Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

The PvP Problem: Healers and Awareness in Solo Shuffle

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 95

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PvP awareness and toxicity toward healers has reached critical levels in World of Warcraft's Solo Shuffle, resulting in a significant healer shortage and declining gameplay quality. Discipline Priests are dominating Season 2 while many DPS players refuse to take responsibility for their own positioning errors and unused defensive cooldowns.

• Healers face constant blame for losses despite DPS making critical positioning errors
• Players over-rely on WeakAuras and addons, losing fundamental game awareness
• DPS players frequently fail to use utility abilities like Tremor Totem or Blessing of Sanctuary
• Toxic behavior toward healers is causing them to abandon Solo Shuffle, increasing queue times
• Season 2 balance changes have made Discipline Priests dominant (60% play rate)
• Solo Shuffle should function as a learning environment for trying new specs
• Class knowledge and positioning awareness separate skilled players from average ones

The healthiest thing for WoW PvP would be for players to stop harassing healers, develop better awareness, use their full toolkit of abilities, and understand positioning requirements in arenas.

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Speaker 1:

Music do. Hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go through a variety of subjects With regards to World of Warcraft, so grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this midweek episode. We're going to be going over pvp now. This might not be everyone's sort of cup of tea, um, but pvp in itself, every new season brings about some sort of challenges and I want to sort of go over some of the more pet peeves of you know season, like seasoned pvp, what they're doing wrong constantly on a basis, stuff like that, um. But it's going to dip into everything from cooldown usage to solo shuffle, to, uh, threes bracket, to absolutely everything. So we're going to start off with solo shuffle now.

Speaker 1:

I'm a very big advocate for solo shuffle. I think that it's very good. I think it's amazing that it's been brought into the game. I think that there is a couple problems with it, okay, one being the fact that there is a lack of healers, and we'll get on to this. We will get on to this, um. The second one being that people aren't really the most how do we put this? They're usually dickheads um, in solo shuffle genuinely? Um, this isn't everyone, obviously this is a select few people. But people will look to complain in solo shuffle when something happens and they'll complain about anyone. Usually this is the healers that get it. So I'm practicing my Resto Shaman.

Speaker 1:

The start of the season, season two, has seen a lot of balance changes. This has seen Disc Priest have a kind of rework, same with MMs. You know multiple things. Disc Priest right now is insane. It's like a 60 play rate when it was 40 last season and it's just outperforming every other sort of healer essentially in the game by a quite decent margin. Okay, closely. That's followed by probably you're looking at your resto shaman, your dragons, you know that sort of thing. But I'm practicing my shaman.

Speaker 1:

Shaman is a class that I wanted to play for well since the beginning of last season. But resto shamans were horrendous last season, which is kind of sad because I love the idea of resto shaman. I've played resto shaman before back in B Shadowlands a bit and stuff like that, and I love the whole aspect and kind of idea of a Shaman. You're putting down your totems, you're very nature orientated, kind of like your druids and stuff. So I wanted to practice my Shaman and solo shuffle. This meant that obviously I'm going to be a little bit of a lower MMR and whenever you try and learn a new spec, you obviously are thinking what the hell am I pressing? What's my big cooldowns? What's my save? This person, oh, shit button. You know you're thinking all of these things and when you go into solo shuffle, you're thinking all of these things and when you go into solo shuffle, uh, you put yourself as a target as a healer, sadly. So I'm practicing my shaman. It's not a bad mmr at the start of the season. It's not bad for it never being played in solo shuffle, really as resto um, I did a few last season, but that was kind of it. So it's not a bad MMR. But I'm trying to play the game essentially just normally, uh, trying to learn the class and trying to figure out what's what cooldown, rotation, stuff like this.

