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?

Will Requiring a Proving Grounds Silver Help Groups?

Someone made a post over on the official forums for the US concerning a comment made during the foreign press tour where it was mentioned that you would need a crucible silver metal to get into LFD and LFR.  It seems crucible will be the WoD version of proving grounds.

The first, and only thing really, I disliked about this idea was with alts.  What if I hit max level, 100 as it will be, and just want to spam heroic dungeons with my guild mates to power gear up?  I have to complete silver first before I can do that?  Seems kind of unfair if you ask me.  If my guild wishes to carry my freshly dinged ass through a bunch of dungeons they should be allowed to.  That is what guilds are for, to help each other.

If crucible will be anything like proving grounds our leveling gear will not be adequate to get a silver.  Take this expansion for example where when you hit 90 you were somewhere in the range of 430-440 but the scaling for the proving grounds was designed around 463.  This would mean there is no way I would be able to get a silver on an alt.  Gear scales down, not up.  Maybe I can pull it off on a hunter being that is the only thing I am really decent at, but on an alt there is no way in hell I can get a silver at an item level up to 33 less than what it is designed for.  So no power running my alts through heroics with guild when I hit 100.  That makes the grumpy elf a quite sad elf indeed.

Apparently something was lost in the translation, as sometimes happens, and that will not be the case, at least not exactly.  My guild will be able to run me through heroics even if I do not meet the requirements.  Suddenly I like the way this is going.  But LFR will not have any such requirements.  Suddenly I do not like the way this is going any longer.  Watcher came around to try and help clear some things up.  I will quote what he stated here, so everyone understands it better and does not go forward thinking the wrong thing, as I did when I first read it, before I talk more about it.

To at least get everyone on the same page in terms of information, since a summary of a translated version of a translation of a few sentences in a single interview may not be the best foundation for a 24-page discussion, here's an overview of our current thinking:

• We will have Normal and Heroic versions of our max-level dungeons. (Note that we did not have Normal level 90 dungeons in Mists.)
• There will be no special requirement other than basic level/ilvl requirements on queuing for Normal dungeons or LFR.
• Level-up quest gear will get you into Normal dungeons/scenarios, and Normal dungeon/scenario gear will get you into LFR.
• Heroic dungeons will be more challenging than the Normal version (not brutally difficult, mind you -- just somewhat more demanding).
• You will need a Silver Proving Grounds medal in a given role in order to queue for random matchmaking for a Heroic Warlords dungeon. If you form a premade group, you can zone in regardless and no such requirement applies.

In the past, challenging content and random matchmaking have often not gone so well together. Relying on item level does nothing to prevent a random group from getting, for example, a tank who may literally have never tanked before. Everyone has to learn somewhere, but we'd rather not have that learning come at other players' expense. One option would be to require a full premade group to do Heroic Dungeons, as we do with Heroic Scenarios, but that would present a very high barrier to entry (finding 4 other people with rigid role requirements is much harder than finding 2 other people with no role requirements). This solution represents a compromise in order to allow the content to see a broader reach via matchmaking, while minimizing frustration.

And yes, we realize that by formally using Proving Grounds as a qualification, it will be incumbent upon us to further refine their balance and mechanics. We'll be updating them for Warlords, and we're confident that we can make them a fair test of baseline ability within a given role. 

So it looks like there will be no requirement to queue up for the LFR, if I read this correctly.  That leaves me to ask, why?  Dead god why?  LFR is more of a problem than dungeons are.  If there ever should be a barrier for entry that is where it should be.  Even if LFR is designed to be tourist mode, like they said, a group of really horrible players will still find a way to wipe until they get 10 stacks of determination.  Anybody that says otherwise is fooling themselves, has selective memory and blocked out the bad runs, never ran the LFR to begin with, or just has the most incredible luck ever to have not run into a group like that and if that is the case let it be known I hate you because I have had no such luck.

Heroic dungeons however will have that barrier to allow people to queue up for them.  You will need to have at least a silver to get into a heroic dungeon using the LF* tool and we can only presume, hope really, that if heroic dungeons are going to have a barrier that they will drop gear better than that found in the LFR.  Or at least they should.  If heroic dungeons have a barrier and LFR does not, this is a no brainer, heroic dungeons must drop better gear.

If heroic dungeons do not drop gear better than the LFR, and heroic dungeons have a lock out system where LFRs does not, blizzard has just made a colossal mistake in my opinion.   It could even rank up there with the biggest mistakes ever and for a company that has made as many big mistakes as they have recently that is no easy task.

