the top keys do run with a healer, they just do the first pulls with a balance druid since they dont need the heal and then they swap to resto when they do

It’s not healer less, they do first pull as all dps then healer go out and respec

To me the bigger issue is the vdh craze. Don’t get me wrong I love demon hunter. Flying and jumping around like a maniac is my favorite thing but when 90%+ of the tanks in the game playing mythics are vdh that’s an issue

Do Engineers still have BRes in DF? That was really useful/fun in prior expansions..

The self sustain and heals provided by non healer roles has got to be reduced by a lot. I understand that Blood DK play style revolves around this but even they shouldn't be able to solo the last 30% of a boss. Affixes also need to be more dps role focused. A new one could be one that only "dps role" assigned players are allowed to interact with and if they get it wrong they get a dps debuff of like 30-50% stacking until out of combat.

This is what happens when you start treating healers like 4th dps. Every class in this game is gauged on how much damage it can do. It's the only thing blizz balances around. They've simplified the game to the point that there is no room for various approaches to solving a problem. Every dungeon is a nail, and dps is a hammer. To 'fix' this blizzard will either have to lean into it completely and make healers ACTUAL dps with smart heals, like ESO does, or completely redesign how dungeon encounters work. I'll give you 3 guesses which route they are going to take. This is always going to be the end of a game as old as wow. Players have been optimizing for literal decades. The only way to counter that is to increase the amount of damage things do, to make it more challenging for the healer. But if you make things TOO damaging, the tank cant tank it. So you make the tank able to take care of themselves, but now if the DPS get hit by anything, they outright die with no chance of being healed. So you make it so the damage is all avoidable. But now there's nothing for the healer to do, and the best approach to an encounter is to burn it down before it can do anything. And nothing short of a completely new approach to dungeons and how groups engage with them is going to get you away from this. The best blizzard has been able to do with their 'balance' is introduce brief experimental periods where people are trying to figure out what the newest, most optimized group comp is. As long as classes are different, something is going to be better than the rest for the majority of content. Blizz COULD fix this. Dungeons don't have to be massive zerg fest where you round up a number of trivial packs of trash and blast them down as fast as you can on your way to the next boss encounter. I would love to see the elevated numbers dialed way back away from current extremes. Less mobs, less damage, more meaningful mechanics even for trash. Make damage difficult to avoid but fixable. Make tanks less tanky. Make healers NEED to heal more than they DPS or the group FAILS. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO PUNISH GROUPS WHEN THEY ATTEMPT TO IGNORE ROLE REQUIREMENTS.

I think they should add the ability to flex for dungeons. You can clear with 5 but mobs get extra health if you add 1 more dps. The main reason why I think we should get this is the amount of dps that queue for a dungeon vs. tanks.

In season 3 and 4 I played monk and shaman in heal. The way you heal people on M+ and the fact that most DHs run ahead and don't look to see if the rest of the team is near them (M+10- M+14) caused me to start playing DPS after 12 years of healing. And most likely I will not return to healing again. Another healer less. Bravo!

its the debuff matrix. remove the debuff matrix. dh brings 5% more magic damage, so if dh is meta it will be a caster meta. Mage brings 5% int, Priest brings 5% stam, RDruid brings 3% vers, evoker brings all the utility.

Personally I think adding even more homogenization is definitely not the right move. I hate how it's become due to m+ and I think the solution lies in the homogenized m+ environment. Make dungeons different enough in terms of required damage & healing profile and utility. ST, aoe, 2-5 target cleave, lust item inside a dungeon, br item inside a dungeon etc. Kinda how they incorporated different professions to be usefull in different dungeons so you don't feel universally bad. Let everyone shine at what they're good at. This game used to be like that. Some classes were god cleavers while other exceled at aoe. Nowadays, it's all the same for every spec with minimal difference with clear winners (classes that have utility). I think dungeons being kinda the same and how it defines meta is not being discussed enough.

