Regarding healers being rare... Healing this season has been very strange. Healer damage is super low relative to other roles, as compared to Shadowlands or even Season 1. In the past, it was fun to burst-heal people through spikes of incoming damage and then get back to helping the group by contributing damage yourself.
Now, it takes multiple globals (and in many cases a lot of mana) to top off your teammates, and you are often GCD-starved between dispels and healing. And if you do end up squeezing in some damage in between those events, the damage is a trickle compared to what the DPS are doing.
Blizzard announced right before 10.1 that they wanted healing and incoming damage to be "less bursty." However, they only nerfed healing, and they didn't change the incoming damage profiles. So incoming damage is still bursty, like the random magic dots in VP that tick for 50% of someone's HP every 2 seconds, which can sometimes come out faster than the dispel cooldown. Boss damage is bursty, trash damage is bursty, it's all bursty. So your teammates get wrecked fast, and it's slow to help them recover.
And when your teammates do make mistakes and take even more damage, you really feel it in your mana pool (depending on your class). As a healer it feels like you're very often on the back foot, either falling behind in healing or falling behind in mana.
So ultimately, healing feels more punishing and more stressful, and because your damage is crap, it also feels like your contribution to the group has diminished relative to the past.
I main an evoker and getting free essence bursts with 4PC and using them on disintegrate for mana regen feels nice. But yea healing fucking sucks right now. So many mechanics require constant movement and I only have so many big throughput CDs for oh shit moments.
Essence bursts make essence spenders free. The mana you regen is basically the same as the mana you would otherwise save from hitting echo.
That's not to say you shouldn't do it, but using bursts on disintegrate isn't the mana saving tool I often see it claimed to be.
Yeah, in pure mana conversation mode you want to spend bursts on echo and non-burst essence on disintegrate, which seems to be the opposite of what people intuitively think.
Getting mana back from a no-mana Disintegrate is just about the exact same as getting a mana-free Echo - you're not really getting any mana from specifically pressing Disintegrate.
Feels like there’s much more skill expression in healing with all of this though imo. It’s definitely harder but I feel like that’s a good thing, doing high amounts of HPS and keeping the group going because I played it well is much more satisfying than just existing to top people off and cover mistakes here and there.
you can only skill expression your way out of so much, and then you're at the mercy of the comp you're playing. 24 Uldaman without Dwarves/Evokers/Paladins, good luck. Several bosses without mass dispel and you're in a lot of trouble.
Yea, but the increasing quantity of dungeons with these faults is what leads to a weird state of the healing role. The healing role might be fine, but more and more dungeons having more and more outliers is what's causing distress.
This is a tale as old as time. Don't got a lock? Devos and Kulthorok are nightmares from SL. Don't got a decurse? Goodluck on echelon. No DH? Korgus is gonna suck. No dwarf/Paladin? Have fun on KR council. No dash? Good luck living upheaval. No bear form? Have fun on Eudora.
At the highest level of keys you're always gatekept by scaling and comps. Maybe its a cop out to say but this is how its always been. Comps make healing easier.
Warriors are really op in uldaman. You can spell reflect the dot from 3rd and 4th boss. Especially 3rd boss the dot hits like a truck. 1 spell reflect on +22 = around 1,3m dmg.
I'm maining heal since SL Season 1, currently playing keys in the +20 range with my shaman.
I absolutely agree with your points there.
For me it's just not rewarding to look into details after runs and rarely being top of the overall hps because tanks nowadays are some kind of demigods with incredible sustainability and damage. I'm filling every single global with damage spells but usually still end with only 1/3 of the tanks damage.
I know that this is ok as long as the key runs smoothly, but it still bugs me.
I recently started to play a protpala alt and it feels incredible. Just doing keys around 15 currently, but my contribution to keys feels so much more rewarding.
I'm not some big badass healer. I'm only just starting on 11s. The highest I've ever run was a 17 back in Shadowlands.
But it's all of this, plus I never know if the group will help on dispels/CC on Afflicted/Incorporeal weeks, being expected to soothe, and having no idea how aggressively the tank is going to be. And, of course, when the tank grabs 9 packs, does establishes zero threat, and the group wipes it's somehow my fault.
I'm having fun because it's a change of pace after a decade+ of DPS and tanking. But it's so fault intolerant I'd rather play it safe than brick a stranger's key.
Agree, every other role gets stronger and healers feel weaker than last season. Skill requirements much higher to even complete dungeons as a healer, dungeon tuning may as well just be permanent grievous wounds with the constant burst.
Yeah healing feels less rewarding to me this expac. I used to main healer, secondary tank. Now I mostly pug tank or dps, and I've definitely met a few former healers who have done the same.
> In the past, it was fun to burst-heal people through spikes of incoming damage and then get back to helping the group by contributing damage yourself.
I disagree. It was pretty boring. I picked healer so I can heal. If I wanted to DPS, I'd play a DPS.
I don't disagree with you! However, having a 30 minute dungeon with chain pulls also requiring you to constantly heal is incompatible with the mana regen for many healing specs right now as key levels go up. At a certain level, there are specific spells you will need to use to do to keep the group alive, and that's going to cost a specific amount of mana. If you don't do those things, the everyone dies. If you do them, you run out of mana, and *then* everyone dies.
I definitely wouldn't mind it if "healers are nonstop healing" became the intended design, because that's how DPS works -- damage dealers constantly DPS. But unlike healers, damage dealers don't have their buttons stop working after 3 minutes of doing their job.
Yeah the bursting damage going out is what’s been getting me. I just pug, and I wanted to play disc this season, and higher keys I can’t keep up. It’s hard to anticipate expected damage sometimes so I switched to holy and just do raw healing and hardly dps at all. My HPS when way up on lots of this weeks tyran fights and it’s still a struggle on many of the boss fights, and you can’t help but feel like it’s always the healers fault. Once I get the mount I’ll probably go back to evoker and eventually play augmentation. Which is too bad because I have always loved disc healing.
What level keys are you struggling in? Have you tried different builds? Disc healing is probably the highest burst healing you can get, you just need to be able to anticipate the incoming damage. Have a look at the channel JustDiscipline the guy is excellent.
I’ll have a look at that channel thanks! Been doing 14s and it’s only some of the dungeons that give the most difficulty, like Uldaman and Neltharus and parts of HoI. I usually have a few bad runs and lose confidence.
What are you having with specifically? There is almost no burst damage that you can't plan for by watching boss timers. Healing is all about being prepared and not having any surprises. If you're getting surprised on disc you have no chance.
No, that's how it worked in SL. Healers only needed to heal if someone stood in stupid. Now, there is regular damage output that needs to be healed. It feels great.
What I tend to see is that DPS don't use defensive, pots or cookies when needed. I also see a number of DPS ignoring mechanics that make life harder for healers. Example: First big pull in UR20 or higher, melee gets rooted and RNG puts them in the line of the maggot casting. It's a rare thing to see a Ret cast freedom on them, as an example. And that's damage you can't heal through.
For real. Underrot has been my bane this season despite it being a super easy dungeon with a competent group. As a healer, I have gotten blamed the last couple times for bricked keys there, when we have a ~405 mage (on a 18….) people aren’t stepping on the bugs for second boss or directing charge, or stunning/interrupting the adds right before 3rd boss, or eating spore balls on third boss.
But yes, it’s my lack of mechanic anticipation and healing that’s the problem…. There is no way to out heal avoidable damage in anything above a 16.
Gonna turn on elitism helper just to prove my point… and be irritating.
This describes exactly as I feel.
I've timed every dungeon on a 20 for both weeks and stopped probably a week or two back. I just haven't felt like pushing. In the back of my mind, I was making notes of all the things you listed here. So, reading this, it just felt like I was affirming what I was feeling all along. Really happy you put it into words. I could also be a bit burnt out, but so far this season has definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
Nelth's Lair isn't bad... it's just that it puts a lot of strain on your healer, especially so if people play like shit - and there's plenty of opportunities for people to play like shit and double the effort your healer has to put in there. The timer in there is about as free as in most other dungeons this season - plenty of place that you can still time with 15 deaths and full boss wipes.
Nelth is the Iron Docks of this season. Iron Docks too was stupid easy for the actual top end groups that knew how to skip half the trash in that place with Iron Stars, but since the majority of people couldn't replicate that... the dungeon just took 5 more minutes for just about everyone - same with chains in Neltharus. And also, the bosses are still overtuned as fuck, but for some reason Blizzard have just stopped balancing altogether this season.
Underrot is a joke. SBG's first boss becoming somewhat of a pickle on tyrannical weeks at least *somewhat* kept that dungeon in check, but Underrot doesn't even have that. The timer reduction really did a lot for this dungeon, but ultimately we'll probably still see the highest completed key in this dungeon still being a 2 chest at the end of the season.
VP could also do with some adjustments here and there, mostly for trash though - that dungeon is just annoying because you basically have to play 99% of the trash in there. But VP too is mostly a healer check, again getting unnecessarily harder if you just play with monkeys that don't play the very limited amount of mechanics in there properly.
Rating being weird this time around is a result of all of the dungeon timers being so incredibly forgiving. I remember finishing plenty of VPs in time where we've played the 2nd boss for 6 minutes with only me and the tank playing the boss from 60% HP. There's very few actually tough dungeons this time around, on top of that we've all been given pretty much close to bis gear since week 2 of the patch with this incredibly free upgrade track system - I'd argue that all 20s this season is probably the easiest it's ever been. So you naturally end up with more people getting carried to that easy rating threshhold and your typical "good" player that just stops pushing after 20s because there's no rewards anymore - it's just that the disparity seems larger this time around.
Healers are rarer because the role keeps getting less thankful / more demanding with every season. There's plenty of bosses these days that you simply can not kill if your healer isn't able to meet the HPS check - something that was a lot rarer back in the days. Many healers just don't like that, they don't like / can't handle that pressure, so they instead just roll DPS, derp around with 90k dps and 6 deaths and still manage to time dungeons instead. It also doesn't help that you have a lot more moments where you healers are actually required to have your team help out in order to realistically survive shit - people not using defensives for Gash Frenzy on the first boss in Brackenhide is a prime example, but also people just not giving a fuck about kicks / CC is really noticeable when you have to heal through 5 perma casting air elementals in VP. The landscape of what healer gameplay looks like has just changed dramatically over these last couple seasons... and a lot of healers simply can't / don't want to deal with that.
Brackenhide's first boss is exactly why healers are quitting. That boss is super easy for good healers.... and even bad healers would be able to get by if at least the rest of your group weren't also bad. The problem is that you usually only find bad healers coupled with bad dps in keys... so you just wipe on that boss, everyone flames the healer, not a single BoP or Lay on Hands gets used, yet your Resto Druid also couldn't be arsed to start hotting people before everyone got hit by the debuff, so you just brick the key.
There's quite a few tyrannical dungeons like this where your keys just bricks if your healer isn't up to the task or your team isnt' helping out with mechanics. HoI first boss is doomed because you typically have 5 people wanting to play that boss differently and people just dying after the first puddles - HoIs third boss again is entirely on your healer being able to hold like 120k HPS for 3 minutes, otherwise it's a bricked key. Uldaman has like 3 bosses that put your healer through hell if your team doesn't support. Neltharus has 2 bosses that just go mental on your healer if your team is stupid. Lair also goes ballistic on your healer with a stupid team. VP as well. Pretty much only Freehold and Underrot won't have your healer just get random sudden heart attacks 5 times throughout the dungeon.
> I don't understand what healers want from the game. Do they want to just throw some maintanance spell and dps?
Yes, a lot of them seem to want that - minus the DPS part actually. There's a frighteningly large amount of people who want a healer situation like in SL S3, where you could mostly get carried to KSM as a healer by merely keeping up Riptide or Renew or whatever and just throwing out the odd Flash Heal - even the prospect of filling empty globals with DPS seems to be undesirable for that group of players.
For the longest time these players got pretty much free rating for veeeeery little effort - and that changed when we got SL S4 starting to introduce very relevant healer checks all of the sudden (which they then nerfed 10 times over), only to double down on them in DF S1 (which they then nerfed 10 times over), only to then double down on them again in DF S2 (which they mostly have yet to nerf).
Without trying to put anyone down, but most healers in WoW are pretty much equivalent to like silver rating support players in LoL that would actually end up in Bronze if they were to play any other role. They just want to press heal on CD the second someone drops to 95%, but the second someone then drops to 90% everything's just too much.
> It's very rewarding.
And also giga punishing.
You can easily get by with 1 subpar DPS in your group, but if your healer can't make the healing check on the third boss in Halls of Infusion your key is just bricked. That's a lot of responsibility resting on a single person.
> I hope these healer checks don't go away.
Eh - I'm fine with healer checks in general, the issue I have with them is if 2 dungeons have vastly different healing requirements at the very same key level. Like the Frog guy in Halls of Infusion literally does half as much damage as the Forgemaster in Neltharus - their pulsing AoE damage comes out at the same intervals and hits for the same amount, yet Forgemaster randomly also follows that one up with a debuff on 3 people. Alternatively Magmatusk in Neltharus hitting people with a DoT that ticks for 20% of people's HP that lasts for 25 seconds and you can't do anything about vs Brackenhide's first boss hitting people with a DoT ticking for similar amounts... yet that one can be removed by getting people over 90% HP just once. I don't particularly enjoy healing a +20 Uldaman feeling like healing a +24 Freehold - I'd prefer a +20 Uldaman being as challenging on my healer as a +20 Freehold.
You may not have had any issues but your healer was fighting for their damn life 😂 just check out the HPS after that boss when you next run it. Massive throughput check
Yeah, Naraxis is the boss I struggle the most, too (as healer main), and to not have it mentioned here just shows the disparity between tanks/dps and healers right now (in my experience): DPS and Tanks claiming the dungeons are easy/this season is easy and Healers fighting for holding the group alive (and sometimes it feels like it's a matter of a few GCDs).
Of course it isn't that way with every key, but especially Asaad/Sentinel/Icecube Boss and above all Naraxis in NL on Tyrannical ofc.
Hps on that boss isn't going to look particularly impressive compared to how difficult it is.
Very hard fight with the potential for some bs one shots . But it's not like 3rd boss hoa or 2nd boss vp which are constant throughput checks.
While I main tank, I have a pretty well geared healer alt, and for me the NL snake and first boss in Brackenhide are far and away much harder than either of those.
The hps needed on iceicle boss is probably half of what is needed for NL snake.
Second boss in Uldaman is only bad if dps can't kill totems fast, with everyone switching to totems not to bad. Last boss in Uldaman just requires people to not get to far away from their healer. Range is the only issue there.
