Method Jdotb Q&A #11 - Weekly Affix Advice, MDI Prizes, World First Race

Pubblicato 15/05/2018 alle 15:29 da Squishei

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World Firsts

Given the extraordinary amount of time and energy it takes to compete in the MDI, do you feel the prize justifies the “cost”?

If you’re competing in the MDI to win money, then no it isn’t worth the time. It likely never will be. While the MDI has shown promise as a spectator event, it’s unrealistic to think that WoW will suddenly (in its 15th year of existence) become a force in the esports space with PvE content. It wasn’t designed with competition in mind, and while it can be bent towards that end, WoW will always suffer from some fairly serious issues as an esports platform.

And there will always be teams that are willing to participate in tournaments for free. The prestige is what draws them, not the paycheck. They just want to know where they stack up against the rest of the competition. The money is a byproduct, not the goal. Personally I know I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about the way I practiced for regionals if the prize pool had been $0 instead of $25k.

Having said that, the MDI can be lucrative for people in other ways. While the prize pool is never going to compare favorably to events in LoL, DoTA or CS:GO, you can use the notoriety gained from the MDI to help yourself in other ways (e.g., grow your stream or attract sponsors). There are ways to make money playing WoW, but they’re in content creation, not in winning tournaments. If the MDI helps you make a name for yourself, then it can easily be the thing that jumpstarts a career, but there’s the rub -- the MDI will open a door, not be the destination.

Do you feel the level of talent coming out of Europe and North America should have netted them a better chance at more slots at Global Finals? Why don’t they just take the best 8 times from around the world?

Really, the only region that has shown it is dramatically ahead of the rest of the world is EU. There were several teams in EU time trials that just missed the regionals cut that were clearly superior to all but a handful of teams from the rest of the regions. I’m not sure it’d be an exaggeration to say that EU could’ve taken a second group of eight teams and still had more talent in that group than some of the other regions.

So while I understand the call for a meritocracy, that desire must give way to pragmatism for now. The biggest thing for the MDI currently is to grow. And in order to grow, it must be watched. And in order to be watched, it needs to give people a reason to watch it. The easiest way to get people to watch the MDI right now is to give them a rooting interest in the teams playing. Unfortunately, casual fans of M+ right now aren’t going to know many of the MDI participants (even from their own region). If you expect China to watch an MDI tournament with one or two Chinese teams in it, you’re sadly mistaken. APAC and NA might be more willing to watch an EU-dominated MDI because we’re all English-speaking and have some familiarity with the teams in the other regions, but even then I suspect you’d lose a lot of the crowd that just wants to root for local underdogs.

Maybe the MDI can get to the point where it doesn’t need to pander to attract viewers, but for the time being it has to try to be as broadly appealing as possible, and that means giving proportional representation to all the regions.

It’s a poorly kept secret that a lot of guilds will be streaming the race to world first for Uldir. Do you feel that raiders have maybe been influenced by the success that MDI competitors have had with streaming time trial practice?

Has the M+ community had an impact on streaming culture in WoW? I’m sure it has in some ways. While several teams stopped streaming practice for MDI, that’s an actual tournament with actual prizes. Nothing like that exists in the raiding community. M+ streamers have been very open with their strategies while pushing keys on live servers, and that’s the closest analog to world first racing that M+ has.

But I think it’s more just a changing of the guard. The race to world first used to be much more contested, and streaming was a relatively niche thing, so it was easy for guilds to tell their streamers to go dark for progression. But these days every top guild is bound to have at least a few streamers, and the race to world first hasn’t featured more than two or three guilds for the last several tiers.

After a while, the rest of the top 10 or 20 or 50 guilds have to be asking themselves why they forego all the benefits of streaming to jockey for rankings that people will forget about in two months. Most people only really care about watching raids while the content is fresh, and that has been exactly when all the top guilds stopped streaming it. If you aren’t realistically in the race for first, why wouldn’t you try to strike while the iron is hot and your audience is at its most receptive?

How much of the responsibility for one’s own health shifts to the player as opposed to the healer at high key levels? How do you get DPS, who typically don’t do that, to get on board with it?

When I first started playing around with catweaving as a druid, my party died noticeably more often. Some of that was my fault because I’d try to DPS when I should have been healing. Some of it was my party’s fault for failing to avoid avoidable damage. Once I got more comfortable DPSing, I learned where I could pin my ears back and go full damage mode and where I needed to put on healing gear and be prepared to spam Regrowth.

Throughout this learning process, there were times when my teammates would die and I would know that if I’d been healing more, I could’ve saved them -- regardless of whether it was their fault or not that they took the damage. And that made me feel guilty for DPSing because I’m the healer and first and foremost it’s my job to heal. But I slowly adjusted my attitude over time. Instead of seeing each member of the team in their concrete roles (tank, DPS, healer), I started seeing our team as simply five people trying to finish the dungeon with as much time left on the key as possible.

Through that frame of reference, any time a DPS takes avoidable damage and I have to heal it, that is time spent healing when I could have been DPSing. So if the DPS says something to me like, “Just do your job and heal,” well, that isn’t exactly correct. My job is to make the key go as fast as possible, and that’s their job as well, and if they’re making me heal when I could DPS then they aren’t doing their job.

Are you going to be able to impress that point of view on a random PUG? Hell no. But if you’re playing with a stable team that’s looking to push keys, then hopefully your team is reasonable and willing to look at things from a different angle.

