So I Can Get Valor From Some PvP but Not From Some PvE? Where is the Logic Blizzard?

I'll be the first to say I like the return of valor, it makes content long forgotten worth repeating, such as dungeons or LFR, but I am not exactly sure the way they are adding valor back is the right way to go.  Firstly there is no valor gear.  So collecting valor to upgrade gear is still RNG based.  Sure you can get the valor in a set way, but having something worth upgrading still depends completely 100% on RNG, which is a failed design to begin with.

But lets put the glaringly obvious fact that blizzard has completely screwed up the addition of valor without adding valor gear and look at the even larger glaring issue that pertains to something they did add, and not something they didn't.

Valor will be attained in the following ways:

• Your first random heroic dungeon per day.
• Each mythic dungeon completed once per week.
• Each raid finder wing completely once per week.
• Completing the weekly bonus event quests. (except for the pet battle one)

At face value everything here seem perfectly logical.  They are all well thought out and reasonable ways to gain valor.  Some people are complaining that the pet battle bonus event does not offer valor when all the other bonus events do but even if I do sympathize with their reasoning that because all other events do grant valor as a reward, the pet battle event should as well but I am going to have to side with blizzard here on this one, which if i am doing that must mean there is a good reason as I do not often agree with blizzard it sometimes seems, and say that the pet battle bonus even should not offer valor.

There are 2 solid reasons why the pet battle event should not offer valor and I will gladly share them, even if the blues have only shared one of the two reasons themselves.

1) The pet battle weekly is account wide.  This means I can pick it up on my hunter, do it on my hunter, and turn it in on my mage, for example.  It is not a quest for my hunter.  It is a quest for me, as the player, not me as the character I am playing.  As such, I can only do it once no matter how many characters I have.  So which one of my characters should I get the valor on?  What if I want it on all of them?  No can do, you can only turn it in on one character, as it is an account wide quest.  It is one and done no matter how many characters you have.  So I agree with blizzard, and this is the reason blizzard has given.  A very solid reason if you ask me.

2) This one blizzard has not said, but it is another very solid reason.  And there is also a reason why blizzard has not said this one, as you will find out shortly after I finish explaining it.  That reason is that pet battles are not PvE content.  Pet battles have noting to do with PvE, nothing to do with PvP, heck nothing to do with lore or quests or reputations or anything else in the game.  It is it's own stand alone mini game.  With that said, it makes no sense for a bonus event that honestly has nothing to do with PvE to award a currency that has uses for PvE purposes, and more importantly, only PvE purposes.  Like it or not, that is a very reasonable explanation for why a non PvE bonus even does not offer a PvE based reward.  Because it shouldn't.

Now, being we just explained why the pet battles are not offering valor, for two extremely valid reasons in my opinion, we need to look into what another bonus event does offer valor.  The battleground event precisely.

Why does PvP offer a PvE reward?

It is a very solid question, one I would love to see blizzard answer without just throwing their standard lines at us.  Give us a real and honest reason why someone should have to PvP to increase their PvE power.  Did they not learn anything from mists with their legendary quest line fiasco? Horde hated the 45 minute to an hour wait times, alliance hated the losing 39 times to get the wins they needed.  Win or lose, most people that were a solely PvE focused player liked it.

It seems that blizzard did not learn anything from their past mistakes.  They once again dangle the carrot telling PvE players, "hey, if you want to make the most out of your PvE gear the fastest you can, you have to PvP."  While it is true no one will be "forced" to do it and it most definitely is not "mandatory" the majorly of player who like to feel that they are doing all they can to better their gear will feel "forced" to do it and in their mind it will feel "mandatory".  So just because it isn't mandatory doesn't mean it will not feel mandatory for a great many people.

Just like I have two completely fair reasons why the pet battle bonus event should not offer valor I feel it would only be best if I do the same for why I believe the PvP bonus event should not offer valor as a reward either.

1) Just like pet battles, PvP has nothing to do with PvE.  While there might be a mild connection, such that you can PvP in PvE gear and you can PvE in PvP gear, they are two separate parts of the game.  Even blizzard has acknowledged that by the announcements for legion where they are splitting the two further apart than they have ever been.  So they can not play ignorant to the fact.  Unless they plan to start giving PvE players conquest points as a reward for finishing the weekly dungeon bonus events and killing raid bosses, they should not be giving PvP players valor for completing their battleground events.  It is as simple as that.

2) Just like valor does nothing for the pet battler, because it is not like you can level pets or increase their rarity with valor, it does nothing for the PvP player.  It is a completely useless currency in PvP.  You can not buy PvP gear with valor, you can not upgrade PvP gear for valor, you can not use valor to get enchants for your PvP gear even.  Bottom line is, valor is 100% useless to the PvP player.

All that said, if you do both normally, kudos to you, you can benefit from it.  But for everyone else, it makes no sense what so ever.  But there is something that makes even less sense than a PvP quest offering a reward that can only be used in PvE and that is the general focus of the entire game in PvE, raiding, not offering a reward that is used for PvE power.

Why doesn't raiding offer valor?

Sure, you can say looking for raid offers valor, but that is not what I am talking about.  I am talking about organized raiding, not random group raiding.

Lets look at what valor is intended to do this time around.  It is intended to boost the power of PvE gear a tiny bit to help people feel like they are getting stronger as the expansion goes along.  This is something all MMOs require.  As soon as people stop feeling as if they are advancing, they stop playing, in large amounts it seems.  To keep people playing you have to keep them feeling like they are moving forward, getting stronger, even if it is only 10 item levels at a time on one single piece of gear.

So even if all you are doing is farming content and not pushing it, having a little boost to your gear allows you to go from doing 88K on that farm boss to 90K on that farm boss.  It makes you feel as if you are still growing stronger as time goes on even if you are not pushing any new content for yourself, be it moving on to heroic or mythic.  You still will get to see your character grow stronger week by week, and people like that, they really really like that.

See, that is what the valor is being added for, to make people feel as if they are growing stronger.  But in some cases, and for a great many guilds out there, that feeling of getting stronger is not just about feeling stronger, it is about getting stronger. 

If you are that normal mode guild stuck on archie, having the entire guild being able to add 10 item levels could help push you through.  If you are that heroic guild just starting progression and hitting the gorefiend wall that seems to effect a great many guilds when they first got to it, those 10 item levels for everyone can actually mean the difference between downing it or continuing to wipe.  And then there are guilds like mine, with only 15 or 16 decent players, at best, that will never get to see a mythic.  Maybe, just maybe, we might be able to get a couple of bosses down if those 16 all had 10 extra item levels so we can carry a few slots with people doing heroic numbers in a mythic.  Or perhaps you are a group that have been working mythic but each boss becomes a new challenge, those 10 item levels for everyone can make that new challenge a hell of a lot more bearable in the dull drums of a late expansion when people start getting bored and wiping tends to tire people out more causing them to quit by turning and 50 wipe first kill into a 25 wipe first kill thanks to having a higher item level.

You see, the item level boost, while nice for everyone, is actually required for raiders.  And not just high end raiders, raiders of all skill levels from normal to mythic.  Allowing a normal guild to get their first archie kill, allowing a struggling guild to get past gorefiend on heroic, allowing guilds like mine who thought mythic was out of the question to think, once again, we might actually have a prayer of seeing a few bosses if we were higher geared so we could carry a few lesser players, and of course, the better guilds working through their first progression on mythic will have a more enjoyable time with it, or even the best guilds that already have everything on farm by making their farming go much smoother and faster.

So those valor upgrades will effect raiders, actual raiders, more than any other players in the game.  Yet for some reason, one that completely escapes me, you can not get valor from raiding.  Why?  If you can get valor from PvP and PvP gear can not even be upgraded, why can you not get valor from raiding when those people not only can upgrade their gear but very well might be the people that need to do so the most.

Now with my piece said, I would like to end by adding, why no valor from our first of each challenge mode each week too?  It could breath more life into it and isn't that what valor is supposed to be meant to do, at least this incarnation of it.

So my question is this blizzard...

Why can we get valor from PvP when we can not upgrade PvP gear but we can not get valor from raiding when we can upgrade raiding gear?

I do not see the logic behind this at all.

The Less Skill Required, The More Fun the Content is

The title of this post is something I just mentioned in a comment to someone with regards to the timewalker dungeons and some issues he had in it.  The line refers to random group content only.  And I 100% completely believe it to be true.

The problem with the timewalker dungeons (which I have none, I love them) is that a lot of "bad" players run into them thinking they can just plow through them like they do a current dungeon and they meet their demise.  This happens by the tank not being able to take all the damage, the healer not being able to keep up with the healing, or the damage dealers just not doing enough damage to down the mobs in a timely manner.

These players are the ones that think they are good players because "I can solo heroics if I wanted to" and do not realize that their gear is scaled down.  The first time they run into something where they might need skill, and they do not have their over geared characters gear to carry them through it, they fail.  Miserably.  Welcome to timewalkers.

There really is no reason to ever wipe in a timewalker dungeon.  I've done them all.  I've done them with great groups, I've done them with poor groups.  I've done them as tank, as healer and as damage dealer.  I've done them on characters I was good at and characters I played quite poorly on.  And one thing I am absolutely certain of is that these dungeons are a push over compared to what they originally were.  They are easy, very easy.  Assuming you do not try to play as if you were are over gearing it and try pulling the entire dungeon at once.  Yeah, that won't end well.

