Bursting, Explosives and Tyrannical

[Nargrom]

So in general, i have been an avid supporter of R.io and its use on the pug world, and overall i am of the opinion that you can make progress in pugs with some effort and patience.

This season, i have been able to pug my way from 600rio to 1430 which is my current, and despite many depleted keys it was fine, i wasn't very mad about it.

Until this week... This week i have lost my shit in 2 of the 4 attempts i have made to pug. I main a healer, a resto shaman.

This week it has become apparent to me, that - at least - in 16s and 17s that I'm doing, the healer is expected to deal with the explosives. And on top of that the dps are entitled to COMPLETELY ignore the bursting affix and nuke everything down often resulting in 6-7stacks of this lethal dot. And if people die from this amazing combination the healer is to blame.

At first i thought the explosives, its fine, i suppose i can deal with them by frost shocking and putting some extra effort. But when the bursting came into play or when they pulled 2 packs at the same time and i had to deal with 5-6 explosives minimum and the bursting damage, i shit you not, i froze. I legit took my hands of the keyboard and i had no reaction/response for 5 seconds.

So i really want an honest answer here, am i doing this wrong? Are these the expectations a group has from their healer this week? Because frankly this is way out of my league. Honestly i cant heal 7 stacks of bursting and i might be able to heal 6 if the group doesn't start immediately running to the next pack.

Excuse the rant but i feel helpless.

[pawsz]

So in general, i have been an avid supporter of R.io and its use on the pug world, and overall i am of the opinion that you can make progress in pugs with some effort and patience.

This season, i have been able to pug my way from 600rio to 1430 which is my current, and despite many depleted keys it was fine, i wasn't very mad about it.

Until this week... This week i have lost my shit in 2 of the 4 attempts i have made to pug. I main a healer, a resto shaman.

This week it has become apparent to me, that - at least - in 16s and 17s that I'm doing, the healer is expected to deal with the explosives. And on top of that the dps are entitled to COMPLETELY ignore the bursting affix and nuke everything down often resulting in 6-7stacks of this lethal dot. And if people die from this amazing combination the healer is to blame.

At first i thought the explosives, its fine, i suppose i can deal with them by frost shocking and putting some extra effort. But when the bursting came into play or when they pulled 2 packs at the same time and i had to deal with 5-6 explosives minimum and the bursting damage, i shit you not, i froze. I legit took my hands of the keyboard and i had no reaction/response for 5 seconds.

So i really want an honest answer here, am i doing this wrong? Are these the expectations a group has from their healer this week? Because frankly this is way out of my league. Honestly i cant heal 7 stacks of bursting and i might be able to heal 6 if the group doesn't start immediately running to the next pack.

Excuse the rant but i feel helpless.

Na, just say: "Suck my cock" and leave the group. Bad asshole players need to learn.

[Simca]

Tanks and healers are generally the best positioned to handle explosives, but it varies by composition and context somewhat. If you're having problems with it in trash pulls, first I'd yell at the tank. Their damage isn't going to be missed nearly as much, and they should be helping you with this. Additionally, some DPS are pretty well primed to handle it without much loss (anyone with 0 cost instants that do a couple hundred points of damage with no CD are perfect), and they should absolutely help if there's more than 1-2 out. Everyone should be helping if there's 5+ out because not dying is pretty important.

There are times in pulls where I have to handle many, many explosives as a healer. Sometimes the game's explosive RNG just shits on you and you spend literally the entire pull whacking explosives. But there's fights where you also can't afford to do that. Tyrannical bosses with insane damage - you can't afford to spend healing globals on Explosive killing that often. This is fine. If they are getting off casts at that point, the DPS deserve to be chewed out about it.