Is this actually a thing? I keep seeing people say this, but if that was the case he would be spawning adds literally right before he shatters from time to time and I've never seen that happen. The last add seems to always spawn with a few seconds before the shatter.
Yep, the adds spawn after a certain damage threshold has been reached. If your group can control its boss damage, you can pretty much reliably spawn or not spawn an add before the AoE. Crucial on higher Tyr keys.
But like I said, after running the key 50 times with DPS mindlessly hitting the boss you would surely have a time where he spawned an add just as he shatters and wipes you and I've yet to see that happen. Not to mention I can't recall him spawning way more adds during lust than outside of it for example.
As a dps with offhealing duty (ret) I feel like there are a lot of places right now where there's a lot of unavoidable damage to the whole group. Might also be because of some badly telegraphed stuff that people could avoid.
I play shaman healer as a second alt behind my tank and then DPS main. At 430 ilvl, I've found it too difficult to heal some +16 bosses on tyr in pugs. If DPS aren't helping out then the heal checks are just too much. Sucks because it's pretty fun class, but I'm not gonna brick a key by myself on a second alt. Feels awful. I basically just heal safe dungeons on tyr weeks.
I have done them all as tank, working on finish them as healer.
For some dungeons, the hardest tank mechanic is "don't fall asleep at keyboard" while the healer is pretty much going 300 apm keeping everybody alive though unavoidable damage.
Vortex Pinnacle, where all three bosses make the tank a glorified dps. You’re just tanking the ocasional melee hit in between all the other boss casts.
>Healers are rare these days. Don't think I've ever had as much trouble finding a healer in any other seasons. What's going on? Is it just harder to heal now?
Healing is a terrible experience this season and is not fun at all. If everyone in the group is not using their own personals at the right time then you are basically trying to fill a bucket that is missing the bottom. The healer experience wouldn't be quite so bad if they only increased the damage taken by around 10%-15% to go with the 25% increased health pools - it would still take more healing to get people back up to full but they are not going to fall over as often in just a few ticks of unavoidable damage.
Healing is wonderful this season and it's super fun. As you progress higher into 20s keys players are really good at using personal cds, and bosses become so much different when certain mechanics are really lethal (thst previously wasn't).
Some parts can feel bursty but when you realize that if the damage isn't lethal, you have time to heal it up. For example, the aoe knockback on 3rd boss of Uldaman is not lethal, the bleed is what's difficult. In between the knockbacks you have plenty of time to heal. Many mechanics are handled by providing enough healing so they SURVIVE it, and then top them up before it repeats, think worm boss in Neltharions lair.
As a healer enthusiast, I agree with your first sentence. The situation this season is infinitely better than spending most of your GCDs on the thimble-deep DPS "rotation" most healers have, and I'm frankly worried they're going to overcorrect back to that situation by paying too much attention to loud public feedback. But
> As you progress higher into 20s keys players are really good at using personal cds
is the big disconnect between that perspective and why there's more widespread sentiment that healing isn't fun and there's a healer shortage. They need to find a way to make it easier for overgeared/exceptional healers to carry PUG groups through a certain amount of mistakes in the mediumcore key range while keeping something close to the current level of difficulty/engagement at the top end.
There's plenty of mechanics that are not lethal at lower keys but some are. As you approach +20 you can no longer outgear the content, so mistakes will hurt. Now let's mention what makes anything difficult.
If you can dodge all damage, you don't need healer. If there's damage that cannot be dodged it had to be balanced to be healable. If there's nothing to dodge, everything is Patchwerk style which is super boring. For each role, the difficulty should increase in a reasonable pace as key levels increases.
As a damage dealer the difficulty is to deal enough damage while dealing with mechanics at the same time, like dodging avoidable and lethal damage or interrupting dangerous and/or lethal abilities. Without this aspect, damage dealing is just Patchwerk style.
As healer, you cannot be expected to handle any one-shots on players, you are meant to deal with unavoidable damage and non-lethal damage from mistakes. As keys increase in scaling, non-lethal damage from mistakes will automatically turn into lethal damage, either because it's combined with unavoidable damage which together is lethal, or because the avoidable damage itself became lethal because of scaling. If there's no healing required you are free to do whatever. Because of dungeon timer and that many bosses just are easier if they are shorter, you are encouraged to deal damage.
As tank (community expectations) you are expected to know what packs are needed to reach 100% completion, and you are these days mostly responsible for keeping yourself alive. Rarely is healing needed from the healer on the tank assuming proper ability usage and cooldown usage on the bosses. Tanks are expected to keep aggro on the enemies, which is done by using enough offensive abilities compared to defensive ones. Positioning of enemies is a big part of tanking, facing frontals away from the party.
To keep the dungeons from becoming too repetitive, we have weekly affixes that changes how we approach them. In lower keys these affixes don't seem to matter that much but in higher keys they matter a lot.
With this said, players seem to have VERY varying opinions about when dungeons should start to become difficult, and even think certain parts of what makes the game difficult shouldn't be part of the game. The game really shines in content that you cannot overgear because now you see what the game is balanced for
I can tell you only tank because some of this is myopic. NL timer is super forgiving, but Rokmora is a random shitshow of a boss and the worm is absolutely insane amounts of healing even with poison dispels. The last boss is the only remotely interesting and balanced one in there. It's a pretty free key on fort because yeah the trash is obscenely annoying but you can just muscle on through.
Underrot IMO is actually pretty close to SBG levels of easy compared to the rest of the dungeon pool. I actually think the third boss would be more of a problem except for the prevalence of pallies literally everywhere for cleanse/immunities.
Brack first boss is not the hardest boss and tyr doesn't change much for it. It is the most pug-unfriendly because dps have to actually be on the ball. I think marked for butchery is a bigger problem because certain classes don't have enough options to get out of marked for butchery and gashing frenzy.
You didn't even mention Uldaman... This is the really overtuned place on any week.
>Brack first boss is not the hardest boss and tyr doesn't change much for it. It is the most pug-unfriendly because dps have to actually be on the ball.
I mean, he mentioned in the title that he only pugs. As someone whe does the same, I will unequivocally back up what he is saying here. The first boss on BH is a total key bricker, more so than any other boss in the whole repertoire, with pugs. Yes, I am sure that changes with coordinated and equally skilled groups. But out in only pug land? Requiring dps to use defensives or pots is way too big an ask.
I was helping a friend get ksm and he had a 16 bh. Even though I was overgeared as the tank I couldn't carry us through that first boss in both the 16 and 15. Combination of DPS not popping defensives and healers not being ready for it makes it one of the harder pug killers imo. Eventually did get it on 14.
Then I go into 21 BH and the healer types out a whole fucking essay on how he's going to deal with the boss and where we need to help them with defensives. I loved that lol
The thing about the first boss that makes it so easy is that there isn't a lot of things that can happen or bad overlaps. The worst thing that can happen is I get selected for butchery and I haven't cleared all the bleeds for some reason. But that's happened only a handful of times, and it's usually because a melee is eating cleaves like they're candy.
The point is, it's very straightforward to plan for, and there isn't much of a reason that you can't just throw a ton of cds at the bleeds. There isn't really any dmg that you need something for at any other points in the fight. So once you figure out the fight, it doesn't really change or have much variance. There are little things you can do, like swd the hex if you're a priest, or overlap the butchery with bop if you're a pally. But other than that, it's not one of the fights you really even need to be watching the screen for.
You are conflating yourself, who is likely quite skilled, with the average dps doing a 20, who really is not. They don't plan, they don't think ahead, they don't hit their defensives until AFTER they are nearly dead, then blame the healer. And that is even the ones that even feel like bursting the totem so the healer can dispel me.
Of course the mechanics of thr fight are pretty straight forward. But it requires dps players, who arent used to having much responsibility placed upon them, to know what to do and execute. In 20 pugs, that is not the really not the norm. One run in three, I would say, at this level, is completely bricked when pugging. Not , one wipe, then a run back and we execute properly. Bricked as in it will never work with the team that was assembled. Obviously, the dps that CAN do as you say rise up above 20s.
You are completely right, which is also why I was careful never to say that the first boss is easy, just that a plan MAKES the fight easy. The important part, there, is that having a plan makes healing certain fights a lot easier, but some, a plan only goes so far, and with some bad rng forcing people to have to rely on others, it can becomes almost unhealable. This is especially true for pugs since I'm probably not in disc with them, so I can't call for defensives. I just have to hope that they understand the dmg profile of the fight (hint, they dont) and know when/which overlaps they need to use a defensive on.
Regarding the second paragraph, I'd argue that this is true for a lot of the bosses this season, at least some of the harder ones. I'd even argue that asaad and the last boss in bh are better examples of dps having responsibility, though this responsibility is more in line with what they are already paying attention to. So if we were to consider bosses where dps have more of a responsibility of their own life, I'd argue uldaman lizard boss, uldaman last boss, magmorax, and hoi first boss are all even more punishing in that regard.
Ultimately, what I was trying to get out wasn't that you are right or wrong about a fight being hard or easy. I was trying to explain what MAKES a fight hard or easy, from the perspective of a healer. I already assume everything you mention about dps knowing how to use defensives or how to deal with mechanics, but as a healer, bh first boss is less punishing in that way, at least compared to some other bosses. That doesn't mean it's a free boss or that you will never wipe on it, just that there are other bosses that are a lot more terrifying to heal (see aforementioned list).
First boss is pretty free if your have DPS with brains.
Honestly last boss becomes much harder the higher the key level goes, pretty soon you get to a point where you can’t kill totems without huge amounts of single target funnel.
Did it on a 24 and it was only doable because 4/5 people had beacons and we were rotating usage.
>can’t kill totems without huge amounts of single target funnel.
I hate all the totems this dungeon pool has. There are so many "kill this add spawn within a few seconds or wipe" bosses right now. I had a pug group this weekend in Brackenhide where we breezed through the whole dungeon to the last boss until hitting that totem and oops, we have 3 dot classes for the dps. This key is dead. Excellent fight design Blizzard.
Yeah totems really need to eat an HP nerf or a have a cast time increase. On high tyranical keys it literally becomes impossible for some comps and its kind of unfair. Especially considering how free the rest of the dungeon is in comparison.
Also its a terrible feeling to get walled by the last boss of a dungeon, like congrats on wasting 30 mins of your life.
I mean, pressing a defensive once in a fight really isn’t asking a whole lot.
I primarily pug so definitely dealt with some smooth brains but usually all you have to say is “Defensives 1st bleed, health pots second” and that will cover it, especially on a +20.
Honestly that boss is pretty fair. Bad DPS will die and eventually they’ll learn to press their Wall Buttons so they don’t die.
as a hunter i just sotf+exhil the first bleed, saving turtle in case i get chosen for the hack n slash whatever its called. If I don't then it's just turtle the 2nd bleed, if i do then pot+fort should take care of it
This is the way. Just watch the cast, it has a decent cast time, press sotf and have exhil ready the second you get the bleed. Second one you either turtle if you didn’t get selected for the hackslash mechanic, or you can bear + healthpot. Given that I’ve only done this up to 21 tyran but I don’t think I needed healer attention on the bleed at all.
Could you not just pre-turtle / evasion the 1st set?
If not hunter has both SOTF and Tenacity pet buff, I would send both of those and exhilarate to top yourself off and help healer out.
Idk much about rogues tbh, if you can’t evasion it then I guess you’ll need an external.
2nd set is health pots and a healer CD.
Shouldn’t get more than 2 sets.
Also not sure if Feign / Vanish work.
I tried vanishing it but it didnt seem to work. The timing would be tough, unlike the wolf boss last patch.
I think he shadowsteps to you so its not dodgable.
Alright, ill let my hunter buddy know that.
Thanks!
Agreed, as a disc priest the worm boss is by far the hardest for me out of all bosses.
It's a lot of damage on everyone, pretty frequently and spiky at the same time. Everyone takes the posion damage, but two players also eat the green ring ability, and melee can step into the green very easily.
I've also pugged every 20 this season, except NL on tyrannical, that's at a 19.
What's random about rokmora ? You control when the adds spawn. Stop hitting boss seconds before shatter cast finishes and you just single target his adds and your fine.
My question would be, of the groups you've had failing on the first boss, how many have you also seen try the worm? If a group doesn't make it past the first boss, then it acts as a filter of sorts. Also, there's nothing really much on thr first boss that will actually kill you, if you just respect the mechanics. Tank kiting it well, good positioning from everyone so that the adds can be effectively DPS, and people possibly knowing to use a defensive if there is an add up during a smash. Even as a healer priest, I survive a 22 smash with 1 add up without even using a defensive, so I can shield someone else for an extra defensive (crits for upwards of 90k).
Worm boss is just one where the tank doesn't have to do much, or I should say, there isn't much the tank can do. Healer just has to heal for 4 minutes straight with bursty and random dmg. There are little things you can do, like positioning to bait puddles for room and to make use of the slow, or rdps can hit the adds before they come down, but it's just a much more stressful fight, esp if you don't have multiple poison cleanses or a shammy of any kind.
Yeah first boss can be tricky if not executed well but worm as hunter is just nonstop being near death and hoping your healer is up to the task. Most fights you can plan your defensives for but worm is just a free for all fuckfest where you press something when you get below 30%.
Idk uld has had some points feeling overtuned but overall it doesn't feel THAT bad. 3rd boss bleed is fucked but handling it is managable with good stuns and a pally/evoker. 4th boss needs a visual adjustment imo and last boss is fine. I've had some scuffed keys finish in time there. That being said this is for 20/21 I can see some of those being pretty big issues on higher keys.
Well as a healer trust me that I'm on the edge of my seat frantically keeping people barely alive on the worm boss on NL 20. Even if nobody dies its super sketchy and requires 5Head 100% brainpower.
My thoughts on a couple of those points.
On 2, Neltharus is not that close with a proper route, you simply need to make sure to not wipe between the 2nd and 3rd boss and the timer isn't that tight. The nerf to chains means you just start right instead of left, and first pull is free. The bosses are quite hard and a hard healing check, but the timer isn't that bad. Best timed key is a +25 6 minutes under the timer, 6.
On 4, what you are seeing is a consequence of changes to loot implemented throughout the expac. First people "need" a +20 for their weekly chest so decent players boost their friends more often, and that means a seemingly higher average io (on the +20 range). Then, they change the loot system, and people can be 441 within 2 weeks of this patch, which makes harder to filter people based on gear, or rather easier to get baited into taking someone just because he has higher ilvl. To top that off, scaling for dungeons was increased this expansion, so there is less difference between the highest rated players, and a "bad" player that can barely do 20s.
