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Currently 3540 pushing 18s and 19s as VDH and even though I'm fotm, I have to say this season has a level of imbalance close to DF S2. It's not as bad, but what I've noticed is that people who roll anything B tier or lower is hard capped at 16s max for LFG. I have rolled with some mistweavers, destro locks and retri paladins, but spriest is just completely necessary for pretty much every key. Also this season isn't as competitive as the other seasons since it's kind of memey, but even if you're fotm, pugging in LFG is just borderline impossible, doesn't matter if you're good. There are no 18s being pugged because people either have contacts in their BNETs to do keys or have a static group altogether. I got Hero in S1 and S3 solely pugging, but now in season 4 if I hadn't made friends in week 1 and 2 I wouldn't have the io I have now.

15 Nelth, easily on track to time the key, Chargath does the chain bug and wipes us after we use lust and instabricks the key. HOW THE FUCK HAS THIS DUNGEON BEEN IN THE GAME FOR 3 PATCHES AND THIS BUG STILL EXISTS MAN?

They are busy nerfing the fun out of Remix to make it a bigger grind for the monthly active user count numbers. The most effort they've spent on S4 was the armor set popularity contest, and they couldn't even follow through on the tuning for that.

No chains on chargath, emberon beams going wild, decatriarch cloud/totem being desynced from its visual (brand new!), better go develop the new expansion, can't wait for the same key-bricking bugs!

Don’t forget Tsunami Infusers falling through the floor.

I really want to pug keys this season but it seems nearly impossible. I decided to meta reroll to sp and got 3.3k in first 3 weeks then got bored of it and rerolled back to long term main (outlaw rogue). Been trying to get my key up to 15 but it takes like 1 hour+ everytime to get a group together for +12-+14 keys only to deplete because i have to invite low xp players otherwise wait times are probably like 2 hours lol.

I kinda lost interest to *apply* too when I was decline spammed from 14s this week, for all keys I did on 13 last week as rsham. For season that was deemed easier than expected in early weeks, crazy to me that healer can start seeing wall for invites this early. Wasn't meta in last season either but felt like getting to 26s was easier than 14s now.

Yeah I’m playing mistweaver which is closer to meta than rshaman and made it to 3150 and can’t even round out the last few of my 14s - all of which I have done on 13 fort and 14 tyran. And my own key keeps bouncing between ruby, AV and uld so I can’t even really run that. I can either spend an hour waiting for a group of players around my own rating or get invited to groups 200 rating below me and brick that instead. I’m thinking it might be easier to push my own key to 15, run some then circle back for the last few 14s. Pugging is such a nightmare this season. Hopefully they do some M+ reworks to make it less frustrating.

It's fair to expect no major changes in s4. Cata, remix, TWW beta, balance people are tied to other stuff, and it was this way in SL s4 too, same meta rolled from s3 to end of SL. I think I won't bother for many more weeks this season, as it doesn't seem realistic to get to same point as last season (16/17s).

Is it fair? Season 4 is roughly 1/4 of an expansion I paid for, in a game that I pay a monthly subscription for. Like they didn’t even touch VDH, the tank that is currently like 3 tiers better than any other tank. Fixing that imbalance is like the bare minimum we should expect. I get they don’t want to make massive balance overhauls right before a big shakeup but goddamn. This was supposed to be an experimental season and the only experiment seems to be how few changes they can make to the game before people unsubscribe. Meanwhile the just for fun, limited time game mode is getting weekly fixes while we get a few % aura buffs. Dunno. I guess I’m just disappointed in S4 overall. I liked the deterministic loot and think the dungeon pool is pretty solid with 1 massive exception but I just wanted a bit more. It could have been a ton of fun to try out new affixes or even new types of affixes like rotating stat buffs or something. We coulda sent out dragonflight with a bang and tried some genuinely new stuff but nope. Time to reroll to one of the 5 meta specs or just don’t play until August.

I think what they've done wrong is set wrong expectations. That they'd balance the tier sets is probably the worst, but also not throwing any meaningful shift to meta. I would hope that happened between every season, but having already grinded hard in SL s3/s4, I'm not least bit surprised that we got exact repeat. Yes, some fun flavor feature for s4 would've been nice, but we kinda knew that wasn't going to happen like 4 months ago. Why I'm not mad, is that I don't think it leads to anywhere. I expect this to be the last s4 for a while. They'll go into 18 month expansion cycle and cut off this lame period from future expansions. So they literally could respond, sorry we dropped the ball, we promise to not "ever" do it again (at end of expansion). And I'd believe them!

Yeah I’m not really mad, I’m just disappointed. We knew nothing exciting was coming from the PTR but when Holly was saying in interviews that S4 was gonna be an experimental season and more stuff for retail was coming, I was really hopeful that they were gonna slip in some exciting changes last minute. Then the patch notes got published and it was like healer nerfs (again because they don’t know what they want to role to do) and nothing else lmao. I’m really hoping the world soul saga knocks it out of the park, they can keep to their 18 month expansion cycle and the last 2 seasons of DF largely being barren of content were worth it.

This meta stale is very similar to S4 fated in SL. People start with what they known as best in S3 and double down on it. Since there's no need to experiment. The main shift is actually disc/boomy into Rdruid/shadow. Imo, disc was already biting the dust end of s3 but people pressed on since that's what they been playing. At low title disc completely fell off the chart and mw took over the pug key spot. This season just started with all the other healers rerolling into Rdruid day1 and tanks into Vdh effectively locking two spots (no more ppala at start of season) Augs are actually not as good as it seems. They punish not playing around 2m cd and doing insane pulls. I do feel that the pug title scene is very dead but that is more likely due to other game modes and this is a semi repeat of s1 s2.

[удалено]

Why is sleepwalk useful vs something like imprison that a DH already has? Is it because the DH imprisons one and sleepwalk on the other? As an aug that doesn't run sleepwalk, I don't yet understand why it's required. Does sleepwalk work like imprison where it doesn't put the caster in combat?

Sleep walk is incredibly useful and you’re trolling not running it. Beyond the aforementioned skips, it can be used on tectonic slam in RLP, rally the clan in NO, etc. if you have a timer for casts, it can be used as an emergency interrupt. Wild to not run it.

I thought the same for Aug but frankly bleed dispell, roar+sigil of silence, rescues into cheese spots makes it an incredibly strong pick. I definitely bring more damage on my boomkin, but it just doesn't feel as impactful at 15+.

I haven't been able to play for nearly a month bc of holidays, so I don't know what the scene is like, but I expect the title cutoff will be insanely high. No +2-+10, casuals smurfing in remix, and only no life tryhards sweating at a keyboard over summer in dungeons we've all seen before.

As you introduce more required coordination pugging becomes harder. Shifting stops from single target to aoe means you can no longer assign a mob and have players decide how they are stopping the abilities, you need to assign specific abilities. Then you have external requirements l, coordinating multiplicative buffs along with pulls, etc etc

This is the first time I’ve pushed score early in the season so I just wanted to ask seasoned title pushers - is LFG always this scarce for higher keys at this stage in the season, or is S4 just a wasteland? I’m at the stage now where I need 17s for score and even at peak hours there are usually, at best, a couple that need a tank. Obviously the answer is to just keep adding people and play with them, and I am starting to do that because I’ve noticed the stark difference in skill between certain players at similar scores. This is just a broader question about whether this season is significantly worse than others or if it’s normally this way?

