Analysis and Thoughts on Soloq and Healers

[Exploration]

Foreword

Back in AT I remember there was a priest who played at above 2k rating in full relentless gear. This was back when everyone at that rating had full gear. I found it quite impressive and thought that there was no way I could do that. Personally I was barely able to play at above 2k with full gear on my priest.

Much later, I came to Blackrock to see how things had changed. As I looked at my vanished gear I came to remember this said priest and thought what the hell, lets give it a shot. I might be rusty since its been a long break but it should be easier now that people at 2k dont have full gear, right?

I soon expanded my challenge to all four healer classes, playing Discipline Priest, Restoration Druid, Holy Paladin and Restoration Shaman, in that order, to find out if 2k on starter gear was doable.


This forum post seeks to explore the following questions:

• What differencies are there between the four healer classes
• How diffculty is it to use only starter gear as a healer?
• Does SoloQ mmr represent skill?
• Is there an unclimbable trench in SoloQ?
• Why are healers unpopular in SoloQ?

Disclaimer 1: The objective of this post is not to boast on my skill. I fully admit to being a low to medium skill player.
Disclaimer 2: Lot of the things explored in this post are only relevant to low level SoloQ. High level SoloQ (2.3k+) is a completely different beast.
Disclaimer 3: I really dont know that much about Shaman compared to the other three.


Part 1 - The Challenge

Objective: Achieve 2k rating on each healer class in SoloQ
Rules: No items buyable with arena points allowed. No profession advantages allowed.

1.1 Expectations

I expected 2k to be difficult to achieve. I expected it to be especially difficult on Shaman which is my weakest class of the four, as well some somewhat difficult on Priest which I think is quite a hard class to play. Paladin and Druid I thought to have easier time on.

1.2 Results


Classes in order by Winrate from highest to lowest (at the time of achieving 2k)

• Druid 68,2% (75 wins 35 losses)
• Shaman 61,5% (104 wins - 65 losses)
• Paladin 58% ( I lost statistics on this one, but it was a similar number to my shaman)
• Priest 56,7% (148 - 113)

Priest is a hard class and it was the class I started on after my long break so it was to be expected for the winrate to be lower. What really separates itself from the rest is the Druid at massive 68,2% winrate, which I played as my second class. Is druid the easiest class of the four? This question is further explored later on.

On Druid I wanted 2050 rating for some transmogs so I played more games, achieving it with just 5 more games playing a record of 5 - 0.

On Paladin, which I played as my third class, I further challenged myself to achieve rating of 2.1k. It was hard. My end record was 240 wins and 202 losses, giving me a winrate of just above 54%.

1.3 Difficulties of Gear

TLDR: Druid suffers least from starter gear, Paladin suffers the most. Priest and Shaman have problems but they can be played around a bit more. Lack of bauble is the single most horrible thing.

Some explanation on my statements, for each class

Spoiler: Show

1.3.1 Druid

Setting up gear for druid was simple. I don't think I made any changes to the item choices from the premade gear set. I did drop my penetration down to 75 though, and gemmed for maximum spell power. Druid does not suffer much from having only starter gear. Mana, Survival and Healing power can all be maintained with passive play, that is, sitting in tree form and prehotting a lot. This is probably the single most affecting factor on my high winrate with druid. I played at 1227 resilience and 2775 unbuffed spellpower.

Further gear only mostly allows you to safely play a bit more aggressive, as you need to worry less about mana and survival.

The biggest deal is lack of bauble, which makes silence combos quite scary.

1.3.2 Shaman

On Shaman I switched to two pieces of Elemental Set for the resilience bonus straight away. Other than that I mostly kept to the preset gear. I played with 1327 resilience, 2735 spellpower and 393/318 mp5. Shaman has to make a choice when it comes to gear here. You either have the gear to survive or you have the gear that allows you to maintain mana. Luckily Shaman excels in short games (more on this later) so mp5 is not that big of a deal.

I could probably have further played to my advantages by using multiple gear sets depending on the setup.

Lack of bauble hurts a ton again.

1.3.3 Priest

The most versatile of the bunch. Priest has a ton of different gear setups to choose from, but against my all wishes I went with the defensive one. I gemmed mostly mp5 and chose the spirit / mp5 pieces. 1275 resilience, 2845 spell power and 181 haste. Priest suffers quite a bit from starter gear. Mana, survival, and lack of haste are all real problems. Even with full mp5 gemming I still find myself going out of mana sometimes. There isn't even a proper PvE mana regen staff to choose in the starter gear selection.