Hello Josh, thanks again for your great videos! I started mw in SL and you taught me a lot :) I dont think I've heard you mentioning buffs, but at high keys, on top of lust, you really want verse and stamina buffs so you need a druid and a priest anyway. You can use engineering to brez but it can be awkward, I am a mistweaver (though this season I play brewmaster a tad more) with bres^^. Also DH tank brings the increased magical damage debuff to mobs, and if you look at those teams they are centered around magical damage, so no ww, no war or hunter (even if they ticked your boxes). But I think the most important thing is that for the huge majority of m+ runners, myself included, this kind of minmaxing is just not relevant. Only like the top of the top need that. But somehow it trickles down to even +8s and people say stupid things like they NEED a dh tank there or such. Meta comps should not matter that much to smaller teams. We run atm (when we can seem we struggle finding time to play together^^) a guardian druid, holy priest, retpal, bm hunter and mage/warlock comp and what limits us is NOT our classes so far, it's our skill and dungeon knowledge. (I'm not playing my monk because we had a tank healer already and I'm the flex one^^) In short I find it quite funny that people (not you, just my own gears turning^^) are so concerned about meta, when they have still so much to improve on their own. Have a nice day and keep on the good work :) PS: I agreee about augvokers, bliz once again did not think that through beforehand^^

18:43 - 19:12 i was about to point that issue but you got me first, nice! Maybe an entire different type of solution is needed here though, we need to cook more. I think they need need to find a new, very significant reason to have a healer in the group but it has to be something special but not tied to damage nor healing. Maybe unique utility related things, or support-type related stuff? That would be something interesting to explore.

Thanks for the content! I have a question about afflicted, I was reading expel harm works on them but I thought it was a self heal that dealt damage to enemies. How does expel harm work to get rid of afflicted?

Love the content as always. One issue with the idea of sharping all utility. If you remove the unique selling points of a spec and reduce it down to hps or dps. Would that not make the situation worse by providing more clearly which spec is the right choice?

I’d invite you to actually look through the logs of these runs or the vods. Boomkins are resto Druid in those keys. They just start the dungeon as balance and then go back out after a few pulls, maybe a boss, depending on the key.

Imo the reason that rdruid is so much better than the other specs. Esp from a less sweaty perspective (pugging 8-12’s) is bc the verse buff and rebirth. And mostly the verse buff. Honestly at my level actual lust isn’t that much better than drums. So why not just continue the trend of replacement buffs. Like a scroll of rebirth, a scroll of chaos brand, scroll of versatility. At my level the meta doesn’t really matter you can time an incorporeal week with 4 warrior and a monk. I get that other players are meta chasers and annoying but if a 515 2500 MW applies to a pug I still get accepted even if no lust/BR. I think this healer meta issue is very overblown and just good for attention/ content. The real balance issue is the way utility and defensive creep interact with the party comp. Rpallies and mages are just better. Bc they can do all the affixes, don’t die, and do big damage. Hunters and Shams aren’t as pog bc they fall over to a stiff wind.

I was not aware of this phenomenon, but this perfectly explains why all healers are tuned to be so absurdly weak, really insightful data. This design really invalidates healers and if you have to tune healers' power to be so low in order for them to fit in the grand framework, basically making them virtually useless, that's just bad design unless your target design is to eliminate the entire class from the game, which i don't think almost anyone would want. Unless it's miscalculation of scaling in the framework of the design, this really bad.

Firstly the keys arent done without a healer. The first little bit is done without a healer then they go out and swap spec. And it is done with the very top players pushing the very limits of classes and game. Why is everyone so concerned they are able to do this, it will not effect 99.7% of the player base.

@LBNinja7, Hello if you check the logs of Lota you would see that he was in Resto spec during the dungeon. But people do start the dung on balance spec for the first huge pulls to add up the damage. But the question is how a tank is capable to sustain themselves on such a big pull on such a high key :). I think it is clear enough for everyone that DHs have an issue.

