Comments on: The journey to the dark side ain’t complete, but it’s slouching along

By: Wiredude

Wiredude — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:51:42 +0000

I had an interesting experience yesterday in the "random dungeon thing". It dropped me into H-HoR. Now I've fairly well geared, mostly 232/245 stuff (gearscore of 4850 or something like that fwiw). I've tanked it before, though only a time or 2. So we gave it a few shots, trying both the alcove strat, and the entry hall strat. And it wasn't working. And then a somewhat surprising suggestion was brought up. We decided to go do something else, but as a group. There wasnt' blame being tossed everywhere, no name-calling, nothing, just a sort of statement of "It's not our day folks, but it's not any one person, let's just do something else." And so we did, I think we then drew OK, and stomped through quite easily! .-= Wiredude´s last blog ..The Random Dungeon Tool and You (tankishly) =-.

By: Jaramon

Jaramon — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:02:30 +0000

I started tanking on Friday and Saturday. It is possibly one of the most stressful things I have done in game. Mostly as a DK I only have a handful of things that do AoE and I am not entirely sure that I have the rotation down for stuff like the Tribunal in Halls of Stone or generally in Gundurak. Planned pulls work out ok but the adds and snap agro kick my ass. (it doesn’t help that some folks run long distance when they get an add and I have to hunt them down to pull stuff off of them.

By: Ohforf

Ohforf — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:36:58 +0000

My drood can tank and kitty pew pew equally as well. I love dpsing (as I tank for guild raids, its nice to relax) but if I want to get quick random hc’s – its tank all the way.

One thing I will say, I don’t leave if I dont like the instance – “I pays my money, I takes my chance”

By: corwyn

corwyn — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 18:14:50 +0000

Hint to DPSers: There are only so many experienced tanks. In order to reduce your wait time for a tank, you will need to encourage NEW tanks. Which means being willing to help them along, explain how the fight should go, and not be jerk. If you only except highly skilled, highly geared tanks, you will be waiting a long time for them, and paying through the nose in one form or another.

I have just started tanking, and with great trepidation put myself into the dungeon finder as a tank. I explained to the group that I was new to tanking and had not been in this particular instance. There was some grousing, but once we got started, the bad guys died, we lived; no wipes, no deaths even. A tank encouraged.

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:10:12 +0000

I would really like to see a comparison of people’s new LFG experience compared across Factions and PVE v. PVP battlegroups. I have not had a bad experience yet, although I always tank and I am in all 245 gear (ok I use Black Heart but who doesn’t? LOL.). Maybe I’m Horde prejudiced but from the p.o.v. of bloggers I know are Alliance as opposed to Horde I have seen more horror stories from the Alliance puggers. Addidionally I hear the worst from those I know are on PVE servers. Would be interesting to find out just how anecdotal this is.

By: Cassandri

Cassandri — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:01:49 +0000

I guess what surprises me the most is the number of hybrid melee/tank players that only queue as DPS. I mean, every time you join a group with 1 tank, 1 dps warrior and 1 dps DK (so, like 90% of PuG groups, right?) that’s 2 players who refuse to tank. Because if they had been willing they’d be off forming their own groups.

I don’t really understand it because yes, my main spec is DPS, and my offspec is Discipline but I don’t mind healing 99% of the PuGs that I queue. It’s a good opportunity to stay fresh at playing my offspec. Plus I just enjoy playing my Priest in any spec really.

I see a lot of tanks (and DPS for that matter) automatically leave if it’s Oculus or Old Kingdom. Why? Once the group has been queued the system is going to force 5 people to complete it and keep subbing in more and more people until it’s completed. By leaving you’re just inflicting the very next person with that instance. Just suck it up and run it?

The other thing that occured to me after speaking to a mate of mine (Prot/Ret Pally) who has a daily routine: H ToC (for the tanking neck) and H FoS (for the tanking shoes?) and then the random heroic. Those first 2 groups? He *picked* that “random” instance for those other people. As a (rare) tank the system has no difficulty matching up 3 DPS and a healer to complete the run that he has designated.

I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see the instances with excellent tanking drops coming up over and over again using the “random” system. Remember how easy it was to find a tank for your H UP run at the start of Wrath? They were all after that sword…

By: Gnomeaggedon

Gnomeaggedon — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:33:39 +0000

I must say that I have rapidly become tired of healing. I might now queue for one or two randoms then yearn for the other things I enjoy… unfortunately Blizzard has decided that we must choose one activity.. no matter how long the wait.

As for healing people in the BAD… I heal them to a point… but this game isn’t about torturing myself.

If someone is stupid, they get stupid heals.
If someone is good they get good heals.

Yes I often heal players pets in preference to the players… the pets can’t know any better.

These days I seem to be faced with:
Instance instance runs on the Shaman as healer
Long waits on the Shaman and Mage as DPS
Long waits for Battlegrounds
Long waits for Raids

I pug, so I just have to wear it I guess… Blizzard is pushing the guild culture, but I prefer to play with my disparate group of friends and PuGs… but the oid that is LFG/LFR/BGQ is killing my desire right now.
.-= Gnomeaggedon´s last blog ..For Christmas, All I Want is to be a Gnome Mage =-.

By: karen

karen — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:26:41 +0000

I have had generally very good experiences with the new dungeon finder. I have a hunter and 2 healers (druid and holy priest), and I like being able to get groups quick. I also like to be able to PUG and get my emblems right away, and then be free to help friends or guildies later on. Before I would sometimes try to wait for someone to do my daily – and then miss out on my emblems if they didn’t show.
The groups I have been with have *mostly* been quick and efficient and surprisingly polite. Sometimes I’ll queue up specifcally for one of the new ones, especially on one of my healers. One time, I got put into a pug FoS group with a tank that had worryingly little hp – but my worry was unfounded; we went on to do PoS and HoR together and it went quite well. Another time I queued up for HOR on my priest and got a druid tank who was a bit unhappy about getting it for his random, but was willing to give it a try, and it went quite well (no wipes… a DK died once but the tank was able to brez between add waves). Even my hunter has gotten overwhelmingly decent groups.
Then again, I have gotten some bad ones. I’ve had plenty of people bail on Oculus (not just random people – friends and guildies too). And I had one group where we only had to pug the tank. The tank tried to pull everything and promptly died. And then he refused to accept a rez. We found you can’t kick people who are dead. He was obviously waiting for us to give up and leave group, so he could replace us and avoid having to wait for the dungeon finder debuff. Well, we weren’t going to let him do that – we just left the dungeon and went off and did out dailies – leaving him to lie there dead – until our 15 min debuff was off, and then we dropped group, reformed, and did our random.

By: burntherotank

burntherotank — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:34:19 +0000

this whole badges in heroic seemed like a good idea initially tome, but i started running and getting geared, but i never really get a chance to run the any instance that i have missed by not being in a raiding guild. i have never seen any boss after fereya in uldar ( hard modes not a chance). what i think is much better idea is to remove the raid locks for instance that are not latest so people like me can actually run those and get badges. that atleast a challange todo. and if u get a bad group u wont be locked for the week so u can run it as much as u want but would not as easy as running a few heroics and getting geared.
if billizard really want every one to c the end game content in think this is the best way to do it…. just my .02

By: Gx1080

Gx1080 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:47:49 +0000

This just in. Got in The Occulus. 5 sec later, the entire group leaves. I was all: WHAT??