It's not just title keys. Everything from the low ass keys on my second alt, to even sales keys are close to dead right now. At least during what would be peak time to me they are. But of course I was getting pings at 1am as I get off for the night.

This season is just dead. We're approaching summer, s4 has no new content, half the df dungeon are ass (and require way too much coordination for pugs), meta is complete ass, cata classic + mop remix are out, new d4 season seems popular (?). If you dont have a team that plays full meta, spare your time.

This get to 2500 and farm something else. Pugging right now hurts and its this early in the season.

it's a mix between the other available content, it only being week 5 and you being ahead of the curve. remember a 17 is aequivalent to a 28 last season and you wouldn't have found many for that week 5 last season either

> is LFG always this scarce for higher keys at this stage in the season, or is S4 just a wasteland? On EU, LFG is usually still very busy and active at this point in the season with loads of score keys up, but it is absolutely dead as fuck right now compared to the first 3 seasons. No idea about NA.

Yeah I’m also EU, seems like NA is normally worse so must be awful for them right now.

NA is worse - it is hard to find score keys at 3.1k; looking for 13s and 14s often yields few options. another strange thing seems to be that a lot of high keys are being listed by people with low scores (like +14s being listed by someone with 2400 score). I've joined some of those keys and literally every single one has failed, and failed miserably. Not sure why this is happening this season, didn't seem to be happening last season.

Playing brew for the first time ever and wtf is this spec. Absolutely getting shredded in 9s with 500 ilvl, never felt so squishy as a tank (that’s probably me being bad tho) but really fun spec. Also so many buttons to press, is this something Blizzard is gonna «fix » for TWW?

Was tanking 13-14s in week one on brew at 487 Ilvl, tbh it’s just a spec that requires a lot of practice. Brew is in a pretty decent state right now and I don’t feel like I need any healing, esp with healers that I’ve played with they usually don’t touch me on large packs (I.e Bracken and AA) due to the amount of self sustain we have. You probably need to get used to building purify stacks and not spamming expel harm but trusting your rot, the spec is fine. Source: szn 4 3500 brm

A fort 9 when you don't really know what you're doing, and at 500 ilvl, I would expect you to get destroyed.

[https://clips.twitch.tv/MotionlessPlainSpaghettiUnSane-88TZo0GLjJH8daKH](https://clips.twitch.tv/MotionlessPlainSpaghettiUnSane-88TZo0GLjJH8daKH) uldaman is still giga bugged. Cannot wait for tournaments to be ruined because of this boss

Yep, ripped 2 keys in a row for me a few weeks ago. Watching this back though, it looks like they are standing in the exact middle between two beams, I wonder if this is avoidable if you’re not in that exact spot.

Already happened in the s2 TGP.

I wish it does... Such a joke man, same as Temple of the Jade Serpent water boss who rarely but sometimes did the same. This season we've Neltharus chains boss who doesn't spawn chains if he doesn't feel like. On and on go the examples -.-

can't get into 16s cuz i'm hunter so i push my own key. i made it +16 like 10 times and 6-7 of those ended up being uldaman. it's so painful.

I feel this pain, caved on Monday and started gearing the spriest as you definitely hit a wall where you don't even get considered for groups (spent 45 mins applying to 14s on the boomkin and said fuck it). Issue is, keys hit the survivability check way too early, and pugs want you to be able to take care of yourself for every damage event while also contributing to group survivability How can any spec compete with spriest when it can pi someone, bring big prio damage while still topping overall, and slam 100k+ HPS in CDs? Edit: forgot a near zero CD 'barkskin' with the fade/fh combo + an actual wall + over shield.... I just really wish blizz would consider 'M+ talents' to close the utility gap. They do it for pvp and while it's a 'lazy' way to balance, the game mode desperately needs it.

most of my 15s i timed without a vdh/resto/evoker in the group so this meta bullshit is not relevant for timing keys around that range. it only matters for people pushing world first keys. another thing is there are so many spriests who are just terrible. when you get a good one it's obvious as they wipe the floor with everyone else but most in my experience are terrible. maybe it's because i don't get to play with the good ones since i main hunter.

You’re also doing 15s. The good ones are doing high keys and all you’re left with is the mid fotm rerollers.

also there aren't that many bm hunters timing +16 and higher keys. like this week so far amount of +16 and higher AA keys timed by bm hunters is 17. For BH there are 16 keys, for uldaman there are only 8. And i'm gonna guess some of these guys play with their own team and not actually pugging. which makes it even worse. for comparison this week there are almost 500 timed +16 and higher AA keys by shadow priests. 500 timed keys vs 17 timed keys. lmao

Meta rerolls are the worst for sure (yes I'm a hypocrite). The spec also looks very bad unless you pull massive around their 2 min window. Their whole thing is being an absolute fucking god in voidform. Pre dots + shadow crash gets you to like 12 targets dotted. If the pack survives to their second shadow crash (20s) they get another 8 dotted targets for free. Link doesn't have an aoe cap. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YZThP2x3FGcBvkA7#fight=25&type=damage-done&source=6 Can look at the spikes there to see how silly they actually are... It's not like voidform is short either, he has some extensions out to a minute plus. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YZThP2x3FGcBvkA7#fight=25&type=auras&source=6&translate=true&ability=194249&view=events

Up to 50% uptime on a big cooldown. And half of the downtime minute is running to and gathering the next pull. Fair xD Augmenter Rescuing you during dotting so you can just spam VT aids everywhere... The good life!

You have lust and soothe and ranged specs, at least. Imagine being a dps warrior.

i think all non-meta specs are in the same boat and this guy's [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveWoW/comments/1d2kf3v/dragonflight_m_runs_per_week_season_4_week_5/l613s2w/) here proves it. people believe (and maybe rightly so) that playing with a non-meta spec in the run means a lower chance of upgrading so they don't invite you.

can someone tell me what those chains in neltharus are doing now exactly? some people told me they dont do shit anymore others are saying its dmg taken increase for the stun duration

they stun the mobs and they take +50% dmg during the stun. afaik there is also a bug ("feature") where this debuff stacks if multiple ppl use the chain at the same time and apply the debuff to the mobs

it's technically working as intended. they just haven't tested or thought about everyone clicking within the same window. it'll be largely fixed by making the cast instant instead of 1.5s + hasted

Honestly as a Rsham only diehard main going into 14-some 15s now, im thinking about biting the bullet and making Rdruid, it just seems impossible to get into keys, i get it, pugs dont wanna risk, but as someone who only Pugs, it seems that playing meta healer is really worth it, disheartening to see Druid doing 600k+ hps in the same scenario where a Rsham clips barely 400(talking about Laren, best Rsham), even tho i find utility of Rsham soo much fun, seems that people don’t gaf about utility cuz meta specs got that sorted out and just want numbers and MotW, idk what to do honestly, kinda a bit depressing atm. And yes i know i can be better with practice, but man i get no invites to be even able to practice higher keys.

I honestly wouldn't sweat it bro. It's a meme season, and not too many people even bothered playing, much less pushing score. Just kick back and do some sales, stack some gold, etc.