Survival is still probably the biggest problem.

1.3.4 Paladin

Believe it or not, but I feel Paladin has the hardest time with starter gear. Paladin seems to lack everything with starter gear. Lack of mana can be played against with proper ability usage, but the lack of haste, resilience, spell power and crit is terrible. Haste is the biggest issue of the bunch, since lack of haste means you won't be able to dispel properly, or rebuff sacred shield against purges. To play against the gear issues I used three different gear sets depending on the setups.

Set 1: 664 resilience, 742 haste, 218 mp5 while casting
Set 2: 802 resilience, 608 haste, 273 mp5 while casting (a lot less crit)
Set 3: 964 resilience, 385 haste, 308 mp5 while casting (a further bit less crit)

I played mostly with the set 1. Yeah, 664 resilience. But I found it absolutely necessary to keep anyone alive on my quest to 2.1k.

Lack of bauble was problematic here as well, notably because Binding Light is not that good of a second trinket.

1.3.5 Healer Gear Dependancy vs DPS Gear Dependancy

I can only make guesses as I did not play DPS classes in my experiment. But if I had to guess, I would say that healer classes in general are less dependant on gear than DPS classes.

1.4 Difficulty of Skill

Overall I had easier time achieving 2k on every one of the classest than I thought. Even when I only had shaman left to go, I imagined it would be hard because it is my weakest class.


Here is how I rank the difficulty of playing each class to 2k (relative to each other):

• Druid: Easy
• Paladin: Medium
• Shaman: Hard
• Priest: Hard

Druid is my strongest class so it might actually be a bit harder, and shaman is my weakest class so it might actually be a bit easier. These are just my experiences.

Some explanation on my statements of skill requirment

Spoiler: Show

1.4.1 Druid

As stated in the previous section, the lack of gear favours passive and easy play. You could probably hit 1.8k rating by just sitting in tree form if you position yourself smartly. Dodging CC is a bit easier than on Paladin, since you don't have to worry about polymorphs. When I look at other druids at low ratings, their most common mistake is perhaps going for too risky cyclones.

High level druid play is completely different thing though.

1.4.2 Paladin

Paladin allows for quite a bit of mistakes with so many panic buttons, and the healing "rotation" is the easiest of the bunch. On the other hand for such a low resilience good positioning is mandatory. Strategical knowledge of which cooldown to use when is also a big deal when playing paladin. Things like when to bubble before trinketting, to name one example.

1.4.3 Shaman

Shaman has easy setups and hard setups. Major part of good shaman play is constant usage of shear and grounding, so when you are playing against a spell cleave you can find yourself drowning in the amount of spells and CC. I don't have much else to say, but I did expect this one to be harder.

1.4.4 Priest

Priest, oh priest. There are so many ways to die or to end up in endless CC chain on this class. Luckily priest does also allow for some big plays to be made, so lack of gear isn't that big of a deal if you happen to be a skilled individual. The difference between hitting SWD on every CC thrown at you and none, can be the difference between 1800 and 2100 rating.

1.4.5 Difficulty of Healer Classes vs DPS Classes

So, are healer classes easier to play than DPS classes?

I would say they are pretty average, but not requiring quite as much gear to get started is a big bonus though.




Part 2 - Interesting Statistics and Findings

2.1 Aggressive vs Defensive Healers


Here are my average game lengths based on the 28 last games on each class

• Paladin 2,7 minutes
• Druid 2,4 minutes
• Priest 1,9 minutes
• Shaman 1,85 minutes

These statistics further prove that Paladin and Druid are indeed the more defensive healers, whereas Priest and Shaman are the more aggressive ones. If I were to take this one step further and compare setup-based statistics, I bet there would be a correlation with Rogues (being the most aggressive, opening based class) having better winrate with Priest and Shaman healers compared to Paladin and Druid ones.


2.2 Win Streaks and Trench

One interesting finding in my games was that my win rate got higher the higher rating I got*. Wait a minute you say. Aren't the games supposed to get harder and harder?

* The exception here is my paladin when I pushed for 2.1k, my winrate dropped considerably

Take these two example pictures from earlier games of my Shaman and Druid. Then take a look at my later games with the two, around 2k rating: Shaman_2 and Druid_2. Thats quite the difference, isn't it?