The one good thing I noticed was that premade groups will be able to zone in to heroic dungeons regardless of if they met the requirements or not.  So my freshly dinged alt can join up with my guild mates and spam heroic dungeons the second I hit 90.  That was a very nice thing to hear.  When I first read it I said to myself, self, I hope that we will be able to at least get in with a full premade.  Seems that this time blizzard did something I can say is pretty awesome.

Watcher made a couple of statements that show he understand things a hell of a lot more than most of the blues that post and I think he/she is quickly becoming my favorite blue.  This person does not seem like he/she is at a complete moron like we have known to come to expect form blues that post.

I would like to talk a little about a few winner comments he made. "challenging content and random matchmaking have often not gone so well together"  I could have told you that a long time ago.  Before cataclysm even came out I said it and many others did as well.  We all said these new heroics will go over as well as a fart in church. You can not add anything that is even remotely challenging even on a small level to random content.  Looks like blizzard is learning.  But if they would have listened to us to begin with they might not have lost two million subscribers at the beginning of cataclysm because of that huge mistake.

"Relying on item level does nothing to prevent a random group from getting, for example, a tank who may literally have never tanked before"  That could happen in heroics too if they get a silver as a damage dealer and then queue as a tank, but his comment did seem to say that you needed to have a silver in the role, so maybe that will not happen.  We will see, but it shows once again that watcher understands what people like myself are saying when we complain sometimes about people in dungeons that have no business being there. 

Just because you have the gear does not mean you know how to play the role.  I could have the item level to heal on my druid, I do actually, but I have not healed on my druid since wrath.  Sure, I might do okay but I should not ever be allowed to subject a group of strangers to that.  Me having the gear means nothing, without the skills I can end up being the reason we wipe over and over.  My gear and the fact I have it, means nothing.  Like I just said, I have a complete healing set on my druid but I have not healed since wrath. Gear means nothing without the skills to use it.

While watcher might just be another blue voice in the crowd, at least at this moment I really like the guy/girl.  The post was informative, put my worries of not being able to have my guild help me on an alt when I hit 100 out of my mind, and gave us a little more information than we had from a translation that was apparently slightly misinterpreted.

I do have some issue with it however, like I said, if heroic dungeons have a requirement to use the LF* system and the looking for raid does not, does this mean that heroics will drop better gear than the LFR?  It sure as hell better.

And what happens when the next tier comes out?  Will heroic dungeon gear be getting an upgrade or will we still need to meet a requirement for something that now offers old, out of date and effectively useless gear but not for the new LFR which will offer better gear, and probably be harder.  Why should something that offers the best current gear through using the LF* system need no requirement?  If LFR still does not require silver, heroic dungeons that will still require it better have their gear updated to once again be better than the current LFR gear.

They need to put the requirement on LFR as well as heroics in my opinion and they need to update heroic gear to always be on par with the current level of LFR gear if they are going to have a requirement that must be met to enter them.

So while this all seems like a good idea, it could very well become one of the things that blizzard did not think out fully again.

Bottom line, if heroic dungeons have a requirement to queue for and LFR does not, heroic dungeons MUST drop better gear.  Not just at the beginning of the expansion, but throughout the entire expansion.  End of story.

What do you think of all this?

Three Baggie Perspectives

This is basically a short post to share something interesting someone said the other day, to say something I decided the other day, and to get some input on motivation.

About the random baggie:  Something interesting.

A hunter in my guild the other night told me he got the bribe bag when queuing up for the LFR the other day.  We both thought it was a complete fluke that a damage dealer had the baggie but then it happened to him again two days later.  Have you ever seen a damage dealer offered the baggie?  I never have.  I want my baggie.

When talking about it we came to the conclusion that it was the hour he plays.  He is a late night player, as in so late at night type of player that he is probably in the LFR when I am waking up for work in the morning.  Twice in the last week it seems damage dealers are needed at that time of day.  Or should it be that time of night?

About the random baggie:  Something decided.

I don't mind healing LFR.  If anything it is the only role I don't mind doing in the LFR.  Not exactly sure why that is, it just is.  But while playing around during the weekend it occurred to me, why bother just to cap being there is no longer any valor gear to buy with valor, and I do not raid enough with them to get new gear all the time to need the valor to upgrade it.

So from now on, I will only heal an LFR when there is an option of the baggie.  No baggie, no healer.  So the next time you are waiting on a healer and wonder why there are none around you will know that at least one healer is out there that is not entering the queue because there is no reason for me to gain valor without valor gear and there is no reason for me to heal without giving me something extra to bait me in.