To illustrate my point I am going to play a game of make believe, because that is just fun to do.  We are going to take a group of "poor" players and put them in 710 item level gear.  We have Bob the rogue, Ann the hunter, Dave the Mage, Megan the healer and Tom the tank.

They are "decent" in the idea that with enough practice they can eventually get things down, or can at least sneak in and do well enough to not be kicked in a pug so they can get a few bosses down here and there, but each on their own is a poor player.

Now in this make believe world lets send those players into two random dungeons together.

Enter Dungeon #1: Upper Backrock Spires Heroic.

They walk in and start pulling, the tank is taking little damage, the healer is able to keep everyone up with hots only for the most part and the DPS are all on different targets but everything is dying fairly quick.  They are not even stopping the mobs from operating the canons and they don't even notice they are there because things are going down so fast.

They get to the first boss and screw up a bit, Dave the Mage even dies trying to deactivate the things when he jumps down but Megan uses the battle rez on him and he is back to trying to open them again.  The boss goes down pretty quick even if they do not do the fight right, so to speak, because they over gear it.

Second boss comes and they do not interrupt, the boss switches focus to a damage dealer and because no one was interrupting, the healer just heals them through it.  They stand in bad a little too long, the two adds with the boss go down seconds apart because of split DPS instead of one at a time nice and fast as intended.  The tank does not even hold aggro on all three as the adds routinely attack the damage dealers instead of the tank and the healer still has no problem.

On the way to the next boss they get knocked back into more mobs, and then still some more, pulling the entire room.  The tank goes into panic mode and instead of rolling his coodowns he hits everything at once, but it works and they get by because the DPS is so OP.

The rest of the dungeon goes like this.  Mistakes, misusing of abilities, abilities not being used at all, ignoring stuff because the healer can heal through it, you know the deal, the standard poor skilled pug thing.

When all is over, everyone had a great time.  Things got slaughtered, things moved fast, and with the exception of Dave, who wears tissue paper as armor, no one died.

Enter Dungeon #2: Ahn'kehet, the Old Kingdom, Timerwalkers

Tom the tank runs in and pulls a pack with a spell flinger, not one of them or even two of them, but three of them.  With the lowered gear scaled closer to correctly, but still pretty OP for this content, the poor players are not downing the mobs as fast as they just were in the last dungeon they did.

Being the mobs are not going down, that means three spell flingers are up.  Being the group does not know anything about stunning or interrupting the spell flingers start flinging spells and the tank goes down faster than a thai hooker, then the healer melts and everyone else follows suit pretty quickly.

They reassemble, tom the tank blames the healer for not healing him, megan the healer says he went from 100 to 0 instantly, and she is not lying, and the damage dealers just sit back and let them argue because to them, it is both the tank and the healers fault.

They go in and pull again, doing the same thing.  One mob less then before because that is all they killed, one mob, and it was not even a spell flinger.  This attempt ends in the same way the previous one did, with the tank dying, the healer dying and then the damage dealers dying.

After playing the blame game once again where Megan calls Tom the worst tank ever, even after she said in the last dungeon "You are so easy to heal Tom, you take no damage, you are a great tank" they go at it again and decide that perhaps they will only pull one pack this time.

They do just that and they do a little better.  The spell flinger is getting casts off as the damage dealers are attacking what seems to be everything but the mob they should be focused on and the tank, of course, can't be bothered interrupting an ability that does 80% health damage to him.  The healer struggles to keep him up and keeps struggling, until the end when Tom dies and then Bob pops evasion and evasion tanks for a few seconds before it goes down.

Wow, that was really hard for these poor players.  If only they knew how to interrupt, how to stun, now to focus damage, how to actually do damage at decent level in this gear instead of letting the gear carry them like normal, it would have been no problem.

They move on to the next two flinger packs and do it as they did the first, with 2 pulls for each pack.  Their repair bill is already a nightmare and they have not touched the first boss.

When the first boss comes it ends up being another wipe fest as Tom does not pick up the big add, and unlike the second boss in UBRS where the healer, when over geared, could heal through the damage that was being put on to the damage dealer, that was also over geared, this time a lower scaled geared healer could not keep up the lower scaled geared DPS that was getting beat on by the add.  They wipe.

It happens a second time too before the tank realizes that he needs to pick up the add.  Surprise surprise, who would have ever thought that the tank should do that.  Bad Tom.  After they down it, Dave says some of his gear is broke so he is heading back out to repair, everyone else follows to take the chance to repair and when outside they all come to the conclusion that it is not worth finishing this dungeon.

So when this is all over, before it is even finished, no one had any fun because the content required skill, something this make believe "test" group did not have.  No fun was had by anyone, well, except for the spell flingers perhaps.

I like the timewalkers dungeons.  They are a fun throw back and they are extremely easy when compared to the original ones, but even if I do like them, I freely admit, I love blowing through a heroic dungeon now even more.  I love the fact I can basically solo them, and so can anyone else in decent gear.  It is just flat out fun to blow things up.  Anyone that says otherwise is lying.

While I can interrupt, stun, knockback, trap, tranq, etc, in the timewalkers, and while I do find them fun, doing things where you do not need to do any of that because you can just destroy stuff is just more fun, sometimes at least.  And in my opinion "sometimes" means "in random groups".

I am of the opinion that anything that uses the random group making system should never, not in a million years, include anything that requires any modicum of skill.  Leave that stuff for raids, mythic dungeons, and other content were you assemble a group yourself and don't let the system do it for you.

The reason people remember BC and wrath dungeons so fondly is because at the time they were released, when they were new and no one knew what they were doing and they were still a challenge until they were learned, we needed to assemble groups by hand. 

Look what happened when they added that same concept with cataclysm.  The cataclysm heroic were no harder than the wrath or BC ones on release.  But they were random groupings.  And what happened there?  Dungeons are too hard happened.  Sorry, they were not too hard, they were never too hard, they were easier than wrath heroics, they were easier than BC heroics, but they allowed random grouping.  That is what made them hard.

Come to think of it, I did not need those make believe examples, all I needed was the cataclysm heroics.

With guild = awesome fun, a bit of a challenge, but felt great doing them.

With random grouping = Curl up in a ball crying while whimpering mommy or it was great.  A flip of the coin, random if you will.

Bottom line is, for random content, the less skill required, the more fun the content is.

Historical Revisionism: The Wrath Time Walker Dungeons

I really enjoyed the time walker wrath dungeons but I think I enjoyed them a little too much for the completely wrong reasons.  It is sort of like the entire game has had collective amnesia or just decided as a whole to write a historical revision of what wrath dungeons were like.  I was starting to think I was the only one that remembered the truth.

It is not like this came completely as a surprise for me being I have been hearing for so long how wrath dungeons were just mass pull AoE fests that had no mechanics and nothing that could kill you.  It seems every time a conversation about dungeons comes up on any forum system out there it always falls into how easy the wrath dungeons were.

It always made me wonder what these people were smoking.  And why were they not sharing.  If you were to ask me if the wrath dungeons were easier than the cataclysm dungeons I would surely say yes, but they were harder than anything we saw in mists and harder than anything we saw in warlords.  Not like the people that read and post on the forums would ever agree with that.  The manta that wrath dungeons were easy has been going on so long that people just repeat it without thinking.  They do not realize that they are making up a new history for them, that they were never actually as easy as people remember them to be.

I think what happens is that people remember what it was like when the group finder was first added to the game.  Having quick access to dungeons we all already knew and all greatly out geared gave the impression they were easy.  You could get 5 random people and do them nice and easy.  Well lets see, getting into one in 20 minutes was new, being able to spam them every 20 minutes was new, and being able to group with a massive pool of people whom, most likely over geared it and knew it like the back of their hand, made them super easy.

Anything is easy when you over gear it.  Even cataclysm dungeons were easy once you knew the fights and over geared them.  Yes, even before they gave some slight nerfs to them, yes, even in that first week, cataclysm dungeons had already reached easy mode.  If you found a group in all dungeon gear that had done all the bosses before, they were no problem what so ever.  But if you managed to get a group that had new people, or a new tank or even more importantly a new healer, cataclysm dungeons were still hard.  Just like wrath dungeons.

Yes Virgina, wrath dungeons were harder than people remember them to be.  And this time walking weekend was a complete laugh fest for me because of that fact.  Sadly I took way to much enjoyment out of watching others die.  Tanks mostly, lots of bad tanks.

Either with people that were new to the game and never did them and only knew what they read on the forums, or with people that forgot the fights, or with people that never did them on release, they all walked in there thinking they could just run hog wild all over the place and it would be no problem.

Oh the deaths, the repair bills, the sudden change to asking for CC, asking what the tactics were, it was all worthy of a hearty laugh.  I have been proven that my history, the real history, not the historical revisionism that seems to have taken a hold of the people that do not know better, has won out.

And the biggest beauty is that we massively over gear these dungeons.  And people are still wiping.

We are doing the numbers we would be doing at the end of wrath in these dungeons while scaled to a 160 item level.  Let me tell you first hand, from someone that had been there and remembers it, there was no one in the game doing 15K in a dungeon at a 160 item level.  Nope, not even close.  When they first came out and you first went in there if you had a group were everyone was doing 1500, not 15000, you would most likely have a nice and smooth run as long as everyone knew the fights already.  In all honesty all you needed to do wrath dungeons was 1K DPS from all the damage dealers.