Speaker 1:

Now, people who've played shaman will realize resto shaman. But a lot of things are very infuriating people. People running out of your earthen wall totems, stuff like this. These are big cooldowns that people don't look at and don't realize are on the floor when you're playing in solo shuffle. So people will kite out of your earthen wall totem and you won't get any value from it and stuff and these sort of things for a resto shaman are huge. Now I go up against disc priests on of things for a resto shaman are huge. Okay, now I go up against dis priests. Okay, on my monk, on my shaman, it's only dis priests that I see and I've come up against. So far. I don't think I've come up against any other healer, um in solo shuffle, which is quite unfortunate. Um, but it's, how do I explain this? You're trying to learn a new class whilst dealing with the best healing spec in the game right now, which is disc priest.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so when you lose like four rounds and you win two, or you win one round and you lose five, yes, it can be due to skill. Some of it probably is, because I probably could win some of these rounds if I know what I'm pressing. But I'm still just learning the class. I don't care about my solo shuffle rating. I really, really don't. I'd learn it. I learn these classes so that I can play them in actual threes. Okay, that's how I view solo shuffle. I view them as a learning ground for new classes, essentially because I have a decent understanding of most of the specializations in the game, but to get better at them you need to just play and play and play, and the people that I play with in threes aren't always available, okay, so solo shovel is the go-to there, but when you get these losses, and when you lose it's always oh my God, why didn't you heal me then? And it's like, bro, I tried, like there was an example of like the second game that I ever played, like in Season 2. Second ever solo shuffle on my Resto, shaman, in Season 2.

Speaker 1:

I was on Maldraxxus big map. I was getting constantly CC'd. Okay, was on maldraxxus big map. I was getting constantly cc'd. Okay, constantly cc'd.

Speaker 1:

Um, because I'm with a melee cleave and it's like a warrior and a survival hunter or something. It's um, pretty rough, but essentially this hunter is harpooning away from me, constantly, going out of the earth and and stuff, and when I know that he needs the like trinket, uh, spirit link totem this is a big cooldown to save him. I trinket straight into a literal fear and the thing is like he just happened to press it at the same time because the hodge was like I don't know a couple seconds already into it. So I was holding off to see like whether or not he needed it and stuff, and I went to trinket link him and I trinketed, got feared and the fear ran out. But the thing is I was too far away to link because no one need or someone needed to be within that range and our warrior was on a completely different target. Okay, so the warrior's on one target, the other side, the hunter's on one, and I'm feared away from them, so I can't link.

Speaker 1:

And what spirit link totem is for those that don't know is that it shares your health pool. So if someone's at one percent and you're at 100, you both go to 50. Yeah, does that make sense? Um, because it's sharing your health pool with the other persons and it evens it out constantly. So, yeah, that's the problem. And then the hunter dies. The hunter dies, by the way, without pressing his wall, his turtle, his aspect of the turtle, or his feigned death. Okay, so three big cooldowns that he has that can save him. Feigned death probably doesn't when he gets that low, but he can at least press his wall high because it gives him, or his wall because it will heal him, because when you use your wall as a hunter, it now does exhilaration on you as well. So it does give you a bit of a heal. Um, turtle is just a big immunity. So you know there's all of that.

Speaker 1:

And then we, you know, load into our uh rooms after the next, after that round is complete, and I have the audacity of the warrior saying why didn't you link him? And it's like no one's close to him so I can't link both of you, you being the warrior and the hunter. I got feared away. So I was in CC which, by the way, warriors can break if they're running a berserserk talent, which he wasn't. And then, secondly, you still have Rallying Cry, so you can save him with a Rallying Cry. And fourthly, fifthly, I don't know what I'm on at this point, I've already forgotten, but he has Turtle Wall Feign Death.

Speaker 1:

But he's not the one getting shit. I am because I didn't use every single cooldown that I had Link. He's not the one getting shit. I am because I didn't use every single cooldown that I had. Link was the only thing I had left. I'd used my Ascendance, I'd used my Earthen, I'd used my Totemic Recall to do another Earthen, I'd used my Healing Streams, I used my Healing Tide, I'd used everything. But it's my fault that he died? No, no, no, he's chasing off like a caster or something that's in Uganda, away from me, which means that I'm putting myself in CC, and it's not like I'm avoiding the CC.

Speaker 1:

I think I grounded a couple Hodges in that round alone. I Tremored one fear. You don't have the cooldowns for it, though, you really don't. And the thing is, you can outplay Grounding Totem. You just wait it out, you run over like you're gonna hodge, the shaman will put down grounding totem, and then you just kill it and then you hodge like it's one of these things, so like it's impossible to sort of gauge whether or not you could have saved him. I could have, but no one was near him to save and that was my only cooldown left. But this warrior insists that it was on me to save him, not him, not the hunter himself, but on me. And the thing is I was saving him the entire round. Now it was his turn to press his defenses, and he doesn't do it. I can't control that, I cannot, but I'm the one that gets stick for it because he died, and this is a problem. This is a problem.

