Blizzard announced something that truly made me ask, what the hell are you thinking? In case you haven't heard, 4.1 is presenting a new system that will offer bonuses if you queue for a small represented role (read: tanks).
Now, this sounds great on the surface. Bonuses for tanks and healers and shorter queue times for DPS. However, while they get shorter queue times, the pure DPS classes get screwed over. Let me make this very clear. If you are a pure DPS class (hunters, warlocks, mages, rogues), you will never have a chance at these rewards. NEVER. There will never be a day when there is an overflowing of tanks and healers enough to make it where you will get the Call to Arms. Now, yes, you do get faster queue times which should mean more instance runs in, however, that will only help you for the first 7 dungeons of the week. After that, there is no pont for DPS.
The other group that gets screwed in this is guilds. A lot of guilds are approaching the level 23 rank right now. As I mentioned on Monday, the quickest way to level up a guild is guild heroics. This new system completely takes away the incentive to run guild heroics. Thankfully, the perks are still there, but after you hit 25, what is left? Nothing. If I'm not getting guild incentives, what is the point of going with a guild group, especially considering that I have to solo queue for a chance for a mount or gems or anything else.
Hybrid classes are loving the changes. As a resto/balance druid who has a good set of tank gear in his bank, I'm loving this new system. When 4.2 hits and all the old gear becomes Justice Points gear, you bet I'm gonna try to catch up on gear if I'm needed in emergency for a raid. And I have chances for extra gold or a rare mount in the process? Yes, please.
So, is it possible to fix this? In my opinion, yes. One, it should change every four hours and just make it random, not based on what is needed. That way, at least the pure DPS have a chance to get the rewards. Second, if a guild, not just a group, are queued for the random role for the next 4 hours, the people filling that role still have a chance to get the goods. Yes, this means that 1 of only 5 people may get the chance for a mount, but that person is not sacrificing the chance at least to run with the guild.
10 comments:
I don't even buy the argument that this will reduce queue times. The majority of the "new tanks" introduced to the queue won't be actual tanks - they'll be shitty asshole hybrid DPS trying to get carried to free pets and mounts.
If I hadn't already quit, this would be the reason I would. Hands down.
I understand what you're trying to do with the 1 hour random thing.
The problem I see with that is that tanks will look at the LFD window, see that it's not "tank hour" and will not queue. "Meh, I'll try again next hour". Same with healers.
Indeed, it's a bad situation for all pure DPS classes, unless Blizzard locks people into their tanking/healing spec and removing all options to switching back to DPS.
While I'm not a fan of the proposed system, I don't buy the "DPS are being screwed" argument.
Nothing in that bag is unique, and everything in it can be acquired, usually with less effort and no RNG (such as pets from the other faction), through other means. And, frankly, a little extra gold and occasional gem (which are worth next to nothing as is) just isn't worth having to deal with a full PUG anyway.
I mean, I'm a tank. I've always been a tank. It's my passion. I have multiple tanks of every class than can tank because I enjoy it so much... and I'll say right now. I don't care about the bag. At all. If I want Anzu I'll go solo a BC heroic like anyone else should be able to do at 85. There are tons of valid reasons to worry about this change. "Pure DPS is being slighted" isn't one of them IMO.
"If I want Anzu I'll go solo a BC heroic like anyone else should be able to do at 85."
Right. One chance per day, as is the same for everyone.
Except now, tanks get more than one chance because they... chose the right class at character selection.
This is fair how, exactly?
@Rilgon
I agree with all of that. You are gonna see bears trying to tank in caster gear or paladins tanking in healing gear. It could be nasty.
@Thorianar
That is one possibility I thought of, which in turn would make the queues much longer. At the same time, all 3 tank classes also have DPS specs, and 2 tank classes have healer and DPS specs, so having a random hour change on it would allow people to use their secondry specs more for DPS or heals, if they are skilled. However, you could also see paladins and druids healing who have no reason to heal.