If you manged to get someone doing 2K in a wrath dungeon and they were paying attention and not doing stupid stuff or standing in bad, you were running the dungeon in god mode because things died so fast with huge numbers like that.  Even if the other two damage dealers died as long as you had that one person you could do the bosses.  So seeing people do, even on the low end, 5K, in these dungeons, keep in mind we are still over gearing them.  Over gearing them by a huge margin, and people are still wiping and I am loving it.

These groups that are wiping with us doing these insanely high numbers, I would love to see them actually do these dungeons as they first came out.  I bet they would not be able to.  They would need too much coordination, they would need too many line of sight pulls, they would need people to interrupt, to cleanse, to dispel.  They would need people to actually know how to play their characters.  Bottom line is wrath dungeons were not the face roll dungeons people talk about all the time.  Even when you were in your full ICC 25 heroic gear you could still wipe to bosses in there and you were doing 15K like you are now.

The dungeons were only a laugh fest to groups that knew the dungeons and over geared them.  Any dungeon, even on release, was always easier with a competent group that knew how to play.  They were not like that otherwise, and maybe some of the people that got suckered in by the false mantra that wrath dungeons were easy will finally realize that they weren't.  Or maybe now they will learn the fights and know what to do, and being they are doing end of wrath numbers at beginning of wrath item level it will become a laugh fast once more.  But at least for a moment, even a short lived one, they realized, wrath dungeons could kill you.  Even when you over powered them like we do now, if you do not follow the mechanics.

Now to some of my funny stories, please feel free to share some of yours, because I have never had so much fun wiping.  I got a kick out of these people thinking "this is so easy" and then having it shoved in their faces, "no it is not".  Was even better when the person that called it easy realized their errors of their way and admitted it is not.

The First Five:

My first five time walking dungeons were on Friday night on my main, the hunter.  It was with a guild group that did not have a tank so we needed to get a tank for each run.  Two of the players, myself and the healer, were vets, we had been there and done that and we both knew what they could be like when wrath first came out.  The other two were new, so we had fun explaining everything to them and sharing some stories.

1st:

First dungeon we get a DK tank, it is halls of lightning.  He seemed like he had never been there before, or at least never tanked it.  Or at least that is the conclusion I came to after the first boss.

The tank ran straight in and started to pull even before everyone zoned in.  I had entered first, him second, and he took off like a bat out of hell.  He did survive on the first pack long enough for the healer to make it in and started to go down the road.

He then pulled the boss, the bosses his adds, the two adds leading up to him and the entire pack of, what is it, 5, mobs that are in that first corner.  He was taking massive hits, the healer was doing the best he could.  We could make no headway on any mob as the healers were all over them.  I had the DPS focus on one at a time and we managed to get a couple down but the healer was oom trying to keep the tank up and we wiped.

I said to the healer, bet you this guy never did these dungeons before because if he had he would have known you do not pull the boss until the adds are clear.   Second time, he does the same exact thing and we almost wipe, at least we had killed some last time.  The healer mentioned to him he can not do pulls like that, he will wipe the group.  His only line that whole dungeon is, these dungeons are so easy, they're wrath dungeons, just keep up.

A few times during the run the tank went all crazy pulling, each time we stood behind as a team and revived him when he died.  He never got a clue.  The last room before the boss he pulled three packs and with their knockbacks, fears, and other fun stuff, we wiped again, multiple times.  He could not keep aggro on any of them because they were all over the place.

5th:

Group 5 was also the halls of lightning, I am skipping 2, 3 and 4 for a moment to stick with the same dungeon.  We get another DK tank that had me laughing the entire run because I kept ripping aggro off him.

I said, wow, these really are wrath dungeons when I have to watch everything I do or I get to tank the mob.  And remember, in wrath if you pulled a mob you were most likely dead.  The trash did not mess around in there if you screwed up on aggro.

Every single pull I would do my first shot and the mob would come to me.  Even with a misdirection the mob would come to me.  I started to joke how long I can wait and still pull a mob off the tank.  I waited 5 second, hit misdirect, hit one shot, then stopped, and a couple of seconds later, boom, mob was on me.

Next pull I did it without a misdirect, waited a full 10 seconds, targeted the tanks target, not some random add, did one shot, mob came flying at me.  We were all laughing like crazy on voice chat, had a great old time.

The tank was taking it slow, letting us CC, seemed to have done it before, but he had some massive aggro issues just like I remember every tank in wrath having back then.  If it were a paladin I would have guessed his RF was not on, but the tank was in blood, not exactly sure what happened, but it was really funny.  We were placing bets on if he would keep aggro on any given mob.  Lots of laughs to be had from everyone.

2nd:

Utgarde pinnacle here we come.  I remember running this countless times trying to get that damn drake.  Used to solo it in wrath on my hunter, yes a hunter could solo it, every chance I got to try and get the thing.  I must have done it well over 800 times before I got it to drop.  A couple of weeks later a healer of mine gets it out of a bribe bag.  Son of a...  Makes me feel like I wasted all that time farming for it if I got it without even trying from a bribe bag.  The least they could have done it allow me to sell it, but that is another story.  I was sure the mount would drop being I did not need it any more.  This was my first time stepping foot into it since I got the mount.

The tank surely was new on this one.  He started to clear the entire first room.  We just went along with it.  No biggie really, but we would tell him about things later so he does not make any mistakes.  Well, two things in particular.  To run down the hallway to the end, and to LoS the mobs in the last room out.

He managed the first part just fine, second, I don't think he understood how to do a line of sight pull.  He ran in and aggroed them, he got feared out toward us, they aggroed on us, more fears, more people all over the place, and wipe time it was.

Second attempt did not go that well either, maybe a blood worm got feared.  Can that even happen?   He only pulled it to the doorway, not through, and the middle pack came out, but at least he was getting better at it.

Third attempt he did it right and we manged. He said in chat.  This is not what I expected.  I thought these were easier.  This seems like it has harder pulls then mythic dungeons.  He laughed, we laughed, it was a fun wiping experience.  Still not exactly sure how someone makes it to level 100 and still does not know how to line of sight pull, but that is another story all together.

3rd:

Third run was nexus and story time again.  It was not only the first dungeon I ran on heroic, it was also the first dungeon I was able to solo on heroic.  My first time doing it on heroic we had a warlock tank.  Nope, not shitting you.  Remember, you needed to assemble your groups by hand back then and tanks were few and far between.  So we did it without a tank.  Remember that doom lord thing you needed everyone to click on and it tried to kill someone when it was summoned?  Made for a good tank.

Either way, we had a paladin tank that made it clear he had no idea what he was doing when he entered, he said so, no guessing here.  He moved slowly because he had to, at first at least.  Once his confidence level went up, which did not take too long at all, he started to over pull.  More so in the room with the first boss in ice blocks.  He pulled the whole room right away before I could even type that there was a boss there.  We wiped.

Second time he over pulled it once again and we wiped once more to people getting feared further down the hall.  I refused to die, I wanted to take out some of the adds first because we did some serious damage to them so I started kiting.  Not used to doing it without a pet because I could always use the taunt on the pet to get one off of me if it got too close and I was running lone wolf MM, but I did manage to take out 4 mobs before I died.  Tried to hit FD but was a little to late.  I wanted to get that last shot off.  Either way, we killed him the next time.

So he takes the next trash up the hill without looking and did not realize there is a pack of 4 and a patting pack of three and ends up with all 7.  The healer gets eaten alive pretty quick, we do manage to stay alive, he was doing well rotating cooldowns.  The healer gets back just as he died, uses a battle res on him and then dies again instantly.  But we do finish them off.  Does the tank wait for him to get back?  Of course not.  He charges ahead to the next pack in the boss room, I tell the DPS to let him die.   We revive him after he dies and the healer finally makes it back.

Then for some odd reason he goes straight ahead, not into the boss room like he did originally, and pulls the side pack and drags them back to the room pack.  Oh hell, we got a lot of mobs.  The healer goes full on crazy mode and manages to keep us up, but he pulls the boss instantly even though the healer wasted nearly all their mana keeping us up.  We kill it with only one causality, the tank.  Good for him.

The entire run he does the same thing.  Takes it slow for one or two pulls, gets some confidence and pulls a ton and kills us.  Clearing packs we can skip, trying to skip packs we can't.  I am thinking this guy was not just new to the dungeon, he must be new to tanking to not understand what can and can not be skipped.  Knowing stuff like that is usually one of the first skills a tank develops.  I think we wiped, or came close to wiping, 10 times in that dungeon.

4th:

Gundrak was the 4th one I did.  Never did manage to get old kingdom on any of the characters I did this with, would love to see how bad tanks dealt with the spell flingers and their 80% hit.  Back in the day every new tank that thought they were god mode would run in there trying to pull three of them only to die instantly to 240% max health damage.  I guess now is no different, but all I can do is guess as I did not get it.

Gundrak never made me think of it as the type of dungeon that had a lot of instant death mechanics but it sure seems like it does now.  We did not wipe, often, but we did lose people on nearly every single pull.  Had a warrior tank that thought he was in a race and of course it was our job to cover his ass when he over pulled, again and again.  We were getting better at covering for poor tanks now however as it seems there are only poor tanks running this.

