The big problem with dungeon queues is well-known: there's tons of DPS in queue and not enough healers and tanks. It's understandable, most folks don't want to heal or tank, most folks just want to DPS. But that's not the whole problem. There are three slots for DPS and only two slots for both tank and healer in each dungeon group. There's plenty of room for a large number of DPS, but clearly the number of people rolling only as DPS is even larger.
So I have the solution. It's simple, but you probably won't think it's reasonable. Bear with me and hear me out. The problem is that several classes don't have the option to be a healer or a tank. Hunters, Rogues, Mages, and Warlocks don't have the option to choose anything other than DPS, while only Druid and Paladin are able to be both healer or tank. The solution is to make more classes able to be healers or tanks. It would have been easy if Blizzard had seen this problem in development and had designed the classes from the get go to be capable of these jobs, but it's not particularly easy for a private server to just up and redesign these classes from the ground up.
But I don't think you'd have to. Some classes *COULD* tank but they just can't hold threat. Others do plenty of healing but don't have any way to distribute it to the party members who need it. With a few rather minor tweaks, you could have more tanks and healers. Let me go over the changes:
SHAMANS
Shamans are capable tanks. They have pretty good damage reduction when they use a shield, enhancement and elemental shamans have further talents to reduce incoming damage. They wouldn't make a good raid tank but they'd do pretty okay if they could just hold threat.
Suggested changes: Give shamans a buff that acts like Righteous Fury, a buff which makes their physical, fire, and nature damage have increased threat. Then further increase the bonus threat that Frost Shock already has.
HUNTERS
Hunters already can use their pets to tank. The difficulty with this is really just in how few abilities the pets have to control the situation. Tenacity pets even get the equivalent of the Warrior's skill Ground Slam. And the hunter can take some damage, too. A hunter and pet duo who know how to work together can really pick apart your average dungeon mob pack. The pet won't have any trouble handling threat, while the hunter doesn't actually need that much of a boon in that area, either. I've seen a few hunters actually tank dungeons at their level and hold threat. So hunters could use some threat bonuses but the main thing hunters need is the ability to choose tank as a role.
Suggested changes: Give hunters improved threat while in Aspect of the Monkey, and make Distracting Shot a taunt in addition to its other effect.
ROGUES
Rogues in combat spec have a fairly significant amount of options to reduce incoming damage. Pair this with their high dodge, stuns and control moves, and the Evasion cooldown, and they can actually withstand enough punishment to tank. I'm not an expert on the exact details but I've seen it done. Now rogues are particularly good at tanking spellcaster enemies, and have such heavy single target damage that they can generally hold threat on just one enemy--but they struggle with mob packs a bit and their health is a bit spike-y when getting hit with physical attacks but with all the stamina from druid bear gear they can do alright. Now it won't be easy at all to tank effectively as a Rogue, but the main point is that it is possible and I'm going to go into more detail on how to handle that at the bottom of this post.
Suggested changes: Give Rogues a poison, "painful poison", which is essentially the same as Deadly Poison but with a large amount of bonus threat.
WARLOCKS
Warlocks can use their Voidwalker or Felguard demon to tank much like a hunter pet can tank. They can also control mobs with fear or a few other moves that restrict their actions. It's tricky to keep all enemies focused on the pet, but it can be done. Warlocks won't want to use fear most of the time in dungeons since the feared enemies ALWAYS run straight into more mob packs. So if they can keep enemies on the Voidwalker or Felguard, it's all about keeping that pet alive, and the Warlock can assist heals on the pet.
Suggested changes: Improve multi-target threat on Voidwalker and Felguard, and cause Health Funnel to give threat to the demon pet equivalent to the threat that the Warlock gains. (so both the warlock and pet get threat from health funnel)
MAGES
Mage tanks?? Mages tank Krosh Firehand. Most dungeons aren't chock full of spellcaster mobs, but the few you do have are very much tankable by mages. Mages are great at resisting spell damage, especially fire or frost damage. They can kite melee physical mobs pretty well, but any mistakes can lead very quickly to a dead Mage. And ranged physical is just a thing Mages can't really touch. So actual tanking options for Mages are rather limited, however there are a bunch of dungeons in which the hardest parts are mostly tankable by mages. To name a few: The Nexus, Violet Hold, The Oculus
Suggested changes: Allow Mages to opt in as tank on certain instances--more information at the bottom of the post
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DEATH KNIGHTS
Death Knights in Blood spec can heal themselves with a variety of moves. In Blood Presence, all of their attacks heal themselves for a portion of the damage dealt. Death Strike heals for 10% of their max health, more if there are diseases on the target. Rune Tap can heal up to 20% of the Death Knight's max health. Vampiric Blood can increase the health of the Death Knight as well as the amount of healing done by abilities. Death Knights can't self-heal like a Paladin but they can put out a steady stream of healing.