BRez for all healers and only healers...fixed!

LB, I appreciate all the work you put into doing your (tutorial and commentary) vids! Just look at all the discussion THIS video alone has created. I also appreciate everyone that dropped comments below with their input. While it is a true statement 'If you're going to do something, do it to the best of your ability!' Some other folks might refer to this as 'Play the game at normal speed and not half-fast (Half assed)', there are concerns Dev's should consider so our monthly sub $$ doesn't vanish into the ether of some other game or maybe serious things like RL issues. As tempting as it is for me to say here "Peeps, it's just a game!". I resist that urge, as it is more than that. For many (including Microsoft or whoever owns Blizzard this week) it's a billion dollar business. To them I would say....'If you want to keep your 'fat stacks' rolling in, consider listening to some really great ideas (some listed below ~ like giving every healer a BRez! No brainer) from the people supplying those fat stacks on your gravy train of life. We work hard from our $$~ don't take that for granted on the way to your bank! For others, I would say to keep an open mind about toon changes. People have a right to express their concerns or viewpoints, whether you consider them good or bad. It is true this game pisses some players off while others (1%) benefits. Kind of like life, really! I feel like 'Smashing this toon or buffing this one' is always going to be part of the game. Some would probably benefit from using the 'OFF' button on the game for a short while to go outside to get some fresh air! Your grandmother might appreciate having her basement back too! Till then, LB, keep cranking out the vids! Everyone, just do him the fav and smash the LIKE and sub buttons. And, Blizzard, (FFS) pay attention to your customers before your magical green carpet of cash flies away! (FFS#2) GIVE ALL HEALERS A FREKKIN BREZ! [My idea is to put a different CD timer on the one who uses the Brez than for others who have one. Example~ 4 min CD for Brez caster and a 2 minute for all others who have one. Or something like that] (OK~ Dismounting soap box now!) Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts a bit! There are so many things that can easily pull us away from all of this. It is always a good thing to keep things in perspective. Enjoy life~ tomorrow is promised to no one!

The reason rdruid is meta has little to do with combat ress, u can get that from crafted bracers. they have x3 mass cc, motw is more or less a must in high keys. And on top of that they have by far the most output. And only second to holy priest on dmg. Rdruid is just so far ahead of all healers in most aspects of the game atm

Ur title is misleading. M+ is not broken, and the average player is having a good time climbing with 3 dps, 1 healer, and any tank. The top % doesn't rep the majority.

There is no such thing as a no healer at all run. They only go healerless for the first boss and then they have to swap. But it won't show up.

They should just take the "L" and make Augmentation a tank spec for the new expansion.

Augmentation was clearly a mistake.. Heck they need to add a 4th role to LFR now for Support.

I disagree with giving all tanks the same kit - that sounds pretty boring, and lazy design. But VDH does need a big nerf to their control - that is just too much of an advantage. However, another key to break the meta is having all dps either be target capped or un-capped. Doing so would go a long way to fixing the dps meta, and therefore the healer meta.

Tbh wow just needs more rot damage throughout a dungeon and a healer wouldnt really be able to be dropped

Surely it doesn't really matter as long as you can still easily (assuming all playing good at their class) time +10 with any comp. Sure META makes it easier but if it can be done by a reasonable team then all good! The rest is chasing kudos not any in game gains. You still get the kudos if you can do cutting edge keys as an off meta, that's why there's off meta competitions. The big problem is the average Joe worrying about the problems of the 0.01%. Those guys should do whatever it takes to do the highest of the high and that doesn't concern 99.99% of us... That's a big majority 😜

Well at the level I'm playing at if I screw up and die we wipe lol.

This is wrong, if you check with top healers, they haven't stopped healing what they're doing is go healer early for hard heal checks, send healer out swap to balance kill boss

Sad to see yet another comp and blizz not doing anything about it

There will never be an answer to a meta. Something will always be better than something else, even if by 0.1 percent. He notion of finding a way to balance things just leads to something else being meta.

