M+ and Raider.IO

[MatPandaZ]

This is a joke, right? Correct is:

Hardest role on lower keys: healer.
Hardest role on mid-range keys: healer.
Hardest role on higher keys: healer + tank.

healer is the one carrying every key. healer has to correct every single mistake every dps and tank does. healer gets the blame if keys gets depleted. it is not fun being a healer in m+.

try timing high keys with too low dps. DPS is fairly easy in low to mid keys, but when you get to the higher ones you need to be able to pump or you won't time it even with no deaths or mistakes. The better the DPS the more you can fuck up during the run and still time it.

[chiddie]

I'm inclined to agree with the OP, I've been finding healing at 15/16 to be easier than any time previously and the pride mana restoration really allows you to spend mana aggressively. Healing becomes easier when you're surrounded by better players who make fewer mistakes, hit their interrupts, tanks know what they need to kite etc.

At higher keys a lot of mechanics tend to one shot so there isn't even the possibility for the healer to carry. The projectile on the 2nd boss in spires for example, if a dps gets hit on a high key without a defensive then they're dead with nobody to blame but themselves. On a +10 the dps will survive on low health and there's healing pressure to top them up before they get hit again which is much more stressful.

Jizuz that SoA boss is one of the 3-4 I really hate as healer, projectiles are just too many and they run too fast.

[intenz]

try timing high keys with too low dps. DPS is fairly easy in low to mid keys, but when you get to the higher ones you need to be able to pump or you won't time it even with no deaths or mistakes. The better the DPS the more you can fuck up during the run and still time it.

Exactly. Good dps can carry a bad tank and healer, especially true of melees with lots of lockdown like outlaw. Good tanks and healers can't carry dps. Talking about 15s and higher. Tanks and healers who think they are gods gift to pve really get on my nerves.

[ellieg]

Exactly. Good dps can carry a bad tank and healer, especially true of melees with lots of lockdown like outlaw. Good tanks and healers can't carry dps. Talking about 15s and higher. Tanks and healers who think they are gods gift to pve really get on my nerves.

Normally play dps. Healing a +5 (lol) mists on my alt druid. No one dying, tank doing everything correctly. Dps are complete trash. Takes about 2-3 mins to kill those 4-5 mob packs in the maze. Dps aren't interrupting the tenders. Doing 2k aoe dps. Finally get thru it, onto the slugs. Tank gets the first cast of the stag horn. No one gets the other. Dps getting yeeted left and right from the aoe swirlies. Failed key by 3 mins lol.

Have never felt the importance of good dpsers cause I'm usually covering that. Learned a lesson im more valuable than I thought

[Nargrom]

I want to start by saying that given this is a hot topic humor me and read what i want to say before you reply please. Thank you.

Now the main topic. Ever since R.IO became a thing, it is noticed that Pugs have high requirements and expectetions from the people that sign in their groups.
This results in many players mostly on the casual spectrum to feel frustrated and find R.IO unjust, unrealistic, a tool that feeds elitism and so on.

I started pushing keys in BfA mostly and that was after Season 2 where player power was already high and pushing into 15s - while it required effort - was a lot easier to achieve than the starting season of an expansion like we are now, where power is still somewhat limited and you can see that difficulty scaling up from +13 to a +14...

My big question to the forum is, are you really annoyed by R.IO or is this just a reaction to being declined in keys?

This season i had to work my ass off in m+ because most of my premade group plays on different hours than me. That meant for me that i had to work my way up the ladder. I main a Resto Shaman and when the season started i did some low keys with the guild to prepare for raiding and that gave me about 500 r.io. The guild mates werent really interested in pushing at the time, so this meant that i had to pug keys. As a Resto Shaman ( which i believe is a ''meta'' class for this season or flavor of the month ) i was signing up in over 30 keys to get invited eventually into one and thats on the 500-600 r.io scale.

Eventually after lots of pugging and lots of failing, i managed to climp on the ~750 r.io scale, that meant most of the dgs was at +8 and +9. At that point a friend of similar to mine r.io decides to join me ( Guardian Druid ) so we finally start pushing 10s and above. So we start making our own groups, doing our research on proper pulling paths, where he might need most of my healing and etc, basically making sure that the tank/healer part of a pug is completely covered with minimal room for error - cause there is always room for error in m+ no matter how good you are. This meant that we had to pug 3 dps.

My critirea for a dps in the pug world was going to be their experience first and then their rio. I would recruit people within my rio range but with experience (aka timed runs ) on par with mine. You see one can have high rio if you do targeted pushes on a dungeon that is ur lowest to bring it on par with the rest of your high keys. This results in high rio only 6-8 timed runs. That for me is not good enough, the guy that had such an rio/experience ratio, might very well be awesome but i dont know that in the pug world, i have to make a decision based on the facts that i have in front of me. On the +5-9 part of the R.io ladder i have over 30 timed runs, why would i want someone to dps for me with 1/3 of the experience?