A few times however he went too far.  Like I said, seemed someone died every single pull.  We wiped a couple of times on trash but had no issues with the bosses.  Last boss was just two people alive, the tank and the healer.  I do not remember that rhino charge being a one shot kill but when he charged me I died and I was at full health when that happened.  Overtuned much?  Maybe not.  Maybe I too am misremembering it to be easier than it really was.  Maybe it was a one shot mechanic at 160 item level and I just never got hit by it to remember.  Maybe you remember.

Summation of the First Five:

It was a guild group and even with two complete noobs to the content it went a lot better than it might have otherwise.  Us doing huge numbers compared to what we should be doing in there, which should have been between 1 and 2 K, made up for a lot of the errors that the tanks made, but nearly every error was a tank error.  All because they probably read the forums and thought, oh I can pull whole rooms.  Ah, no, you can not, you never could in wrath dungeons, at least not until you over geared it by 100 item levels.

Funny Statements:

On my horde hunter in a gundrak, one of the damage dealers says "I hate this, I used to do 30K in these and now I am doing 5K".  I said, "Sorry, you were never doing 30K in these, 30K in dungeons did not come until cataclysm"  He swore up and down that he used to be able to do 30K, and the best part is when he said, the only reason he is doing so low now is because he has crap gear.  That was good for a laugh.   He was a level 100 in mostly normal mode gear, better than my hunter who is not even LFR geared, yet I quadrupled him.  Guess scaling works better for hunters huh?

On multiple characters, in multiple dungeons, by multiple tanks I heard something like this.  "It is only a wrath dungeon so I am going to be pulling big and pulling fast".  It always, yes each and every single time, ended with a dead tank and the group following shortly after.  Each time I laughed, even more so when I was on a hunter or rogue that could drop aggro.

Last boss in halls of lightning, on my rogue, paladin healer says to the ranged, "don't worry about standing on top of him, I can heal though this easily".  One ranged dies, the other ranged dies, I die, healer dies tank dies.  One DPS, "I thought you said this was easy to heal"  Paladin says, "It used to be easier they must have increased the difficulty."  Both me and the tank say, at the same time, "these are actually a hell of a lot easier than they used to be".  BTW, we wiped again a second time with everyone stacking that time too.  The healer swore up and down it used to be easier.  I did it early on, and no, it was not.  If anything that boss was probably the hardest boss in a heroic I ever faced if you have a fresh max level healer with you, and heck, even some well geared healers could not handle it.  The guy is lucky we were doing over 7K each instead of the 2K each we might have been doing at best when it was at level, or we would have never managed that boss.

Gundrak, horde hunter, DK tank, he has never been there, we all jump down, he hits path of frost, we all die.  He says, sorry, did not know the fall was that far.  I died, but I found it very funny.

Frustrated DPS when I enter a halls of lightning.  "Not this one again.  Please be able to do this, I have spent hours wiping here in different groups.  I will server transfer a character with 1000 gold to each of your servers if we can finish this".  Not sure why I thought this was so funny but it made me laugh.  I'll laugh even more if I end up with 1K gold in my mailbox, I really am not expecting it.

I think most of my favorite moments were when tanks died because they over pulled.  I am not sure which room I think of as the best.  It is a close tie between the knockback guys in HoL or the fear guys in UP that they always refuse to light of sight pull.  Both rooms can quickly mean death with a bad pull and from this weekend there is one thing I know for sure, tanks do not learn how to pull any more.  Those rooms were rooms of death over and over and each time it was fun laughing at the cocky tank.

In the end Wrath dungeons are easy.  If you know what you are doing.  Or as it seems, if you have a tank that knows what they are doing.  With the scaling down we already over gear it.  So all you need is a tank that did not fall for all the hype that wrath dungeons were easy and you will have no problem with any of them.  They are easy.  When you get a group that knows what they are doing.

To end this I will quote a healer on voice chat from one of his runs.  "This damn druid tank can not take even one hit, why does he keep insisting we pull entire rooms, I hate these dungeons."  Yeap, seems like the wrath dungeons are all about the tanks.  Just like they were back in wrath and where the tank ego started to really get inflated.  So they might have messed up the scaling, but they nailed the importance of tanks perfectly.  Maybe the fact they all seem to suck will put their ego in check a little bit.  But I doubt it, they will just blame the healer, or the DPS, or the price of tea.

I had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs at the expense of others this weekend, how about you?

Are Mythic Dungeons Worth It?

I've been reading around on peoples take of the new mythic difficulty dungeons and the comments seem to range from the foaming at the mouth raging that they are too hard all the way to the with a quality group of players they are still too easy opinion.  I try as best I can to give things an honest assessment and not base it off just how I did it or who I did it with.

If I entered a mythic dungeon on my 650 something rogue with my limited skill playing one, or melee in general, and was with a group of like skilled players I too might end up in a foaming at the mount rage over how difficulty it was.  Same goes for how it felt when I went in with a guild group and we had no real problems at all and moved right through it I could rightfully say it was not nearly as hard as I expected it to be because it was leaps and bounds easier than launch day cataclysm heroics.

I am not a great player, never have been by any standard, but I am better at some classes than others.  I had no problem tanking one on my druid but I think I might have some issues tanking one on my warrior who is only a mere 3 item levels lower.  It all comes down to a skill factor.  I tank more on my druid than I do on my warrior.  Same goes for playing a damage dealer.  On my 683 hunter I have zero issue meeting the requirements for the dungeon but even if my rogue was in equal gear I am sure it would be hell. 

So while I am not a great player I do believe I understand, perhaps better than some of these people posting their assessments, that everything is not so black and white.  You need to consider the content in reference to who it was created for and what it was designed around.

I think the issue some people have, the ones that are having a lot of issues with it, is that they thought it would be a quick and easy way to gear up alts and that is just not true unless you are fairly good at playing said alt.  So they go in there with a skill level roughly equal to me on my rogue and have troubles and say it is over tuned.

Hopefully not sounding elitist here but no, it is not over tuned.  You are either under geared on your character, not skilled enough on your character, or have a group that has people that fit into one or the other of those categories.  Perhaps even both and if you are in a group of both under geared and under skilled players and have trouble it is not because it is over tuned, it is because those people should not even be in there.

Bottom line is if you are lacking the skill needed to pull the numbers, can't follow the mechanics and / or do not have have the gear capable of doing such, you are going to have a really bad time in mythic dungeons.

The same goes for the other way around for the people that say it is too easy.  When I tanked one on Tuesday night I was on a 672 tank with two DPS at 690, one at 675 and a healer rocking 694 gear.  The four people I went with I have been playing with all expansion, two of those four I have been raiding with for at least four years.  We all know what we are doing, we know how to work as a team, and on top of all of that we over geared it.

Saying something is "too easy" when it is supposed to be "too easy" for you is not exactly honest feedback.  Honest feedback would be it was easy for us because it was supposed to be easy for a group like that.

One thing to remember is that later in the expansion when everyone is rocking item levels in the 710s and 720s mythic dungeons will be just as faceroll as heroic are now with people in 660 gear.  It is just the way of dungeons.  Five man group content quickly becomes trivial with gear to some extent.

The issue I see with all these people complaining one way or the other is that they do not seem to understand who these dungeons are aimed at.  The people saying it is too hard for them just need to get better playing their class and the people saying it is too easy already our gear it so not one is really impressed that something they over gear is easy to them.  I'd like to believe they seemed sort of well tuned for who they are intended for.

Now the question is, who exactly are the mythic dungeons intended for and what is their expected difficulty for the people it is intended for.

I think the design would give a group of all 670 players an appropriate challenge.  If you are less than that it is just going to make it harder than it needs to be, or impossible if you are not skilled, and each bit over that is just going to make it that much easier as long as you follow mechanics.

I was tanking it at what I believe to be an appropriate item level but being backed by a very geared and skilled healer and three damage dealers all capable of pulling 60K or more on short burst type fights like you see in dungeons made it easy.  That does not mean it was easy just because it seemed like it was.

I think, my opinion only remember, that these mythic dungeons were designed with the idea of people around a 670 item level looking for upgrades.  It should work to be a suitable challenge, but not overly challenging, for people at that item level with good skills and it should be rough, really rough, for people around that item level with lesser skills.

So basically what I am saying is that I think mythic dungeons are just perfect how they are for who they are intended for.  The only real issue I see is that it was not marketed correctly to explain who they were intended for.  That is why some people think it is too hard, because they think it is meant for them, when it is not, and others think it is too easy, because they think it was meant for them, when it was not.

But that is all fine and dandy and not the real reason I decided to write this post.  As I said I was reading a lot and seeing the people complain that it was too hard or too easy but it was one comment that had nothing to do with difficulty what so ever that really grabbed my attention, as it made a lot of sense to me.  It was about the reward.

The person pointed out that a person, solo, could manage to get themselves 695 gear on T2 with much less difficulty than a mythic dungeon has to offer and much less hassle as there is no need to assemble a group.

He also pointed out that mythic dungeons are harder than normal mode HFC and after stepping foot into it for the first time last night I would have to say I wholeheartedly agree with him there.  Normal HFC drops 690-705 gear, which is better, and seemed to be easier than a mythic dungeon.

His point had nothing to do with the difficulty, no argument that it was too hard to too easy.  His point was that no matter you view mythic dungeons as or for who you think their intended audience is, the reward for doing them is out of line with other modes of gear collection and I have to say I agree with him.

What do I believe would be correct for them?  Hard to say but based on the examples he gave I think all bosses should drop 700 loot and the last boss should have a chance to drop a 715 piece.  That, in my opinion, would put it more on par with the current gearing options otherwise.