They only go balance for the first pull... and also you are ysing the top players on a coordinating group using special weakauras that nobody use. And yes, shadow priest and vengeance DH need to be nerfed.

totally agree

That is common sense, so blizz won't do it and continue screwing everyone with their meta classes

The easy way to fix the distrbution of avoidable vs unavoidable damage Righr now avoidable damage is like 99.999 % of the damage of a dungeon ( not damage done but damage that can ocur) Put more unavoidable damage and nerf avoidable damage You fix healer having to go dps spec fore pull that dont do damage You fix vdh domminance And you fix low key being harder to heal than mid/high one

The truth is that resto druid is by far the best healer and almost as broken as VDH. They do way more damage than others and can swap out to boomkin for insane shenanigans like this. There's nothing a monk healer can do to touch the output of a good resto druid both in key healing and damage. It's pathetic. Blizzard's balance team are stealing their paychecks. Their insistence on there being a meta god comp every season is ridiculous. High keys this season are balanced around the god comp.

Sorry Mate, but I absolutly don't agree with your points in this video. :( Meta will always be there, and that's okay. The question is if other classes are capable of doing high keys. The answer is YES. That's very heathy for the game... Some are better some are worse... That's natural... What is not natural is extrenly high tanks self healing... They need to nerf tanks... With these high stats DH is basically undestructable... and also has all CCs... We got here becasue people want have button for every situation... and that's big issue for the game... The classes are there because they have different strengths and weakneses... However, if they keep adding selfsustain abilities, they diminish weakneses and we're getting to the point when everybody is just blasting through everything... There were times when you always wanted Lock in your group for Soul stone and Health stone, now everybody has self healing and half of the classes have Battle ress... There were times when you wanted Shaman in your group for Hero and specific totems which nobody else had... Now it doesn't matter because everybody has everything... When different classes offer different abilities/buffs/debuffs you need to make choices because you have just 5 spots in the group... so groups can differ based on the composition... although the META will always be there, it won't be that this comp has everything... 🤷

You know i really like your idea about giving all healers bres and all dps some sort of lust, like it's the same thing with the mana regeneration issue healers had in past expansions and it was fixed simply by making it equal regen rates and mana pools. In my opinion your suggested solution is exactly what is needed BUT they need to add something special about each type of brez and lust so there's still something about each class that makes it's bres and lust more special not just a fluff, something that is not a game changer but also something that makes the class show of why their type of bres showcases its usefulness, like, it covers a baseline and the added extra class related thingy added is just a small bonus of small significance. All this would simplify balance as well overall across the board. WE ARE COOKING BOYZ!

I agree, each healer should have a brez and no other classes roles should. The warlock Soulstone should only work if applied before the death, like it used to be. Tanks should get a wider range of mitigation tools and melee should have interrupts and range should have party buffs. Each range should be able to apply the same buffs as the other ranged. This would balance things. Everything else should just be flavor. Keys shouldn't start unless a "role check" is met and this would allow them to make affixes based on roles too.

you are overthinking this. all they have to do to fix the meta is 1. take away double sigils for DH tanks 2. more uncapped aoe for every spec. 3. remove Power infusion

It was super depressing as a healer when i swap to bear and do more healing... No wonder why the heal column is disappearing. Instead of making the heal job better they are just eliminating it.

Dude, they are not healerless keys. Just look at logs or videos.

There are always gonna be metas. Game does not need to be balanced around the meta/competition. It's an RPG, so more homogenization while also reducing class identity will make it stale. If playing at the highest level to obtain score/world-first is your goal, then reroll to best spec and achieve your goal. Please stop advocating for classes to be the same mechanically, so the only thing we have to differentiate them is changing skins and spell-colors.

Anybody with cursory knowledge of a bell curve understands that the top % is not representative of the majority of player experiences.

All healers should have battleres. Other classes can also have it, but if you don't run the healing spec, it won't work in m+