As for Bursting, I've not found it to be particularly egregious, but if the DPS pushed it much past 6 stacks, I'd probably yell at them. It isn't just stack count though, it's timing. If you kill 10 mobs in the -exact- same second, a 10-stack Bursting is perfectly survivable. But if you kill 9 mobs in the same second, wait 3 seconds, kill another, wait 3 seconds, kill another - then nobody will live through that. Slightly staggered kills that perfectly refresh the expiration timer are the real killer when it comes to Bursting, I think, not just raw stack count.

I usually defuse this with sarcasm: "Wow, you guys managed to hit the perfect anti-timing to refresh Bursting 6 times in a row with 0 seconds left each time. That's truly impressive."

[xero5141]

So in general, i have been an avid supporter of R.io and its use on the pug world, and overall i am of the opinion that you can make progress in pugs with some effort and patience.

This season, i have been able to pug my way from 600rio to 1430 which is my current, and despite many depleted keys it was fine, i wasn't very mad about it.

Until this week... This week i have lost my shit in 2 of the 4 attempts i have made to pug. I main a healer, a resto shaman.

This week it has become apparent to me, that - at least - in 16s and 17s that I'm doing, the healer is expected to deal with the explosives. And on top of that the dps are entitled to COMPLETELY ignore the bursting affix and nuke everything down often resulting in 6-7stacks of this lethal dot. And if people die from this amazing combination the healer is to blame.

At first i thought the explosives, its fine, i suppose i can deal with them by frost shocking and putting some extra effort. But when the bursting came into play or when they pulled 2 packs at the same time and i had to deal with 5-6 explosives minimum and the bursting damage, i shit you not, i froze. I legit took my hands of the keyboard and i had no reaction/response for 5 seconds.

So i really want an honest answer here, am i doing this wrong? Are these the expectations a group has from their healer this week? Because frankly this is way out of my league. Honestly i cant heal 7 stacks of bursting and i might be able to heal 6 if the group doesn't start immediately running to the next pack.

Excuse the rant but i feel helpless.

I am not doing 16s and 17s but I have been tanking like 10s-14s lately on my DH with my Hpally gf. Between the two of us we get most of the explosives, and if we don't they're picked up by the dps or we say something, period.

She only does them when it's easy to grab them but never sacrifices healing for it. In my experience, it's pretty easy for any tank to tab target and grab them as well as some dps classes like hunter, balance druid. Bursting is silly though and dps are just braindead. I do enough damage tanking that I can sort of control when bursting happens a lot of times and I do that when possible. Otherwise, if we wipe and she is doing 7khps it's clearly the dps that need to step up, you know?

[Nargrom]

Tanks and healers are generally the best positioned to handle explosives, but it varies by composition and context somewhat. If you're having problems with it in trash pulls, first I'd yell at the tank. Their damage isn't going to be missed nearly as much, and they should be helping you with this. Additionally, some DPS are pretty well primed to handle it without much loss (anyone with 0 cost instants that do a couple hundred points of damage with no CD are perfect), and they should absolutely help if there's more than 1-2 out. Everyone should be helping if there's 5+ out because not dying is pretty important.

There are times in pulls where I have to handle many, many explosives as a healer. Sometimes the game's explosive RNG just shits on you and you spend literally the entire pull whacking explosives. But there's fights where you also can't afford to do that. Tyrannical bosses with insane damage - you can't afford to spend healing globals on Explosive killing that often. This is fine. If they are getting off casts at that point, the DPS deserve to be chewed out about it.

As for Bursting, I've not found it to be particularly egregious, but if the DPS pushed it much past 6 stacks, I'd probably yell at them. It isn't just stack count though, it's timing. If you kill 10 mobs in the -exact- same second, a 10-stack Bursting is perfectly survivable. But if you kill 9 mobs in the same second, wait 3 seconds, kill another, wait 3 seconds, kill another - then nobody will live through that. Slightly staggered kills that perfectly refresh the expiration timer are the real killer when it comes to Bursting, I think, not just raw stack count.