So the problem with mythic dungeons is not the difficulty or lack thereof.  It has nothing to do with blizzard not correctly identifying who the content was intended for.  It is all about the reward for doing it.  That is the main problem with mythic dungeons.  The carrot at the end of the stick looks kind of old and moldy when you compare it to other, much easier, options out there for gearing.

Do you think blizzard should rethink the rewards from doing mythic dungeons?  After seeing his comparison, I sure think so.  It should at the very least be a higher item level than the apexis crystal 695 gear in my opinion, easy or hard does not matter, only the carrot does.

Would Scaling Dungeon Gear Rewards Help Them Remain Relevant?

I remember when warlords of draenor was announced and blizzard said they intended to make dungeons remain relevant for a longer time.  I had my doubts.  We all know how it goes when it comes to dungeons, at least when it comes to people that raid.  As soon as you start killing raid bosses dungeons become completely irrelevant.

With the addition of LFR which basically means that anyone can be a "raider", it diminishes the usefulness and life of dungeons even further.  Add that to the fact that they removed valor and justice and the associated things you can buy with them and you have little to no real reason to run dungeons any longer.

It seems blizzard moved in the opposite direction of what they said they had intended to do.  With the exception of having us need to do 5 dungeons, 4 on heroic, as the starting parts of the quest line for this expansions legendary item, the ring, there are no real reasons for anyone that is not seeking achievements to do dungeons at all.  The gear is poor in comparison to what you are able to get as soon as LFR comes out and the rewards otherwise are non existent, even when considering tank or healer baggies and the 50 garrison supplies.

So it got me to thinking about what would make dungeon more relevant for a longer period of time.  They can not just amp up the difficulty of them and have them reward higher level gear because there will always be brand new characters hitting 100 that will want to start the legendary quest line and it would be unfair to have them have to do a dungeon tuned around a 680 item level when they just hit the 615 item level required to enter them.

So what options are there really?  I say let dungeons stay as they are and have been since the beginning of time.  The more gear we get the easier they become to the point of being face roll easy where most raid geared classes could solo them by the end of the expansion, I see nothing wrong with that.  If anything it helps those new 100s get the "old" stuff out of the way faster as they try to play catch up.  Not to mention, it is fun to have some mindless steamrolling fun in a dungeon that you are only doing for the daily reward anyway, at least for me.

Then thinking about it I came to the conclusion that the garrisons held the answer, or at least one possible answer.  Garrison missions to be more precise.  The garrison missions for the raids count the number of raid kills you need to have in a particular difficultly for which reward you will be getting.  So say you have the highmaul raid mission and no raid kills you would get a 655 item from the box and once you kill 15 bosses on normal you would get a 670 from the box and once you kill 15 bosses on heroic you would get a 685 from the box.

So why not tie this idea to dungeons to keep them relevant longer?  Not exactly in the same way, but using the idea that your current progression dictates your dungeon rewards.

My idea would be this.  Dungeon gear that drops will be 630 basic and as you kill raid bosses it can go up.  Not like missions to the "next" level but to that level.  Like lets say you killed 15 highmaul bosses in LFR, when you do dungeons the gear that drops will be 645.  If you kill 15 highmaul bosses on normal it would drop 655, heroic, 670, and so on.

This would work on multiple levels.  One in that is becomes a reasonable replacement for valor gear and what valor gear was originally intended to do, fill in missing spaces.  Now if you are, lets say, regularly killing heroic highmaul and still have not gotten a pair of legs, you can go do some dungeons to try and get a pair of legs equal to the current content you are doing.

The idea is that as you move up in the gear that you are normally attaining anyway from raiding, you can continue to get dungeon gear at the same level you are capable of attaining gear to begin with.  So it is not giving you anything better than you are capable of attaining anyway to begin with.

For non raiders this will mean they can move up their dungeon gear from 630 to LFR level each time a new LFR comes out, for the casual raider they can move their dungeon gear from 630 to normal or heroic, and so on.

This would mean that everyone, from the person happy with just 630 gear that never touches a raid to the mythic raider that can't seem to get those illusive bracers to drop has a reason to run dungeons.  It would keep dungeons relevant not just until you get the one thing you might need, but always, for the entire expansion long.

One big "problem" I could see people saying is it would be face roll easy but as I already explained, that is really not a problem.  They should be face roll easy for people in raid gear.  That is absolutely working as intended. They are only intended to have any difficulty in a random group at the minimum item level, and they are at that point, so no reason for anyone to ever say they are "too easy" because in better gear they are supposed to be "too easy".

The other problem might be that people would, or could, gear up too quickly that way.  Once you down 15 bosses at a specific raid level just spam dungeons until you have all gear of that level.  I can see that point and I believe I have a solution for that as well.  Instead of the gear they "drop" being equal to your current raid level, have a bag at the end of the run for everyone, a bag they can only get once per day and that bag would contain 1 piece of gear, guaranteed, for your current raiding level.  So the dungeon would still drop 630 gear otherwise, but once a day you have a chance to get something that very possibly could be an upgrade.

I know I would still do it that way.  Legs have been an issue for me so far and I would run it every day in hopes of getting a pair of legs.  Heck, even if they were not an issue I would run it every day hoping to get a pair with the best stats for me, or one that is warforged, or one that has a gem slot, or one that has an additional stat or even better one that has it all.  It would most definitely give me a reason to run dungeons every single day and you can be damn skippy I would run my dungeon every single day.

As it stands now, dungeons have already run out their welcome as far as I am concerned.  My alts do the dungeons for the legendary by direct queue and then never touch another dungeon because there is no need to.  Maybe if someone in guild is going I might tag along for fun, but otherwise, dungeons are irrelevant as soon as you finish the required ones for the legendary, even on alts that you rarely or never play, and I believe there is a way to fix that.

So do you think scaling dungeon gear rewards would help dungeons remain relevant like I suggested, or do you have another idea to keep them relevant?

Will You Run Dungeons in Warlords?

We have been hearing a lot about the warlords gearing pyramid and that dungeons would become a basic part of the gearing system in warlords but I worry for the lasting success, or even usefulness of dungeons, for many reasons.

First think of why you run dungeons.  I'll gladly share why I do.  I run them as a starting gearing measure on my main thanks to the LFG dungeon queue.  I hit max level, usually one of the first on my server, so it is not likely there is anyone to run them with.  So I use the LFG dungeon queue to get a group.

I learn the dungeons usually during this time (plus my beta experience) so as guild mates hit max level I can help them and explain what is going on.  I do this not because I am a nice person, but because it makes their lives easier which in turn makes my life easier.  Call me selfish if you must but someone usually has to teach others, might as well be me being I was there first.  Selfish would be those people that call people out for not knowing how to do things but refusing to tell them how.  Well, maybe if you told them and didn't keep it to yourself than they would not mess up.  Sorry, that was a little side tangent there, but that always does come up in new dungeons.

I then run them to knock out the achievements but I am never in a rush for them.  I got most of this expansions solo toward the end of ToT when I was a little bored.  I went in on heroic and did the achievements myself.  I never use the LFG system to get achievements.  Any I get when doing them in a random is pure gravy.

Then as the expansion goes on I might pop in there for some valor, some justice to convert to honor or to buy heirlooms with, and maybe to get some gear on newly or under geared alts when a guild group is going.  Also as an added plus in mists there was the addition of reputations you could get and some alts got their reputations up completely just doing one dungeon (and one scenario) a day.

Looking back on how I use dungeons as a tool to play with in the game I can't help but think they are going to be basically worthless in warlords.  Don't get me wrong, they will or could still be a stepping stone for many, but over all there will be little to no repeatability with them and that has me worried not only for the dungeons and their usage, but for the future of the game if this is the design they choose to go with.

Let me explain why I think dungeons will serve no purpose at all in warlords unless they change something.  And yes, there is still time to change something.  One positive is that there can be warforged loot in dungeons, but that is not really all that great of news, as you will see, because the warforged loot would still be greatly lower than LFR gear.

1) Sub Par Gear:

On my main I will surely run dungeons on day one.  There is no doubt about that.  Getting that gear will basically be the only way to get gear on day one so, as always, I will do whatever it is within my power to get the best gear I can get outside of guild to better prepare myself for the guild runs when they do start.

With that said however the gear that comes from dungeons is sub par at best.  If you can manage to round yourself up 3 crafted pieces and finish up all the quests in nagrand you can probably just enter LFR when it comes out and get better gear than dungeons.  Being LFR is insanely easier than dungeons that does seem like a compelling reason to just wait for the LFR if you can already meet the item level requirements to enter it.

Yes, you heard that right.  As much as blizzard says you do not need to do LFR when push comes to shove and you only have time for one thing which one are you going to choose, the one that drops lesser gear or the one that drops better gear?  You will choose LFR.  So yes, you still need to do LFR people.  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but blizzard lied to you.

Sure you can do dungeons and go straight to normal raids in dungeon gear but that requires three things.  1) That you are a really skilled player that can pull off doing the numbers needed for normal while only in dungeon gear.  2) Someone willing to take you if you are only in lower, possibly much lower, item level dungeon gear.  3) You need to be ready to raid before the LFR comes out.  Because lets face it, dungeon gear will be great gear until LFR comes out, but once LFR comes out dungeon gear moves to the back burner because there is better gear out there.