Speaker 1:

This shows the lack of awareness that people have in PvP. This shows that people have become desensitized to actually looking at what's happening in the game and looking at their weak aura. That goes beep when someone presses a big offensive cooldown. And then they look at their health and it's like, oh, they're not killing me, so I don't care. You know, the difference between higher level players and lower level players playing the same spec is their awareness and their or their knowledge of what is happening. And I can actually help save them, because if the warrior pressed rallying cry, he probably could have saved him. I probably could have gotten there in time to use my spirit link totem, but he doesn't think that. He thinks I need this for myself. And now you've sat on a cooldown the entire round that you haven't used, but you're blaming me when you could have saved him and it's like ridiculous.

Speaker 1:

Um, another one that shows the awareness of people and it really is bad, because a lot of people do rely on their weak auras. They're fucking I. They're like what is it add-ons? They're going to rely on all of these and they're not actually going to look at their screen. So this one, for example I have a Retribution Paladin. I have an Elemental Shaman on my team. I am against a Disc Priest, a Shadow Priest and a Destro Lock. It was one of the locks, I think it was Destro.

Speaker 1:

So what do all of these classes have? They all have a fear. Okay, they have a fear. They have a silence. They have one stun in psychic horror, but they all have fear. What do retribution paladins have and what do elemental shamans have? Okay, they have a tremor totem. This this isn't on my shaman, by the way, this was on my monk, so I can tremor this, just so that you guys know. But this is on my mist weaver monk. Okay, now, mist weaver has been underperforming a lot.

Speaker 1:

But back to the story. Back to the story um, I have a retribution paladin who has blessing of sank okay, and I have a le shaman who has tremor okay, tremor totem being something that can get you out of fears. Blessing of sank can get you out of fears and silences. Um, yeah, this is a 45 second cooldown and a minute cooldown, okay. Now, I played all six rounds.

Speaker 1:

I got feared probably 20 times once I got um, like dispelled of it via a tremor totem or a blessing a sank. It was a blessing a sank that got me. The shaman didn't press tremor at all when he was on my team. I don't know if he pressed it on the other team, but when he was on my team he didn't. So the way the solo shuffle works, you, you obviously switch people every single round, so one person will be on the other team, someone will go on to their team, etc. So one round out of six is when I didn't have either of these. I didn't have a tremor totem or a sank, which is fine, but the other five rounds I think it came out to about 20 fears in total, and the thing is we lost because of these fears.

Speaker 1:

These fears were very impactful, but they shouldn't be, because I have stuff to get out of it. I have, like people that can get me out of fears, and it's ridiculous and they just didn't press it. And again, I don't know if that's just lack of awareness, which I believe it is. I do believe that people have the lack of awareness in arenas because they know, because they rely on their add-ons so much I genuinely do they rely on sound boards that go beep, beep, boop, boop, like, and it's like what the fuck it's like when primordial wave is pressed or something in season one of uh, the war within. You heard the primordial wave sound and then it's like, okay, I need to be careful because the shaman's gonna pump out a shit ton of damage now and you know, yes, that's good to have, but you need to pair that with the actual like uh, what is it? The awareness of more than a pet rock.

Speaker 1:

Okay, like, people only play solo shuffle and they complain when they lose a round, but then when you look them up, they've never played threes because they can't play threes. Threes is a different game to solo shuffle. Solo shuffle if you're playing the right spec and class, you will automatically do well in that bracket. If you're playing threes, you can make the worst comp decent if you're just good players with good communication and good awareness. Okay, in solar shuffle, it's a different game.

Speaker 1:

I I bet that this elemental shaman that I was playing with was very good last season because elemental shaman was one of the highest like picked classes in the game, because it's simple rotation, its damage output was very good. But this season it got heavily nerfed, I believe, from the small rework that it's had, and it's just useless. And the thing is he never bothered to understand like that he should be using these tremor totems to get your healers out of fears and stuff. He never understood these sort of things because all he did was press damage and that won him the game, because dampening is a big thing in solo shuffle, but his awareness is dog shit. That's the difference and that's the sad thing. That's the sad, sad thing that people aren't as good as they think they are because they only rely on the damage from their class and it being one of the meta classes at that time.