About the random baggie: Motivation.

The bag has never been motivation for me to tank the LFR or a dungeon.  It is not really about reward or even instant queue.  I can ramble off a million and one reasons I do not like tanking random content but it comes down to the people in it.  I've actually become a pretty staunch tank protector in random content.  Even more so when I am on my healer and others complain.  As long as I have no problem keeping him up, you have no right to complain.  But all people do it complain about tanks.  All other tanks do it ignore or insult each other, usually.  Tanks get no love, only grief.

I currently have 6 tanks capable of tanking SoO LFR.  I've tanked some flex and some normal on two of them.  But I will not ever even consider for a moment tanking SoO LFR.  A baggie is just not compelling motivation.  I like to tank, I am willing to tank, but the people in them keep me from doing it.  I am sure I am not the only person that feels that way, just look at the fact there are always tanks needed.  What type of motivation do you think would get people like me to tank?  People who like tanking but do not like the people in randoms?

What if: LFR Was Replaced by LFD 2.0

As the game stands how we recognize the LFD to mean a 5 man dungeon usually from the start of the expansion with low starter gear and the LFR to mean a 25 man raid that is now the new standard for the gearing up process.

I often complain about the LFR for various reasons but one of the most prevalent reasons why I no longer run it is because of the people in it.  Maybe some people do not mind a jerk here and there but I've about had as much of these assholes (excuse my language) as I can take.  Even if it is a good group with just a few "go go go" jerks and a few "I am gods gift" morons sprinkled with your regular AFK LFR heroes I just do not want to deal with them any longer.

The LFR has worn out its welcome as far as I am concerned.  Now, with no valor gear the only way to gear alts this coming patch is through the LFR.  So like it or not if I want to have alts at least at a minimal level of gear that I can bring them in to raid once in a while I have to subject myself to the horrible nightmare that is the LFR for gear.  There is no longer any way around it.  I can no longer just get whatever valor gear there is and work with that to get me up there a little until I get into an alt run for the real raid.  Blizzard has damned me to hell and made it so if I want gear I have to burn in the pits of anguish, otherwise known as the LFR.

So it had me thinking, what if there were no LFR but LFD 2.0.

All LFR wings would be 5 man dungeons instead of 25 man raids.  Designed to be done just like dungeons with one tank one healer and three damage dealers.

Lets look at some of the pros and cons as they might be.

Pro's for LFD 2.0:

• 5 man randoms usually have better people when compared to 25 man randoms.
• They would be easier for the masses.
• You could remove raid tier as it is no longer a raid.
• People still get to see the content.
• Premade groups would be easier to assemble.
• Tanks and healers could get baggies.
• They would fit better into the "bite sized" content people like.

Con's for LFR 2.0:

• Unlike LFD you can only loot bosses once a week which could confuse some.
• Some raid mechanics can not work with 5 people.
• Some like to raid and they would lose that "epic" group feeling.

I am sure there are more pros or cons that you can come up with, but what if they completely abandoned the LFR project and went back to using dungeons as the gearing up process.  But in a better way than ever before with updated dungeon gear with each new addition.  Each patch would release a new tier of dungeons that are mini versions of the raid with their gear as the catch up mechanic.

What if the LFR was replaced by LFD 2.0?  Would it replace all the problems that many people perceive the current LFR to have?

Difficulty?

- I often say the LFR is too hard for the masses it is made for.  While bosses go down most groups are filled with people that will never learn anything because the game can not create more difficulty to teach them without making it harder on the few that actually know what they are doing.  So I contend that making it easier is the better idea because the ones that do not want to learn will never learn anyway, so why have any difficulty there in an attempt to teach people that refuse to learn?

As a five man dungeon that becomes less of an issue.  As they will be easier to begin with because of five man design, some of the mechanics that actually cause problems for some, the ones that seem to never learn, would most likely be absent, so they can not screw them up.

Also, with the addition of flex, the argument that LFR can teach people no longer holds water.  While it is true a person that wants to learn to get better can use the LFR as a tool to get better the majority are there for quest items, reputation, gear and/or valor.  They are not there to get better.  That is now the place of flex, where you will be with a group that might actually teach you instead of a bunch of random people that all care only about themselves.

Wait time?

