Bring the Player not the Class vs Class Diversity for M+

[Relapses]

This is the flip side of accessibility and having everything be cross realm.

The applicant pool is so large you can be picky and still put a group together in a reasonable amount of time.

Before cross realm, putting together groups could take much longer and holding out for specific classes and specs would take a very long time so people more willing to roll with a non-perfect comp.

Not saying cross realm or accessibility is bad, but it has a cost.

Even if cross-realm wasn't a thing, we've reached a point where 90% of WoW's population is spread across 10 or so servers. We'd still have the same problem.

[LazuOG]

Only blizzard is to blame for the numerical and utility state of the classes in their game as well as content design. The meta is a symptom of this. If you can't make that connection you can't be helped.

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The way I see it, organisms, (Not even just humans.) tend to choose the path of least resistance.

If you're pugging, there's just no good reason to not bring meta classes. Sure, that DH might be the best player in the world and that hunter might be the worst, but there's no way of knowing that. Your only metric to judge by before you see them in action is io score and ilvl. So all other things being equal it's just as likely the hunter is a god tier player and the DH is shit.

And honestly, I've ran plenty of m+ with meta comps and plenty with off meta comps and even in like 14s and 15s, (So not truly high keys.) the difference is so large that it's not possible to just ignore. It's like, if you bring some combination of hunter, boomy, WW and fire mage, the amount of mistakes you can make while still flying through 15s or even 2 chesting 15s is insane. But when you bring weaker classes like DH, ret, shaman, lock, etc the run is just so much harder. Small mistakes more easily snowball into larger ones because everything lives longer.

Running off meta comps feels just like running meta comps except everyone is 10-15 ilvl lower. That's my two cents at least.

That's absolutely on point.

[Matthias]

Only blizzard is to blame for the numerical and utility state of the classes in their game as well as content design. The meta is a symptom of this. If you can't make that connection you can't be helped.

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That's absolutely on point.

But is this an issue of class design or dungeon design? Part of the point of my thread was I wanted to know how the community felt about Dungeons having a harder emphasis on utiltiy as opposed to DPS just trying to pump as much damage as possible. Yes interrupting and stuns were always a thing, but interrupts have become more critical, displacements are amazing....and I seriously dont know why Druids are allowed to have Trents...this makes my life so easy as Tank.

Point is if this were Legion or BFA this wouldn't be as glaring as an issue. So keep dungeons this was and adjust classes accordingly? Or revert to a simplier design? Because yes as it is now for DPS classes you at least want for two of your slots, Hunter/Boomkin/Fire Mage. I've never seen such a meta disparity.

[Shakou]

Nothing is unviable for M+. E peen scores are not actually important, and anything not competing for top keys isn't impressive to anyone. There's actually being elite and then there just your giant inflated ego. So if you're not even pushing top keys there is positively no good reason you do not bring whatever comp you want so long as they can time the key.

And it goes without saying that the problem with M+ balance is dungeon design. Of course they don't at all balance classes around 5 man dungeons lmao or even with 5 man dungeons in mind. Some classes might need love in the utility department and others need a nerf, but as far as I am concerned dungeons haven't been good since Legion launch. I don't know what happened but I don't find any dungeon since then to be even particularly enjoyable.

IMHO they should stop trying to push M+ as an E Sport. They don't have a fucking rated battleground invitational and that's way more balanced. Of course they won't cuz a lot of people are actually into m+ as an e sport.

What they ought to do is revert the insanely stupid decision to remove timed chests, add more cosmetic rewards that aren't harder to get than gladiator without paying people, and make keystones deplete again to incentivize players to group up and give a shit if it's not their key.

[LazuOG]

So if you're not even pushing top keys there is positively no good reason you do not bring whatever comp you want so long as they can time the key.

And what increases your chances to time that key? Inviting the classes with the best toolkit piloted by players with the most experience.

There is objective and subjective difficulty. A 10 key is objectively easy, but hard if ur group is around 184 ilvl. In that kind of scenarios you would statistically still do much better if u ran a meta comp because that's what meta comps do. They make stuff easier, faster, and more forgiving. With the flood of applicants there is no reason to ever bring anything else to a key that is subjectively challenging for you.

