Replace DPS specs with tanks/healers.

[EmrysForrest]

Do not add additional specializations to balance. Do not add new classes to balance.

Remove one of the Mage specializations (arcane is the least popular, so remove arcane) and implement a Chronomancer healing class.

Remove Elemental or Enhancement and replace it with an Elementalist tank specialization.

Remove Survival and replace it with a Medic healer.

Do not add a Necromancer. Make one of the DK’s specializations a Necromancer caster specialization.

Remove a rogue specialization and replace it with an evasion tank centered around mobility and avoiding damage.

I’ll let you guys get creative with Warlocks.

This way we aren’t seeing an endless stream of new additions for the balance team to struggle with and inevitably neglect due to difficulty with sheer volume of specializations.

[Kumorii]

Not sure how this helps with balancing since it would still be the same amount of balancing required...
Tanks still need to be balanced among themselves and healers do too...
Especially since you add evasion tanking which is one of the hardest things to balance. In short, this idea just makes it worse in my eyes.

[Kithelle]

This wont change anything...tanks and healers aren't scarce because there isn't enough specs, it's because there aren't enough people who want to tank or heal.

[Usernameforforums]

People dont want to tank and heal. Simple as that. Adding more tanks/heals or replacing dps as such will not increase tank/heal players by a marginal enough amount to warrant such a change. If anything remove tank and heal roles then make everything dps with their own personal defensives and healing cds. That will get your queues faster.

[RaoBurning]

I’ll let you guys get creative with Warlocks.

Easiest of the bunch. We already had Meta during Wrath. AoE Life Drain was *chef's kiss*. The exploding leap, the meteor fall. Ahh the good times when shit could be weird and it was okay.

[Nzx]

This way we aren’t seeing an endless stream of new additions for the balance team to struggle with and inevitably neglect due to difficulty with sheer volume of specializations.

Ah yes, of course, because if you remove something and replace it with something totally and completely different it requires zero development effort or balancing. Truly this is groundbreaking stuff right here.

[Delekii]

People dont want to tank and heal. Simple as that. Adding more tanks/heals or replacing dps as such will not increase tank/heal players by a marginal enough amount to warrant such a change. If anything remove tank and heal roles then make everything dps with their own personal defensives and healing cds. That will get your queues faster.

I would tank or heal on every class if every class had a tank or heal spec. Currently when I play hunter, warlock, rogue or mage, I can do neither.

[Usernameforforums]

I would tank or heal on every class if every class had a tank or heal spec. Currently when I play hunter, warlock, rogue or mage, I can do neither.

Pat yourself on the back because you’re the .5%

[Better]

Remove a rogue specialization and replace it with an evasion tank centered around mobility and avoiding damage.

They vaguely tried this with Veng. Blizzard isn't consistent enough for this type of playstyle to be actively promoted honestly.

You also have the problem of players not WANTING to tank. There's plenty of choices to tank, if they player doesn't want to they just wont. Same for heals.

[Hobbidaggy]

Adding more tanks/healers doesn’t make more tanks/healers appear in the queues. It just makes the same people who tank and heal have more options.

I recently returned and after being a Druid Healer/Tank I started it again and can honestly say the reason people don’t want to Tank or Heal is because the community is so toxic towards you if there is ANY mistake or something unexpected happens. You get abused, told to learn how to play and then the player leaves..triggering more people to leave and then the group falls apart.

If the tank isn’t pulling fast enough for a specific DPS then the DPS player will run ahead pull half the dungeon or raid and then complain when they die that you weren’t going fast enough and should have pulled the treat off the mobs.

If a tank does run super fast and pulls half the dungeon and the Tank and DPS are all dying and the healer can’t keep everyone up. The healer is abused for not doing enough and being “bad”

Want to fix queue times? Fix players being jerks to the tanks and healers out there and maybe more people will be interested in trying it.

Edit: just also want to add before it is called out, I will still continue to tank and heal because I enjoy it. I’m not going to quit because “people say mean things” I’m old enough to not care what people on the internet say

[Delekii]

Pat yourself on the back because you’re the .5%

Possibly. But if every class had the option, no player would have the excuse.

Games lacking trinity type setups or something to replace them lose a whole lot of depth in my opinion.

[8bithamster]

People dont want to tank and heal. Simple as that. Adding more tanks/heals or replacing dps as such will not increase tank/heal players by a marginal enough amount to warrant such a change. If anything remove tank and heal roles then make everything dps with their own personal defensives and healing cds. That will get your queues faster.

And why do people not want to do that? Oh right, the dps community with 0 patience and scream gogogogogogo. The same people that cannot understand that a tank has to learn to get the routes right, or a healer has to get the healing down.

[Usernameforforums]

Possibly. But if every class had the option, no player would have the excuse.

Games lacking trinity type setups or something to replace them lose a whole lot of depth in my opinion.

Sure they wouldn’t have the excuse but a pure dps player doesn’t want to play a tank/heal because they dont want the group responsibility. Changing specs around may increase percentage for tank/heal because of less dps due to them quitting due to their favorite spec changed to tank/heal. Example, i play demo and that changes to tank, fuck that im out.

Yeah but trinity sucks ass cuz you have to stop playing the game every 15 minutes for 8-15 minutes. At least with a dps setup it would be 20secs-3minutes. It would be a better change than adding tanks/heals.


I can see that even if they made this change, people that did tank/heal would quit because thats their favorite thing to do. Either way, people are going to quit.

And why do people not want to do that? Oh right, the dps community with 0 patience and scream gogogogogogo. The same people that cannot understand that a tank has to learn to get the routes right, or a healer has to get the healing down.

