Looking for Equilibrium

When using the Dungeon Finder to find a group, damage-dealers (dps) endure long waiting times, while tanks and healers enjoy a much shorter time in the queue. Since the facility was introduced, this has remained the case.


One may wonder why the average waiting time for a dps has not decreased, but instead even increased, since then. Having economic insight, one may envision the three roles as three choices a dungeoneering player decides on as part of an economic decision, and also that the the three choices, on the large scale with several people, tend to economic equilibrium with each other.

Cost and benefit
When faced with a choice of activities to perform, a person makes an economic decision whenever they try to gain the most satisfaction by choosing the best activity for them. For each activity, they need to compare the costs incurred with the benefits gained. The excess of the benefit over the cost is their (accounting) profit from the activity:

Accounting profit = Benefits - Costs

Given that a dungeoneering player wants the dungeon experience to be as enjoyable as possible, they make an economic decision when they decide on which role to fulfill in the group. They consider:

• Cost in terms of what they dislike about the role. For example, a player may dislike the need for a tank to track threat levels.
• Benefit in terms of what they like about the role. For example, a player may see prestige in the tank's role of keeping the other players safe from harm.

Given the above, the player chooses the role that provides the greatest profit.

Opportunity cost and dungeoneers
When several dungeoneering players face this decision, an 'economy' develops, in which there is one 'market' for each role. Like a real-life economy with several of its own markets, whatever happens in one market affects all the others. This is because the person decides to participate in a market based on whichever provides the greatest profit for them; where profits change, so does their decision.

The opportunity cost of an activity is the accounting profit given up by not doing the next best activity in order to do the current activity. This itself is a cost which the person must consider in their economic decision. By subtracting the opportunity cost from their accounting profit, they determine the economic profit, a complete summary of the costs and benefits:

Economic profit = Accounting profit - Opportunity costs
or
Economic profit = Benefits - (Explicit) Costs - Opportunity costs

A rational person would ensure that their accounting profit at least equals the opportunity cost, so as to avoid an economic loss.

A significant cost incurred in fulfilling a given group role is the waiting time in the queue. The waiting time of the current role is considered under the common (explicit) costs; however, where its waiting time is longer than that of the next best role, an opportunity cost arises. This is the case in choosing dps instead of tanking/healing; as the waiting time for dps is longer than that for both tanking and healing, they forego the benefit of a reduced wait time.

However, since the wait times for dps have remained at high levels, the three 'markets' must be at equilibrium with each other. This can be explained by the following:

• Personal preference
• Greater difficulty tanking and healing than dpsing
• Freedom to do other activities while queued

These factors provide benefits and/or avoided costs which offset the costs associated with long waiting times, sometimes considerably.

The 'triage' paradigm of healing
With the Cataclysm expansion came a shift in the mindset of the healer. Instead of healing without much thought of efficiency, they must now more carefully choose who to heal. Players generally impress from this an increased difficulty to heal, and so the cost of filling a healing role has generally increased.
In their quest for maximum 'profits', one can expect some number of healers to abandon healing. They may either fill another role (if they can still earn a positive profit by filling another role) or abandon dungeoneering altogether (if they cannot). This can swell the ranks of dps, which has the effect of increasing waiting times. The exodus of healers continues until an economic equilibrium is achieved, where there is a greater proportion of dps and therefore longer wait times for them.