- Have you ever waited in queue for over an hour?  I have plenty of times.  I remember when the LFR first came out and the tanks actually had a wait time.  Myself and a tank buddy entered the queue together, one hour and 50 minutes later I said to him, we should be done with two LFRs already, not waiting for the first one, and I gave up and logged off.  It was also the last time I ever queued up as a tank with just another tank with me.  Now I will not tank the LFR unless there is a mostly full guild group there.

People only have a certain amount of time to play.  Even someone like myself who does play often I only have a certain amount of time to play.  It is partly why I no longer run the LFR.  I'll log on with the intention of doing one or two with an alt and do some auction house listings, some pet battle dailies, some rare hunting and maybe another quest or two.  If my queue does not pop, guess what?  I don't do the LFR.  I do not have an unlimited amount of time to sit around and wait.

Maybe, just maybe, if I could be assured a good group with decent people that will move at a fair pace I would wait it out but more often than not I will queue into a group were one of the tanks drop as soon as they zone in and after waiting 50 minutes I am now waiting again.  No thank you.

One of the worst parts of the LFR is the fact there is such a brutal wait time.  Would having five man versions of them alleviate that?  I think there is a possible chance of that actually happening, if the bribe bags are used correctly.

Being you can only get loot from LFD 2.0 once a week what real reason is there for a tank to queue more than once?  The baggies.  Make the baggies have a chance to drop a piece of loot that comes from that wing.  So while you can only get loot once a week, you can grind out as a tank to get a second piece or even a third or forth, if you are willing to put in the effort.  That is of course along with the goodies they already have a chance to get from baggies.

This would mean that, if done correctly, you have all but removed the wait time from the LFR by making them LFD 2.0.  My alt would never get through its first pet battle daily before the queue popped up and I don't know about you but if queue was that fast I would be much more likely to use the LFR (LFD 2.0) to gear my alts.  The excessive wait times of the LFR would not translate to the LFD 2.0.  I might even tank them if they were 5 man because it would remove the biggest reason I do not tank the LFR, the fact the other tank 99 out of 100 times is a complete jerk in one way or another.  If they even respond to you when you ask them if they want to take the boss first.

Community?

- I believe the 25 mans give the community a bad name.  No really.  Just look at some of the groups and the people that are in them.  I am not talking just the "go go go" jerks.  I am talking the whole bunch, the entire collection of the great unwashed, the undesirables.

Making groups has always been the best way to build community and just look at the success of the heroic scenarios.  I have not seen trade more active on my tiny server since the days of ICC with people looking for groups.  Looking for tanks or healers.  Admittedly I do not understand why anyone would need a tank or a healer for a heroic scenario but in lesser gear they could surely be helpful.  I've just gotten so used to going in my heroic scenarios with my 3 hunter team.  We rip through them like a fat kid at a cake shop.  We leave nothing behind and finish the stuff in record time.  Love capping valor in an hour.  But that is another story all together.

Making a group of 3 or 4 and getting the 1 or 2 you need from the random system is a lot easier than making a group for the LFR.  Heck, even getting all 5 for a dungeon is a lot easier than getting 25 for the LFR.  Even more so late in a patch like now.  If I can find even 3 or 4 people willing to do the LFR it is a miracle and my guild is a guild filled with alt-a-holics that all have characters that need stuff from the LFR but they just will not do it.  They would rather leave their alts under geared than to subject themselves to the hell that is the LFR and I don't blame them.

But with smaller groups like LFD 2.0 would bring, saying we have 4 and just need one more, the likelihood of getting that guild person to join us is better.  As is so much better I might as well just call it a sure thing.  We just need one for a 2.0 dungeon.  Me, me, me, I can see it already.  Full guild group.  I am in.

Whether it be making guild groups or trade groups, smaller groups mean the likelihood of more community and more people talking to each other to make said groups.  This is good for the game.

Toxic behavior?

- I would be hard pressed to believe there is any worse part of the LFR than the toxic behavior that seems to run rampant in them.  I could not even repeat some of the things I have heard in those groups or I would have to label this blog as adults only and it would still most likely offend someone that reads it.

Large groups bring out the worst in people.  As an old saying goes, a person is smart, people are stupid.  That is shown in a perfect example with the LFR.  I have seen people that were normally decent people get caught up in raid conversations that were bile being thrown back and forth and why is that?  Because they can and because blizzard does nothing about this sort of toxic behavior.

Before the LFR was ever introduced I made a post expressing my concerns on what could go wrong with it.  One of them was this, the toxic behavior thing.  I said, basically, you can not put 25 random people together and ask them to act civil to one another when there are no penalties for them becoming jerks.  Chalk another one up for the elf.  Sometimes it sucks being right.