What does your perfect M+ experience look like in BFA?

The one thing I’m really looking for in M+ in BFA is meaningful healer engagement in every dungeon. While bosses like Amalgam of Souls or Cordana Felsong -- with very minimal healing requirements and thus a lot of opportunity to DPS as a healer -- can be occasionally fun, it’s not a great situation when a healer finds themselves obsolete for an entire boss fight. And is it really asking so much that a boss fight include difficult healing elements?

Not that every fight has to be punishing in the damage department, but there needs to be some kind of damage coming out that makes a healer feel necessary and (perhaps more importantly) challenged at times. The most fun M+ fights for me in Legion were L’ura, Moroes, Talixae Flamewreath, etc. Fights where the damage was sustained and intense, and you knew that a bad healer wasn’t going to be able to keep up with it. You don’t need every boss to look like this, but there needs to be at least one of these bosses in every dungeon.

I want more bosses where my performance as a healer matters, where my mistakes will mean a wipe, and where my mastery of my class is tested.

Weekly Affix AdviceDungeons Most Affected by Bursting:

Lower Karazhan: Lower Kara is loaded with pulls that can get out of hand quickly with Bursting. The Spectral Patron packs can easily go above 20 stacks of Bursting if you aren’t careful, and Phantom Guest and Ghostly Understudy pulls can reach similar numbers. You can pull smaller in Lower to compensate but it will slow the dungeon down considerably.

Eye of Azshara: The Bitterbrine Scavengers and Seaspray Crabs will toss up so many stacks of Bursting that many groups opt to just have their healer stand out of range Bursting range so he or she can res rest of the group who pulls everything and accepts their fate.

The Arcway: The Enchanted Broodlings will generate a bunch of Bursting quickly; while Manafang Devourers won’t reach quite the same number of stacks, they will occasionally jump to ranged players which will make them die slower than the rest of the pack because they aren’t in cleave range. This will often cause high stacks of Bursting to get refreshed when the stragglers are cleaned up at the end. The Plagued Rat pull is already dangerous by itself, and Bursting almost guarantees some deaths here.

Neltharion’s Lair: It’s easy to lose track of the Vileshard Crawlers and Tarspitter Slugs during big pulls and get a double digit bursting stack that keeps extending itself because DoTs continue to kill off low health mobs.

Dungeons Most Affected by Quaking:General note about Quaking: Any boss where you’re relying on Prydaz to live through a mechanic is a potential issue on Quaking week because your Prydaz will frequently get knocked off by Quaking and won’t have time to refresh before the dangerous mechanic happens.

Darkheart Thicket: Dresaron’s Down Draft is already painful to heal through, and adding Quaking to it can often be lethal. If Quaking lines up with Xavius’ Feed on the Weak or Nightmare Bolt, it will probably kill someone.

Court of Stars: It’s common for groups to stack on Talixae Flamewreath to make sure her adds spawn in a tight group, but this can easily kill your party on Quaking. Bad Quaking timing during Melandrus’ Slicing Maelstrom will make it difficult to do the necessary healing.

Halls of Valor: Fenryr can be a little more challenging with Quaking, but this one is almost all about Hyrja. Quaking right before Arcing Bolt or Expel Light can be deadly, and Quaking during Eye of the Storm is often a wipe.

Upper Karazhan: It will be much more difficult for groups to stack up on Curator to keep the adds clustered and the puddles neatly stacked. Quaking will also cause issues on Medivh during Flamewreath and Guardians when healing throughput will already be a struggle.

Dungeons Most Affected by Fortified:

Halls of Valor: Valarjar Thundercallers and Runecarvers start to get lethal on higher keys, and the Storm Drake’s Lightning Breath has a chance to wreck the tank. Make sure to dodge the Ebonclaw Worg leaps. The four kings will all hurt, and tanking multiple of them will be iffy.

Maw of Souls: Seacursed Soulkeeper’s Brackwater Blast will start needing personal cooldowns. Night Watch Mariner should be skipped as the damage is likely unlivable on higher keys. Shroud Hounds will kill someone if they leap to the same target. Skjal’s Give No Quarter will be deadly.

Neltharion’s Lair: Rockbound Pelters and Blightshard Shapers will shred the party with their respective casts. Rockbound Breaker’s Avalanche will be lethal. Stoneclaw Grubmaster’s Stone Shatter will probably kill anyone standing near the tank. Emberhusk Dominators do tons of damage to the three furthest players from them, so be prepared to pop cooldowns.

The Arcway: Dreadborne Seers will start killing people Prophecies of Doom. Searing Wound from Wrathguard Felblades will require significant healing and can quickly overwhelm the healer if it goes out on multiple targets. If one person takes multiple casts of Arcanic Bane from Withered Fiends it will kill them, and the Withered Manawraiths will start doing real damage to the tank. The Plagued Rat packs are very dangerous for melee.

Dungeons Least Affected by This Week’s Affixes:

Cathedral of Eternal Night: The imp pulls in Thrashbite’s room are the only place where Bursting is likely to be painful. Quaking can be annoying on Mephistroph, but you can play around it.

Vault of the Wardens: Quaking won’t overly affect any of the bosses in Vault, and none of the trash pulls are big enough to make Bursting lethal.

Upper Karazhan: Curator and Medivh will be more difficult with Quaking, but since it’s Fortified week it balances out. Watch out for Bursting when pulling Mana Devourers; the rest of the trash will be easy.

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