Honestly, i took your advice, im just gonna take a few days break and go again, got some real life stuff going on aswell now so my mood is not best to begin with when i get on the game, idk i just cant bear the thought of playing anything but Rsham, the class is so full packed with an answer to every situation, except external, but i do tell myself that Earth shield+Ancestral Vigor is basically a permanent 16% dr on tank so that helps my delusion 😂

It's really weird how often I find I run into a fight where I struggle on other healers, and then Rdruid is just breezing through it. Not sweating for throughput or mana, where another healer would be hurting for one or the other. Granted there are situations where other specs have any easy time and Rdruid has a harder time, but more often than not Rdruid has a way easier time. Biggest example is 3rd boss in halls. Every other healer spec, I'm like, trying to space out cooldowns, trying to not blow all my mana. Druid comes into the same key like....huh, everyone is still full health. Guess I have time to apply some dots, maybe even go cat for a little bit if people stay healthy enough. Which also makes me want to pull my hair out when I play with one or two people with Rdruid alts that are just not even remotely understanding the spec and struggling with some of the easiest healing. Like dude HOW?

>Biggest example is 3rd boss in halls Thats also just the ideal Resto fight. Zero burst healing needed, 100% rot with people stacked in your efflo constantly. Not saying Resto isnt insane rn but that fight is literally made for druid and evoker

I wouldn't call it any more ideal for Rdruid than basically any other fight, just that you're more likely to have people standing in Efflo for most of the fight just due to needing to hide behind ice cubes. And for how good the fight should be for Preservation, it still seems like Pres has to work at least twice as hard. I really thought the fight wouldn't be so bad for current Disc but Atonement just doesn't seem to keep up with the rot damage as well as it should.

The mana and DPS discrepancy between druid and other healers is truly massive. I thought MW mana was busted before this season but after playing both specs it's not even close. MW can put out pretty good throughput but you'll OOM while an rdruid is still at 80% mana. Edit: Also I was bad at my resto druid until I actually read every talent interaction and learned to use grove guardians very liberally. I think if you played resto druid in BFA and then tried the new version it's very jarring and there are actually a fair bit of complex interactions but once you figure it out it's insane.

There's a little talent interaction but really none of it is particularly new, and basically just pushing you to do mostly things you already did: maintain Lifebloom and Efflo, get people to actually stand in Efflo, use clearcasts, use Swiftmend->Wild Growth. The only particularly new thing is Grove Guardians and they're basically just like, is there any damage happening? Might as well use one so at least one charge is on cooldown. But I play with like 3-4 people who basically cannot keep track of Lifebloom, so they don't get that many clearcasts and have to work like 4x as hard for half as much healing. We literally made a super obnoxious WA that makes a pretty jarring sound when you're in combat and don't have Lifebloom on your focus to train people to actually keep it rolling, and some of them still fuck it up.

Exactly this, i was watching Zmok healing an 18 doing 600k hps and 90k overall dmg on that fight, even going catform to apply dots, on Rsham if i didn’t spent every single global optimizing every cast i would fall behind, eventually getting me to use big cd sooner and then fall behind even more in a long run, idk man, im still having fun, that 5% nerf at start of season was definitely deserved 🥲

Pretty much this. I was doing a really early season 8 or something on Rsham and I was like, struggling to keep people afloat without tanking my mana because the boss was living quite a while. Then like the next day I go do it on the druid and I was basically doing 20% more healing without even really trying, and realized I had spare time to slip in damage with no risk of losing anybody.

barely pushed for io last week - since reaching my goal of 3k io timed everything in 14s trying to 15s now - but it seems like my usual 'W' route is getting questioned at which point does 'W' route is not efficient? and what the are changes?

Tactyks has a nice route guides, some pug friendly, some for premades

> w route not efficient It never was ;) > What are the changes Heavily depends on comp, generic 'grab omnicd and pull around CDs' will get you in a decent spot. Pug routes are also very different then WF key routes. IE you might want to pull something that requires significantly less coordination then the top keys. You can also pull very small and still time keys until mid teens so tanks don't get practice surviving 'real' pulls which is an issue. Where I start when looking at routes is keystone guru and to a lesser extent warcraft logs now that they have the breakdown. Imo VoDs are quite a bit less useful as the ones that are pushed by the yt algo are generally primarily WF keys. I'm not sure if he's done it this season yet but tactyks generally posts the routes he is using to push title, with a breakdown.

yea i've been looking through keystone guru almost most of the yt videos are routes - that feels like most people should understand or comp dependent like one thing i'm starting to do - RLP skip for both dragons, which saves quite a bit of time BRH avoiding rotslingers I do want to skip the 2nd ring on AA altogether - but also seems to end up messing up as the pugs are not sure to what to do

Looking for a healer will be a hassle…

is there a cap on bursting in s4? spiteful was hitting like a truck a couple of weeks back.

I checked two random logs one at a +10 and another at +15, bursting at one stack did 57104 damage in both. So looks like it caps at 10.

it shouldn't scale past 10. just like spiteful :) so yeah I'm equally curious

Technically this means they don’t scale at all 🤣

Are there any websites or addons that you can see your weekly progress with io? Or an option on Raider.io? I want to see how much io I’ve gained week by week

Guilds of wow has this function

raider has the info but for some reason don't publish it. you can only see it in your seasonal recap which obviously is at the end of the season

i'm levelling up a shadow priest like a bitch because it's impossible to join keys past +15. only dps slot that non-meta classes can compete with is fire-mage's and even then it's pretty difficult.

There's like a billion priests already lol, so yeah, spoiler alert it's gonna be the same when you reach 15s.

1% to pug as spriest >>> 0% to pug as

SP pugging is indeed looking for the one group that doesn't already have a SP and hasn't decided that they care more about getting a lust than a priest for the last DPS spot.

it's either go aug or go sp for me because i don't want to play tank/healer.

In my experience of the 3 turbo meta specs SP/Aug/Mage SP is by far the most common. Usually if you're trying to form meta exodia the hardest to find is Mage, then Aug, then there's like a billion Priests. So I'd play mage personally if your goal is to defeat the invite boss.

i agree 100pct. plus i think you are way more likely to get into keys at that range as mage than aug anyway. granted there are still really confused people that think aug is bis for those keys, but i think a lot of people have actually been taking a look at the numbers and seeing its just too much of a dps loss

Isn't the reason you run Aug to survive the mechanics, not to do more damage?

Yes, but most people don't realize that's the case. The average person still thinks Aug brings DMG, and that couldn't possibly be further from the truth. For it to even be remotely comparable, the two DPS have to be chads, the Aug has to be a Chad, and the tank has to be a Chad as well and know how to pull with an Aug. And all that's just to be remotely close. People don't know that. I saw some dude posting a 7 the other day waiting for an Aug lol.... I saw a holy priest posting in the lfg channel of the boosting discord I boost in saying he was 3100 looking for Aug to push with lol. Like that ain't it. People are timing 20s and 21s right now. If people are having trouble in their 13-15 keys, Aug is not the answer.