LFD 2.0 would still have the chance of grabbing a jerk but that jerk would be less likely to act up without a huge captive audience.  9 times out of 10 a jerk in a five man the jerk will either find the fast path out with a boot to the ass or they will just shut the hell up and do their job because it will all be over in 15 minutes.

LFR 2.0 offers 2 things the LFR does not.  Smaller groups, were that one person has less of an audience to back him up and a quick run.  Most of the worst stuff in the LFR starts happening when people have waited for an hour to get in or waited for an hour while in there because tanks dropped or because there were wipes, or because there were any delays.  Smaller groups and quicker content means the chance of being exposed to toxic behavior is limited a great deal.  Not eliminated by any means, but limited a great deal.  For that one reason alone I would love to see the LFR wings turned into 5 mans.

End game?

The end game is different for everyone despite how hard blizzard is trying to push everyone into raiding, even more so the next patch with no valor gear.  For me my end game is normal modes, if I finish them I am happy.  Some of my readers are in the same boat as me with normal mode being our end game.  Some of my readers finish heroic modes, some of them fishing LFR and some of them never even enter LFR.  I even have a few readers that do not even do dungeons even if they have multiple 90s.  The end game is different for everyone.

Maybe it is time that blizzard starts to understand that and stops trying to push everyone into raiding.  LFD 2.0 would open the doors for a great many players where dungeons fit their play style, play time, and skill or dedication level much more appropriately.

With the addition of flex we will, hopefully, see a lot more pugging going on, so those former raiders or people that want to raid but play on off hours, could very well be served with having flex to run.  There is no longer a need for the LFR, at least not as much as there used to be.  But there is a huge open space for the vast majority of the players that do not want to raid that have absolutely nothing to do and no way to progress their character at all.  LFD 2.0 would allow them that.

Blizzard needs to understand that forcing people into content they do not like to do is bad for the game.  I was forced to PvP for my PvE legendary quest line.  I do not like to PvP and did not want to PvP.  I did it however because it was winning just two battlegrounds and once I was done with it I was done with it.  However, if I were forced to continually PvP to get my PvE gear I would quit the game so fast that the sound of me uninstalling the game would make a sonic boom.

This is exactly the place the vast majority of the player base is in.  They are not raiders, they do not want to raid, but they feel forced to raid if they ever want to feel any level of personal progression.  Dungeons 2.0 would be much more accessible to the masses and fit the type of bite sized quick and easy content they enjoy. 

Perhaps, to some small extent at least, the reason for so many lost subs is because blizzard is forgetting that the majority do not want to do the content blizzard is trying to force them into, just as much as I would not like to have to PvP all the time to get my PvE gear.

Let people have their end game.  Because now with no valor gear coming next patch, the end game for anyone that does not raid at all is going to be a year old soon.  Think about it.  If you do not raid, never raided and never had any intention to raid, your gearing process ended when the expansion came out.  463s from dungeons, 489s and 496s from valor and reputation.  Oh, and 1 522, isn't that nice.

They need to add something for those people that do not raid and turning the failed experiment of the LFR into LFD 2.0 might just give some of them something.

What if all wings of the LFR were changed into 5 man dungeons that you could only get loot from once a week called LFD 2.0?

What if indeed.  I think it would be a fantastic change for the game.

Remembering My First: Random Dungeon

The date was December 8th 2009 and patch 3.3 had just dropped.  Random dungeons, among many other things, were just being added to the game.  As has always been my desire I wanted to try it out as soon as I logged on.  There were also three new dungeons, but I wanted to wait until later when more guild mates where on to try them.  So I just hit the queue button and let it fly.

There was almost no wait.  I think I was in queue for all of 3 minutes, even as a damage dealer.  I ended up getting into Azjol Nerub.  Just as luck would have it, it was a dungeon I had never done before.  Anyone that was around back then will remember that we used to need to assemble our own groups and there were certain dungeons that people just did not ever like to do.  The two down there were two of the dungeons no one ever wanted to do.  The other was the Oculus.  So at that point in the game, yes, this far into the expansion, I had still never done those three dungeons.  I'd finished naxx, EoE, OS, ToC and got 10 deep in Uldaur but I still had never stepped foot into these three dungeons.