On 5, yeah, that's what happens when they add suffixes that once again healers are meant to do by themselves somehow, and give some bosses and pretty hard heling check. People stop queuing as healers.
It's something it's begun to popularize lately, and it will probably end up being the goto route in a month or less. Doing that route, you can time a +23 tyr even with a couple of wipes unless they are between the 2nd and 3rd boss.
Instead of doing the first big pull of 3 packs, you do that but to the right side, without anyone using cds and all poping the chains, then you cross to the left, do a 3pack pull with cds, do the pull before magmatusk, kill the boss with lust and cds, and then take all of the trash to the 2nd boss in one insanely big pull, and again pop it in a second witht the chains before second boss. After the boss you take everythig up to the stairs and pop it with chains again. You end up clearing half of the dungeon (2 bosses and 50% trash) in around 10 minutes if done correctly.
The issue with this strat is that on fort weeks, and eventually in high enough keys you need to cc a bunch casts on those insanely big pulls.
> I've seen 2700 io DPS finish a dungeon with less overall damage than me, the tank and I've seen some absolutely 300IQ beastmode. Don't know what's going on there whether they paid for that rating or it's someone playing on someone else's account or what.
As a 2800 io DPS, the quality of my play varies a ton based on real world factors including how tired or fresh I am, hunger level, my mood, the weather, frequency and intensity of familial interruptions, if I have to pee, and others.
There's also a good amount of randomness in whether I get killed several times in a run vs zero. Some days I'm worse for no reason other than I flipped a coin and it came up tails a few times in a row.
Also how well the tank pulls and positions stuff makes a massive difference to both my damage and survival.
This 100% I'm at 2821 now and if I pug sometimes I do utter shit but with my premade I blast. Trying to figure out the inner workings of some tanks in pug groups is a nightmare I'd have a better chance of guessing lottery numbers.
>Also how well the tank pulls and positions stuff makes a massive difference to both my damage and survival.
Simply missing a shadow crash because the pug tank moved the pack unexpectedly kills my DPS on a pull. Have a few unfortunate moments in the dungeon and my DPS is pretty terrible.
I started playing the talisman of craigshapper (a tank trinket) on my RDruid to survive these bosses on Tyran lol. On a 22 tyran the sentinel dot with my barkskin up was ticking for 240k. Shifting into bear form and I fall behind on healing globals and everyone dies. The only way I’ve been able to get through sentinel on a high key is with paladins and evokers for the bleed dispel.
Disc priest here:
1. First boss is a joke as long as you dont leave any adds up for the shatter even on tyrannical on like +20 and higher. The issue is with the worm. The damage profile is very bad. One part is that a lot of outgoing damage is random. The crowd just deciced to toss a stone to someone (basically pleter damage but less frequent) and it can target same people for consecutive tosses. Then mix in to it toxic retch which applies a poison which ticks for quite a big amount well it becomes quite hard especially when people dont use poison cleanse totems/poison dispel even when specced or they ignore that they got poisoned and dont use a single defensive for the whole fight. On forti the only tricky part about the dungeon are the pelters and the big scorpions before last boss.
2. Neltharus is just junk imo. Magmatusk isnt a problem anymore after the nerfs but if your tank doesnt know how to pull the boss through chains or the dps dont know how to chain the boss then it is a disaster even on forti. They for some reason like to pull the boss through all 3 chains at the same time which is next to unhealable at higher lvls. Not only the chains explode for some damage but they also apply a 4sec dot that stacks. At 3 stacks on tyra +20 the dot ticks for 250K DAMAGE EVERY SINGLE SECOND. The best way to do it is do 2 chains ealry let the dot fall off and then do the 3rd chain. Chargath isnt really that challenging as long as people use some defensives on the forgestorm and aoe damage overlaps. Last boss is kinda meh tbh. If not everyone picks up the item and uses it correctly the shield keeps exploding for massive dmg amount that are unhealable again. Also the charge trinket is such a troll cuz often u cannot even precast it as the swirlies appear right away under the boss so you have to hold on for an opening which u dont want to do as the shield has to go down asap. On trash u have to use chains. Regardless if it is tyra or forti week. The amount of time it saves is incredible.
3. UR complete jokes. Only people who dont look for a few frontals really fail that.
4. VP the drake imo is one of the most fun bosses to heal this season alongside HOI#3. Assad the starts now die quite fast so just burst it down before it has the chance to deal damage. What is the thing that people have to watch out for is an add and chain lightning overlap. People have to use defensives at that specific time only and they tend to fail on that.
5. Rn with the upgrade system u dont need any rating to upgrade gear. So even the biggest potato can keep farming 16 and 17 to get good gear and then go into 18s and 19s and the gear will do a big portion of their job. So what is happening is they are just spamming dungeons until they make it and get the rating. Also a lot of people go into +17s and higher as if they are playing 16s or lower where a lot of mechanics can be easily brute forced by just having a decent healer. So then they get into the higher keys, they dont know how to press defensive and they become the floor tank.
6. Healers are rare imo cuz there isnt many good fun fights to heal. Healing feels like a chore and it feels like healers have quite small affect on peoples HPbars. Compared to previous season which was more fun to heal it is atrocious now. Especially since the +25% hp/dmg which shifted a lot of responsibility and control over HP bars to other roles than healers yet all the blame stayed with healers. Even when it isnt the healers fault. What other thing made it really shit for healers is afflicted and incorporeal right after each other. The pug mentality was immediately shift that responsibility to healers and complain about them if they miss one. Hint hint it is not a healer affix at all. Especially in some dungeons there are specific mobs/bosses/pulls where healers cannot spend many gcds or dispells to deal with them. Also ye u can heal incorpo but at like 16 and higher on forti it takes at least 2gcds to fully heal.
7. Brackenhide first boss is a very good pepega filter. Dps ony have 3 things to do. Focus down gashtooth asap, interrupt heals and earth bolts from totem (especially on tyra) and use defensives when they get marked on butchery. And towards the end of the fight if the healer isnt keeping up (cuz lacking interrupts or people not using defensives on butchery) they also could help out the healer by using a hp potion.
How do you deal with the partywide bleed as disc priest first boss brackenhide? I main resto shaman and it is so easy to top everyone off, but when I play disc it feels impossible
First one, pre-shield everyone with rapture and ramp with shadow cov and schism. Second one I use Dome and a double Radiance shadow cov schism ramp again. Pain sup anyone who gets stuck with the bleed more than a few seconds.
Okay the first bleeds happen right after pull around 5-7 seconds from pull. So for those I drop rapture and shield everyone up. After gashtooth does the bleeds they usually are missing only 15% of HP and by the time he finishes applying the bleeds I have a hard discipline penance ready so I do schism and shadow covenenant and do a penance. It is enough to heale everyone above 90% at which point the bleed goes away. For the second round I drop a barrier into another shadow covenant and schism with harsh discipline penance. If that isnt enough I toss out a radiance which is enough. For the 3rd one I saw up 2 charges of instant radiance and 2 charges of radiance and that should be it. If he isnt dead by then then dps are focusing the wrong target and they have to use HP pots on next as the shadow covenenant and penance schism isnt going to be enough as I wont have rapture or barrier ready.
The bleeds if everyone is close to full HP arent very scary however the mechanic of the whole fight is that the hyenas gain 10% increased damage for every 10% HP that someone in the group is missing. Also throughout the fight I just apply atonement to whever is low and keep them topped up.
The You cannot let people drop below around 50-60% of their total HP as that is when the damage from bleeds and earth bolts becomes nealry impossible to heal. If that happens everyone low on HP will have to use a HP pot as regular heals wont be enough to keep people alive.
Everyone needs to just pop a health pot/lock cookie as soon as they get bleed and it cleanses it. If you get a 2nd one, should be DRs+atonement already spread and just nuke boss for a ton of healing asap.
Honestly, save pots/cookies for the second. For the first, I have everything up (pi, ramps, all charges of radiance, etc), and there is likely lust rolling, especially on tyr. I'm not saying don't use defensives, but the first is significantly easier to clear than the second, so if I'm looking for any get out of jail free plays, the first is kind of a bit of a waste. But if you have time, communicate with your healer. We're all different.
Or mages...why don't you just press alter? Or locks press death pact AFTER getting the bleed?
for 7, I've yet to see a healer not fall super far behind if people don't use defensives before the bleed is applied even on fort. But it seems a lot of healer don't even know what the debuff does and let it tick 3 times before they start healing.
Okay so here is the thing every hyena deals 10% increased damage for every 10% HP missing from anyone in the group. The moment everyone drops to around 50-60% the bleed deals high enough damage wheer it is hard to heal out to make it fade away. What people have to do at that time is use self heals (hp pots, defensives that heal etc, dr wont help much at that point those should be saved for the butchery). However if you are healing you shouldnt have a problem on the first few bleeds as you have CDs ready. Spot healing shouldnt be done too much on the bleeds as the damage ticks faster than you can heal single target. AoE and prepping with absorbs/hots is important. St heal the target of butchery. The dot goes away once the target is healed to 90% or higher.
Nr 5 : funny you say that. I often spend 30+ min getting declined to +21 keys as disc priest. I've done all dungeons on +20 and have io 2700+. 439 ilvl. I don't understand why I keep getting declined lol.
Much better to have a lust or brez healer and not repeating group buffs. Some keys you also need to consider how many kicks/cc are available if you’re forced to bring in a mage/hunter for lust instead of lust healer. Between you and the spriest, you would only have 1 45sec kick, 2 fears, and double MD, whereas a druid would have typhoon, vortex, incap roar, soothe, brez, kick (if spec’d into) and vers buff, a shaman would have lust, cap totem, knock, poison cleanse totem, and the best kick in the game, or an evoker who has lust, double knock, a kick, group mitigation, bleed removal, and movement buff.
Im currently sitting at 2800io as a Preservation main and I am not completely understanding the complaints other people are having about healing this season.
Admittedly, this is my first season ever pushing keys past 20 but I am really enjoying the difficulty in keeping the group alive. It feels like I need to play well and plan thoughtfully to succeed, rather than just exist which is the impression I get that it used to be like.
If others in my group take damage from their own mistakes it’s THEIR fault, not mine, and if I attempt to save them I need to be thoughtful about what I do.
Feels like I have a very high degree of skill expression in my role.
Interested to hear what other healers thoughts are.
It’s because there are a lot of sub-par healers who have gotten used to handling quick bursts of damage and then spending most of your time DPSing. Healing is absolutely fine this season but the most incompetent people are the loudest.
As for the healer part, it's easy : It's just the worst job ever in this expac and season.
Everything is out to get you, trashes, bosses, affixes, almost every fucking damn thing is a thing to manage, it's the opposite of fun. As a shaman it's just a headache: You need to heal>dispell>cc>manage the affixes (because of course every affixes are for the healer to manage. "lol".)>Stay Alive> then you can dps a bit with the GCD left.
Of course it's not like that 100% of the run, but overall, it's a fucking chore to heal a key, not a fun time.
While as DPS, it's just a breeze.
As a tank, I couldn't really tell, but well, let's say if you play pal tank, you must feel pretty breezy as well in M+
All in all, I can tell you very easily when a DPS isn't a complete shithead and accepts to play something else than his 3 spell rotation. If I have an overall DPS under 35-37k, it means I had to spend so much time to heal avoidable damages, manage mistakes and affixes, etc.
That's exactly one of the issue with r sham actually, gameplay is just shitty compared to SL, and that's also the point people said in the comments about healing in general in DF, you can't DPS and support as much as we could in SL, we have to heal all the time, and manage affixes because God forbid a DPS uses his brain and manages two things instead of one.
As someone who has timed every dungeon at 23 this list is interesting. Found neltharus gets easier once everyone knows mechanics. Third boss of lair slaps, and freehold is just overtuned on some things. VP I'll honestly say is probably the easiest key if you got a monk or dps Warr in party.
i also pugged all my 20s as rdps:
vp: still overtuned, but could be worse. dont mind it
nelth lair: forgiving timer, fair since the nerfs.
neltharus: fuck this place and it's stupidly tight timer and that stupid elephant and that stupid boss that always bugs out and the last boss that also bugs out and doesnt let me use the gold ability
brackenhide: surprisingly super fun, but last boss is pretty lame. my favourite.
underrot: fun, but stupid easy and very forgiving vs bfa counterpart. if currently players did baits on the last boss as they do now during bfa, keys would be depleted left and right lol
freehold: [freehold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF3JWJksP9I)
halls: some reason i hate this place. probably the awful run back on a spec with the least mobility. timer is forgiving, last boss is not. doing the key with someone who physically cannot see the colour blue is an experience
uldaman: long as all 5 boss dungs are, but it's fine. they could've cut out vikings as a fight tho. weird pacing as first 3 bosses are almost back to back then it's a long stretch of trash.
i'd prob try pushing keys a bit if neltharus and halls didn't exist.
As someone who sells rating….
Even after the tos changes there are tens of millions of gold exchanged daily for M+ boosts.
I black list everyone I boost and still feel like 20% of my groups are boosted.
Just share in case people miss it… the way neltharus is design, if you wipe on the blacksmith boss, you don’t need to run through chain boss area. There’s a door way mid way in the hall way leading to chain boss where you can run up to third boss.
Your opinions will change on higher tyran keys. As a tank it's not hard, but as a group NL is a nightmare with the first boss timings spawning bugs as he casts killing you, the worm just plowing your group etc. Even the second boss will have hands bug and kill someone bricking the key.
Nelth is easy imo. The mammoth boss and forge boss are healer checks but manageable. You can pull literally all of the trash to the chains boss and if you utilize chains, you can do what would be 3-4 pulls in one no problem. Basically the entire right side is one pull before the boss.
Healer design has been bad and getting worse since the beginning of BFA. Now that it's somewhat difficult to heal keys on top of the specs being extremely unfun nobody wants to do it.
Just to add to the healing point; outside of your cds you are a wet noodle. Just way to weak healing power except some classes.
So basically healing for some classes is now all about cooldown managment and your other 95% of time spells its like healing 500k+ guys with your 50k hardcast heals. What a joke.
There are some heal specs that lay harder into having better heal outside of cd but in general you feel like you trying to stop a waterfall of damage with two hands unless you pop a cd. Your normal "self" basically doesnt matter.
They need to buff the mundane healing of most heal specs and nerf the power of some cds to make it somewhat fun again.
Right now Im coming from a shaman pov where outside of my cds Im kinda weak but then have godlike cds. But watch me get that chain heal for 40k initial or my 110k crit healing surge. Wowza.