If you want to get shit done and increase your chances of success, try to invite meta classes with high IO. Can you do keys with off meta comps? Yes. Will they be as smooth as if the same players played meta characters? Not even slightly.

[Gaidax]

If you want to get shit done and increase your chances of success, try to invite meta classes with high IO. Can you do keys with off meta comps? Yes. Will they be as smooth as if the same players played meta characters? Not even slightly.

It's really just down to that. People rush in with their "herpa derp you can do keys with every class", well no shit Sherlock, but the idea is not just do, but also increase chances of actual success when you assemble a party of complete strangers you know nothing about. And after all said and done - there are simply specs that are better at it than others.

[intenz]

"Bring the player" would only be possible if specs were very close on dps, and they aren't. We're seeing as much as a 20% delta which is unacceptable really.

[Voidwielder]

After hitting 1.1k as a Holy Priest three weeks ago (!), with half of the timed one's being 14's (the rest are 13's) - this week really exemplifies that Meta comping is absolutely a thing. I can't get in to a single 15 this reset and the one's that do take me in are obviously desperate people who just want to start the run as soon as possible - and of course, first hard pack and it all goes to the shitter, missed Stuns, missed interrupts, eating Spiteful damage like it's a caramel cake... and then it's all somehow my fault. And then some have the gall to whisper me after the run to either reroll or better, kill myself.

[ydraw]

Nothing is unviable for M+. E peen scores are not actually important, and anything not competing for top keys isn't impressive to anyone. There's actually being elite and then there just your giant inflated ego. So if you're not even pushing top keys there is positively no good reason you do not bring whatever comp you want so long as they can time the key..

Yeah, nah. This is just wrong.

Go run a +15 with a BM hunter, Frost Mage, Assassination Rogue and a Blood DK.

Let me know if you time it.

Timers are simply not that generous that you can do 30% less DPS and still time the key. And 30% is probably an underestimation of the difference between the top and bottom M+ specs.

[Tziva]

Look, I don't disagree that there needs to be better balance and the classes at the bottom are too far below the top, but there is a huge divide between bringing a nonmeta class to a run, and stacking all the worst specs in the game into some kind of supershitteam. Conflating the two isn't really helpful and doesn't really reflect how people actually build teams.

For the average player doing midrange keys, inviting a havoc DH because a good one signed up and a windwalker didn't isn't going to play out as that big of a deal. It probably won't even be the biggest determiner of success in your run, as performance variation and mistakes -- as us average players tend to have occasionally -- are not rare for these groups. Even just not planning out the perfect 100% route with optimal invis pot/shroud skips and precise prideful timings is something that will probably have a better impact on the pace that a suboptimal spec's presence.

I've been in PuGs that want to invite the chicken with way less experience than half the other signups solely because he's a chicken, and it almost always turns out poorly. Sure, if you have signups that are similar in experience and ilvl and one is a fire mage and one is a fury warrior, no one is going to fucking fault you for inviting the mage, but people really need to understand copying the meta isn't some magical I Win button.

[Tziva]

...That said, I healed a m+ the other day with a DK tank and hoooooly fuck. I heal other people, he dies. I heal him, other people die. Ended up having to just spam my fastest heal which is terribly inefficient both for mana and for actual HPS.

I hadn't done a key with DK tank since early in the expansion, and I guess I've been spoiled by weeks of less terrifying tanks because it was much worse than I expected. It's someone I've played with many times before and I know they're a good player, so I am 100% marking this down as a class balance issue.

In conclusion, Blizz please fix Blood.

[Marrilaife]

There's been a shortage of ranged DPS for many years, perhaps as long as the game has existed. Rather than try and figure out a way for ranged to be more rewarding, perhaps this is simply the counterreaction: make melee less and less friendly until the ratio is 60/40 ranged/melee. Obviously, the game actively *losing* ranged options since the official launch of the game is rather idiotic.