So why is that? Well, theres two main reasons.

First is that I got better with each game I played. More consistent results.

Second is that, the games did in fact get easier. People stop LoSing heals, start dispelling, start helping with heals, start CCing. More consistent results.

So am I saying that there is a possibly unclimbable trench? What if I was just a slight bit worse, could I have been stuck in 1600s forever? I would say no. Even though my results were less consistent at lower ratings, the direction was always up. There may be small unlucky streaks, but in the end skill prevails.

By the way, my highest winstreak was actually on my Shaman. A whopping 19 game winstreak. The chances of that happening at my winrate were 0.0097%. Yeah.


2.3 Does SoloQ Rating Represent Skill?

I think SoloQ rating is the single most representing number of individual skill you can get. But even then, it's not that accurate. Classes that combo well with any other combination of classes have the advantage. Ele shams, Warriors and Warlocks seem to have an advantage, whereas combo specific classes like Rogue seem to suffer. Still, any class should be able to get relatively high ratings when played well, and even the disadvantaged ones like rogues should be able to minimize the disadvantage by playing DuoQ.

This is all without taking balance into acccount. Thats something that I have no business commenting on.


2.4 Amount of Hate

Not going to lie, the SoloQ can be quite hateful.


Here's the amount of death threats and game deletation requests I got for each class.

• Shaman: Not too many
• Druid: A bit more (Despite that crazy winrate!?)
• Priest: Some
• Paladin: A lot

This is by memory so its not necessary all that accurate, but might give some indication.

On a serious note though, do we really have to tell someone to kill themselves just because we lost a game? In my opinion, when you find yourself constantly getting angry while playing this game you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself what you are playing this for. Personally I find the game a lot more enjoyable if I at least try to be friendly with people. You win some, you lose some. Or with someone.

I also feel that healers tend to get more hate than DPS players in general. It is quite unforgiving role to play in the sense that mistakes tend to be very costful. Maybe this hate business is part of why healers are so unpopular in SoloQ?

Then again rogues seem to have it even worse. You miss one opening sap that costs you a game and theres always that one team mate that will tell everyone for the next 10 games how you ****ed up. What a cruel class to play. Rogues have all my sympathy.


Part 3 - Conclusion / TLDR


Here are some points from this writing that I would reiterate:

• Healers are all playable with starter gear up to 2k at relative ease
• If you are playing a healer with starter gear, get Bauble as your first item
• Druids seem to have it a bit easier early on
• There is no unclimbable trench. Your MMR represents your skill, to a decent degree.
• Low ranked DPS people should not be so quick to blame their healers, but rather find ways to make their healing easier. Go run pillar with them. Play defensive for a moment.
• People should try to enjoy the game more. Its not worth playing if you don't.

A quick thank you to AT/Warmane/Blackrock staff. Even though the server seems to be a bit heavily moneytized (I hope its working) and there may not be all the content I hope there might be, it's great to see that the server still works after all these years, and that there is a place to play some good old Wotlk Arena on. I had a ton of fun playing way too much for the past two weeks, so Thank You!


Afterword

There are Two bank signs and a bench in the middle of ****ing nowhere, and I have no idea why.

Also a shameless promotion of my old AT Exploration Movie.

Thanks for reading, hope you found at least some of it interesting.

[jediknight14]

Solid 10/10 post, had fun reading it. Further from now I'll be referencing people here instead of writing paragraphs of text every time.

I'm pretty sure the prime reason that there are so little healers in soloQ is the hate. No matter how chill you are it just gets to you when you hear insults left and right.

There are other reasons though, generally they are played less because unless you are a real beast at the class they are a reactive role, not proactive and proactive roles are a little more fun in pvp I think.

Agree on how easy druid is. To clarify I'm a terrible player. I know a lot about the game but I'm super inconsistent no matter how much I practice so 2k is impossible for me. Even though my main and by far the best class is hunter and I can't even land a cyclone as a druid, because of the fact that druid can start healing before the enemy's cc and burst begins it's super easy to play and I achieved the highest rating on my druid where at low rating the opposing team is basicly incapable of killing anything if you just keep people in open 100% hotted and don't get cc'd/dispelled on inervate.

[Exploration]

Thanks for the reply.

There are other reasons though, generally they are played less because unless you are a real beast at the class they are a reactive role, not proactive and proactive roles are a little more fun in pvp I think.