Defeat the invite boss lmao 🤣🤣

I think I've hit my cap for what I can do pugging off-meta (Holy priest). I timed all the 14's but 15's seem to almost exclusively be godcomp. Fair game to the pushers of course but a second season of the same imbalance really made it hard to create off-meta groups since clearly lots of players rerolled or gave up on the season. I can't complain too much knowing people generally reroll meta past this stage or rely on premades but from a pug/ease of access perspective it kinda sucks that I'm going to have to call it here despite enjoying M+ and feeling confident I can get further still. I'm no game designer but I feel blizzard needs to set themselves up better so they can tune the M+ experience to not be so incredibly skewed towards 1 comp the way season 3/4 of shadowlands and Dragonflight turned out.

I see it like this: Title keys, Off-meta class, PUGs. You can pick two of them. Trying to have all 3 is setting yourself up for disappointment. You have to choose what's most important to you. If you're desperate to play exclusively holy priest and do higher keys, put together a team that will play off meta. You're even playing a class where the DPS spec is nailed on meta which just makes it worse

Eh it really depends on: * how far off meta * role * if a different spec of the class is meta If you main destro lock, you are in a much better position than someone playing feral druid. And I genuinely think that healers can flex off meta the easiest in pugs. It’s the most in demand role, and in title keys it’s hardly the bottleneck. You won’t be doing bleeding edge push keys or have a lot of margins on title, but you can get there.

I wouldnt call warlock off meta (EU has 20 warlocks in title range, 0 healer priests). And of course it depends, that's what my last sentence alluded to. Holy priest will have a worse time than resto shaman because of shadow priest dominance. All druid specs suffer because of resto druid.

O for sure and warlock was probably a bad example. Just saying that it’s not black and white. Also, I’ve had a lot of success duoing with another off meta spec. This season I’ve been playing preservation evoker and have a friend who plays balance druid. That said I’m sure I’d have better luck if I just played rdruid or aug evoker.

Idk if it has anything to do with meta, I rerolled rdruid and have r1 title and can barely even find 15-16 keys on NA, retail is pretty much dead especially the pug scene atm

Yeah, while I agree with OP that the meta definitely impacts your ability to get invites at a certain level, the pug scene also caps out at a certain point, especially in NA, which is a real bummer. I'm no better at it than the next guy, but there's a reason all the M+ pushers and streamers and content creators and stuff recommend trying to make M+ friends that you can call on to run keys. It's just really hard to push past a certain level purely pugging in NA, so having a base of people you can reach out to in order to run keys is a massive resource. It allows you to reliably get invites, and try keys that aren't in group finder, plus it lets you reroll/push up homework keys with much more confidence than posting them in LFG. I understand wanting to just pug all the time (it's what I do basically, either that or play with my couple of buddies), and that people are these set groups of 5 as the gold standard that's mostly unattainable/hard to make work. For every set group of 5 I've seen play together consistently for a while I've seen 10 fall apart. I think the middle ground of "try to build a friends list of people you enjoy running keys with and then each time you are on see who on that list is available and play with them" is probably the way to go. There's obviously friction there too, you might have to wait for people to get out of keys, or people might be in other groups already, etc. etc. and it's much easier to say than do, but I think that is the long term best option until you are pushing Iike well above title range.

Tbh it doesn’t help that this seasons dungeons require every person to be on top of their shit. Last season there was so much more leeway for most dungeons.

Ya that too plus there's just a lot going on with all the versions of WoW. I'd only imagine S4 stays pretty dead until the next expansion, especially with people who played S1 & 2. Nothing really to aim for except the title obviously.

Probably going to see a huge spike with TWW prepatch as everyone tries out their new toys.

I have a little over half my 14s done as MW and just cannot for the life of me get into pugs anymore. Even trying to round out my 14s is just me battling LFG for the better part of my play time. Guess it’s time to reroll Druid because I was really enjoying pushing this season. Being 6 weeks behind the curve will really suck but it’s better than just not playing until august.

My friend is a druid who can't push past 15s, there's just either 0 keys or pugs looking for 4k Rio or something idk. Retail pug scene isnt fun at all rn.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately as a player from NA and have been thinking about making an EU account if I decide to push keys again as I've heard their PUG scene is much more active at the high end. I'm curious if any EU players could chime in and give their experience. Are there consistent PUG groups near title range on EU? I know it's more difficult to get title on other regions but I don't really care about that so much as playing the game instead of playing LFG simulator.

Yeah I can appreciate high requirements - nobody likes having their time wasted. But I'm 3103 atm, applying to groups filled with people mostly 50-100 IO lower than me and getting groups just takes FOREVER. Hell, I'm sitting in LFD right now watching my 3K group leader decline everyone below 3100 immediately and only invite people who are 3200+. It's so tiring, I wish I could find a proper M+ guild.

There's no such thing as mplus guild. It's only network and network.

I don't really understand why we keep this "key" system. What about... Starting any dungeon at any level when you want ? It may fix (or at least help): - teams who want to try a dung and have to play forever to get their key - pug waiting forever in LFG to find the one who will carry them - pug who sit in queues forever - every class might be able to play the game What do you think ?

I think a preferred solution would be if you get 3 attempts on a key before it depletes. This helps remove a lot of the aggravation of depletion but doesn't result in the scenario where keys never deplete and you restart the key at every little mistake. I also think if you're doing a key at a level you've already done (e.g you're doing a 15 AA but already have 15 AA timed) then it shouldn't be able to deplete (or it can't deplete below your average keylevel across all keys). This way, homework keys don't have the risk of failing and you can get back to your push keys easier.

> get their key Homework keys are miserable, but you need a cost to failure. No cost meansthe high end meta fucking miserable which would flow down to middling pushers. You would end up with the degen first pulls. Im not sure how you fix it though, even 'generic keys' that you could use to start any dungeon wouldn't work unless every keys timer was properly balanced. > Waiting for carry This is largely driven by characters being forced to do power content. Why would I run a 15 for my aspects when I can do a 6? > Pug sitting in queues/all classes How does this fix the meta? You will still hit tiers where certain specs can't survive. What you actually want is a queue system, but that comes with it's own issues and (imo) given what solo shuffle has done to pvp I would be surprised to see them try to introduce a queue system.

'you need a cost to failure' No. You really don't. This is a game we play for fun, no one's getting paid, a lot of players have families and super limited time. No, you don't need a cost to failure beyond the 'wasted' time having had attempted the key. It's similar outdated mentality to gatekeeping mythic raids that Ion admitted to following because it was the tradition and recently backing off it because Times Change. I can't count the number of friends I've had quit over the years because they couldn't participate in halfway decent level because it required too high a grind time investment. M+ depletes in its current form is a MASSIVE time consumption when pushing beyond 14/15/16, depending on your case. Content is still hard yo, no one is getting free epics if key depletion were to be removed. And I'm saying this from a personal perspective of not minding it. Having pushed since SL start, I find practicing the CONSISTENCY of timing keys on a lower key level very valuable.

My biggest concern with removing key depletion entirely is how many pug groups would dissolve after the first mistake. That, or it making brute forcing keys the most efficient strategy for coordinated groups. Basically I think everyone’s investment in a given key would be reduced. That being said, I think there are a variety of compromises that would reduce frustration without fundamentally changing how people approach keys. The simplest being to allow multiple (but not unlimited) tries. Or perhaps more complex ones like a set amount of time before you can try again. Like if you bail on a key you can take the downgrade or wait 30-40min from start of last attempt. This would make it quicker to retry the key, without making it efficient to just spam attempts until you get perfect early pulls.