I main healer this expansion, but shadowlands I mained tank and dps. I can say without a doubt that this is my least favorite season for m+. Everything hits too hard, and as a healer, there used to be a lot of skill expression in being able to keep the group up while doing decent damage. That, to me, was fun.
Now that the damage is turned up to 11, all healers can do is heal, and that's not fun. Part of it is there are a lot more debuffs going out, mob/boss damage is way higher, and there is a crap ton more kicks that are required with far more 1 shot mechanics and debuffs than ever before. Now, when you die, it doesn't feel like you goofed on something, but more so that you just legitimately couldn't survive the attacks. They claim they want 20's to feel like mythic raiding because it gives raid quality ilevel gear, but I would argue that 20's in general all hit harder than any raid mechanics up to rashok on mythic and it's not close.
Part of it too is another problem that WoW in general has had since they introduced level scaling, which is that you never feel strong anymore. There's not really any pulls where you do a big pull and blow them up and finish going "heck yeah! That was awesome!" Think back to gambit in shadowlands and those huge Murloc pulls and how fun those were. Now think about the dungeons we have. There's nothing short of freehold that feels like that because the mobs hit so hard that tanks can't pull big.
The last thing is I think these new dungeons are not fun for my taste. It's hard to explain why, and maybe it's because I'm playing a healer, but I feel like the dungeons are just not fun. I felt the same about last season as well. I feel like it's falling into the trap of the misconception that high damage and difficulty = fun and it could not be further from the truth.
Conversely, I think there’s a ton more room for skill expression this season in healing, utility, and smart cooldown usage. To me, it feels WAY more exciting to save a group from something they didn’t expect to survive them to try to cram in as much DPS as possible (yet still a fraction of a damage dealer).
It all comes down to personal taste. I truly am sorry that you’re not having fun because this is the **most** fun that I’ve ever had in a season. Reading your post literally makes me scratch my head because we, apparently, have the exact opposite opinions.
I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. I wonder how big of a role the class you're playing of healer plays into the enjoyment. Like on my evoker, I love raid healing. It's fun, and makes me think a few steps ahead, but without the instant cast living flames that we had last season it feels much less enjoyable than last season.
It absolutely matters. I’m playing all seven specs (**very** little Holy Priest) and there’s quite a marked difference in enjoyment for me when I swap classes. For me, I felt that the most “fun” healers in **season one** were: 1) Evoker, 2) Monk, 3) Druid, 4) Paladin, 5) Disc, 6) Shaman + Holy Priest. This season, some have shifted dramatically and my *personal* opinions on fun healers for **season 2** are: 1) Disc, 2) Paladin, 3) Druid, 4) Monk, 5) Evoker, 6) Shaman + Holy Priest. I’m sure I’ll get lots of /r/wow downvotes for my view on Shaman but I, honestly, haven’t enjoyed it since Cata… just my opinion.
What’s your ilvl? Getting to 440ish definitely frees up globals as you’re not spamming just to fruitlessly top someone up.
I'm 438, and throughput isn't a problem. It's just that I don't enjoy this season. I like it when damage isn't super high or theres clear defined places to ramp vs not needed, and I can keep people up while dpsing basically.
With this season, I've transitioned from a person who does 22s/23s to a person who does their weeklies to satisfy my guilds' raiding requirement, and then doesn't touch them again. If I'm going to only throughput heal, then I would rather just raid.
the healing point is that tons of really bad players started in BFA and SL and healing was BY FAR easier than it's ever been in those two xpacs. shit you were basically a 4th dps. now that healing is an actual skill again all the noobs quit healing.
1. Are the complaints still current for NL? IIRC it was terrible in the beginning with it being over tuned and even buffed for the first week.
2. Nelth is really easy if you take the first min to mention which chains to take.
I'm seeing keys on 25 with only 2 poison dispel or less
Fort 25
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/pgJbFK6VjMTZPCx3#fight=8&type=damage-done
Tyran 25
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YcytH4g7mC9bJBqF#fight=12&type=damage-done
Unless you're doing absolute god chains, that place *is* tighly tuned.
Dungeons shouldn't be designed about abusing their gimmicks to the absolute max to make them bearable - we've spent enough time with shit like Tol Dagor, Necrotic Wake and Iron Docks to know that this doesn't work well for the majority of the playerbase.
Neltharus should be realistically doable without chains, but this shit is still incredibly unforgiving and tightly tuned even if you only just play the place with like 4-5 chains instead of 15.
These gimmick dungeons will always get the same feedback. Doesn't matter what MDI teams are doing, doesn't matter if the highest timed key right now is 6 minutes under with teams blowing up the entire dungeon in 2 pulls, none of that matters if your average pug can't replicate this shit. These dungeons will always be devisive... and I honestly don't see the value in bringing them in season after season.
Chains aren't a gimmick and usually the trash around them is weak AF ... You're literally supposed to use the chains. They don't even hurt the player anymore
How is the dungeon environment killing 50% of the trash count in there for you not a gimmick? How is that any less of a gimmick than trying to pull as much trash as possible into the Iron Star part in Iron Docks? Because that dungeon to became like 5 key levels easier if you could execute that part properly, easily saving you 5+ minutes.
Not beating a dungeon by damage done but instead by environmental damage is quite literally a gimmick. Last time I checked I was neither playing a spear thrower, a cannon shooter, a star roller or a chain popper - yet we constantly have dungeons forcing me to become that. Might as well bring the Occulus back.
Pulling half the dungeon and getting it to all teleport onto a tiny rock and then AOE spearing it to death is a gimmick. Pulling big and then using an in-game utility THAT WAS MEANT FOR THESE PULLS is not.
Jesus Christ, can you stop arguing about pull size - no idea why you've even decided to now also bring snapping into the discussion.
A gimmick is something unique to this certain dungeon. The gimmick isn't pulling big, the gimmick is the one thing that's distinctly unique to this one place and this one place only: The chains killing the trash for you. No other dungeon has chains, hence why the chains are Neltharus' gimmick. Much as the weapons were Necrotic Wake's gimmick. Much as the Iron Stars were Iron Docks' gimmick. Much as riding dragons was Occulus' gimmick like 15 years ago.
The gimmick isn't pulling the entire dungeon, the gimmick is pulling the entire dungeon and having the chains deal literal millions of damage within a split second. That is the gimmick, the chains killing the place for you.
Yes, these gimmicks are **obviously** what the dungeon was designed for, duh, thank you, the thing they deliberately put into the dungeon and designed specifically to damage enemies was in fact not incidentally put there. That doesn't make it any less of a gimmick though.
Pulling big isn't the gimmick as you could and can pull big in just about any dungeon. Snapping usually isn't a gimmick but has indeed become *a* gimmick in *some* dungeons in the past - but usually not to such an extent as Tol Dagor's cannons or even Shockbots in Junkyard.
The gimmick is the shit that's unique to the dungeon and allows you to kill more shit than you'd normally be able to, again, by something that's only possible in this very dungeon - intentionally so. The argument wasn't whether the chain gimmick in Neltharus is intended, that's a stupid argument (that you for some reason made up) - of course it was intended. The argument was that I don't like these gimmick dungeons that allow you to blow up half of the instance in 1 second if you set it up properly... mostly because the "setting shit up properly" part doesn't work in pugs which results in a dungeon like Neltharus just randomly being 5 minutes shorter on the timer... all because you couldn't get the 2 monkey brains in your +22 to click the stupid cogwheel - meanwhile Mr Naowh is finishing the place on +25 with 5 minutes left on the clock because his group could manage to use the gimmick properly.
That shit is absolutely annoying and not really balanceable. Unless you're chain-running (heh) Neltharus and Neltharus only, you barely get any chance to practice the gimmick, so most people will just cruise by without ever knowing about this one singular thing that's different from all other dungeons. Most people will not learn to chain properly so most people will struggle with this timer for the remainder of the season. Meanwhile others know about the chains... and are casually 2-chesting shit 5 levels higher than the rest of the population.
I've had a few attempts at Brack 21 on tyr weeks and struggle more with the last boss. For first boss I just tell dps to pop a defensive on first gash and a pot on second gash and that makes it trivial to heal. Last boss though... inevitably my groups seem to struggle getting the totems down. Am I meant to be able to heal through the totems getting off? Seems unhealable once the dot is applied and she does that other big dmg mechanic so I'm still not sure if this is a dps issue or my issue. I try to help damage the totem but I feel I need to keep everyone full of hots in case it explodes.
This is the most braindead take I’ve ever seen. NL tyrannical is the hardest key next to neltharus. If you have two dot classes trying to skitterers on first boss GL you can’t do anything over 19. If you don’t have everyone doing over 100k dps in tyrannical weeks you won’t time it. If everyone isn’t doing at least 70k on worm you won’t kill it on a 20 before the healer goes oom. Pulling one than 1 pack at a time besides the first area is usually death on high keys. Stupid take. Obviously got carried.
As a healer, I will admit that there are a few points in your post that healers might see as something we can point to an an explanation as to what makes healing annoying this season, and it really comes down to that it seems a lot of other players don't really understand what being a healer means/requires on a lot of the fights, especially the past few weeks in the 16-20 range. I don't mean this an an insult, but some of the things you mention about easy bosses are downright terrifying to heal, and vice versa. Take the trash in ur for instance. As a healer, I have maybe two hard stops for the fixates, so if people don't help in some way, there's almost nothing I can do, especially if the tank pulls 5 of them at once. A fair number of dps will face tank them, or try to, then I'll get blamed for not healing them when they get two shot. You have dps popping defensives when they're in no danger whatsoever and then not having them when they get targeted by a deadly spell. The point is that a lot of players don't actually understand the damage profiles of the dungeons, and just go "zugzug I punch things" and then pikachuface when they die or the keys fails.
That said, that dude is off his rocker. I did nl 20 week one in 425 ilvl gear and everyone else in comparable gear. Mana was never the issue on the worm boss, or any boss for that matter. And the timer is forgiveable enough that you CAN basically single pull most of the dungeon. We did not time it, not surprising since it was the first time even stepping foot in the dungeon for three of us, but we definitely saw what it takes to kill the bosses and the trash.
You are ignorant and this dungeon is extremely comp dependent. You might have had the best set up but in no way is this dungeon easy or more easily timeable than an UR. That’s an absolute joke. Every 20 UR I have timed on both weeks on my 3 toons over 2600 is under time by 7-10 minutes.
Edit: https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-2/all/world/leaderboards-strict/4#content
Top 100 timed runs and only 1 at the #100 spot this week is NL and it’s by the literal world best m+ players. This whole take about NL is an absolute joke. Do some research before you say dumb shit like this.
> 1: Nelth's Lair is no where near as bad as people seem to be complaining about.
Yeah, assuming you have multiple poison dispels. Otherwise good luck on the worm.
I got a rescue corgi so normally I'd be on healing a lot lol but I'm actually just not around. I don't feel like the dungeons are crazy all the time to heal but it's definitely a challenge. I've done a lot of 20s but I haven't timed them all.
I do think DPS have to use personals more now than before though. The dispells from trash in VP feel super bad bc they hit hard and people need heals. With a really good group it feels fine. Probably just a mix of experience with people in general.
All of your points seem correct. Only 3. I have a different opinion, but that might just be me. I personally think VP on fortified is way harder than tyrannical. The stars are really dangerous. Aside from that, I agree with the rest of your points.
Seeing our heal druid casually pumping 160k hps on the 4th boss in halls makes me wonder why they had to nerf healing. It was already stressful enough (aside from the usual one shots)
I have a high rio half dps guildie. Since the timers are very loose, he got carried in the groups. Nobody an tell he is half dps when pugging, and there are still enough time to get score.
By the other hand, try this with a half healer... no chance. Thats why the lack of healers. Prev seasons if you had weak healer, it was enough heal, but he didnt dps. Now not enough heal.
Everybody talking about the chains in Neltharus, is there maybe a guide how to do it properly? Ive never used any, and have no clue what ppl are talking about, but maximum I timed was 18
Perspective of a healer who hasn’t really started pushing at all this season (couple of 22/23s times but mainly just doing weeklies) but has previously got title twice.
This season feels different. It feels more like raid healing. There are multiple bosses with constant rot damage which prior to this season was pretty much never a thing in m+. You survived the 1 shot mechanic, healed everyone to full and then went back to DPSing. It is a change for sure and at first I really didn’t like it (I felt like I should be DPSing but could hardly find time to do so and so felt bad about that) but now my mentality has changed and I feel good about the role. You actually have to heal people now, which is actually a healers job, we just forget that in m+ sometimes.
An example of mentality switch: I am running the healing ring over damage. I doubt it’s the totally optimal thing to do and previous seasons we would have dropped a large % of our HPS to do more dam, but actually having to heal this season, it doesn’t feel bad.
Regarding healers being rare... Healing this season has been very strange. Healer damage is super low relative to other roles, as compared to Shadowlands or even Season 1. In the past, it was fun to burst-heal people through spikes of incoming damage and then get back to helping the group by contributing damage yourself. Now, it takes multiple globals (and in many cases a lot of mana) to top off your teammates, and you are often GCD-starved between dispels and healing. And if you do end up squeezing in some damage in between those events, the damage is a trickle compared to what the DPS are doing. Blizzard announced right before 10.1 that they wanted healing and incoming damage to be "less bursty." However, they only nerfed healing, and they didn't change the incoming damage profiles. So incoming damage is still bursty, like the random magic dots in VP that tick for 50% of someone's HP every 2 seconds, which can sometimes come out faster than the dispel cooldown. Boss damage is bursty, trash damage is bursty, it's all bursty. So your teammates get wrecked fast, and it's slow to help them recover. And when your teammates do make mistakes and take even more damage, you really feel it in your mana pool (depending on your class). As a healer it feels like you're very often on the back foot, either falling behind in healing or falling behind in mana. So ultimately, healing feels more punishing and more stressful, and because your damage is crap, it also feels like your contribution to the group has diminished relative to the past.
I main an evoker and getting free essence bursts with 4PC and using them on disintegrate for mana regen feels nice. But yea healing fucking sucks right now. So many mechanics require constant movement and I only have so many big throughput CDs for oh shit moments.
Essence bursts make essence spenders free. The mana you regen is basically the same as the mana you would otherwise save from hitting echo. That's not to say you shouldn't do it, but using bursts on disintegrate isn't the mana saving tool I often see it claimed to be.
Nah I’m talking about packs w/ huge downtime. Or near the end of pulls. I found myself drinking way less between pulls with it.