@ktokthrooks
Yes, the mounts are currently available in game and nobody cares too much about gems or gold. However, the pure DPS still get screwed.
Let take the Swift White Hawkstrider. I don't know if this is one in the Call to Arms bag or not. You can farm heroic Magister's Terrace for this mount or you could queue for the Call to Arms. Pure DPS would get one shot a day at this, which would be the farming of heroic Magister's Terrace since they would theoretically never get the Call to Arms. As a healer, I could have anywhere from 2 - 10 times a day to get that rare mount depending on how many dungeons I queue for. For one day, the percentage difference may be small. However take 6 months, and the advantage statistically swings heavily to the healer doing the Call to Arms and farming heroic Magister's Terrace. The main reason is while the drop rate is the same between the Call to Arms and the mount dropping in heroic Magister's Terrace, just the shere number of attempts gives the advantage to the healer.
@Redhawks
I think there is something you are missing from all of this. The reason the queues are so long is there is 15-20 times more dps queuing up over tanks and healers. If your suggestion of having a dps 4 hour window show up every few times would screw dps even more then they are screwed now.
The whole point of giving extra rewards to tanks and healers is to get them to queue when they didn't plan on queuing. If there is no reward they won't queue (even if they have a dps spec). If they did you only increase the time spent in the queue. If you think hour long queues are bad now what happens when tanks are now queuing as dps during the dps 4 hour block. What do you think that will do to queue times?
The whole LFG reward thing is kind of pointless if you get 4 hours to your roll and you have to spend all 4 of it in a queue.
Is this system new reward system fair to dps? Well it is and it is not. On the one hand DPS are in the queue because they need gear or points. I fail to see how getting what you want faster is screwing you. The most valuable resource in this game is time. Sure you miss out on the possibility of getting something shiny, but you get what you were there for in the first place faster.
Prior to the LFG system the whole game is built around favoring DPS. As part of any activity that requires a tank (Dungons/Raids) you only need 1 tank per 5 people for dungons and 10 person raids, or 2-3 tanks per 25 people for bigger raids. Removing healers that is a 3-1 - 7-1 ratio of dps per tank. In a small 10 man raiding guild having more then 3 tanks is usually over kill. Even in large guilds you only need 3-5 tanks total. Prior to the LFG tool if you were that 4th or 6th tank in the guild, you didn't get to do much other then solo quest or look outside the guild for a dungon run. In this way people have by natural progression kept the tank population low.
Because of this game design concept Blizzard has 2 options to boost queues. 1. They need to encourage existing tanks to run more often than the once a day they need for themselves, or 2. Encourage more people to be tanks. While this solution isn't perfect (which they admit as such) giving any incentive for DPS to run more often will only make the problem worse.
My personal opinion, take away the server wide RDF and make it server ONLY. Before you get all puffy, it will be tough for awhile, long que and bad players but as the servers community starts to govern itself; those jerk players will be weeded out. Besides, we have long que and bad players now, at least this way we know in a few weeks it will get better. At least good players will want to play again knowing that they will have some sort of control over who they play with. My opinion, as a healer, I don't plan on taking Blizzard up on their offer of extra loot. It's too frustrating. I've been harrassed and called names from people I will never see again, it's no fun. I'd like my server to be a community again.
Making it server wide rather than battlegroup wide would not fix anything imo. I don't see how it would "weed players out." Wouldn't it just be exactly the same?
I posted an opinion on CTA at http://www.toprosters.com/call-to-arms
DPS that do Archy while waiting in the queue arguably get much, much better (I.e. Stat-boosting gear, better looking rarer non-unique cosmetic rewards, and more gold) than someone queuing as tank or healer who would have otherwise queued DPS .
Besides the system is garbage because once you get the reward out of it you wanted, you will go back to queuing as DPS.
Its one of the good platform for awareness of people. Keep sharing such stuff in the future too.
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