Its not that they can’t understand, its that they dont want to. They have the ability to understand it quite well. They rather have personal responsibility than having the entire group rely on them. If a tank/heal fucks up, the whole group suffers. If a dps fucks up, theres two others that can fill in.

The gogogo mentality was farther fueled by mythic+. It was barely a thing before mythic+. It was there, but it wasnt as bad as it is today. It also doesnt help that they changed classes to fit that.

[Biomega]

They rather have personal responsibility than having the entire group rely on them. If a tank/heal fucks up, the whole group suffers. If a dps fucks up, theres two others that can fill in.

The gogogo mentality was farther fueled by mythic+. It was barely a thing before mythic+. It was there, but it wasnt as bad as it is today. It also doesnt help that they changed classes to fit that.

You get those two are connected, though, right?

Timers exist to give DPS more responsibility. Otherwise you could do things with the most slacker DPS imaginable and still succeed.

If you removed timers, then tank/heal would be pretty much the ONLY point of failure (in terms of performance). You'd be heaping MORE responsibility on the two roles that already shoulder a lot of it, which is counterproductive.

[Asrialol]

Adding more tanks/healers doesn’t make more tanks/healers appear in the queues. It just makes the same people who tank and heal have more options.

I recently returned and after being a Druid Healer/Tank I started it again and can honestly say the reason people don’t want to Tank or Heal is because the community is so toxic towards you if there is ANY mistake or something unexpected happens. You get abused, told to learn how to play and then the player leaves..triggering more people to leave and then the group falls apart.

If the tank isn’t pulling fast enough for a specific DPS then the DPS player will run ahead pull half the dungeon or raid and then complain when they die that you weren’t going fast enough and should have pulled the treat off the mobs.

If a tank does run super fast and pulls half the dungeon and the Tank and DPS are all dying and the healer can’t keep everyone up. The healer is abused for not doing enough and being “bad”

Want to fix queue times? Fix players being jerks to the tanks and healers out there and maybe more people will be interested in trying it.

Edit: just also want to add before it is called out, I will still continue to tank and heal because I enjoy it. I’m not going to quit because “people say mean things” I’m old enough to not care what people on the internet say

I think you posted in the wrong thread; your reply has nothing to do with what the OP wrote.

[Usernameforforums]

You get those two are connected, though, right?

Timers exist to give DPS more responsibility. Otherwise you could do things with the most slacker DPS imaginable and still succeed.

If you removed timers, then tank/heal would be pretty much the ONLY point of failure (in terms of performance). You'd be heaping MORE responsibility on the two roles that already shoulder a lot of it, which is counterproductive.

And if you removed tank/heals then everyone has the same responsibility to heal themselves, use defensives, and dps. Everyone would have the same amount of responsibility while not being too demanding.

[Biomega]

And if you removed tank/heals then everyone has the same responsibility to heal themselves, use defensives, and dps. Everyone would have the same amount of responsibility while not being too demanding.

That's true, but that's such a radical change you might as well make a new game.

[Twdft]

And if you removed tank/heals then everyone has the same responsibility to heal themselves, use defensives, and dps. Everyone would have the same amount of responsibility while not being too demanding.

Trinity makes the group stick together. I've played a game without it (DDO) and dungeons were a mess.

[LordVargK]

And why do people not want to do that? Oh right, the dps community with 0 patience and scream gogogogogogo. The same people that cannot understand that a tank has to learn to get the routes right, or a healer has to get the healing down.

Absolutely not true. Like at all.

There is no heal/tank scarcity in raids (generally). Tanks are an afterthought in PvP and healing in PvP is also not that much of a problem. It's only m+ (or dungeons in general) where it's a problem, but one Blizzard made.

The whole concept of m+ favours DDs.
Tanks have to plan the routes ahead, since they are the ones pulling. Often they can't really tank, but have to kite. There are even some affixes that make this necessary (e.g. necrotic). All that while doing as much DPS as possible. Taking defensive talents or legendaries is often not the best choice for them.
Healers have a shit job: They are only needed if the group makes mistakes and otherwise they act as low throughput damage dealers, that occasionally have to burst heal the group. And since they don't have an interrupt (except shamans), they can't even reliably prevent damage but have to rely on the DPS and Tanks to not suck, since one missed kick can cause a wipe on higher keys and there is nothing a heal can do about it.
So we have two roles, that are basically more difficult DDs with more responsibility.

Only DDs can play their intended role: Just make as much damage as possible (and interrupt important abilities).

The timer of m+ coupled with the clear % requirement makes this a DPS race. One good DPS can carry your key. A healer can't do that. A tank could, but only if he does high dps, not by just tanking more mobs than usual (since the DPS would die either way because of missed interrupts).

How I would fix that problem:
Make invisibility potions unusable in m+. Give more mobs stealth detection. Reduce the timer of dungeons. Then, instead of requiring a certain number of mobs for 100%, let each killed mob extend the dungeon timer by a few seconds, that way you're not as punished by not following the optimal route. Essentially you could either kill as little trash as possible and try to burst the bosses in a short amount of time or you could kill more trash and then have more time for the bosses. Assuming you kill the trash fast enough, but in my concept the time extension would be very generous.
That way you have an option to "save" a few boss wipes by just extending your time and tanks don't have to meticously plan the routes ahead.

In regards to healers: Give them something to heal other than the group. We have some raid boss encounters where healers must heal mobs, which in turn buff the group. Maybe implement this mechanic in m+.

[Usernameforforums]

That's true, but that's such a radical change you might as well make a new game.

True but people would quit if their chosen spec became tank/heal. It forces them in a position to either adapt or quit which really isnt healthy for a nearly 20yo game. Might as well make that new game.