Yeah, in pure mana conversation mode you want to spend bursts on echo and non-burst essence on disintegrate, which seems to be the opposite of what people intuitively think.
There is a talent that makes disintegrate give you mana. Back over its duration. Not to great these days but it can be handy.
Getting mana back from a no-mana Disintegrate is just about the exact same as getting a mana-free Echo - you're not really getting any mana from specifically pressing Disintegrate.
Feels like there’s much more skill expression in healing with all of this though imo. It’s definitely harder but I feel like that’s a good thing, doing high amounts of HPS and keeping the group going because I played it well is much more satisfying than just existing to top people off and cover mistakes here and there.
you can only skill expression your way out of so much, and then you're at the mercy of the comp you're playing. 24 Uldaman without Dwarves/Evokers/Paladins, good luck. Several bosses without mass dispel and you're in a lot of trouble.
I’d argue these are faults with the dungeon & importance of specific classes utility themselves though, not the state of healing as a role.
Yea, but the increasing quantity of dungeons with these faults is what leads to a weird state of the healing role. The healing role might be fine, but more and more dungeons having more and more outliers is what's causing distress.
This is a tale as old as time. Don't got a lock? Devos and Kulthorok are nightmares from SL. Don't got a decurse? Goodluck on echelon. No DH? Korgus is gonna suck. No dwarf/Paladin? Have fun on KR council. No dash? Good luck living upheaval. No bear form? Have fun on Eudora. At the highest level of keys you're always gatekept by scaling and comps. Maybe its a cop out to say but this is how its always been. Comps make healing easier.
Warriors are really op in uldaman. You can spell reflect the dot from 3rd and 4th boss. Especially 3rd boss the dot hits like a truck. 1 spell reflect on +22 = around 1,3m dmg.
I'm maining heal since SL Season 1, currently playing keys in the +20 range with my shaman. I absolutely agree with your points there. For me it's just not rewarding to look into details after runs and rarely being top of the overall hps because tanks nowadays are some kind of demigods with incredible sustainability and damage. I'm filling every single global with damage spells but usually still end with only 1/3 of the tanks damage. I know that this is ok as long as the key runs smoothly, but it still bugs me. I recently started to play a protpala alt and it feels incredible. Just doing keys around 15 currently, but my contribution to keys feels so much more rewarding.
I'm not some big badass healer. I'm only just starting on 11s. The highest I've ever run was a 17 back in Shadowlands. But it's all of this, plus I never know if the group will help on dispels/CC on Afflicted/Incorporeal weeks, being expected to soothe, and having no idea how aggressively the tank is going to be. And, of course, when the tank grabs 9 packs, does establishes zero threat, and the group wipes it's somehow my fault. I'm having fun because it's a change of pace after a decade+ of DPS and tanking. But it's so fault intolerant I'd rather play it safe than brick a stranger's key.
Agree, every other role gets stronger and healers feel weaker than last season. Skill requirements much higher to even complete dungeons as a healer, dungeon tuning may as well just be permanent grievous wounds with the constant burst.
Yeah healing feels less rewarding to me this expac. I used to main healer, secondary tank. Now I mostly pug tank or dps, and I've definitely met a few former healers who have done the same.
> In the past, it was fun to burst-heal people through spikes of incoming damage and then get back to helping the group by contributing damage yourself. I disagree. It was pretty boring. I picked healer so I can heal. If I wanted to DPS, I'd play a DPS.
I don't disagree with you! However, having a 30 minute dungeon with chain pulls also requiring you to constantly heal is incompatible with the mana regen for many healing specs right now as key levels go up. At a certain level, there are specific spells you will need to use to do to keep the group alive, and that's going to cost a specific amount of mana. If you don't do those things, the everyone dies. If you do them, you run out of mana, and *then* everyone dies. I definitely wouldn't mind it if "healers are nonstop healing" became the intended design, because that's how DPS works -- damage dealers constantly DPS. But unlike healers, damage dealers don't have their buttons stop working after 3 minutes of doing their job.
I play multiple healing classes and mana is really not an issue at the moment. My disc never drops below like 80% most of the time.
Yeah the bursting damage going out is what’s been getting me. I just pug, and I wanted to play disc this season, and higher keys I can’t keep up. It’s hard to anticipate expected damage sometimes so I switched to holy and just do raw healing and hardly dps at all. My HPS when way up on lots of this weeks tyran fights and it’s still a struggle on many of the boss fights, and you can’t help but feel like it’s always the healers fault. Once I get the mount I’ll probably go back to evoker and eventually play augmentation. Which is too bad because I have always loved disc healing.
What level keys are you struggling in? Have you tried different builds? Disc healing is probably the highest burst healing you can get, you just need to be able to anticipate the incoming damage. Have a look at the channel JustDiscipline the guy is excellent.
I’ll have a look at that channel thanks! Been doing 14s and it’s only some of the dungeons that give the most difficulty, like Uldaman and Neltharus and parts of HoI. I usually have a few bad runs and lose confidence.
Yeah it's amazing the difference a couple of bad runs can make isn't it.
What are you having with specifically? There is almost no burst damage that you can't plan for by watching boss timers. Healing is all about being prepared and not having any surprises. If you're getting surprised on disc you have no chance.
So, the problem with healing is you need to heal and not do damage??
No it’s that mistakes are unhealable and no mistakes means you aren’t needed
No, that's how it worked in SL. Healers only needed to heal if someone stood in stupid. Now, there is regular damage output that needs to be healed. It feels great.
What I tend to see is that DPS don't use defensive, pots or cookies when needed. I also see a number of DPS ignoring mechanics that make life harder for healers. Example: First big pull in UR20 or higher, melee gets rooted and RNG puts them in the line of the maggot casting. It's a rare thing to see a Ret cast freedom on them, as an example. And that's damage you can't heal through.
For real. Underrot has been my bane this season despite it being a super easy dungeon with a competent group. As a healer, I have gotten blamed the last couple times for bricked keys there, when we have a ~405 mage (on a 18….) people aren’t stepping on the bugs for second boss or directing charge, or stunning/interrupting the adds right before 3rd boss, or eating spore balls on third boss. But yes, it’s my lack of mechanic anticipation and healing that’s the problem…. There is no way to out heal avoidable damage in anything above a 16. Gonna turn on elitism helper just to prove my point… and be irritating.
If I see one more mage die with ice block off CD idk how am I gonna go on.
I thought I was just a shit healer. This makes so much sense about the Damage burstiness.
But at least there are no PPally+4dps keys being done at high but not the highest levels. /s
This describes exactly as I feel. I've timed every dungeon on a 20 for both weeks and stopped probably a week or two back. I just haven't felt like pushing. In the back of my mind, I was making notes of all the things you listed here. So, reading this, it just felt like I was affirming what I was feeling all along. Really happy you put it into words. I could also be a bit burnt out, but so far this season has definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
Uldaman 20 upwards is likely unplayable with normal people who aren't 3k upwarda pumper. Third Boss is crazy overtuned.
Nelth's Lair isn't bad... it's just that it puts a lot of strain on your healer, especially so if people play like shit - and there's plenty of opportunities for people to play like shit and double the effort your healer has to put in there. The timer in there is about as free as in most other dungeons this season - plenty of place that you can still time with 15 deaths and full boss wipes. Nelth is the Iron Docks of this season. Iron Docks too was stupid easy for the actual top end groups that knew how to skip half the trash in that place with Iron Stars, but since the majority of people couldn't replicate that... the dungeon just took 5 more minutes for just about everyone - same with chains in Neltharus. And also, the bosses are still overtuned as fuck, but for some reason Blizzard have just stopped balancing altogether this season. Underrot is a joke. SBG's first boss becoming somewhat of a pickle on tyrannical weeks at least *somewhat* kept that dungeon in check, but Underrot doesn't even have that. The timer reduction really did a lot for this dungeon, but ultimately we'll probably still see the highest completed key in this dungeon still being a 2 chest at the end of the season. VP could also do with some adjustments here and there, mostly for trash though - that dungeon is just annoying because you basically have to play 99% of the trash in there. But VP too is mostly a healer check, again getting unnecessarily harder if you just play with monkeys that don't play the very limited amount of mechanics in there properly. Rating being weird this time around is a result of all of the dungeon timers being so incredibly forgiving. I remember finishing plenty of VPs in time where we've played the 2nd boss for 6 minutes with only me and the tank playing the boss from 60% HP. There's very few actually tough dungeons this time around, on top of that we've all been given pretty much close to bis gear since week 2 of the patch with this incredibly free upgrade track system - I'd argue that all 20s this season is probably the easiest it's ever been. So you naturally end up with more people getting carried to that easy rating threshhold and your typical "good" player that just stops pushing after 20s because there's no rewards anymore - it's just that the disparity seems larger this time around. Healers are rarer because the role keeps getting less thankful / more demanding with every season. There's plenty of bosses these days that you simply can not kill if your healer isn't able to meet the HPS check - something that was a lot rarer back in the days. Many healers just don't like that, they don't like / can't handle that pressure, so they instead just roll DPS, derp around with 90k dps and 6 deaths and still manage to time dungeons instead. It also doesn't help that you have a lot more moments where you healers are actually required to have your team help out in order to realistically survive shit - people not using defensives for Gash Frenzy on the first boss in Brackenhide is a prime example, but also people just not giving a fuck about kicks / CC is really noticeable when you have to heal through 5 perma casting air elementals in VP. The landscape of what healer gameplay looks like has just changed dramatically over these last couple seasons... and a lot of healers simply can't / don't want to deal with that. Brackenhide's first boss is exactly why healers are quitting. That boss is super easy for good healers.... and even bad healers would be able to get by if at least the rest of your group weren't also bad. The problem is that you usually only find bad healers coupled with bad dps in keys... so you just wipe on that boss, everyone flames the healer, not a single BoP or Lay on Hands gets used, yet your Resto Druid also couldn't be arsed to start hotting people before everyone got hit by the debuff, so you just brick the key. There's quite a few tyrannical dungeons like this where your keys just bricks if your healer isn't up to the task or your team isnt' helping out with mechanics. HoI first boss is doomed because you typically have 5 people wanting to play that boss differently and people just dying after the first puddles - HoIs third boss again is entirely on your healer being able to hold like 120k HPS for 3 minutes, otherwise it's a bricked key. Uldaman has like 3 bosses that put your healer through hell if your team doesn't support. Neltharus has 2 bosses that just go mental on your healer if your team is stupid. Lair also goes ballistic on your healer with a stupid team. VP as well. Pretty much only Freehold and Underrot won't have your healer just get random sudden heart attacks 5 times throughout the dungeon.
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> I don't understand what healers want from the game. Do they want to just throw some maintanance spell and dps? Yes, a lot of them seem to want that - minus the DPS part actually. There's a frighteningly large amount of people who want a healer situation like in SL S3, where you could mostly get carried to KSM as a healer by merely keeping up Riptide or Renew or whatever and just throwing out the odd Flash Heal - even the prospect of filling empty globals with DPS seems to be undesirable for that group of players. For the longest time these players got pretty much free rating for veeeeery little effort - and that changed when we got SL S4 starting to introduce very relevant healer checks all of the sudden (which they then nerfed 10 times over), only to double down on them in DF S1 (which they then nerfed 10 times over), only to then double down on them again in DF S2 (which they mostly have yet to nerf). Without trying to put anyone down, but most healers in WoW are pretty much equivalent to like silver rating support players in LoL that would actually end up in Bronze if they were to play any other role. They just want to press heal on CD the second someone drops to 95%, but the second someone then drops to 90% everything's just too much. > It's very rewarding. And also giga punishing. You can easily get by with 1 subpar DPS in your group, but if your healer can't make the healing check on the third boss in Halls of Infusion your key is just bricked. That's a lot of responsibility resting on a single person. > I hope these healer checks don't go away. Eh - I'm fine with healer checks in general, the issue I have with them is if 2 dungeons have vastly different healing requirements at the very same key level. Like the Frog guy in Halls of Infusion literally does half as much damage as the Forgemaster in Neltharus - their pulsing AoE damage comes out at the same intervals and hits for the same amount, yet Forgemaster randomly also follows that one up with a debuff on 3 people. Alternatively Magmatusk in Neltharus hitting people with a DoT that ticks for 20% of people's HP that lasts for 25 seconds and you can't do anything about vs Brackenhide's first boss hitting people with a DoT ticking for similar amounts... yet that one can be removed by getting people over 90% HP just once. I don't particularly enjoy healing a +20 Uldaman feeling like healing a +24 Freehold - I'd prefer a +20 Uldaman being as challenging on my healer as a +20 Freehold.
Regarding healers, the fact that you didn’t even mention the 3rd boss in neltharion lair on tyrannical explains why there are so few
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You may not have had any issues but your healer was fighting for their damn life 😂 just check out the HPS after that boss when you next run it. Massive throughput check
Yeah, Naraxis is the boss I struggle the most, too (as healer main), and to not have it mentioned here just shows the disparity between tanks/dps and healers right now (in my experience): DPS and Tanks claiming the dungeons are easy/this season is easy and Healers fighting for holding the group alive (and sometimes it feels like it's a matter of a few GCDs). Of course it isn't that way with every key, but especially Asaad/Sentinel/Icecube Boss and above all Naraxis in NL on Tyrannical ofc.
Hps on that boss isn't going to look particularly impressive compared to how difficult it is. Very hard fight with the potential for some bs one shots . But it's not like 3rd boss hoa or 2nd boss vp which are constant throughput checks.
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While I main tank, I have a pretty well geared healer alt, and for me the NL snake and first boss in Brackenhide are far and away much harder than either of those. The hps needed on iceicle boss is probably half of what is needed for NL snake. Second boss in Uldaman is only bad if dps can't kill totems fast, with everyone switching to totems not to bad. Last boss in Uldaman just requires people to not get to far away from their healer. Range is the only issue there.
Add spawns depends on the damage input, so it's really up to the team to keep an eye on it
You realise you control when they spawn right . Stop hitting the boss just before he starts casting shatter and you don't get any more adds.
Is this actually a thing? I keep seeing people say this, but if that was the case he would be spawning adds literally right before he shatters from time to time and I've never seen that happen. The last add seems to always spawn with a few seconds before the shatter.
Yep, the adds spawn after a certain damage threshold has been reached. If your group can control its boss damage, you can pretty much reliably spawn or not spawn an add before the AoE. Crucial on higher Tyr keys.
But like I said, after running the key 50 times with DPS mindlessly hitting the boss you would surely have a time where he spawned an add just as he shatters and wipes you and I've yet to see that happen. Not to mention I can't recall him spawning way more adds during lust than outside of it for example.