All in all, there are no decent gearing options in dungeons.  You might run specific ones for a specific drops but you might not if it is only one or two pieces and you are already downing raid bosses at a decent pace.  So the gear in dungeons is a major issue.  Lets not forget that much better gear will drop from much easier content.  Just think about that for a second.  Better gear and easier content vs worse gear and harder content.  No contest.

2) Difficulty:

Sometimes blizzard learns from their mistakes.  Sometimes they don't.  This is a case of they don't.  The idea of making heroic dungeons harder is admirable.  I will admit that.  But the bottom line is that anything you allow random people to group together for with the in game finder will be destine for failure when you add any degree of difficulty to it, even if that is only minimal difficulty.  How could blizzard have not learned that by now?

Hasn't blizzard learned anything from cataclysm and over 2M lost subscribers thanks to difficult dungeons?  It sure as hell does not seem so.  While mechanics wise nothing in any of the ones I have done seem all that difficult, I can say, without a doubt, that I am the only person to ever have lived through a dungeon and not died once on a beta.

Not saying I never died.  I died plenty. But I have never met anyone in any of the dungeons I have done on beta that lived through the entire run, besides me.  I know, beta is beta, but still, if a group of people that are going there with the intention of testing and learning, working together and sharing strategies before the pull, all with hellscreams downfall titles, and some idea how to play their classes, can not get through dungeons without dying, how are your random people doing to do this?  Seriously.

Blizzard decided that to random for the dungeons you would need to get a proving grounds silver.  Again, an admirable idea with the best intentions, but this has to be the worst idea ever.  I managed a silver on my rogue the very first time I tried it and I suck at my rogue.  I would not even bring myself into a dungeon and inflict myself on others as bad as I am.  I also have failed silver on my priest the first time I tried it.  Failed.  I heal heroic raids just fine, not great in any sense so don't get me wrong, but I am capable.  So my priest whom I am okay at would not be capable of queuing up for a dungeon but my rogue which could not fight his way out of a paper bag could?  What is wrong with this picture?

You want a better gate to using the LFR system for heroic dungeons I got one for you blizzard.  To queue for a heroic dungeon you need to have deadly boss mods downloaded, updated and active.  If it is not downloaded, updated and active, you may not use the random group finder for heroic dungeons.  I think that would help the quality of game play in dungeons a hell of a lot more than a proving grounds silver which, as it turns out, proves absolutely nothing about a players ability to play.

3) Incentive:

Everything, even more so lower content, needs to have an incentive to do it.  I mentioned the early characters will have the gear incentive, but once LFR comes out and crafted gear becomes more available that will decrease a great deal if not completely.

But what about other incentives?  Exactly, what about them, there are none.  In mists we could run dungeons for reputation.  No need to do that, you can not get reputation that way.  We used to be able to run dungeons for valor so we could buy gear, or upgrades to gear.  No need for that, there is no valor which means not valor upgrade or valor gear.  We used to be able to run dungeons for justice that we could buy older gear with, heirlooms with and convert to honor so if we wanted to test the waters in PvP we could get starter gear.  No need for that, justice is being removed so all the things justice were good for are gone as well and so is that incentive to run them.

I am finding it very hard to think of any reason to run the dungeons other than to get the achievements from them, which if I do them like I did this expansion, I can go back and solo them all later when I am bored.  Or create a guild group for them, but not use the random system for them.

4) Wait Time?

I put this one with a question mark because no one can tell the future, but I really worry about the wait time for these dungeons after the first month or two when even the slower levelers have all manged to pass them on the gear scale.  With sub par gear, more difficulty, and no real incentive to do them, why would any geared player ever do them?  Why would any skilled player ever do them, even more so if they can get much better in LFR or normal if they are that skilled?

So if no geared player would do them and no skilled player would do them what exactly are you left with?  You are left with really really under geared people (which are the people that actually should be there) and people that might very well be on characters that they are not very good with, like me on my alts and many lesser players.

So you are left with poorly geared poor players in slightly more difficult content.  How well do you think that is going to go?  Be honest, I already know the answer.  Not to mention, with no incentive to do it less people will queue for it and with the sliver proving grounds requirements less people will queue for it, so this in turn means longer wait times.

I really worry about the future of dungeons in warcraft because they have no future as they stand now in their current state offering a piss poor gearing option with a higher difficulty level than those that would need that piss poor gear can probably handle and no incentive and quite possibly a long wait time for them.

Now, what post would be complete from the grumpy one without offering my idea for a solution.  Get ready to shoot this one down because I know there are going to be faults with it but I believe it can both bring life to dungeons and make them more what they should be, the back bone for the beginning of the gearing process and a viable option to do not only to pass the time but maybe gear up slowly.

The Solution:

Give all players, not just tanks and healers, a baggie for completing the dungeons.  Tanks and healers would of course get their additional bribe bag.  Have this reward (as in baggie here) offered all the time.  Not once per day like in BC, wrath and mists, and not 7 per week no matter when you do them like in cataclysm, but each and every dungeon completed.

When you complete a dungeon you get 100 apexis crystals and a baggie.  The baggie would contain one of the follow guaranteed, one sorcerous air, one sorcerous fire, one sorcerous water or one sorcerous earth, which are crafting materials that are slightly harder to come by and needed in massive quantities by professions.  They could even give it a slight chance to contain two just to mix it up, like 30%.

But that is not where it ends, that is not enough.  You would also have a chance to get a extra bonus roll coin which would be a very small chance and not count toward your 3 per week total.  Added to that you would have a small chance to get a item for your current spec selection when you open the bag that will always be, even in later patches, equal to the current raid tiers top LFR pieces.  In this case, it would start at 650 items.

Oh, and I really would like that must have deadly boss mods (or an accepted equivalent) downloaded, updated and installed part.  So much better than I like the proving grounds idea.

Now, the solution might not have cured much of anything but it did add incentive.  It made the content repeatable.  If there are two things this expansion needs, and dungeons more so, is incentive to do them and a reason to repeat them.  Giving people a way to get apexis crystals, gear, crafting items, extra raid rolls, and other junk would most definitely give people an incentive to continue to run it.  And when those knowledgeable people with better gear and more skill are around when those people with lesser gear and lesser skill get into a group it will not be the nightmare it would be without them.

You know what I love about dungeons in mists now?  The fact I can solo them.  I love being able to go in there, even more so with two or three guild mates, and just burn through the thing for fun.  You see, I want my scheduled content to be challenging, like raiding, and I want my time sink just for fun stuff to be fun, like dungeons.  I might be different from everyone else but it would not surprise me if a fair deal of people agreed with me on that one.

So with nothing really to offer in warlords (as it stands) will you be running dungeons or just skipping them like I will most likely do on every single character past my first because there is really no incentive to do them?

Speculating on the Future of the LFR, the CRZ and Dungeons.

There are some changes coming with the next patch and those changes might effect some of the things we have become used to, like them or not, like last tier 5 mans, the CRZ and the LFR.  I've been pondering them and figured I would do what I always do and share some of my opinions on them.

Will Flex Raiding Destroy the LFR?

If I had to make a quick jump decision I would answer, yes I hope it does.  If I were to think it out a little bit I would say, it won't but it will change the face of it as we know it now.  At least that is how I see it.

I have often said that the LFR is too hard for the average player and I stand by that.  It really is way too hard for the average player.  With the addition of flex raiding I feel it will shorten the life of the LFR for those people that are, for lack of a better term, above average.  The players that are decent in their own right but are not really great.

Those people are the heart and soul of the LFR.  They are the one that make it possible for the average player to actually finish the LFR.  I've been in some awesome groups, some great groups, some average groups and some horrible groups.  All of them however would be the exact same group, a horrible group, if you removed the above average players.

Those above average players are the ones that dictate which group you are in.  Get a group with more than 18 above average players and it is an awesome group.  13 above average players can mean it is a great group, 10 might be a good group, while 5 or 6 might only be doable.  Get to the point where there are only 1 or 2 or even 3 above average players that are not in one of the control roles and it could very well be a horrible run.

While I can still see many above average players, the ones that make the LFR possible, running the random raids I don't see them doing it as long as they are right now.  Lets just take where we are for example.  Myself and many others like me do not need anything from the LFR, have not needed anything for a very long time, but we still run it for runstones because we are not downing all 6 of those end bosses each week.  Or any in my case now that I am doing 25s and only getting 3 bosses in per week, not downing much of anything each week.  So I really have no choice but to run it.  There are a great deal of above average players in that same boat and those people are the ones that make an LFR run nice and smooth. Whenever you are in a smooth run, thank them, or yourself if you are one of them.  But what if they were gone?

Then you would have groups like I talk about sometimes.  Nightmares that seem to never end.  LFRs filled with the average player.  The average player is bad.  Really bad.

I did my LFRs last night, the last 2 looking for runestones.  Once again, if it were not for the guaranteed drop I would have gotten none again.  I swear I will never get that cloak, but that is another story.  It was nice and smooth and super fast.  I was able to get both parts done in less than an hour run time.  Even adding queue time, 8 minutes for the last part and 34 minutes for the second to last part, it still took less than 2 hours total.  My weekend runs, when those better players looking for their runestones are not there, take 2 hours just to do them while in them.  Sometimes 3 hours.  And the wait times are doubled, tripled, even quadrupled on occasion.

When flex raiding comes people will be more likely to do that to get their runestones (if there is something like that, just using it as an example).  Better gear, no queue, self assembled, any number of people, the ability to get achievements, collect quest items, and you still get valor.