Suggested changes: Give Death Knights a buff they can place on a party member which causes Death Strike, Rune Tap, and Vampiric Blood effects to affect the buffed target instead of the Death Knight, and make all Blood Presence healing hit all party members while the buff is active on any party member.
HUNTERS
Mend Pet. It's a decent healing ability, but it can only heal the Hunter's pet. Now if the Pet WERE the tank, that would work out fine. Only you can't roll as both healer and tank, also Hunters just aren't that powerful.
Suggested changes: Give Hunters Mend Tank ability which applies Mend Pet healing to the target but only works if they are listed as Party or Raid Tank and if the Hunter is listed as Party or Raid Healer. In a 5-player dungeon in which the Hunter is the healer, the Hunter can back up their mediocre healing prowess by using the pet to off-tank and using Mend Pet to boost total healing output.
WARLOCKS
Warlocks can actually heal party members a bit, plus they can heal themselves by draining life from enemies, and they can funnel their own life into their pet.
Suggested changes: Same deal as with Hunters, only with Health Funnel. The Warlock will have to channel Health Funnel to keep the tank alive, but that is a significantly stronger heal than Mend Pet. Also make Health Funnel's healing output be boosted by spell power--I'm pretty sure it isn't already.
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Final Points:
Some of these classes won't be very good at their role as tank or healer even if the player is very skilled and knows exactly what they are doing. To help sort this out, adjust dungeon finder a bit such that these off-specs can select the roles Sub-tank or Sub-healer, and only put them in groups in which all members have checked the box to agree that sub-tanks/healers are acceptable. Also never queue a sub-tank with a sub-healer. If people don't want to bother with having a Rogue tank their dungeon, or rely on healing from a Death Knight, they can opt out of that. But I'd bet waiting a few hours in queue will begin to change minds.
P.S. I'm pretty good at healing and tanking. I'd enjoy the challenge of having a sub-healer try to keep my tank alive, or trying to flex my healing prowess by keeping a sub-tank alive. I'm sure I'd also give a shot at sub-tanking and sub-healing. In fact I've already done some of that. On Excalibur I was tanking dungeons with an Arms warrior. Not hugely effective (threat management is a bigger issue than you might expect), but with a bit of patience on part of my groupmates, I could do it fine.
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Member
How to fix the dungeon queues
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Forum Veteran
so your suggesting they do a massive overhaul of custom content (which they avoid if they can) just to speed up the rdf que? . goodluck with that.
speaking as someone who only plays dps characters, i've never had to wait more than 30 minutes for a rdf. that's a reasonable time to me, and it goes by pretty fast if you're doing something other than afking in dala while you wait for the que to pop.
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Forum Veteran
Didn't you want to Remove RDF Rewards a week ago so noone would queue at all? This suggestion is like the opposite.
About the suggestion itself: those who want to heal or tank will choose a class that can do it. I am not sure what kind of dungeons this suggestion is intended for but it would not work with level 80 heroic dungeons unless the group already has enough gear to do ICC. And even then it could fail at specific bosses.
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Member
I don't think you go in RDF very much. I've queued as both DPS and tank and waited for hours. Then again, maybe that's because I'm below max level. I don't think dungeons even pop all day some days in the 1-60 range.
P.S. it's spelled QUEUE
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I explicitly stated multiple times on that post that the reason I think RDF rewards should be removed is so that those who wish to circumvent RDF can.
How is it like the opposite? I have two separate problems with RDF and I offer solutions to improve things. These posts are more similar than opposite, and they certainly aren't contradictory.
Please don't try to insert a strawman version of me into your argument when you speak against me. Debate what I said, not what you wish to pretend I said.
It's far from being a perfect solution, but I'm offering ideas. Constructive criticism would be nice. Saying it wouldn't be effective enough therefore we should abandon the idea altogether is a bad argument.Edited: October 16, 2016
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Forum Veteran
Most people here are not interested in playing a custom version of wotlk where hunters can heal and rogues can tank. That's just not how this game works. If you get a rogue that has enough gear to tank then get a hunter to misdirect. If you also want to queue using RDF then get a dps who can queue as tank instead of the rogue so you can get in the dungeon. While any class with enough gear can tank, it's not that simple with healing and any custom spells are not welcome here. If you want dungeon finder to let any class to queue as tank or healer think about random groups formed by queuing alone where, for example, a low geared mage would queue as tank or healer to get in dungeon faster. And then you are stuck there til you find a real tank or healer who can actually do it.
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Forum Veteran
that's your problem than, barely anyone does rdf before 80 on icecrown as it's pointless. you level faster by questing and you out level gear to fast to make rdf worth doing.
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Moderator
Giving every class custom abilities to "make up" for players' class/spec/build decisions (more often than not, the decisions of the players complaining)?
Yeah, not going to happen.