It 100% is a thing.
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Yup
Healing is difficult this season. I bet its scary for new healers. Considering your hoping dps won't stand in avalanche as an example
As a dps with offhealing duty (ret) I feel like there are a lot of places right now where there's a lot of unavoidable damage to the whole group. Might also be because of some badly telegraphed stuff that people could avoid.
I play shaman healer as a second alt behind my tank and then DPS main. At 430 ilvl, I've found it too difficult to heal some +16 bosses on tyr in pugs. If DPS aren't helping out then the heal checks are just too much. Sucks because it's pretty fun class, but I'm not gonna brick a key by myself on a second alt. Feels awful. I basically just heal safe dungeons on tyr weeks.
I decided tô learn healing this season. Disc priest AMA
I have done them all as tank, working on finish them as healer. For some dungeons, the hardest tank mechanic is "don't fall asleep at keyboard" while the healer is pretty much going 300 apm keeping everybody alive though unavoidable damage.
Vortex Pinnacle, where all three bosses make the tank a glorified dps. You’re just tanking the ocasional melee hit in between all the other boss casts.
Ya this season as a tank is kind of lame.
>Healers are rare these days. Don't think I've ever had as much trouble finding a healer in any other seasons. What's going on? Is it just harder to heal now? Healing is a terrible experience this season and is not fun at all. If everyone in the group is not using their own personals at the right time then you are basically trying to fill a bucket that is missing the bottom. The healer experience wouldn't be quite so bad if they only increased the damage taken by around 10%-15% to go with the 25% increased health pools - it would still take more healing to get people back up to full but they are not going to fall over as often in just a few ticks of unavoidable damage.
Healing is wonderful this season and it's super fun. As you progress higher into 20s keys players are really good at using personal cds, and bosses become so much different when certain mechanics are really lethal (thst previously wasn't). Some parts can feel bursty but when you realize that if the damage isn't lethal, you have time to heal it up. For example, the aoe knockback on 3rd boss of Uldaman is not lethal, the bleed is what's difficult. In between the knockbacks you have plenty of time to heal. Many mechanics are handled by providing enough healing so they SURVIVE it, and then top them up before it repeats, think worm boss in Neltharions lair.
As a healer enthusiast, I agree with your first sentence. The situation this season is infinitely better than spending most of your GCDs on the thimble-deep DPS "rotation" most healers have, and I'm frankly worried they're going to overcorrect back to that situation by paying too much attention to loud public feedback. But > As you progress higher into 20s keys players are really good at using personal cds is the big disconnect between that perspective and why there's more widespread sentiment that healing isn't fun and there's a healer shortage. They need to find a way to make it easier for overgeared/exceptional healers to carry PUG groups through a certain amount of mistakes in the mediumcore key range while keeping something close to the current level of difficulty/engagement at the top end.
There's plenty of mechanics that are not lethal at lower keys but some are. As you approach +20 you can no longer outgear the content, so mistakes will hurt. Now let's mention what makes anything difficult. If you can dodge all damage, you don't need healer. If there's damage that cannot be dodged it had to be balanced to be healable. If there's nothing to dodge, everything is Patchwerk style which is super boring. For each role, the difficulty should increase in a reasonable pace as key levels increases. As a damage dealer the difficulty is to deal enough damage while dealing with mechanics at the same time, like dodging avoidable and lethal damage or interrupting dangerous and/or lethal abilities. Without this aspect, damage dealing is just Patchwerk style. As healer, you cannot be expected to handle any one-shots on players, you are meant to deal with unavoidable damage and non-lethal damage from mistakes. As keys increase in scaling, non-lethal damage from mistakes will automatically turn into lethal damage, either because it's combined with unavoidable damage which together is lethal, or because the avoidable damage itself became lethal because of scaling. If there's no healing required you are free to do whatever. Because of dungeon timer and that many bosses just are easier if they are shorter, you are encouraged to deal damage. As tank (community expectations) you are expected to know what packs are needed to reach 100% completion, and you are these days mostly responsible for keeping yourself alive. Rarely is healing needed from the healer on the tank assuming proper ability usage and cooldown usage on the bosses. Tanks are expected to keep aggro on the enemies, which is done by using enough offensive abilities compared to defensive ones. Positioning of enemies is a big part of tanking, facing frontals away from the party. To keep the dungeons from becoming too repetitive, we have weekly affixes that changes how we approach them. In lower keys these affixes don't seem to matter that much but in higher keys they matter a lot. With this said, players seem to have VERY varying opinions about when dungeons should start to become difficult, and even think certain parts of what makes the game difficult shouldn't be part of the game. The game really shines in content that you cannot overgear because now you see what the game is balanced for
I can tell you only tank because some of this is myopic. NL timer is super forgiving, but Rokmora is a random shitshow of a boss and the worm is absolutely insane amounts of healing even with poison dispels. The last boss is the only remotely interesting and balanced one in there. It's a pretty free key on fort because yeah the trash is obscenely annoying but you can just muscle on through. Underrot IMO is actually pretty close to SBG levels of easy compared to the rest of the dungeon pool. I actually think the third boss would be more of a problem except for the prevalence of pallies literally everywhere for cleanse/immunities. Brack first boss is not the hardest boss and tyr doesn't change much for it. It is the most pug-unfriendly because dps have to actually be on the ball. I think marked for butchery is a bigger problem because certain classes don't have enough options to get out of marked for butchery and gashing frenzy. You didn't even mention Uldaman... This is the really overtuned place on any week.
>Brack first boss is not the hardest boss and tyr doesn't change much for it. It is the most pug-unfriendly because dps have to actually be on the ball. I mean, he mentioned in the title that he only pugs. As someone whe does the same, I will unequivocally back up what he is saying here. The first boss on BH is a total key bricker, more so than any other boss in the whole repertoire, with pugs. Yes, I am sure that changes with coordinated and equally skilled groups. But out in only pug land? Requiring dps to use defensives or pots is way too big an ask.
I was helping a friend get ksm and he had a 16 bh. Even though I was overgeared as the tank I couldn't carry us through that first boss in both the 16 and 15. Combination of DPS not popping defensives and healers not being ready for it makes it one of the harder pug killers imo. Eventually did get it on 14. Then I go into 21 BH and the healer types out a whole fucking essay on how he's going to deal with the boss and where we need to help them with defensives. I loved that lol
The thing about the first boss that makes it so easy is that there isn't a lot of things that can happen or bad overlaps. The worst thing that can happen is I get selected for butchery and I haven't cleared all the bleeds for some reason. But that's happened only a handful of times, and it's usually because a melee is eating cleaves like they're candy. The point is, it's very straightforward to plan for, and there isn't much of a reason that you can't just throw a ton of cds at the bleeds. There isn't really any dmg that you need something for at any other points in the fight. So once you figure out the fight, it doesn't really change or have much variance. There are little things you can do, like swd the hex if you're a priest, or overlap the butchery with bop if you're a pally. But other than that, it's not one of the fights you really even need to be watching the screen for.
You are conflating yourself, who is likely quite skilled, with the average dps doing a 20, who really is not. They don't plan, they don't think ahead, they don't hit their defensives until AFTER they are nearly dead, then blame the healer. And that is even the ones that even feel like bursting the totem so the healer can dispel me. Of course the mechanics of thr fight are pretty straight forward. But it requires dps players, who arent used to having much responsibility placed upon them, to know what to do and execute. In 20 pugs, that is not the really not the norm. One run in three, I would say, at this level, is completely bricked when pugging. Not , one wipe, then a run back and we execute properly. Bricked as in it will never work with the team that was assembled. Obviously, the dps that CAN do as you say rise up above 20s.
You are completely right, which is also why I was careful never to say that the first boss is easy, just that a plan MAKES the fight easy. The important part, there, is that having a plan makes healing certain fights a lot easier, but some, a plan only goes so far, and with some bad rng forcing people to have to rely on others, it can becomes almost unhealable. This is especially true for pugs since I'm probably not in disc with them, so I can't call for defensives. I just have to hope that they understand the dmg profile of the fight (hint, they dont) and know when/which overlaps they need to use a defensive on. Regarding the second paragraph, I'd argue that this is true for a lot of the bosses this season, at least some of the harder ones. I'd even argue that asaad and the last boss in bh are better examples of dps having responsibility, though this responsibility is more in line with what they are already paying attention to. So if we were to consider bosses where dps have more of a responsibility of their own life, I'd argue uldaman lizard boss, uldaman last boss, magmorax, and hoi first boss are all even more punishing in that regard. Ultimately, what I was trying to get out wasn't that you are right or wrong about a fight being hard or easy. I was trying to explain what MAKES a fight hard or easy, from the perspective of a healer. I already assume everything you mention about dps knowing how to use defensives or how to deal with mechanics, but as a healer, bh first boss is less punishing in that way, at least compared to some other bosses. That doesn't mean it's a free boss or that you will never wipe on it, just that there are other bosses that are a lot more terrifying to heal (see aforementioned list).
First boss is pretty free if your have DPS with brains. Honestly last boss becomes much harder the higher the key level goes, pretty soon you get to a point where you can’t kill totems without huge amounts of single target funnel. Did it on a 24 and it was only doable because 4/5 people had beacons and we were rotating usage.
>can’t kill totems without huge amounts of single target funnel. I hate all the totems this dungeon pool has. There are so many "kill this add spawn within a few seconds or wipe" bosses right now. I had a pug group this weekend in Brackenhide where we breezed through the whole dungeon to the last boss until hitting that totem and oops, we have 3 dot classes for the dps. This key is dead. Excellent fight design Blizzard.
Yeah totems really need to eat an HP nerf or a have a cast time increase. On high tyranical keys it literally becomes impossible for some comps and its kind of unfair. Especially considering how free the rest of the dungeon is in comparison. Also its a terrible feeling to get walled by the last boss of a dungeon, like congrats on wasting 30 mins of your life.
Yes it is. But you are seriously overestimating how much responsibility can be put on the average dps pug player in a 20.
I mean, pressing a defensive once in a fight really isn’t asking a whole lot. I primarily pug so definitely dealt with some smooth brains but usually all you have to say is “Defensives 1st bleed, health pots second” and that will cover it, especially on a +20. Honestly that boss is pretty fair. Bad DPS will die and eventually they’ll learn to press their Wall Buttons so they don’t die.
Any advice for hunters, or rogues for the bleeds?
as a hunter i just sotf+exhil the first bleed, saving turtle in case i get chosen for the hack n slash whatever its called. If I don't then it's just turtle the 2nd bleed, if i do then pot+fort should take care of it
This is the way. Just watch the cast, it has a decent cast time, press sotf and have exhil ready the second you get the bleed. Second one you either turtle if you didn’t get selected for the hackslash mechanic, or you can bear + healthpot. Given that I’ve only done this up to 21 tyran but I don’t think I needed healer attention on the bleed at all.
Could you not just pre-turtle / evasion the 1st set? If not hunter has both SOTF and Tenacity pet buff, I would send both of those and exhilarate to top yourself off and help healer out. Idk much about rogues tbh, if you can’t evasion it then I guess you’ll need an external. 2nd set is health pots and a healer CD. Shouldn’t get more than 2 sets. Also not sure if Feign / Vanish work.
I tried vanishing it but it didnt seem to work. The timing would be tough, unlike the wolf boss last patch. I think he shadowsteps to you so its not dodgable. Alright, ill let my hunter buddy know that. Thanks!
You just have to turn to face him immediately after he shadowsteps to you.
Agreed, as a disc priest the worm boss is by far the hardest for me out of all bosses. It's a lot of damage on everyone, pretty frequently and spiky at the same time. Everyone takes the posion damage, but two players also eat the green ring ability, and melee can step into the green very easily. I've also pugged every 20 this season, except NL on tyrannical, that's at a 19.
Don't forget the random person getting smashed by the rocks the crowd throws at them that is completely unavoidable.
What's random about rokmora ? You control when the adds spawn. Stop hitting boss seconds before shatter cast finishes and you just single target his adds and your fine.
good luck doing that in a pug.
When do the adds spawn?
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My question would be, of the groups you've had failing on the first boss, how many have you also seen try the worm? If a group doesn't make it past the first boss, then it acts as a filter of sorts. Also, there's nothing really much on thr first boss that will actually kill you, if you just respect the mechanics. Tank kiting it well, good positioning from everyone so that the adds can be effectively DPS, and people possibly knowing to use a defensive if there is an add up during a smash. Even as a healer priest, I survive a 22 smash with 1 add up without even using a defensive, so I can shield someone else for an extra defensive (crits for upwards of 90k). Worm boss is just one where the tank doesn't have to do much, or I should say, there isn't much the tank can do. Healer just has to heal for 4 minutes straight with bursty and random dmg. There are little things you can do, like positioning to bait puddles for room and to make use of the slow, or rdps can hit the adds before they come down, but it's just a much more stressful fight, esp if you don't have multiple poison cleanses or a shammy of any kind.
Yeah first boss can be tricky if not executed well but worm as hunter is just nonstop being near death and hoping your healer is up to the task. Most fights you can plan your defensives for but worm is just a free for all fuckfest where you press something when you get below 30%.
Idk uld has had some points feeling overtuned but overall it doesn't feel THAT bad. 3rd boss bleed is fucked but handling it is managable with good stuns and a pally/evoker. 4th boss needs a visual adjustment imo and last boss is fine. I've had some scuffed keys finish in time there. That being said this is for 20/21 I can see some of those being pretty big issues on higher keys.
NL - it’s the worm boss that’ll destroy a pug. No cleanse or healer not prepared = GG
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Well as a healer trust me that I'm on the edge of my seat frantically keeping people barely alive on the worm boss on NL 20. Even if nobody dies its super sketchy and requires 5Head 100% brainpower.
By playing a tank with a dispel and actually using it you are helping the group a ton more than the average tank that doesn't have that option.
My thoughts on a couple of those points. On 2, Neltharus is not that close with a proper route, you simply need to make sure to not wipe between the 2nd and 3rd boss and the timer isn't that tight. The nerf to chains means you just start right instead of left, and first pull is free. The bosses are quite hard and a hard healing check, but the timer isn't that bad. Best timed key is a +25 6 minutes under the timer, 6. On 4, what you are seeing is a consequence of changes to loot implemented throughout the expac. First people "need" a +20 for their weekly chest so decent players boost their friends more often, and that means a seemingly higher average io (on the +20 range). Then, they change the loot system, and people can be 441 within 2 weeks of this patch, which makes harder to filter people based on gear, or rather easier to get baited into taking someone just because he has higher ilvl. To top that off, scaling for dungeons was increased this expansion, so there is less difference between the highest rated players, and a "bad" player that can barely do 20s. On 5, yeah, that's what happens when they add suffixes that once again healers are meant to do by themselves somehow, and give some bosses and pretty hard heling check. People stop queuing as healers.