Is there really a comparison to be made?  They are two different types of things.  One is randomly grouped content that becomes too hard for most while the other is assembled content that becomes easier than normal because you can communicate.

Being flex raiding does not lock you to bosses either you can actually help your buddies if you wanted to.  You ran your flex raid and downed the first 5 but on the weekend your buddies want to go but do not have a tank.  Well, you can tank, you can not get loot off the first 5, but you can help your friends down them.  Holy freaking awesome batman.  When are they adding this to the real raid.  Lock people to bosses so they can only loot them once a week.  We need that.

This means that the pug society will return.  Not saying the pug world was much better than the LFR world.  I remember assembling pug raids that took an hour plus to get going, similar to some LFR queue times.  But if you are going to wait for an hour why not wait for better gear.  I also remember joining pugs that failed on trash.  So there are bad pugs too, it is not all rosy in pug world, but at least it is assembled.

But all this is assuming the difficulty is such that a pug can do it.  The last time the pug community on my server had any decent success, or even existed, was in wrath when your worst pug would at least do 3/12, most would do 6/12 and many could do 10/12.  You would need a much better hand picked group to get a full clear which still was extremely rare on my server, but it could be done.  And either way, lets face it, if you could even do 6/12 pugs at a moments notice because pugs are always running, it would not be so bad would it?

If the new flex raids are slightly easier than 30% ICC or at least close to it then you very will might have a return to pugs running 24/7 and if that is the case then my main can get his runestones in flex, my alts can gear up through flex, and I could drag my friends that really aren't that great through flex to hopefully teach them.  Something I have tried but really can not do in the LFR unless I can get a mostly guild group to queue up for it.

Speaking of that, our guild always did weekly LFR runs.  We would test out new people there just to get to see them, gear up some alts knowing we had some mains there to cover for our doing 60K instead of more, basically bring the whole crew and have a little fun.  LFR was always easy when you had at least 15 in guild with you.

Now we have flex raid for that.  If we can get 15 together, or 18, or 12, we will just run a flex raid.  Again, better gear, just us, ability to communicate, learn, teach, and have some fun with our guild mates and perhaps a few pug friends from our server or others as we can cross server flex, and you have a winner all the way around.

So what does all this mean?

If there will be pugs running 24/7.  And flex raiding will be very pug friendly by allowing people to do the same bosses again, by being easier content for an organized, even if not great group, and it offers so much more than the LFR can in terms of gear, special loot, achievements and the such, why do the LFR?

Would this mean that only the worst of the worst will be left in the LFR after the first few weeks?  I can see the above average players still doing it those early weeks.  After all, what I always say, an upgrade is an upgrade is an upgrade.  And if the new weapon, trinket, or tier set is so good that even the LFR version is worth getting I will run all three modes, LFR, flex and normal to increase my chances of getting one of them.  But with that comes three times more likely for me to get it (or not get it knowing me) and that will shorten the time I feel I need to do the LFR.

Once I do not need anything from it I will drop it like its hot.  Just like once you do not need valor any longer you stop grinding it.  I keep myself at 3K all the time now and if I get an upgrade I use 500 on it to get my 8 extra item levels and recap my 3K instantly.  But it is human nature to try to remove the need to do things.  And if I can remove the need to do LFR like I have removed the need to valor cap, I will do so. In a heartbeat.  Heck, I have been actively avoiding it on my alts even if they do need a lot of gear from there and rep.

But I would still run flex with my friends and fellow raiders.  Flex will take the place that LFR once had.  The place where I felt I needed to do it.  Like I need to do it for runestones now.  If flex were out now and we were clearing flex I would just get my runestones there and so would anyone else that was a halfway decent player which leaves who for the LFR groups?  The average or worse, less than average, players.

If I already call the LFR too hard sometimes for the masses what do you think it will be like when the above average players have absolutely no reason to do them.  And even those people that love the LFR because it fits their raid whenever schedule, if flex raiding is anything like wrath raiding where there are pugs going 24/7 what do you think those people will choose?  A possibly very hard LFR with trolls galore or a flex raid with better rewards?  I don't think I need to tell you what my answer would be.

LFR is not going anywhere, at least for now.  But it will need to be adjusted to the new denizens that will be in it.  And if blizzard does not adapt to it fast and realize that only the worst of the worst are there, it can implode on itself and become completely worthless.

If they do not considerably lower the difficulty of the LFR I can see flex raiding destroying it.  This is of course with the hope that flex raiding is indeed easy enough for the masses and brings back the 24/7 pug community.  And with my next section it shows why I believe the return of the 24/7 pug community is possible.

Will there still be a CRZ when we get Virtual Realms?

The CRZ was added because blizzard did not want to admit they needed to merge servers.  The CRZ showed everything wrong with how it should be done.  It was quite possibly the worst addition to the game ever. 

I've always argued that if I wanted to be on a small server I should have that right.  But that was only one tiny part of why I hated the CRZ.  Server merges would have been better but it was not going to happen.  For that to happen blizzard would need to admit it was not as big as it once was.  Not like they need to, we all know that, but they wanted to save face.

So along comes server merges without using the word server merges.  Call it virtual realms.  Don't let the name deceive you.  This is not something new and interesting, it is just a server merge system without actually having to merge servers.  All this effort to save face really.

Will I complain about the same things I did with CRZ?  Nope.  Not at all and not in the slightest.  While my one big complaint was if I wanted to play on a small server I should have that right, this is difference.  CRZ was putting me with people on other servers, virtual realms are merging servers.  Sure, I do not like that I don't have my quiet rare farming world that I used to, but a merge is a merge.  I can still have a choice.  I can still move to another server that is a smaller merged server, if I choose.  I can still escape it some whereas I had no opt out from the CRZ.  So virtual realms are better already.  They will offer choice.  Sure that choice comes at the cost of a server transfer, but it is still a choice like it or not.  Now the ball is in my court should I want to move.  Not like with the CRZ when I had no choice what so ever.

Virtual realms also address a lot of the other issues I had with CRZ.  I'll go over a few.

Resources: 

When someone from Thrall (for example) would mine ore, it effectively gets removed from my server.  If there were people from other servers, larger ones, farming, there was less available for my server.  This meant higher prices, stress of not being able to find any resources, and competition with someone that you could not even buy it off of if you needed it. 

Now with virtual realms you are not only grouped with the realms you are with, but you share an auction house.  So if some guy from Thrall is clearing out all the silver ore and I can not find any, at least it will be on my auction house from him instead of disappearing from my servers balance. 

While the guy you are competing with is still the enemy in a sense because you want those nodes, at least what he gets is not being removed from your server.  I used to be that everyone that minded something was basically stealing it from your server for his.  He will be using it on your virtual realm or selling it on your virtual realm.  It is no longer some other server taking your stuff, so to speak.

Trading:

You can not trade someone in the CRZ.  Even if you met up with someone while leveling and decided to quest with them and you each added one another to your friends list.  If some green shoulders dropped that you both hit greed on and you won and then he said, wait I can use those, you were screwed.  You could not trade the shoulders to him.  Even if you both had rights to it.  Even if you both rolled on it.  It is no longer tradable.  Another reason the CRZ sucked.  With virtual realms that other person you met from another server is actually linked to your server which means you can pass the shoulders along to him freely.  Nice.

Buying:

Being you could not trade you could not buy.  Someone wanted to sell some nice BoE drop at a reasonable price.  He wanted 10K and on your server it was usually 25K on the AH.  But being he can not trade it to you, you could not put gold in the window to pay him for it.  He could not even put it on the AH for you to buy and trade it that way.  CRZ really sucked for many things and that was one of them.  Now with virtual realms you can trade or use the AH, either way, you are on the same realm effectively thanks to the server merge. 

Guild:

You could meet someone while running around a CRZ and become friends with them.  Your guild could need a holy paladin and he just happens to be a holy paladin without a guild.  Sorry CRZ will not allow you to raid current content with him.  Sorry CRZ will not allow you to invite him to your guild.  Seriously, what was the use of CRZ if you could meet people, become friends with them, and then can't do anything with them?  One of the myriad of reasons that made the CRZ the worst addition to the game ever.  With virtual reams who cares if the guy is on another server.  He can tag along in the current raid or he can even join your guild.  Now if the CRZ allowed that to begin with, as it should have, there would be no need for virtual realms.

There are lots of things that will benefit from the server merge but shhhh, don't call it that.  If blizzard knew we knew what it really was they might cancel it.  They really seem to fear merging servers.  That is why they gave us the biggest pile of dog crap ever introduced to the game, the CRZ.  Because they figured it would be better to shit on their player base than to admit they needed to merge servers.

But with that in mind, with virtual servers, will CRZ still be needed?  Will they still be attempting to over populate dead zones that are only dead because there is really no reason to be there and you level through it in 30 minutes?  Come on people, zones you spend 30 minutes in do not need life, spend your time and resources on things that matter.  Not making it seem like there are 5 people in feralas instead of 2. 

If you really want to fill out those lower level areas then reduce leveling speed to a crawl again and watch the zones fill up.  That is why it always felt like they were full, because people actually spent time there.  They only seem empty because the game has changed, accept it and move on, leveling zones are fine if they are not full, the CRZ was never needed to give leveling zones life because leveling zones do not need life.

I wonder if the CRZ will go the way of the dodo once the virtual realms come out.  I doubt it because they will still want to give those leveling zones life for some odd reason, but would we really still need it?

