechanics, and they hit much harder. Without breaking the model by using a second healer, they have made it that CC is required again, and that you can't mindlessly AoE everything down. You shouldn't be able to break this model with a second healer, but again, it is a step in the right direction.
Several idiot-check mechanics also leave no room to blame the healer or tank. For instance, the flame breath in HC Grim Batol a boss does. You stand in it, you die in a second, and no healer can save you. You can't blame anyone else when you die.
Even the moron hunter I saw the other day didn't try to blame the healer or the tank. Though he did leave after I called him a complete moron (he died to the breath 3 times even when we explained what to do, and left the group when I told him how big a moron he was). Win-win!
"We did the tol barad boss yesterday and even with people in greens there were few seconds left on the enrage timer."
Interesting, couldn´t remember season 9 started yet...
...The new dungeons are as hard as the players can move, involving Tank DPS and Healer. You can evade massive group damage just by being in the right spot. Next thing is interrupting (Grim batol add-spawning casters). And of course you can CC.
Since I switched from Heal to Tank I´m having a very good time on my paladin. No problms in points as aggro or incoming damage. My favorite healer has some issues with mana-management when it comes to group damage, what is almost always avoidable.
I haven´t made any random HC runs (just guild internal) just did some NH rund with the tool, what fed me up until I can outgear HC´s.
I hope I can return to the PuG in the next weeks, I just joined a new Guild with some of my favorite companions and gear up. That´ll be done next wekend I hope.
Considering that 80% of damage is completely avoidable, I haven't actually had THAT much of a problem with M&S in my runs. All it took was me to take a strong raid-style leadership role, mark mobs, and tell them what damage is avoidable. With the exception of Grim Batol, this has made heroics, well, not faceroll, but a good point between easy and challenging.
Honestly though, Vortex Pinnacle? It's one of the easiest heroics, along with Throne of Tides and Deadmines. I imagine your strategy will work in Grim Batol, except for the last boss which has strict DPS requirements, but I'll be interested to see how that goes.
That, and heroics were never meant to stop decent players. A modicum of skill will get you through them fine. It's the M&S that it stops, and so far kicking mechanics work quite well (or a few times they dropped of their own volition after blowing up the group too many times).
No offense but as others have said you picked a pretty easy heroic. Their are alot of bosses which im pretty sure would be close to impossible with 2 healers.
These spring to mind:
-Admiral Ripsnarl in Deadmines
-The boss with the portals in halls of orgination
-The boss with the spores in halls of orgination
You may well be able to pull this off but if you are going to take a full team minus a healer as you suggest then id assume your dps is good enough to make the healers job much easier without resorting to slowing the dungeon that much.
You seem to be coming up with a way to enable the rest of your damage dealers to get away with playing badly. Nowadays healing is as hard as dps make it good dps can avoid most damage and mitigate more with interrupts cc and stuns bad ones continue to play like WotLK and spam their rotation whilst wanking over the damage meters.
I picked no heroic, simply queued for a random. I explicitly told that some boss fights has DPS responsibilities. I simply said that ALL trashpacks and MANY bosses can be trivialized by using 2 healers, and assumed that the whole "hard cataclysm" idea is therefore broken as it allows bad players brute-force SEVERAL heroics. They can simply leave and reform if random gives them one of the non-brute forcable.
"Worst M&S I've seen so far was a Random PuG which wiped once on the first boss in HoO, and figured 'We can't do this with our gear' and decided to quit. So I guess the real M&S will stop doing heroics until they get carried through them anyway."
This is what used to happen in Burning Crusade when heroics were harder. If everyone wasn't in full epics, that was generally the excuse for failing. "We don't have enough gear". Even though you're supposed to be able to run them in non-heroic blues.
Concerning Blizzard's gear-score requirement for heroics, it has been there ever since Dungeon Finder was introduced, a year ago. You probably didn't realize this because you already had the gear for heroics at that point. As a brand new level 80, I didn't have gear then, and so noticed the requirement immediately.
VP is very easy. First boss in SC is even easier, how did you wipe to red on that? :)
Also, DDs finally DO have responsiblity, because it's now impossible to heal stupid. Yeah sure, your double heal setup may work on easier bosses, but that's it. It doesn't mean that DDs don't have it harder. It just means you can still carry their sorry asses.