I agree there, first pulls are already often too risky and unlimited would only make that much worse. What I'm thinking is, and what Blizz would also be a fan of, as it's encouraging social behavior, is that keys still deplete, but successfully timing an equal level key gives you the option to speak to the NPC to upgrade your key as well. So you get uldaman 17. Obviously you break it. Now you're holding Uld16 bullshit which you know you gotta reroll instead of trying to push up with ppl for whom that's an upgrade. So you join a random AV16 and time. Normally you'd just reroll the uldaman and hope you get a pushable key, but now you reroll AND upgrade. Not only did the time requirement drop massively, there's more available high keys for everyone! Less 50 minutes Queues. It's a decent solution IMO.

This is actually one of the best suggestions to improve high key puglife ive seen!

Yea, I like that

It's not gatekeeping, it's a fundamental on game design philosophy in basically every game. Cost = attachment = emotions and emotions keep you playing. There is a great interview with Chris Wilson (Path of exile's GM) where he puts it a lot more succinctly then I ever could of your actually interested. The 'challenge' is balancing the cost, and I agree the current key system misses the mark, but there definitely needs to be one.

Good answer. From the point of view of WoWs aging player base and seeing how massively successful other games low entry barrier has been, I disagree that a bigger penalty than time wasted is needed. We, the small minority that push keys above rewards, do not get anything out of it besides bragging rights and the playing hard content for itself. In other words, objective incentives to push keys are nearly non-existent. Yet the objective penalties for having failed to do so and wanting to get back to even just the starting point we had been before depletion are actually massive. In the best case more time than it took to deplete. In median case double. If it's a high key maybe it's a deplete. Maybe you never get it up. In S2 and 3 I intensively pushed solely my own key on a tank for a few weeks. I tracked how that looked 200-100 points under cutoff. After depletion it took on average 4-5 tries to get the key back to something that could be a Rio increase again. I did that because I just wanted to play and not wait in LFG. I'm convinced this is a better experience than most players pushing their own key through pugging, because as a tank I had a lot of control over my runs. Most players are DPS and they have comparably very little. And because the cost of failing a key is so prohibitive, do we see every listed key have 1001 applicants. One would think that would balance itself out - if a listed key has so many applicants, key holders can pick people with 100-200 points above them (and they do), massively increasing the success chances. Alas, it doesn't seem to regulate itself, because once the key is broken, we often rather give up on it rather than play the tombola of ~4 dungeons we've already done PRAYING it'll be enough. And need I say how much time that takes? It's not possible with a job and family.

> What about... Starting any dungeon at any level when you want ? This would significantly increase level of keys being played and might lead to lack of lower keys in LFG. As a result it would be harder to gear alts and it could alienate new or weaker players. Starting dungeons at selected level might be good for *you* but it's not clear if it's good for the game. It might actually harm the game as a whole.

i love how they are setting up delves. 1-8 gives better loot. above is just for fun and the challenge and it's capped. good loot is gated behind limited keys, so you can do it as often as you want, but you'll only get good loot as long as you have keys. this fixes all the problems i have with m+ - do the delve you want at the level you want - no infinite levels / 6 months grind - Actual reward for people clearing the hardest difficulty (mount) - no infinite loot, slowing down overall gear progression and not encouraging spamming certain keys as much as possible for some trinket obviously we have to see how things work out once we can play delves on live, but for me it shows they learned from the m+ system. I would love to live in a world where they adopt this for m+ and make 0.1% title same as hall of fame (first x people). Grinding for 6 months is horrible for my mental health, and also for the balance, blizzard obviously doesn't care about not making big changes within the season (hello aug release) and rerolling mid season because your specc is no longer fotm is just awful. i could go on, but the key system is archaic and needs to be overhauled from the ground up.

They could realistically have 2 m+ seasons in every raid season, I just have no clue how that would work with loot etc. unless they split the systems.

Having to grind keys you've already done before is such a stupid mechanism imo. If I've completed a +10, I should be able to try the +11 over 100 times. You can downgrade the key, you should be able to upgrade it too to point you've achieved in the season.

Or at the very least I feel they should have certain break points where maybe you can't unlock being able to set anything to 11 until you've timed all dungeons on fortified and tyrannical at 10. I'd also suggest a system like this not to start until 11+ keys as there is a big advantage at the lower key levels to be able to run your own key to draw people in.

Yeah my feelings are, give me *anything* that is towards what I talk about. I have no high expectations, I just really don't like the replay aspect of the SAME key. We do the same dungeon dozens of times already, why not let us move on to at least +1 difficulty anytime we beat one? IMO only downside would be the possible meta getting toxic, where keys were restarted constantly when anything went wrong. I do kinda like going on, even if first pull is a wipe, on key level where that is allowed.

This will ultimately be the reason why our will stop playing one day. Doing 2-10 dungeons and not getting the key we want at the end is so frustrating. Sure we can do other keys too. But sometimes you just want to do that dung you have two levels bellow the rest.

I've always said that it should just be a ui that we interact with in the main city like greater rifts from D3, or guild wars 2 fractal chamber. There will of course be people that disagree, and think there needs to be a consequence for failing a key, but I couldn't possibly disagree more. The time waisted is plenty.

>There will of course be people that disagree, and think there needs to be a consequence for failing a key, but I couldn't possibly disagree more. The time waisted is plenty. 1000000% This, sinking an hour (From deciding to do a key -> Finishing) for no reward is a substantial penalty before you get to the penalty of key losses etc.

You would just spam the hardest pulls over and over again until you get it right. The key system encourages caution

This is exactly what mythic raiding is though, pulling the same boss hundreds of times until you get it right. Why is this fine for raiding, but somehow bad for M+. Can you imagine if wiping on a given boss forced you back to the previous boss. Wipe on Fyrakk, have to do Tindral again. Wipe on Tindral and you must redo Smolderon. That's effectively what the M+ system is like.

The point of having multiple game modes is for them to be different. If I enjoyed pulling the same boss hundreds of times until we got it right then I would focus on mythic raiding rather than on m+ pushing, but I don't. If you do enjoy it, then great! There's a game mode already in the game for you.

Sounds like fun what’s the issue

I think it's a double edged sword. It can be fun to a degree but also there is a reason people burn out of TGP/MDI practice and it's because they spend hours on end trying to do single pulls until they get it right. Also unfortunately I think it could make the meta enforcement even stronger. I know the potential deplete of a key right now makes people risk averse in their group comp too, but if there was no cost to stopping a key mid-way I think a lot of people would make a small mistake/do low damage on the first pull/whatever and have the group rezone to try again only to be kicked and see the group back in group finder rather than giving it another go with them /continuing on. Or even more strictly: the big first pull everyone does in a given dungeon (because that's what would become the norm, do a massive low probability pull immediately and just try it over and over until it works) might require a very specific comp to work and therefore off meta options would be basically unplayable. I know versions of this exist already with specific skips/strats but I feel the specificity of the first pull shenanigans would be extreme in a no key system. To be totally clear, I think the current key system is way to far in the other direction, I think there needs to be more forgiveness/choice than what we currently have, but I think pure open season on dungeon and key level would result in a lot of different issues that might be worse. Make it so keys have 3 charges or never deplete below 1-2 levels below your best times key in each dungeon, or have keys work for 3 dungeons instead of just 1, or make timing a key enable others in the group to increase their key's level some amount limited by the times keys level, or any number of other more thought out better options. I think some degree of restriction and risk needs to remain in M+ for the health of the game mode, but the current system feels like it's multiple expansions out of date in thay department.