Are dungeons really dead?

I know a great deal of people love five mans and I do in some case as well.  I can live with or without them.  I do agree with the sentiment that it felt like they were really lacking this expansion.  Having the last raid patch of the expansion come out without a three pack of new dungeons is contrary to what we have seen the last two expansions.  We have, as a community, kind of gotten used to that quick catch up mechanic that was the late expansion five mans.

People have been asking all expansion if there would be any more five man dungeons and they said no.  They went the way of the scenario this expansion for better or worse depending on who you ask.  Some love the holy trinity and others like the need for nothing special, just queue and go type of groups.  Both have their advantages of course.

But if dungeons were really dying out and losing favor with the designers we would see when the last raid patch came out wouldn't we?  The ICC 3 and the Twilight 3 show us we should have the Org 3 this expansion right?  Nope, because it does seem like 5 mans have lost their place in the hearts of the designers.

I must say I always liked those last raid patch dungeons.  They worked as the perfect catch up for my alts that had been neglected all expansion really.  I also have some fond memories of them.  Halls of reflection might have been one of the biggest tear inducing dungeons of all time but I loved getting [We're not retreating; We're advancing in a different direction] my first time in there because it has to be one of the greatest achievement names ever and it was a pretty fun race against the clock.  But for random groups, it was surely a nightmare sometimes.

Having something become part of wow culture is one thing but losing it is another.  We lost the nessingwary quest line in cataclysm and I even made a post about it.  It would be nice to think that post, in some part, helped ensure his return this expansion but perhaps it was just an oversight last expansion like the many of other things they forgot to include.

No dungeons at the end of this expansion can not be chalked up to an oversight.  It would be a clear decision on the part of the game makers to move away from five man content and to move away from the end of the expansion catch up mechanic that they were so good for.

I think not having any new 5 man dungeons at the end of this expansion might be very telling as to what we can expect the next expansion.  The possible moving away from dungeon content as the predominant catch up and random content filler to something more complete including scenarios and LFR.  But with LFR being such the joke it is and scenarios not exactly being a reasonable way to gear up because you only get a shot a decent piece of gear once a day instead of once a run means neither of them are in the position to replace dungeons.

So the removal of dungeons and no addition of anything that can take their place in the grand scheme of things makes you wonder if they really are dead.  Not adding them AND not replacing them with something else might just mean they are phasing them out completely as content for anything other than release.  And even as someone that can give or take them I think that is the wrong move.  I might not be one of the people that love them and scream to get them back but I am also not someone that is going to say don't waste your time on them and make something else.  I am perfectly neutral about them and I think abandoning them, even more so from the last raid patch, is a huge mistake.  The question is, what should we read into it.  If anything.

Bonus topic:  Random Grouping

Do you think the trend against random grouping will continue?

When the LFD was first introduced I loved the idea of it.  Even if I was in a guild, and that guild I found because of having to assemble groups by hand, I still had a hard time getting my dungeons done each day.  Most days I never did.

As anyone that played before the days of the LFD will tell you group content was time consuming to assemble for.   It was a choice to spend the day in trade or to go out and do things.  Couldn't have it both ways.  Of course in time once I made a name for myself and was getting invited to groups a little more often it did free me up to go out in the world and do stuff and still occasionally get my dungeon in.  I could just wait for a whisper while doing my dailies and if one did not come I would head back to the city and try to spam until I could find a group.  Most days I never did.  On a good week I ran my dungeon 3 times, maybe, just maybe, 4.  I don't think I ever ran my daily dungeon each day.  Ever.

Then everything become random groups.  Even raids did later on.  And the communities started to fall apart after wrath when the merged 10 and 25 man raiding into one thing and pugs stopped.  Between lack of pugs, lack of community, lack of assembly, the game started to become automated.

Log in, do random content, cap, wait for raid night.

But recently we have been seeing more and more of a push to self assembly.  It started a bit ago with rated battlegrounds and now it has extended to PvE with heroic scenarios last patch and flex raiding next patch.

I have to give blizzard some props here.  Nice work on attempting, albeit slowly, to build community again.  Adding virtual realms is also a huge step in that direction even if most people do not notice it as such.  By merging servers, oops, don't tell them I said that, they are making it possible for even what was once a small server to have more people for non-random content.  By adding flex raiding and more so the ability to do the same bosses again, they are stepping up the ability to pug.

They are making a solid push forward into returning us to where we came from, but in a better position than we were when we were there.  The days of assembled groups are returning, or might be returning, we will see.  But it is clear, at least in my mind, that blizzard is trying to let the community help itself again by adding some things to the game that will allow us to be a community again and step away from the "log in, do random content, cap, wait for raid night" that cataclysm basically became and mists expanded on at first.

With two patches in a row having content that needs to be assembled instead of randomed into, do you think this is a trend that will continue?  Do you think it is a trend that should continue?

The one thing I worry about is the absence of  random content in place of this assembled content.  They need to work a balance.  And if they had given us our 3 pack of dungeons this last raid tier and if they do make LFR a lot easier for the people that will be left in it, with those and the addition of flex raiding and server merged virtual realms, we could have the perfect balance of community and ease all in one nice bundle.

The balance is close to where I think it would be perfect but at the moment they are pushing assembled content so hard as the flex raiding and virtual realms support it, that they are forgetting the random content completely.  How long do you think they will push it and how much should they before it is too much?  That is something worth thinking about.

Either way, I am looking forward to once again trying to develop into a community again.  I guess it is time for me to shrug off my anti-social tendencies and once again enter the world so to speak.  It has been so long since I only ran with guild or in random content.  I don't even know if I remember how to pug in trade like I used to do every single day of my gaming life before the introduction of the LFD. Well hello there community, welcome back.  I've missed you.

What Does "No New 5-Mans" Mean to You?

Seeing the comment that there would be no additional 5 man content this expansion opened my mind to a lot of thoughts and one of them is something I am honestly surprised about.  That being, I like the idea.

I really do think it is a great idea to not add any new five man content.

Look back at the five man content added at the end of wrath and cata.  It is wasted content.  You will never see them while leveling because you will never reach the item level required to get into them until you are well past them level wise. So they are forgotten content unless you decide to go back and do them for achievement sake.

So why really make them?  A catch up mechanic for raiding.  That was their only purpose really and we have already been told they do not want that super quick catch up mechanic anymore.  As long as there is new valor gear, new justice gear, and increased drop rates from the previous LFRs and bigger nerfs to past normal raids, there will be a catch up mechanic that way.

While I would like to see some new five mans I can understand and even agree with the idea that they are not needed. 

So what does that mean to me?

Not much really from a gearing up standpoint other than the fact that if I want to gear an alt up for raiding I will need to do it by raiding.  Even if we are only talking the LFR style of raiding lite.  What an interesting idea.  Make people gear for raiding by raiding if they want to do it quickly, or through valor if they want to do it slowly.  But wait, if the valor gear is going to be locked behind a raiding reputation you will need to raid to get the valor gear.  I guess that if people want raid gear they will have to raid in one form or another.  I think I like that idea somewhat.

So my warlock will never be "raid ready" like he was last expansion.  My rogue will never be "raid ready" like he was last expansion.  Who cares.  I do not really raid with them.  Never really have and if and when I do decide to do so with them, the LFRs, and there are many of them, with an increased drop rate of them, should be an ample catch up mechanic.

So all that time spent making those new five mans that really serve no purpose can now be used to make content that might actually have more life.  Or we can hope.  That time could end up being spent on something else that will never be seen in the future just like those end five mans will never be seen by people leveling. But it will bring more to the mix now, and isn't now what really matters? 

Being they have said countless times they do not want a quick catch up mechanic what do you think new five mans would bring anyway if they did add them?  More dungeons with 463 drops.  No thank you.

So no new five mans means I actually need to work on my characters and drag them through the gearing process, not just skip a huge lump of it.  It means those characters might even get a little raid experience on their way to gearing up to do a real raid, which would be a useful thing.  Playing a character is a good thing as it gets you used to where you have your abilities bound.

As far as I see it, no new five mans means we have the potential for more content, better content, and I actually am being pushed to play those characters I do not play often more.  It is a very subtle move that I think most people will miss the point of.  For an expansion that was very alt unfriendly at the start, it is turning into something that is almost alt friendly.  Not quite, but almost.  Alt friendly in the sense that it will make us play our alts and not just have them.

People will be blasting the no new five mans for the next week, I am sure of it, but this elf won't be one of them.  I think it is a brilliant move and I am impressed they are doing that, or should that be not doing that. 

I would rather see an extra raid than a set of three 5 mans.  Perhaps instead of wasting their time on making three five mans with 4 bosses each, they can make two raids instead of one.  Ever think about it that way?

Look at the five mans we got at the end of cata, they were leaps and bounds better in style, vision, mechanics and size than the raid we had.  If those three five man dungeons were never made and all the time spent to make them was spent on DS I think DS would have been better. 

It could have had as many as 20 bosses, better design, and original places to fight instead of recycled content.  Don't you think DS would have been better if there were no five mans to take up a lot of development time?  I do, and that is what having no new five mans means to me.  Better content coming from somewhere else, instead of just another treadmill in the gearing process when it is not needed because we already have one in place for gearing up, namely the LFR.

No new five mans is a giant leap ahead in the development of a better game and better over all content for us.  So I won't complain about it.  At least not today. ;)