Mr Goblin
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter! (Doh I'm already here)
We have actually done something similar for our early heroics except just using a Ele Shammy and Resto Druid - Shammy does some DPS and some healing.
As someone mentioned "That, and heroics were never meant to stop decent players." which is the norm for most players that read your blog (or blogs on WoW in general).
One final point. You could think of your method of 2 healers as a form of CC. You are just making the damage taken by the tank easier to handle, which is exactly what a good CC will do.
"Concerning Blizzard's gear-score requirement for heroics, it has been there ever since Dungeon Finder was introduced, a year ago. You probably didn't realize this because you already had the gear for heroics at that point. As a brand new level 80, I didn't have gear then, and so noticed the requirement immediately."
no, that's definitely not true. when it came out, i queued with a lvl 77 warlock for the argentum 5man and was almost half epic just from this immediately after i dinged.
then came changes in the level where you could join and after that increasing demands on the equipment.
@daniel
Let me guess, you're DPS right? As gevlon already mentioned, heroics are designed to be easy mode for you.
Althought dps never really noticed all that much of a difference in TBC heroics either, unless they pulled aggro.
I'm afraid you're way off your target this time, Gevlon.
It's one week after Cata release. The 'M&S' you're referring to actually managed to hit 85 in a timely fashion while getting the mere minimum of gear in six days.
Wait another two weeks until the LFD becomes swamped with people who currently 'need' hand-holding in order to survive the 'unbearably difficult' quests...
To be honest, LFD has been perfectly fine thus far with more or less everyone doing something stupid stating their own idiocy by correctly identifying the mistake and not repeating it next try.
@riptor
Of course heroics will be easier with higher gear score. The problem with WotLK was that blizzard's token and daily system forced players who out-geared the dungeons to keep doing them. It's ridiculous to be doing dungeons geared for ilevel 187 blues to be rewarding ilevel 264 epics. Of course they'll be face rolled.
Now with the weekly point caps, most geared players will be getting their points from raiding instead. Therefore more people in dungeons will be at the appropriate gear level. So we'll be running the dungeons to get ready for raids, not for grinding points/badges.
Oh this is how I used to do heroics in TBC at the beginning. When we didnt have that great gear 2 mages 2 healers and 1 tank. We also did magisters terrace that way. It worked just took longer to kill trash.
Really when it comes down to it all this is saying is that if you have an extra heals that the dps requirement on this is actually rather low.
For the most part wipes have only been happening because the healers go OOM because people are taking to much damage or you get 2 groups of mobs.
What the real benefit of having 2 healers would be is that you can have your tank aggro everything and the dps just aoe since you will be able to out heal the damage the tank will be taking on the pull.
Where this would fail would be on a pull where the mobs are capable of outhealing your dps if you only have 2. Gear would fix this problem and so far i haven't encounter anything where you couldn't CC a healer or such.
I didn't notice the gear requirement for heroics when it was first introduced even though I leveled a character for the undergeared project right afterwards.
Because it was an undergeared guy, I didn't give him any epics before queueing up in heroics, and I used the queue to do dungeons to get my best in slot blues, so I was using it from fairly early on. I did do some gear prep beforehand, since I was playing a tank and had to be uncrittable, but uncrittable and 25k hp were the only things I worried about and once I had them, the tool accepted me no problem even though my gear avg ilvl was probably <187, which is the line that the tools appears to be taking now for WotLK heroics.
Which is fairly ridiculous really -- all the early ones are doable greens now that all tanks get uncrittable without gear. most of the 3.0 heroics are a total faceroll if you have queueable gear.
I don't like the level chosen for gear requirements at all. One good undergeared demonstration would probably be to clear a bunch of wrath heroics with a 2 or 3 player group where all players are 80 and have item level lower than LFD will let them in.
I can tell you, that you are not completly wrong: I am in a semi-hardcore guild. I took one week of and went nerd-enrage. Lvl 85 on Tuesday, ~14:00. Now you just rush into heroics. Today first raid. Killed 3 bosses, got the fourth to 8%. PvP down easily.