Speaker 1:

So people need to get the awareness back into the game of pvp. Because it's not there. People are losing it because of add-ons, because they hear beep, and then it's like, oh shit, massive damage. Oh, it's not there. People are losing it because of add-ons, because they hear beep, and then it's like, oh shit, massive damage, oh, it's not on me, so I don't care, that's the healer's job. And it's like, no, it needs to be everyone's job. Still, if the healer gets cc'd on the damage, then what if I get feared and then he presses his big damage? But you're an elemental shaman, what are you going to press? You're going to just let yourself die or you're going to tremor totem to get your healer out of the cc and then they can help you. Yeah, so you've helped them and then they can help you, kind of deal. But I don't get this. People don't use their buttons in arena and the thing is like blessing a sank is a pvp talent, so he's actively taking a pvp talent that he's not using in the game. So what's the point? And the thing is retribution paladins have like five buttons anyway, less than five buttons to press anyway. So what are you doing? It's ridiculous. People need to get the awareness back into pvp and I think that it's completely gone because people do rely on it too much with add-ons. They, they really, really do, and it's ridiculous. I I just don't get it.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to show or not show you, but I want to go over this forum post because this ties into a lot of what I've just been talking about. So you want more healers in solo shuffle is the title. Then stop being total jerks to your healers, stop. You want more healers in solo shuffle is the title. Then stop being total jerks to your healers. Stop blaming your losses on healers for your bad positioning, lack of impactful CC and poor target choices. Yeah, I agree. I completely agree with the first sentence.

Speaker 1:

I'm a DPS main? I don't. I have probably shit-talked a healer once in solo shuffle and I don't like doing it, but sometimes it is. I mean, I remember the guy that I shit-talked. He was actively throwing and the thing is he didn't even like hide it. He actively said I'm throwing like after the first round because he lost the first round. He's just like I'm not playing with this guy, I'm throwing and it's like really, dude, come on, your mentality is like rock bottom, like bottom. It's ridiculous. Um, that's the only sort of healer I've, you know, thrown some hands with, basically because it's like what the fuck are you doing? Get over yourself. Like just play the game. Ridiculous. Um.

Speaker 1:

But I've had many people die on my team due to lack of bad positioning, lack of impactful cc and or target choices. I've had people who are on completely different targets before, like in solo shuffle. Example was that warrior and the hunter that I described at the start of this um podcast like it's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. All you got to do is dps is say this target easy, and then you can use the ping system to ping who you are killing. Like it's really there, I am very aware of who my rogue wants to kill. Let's say, if I'm playing rogue boomy, I'm very aware of who my rogue wants to kill. Um, as for cc, some people do just throw it out, and it's a bit ridiculous. Um.

Speaker 1:

The biggest culprit, though, is bad positioning. The amount of times I've seen people go around a corner, which means that your healer has to go out from where they are, where they're comfortable positioning, and they have to put themselves in danger of getting cc'd, of getting switched to, which means that your healer has to go out from where they are, where they're comfortable positioning, and they have to put themselves in danger of getting cc'd, of getting switched to, of getting you know multiple things, and they die because they are around a corner and your healer can't get there quick enough. And then they're like what the fuck? Why didn't you heal me? And it's like bro, you literally can't your line of sighting. And it's yeah, it's ridiculous. Um, carrying on with this.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, every match has a dumb dps mouthing off meanwhile. It was their mistake that cost them the match. I agree, I think most dps players, uh, are the reason that a match is lost. Now I I like I said, I main dps, I main boomy I've probably cost my healers their positioning, which cost us the match. I've also won my healer, like I've also won rounds because of my positioning, for that for our healer. Okay, like it can go both ways.

Speaker 1:

But a lot of people aren't as accustomed to being positionally adept, if that makes sense. They don't understand what the positioning of a healer does for just their team in general. Okay, and this is because a lot of people don't or aren't the targets. If you're looking at an arms warrior or a fury warrior, you genuinely aren't the target most of the time when it comes to being, you know, the one dps to kill or something, so they aren't as sort of ready for it or understand the positioning as much. Um, because it's like oh, I'm not the target, I just do my damage. I press rallying cry when I'm told to. For my other dps, you know I'll intervene every now and again. But when it comes to them being the target, suddenly they have to run back when they should be running like, or they have to run back instead they're running in to do more damage and it's like, oh, this is really bad for us, you need to back the fuck up and yeah, it's.