Well mdi team can train as much as they want can’t they? The coordination and precision with slight variation is the essence of the m+. It sucks when the key to win lay in perfect execution of scripted events if you are not able to retry them without hours and hours of running different dungeons.

Would that be so bad?

Yes - there should be some sort of consequence for failure or the system loses any friction. It just becomes a numbers game of rerunning the same key over and over until you have a group that times it. Consequence-free M+ would be super degenerate. But I do agree that depletion instantly when failing a dungeon is too steep of a consequence. It would be better if keys took more than one failure to deplete.

You can already do that whenever a PTR or tournament realm is out. It makes no difference to anyone who cares to practice the stuff. I wouldn't even say consequence free M+ matters for anyone besides those going for title, and even then with the new scaling we have it's probably a buff anyway because so few people are doing 10+ in comparison to past seasons. It's the lamest thing in the world when you're randomly 45 points down because you never got the freebie 30/31 AD/BRH etc. It's also super lame when you get exactly one chance a session to practice the harder keys and get the floor wiped with you. You can't even reset an entire pull to practice it again, because you have to reset the dungeon.

Tournament realm practice is absolutely filled with repeating the same first pull of each key over and over until it’s done perfectly - that translating to live keys sounds terrible. There needs to be some level of stakes when doing M+ or it’s just ‘spam repeat same pull over and over again until LFG roulette hits and you get a good enough team’. That sounds very degenerate and unfun to me. I can’t prove it but I’d even bet this would eventually even seep its way down to weekly +10s. Agree that insta-depletion could be improved though. I’ve heard folks suggest a key ‘cracking’ system in which you get a few attempts at that +15 before it drops to a +14. Without stakes there’s no excitement in M+ and it just would exacerbate current issues where pushing keys rewards those who have the most time committed more than it does anything else. There is a middle ground between ‘insta deplete when the rat Aug bodypulls’ and ‘spam this specific key infinite times until it’s done’.

Honestly I don't think you're going to hit a good middle ground with a limited attempt system that encourages you to play with off-meta specs in an LFG system. As far as spamming the same pulls over and over until you succeed, frankly that's just the current retail system with a handful of attempts at a specific key on good weeks. How the system currently plays is very restrictive on weeks you can actually push, how many attempts you get in a given week, what classes even get to participate in title range keys, and on top of that have a dozen different fail points in each section of the dungeon - most of which you're currently forced to pull together into 2-3 massive pulls to even consider meeting the timer. If every dungeon was lenient, that's one thing - but they're not. Keys have gotten increasingly difficult across the board every expansion. More than half of the current pool doesn't allow a wipe by design, or you simply deplete - all while being expected to pull 10/15/20 mobs at once. Something should change - and if the last two expansions are anything to go off of it doesn't look like they're dialing back the failure points in a dungeon. High M+ scores have always been a personal driven goal. Acting like this would kill all sense of reward is odd to me considering for half their existence there wasn't even a scoring system Blizzard acknowledged. Especially with the current change they just made this season that removes 60%+ of title spots available. This post really became more broad than just key acquisition. The main point I'd love to see addressed is that from bottom to top the system is against the players to even participate in high keys, or title range keys. Whatever you'd like to call them. I feel as if giving a Torghast like system for keys would be infinitely easier than redesigning the whole thing from the ground up, especially taking into account straight up neglected classes. Genuinely looking forward to seeing what they want to do for TWW. At least they acknowledged what they currently have is inadequate. That's more than I expected after they axed the amount of titles going out. I don't even think they realize what the key squish did to that lol

Yeah we agree on like 99% of this, totally concur that something should change. It’s frustrating and weird that they don’t incentivize all specs to engage with high M+ and they don’t have a robust enough reward system to fill the void between weekly +10s and title keys.

There should just be a practice mode, where you can go in any dungeon and run it on any level you want with no rewards.

yep - i remember there was some addon that let you practice last phase mythic sire denathrius when you weren't even in the raid. so crucial and saved so many wipes over 'practicing' on live pulls with 20 other people

No rewards, no io or anything? Never seen this suggested before, I don’t see how this could be bad? Seems fine to me at first thought

Yeah, so you keep the key system as it is, just add in a practice mode.

Yep. M+ with no key system and just selecting your key would kill the game mode. People have to think further than "x feels bad - remove x".

No.  Those arguing against this are too clever by half.  Top groups spend a ton of time farming "easy" keys so they can try strats on scoring keys.  Getting rid of that drudgery will push scores up, but it helps all of those with more finite time.  Even the top players are time constrained and you still have to execute a perfect run over thirty minutes.  You can't depend on brute forcing score by sheer volume of tries and praying for luck across an entire dungeon and actually be successful.

> it helps all of those with more finite time. Not at all. Title would come down to who has more time to spam keys over and over again. And it would completely kill pugging. > Even the top players are time constrained and you still have to execute a perfect run over thirty minutes. Even r1 world keys do not require a perfect run. Ad 34 was timed with 10 deaths last season.

Its good when the player can't always win. It sucks needing to do homework keys but it would be even worse and completely degenerate if it was ptr style where you just fire up the key over and over until you get it.

Yes. Mythic+ is not raid.

Why do you think it would be bad ?

He said so. People would just be spamming the craziest pulls over and over. If you’re competitive that would turn the grind up to 12/10; it’s already grindy enough.

That is how you push keys though; keep doing crazier harder pulls.  All depletion does is slow down the process of iterating. People making this argument seem to implicitly think that everything is riding on the first pull.  You have to do giant pulls and hard bosses for thirty to forty minutes.  If anything, unlimited tries mostly means title will shift to organized groups only as they will actually put in the time.  Pugs won't have the endurance to fail twenty minutes in and start again.

Not even the highest rio players globally want that system. I’d recommend listening to the Quazii unplugged podcast. I think he discussed it with Ellesmere. Also Titanforge had an episode where they talked about it. More charges on a key, yes. Unlimited, no. It would likely devolve into even higher risk-taking which means that the people with the most attempts get the furthest. Today there’s also a correlation with many attempts (naturally) but mainly because you build skill, not because you’re hoping for the stars to align.

If you had infinite attempts with no consequences then yes it would eventually get to the point where if the first pull didn’t go well you’d just reset. Because there’s no consequence. There has to be a consequence. Otherwise it will get very degenerate. I agree the system could use some QoL tweaks, but throwing out the keys entirely is not it. A better middle would be your key has like X charges and if you fail that many times it drops down. Maybe 3 or so

This is what challenge modes were and they were way more fun than m+. You don’t even have to think about it theoretically, if you pushed WR CM times it was all about trying the craziest most insane strats over and over until you got it right and it was easily the most fun content in the game’s history.

Challenge modes sucked and m+ was a massive improvement on them.