But what I CAN tell you: You don't faceroll those encounters with three healers. Those are needed at our kind of gear (I am at around 348-389 and thats what I am wearing).
Now you can do it with two, if gear is better. But with heroics gear you will make your life very hard with two healers.
The problem is as follows: You take two healer, they need the same mana as three need to get the group topped, but distributed among two instead of three.
Now while this is obvious, it gets worse: You have some nice Healing per Point of Mana and some bad (or at least less efficient). Take Wild Growth. Its really nice, but it's got a cooldown it doesn't hit everyone who took damage. So the problem comes down to the group dying faster than WG coming off cooldown. Using Rejuvenation additionally (and perhaps even more spells) is less efficient thus even more mana is burned. So even if two good healers had the mana pool of three not so good, you still would fail due to higher mana consumption.
Nonetheless, your statement is true about doing heroics. Those raids that are active are not possible for the average random group, but of the three bosses we nuked, we didn't see enrage once (suppose they didn't get one), it was all healers mana. Last boss we did hit the Enrage Timer, so this is a dps race. And keep in mind: There are less obvious mechanics that fail on dps, like not killing adds fast enough (which 3 of 4 encounters required). But this maybe the fault of the healer (he could have healed through that! ;-) )
Those are some considerations you may make to your assumptions, though you are correct in your conclusions.
"So if you want some easy (granted, bit slow) heroics, form a pre-made party that has the two necessary ingredients: the tank, the DD-healer, and a good DD who can kill the boss before everyone fall asleep."
So basically, you need a good tank, a good healer (with DD offspec), and a good DD (DPS). If you have those elements already, then you wouldn't be wiping in the first instance, because you'd work as a team of 3 (with only tank and DPS providing the damage, no different to your scenario assuming that the extra M&S will be near worthless in both cases). Healer can easily solo heal tank and good DPS.
Essentially, today's post says "have a good team and heroics will be easy". That's not news. And as others have pointed out, you've picked the easiest heroic so far, from what I've heard.
Because the damage dealer to healer ratio is not balanced (1/3), you will always gain more than you lose with a healer instead of a damage dealing class. Especially since a significant part of the damage is going to be dealt by the tank, the ratio could even be considered 1/4.
Since that is also true for raids, bringing an additional healer will always be an option in every fight with low damage requirements.
This leaves us with the dilemma, that all the content will be out-geared very soon. Just imagine a healer having double the amount of Mana than the healer has now, that will give a similar effect as having two healers. My Mana increased from ~60k to ~90k with doing a handful of heroics, so it's save to say that as soon as the second raid tier is reached (and epic gear will be available for Justice Points), the heroic content will be trivialized to nothingness. With some heroic gear, we already run through instances like Vortex Pinnacle without any crowd control.
And its not even necessary to have a damage dealer switch to his damage dealing spec. All the classes with healing specs and enough intelligence can sub as a full healer for a short time or a difficult boss phase. Thats all thanks to the three "base" healing spells (fast, but expensive, big and cheap heal). Even with only those three, they can heal the same as any normal healer, just with the price of having a slightly lower efficiency.
But instead of pointing that out, I'd like to shift the focus on an other observation I've made in cataclysm heroics so far.
The biggest problem I have with the current system is the utility that different classes provide. For example, a Mage will trivialize the more difficult heroics like Grim'Batol, Blackrock Caverns and the Stonecore as he has slows, freezes to easily take care of the adds. And he has good crowd control as well as heroism.
Another overpowered class is the shadow priest, not only, because he can easily switch the help with healing, but because he can either shackle, fear or most importantly mind control mobs. With a mind-control pull, the trash is decimated by one mob, before any player has to enter combat. And if one takes control of a healer, ~200k heals can be spammed for the hole fight - and the priest is regenerating his own Mana during that time.
That results in a situation where the group setup is a lot more important than player skill, and it continues the Wrath philosophy where "ranged > melee". Or who went Lich King without any paladin healer? Probably close to nobody.
As long as the difficulty of the encounters continue to depend on the group setup as strong as now, I don't think, that Blizzard have reached their goal of creating a hard, but doable content.