I find it really interesting what you wrote here. I never thought about it that way, but in the past I've found myself saying that the thing I enjoy the most in strategy games is reacting to my opponents strategies and countering them. So, reactive play. Perhaps thats why I find myself playing healers here. But also the short queue time.

no matter how much I practice so 2k is impossible for me

You really think so? I'm almost tempted to prove you wrong. I was thinking of writing a comprehensive beginner guide for one of the healer classes, but I'm not sure if people would be interested in that sort of thing..

[Soumi]

Veritably well written and well put post.

[theforgotten1]

best post i've read in a while here. i'm going to put it in my stream channel so people can come here and see that the rating is proportional with the way you're playing. thanks for the good read.

btw i laughed hard when you counted the death threaths you recieved ^^

[Orthodox92]

Great post!

[Quote]Second is that, the games did in fact get easier. People stop LoSing heals, start dispelling, start helping with heals, start CCing. More consistent results.[Quote]
I think that every dps players should read this every time before que.

[sagf23424]

Appreciate all the effort you put into the main post

to clarify, with starter gear healers' power should be ranked like this
druid
paladin
priest
shaman

Normally, every 3rd game you meet double melee comps which oneshot both priest and shaman. Priest can have ele/can't have sp in his team and that's a huge advantage. Unlike shaman priest has some instants to survive another second, yet both can't really heal any decent incoming damage.

[Exploration]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I appreciate the feedback.

Appreciate all the effort you put into the main post

to clarify, with starter gear healers' power should be ranked like this
druid
paladin
priest
shaman

Normally, every 3rd game you meet double melee comps which oneshot both priest and shaman. Priest can have ele/can't have sp in his team and that's a huge advantage. Unlike shaman priest has some instants to survive another second, yet both can't really heal any decent incoming damage.

I'm gonna have to say I disagree with you here.

First of all it really depends on what you mean when you say "starter gear healers' power". But even so I would probably not put Shaman as the worst of them in any given list. Perhaps you meant that for either a beginner or a low skill player shaman could be the worst, but I feel that is not the case for the following reasons:

1. Despite being the class I have the least exeperience with, my winrate with shaman was the second highest of the classes. Then again I played shaman to 2k as my last class so it enjoyed the advantage of my experience from my previous games. That being said I did considerably better than on priest.

2. As to what you say about double melees, I went through maybe 80-90 of my last games on shaman, and only found one instance where I lost vs double melee with me dying first. Even on that game I lost because I messed up, and in addition my instant Tidal waves Healing wave did not crit. I found that I won almost all my games vs double melee teams. In my opinion Shaman has considerable survivability versus double melee with the ability to kite so well, while getting healed from stacking hots of healing stream (great in short games where you don't need cleansing!), riptide, earth shield, earthliving and you can even drop down a stoneclaw while running. Bladestorm seemed like the biggest shaman killer to me since it's unkiteable, so there shadow priest is pretty good with that disarm and shield.

Here are some of my latest games vs double melees on shaman if you want to watch (around 1950 rating)

Spoiler: Show

-1698554
-1698355 (this is good example of defensive positoning and kiting, although to be fair I was in favored team)
-1698327 (the one I lost, soloed by warrior, mostly because I forgot to bloodlust lol)
-1698039
More often than not, the meleecleaves seemed to go for my mage, warlock or priest so it was hard to even find games of them going on me.

Edit: I ended up playing some more games to see if I could meet some better melee cleaves.

I did in fact end up losing a bit more, though mostly vs enhance shaman combinations which I did not previously face. Other than that I still feel that with if I played a tiny bit better I could have prolly won most of those games.

Here is a replay of me winning vs a favoured hunter-warrior combo who goes after me.
-1739116
Here the hunter is full geared, but warrior only has wrathful weapon. Still, a far superior gear to mine. With good positioning, kiting and fake casting the game turned out winnable.

Now you could argue that if I was put to play 2.4k games on my starter geared healers I would get stomped every time vs double melee and I agree. But I also think I would lose almost every game regardless of what I was up against.

But this is all speculation. Feel free to clarify what you meant with "starter gear healer powers".

Now a fun story here. I'll leave the player unnamed, but I was spectating a previous very high (like super high) ranked holy paladin playing on starter gear some time ago, and he was having considerable difficulties passing 2k rating. I think this speaks to some evidence as well, that paladin suffers greatly from starter gear.

[ssoro]

tks for this interesting topic, i enjoyed going through it