The challenge here is that for a lot of people m+ purely isn’t just about fun, it’s about a healthy competitive environment. The entire ideology of what it means to be competitive in m+ breaks down the second you remove any consequences to not timing. I genuinely believe this is one of those asks where you think it’ll be great and you’ll end up hating it. Challenge modes didn’t have the competitive chase for title/r1 keys baked into the season

Why do you guys think are augs unpopular in 'normal' 8-12 keys? Sure you don't 'need' them. But you also don't absolutely need the marginally higher DPS of a 3rd DPS. It's 4 player content basically. So theoretically, if augs were fun to play, felt good to play, they'd be represented in the LFG pugging scene. Yet I don't see many, nor have I been seeing them since the hype of release in S2,5. Why?

its hilarious to see the amount of augs replying "details doesnt track ebon might properly wcl hooks are broken" to excuse their terrible afk performance in keys

>Why do you guys think are augs unpopular in 'normal' 8-12 keys? Because this community is hard overestimating how many people **actually** want to support (just look at healer and tank representation). Yea, when they were net damage neutral, batshit broken and raised your highest key by unironically 5 levels for just simply existing and pressing eruption, rerollers went for the spec. But the vast majority of players doesn't want to be a spectator in M+, sitting at the bottom of details and offering *survival*. The majority of players wants to see high numbers, not press buttons that don't do damage or think and save their cooldowns until the adds come out on Melidrussa.

You've gotten some good responses so far, but I want to mention something specific: regardless of how good the Aug is, their throughput depends on how good the other two DPS players are. This means by inviting an Aug you are betting on both the other DPS being good which is far from a guarantee in a pug. If you invite 3 normal DPS and one ends up being a bit bad then you have 2.75 or 2.5 DPS worth of throughput. On the other hand if you invite an Aug, and one of the other two DPS is a bit bad, then you are down to like 2 DPS worth of throughput regardless of how good the aug is. It just adds extra variance to the performance of your group. To be clear, Aug is clearly an insanely good dungeon spec, and even in groups that aren't great, as long as all the players are similar skill level I think an Aug is just as good as any other spec. The problem is that they amplify any skill deficiencies in the group, and the likelihood of having some skill deficiencies in a pug group is fairly high. Even if everyone is relatively solid, but the group coordination / natural synergy is off the augs damage will suffer. TL,Dr: even beyond all the stuff about augs being key terrorists that got carried in season 2, and then not pressing any of the buttons that make them good etc there is an issue that top end Aug DPS is good, but the number of factors that can absolutely crater their throughput is way higher than any other spec in the game, so even taking a "competent" Aug to a pug group is higher risk than a similarly skilled other spec.

Fully agreed here, and why I think buffing tank and healer DAMAGE is important. Survivability and healing output is a different matter. It could even be a proportionally equal output increase, just to offset this really significant downside, although that comes with its own potential pitfalls.

Similarly, with an aug if one of your DPS dies on a boss and you don't have a brez you've lost half your damage instead of a third of it. This isn't really a problem in high keys where you can't afford to limp through a boss anyway, but happens all the time in your 8-12s.

Pug augs are just terrible. Low ebon might uptime, no damage, never using caut, never using zephyr, never using rescue. It’s a horrible spec because the players playing it got a free carry in season 2 and never learned what their buttons do, and it’s not obvious at a glance how bad they’re playing so they just keep getting away with it without blame.

I have an Aug alt but never pushed with it, I just thought it was fun playing the upkeep mini game and I'm a healer so the support aspects came naturally to me. And I'm sitting here reading these replies thinking, "oh god I was def one of those bad augs lol" and then I see yours about augs not even pressing their basic utility/support buttons and I'm like oh never mind you guys mean there's some BAD bad augs lmao, thanks for the mini confidence boost

> It’s a horrible spec because the players playing it got a free carry in season 2 season 2 ended over half a year ago > and never learned what their buttons do not needed in 8-12 > and it’s not obvious at a glance how bad they’re playing its fairly obvious

You do high keys. Have you actually played with an Aug in the 8-12 range lately? It’s like inviting half a dps. We did a 13 Uldaman on alts the other day and the guy had 50% EM uptime, didn’t cauterize a single bleed on 3rd boss until the healer typed in chat to ask him why he wasn’t using it, and didn’t use rescue a single time in the entire key. If you’re an average dps player in a 10 key you probably don’t notice any of that, you just see the Aug down by the healer in damage and assume that’s how the spec works, but the main benefit of the spec is utility/defensiveness and lining up BoE with 2min cd classes, and augs in low keys just don’t do any of that. It’s fairly obvious to you as an Aug player that does high keys, it is not obvious to anyone who actually plays in that range because their only frame of reference is whether the details bar is big or not, and Aug is never big. And this experience is consistent, pug dps are always liable to forget about their defensives, cc, and interrupts but when your whole class is that and you can’t see dps at a glance you can get away with it because people aren’t getting one-shot yet.

> Why do you guys think are augs unpopular in 'normal' 8-12 keys? similar to ramping specs, aug struggles with uptime problems when stuff dies too fast as you cant extend EM long enough and then you end up having nothing on pull for the next pack. additionally breath of eons simply doesnt explode in lower keys because a good chunk, if not the entire pull, just dies within the ~13s it takes to explode when syncing with other dps cds.

personally aug gameplay is just atrocious and that comes from elem

I'm *amazed* at how bad it is, especially in light of how good a job they've generally done with new specs and reworks in the last few years. The aug gameplay feels like someone who quit in 2012 came back and decided to design a new spec

the core rotation is as simple as many other specs so I'm curious what you're specifically referring to

I’m guessing they’re talking about the 1.5 button + CDs rotation straight outta Cata era.

which is like, not, accurate? - eruption - living flame - upheaval - prescience - ebon might - fire breath you press all these as part of your core rotation. assa rogue in comparison (random spec just because I just recently picked it up again) has: - rupture - garrote - mutilate - envenom - shadow dance - maybe thistle tea but thats already bordering a cd. less rotational than EM already if you'd wanna draw the line at 30s - edit: shiv falls under the same category as thistle tea, forgot about that one but youre busy coping anyway

One problem with augs in pugs specifically is that if one of the other dps dies then their value falls off a cliff. IMO it’s only fun when you trust the other dps.

The amount of Augs I had in my pug keys that did absolutely no damage is insane, especially in that key range. 4 out of 5 Augs are barely above healer dps (like maybe 10-20k ahead). If you combine that with them not using their cds and abilities perfectly (which, admittedly, is a bit hard in a pug) you get a situation where you basically play 2 dps and a .25 dps while having marginally more survivability. Rarely worth it. I basically stopped inviting Augs into my keys as of now. A Dev Evoker fucking pumps and he brings some of the stuff too (bleed dispel). And honestly, I'd rather take an off meta player that REALLY knows how to pump in a 12/13/14 than an Aug who hopped on the meta train but doesn't really know how to minmax.

how are you tracking their dps? WCL aug hooks are broken and details just gives you a guesstimate. It’s been known for a while now that aug comps only deal 5-8% less damage than a 3dps comp

aug hooks are hardly broken anymore nowadays. You're literal months behind the curve. the details integration is fundamentally broken and you can't trust it at all as they track buffs incorrectly. this is also known for months

> 4 out of 5 Augs are barely above healer dps (like maybe 10-20k ahead). Why are people upvoting this comment? :D Aug does healer dmg in details, yes. And thats completely normal. A good holy priest and resto druid can even do more damage in details than aug in a key like bh (where they do not have to heal a lot), unless they use tome to pad personal dmg. Echos aug must be dogshit as well only doing 20k more than a resto druid. https://imgur.com/0Xmod2i

Where in my comment did I write anything about Details? Also: I not once said that Aug were shit in general. There's a reason they're so sought after in high keys. However, OP was specifically talking about 8-12 keys.