Gevlon,
This really is a great idea.
In one way all the idea does is move content one level easier for generic dps and tank pugs. By coming up with this you have in essence made 4.0 content as puggable as when 4.1 gear comes out. (I myself was going to wait until either the "oh crap we need to buff heals" 4.0.5 or 4.1 before getting into healing much.)
I will certainly give this a try.
Oh by the way, to all those "an extra healer won't help" crowd.
YES this will! All you need to realize is the number of times groups wipe due to the following.
--2+ toons taking damage
--Tank getting a crit, needs health recovery fast
--Heals getting behind damage curve on tank
---Heals needs to "twitch button" tank save like pally shield.
ALL of these would be greatly helped by another set of healy eyes and hands.
It's not a great idea though is it? Why do you want to use a method which further seeks to abstract any sense of responsibility from the DPS?
If you want the "M&S" to get better, to achieve any sense of self awareness or accountability why provide a mechanism that prevents this?
Surely the thinking, in order to be constructive, should be along the lines of what could be done in order to not have the DPS given an easy ride?
What this method does is provide a kind of palliative care, addressing only the symptoms and not the underlying cause.
To the guy who laughed about season 9 not starting yet: so what, Argaloth boss is still there in Tol Barad keep, we killed him before season 9 start, the only problem was actually getting that TB for our faction since the opposite one outnumbers our twice. He dropped 2 pieces of new pvp tier, even if you can't buy these yet for honour. We sharded one (as we didn't have that class), so now pvp gear is disenchantable.
We had 8 guild members, 2 pugs, the boss is pretty easy tactics-wise like old VOA bosses, he's a dps race boss for now when people run around in blues, healer mana is limited and damage dealers don't do insane dps yet. I predict once people get decked in gear he'll become like old VOA, go in, collect loot.
About the "gearscore" needed for heroics, yes, when we needed a pug healer etc. people used to cheat and buy rings from Therazane rep. etc. to pass the limit. However, you know, you can always do it the old school way, fly to the instance / use summon stone and walk through the door. I don't think there's any gear limit on that.
Note to enchanters, wait with sharding high level crap before you pass HC requirements in LFG, it's really annoying when you drop below because you sharded some lousy useless quest reward.
I agree with boss selection named here what people find hard:
- 3rd boss in brc "kite through the fire", it's enough to someone to kill an add in a wrong spot and moment for the boss to get too many stacks and overwhelm you
- Ripsnarl in deadmines, needs dps really on their toes since adds gain HP in time, if they aren't picked asap, we had our caster dps run oom
- stonecore first boss, maybe you have uber pc but I can't the hell see where are safe spots from the boss' burrow, and you get one shot if you get caught
We also found Draga in Grim Batol pretty annoying in the dragon phase.
Haven't done VP or Lost City yet, I heard Siamat is pretty annoying too but didn't check yet.
And yeah, the graphic issues, Lady Nazja-something in Throne of the Tides, we had 2 melees, so the geyser was often under the boss in melee, and try to see light blue circle under the huge boss, on blue floor with druid healer putting light green circles on top of that. We felt like morons failing to the geyser but I really hate what they did with druid and priest green / white healing circles obscuring bad stuff underneath.
I'm afraid, Gnome of Zurich and others, that your memories are playing tricks on you. There were gear requirements right from the start of Dungeon Finder. See the original patch notes: http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_3.3.0
As is still the case today, not all dungeons had gear requirements.
Id have to agree as a healer i feel immense pressure in H's at the moment, and whats worse is you always get the blame, im not sure what its like as other classes but as a druid i can have 3 stacks of lifebloom, rejuvination, WG and be spaming moslty healing touch on the tank sometimes and only just keeping the tank up while other people are taking damage so i use one GC on one other person and the tank dies, guess who gets the blame for that? Ive decided my gear must not be good enough if i am doing everything i can and still manage to let a dps die every few trash pulls.
@rashnu
"My toughts about new heroics:
Trash fights are way more difficult than the boss fights."
This is a great change to dungeon mechanics. You now have to earn your way to the loot pinata by fighting down the halls.
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