I usually defuse this with sarcasm: "Wow, you guys managed to hit the perfect anti-timing to refresh Bursting 6 times in a row with 0 seconds left each time. That's truly impressive."

i have no issue to deal with explos as long as the dps and tank do their job fine, when i have a DH tank that gets bitch slapped by mobs for 30% of his health per hit, i cant possibly waste GCDs on explos or even look for them. Same goes for dps, i have had dpsers bitch slapped by trash and die on from explo or bursting sortly after and they started bitching about. They dont care tho, tank will do his mediocre job as a tank, meaning he will required focused healing and 8/10 times dps will fuck up some how. I just cant heal stupidity-affixes and deal with whatever else is going on.

- - - Updated - - -

I am not doing 16s and 17s but I have been tanking like 10s-14s lately on my DH with my Hpally gf. Between the two of us we get most of the explosives, and if we don't they're picked up by the dps or we say something, period.

She only does them when it's easy to grab them but never sacrifices healing for it. In my experience, it's pretty easy for any tank to tab target and grab them as well as some dps classes like hunter, balance druid. Bursting is silly though and dps are just braindead. I do enough damage tanking that I can sort of control when bursting happens a lot of times and I do that when possible. Otherwise, if we wipe and she is doing 7khps it's clearly the dps that need to step up, you know?

yeah man, in most trash pack i push 9k hps and always a cd is needed. I legit dont know if do it wrong.

[Dakara]

As for Bursting, I've not found it to be particularly egregious, but if the DPS pushed it much past 6 stacks, I'd probably yell at them. It isn't just stack count though, it's timing. If you kill 10 mobs in the -exact- same second, a 10-stack Bursting is perfectly survivable. But if you kill 9 mobs in the same second, wait 3 seconds, kill another, wait 3 seconds, kill another - then nobody will live through that. Slightly staggered kills that perfectly refresh the expiration timer are the real killer when it comes to Bursting, I think, not just raw stack count.

I usually defuse this with sarcasm: "Wow, you guys managed to hit the perfect anti-timing to refresh Bursting 6 times in a row with 0 seconds left each time. That's truly impressive."

This.... a Million times this!

It happens all the time! Bursting is just about to expire... add a stack and refresh...again, about to fall off... add a stack and refresh... rinse repeat.
I’ve tried to educate groups on this so many times... a 6 stack of bursting when the groups topped off is not big deal. Continuing to refresh bursting while adding a stack is deadly especially if the groups HP is low.

It would appear many DPS seem to misunderstand staggering the kills. I’d rather you burst them down and get it over with than refresh bursting into effectively a prema-dot. If you’re going to stagger, then wait for bursting to fall off ffs!

“Healer Y u no heal?”

[Bigbazz]

I did a De Other Side 16 earlier this evening and this week is very tough going on healers, I sacrificed a meaningful amount of damage on pretty much every pull just popping explosions, we had 1 go off throughout the entire dungeon, but if I had left it to the tank/healer we'd have been absolutely fucked. Damage requirements on Tyrannical week are nasty and to be honest if it wasn't for the ilvl228 world first level hunter that we randomly had in our group we'd have probably not timed it, I think we were 3-4mins clear but didn't they just nerf the time requirement?

This week is overwhelmingly harder than last week, but I think when you only need +14's for your vault it's hardly the biggest problem in the world. On my alt (ilvl202 ish) we had a disaster in necrotic wake 13, it's a much easier dungeon than de other side but the healer gets slaughtered by the bursting healing, someone ass pulled a pack near the stairs, low hp mobs and it just wiped the group because of bursting.

To top it off packs are instantly going back into combat with people who die and release, we had someone die and res and then a prideful mob + a pack of mobs run all the way to the entrance of the instance to attack a player who had just released. We had something similar happen in De Other Side too, with packs not resetting if someone released after dying (not sure if that's new but it seemed to catch the whole group off guard on both occasions?).