Maybe the first goddamned step to fix the shortage of ranged dps would be to add new ranged dps classes and stop adding melee? In 16 years of wow they added 3 melee classes, 0 ranged, and reworked a spec from ranged to melee. Hypocrisy at its finest. Hey guys, we made a game with 6 ranged classes 9 melee but you know what, we don't want you to play a melee...

Some classes like warrior or paladin don't have a single spec that would be wanted in high m+ keys. Paladins can maybe pass as a healer but still behind shamans, discs and druids.

[Bigbazz]

Maybe the first goddamned step to fix the shortage of ranged dps would be to add new ranged dps classes and stop adding melee? In 16 years of wow they added 3 melee classes, 0 ranged, and reworked a spec from ranged to melee. Hypocrisy at its finest. Hey guys, we made a game with 6 ranged classes 9 melee but you know what, we don't want you to play a melee...

Some classes like warrior or paladin don't have a single spec that would be wanted in high m+ keys. Paladins can maybe pass as a healer but still behind shamans, discs and druids.

Nevermind M+ I think it's arguably worse in the raid, having done M+ as Arms until this last week or so where I decided to try the raid.

In raiding I feel like an empty raid spot, the class is weak from the outset but then the raid is also punishing to melee, to where you need your tanks to have perfect positioning/movement to allow you to maximise uptime around the mechanics where ranged wouldn't have that problem and simply have more uptime anyway. On a well executed attempt with really tight positioning and tank movements optimised so you can have the best fighting chance you're still absolutely nowhere on the meters.

Castle is a shit raid for melee, what a massive contrast to the last raid I did (Nighthold) and the icing on the cake is most of the melee specs are shit to begin with, save for Unholy/WW monk.

[Orwell7]

A bold move: make 6-player groups.
This way we can have more spec diversity. On top of my head, DPS classes could be separated into 2-3 categories, and every dungeon should need 1 of each. Like "pure" dps classes can only excel if they have a "support" dps class. Tank+Heal+1-3pure+1-3 support dps.
Maybe even shake thing up by dedicating a "support" role to either healing, dps or tank hybrid. The latter can be used in dungeons for new tank mechanics. This hybrid can be demo or bm.

There are thousands of ideas how to fix this, but only one thing should be said:
God-tier specs are the problem. A handful of specs have everything+1. The rest are waaay beyond them now.
I can safely say that this is the most unbalanced the game has ever been - and Blizzard is just flat-out incompetent and lazy, because they have all the data they need and still not doing anything.

[Toybox]

Nevermind M+ I think it's arguably worse in the raid, having done M+ as Arms until this last week or so where I decided to try the raid.

In raiding I feel like an empty raid spot, the class is weak from the outset but then the raid is also punishing to melee, to where you need your tanks to have perfect positioning/movement to allow you to maximise uptime around the mechanics where ranged wouldn't have that problem and simply have more uptime anyway. On a well executed attempt with really tight positioning and tank movements optimised so you can have the best fighting chance you're still absolutely nowhere on the meters.

Castle is a shit raid for melee, what a massive contrast to the last raid I did (Nighthold) and the icing on the cake is most of the melee specs are shit to begin with, save for Unholy/WW monk.

Warriors pump in M+, and there is some utility there, but it's nothing compared to what the big classes have, plus we come with the downside of being melee You're right though, in raid, Arms is nothing but a battle shout outside of a few choice bosses (Huntsman) where two target cleave potential is high.

[Voidwielder]

Utility is definitely an issue. No healer, no spec should have what Resto Shamans have as a baseline - beyond that their talents allow near perfect selection for Tyr/Fort.

I regret sticking to my main of 12 years, as painful as it would have been I could have had that +15 achievement done by now.

[Squigglyo]

The fact I have to reroll into a meta class in order to get invited to half the groups shows blizzard failed.

Very little effort has gone into making all the classes decent. Having different specs better at things is fine. Seems blizzard expects you to have different classes for things too with the way they care about balancing.

Every class should have talents that give them aoe/interupts/utility/etc so that every class is capable in everything. As is, you 'need' certain classes, so a bad player with that class gets a spot compared to a good player with a different class.

Its not bring the player. Its bring the player IF they have one of the 'best' classes.