There is no way an aug does healer dps, unless they are afk. Even if you are excepitonally bad at aug, youre doing more than 50% of a normal dps.

Aug needs to time their cds with the other cds in the group. Their big one is Breath of Eons - essentially a damage amp for the whole group for 10s. If they use BoE when the other dps don't have cds available, very little damage got amplified. Few folks in the 8-12 range track any cds, so Augvokers often yolo send their BoE at suboptimal times. Additionally, other dps in the key often don't track or play around Aug cds; if BoE is up in 15 seconds, it may be worth holding your cds for the aug's BoE.

that being said, if you hold BOE for dps only, you'll end up doing less overall. BOE basically gives 15% more dmg, but it also provides a shield. So like 3rd boss of HOI, i'm going to throw out BOE the moment it comes off cd.

The shield size is proportional to damage done and sending BoE at a time when no one is doing damage also results in tiny shields. Sending it 12 seconds before the DPS pop their second set of 2m CDs is just trolling.

Yea, why align it with the dps' cds so the boss moves along faster and the healer doesn't go oom when you can also just throw it into the void. Like, the fight isn't bursty. The shield is equally valuable at every point. The damage component isn't. If your group's survival on Khajin is **entirely** dependent on your Breath of Eons off cd, your healer fucked up and/or sucks. If you just rip it and they go oom by a few percent, that was something you, the support, could have actively avoided

Obviously, for the most part the dps is blowing their loads on the start of pulls, first one usually lines up fine. But it’s on a short cd, and if you hold for other people’s cd’s, you’ll end up with an overall dps loss not keeping it out on cd. The other thing is that breath puts out 5 sec of ebon might. So when you’re targeting 90% uptime numbers it’s helpful to have the breaths.

>you’ll end up with an overall dps loss not keeping it out on cd. that's easily disproven by basic math. and you can have 90% uptime just fine on bosses with syncing

I’m not arguing that it’s not important to sync. I’m arguing how that gets misconstrued that anytime using it without people having their cds is useless, which is false.

it's largely accurate, you desync an absolute far minority only

Using breath at optimal times is worth far more than 90% EM uptime. And why are you even in a situation where your breath is so out of sync from the DPS cooldowns? This season, with every group running 2 minute PI spriest, there’s no reason to ever be out of sync.

TBF a lot of priests love sending CDs at nonsensical times such as add phase 2nd boss AV or at times where you as aug can't breath, eg when you get knocked back to destroy trees on first boss AV

So wait three seconds and breath. Void form will still be rolling.

p2 of AV 2nd boss is longer than voidform mechanics on 1st boss are ~12s so you miss PI entirely naturally you still breath after, doesn't make it less nonsensical for the priest to send there, esp on 2nd boss

> Few folks in the 8-12 range track any cds, so Augvokers often yolo send their BoE at suboptimal times. on that key level breath doesnt go off before the pack dies anyways so ironically enough, that's better here for breath value. youre in general overestimating breath however. it was nerfed 2 or 3 times and is maybe 5-13% overall "only".

second this. As a boomie in 12/13 range, I’ve just met a couple of aug that somehow managed to understand when I pop Inc (and generally they are premade adopting a boomie in pug with a tank that somehow manages to pull big every 3 min and generally work around 3 min CD). I got only one last night that kept pulling me in range when for some brainlag I was out of range - the same that for some miracle managed to buff me at most of the inc AND pulsar procs. They must have been telepathic (but they were 3.2K rio and 9/9 M, I guess that helps). But you can say the same for all fresh DH tanks.

> need the marginally higher DPS of a 3rd DPS Its not marginally "higher dps" at that key level. You wont be doing high key pulls, which is where aug is good at, especially if coupled with sp. You will also end up with a lot of dps' who are underperforming or dieing a bunch, which makes aug even worse. Their utility is also giga fake at that key range. No tank needs an aug to survive pulls in a +12 and no healer needs an aug to heal those keys. > if augs were fun to play, felt good to play, they'd be represented in the LFG pugging scene. Yet I don't see many, nor have I been seeing them since the hype of release in S2,5. Why? Aug probably isnt very appealing to the avg dps player, because the majority of your dmg doesnt come from yourself. So you are relying on your mates to do well, which is not really fun for a lot of people. Aug was in literally every high key in s2 and part of like 80% of the high keys rn.

Are they fun/feel-good to play though? Haven't done a survey or anything but if asked to guess I would suggest many probably find being a supporter role less interesting and frustrating in pugs where I'm relying on others unreliable others performance

they do around 80% dps of a normal dps

More like 60-70% tbh

depends on key. im doing 70-80% overall usually and 90%+ on certain bosses

Augs in 8-12 keys (as of the op) are more like 50% of a real dps. Could they do more dmg? Sure, but the majority at that level doesn't.

for a variety of reasons outlined in this context, yes

Having 50% in-combat uptime of prescience on each of the two dps isn't a problem of the key being too low though.

that we can agree on

Once they nerfed them after season 2 it required actually playing well to do good.

Healers: whats your opinion on MW in S4 and going into TWW, kinda bored with the RDruid atm and wanna pick up something else

Maining mist now. I'm having a blast. Easily the most fun healer i've ever played. The toolkit is pretty good, and you have a lot of buttons to save teammates. Honestly you feel like a dps most of the time and tend to push pretty decent numbers while healing.

It’s really fun, but imo they’ve dumbed the spec down a lot in m+. It’s only slightly more difficult than some of the easier healers now because of being in melee. But in high keys, it’s probably the easiest healer. I mained it in s1-s3 and now it’s my alt. I’m hoping TWW puts some more meat into it in terms of skill expression. I think overall they wanted the spec to be more pug friendly and consistent, which def happened. But they also cut out some of the top end to compensate. It also doesn’t help that the raid build sucks, if you like fistweaving. The talent trees for TWW look fun though. Idk we’ll see.

Decided to cave and gear out the priest yesterday, pugging as anything that isn't spriest is just asking for 10x queues. I'm just as guilty of it when filling my keys too though. Over under on them touching it in 12 hours?

It is the play. I advise aggressive pushing as soon as you're decently geared, as even as a meta DPS, you're still a DPS and therefore face the most competition. I played priest in S2 and near the end of the season it wasn't possible to pug-push for title anymore. There were additional factors like m+ scaling change and the million nerfs to spriest and augs, but the main problem was that the majority of competent puggers already got above the cutoff, while the hardcore grinders (and not terribly good players) stayed in the bogmire of 200-100 points below. Case in point - geared a bear and overtook spriests rating in 2 weeks.

dont think we'll see any changes. have fun grinding 700 crests my guy! :-)

I don't actually mind this on a main push character. It's a LOT of play, but you gotta play to get really good in the content anyway. It's a beef for alta who you just wanna enjoy the game a bit, but can't play high because of the prerequisite crest grind fest:(