[marulol]

I'm in a completely different boat every 15+ run I've done the healer doesn't do any orbs and me as a hunter ALWAYS has at least 40% of the orbs killed per run. Healer is always bottom. I thought melee was supposed to be doing them the most? That's definitely not the case in the pugs I've been in in fact melee have been the WORST at it. Had an ehancement shaman at bottom in one run.. like really? Probably the easiest class to kill them because it's easy to use resources. As a hunter sometimes it's difficult to get them if I'm low on focus and focus regen is so slow on mm.

[Zigrifid]

In legion i was a tank i dealt with those explosives cause it was easier and dps could focus with their tunneling,in shadowlands im a dps ! and i still deal with explosive cause for some reason people tend to forget them, i have been to groups where others killed them also i cant say that everyone doesnt care ^^ but there are cases like MoTS where at 2nd boss people didnt care about explosives spawning at the clones (which is something blizz must change) and i couldnt reach all of them in time

[TheFirstOnes]

Bursting and explosives, irdc about. It's mostly situational regarding the two. But, Tyrannical?! Fuck Tyrannical.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

The only healers that I ever assume are "expected" to deal with Explosive orbs are Holy Paladins and Resto Druids. Holy Paladins are generally in the melee already and benefit from Crusader Striking (maybe even Judgment) Explosive orbs and Resto Druids press 1 Sunfire and orb is dead. But I suppose Resto Shamans have Frost Shock too, so they aren't incapable.


That being said I have no encountered any group that had the automatic expectation that healers will be on the ball with Explosive orbs. Too many times have I seen over zealous tanks pull 2-3 packs in non-Bursting weeks and have seen upwards to 6 orbs. Too many times have I seen melee DPS and tanks outright not attack orbs because they are 1.) busy trying to adjust to the shitty pull, 2.) just don't target the orbs, or 3.) die to whatever horrible pull was just pulled.


Explosive orbs are insanely easy to deal with and that's the ironic part. Using the example of an over zealous tank pulling just a little too much, and the group having to adjust accordingly, orbs die in 1 hit. You can have just 2 DPS (or 1 DPS and the healer if initiative is taken) and in a couple of seconds all orbs are dealt with.


Also, I am speaking as well as to 15 - 17 keys. Granted people are now in the 19 - 21/22 range so who knows what MDI meta strats they are doing.


I suppose when it comes down to it, good healers will take initiative to help out or outright handle all of the Explosive orbs. Depending on if they can do that while also fully healing the group as necessary will determine how good they are. But to expect the healer to handle all of the orbs without making any effort to begin with is ridiculous. One of those "you know what happens when you assume" scenarios.

[erifwodahs]

Explosives are for tanks and healers currently.
Really easy to deal with.
Bursting is priest affix now tho. It's really painful, if extended, but otherwise it's not that bad. as you can't really pull 20 mobs at a time so most of the time limit is 5-6.
Solution - don't pug.
And yes, besides tanking being dogshit this expansion, every affix apart from sang is healer affix.

[Tech614]

1 Sunfire and orb is dead.

1 anything and they are dead. This is shadowlands explosives, not legion and BFA. They die from being touched.

[melzas]

Explosives are team effort, you can't expect tank and healer get them all for you, it's ridiculous. Sure it's easy for healer to kill orbs when there isn't much healing required, but when it gets intense for healer and you are a DPS with mindset of "heal and tank must do it", you can easily wipe because of explosives.

I did 5 15 and 16 keys this week (as a healer) and generally everyone was killing orbs in every group, me included. You don't expect others to do it for you, no matter what role or class they play.

[Firebert]

All three affixes are for the tanks and DPS to deal with; the only healer affixes that are in the game right now are Spiteful (run away), Quaking (don't get interrupted), and Sanguine, Volcanic and Storming (don't stand in it).

This week is one of the easier weeks for healers; the next one is probably going to be Inspiring/Necrotic starting 24th March.