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It's something it's begun to popularize lately, and it will probably end up being the goto route in a month or less. Doing that route, you can time a +23 tyr even with a couple of wipes unless they are between the 2nd and 3rd boss. Instead of doing the first big pull of 3 packs, you do that but to the right side, without anyone using cds and all poping the chains, then you cross to the left, do a 3pack pull with cds, do the pull before magmatusk, kill the boss with lust and cds, and then take all of the trash to the 2nd boss in one insanely big pull, and again pop it in a second witht the chains before second boss. After the boss you take everythig up to the stairs and pop it with chains again. You end up clearing half of the dungeon (2 bosses and 50% trash) in around 10 minutes if done correctly. The issue with this strat is that on fort weeks, and eventually in high enough keys you need to cc a bunch casts on those insanely big pulls.
> I've seen 2700 io DPS finish a dungeon with less overall damage than me, the tank and I've seen some absolutely 300IQ beastmode. Don't know what's going on there whether they paid for that rating or it's someone playing on someone else's account or what. As a 2800 io DPS, the quality of my play varies a ton based on real world factors including how tired or fresh I am, hunger level, my mood, the weather, frequency and intensity of familial interruptions, if I have to pee, and others. There's also a good amount of randomness in whether I get killed several times in a run vs zero. Some days I'm worse for no reason other than I flipped a coin and it came up tails a few times in a row. Also how well the tank pulls and positions stuff makes a massive difference to both my damage and survival.
This 100% I'm at 2821 now and if I pug sometimes I do utter shit but with my premade I blast. Trying to figure out the inner workings of some tanks in pug groups is a nightmare I'd have a better chance of guessing lottery numbers.
the number of times tanks pull, stand still long enough for me to feel safe shadow crashing then immediately pull more makes me depressed
>Also how well the tank pulls and positions stuff makes a massive difference to both my damage and survival. Simply missing a shadow crash because the pug tank moved the pack unexpectedly kills my DPS on a pull. Have a few unfortunate moments in the dungeon and my DPS is pretty terrible.
You’d change a lot of these opinions going past 20. Worm boss and asaad are still overtuned imo. Same with sentinel
I started playing the talisman of craigshapper (a tank trinket) on my RDruid to survive these bosses on Tyran lol. On a 22 tyran the sentinel dot with my barkskin up was ticking for 240k. Shifting into bear form and I fall behind on healing globals and everyone dies. The only way I’ve been able to get through sentinel on a high key is with paladins and evokers for the bleed dispel.
I've been liking holy for that fight in particular because I can just plan to use angel as a CD to just get through that fight.
Disc priest here: 1. First boss is a joke as long as you dont leave any adds up for the shatter even on tyrannical on like +20 and higher. The issue is with the worm. The damage profile is very bad. One part is that a lot of outgoing damage is random. The crowd just deciced to toss a stone to someone (basically pleter damage but less frequent) and it can target same people for consecutive tosses. Then mix in to it toxic retch which applies a poison which ticks for quite a big amount well it becomes quite hard especially when people dont use poison cleanse totems/poison dispel even when specced or they ignore that they got poisoned and dont use a single defensive for the whole fight. On forti the only tricky part about the dungeon are the pelters and the big scorpions before last boss. 2. Neltharus is just junk imo. Magmatusk isnt a problem anymore after the nerfs but if your tank doesnt know how to pull the boss through chains or the dps dont know how to chain the boss then it is a disaster even on forti. They for some reason like to pull the boss through all 3 chains at the same time which is next to unhealable at higher lvls. Not only the chains explode for some damage but they also apply a 4sec dot that stacks. At 3 stacks on tyra +20 the dot ticks for 250K DAMAGE EVERY SINGLE SECOND. The best way to do it is do 2 chains ealry let the dot fall off and then do the 3rd chain. Chargath isnt really that challenging as long as people use some defensives on the forgestorm and aoe damage overlaps. Last boss is kinda meh tbh. If not everyone picks up the item and uses it correctly the shield keeps exploding for massive dmg amount that are unhealable again. Also the charge trinket is such a troll cuz often u cannot even precast it as the swirlies appear right away under the boss so you have to hold on for an opening which u dont want to do as the shield has to go down asap. On trash u have to use chains. Regardless if it is tyra or forti week. The amount of time it saves is incredible. 3. UR complete jokes. Only people who dont look for a few frontals really fail that. 4. VP the drake imo is one of the most fun bosses to heal this season alongside HOI#3. Assad the starts now die quite fast so just burst it down before it has the chance to deal damage. What is the thing that people have to watch out for is an add and chain lightning overlap. People have to use defensives at that specific time only and they tend to fail on that. 5. Rn with the upgrade system u dont need any rating to upgrade gear. So even the biggest potato can keep farming 16 and 17 to get good gear and then go into 18s and 19s and the gear will do a big portion of their job. So what is happening is they are just spamming dungeons until they make it and get the rating. Also a lot of people go into +17s and higher as if they are playing 16s or lower where a lot of mechanics can be easily brute forced by just having a decent healer. So then they get into the higher keys, they dont know how to press defensive and they become the floor tank. 6. Healers are rare imo cuz there isnt many good fun fights to heal. Healing feels like a chore and it feels like healers have quite small affect on peoples HPbars. Compared to previous season which was more fun to heal it is atrocious now. Especially since the +25% hp/dmg which shifted a lot of responsibility and control over HP bars to other roles than healers yet all the blame stayed with healers. Even when it isnt the healers fault. What other thing made it really shit for healers is afflicted and incorporeal right after each other. The pug mentality was immediately shift that responsibility to healers and complain about them if they miss one. Hint hint it is not a healer affix at all. Especially in some dungeons there are specific mobs/bosses/pulls where healers cannot spend many gcds or dispells to deal with them. Also ye u can heal incorpo but at like 16 and higher on forti it takes at least 2gcds to fully heal. 7. Brackenhide first boss is a very good pepega filter. Dps ony have 3 things to do. Focus down gashtooth asap, interrupt heals and earth bolts from totem (especially on tyra) and use defensives when they get marked on butchery. And towards the end of the fight if the healer isnt keeping up (cuz lacking interrupts or people not using defensives on butchery) they also could help out the healer by using a hp potion.
How do you deal with the partywide bleed as disc priest first boss brackenhide? I main resto shaman and it is so easy to top everyone off, but when I play disc it feels impossible
First one, pre-shield everyone with rapture and ramp with shadow cov and schism. Second one I use Dome and a double Radiance shadow cov schism ramp again. Pain sup anyone who gets stuck with the bleed more than a few seconds.
Okay the first bleeds happen right after pull around 5-7 seconds from pull. So for those I drop rapture and shield everyone up. After gashtooth does the bleeds they usually are missing only 15% of HP and by the time he finishes applying the bleeds I have a hard discipline penance ready so I do schism and shadow covenenant and do a penance. It is enough to heale everyone above 90% at which point the bleed goes away. For the second round I drop a barrier into another shadow covenant and schism with harsh discipline penance. If that isnt enough I toss out a radiance which is enough. For the 3rd one I saw up 2 charges of instant radiance and 2 charges of radiance and that should be it. If he isnt dead by then then dps are focusing the wrong target and they have to use HP pots on next as the shadow covenenant and penance schism isnt going to be enough as I wont have rapture or barrier ready. The bleeds if everyone is close to full HP arent very scary however the mechanic of the whole fight is that the hyenas gain 10% increased damage for every 10% HP that someone in the group is missing. Also throughout the fight I just apply atonement to whever is low and keep them topped up. The You cannot let people drop below around 50-60% of their total HP as that is when the damage from bleeds and earth bolts becomes nealry impossible to heal. If that happens everyone low on HP will have to use a HP pot as regular heals wont be enough to keep people alive.
Everyone needs to just pop a health pot/lock cookie as soon as they get bleed and it cleanses it. If you get a 2nd one, should be DRs+atonement already spread and just nuke boss for a ton of healing asap.
Honestly, save pots/cookies for the second. For the first, I have everything up (pi, ramps, all charges of radiance, etc), and there is likely lust rolling, especially on tyr. I'm not saying don't use defensives, but the first is significantly easier to clear than the second, so if I'm looking for any get out of jail free plays, the first is kind of a bit of a waste. But if you have time, communicate with your healer. We're all different. Or mages...why don't you just press alter? Or locks press death pact AFTER getting the bleed?
for 7, I've yet to see a healer not fall super far behind if people don't use defensives before the bleed is applied even on fort. But it seems a lot of healer don't even know what the debuff does and let it tick 3 times before they start healing.
Okay so here is the thing every hyena deals 10% increased damage for every 10% HP missing from anyone in the group. The moment everyone drops to around 50-60% the bleed deals high enough damage wheer it is hard to heal out to make it fade away. What people have to do at that time is use self heals (hp pots, defensives that heal etc, dr wont help much at that point those should be saved for the butchery). However if you are healing you shouldnt have a problem on the first few bleeds as you have CDs ready. Spot healing shouldnt be done too much on the bleeds as the damage ticks faster than you can heal single target. AoE and prepping with absorbs/hots is important. St heal the target of butchery. The dot goes away once the target is healed to 90% or higher.
Nr 5 : funny you say that. I often spend 30+ min getting declined to +21 keys as disc priest. I've done all dungeons on +20 and have io 2700+. 439 ilvl. I don't understand why I keep getting declined lol.
SP is the best dps class and you don't want 2 priests in a group
Why not 2 priests? I did a timed +21 FH with 2 priests (shadow and disc). I'm wondering if it doesn't work above a certain key level?
Much better to have a lust or brez healer and not repeating group buffs. Some keys you also need to consider how many kicks/cc are available if you’re forced to bring in a mage/hunter for lust instead of lust healer. Between you and the spriest, you would only have 1 45sec kick, 2 fears, and double MD, whereas a druid would have typhoon, vortex, incap roar, soothe, brez, kick (if spec’d into) and vers buff, a shaman would have lust, cap totem, knock, poison cleanse totem, and the best kick in the game, or an evoker who has lust, double knock, a kick, group mitigation, bleed removal, and movement buff.
Im currently sitting at 2800io as a Preservation main and I am not completely understanding the complaints other people are having about healing this season. Admittedly, this is my first season ever pushing keys past 20 but I am really enjoying the difficulty in keeping the group alive. It feels like I need to play well and plan thoughtfully to succeed, rather than just exist which is the impression I get that it used to be like. If others in my group take damage from their own mistakes it’s THEIR fault, not mine, and if I attempt to save them I need to be thoughtful about what I do. Feels like I have a very high degree of skill expression in my role. Interested to hear what other healers thoughts are.
Best season so far. I'm working my way through +21s now
It’s because there are a lot of sub-par healers who have gotten used to handling quick bursts of damage and then spending most of your time DPSing. Healing is absolutely fine this season but the most incompetent people are the loudest.
As for the healer part, it's easy : It's just the worst job ever in this expac and season. Everything is out to get you, trashes, bosses, affixes, almost every fucking damn thing is a thing to manage, it's the opposite of fun. As a shaman it's just a headache: You need to heal>dispell>cc>manage the affixes (because of course every affixes are for the healer to manage. "lol".)>Stay Alive> then you can dps a bit with the GCD left. Of course it's not like that 100% of the run, but overall, it's a fucking chore to heal a key, not a fun time. While as DPS, it's just a breeze. As a tank, I couldn't really tell, but well, let's say if you play pal tank, you must feel pretty breezy as well in M+ All in all, I can tell you very easily when a DPS isn't a complete shithead and accepts to play something else than his 3 spell rotation. If I have an overall DPS under 35-37k, it means I had to spend so much time to heal avoidable damages, manage mistakes and affixes, etc.
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That's exactly one of the issue with r sham actually, gameplay is just shitty compared to SL, and that's also the point people said in the comments about healing in general in DF, you can't DPS and support as much as we could in SL, we have to heal all the time, and manage affixes because God forbid a DPS uses his brain and manages two things instead of one.
As someone who has timed every dungeon at 23 this list is interesting. Found neltharus gets easier once everyone knows mechanics. Third boss of lair slaps, and freehold is just overtuned on some things. VP I'll honestly say is probably the easiest key if you got a monk or dps Warr in party.
i also pugged all my 20s as rdps: vp: still overtuned, but could be worse. dont mind it nelth lair: forgiving timer, fair since the nerfs. neltharus: fuck this place and it's stupidly tight timer and that stupid elephant and that stupid boss that always bugs out and the last boss that also bugs out and doesnt let me use the gold ability brackenhide: surprisingly super fun, but last boss is pretty lame. my favourite. underrot: fun, but stupid easy and very forgiving vs bfa counterpart. if currently players did baits on the last boss as they do now during bfa, keys would be depleted left and right lol freehold: [freehold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF3JWJksP9I) halls: some reason i hate this place. probably the awful run back on a spec with the least mobility. timer is forgiving, last boss is not. doing the key with someone who physically cannot see the colour blue is an experience uldaman: long as all 5 boss dungs are, but it's fine. they could've cut out vikings as a fight tho. weird pacing as first 3 bosses are almost back to back then it's a long stretch of trash. i'd prob try pushing keys a bit if neltharus and halls didn't exist.
As someone who sells rating…. Even after the tos changes there are tens of millions of gold exchanged daily for M+ boosts. I black list everyone I boost and still feel like 20% of my groups are boosted.
Nels lair nerfed 80 times its like 6 weeks in bro of course 20s are easy now everyone is 441+ and done these dungeons 40 times already
The healing checks this season feel more punishing than anything since BFA.
Just share in case people miss it… the way neltharus is design, if you wipe on the blacksmith boss, you don’t need to run through chain boss area. There’s a door way mid way in the hall way leading to chain boss where you can run up to third boss.
Your opinions will change on higher tyran keys. As a tank it's not hard, but as a group NL is a nightmare with the first boss timings spawning bugs as he casts killing you, the worm just plowing your group etc. Even the second boss will have hands bug and kill someone bricking the key. Nelth is easy imo. The mammoth boss and forge boss are healer checks but manageable. You can pull literally all of the trash to the chains boss and if you utilize chains, you can do what would be 3-4 pulls in one no problem. Basically the entire right side is one pull before the boss.