Speaker 1:

It's tough. It is really really tough because some people just don't know that part of the game and it's ridiculous, and blizzard needs to start banning people for their toxic whispers too. It is beyond frustrating getting whispers from DPS spewing toxic and hateful replies. You should never be spewing hateful or toxic messages in a game. You just shouldn't Just report them and hopefully the Blizzard system will do its thing. But yeah, it's shit. It is very shit and people need to stop doing this in the game. This is why no one wants to heal in Solar Shuffle. You can shove all the rewards you want at people, but no one is going to heal anything with all these toxic jerks. I agree, I do somewhat agree.

Speaker 1:

I think that DPS, who haven't fully grasped what's happened or how we lost the round, is one of the most detrimental things in solo shuffle, because our healer could be out of cooldowns in a full CC chain and yet it will still be their fault. Because it's like oh, why are you getting CC'd? And it's like bro, your positioning is making me having to push in to heal you so that you aren't dying. Because I either have a choice of I leave you to run off into the like sunset and then you die just due to damage, or I have to chase after you get cc'd and then you died, but I still get blamed either way. And it's like you still have 20 cooldowns that you can press, but you refuse to press them, like higher health. So you know who's really at fault here? And it's like, well, you, obviously you were meant to keep me alive. And it's like, yeah, whatever, and people do this and it's fucking ridiculous. It is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but you cannot be blaming your healers for every loss. Sometimes, yes, healers lose you the game, okay, but sometimes you lose yourself the game due to positioning, due to the other dps not doing anything, due to you not cc'ing, due to your bad positioning, due to you not pressing defensive cooldowns.

Speaker 1:

There's many different things that can occur in a game that, like, make you lose that round, and sometimes it's just the classes. Sometimes it genuinely is the classes. I was with a dragon, an evoker and a disgrace in the game and it's double hunter and I think it was a warrior or something. Now this dragon was zero and five. All right, I had the dragon for the last round.

Speaker 1:

So I'm like, how do I play with a dragon? I have to make sure that he's close, make sure that me and the other person are kind of somewhat close to each other so he gets more value out of Dream Breath. I need to know that he's constantly going to want to rescue me and when he rescues me up the top of Moogambala I need to make use of that positioning so I need to keep my distance while he tops me up, whilst he deals with our other hunter that's, you know, taking a bit of damage and we end up winning the last round. And that's due to the fact that I kind of understand what an evoker wants and what the healer wants. A lot of the other classes that were in that game didn't understand it because it seemed like they'd never played healer.

Speaker 1:

But sometimes it's genuinely because of the spec. Disc priest is so good right now into like everything, so you have to play exceptionally well to beat a disc priest at the moment as another healer and I know that. So I need to up my game as well when I'm on the evokers team and sort of understand when to be pressing my defensives, when to I can burst and stuff like that. So it's so many factors in a solo shuffle that can hinder or improve your chance of winning. But everyone needs to stop slandering healers genuinely and that's coming from a dps main that genuinely is something that can't happen.

Speaker 1:

You need to stop slandering people in solo shuffle in general, but because the healers the odd one out on the team, it's like, oh, there's two dps, one healer. Yeah, it's healers fault. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. And it's like that's just not the case. Is it like you're the re? And then what you'll do is that you make this healer stop playing solo shuffle and then you'll be sat there in a queue and be like, oh my God, why is no one queuing Solo Shuffle Dead game?

Speaker 1:

And it's like, well, because you're making healers quit, because you're the dumbass who's like chatting shit about healers, and it's like, just get over yourself. You aren't anything special. In fact, you're probably not even normal. You're the dickheads who are being dickheads and causing people to quit the game, and it's it's ridiculous. People just don't understand it. They really don't. But look, that's my rant over for this week. Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff happening, as well as the etsy shop multiple things happening. I'm looking to put up a couple of dnd products this week, so keep an eye eye out for that. Um, but yeah, thank you all very much once again and go with valor friend, goodbye, thank you.