[Ryzeth]

Explosives are for tanks and healers currently.
Really easy to deal with.
Bursting is priest affix now tho. It's really painful, if extended, but otherwise it's not that bad. as you can't really pull 20 mobs at a time so most of the time limit is 5-6.
Solution - don't pug.
And yes, besides tanking being dogshit this expansion, every affix apart from sang is healer affix.

This post couldn't be more wrong even if your life depended on it. Almost every single affix is a group effort to properly deal with. Grievous is about the only 'healer' affix, and even then it just depends on the dungeon since a lot of group damage is entirely avoidable. Quaking's kind of a healer affix I guess, but not really.

[Adam Jensen]

Just ran a Mists with my guild a few hours ago.

I was on a boomkin. Disc priest, sub rogue, BM hunter and VDH. You know what we did? We acted like mature adults and worked on explosives together. I got a few with moonfire. Disc priest got a few with SW:P. VDH threw his glaive. The hunter shot a few. Even the rogue got out of his way to do things (the rogue's one of our best players too, since he's always going out of his way to do mechanics and help out, while still maintaining high dps/hps on whatever toon he's playing.)

My point is, the group should not be relegating the explosives to one person, but acting with an expectation that everyone helps out. I mean sure, if you wanna say "hey maybe X player should focus on explosives because he's ranged" or whatever is fine, but that should not come with the assumption that no one else does explosives, especially if the person assigned to it is feeling overwhelmed.

I think the better option is always just work as group. If your group can't do that, you don't have a good group.

[GnomeEU]

I joined a group today with two guys with 2200 rating.
I shit you not that group was much worse than my avg 14 run.
Every second cast got through. Bombs exploded left and right.
At least 3 wipes. The guy with 2200 rating LOSed the healer for 20 seconds at 2 pulls. The other guy didn't decurse the healer once, after silenced for 5 seconds. Lethal casts got through all the time. Like the roots with the 50k dot. There literally only one cast to kick and the group still failed to do so.

I thought i get carried hard now. But that was an epic fail run. Only carried by strong heals.

The bombs are everyone's responsibility. As a healer I kill them when I have free globals. But usually the tank drops from 100 to 10% HP all the time, and with bursting as well... don't expect your healer to waste globals on bombs.

Also the tank can kill bombs yes. But especially in the first 5 seconds you usually struggle to survive and build enough threat. You don't have much time to do bombs while the mage combust an other target.

So if bombs exploded it's your fault, not healer, not tank. It's your fault. Because you didn't kill it

[Adam Jensen]

So if bombs exploded it's your fault, not healer, not tank. It's your fault. Because you didn't kill it

If this forum had an upvote option . . .

[Tojara]

Explosives are a mechanic that everybody should be aware of, with the caveat being how much you pull.

Considering this is a tyrannical week and not a fortified week, the chances your group dies to trash is lower unless of course you're making up for the lack of fortified by pulling extra (which a lot of people will do, especially if they're pushing). If you want to be efficient about it, the best roles to kill explosives are the healer and tank. Why? DPS GCDs are generally more important and in a world where explosives can be one tapped by basically everything, both of those roles should have zero issue doing them.

Here's the thing though. If you're pulling insanely large and you start to see half a dozen explosive orbs pop at once, you can't really expect one person (let alone two) deal with them alone, especially if they're spread out. In such a scenario (which happens), your entire group needs to be aware that if a couple of them go off at the same time, well, your group is probably dead.

With all of that said, generally, the healer generally deals with it. Explosives in Shadowlands spawn slightly outside the radius of the mob that produced it (as opposed to on top of the mob like it did in BFA), making it visually a lot easier to see. However, running around even slightly can cause problems especially for some DPS classes, so it's obviously not ideal. Furthermore, at least at the start of a pull, running around dumping GCDs into explosives as opposed to getting threat probably isn't ideal (depends on the tank you're playing, some can just use a single GCD and have things glued to them for the entire pull).

TLDR; Team effort, but healers are the best equipped to deal with them (generally). If you see lots up at once, you should probably help out.