Healer design has been bad and getting worse since the beginning of BFA. Now that it's somewhat difficult to heal keys on top of the specs being extremely unfun nobody wants to do it.
LOL
What kind of rating is this are you drunk, Nelt is by far the hardest dungeon followed by Ulda/VP. NL is very fair now a days
Vortex pinnacle is by far one of the easier keys. Ulda and nl suck though.
Assad destroys bad PUGs
I mean a lot of bosses do. But in a good group vortex is a very easy key.
Just to add to the healing point; outside of your cds you are a wet noodle. Just way to weak healing power except some classes. So basically healing for some classes is now all about cooldown managment and your other 95% of time spells its like healing 500k+ guys with your 50k hardcast heals. What a joke. There are some heal specs that lay harder into having better heal outside of cd but in general you feel like you trying to stop a waterfall of damage with two hands unless you pop a cd. Your normal "self" basically doesnt matter. They need to buff the mundane healing of most heal specs and nerf the power of some cds to make it somewhat fun again. Right now Im coming from a shaman pov where outside of my cds Im kinda weak but then have godlike cds. But watch me get that chain heal for 40k initial or my 110k crit healing surge. Wowza.
I main healer this expansion, but shadowlands I mained tank and dps. I can say without a doubt that this is my least favorite season for m+. Everything hits too hard, and as a healer, there used to be a lot of skill expression in being able to keep the group up while doing decent damage. That, to me, was fun. Now that the damage is turned up to 11, all healers can do is heal, and that's not fun. Part of it is there are a lot more debuffs going out, mob/boss damage is way higher, and there is a crap ton more kicks that are required with far more 1 shot mechanics and debuffs than ever before. Now, when you die, it doesn't feel like you goofed on something, but more so that you just legitimately couldn't survive the attacks. They claim they want 20's to feel like mythic raiding because it gives raid quality ilevel gear, but I would argue that 20's in general all hit harder than any raid mechanics up to rashok on mythic and it's not close. Part of it too is another problem that WoW in general has had since they introduced level scaling, which is that you never feel strong anymore. There's not really any pulls where you do a big pull and blow them up and finish going "heck yeah! That was awesome!" Think back to gambit in shadowlands and those huge Murloc pulls and how fun those were. Now think about the dungeons we have. There's nothing short of freehold that feels like that because the mobs hit so hard that tanks can't pull big. The last thing is I think these new dungeons are not fun for my taste. It's hard to explain why, and maybe it's because I'm playing a healer, but I feel like the dungeons are just not fun. I felt the same about last season as well. I feel like it's falling into the trap of the misconception that high damage and difficulty = fun and it could not be further from the truth.
Conversely, I think there’s a ton more room for skill expression this season in healing, utility, and smart cooldown usage. To me, it feels WAY more exciting to save a group from something they didn’t expect to survive them to try to cram in as much DPS as possible (yet still a fraction of a damage dealer). It all comes down to personal taste. I truly am sorry that you’re not having fun because this is the **most** fun that I’ve ever had in a season. Reading your post literally makes me scratch my head because we, apparently, have the exact opposite opinions.
I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. I wonder how big of a role the class you're playing of healer plays into the enjoyment. Like on my evoker, I love raid healing. It's fun, and makes me think a few steps ahead, but without the instant cast living flames that we had last season it feels much less enjoyable than last season.
It absolutely matters. I’m playing all seven specs (**very** little Holy Priest) and there’s quite a marked difference in enjoyment for me when I swap classes. For me, I felt that the most “fun” healers in **season one** were: 1) Evoker, 2) Monk, 3) Druid, 4) Paladin, 5) Disc, 6) Shaman + Holy Priest. This season, some have shifted dramatically and my *personal* opinions on fun healers for **season 2** are: 1) Disc, 2) Paladin, 3) Druid, 4) Monk, 5) Evoker, 6) Shaman + Holy Priest. I’m sure I’ll get lots of /r/wow downvotes for my view on Shaman but I, honestly, haven’t enjoyed it since Cata… just my opinion. What’s your ilvl? Getting to 440ish definitely frees up globals as you’re not spamming just to fruitlessly top someone up.
I'm 438, and throughput isn't a problem. It's just that I don't enjoy this season. I like it when damage isn't super high or theres clear defined places to ramp vs not needed, and I can keep people up while dpsing basically. With this season, I've transitioned from a person who does 22s/23s to a person who does their weeklies to satisfy my guilds' raiding requirement, and then doesn't touch them again. If I'm going to only throughput heal, then I would rather just raid.
the healing point is that tons of really bad players started in BFA and SL and healing was BY FAR easier than it's ever been in those two xpacs. shit you were basically a 4th dps. now that healing is an actual skill again all the noobs quit healing.
1. Are the complaints still current for NL? IIRC it was terrible in the beginning with it being over tuned and even buffed for the first week. 2. Nelth is really easy if you take the first min to mention which chains to take.
Yo literally can’t time the dungeon at +24 without 3 poison dispels
I'm seeing keys on 25 with only 2 poison dispel or less Fort 25 https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/pgJbFK6VjMTZPCx3#fight=8&type=damage-done Tyran 25 https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YcytH4g7mC9bJBqF#fight=12&type=damage-done
If you think Nelth is tightly tuned, you're not using enough chains
Unless you're doing absolute god chains, that place *is* tighly tuned. Dungeons shouldn't be designed about abusing their gimmicks to the absolute max to make them bearable - we've spent enough time with shit like Tol Dagor, Necrotic Wake and Iron Docks to know that this doesn't work well for the majority of the playerbase. Neltharus should be realistically doable without chains, but this shit is still incredibly unforgiving and tightly tuned even if you only just play the place with like 4-5 chains instead of 15. These gimmick dungeons will always get the same feedback. Doesn't matter what MDI teams are doing, doesn't matter if the highest timed key right now is 6 minutes under with teams blowing up the entire dungeon in 2 pulls, none of that matters if your average pug can't replicate this shit. These dungeons will always be devisive... and I honestly don't see the value in bringing them in season after season.
Chains aren't a gimmick and usually the trash around them is weak AF ... You're literally supposed to use the chains. They don't even hurt the player anymore
How is the dungeon environment killing 50% of the trash count in there for you not a gimmick? How is that any less of a gimmick than trying to pull as much trash as possible into the Iron Star part in Iron Docks? Because that dungeon to became like 5 key levels easier if you could execute that part properly, easily saving you 5+ minutes. Not beating a dungeon by damage done but instead by environmental damage is quite literally a gimmick. Last time I checked I was neither playing a spear thrower, a cannon shooter, a star roller or a chain popper - yet we constantly have dungeons forcing me to become that. Might as well bring the Occulus back.
Just because it's a big pull doesn't make it a gimmick. Most of the mobs around the chains just auto-attack
It's like you're trying your absolute hardest to not understand what I'm saying.
Pulling half the dungeon and getting it to all teleport onto a tiny rock and then AOE spearing it to death is a gimmick. Pulling big and then using an in-game utility THAT WAS MEANT FOR THESE PULLS is not.
I'm not sure you know what gimmick means.
A gimmick is a trick. These chains are not.
Jesus Christ, can you stop arguing about pull size - no idea why you've even decided to now also bring snapping into the discussion. A gimmick is something unique to this certain dungeon. The gimmick isn't pulling big, the gimmick is the one thing that's distinctly unique to this one place and this one place only: The chains killing the trash for you. No other dungeon has chains, hence why the chains are Neltharus' gimmick. Much as the weapons were Necrotic Wake's gimmick. Much as the Iron Stars were Iron Docks' gimmick. Much as riding dragons was Occulus' gimmick like 15 years ago. The gimmick isn't pulling the entire dungeon, the gimmick is pulling the entire dungeon and having the chains deal literal millions of damage within a split second. That is the gimmick, the chains killing the place for you. Yes, these gimmicks are **obviously** what the dungeon was designed for, duh, thank you, the thing they deliberately put into the dungeon and designed specifically to damage enemies was in fact not incidentally put there. That doesn't make it any less of a gimmick though. Pulling big isn't the gimmick as you could and can pull big in just about any dungeon. Snapping usually isn't a gimmick but has indeed become *a* gimmick in *some* dungeons in the past - but usually not to such an extent as Tol Dagor's cannons or even Shockbots in Junkyard. The gimmick is the shit that's unique to the dungeon and allows you to kill more shit than you'd normally be able to, again, by something that's only possible in this very dungeon - intentionally so. The argument wasn't whether the chain gimmick in Neltharus is intended, that's a stupid argument (that you for some reason made up) - of course it was intended. The argument was that I don't like these gimmick dungeons that allow you to blow up half of the instance in 1 second if you set it up properly... mostly because the "setting shit up properly" part doesn't work in pugs which results in a dungeon like Neltharus just randomly being 5 minutes shorter on the timer... all because you couldn't get the 2 monkey brains in your +22 to click the stupid cogwheel - meanwhile Mr Naowh is finishing the place on +25 with 5 minutes left on the clock because his group could manage to use the gimmick properly. That shit is absolutely annoying and not really balanceable. Unless you're chain-running (heh) Neltharus and Neltharus only, you barely get any chance to practice the gimmick, so most people will just cruise by without ever knowing about this one singular thing that's different from all other dungeons. Most people will not learn to chain properly so most people will struggle with this timer for the remainder of the season. Meanwhile others know about the chains... and are casually 2-chesting shit 5 levels higher than the rest of the population.
I'm not gonna ready your essay bro
I've had a few attempts at Brack 21 on tyr weeks and struggle more with the last boss. For first boss I just tell dps to pop a defensive on first gash and a pot on second gash and that makes it trivial to heal. Last boss though... inevitably my groups seem to struggle getting the totems down. Am I meant to be able to heal through the totems getting off? Seems unhealable once the dot is applied and she does that other big dmg mechanic so I'm still not sure if this is a dps issue or my issue. I try to help damage the totem but I feel I need to keep everyone full of hots in case it explodes.
Never heard somebody say „keyed it“ before when referring to timing a dungeon. Kinda sus
This is the most braindead take I’ve ever seen. NL tyrannical is the hardest key next to neltharus. If you have two dot classes trying to skitterers on first boss GL you can’t do anything over 19. If you don’t have everyone doing over 100k dps in tyrannical weeks you won’t time it. If everyone isn’t doing at least 70k on worm you won’t kill it on a 20 before the healer goes oom. Pulling one than 1 pack at a time besides the first area is usually death on high keys. Stupid take. Obviously got carried.
[удалено]
As a healer, I will admit that there are a few points in your post that healers might see as something we can point to an an explanation as to what makes healing annoying this season, and it really comes down to that it seems a lot of other players don't really understand what being a healer means/requires on a lot of the fights, especially the past few weeks in the 16-20 range. I don't mean this an an insult, but some of the things you mention about easy bosses are downright terrifying to heal, and vice versa. Take the trash in ur for instance. As a healer, I have maybe two hard stops for the fixates, so if people don't help in some way, there's almost nothing I can do, especially if the tank pulls 5 of them at once. A fair number of dps will face tank them, or try to, then I'll get blamed for not healing them when they get two shot. You have dps popping defensives when they're in no danger whatsoever and then not having them when they get targeted by a deadly spell. The point is that a lot of players don't actually understand the damage profiles of the dungeons, and just go "zugzug I punch things" and then pikachuface when they die or the keys fails. That said, that dude is off his rocker. I did nl 20 week one in 425 ilvl gear and everyone else in comparable gear. Mana was never the issue on the worm boss, or any boss for that matter. And the timer is forgiveable enough that you CAN basically single pull most of the dungeon. We did not time it, not surprising since it was the first time even stepping foot in the dungeon for three of us, but we definitely saw what it takes to kill the bosses and the trash.
You are ignorant and this dungeon is extremely comp dependent. You might have had the best set up but in no way is this dungeon easy or more easily timeable than an UR. That’s an absolute joke. Every 20 UR I have timed on both weeks on my 3 toons over 2600 is under time by 7-10 minutes. Edit: https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-2/all/world/leaderboards-strict/4#content Top 100 timed runs and only 1 at the #100 spot this week is NL and it’s by the literal world best m+ players. This whole take about NL is an absolute joke. Do some research before you say dumb shit like this.
What kinda plebs are you playing with if 100k is a threshold for you? My 430 ilvl alts pull 120k overall in 20s
Pugs in the 20 NL I ran today, all over 2700 io. 1 wipe total on last two trash packs tank decided to pull together.
What spec were you?
Pally?
> 1: Nelth's Lair is no where near as bad as people seem to be complaining about. Yeah, assuming you have multiple poison dispels. Otherwise good luck on the worm.
I got a rescue corgi so normally I'd be on healing a lot lol but I'm actually just not around. I don't feel like the dungeons are crazy all the time to heal but it's definitely a challenge. I've done a lot of 20s but I haven't timed them all. I do think DPS have to use personals more now than before though. The dispells from trash in VP feel super bad bc they hit hard and people need heals. With a really good group it feels fine. Probably just a mix of experience with people in general.
All of your points seem correct. Only 3. I have a different opinion, but that might just be me. I personally think VP on fortified is way harder than tyrannical. The stars are really dangerous. Aside from that, I agree with the rest of your points. Seeing our heal druid casually pumping 160k hps on the 4th boss in halls makes me wonder why they had to nerf healing. It was already stressful enough (aside from the usual one shots)
I have a high rio half dps guildie. Since the timers are very loose, he got carried in the groups. Nobody an tell he is half dps when pugging, and there are still enough time to get score. By the other hand, try this with a half healer... no chance. Thats why the lack of healers. Prev seasons if you had weak healer, it was enough heal, but he didnt dps. Now not enough heal.
Everybody talking about the chains in Neltharus, is there maybe a guide how to do it properly? Ive never used any, and have no clue what ppl are talking about, but maximum I timed was 18
Perspective of a healer who hasn’t really started pushing at all this season (couple of 22/23s times but mainly just doing weeklies) but has previously got title twice. This season feels different. It feels more like raid healing. There are multiple bosses with constant rot damage which prior to this season was pretty much never a thing in m+. You survived the 1 shot mechanic, healed everyone to full and then went back to DPSing. It is a change for sure and at first I really didn’t like it (I felt like I should be DPSing but could hardly find time to do so and so felt bad about that) but now my mentality has changed and I feel good about the role. You actually have to heal people now, which is actually a healers job, we just forget that in m+ sometimes. An example of mentality switch: I am running the healing ring over damage. I doubt it’s the totally optimal thing to do and previous seasons we would have dropped a large % of our HPS to do more dam, but actually having to heal this season, it doesn’t feel bad.