Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Ideas to Fix Heroics.

This has absolutely nothing to do with difficulty, I thought I would get that out of the way first.

The LFD system is critically broken at the moment.  Unless you go with guild mates the success rate is low.  Even now a few weeks after release there is still a huge turnover in groups and there are still people that have no business being in heroics.  Blizzard has the ability to fix this and I wish they would.  Here is a short list of things I would love to see added to the LFD system.

1) Real Gear Check.
- The Hunter wearing Resto Shaman gear, the Ret Pally wearing Holy gear, the healer with hit on all their items.  Do not just check average item level, check what the items are.  If the items do not match the spec then count them as 0 in the average..

2) Spec Check.
- Speaking of spec.  A simple check to make sure that the person queuing for Tank or Healer is actually a tank or healer with actual tank or healer gear would be really nice.  If someone is not in Tank/Healer Spec at the moment and not in Tank/Healer gear at the moment then they should not be allowed to queue as a tank or healer.

3) PvE Check.
- PvP gear is named PvP gear for a reason.  It is for PvP and not PvE.  While it is okay to some extent it is not correctly itemized for PvE.  The Holy Paladin I had healing in 4/5 PvP gear did a great job, he would have done better if he wasn't trying to cheat the system. 

4) Anti-Griefing Enforcement.
- Rogue is doing tricks on the healer because it is funny?  Boomkin bringing entire rooms into the fight and laughing?  People being continuously rude and offensive?  Someone porting out and refusing to leave when they know you can not kick them?
When you kick them there should be a check box for griefing.  All griefing kicks should be reviewed.  Griefers should be locked out of heroics for a week for each offense.  Filing a false griefing kick would get the person that started the griefing kick a week off from heroics, this way it polices itself and will not be misused.

5) DPS Check.
- While I am normally 100% against this type of stuff it is needed.  A Warlock pulling 3K, a Ret Pally pulling 4K, a Shaman pulling 5K.  They all have no business being in a heroic yet.  Make a three strike system that warns the person.  If they do under 6K DPS (which is still low) on a boss fight the system will let them know they get a strike.  If they get three strikes in one day they are banned from queuing for heroics for a week.  This way they can police themselves.  They can choose to keep going after they sucked it up on two bosses and take their chances or they can drop group and try again tomorrow after they think about what they were doing wrong for a while.  (I know this would be the hardest one to implement but something like this is needed)

Doing some simple changes like this will really help the LFD system.  The major problem with the system the way it is and the reason all heroics are hard is because you have people in there that have no business being in there.  Blizzard needs to implement something better then this horrible (and inaccurate) item level garbage they have. 

Anyone can get a high enough item level without ever stepping into a normal dungeon.  The problem is many of these horrible players never tried the normal version.  That is why they suck.  I go back to an old suggestion I had before.  Require everyone to do every standard dungeon at least 3 times before they unlock the heroic version of it.  There is no way to make them learn but if you force them to try it on normal at least something has a chance to stick.

Fix the LFD system and that is all that is needed for those people screaming to fix the heroics.  The heroics are not the problem, the idiots that queue up for them is the problem.

3 comments:

  1. I see a few faults here.

    "If someone is not in Tank/Healer Spec at the moment and not in Tank/Healer gear at the moment then they should not be allowed to queue as a tank or healer."

    Did you think about hybrids at all? I can queue as either a tank or a healer, or any combination of the three roles depending on what my current spec is. You can check more than one box for a reason. Towards the end of Wrath I could DPS in my cat set in a bear spec good enough for dungeons (3k-4k depending on the group), so in heroics I'd check all three boxes if I happened to be feral/resto.

    "If they get three strikes in one day they are banned from queuing for heroics for a week."

    An entire week? That's pretty harsh, and it would lock them out of doing random heroics with guildmates and friends as well (who might be able to support lower DPS).

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  2. You have a point about hybrids but I can't think of any other possible suggestion to weed out the 3 DPS tanks I had the other day or the ret healer.

    Okay, maybe a week is harsh. 48 hours seem more reasonable?

    I do think some sort of check needs to be put into the game for these things. When I run with guild mates, even as few as 2 and we pug 2 there is never a problem.

    When I fly solo I have still never found a group that can get past 1 boss. To many people that are in wrong spec, wrong gear, or just not ready.

    These people are the only reason heroics are [i]hard[/i].

    Thanks for the comment.

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  3. I think a good start to fixing the LFG would be to judge a person's average item level based on what they have equipped, not what's in their bags/bank. A mage getting into a heroic because they have warrior plate sitting in their backpack isn't a great idea. It would put hybrids in an awkward spot (multiple roles = multiple gear sets) so maybe only soulbound gear would be considered. Interesting post, now it's got me thinking :)

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