So applying this critirea, and having me and my friend tank being premade with in 2 weeks we boosted our R.io from ~750 to a little over 1000, having timed all dungeons in +13 and yesterday we managed to complete our first +14. Pug players within our R.io range and with experience on par with ours almost never fucked up and we rarely depleted keys and if we did was for 1-2min over timer.

So dear anti-R.io player, do you think it is unfair that you are not selected for a key? Have you done the work your self? Have you put in hours into the pug world? Have climbed the R.io ladder step by step? Or do you expect to join 900rio groups with 500rio or 1.1k groups with 900 rio?

Since this thread is still going strong, i wanted to provide some update and some additional information, since there is a massive number of different opinions in here.

Again this my personal experience, doesnt mean it works out like this for everyone.

So two weeks after the creation of this thread i find myself at 1313 R.IO and my friend the Guardian Druid at 1200. We are now well into the 15s, actively farming them, and we near on KSM. The same method of group forming still applies and still is effective, but now we have to be even more selective. Depending on the affixes certain classes benefit us more than others like for example on necrotic week we prefer boomkin with treants over - say - an unholy dk or a mage and it is a must for the dps we recruit have to have high enough dps to reflect their ilvl since 15s on a tyranical week are a dps and time check for us.

It has been noticed that after entering the 15s ladder, knowledge of tacs from players is increased and we dont have to explain stuff any more, and the skill between the players that we recruited for 14s and the ones we have for 15s is totally unmatched, there is a lot more skilled involved in the higher r.io players. Again this is my experience and what i have noticed in a pool of 50 plus timed keys and as many if not more depleted ones in the combined ladders of 10-14 and 15-19 so far.

The overall process has been painful in the pug world, it has taken me over 1 month of daily key farm to go from 750 to 1300 r.io score. It is a process that requires consistency and patience. Still recommend keys with friends or guildies.

I have seen some replies regarding who carries who in high keys. If your group is functional, you work as a team, your tank does his job, the healer his and dps theirs.

The skill of each role complements the others. If a tank is skilled and doesnt take much dmg and keeps aggro, then the dps can dps more and the healer will have to heal less and contribute to the dps as well. Same applies for the dps, if the dps is high then things die faster and the tank can move faster and the healer heal less and contribute to dps, if the healer is a baller, he will provide enough cc and efficient healing to make tanks life easier so he can focus on his job and the healer can and should contribute to dps on bosses. In high keys in my opinion carrying doesnt exist. You work as a collective so you can keep pushing keys.

[Glorious Leader]

This is a joke, right? Correct is:

Hardest role on lower keys: healer.
Hardest role on mid-range keys: healer.
Hardest role on higher keys: healer + tank.

healer is the one carrying every key. healer has to correct every single mistake every dps and tank does. healer gets the blame if keys gets depleted. it is not fun being a healer in m+.

it depends. Its a case where you really need a group you gel with. I like doing them with my friends but not with pugs because with pugs its very much a case someone will die very quickly like within a global and then ask healer wtf..

- - - Updated - - -

I'm inclined to agree with the OP, I've been finding healing at 15/16 to be easier than any time previously and the pride mana restoration really allows you to spend mana aggressively. Healing becomes easier when you're surrounded by better players who make fewer mistakes, hit their interrupts, tanks know what they need to kite etc.

At higher keys a lot of mechanics tend to one shot so there isn't even the possibility for the healer to carry. The projectile on the 2nd boss in spires for example, if a dps gets hit on a high key without a defensive then they're dead with nobody to blame but themselves. On a +10 the dps will survive on low health and there's healing pressure to top them up before they get hit again which is much more stressful.

Very true and yet people will still blame you if they die.

[Engal]

Instead of using the actual leaderboards, it would probably be better to use the very charts that r.io uses at the above the leader boards like these:



and



That makes seeing trends easier. Yes DH does dominate more as you climb higher in keystones but the other remaining tank classes are just as viable. And that's something that players really need to understand. "Meta" is only really a concern when you're at the very top of elite gameplay, for everybody else who isn't pushing +18 or higher keys, then the "meta" is mostly irrelevant. If anything it creates a false bias that just because a player is playing a "in-meta" class/spec they MUST BE better than that other player who isn't playing an "in-meta" class/spec.

We were talking about " higher key"

The shift is seen starting +12/+13 actually, and you includes +10, which was not my point.

Looking at dps for +15, for example, give you this :




As you can see, the dps mainly dominating are the same I told you earlier.

The more you go into higher key, the more it is shown.

At +20, this is flawless and you can't deny it.



Which brings me back to my original point :

If you're not one of those class you'll find harder time being taken into a PUG group for higher key, even for lower actually cause people tend to be meta slave and copy pasta those higher key group.