I must admit I would have preferred to get a dungeon I knew for my first ever random dungeon.  I mean I do not know any of these people and I have always felt a little uncomfortable around people I did not know.  Sure, you have to meet people eventually but when assembling on your own server it was a lot different.  These would not be people I would ever see again most likely.  They have no vested interest in how I do over all or taking it slow so I can learn and hopefully not screw up whereas someone on my server would not mind someone new to the dungeon because they would have a vested interest in me getting better.

See, that was part of the beauty of hand picking dungeon running mates.  For as frustrating as it could be assembling your own group you knew that if you did it and found someone good in a run it could end up being someone you could run with every day.  So if someone were to say, I've never done this one, they would explain it and not think anything of it.  It was in their best interest not to be a dick about it.  If they kicked you because you had never done it they could get a name of the server of being a jerk.  They would also need to go back to find someone else.  Another waste of time after taking however long it was to assemble the group to begin with.

I admit I was a little scared of the idea of playing with people I did not know and would never see again.  I had spent a decent amount of time in groups with people I never knew but they were on my server, I would see these people again.  Getting to know them made sense to me.  I knew right off that there would be no real good reason to get to know these people and I was sure they felt the same about me.  There was no need to get to know me.  So I was not sure what to expect.

When assembling your own group you usually talked while assembling, talked on the way there, talk about what you were going to do.  You communicated, not always because you had to but because you wanted to.  These people were your peers and you would be playing with them on this server.  Would a random group have the same feeling of people wanting to connect or would it be a go go go mentality.

While it is true that the random dungeon system has evolved into a go go go mentality on December 8th of 2009 it was not that way.  It was new to all of us and people were downright awesome.  At least in my first run they were.

I zoned in and we all said hello to each other. Three people, myself being one, said it was their first random.  Two had done a random before but one of those two had never done this dungeon either.  We all had decent gear so there would be no difficulty of course, except for the difficulty of adjusting to a random group.

I did what I always do and I set my focus to the group leader, because the group leader is always the tank when we assemble groups.  It wasn't until shortly later that I noticed it does not work that way in a random dungeon.  Yes, complete huntard moment.  I misdirected the first pack of mobs to the healer.  Oops.  The healer complained about getting aggro and I immediately admitted it was my fault.  I explained that I set focus for my misdirect macro on the group leader because we always made the group leader the tank.  The healer said it was understandable being it was my first time a random.

I fixed my misdirect focus to the tank because now I noticed that little symbol that only one person has for the position of leader does not mean tank, it just means leader.  The tank could be someone else.  In this case it was.  It wasn't until after I made that mistake that I noticed the little shield, swords and plus mark which designated the tank, damage dealers and healer respectively.

We laughed a little about it and I appoligized a few times.  They all said it was no big deal, we all need to learn how this new thing works.  It was like making a group of people on my own server.  There was talking, there was explaining, there was figuring things out as a group, there was joking, there was fun and there was achievement hunting.

On the second boss the tank said, want to go for the achievement.  I said, sure, but I don't know what the achievement is.  The tank said, the idea is that you pull and then feign death to reset the boss then we run down and kill it.  One of the DPS joked, but make sure to misdirect to the healer first.  I said, okay, and we all laughed.

I did as instructed and aggroed and feigned death, after dismissing my pet of course, as I knew he could cause problems if he were still there when I feigned and it reset the boss.  We ran down and beat up the boss and got the achievement for it.  The DPS said afterward, you messed up, you were supposed to misdirect to the healer first.  I said, sorry, I'll try to do better next time.  We all laughed again.

We ended up clearing the dungeon with no real issues outside of me misdirecting the first pack to the healer.  Leave it to the huntard to make the only mistake of the dungeon.  But in a way, it became the perfect ice breaker for the group of people using this new random dungeon feature on the day it came out.  We all talked, we all had a good time, and oddly enough when the dungeon was over we all stayed in group for a few minutes and exchanged pleasantries.  We wished each other a good day, thanked each other for the run and said we hope we bump into each other again.

I do not recall the names of any of those four people I was with that first day of random dungeons release in my first random, but I did recall them for a while back then.  I kept thinking maybe I would run into them again.  But the collective of people to choose from for randoms is so huge at max level that the odds of seeing someone again are slim to none and I never once saw any of them again and soon their named faded from my memory. 

I could not even tell you the class my tank was any longer, or that of the healer.  I do not even recall what class the other two damage dealers were.  They become all nameless, classless, figures of the past now.  But even if I can not remember who they were I do remember that they made my first ever random dungeon a good one.  Random dungeons have changed a lot since then but that can never taint the memory I have of the random dungeon system showing some real promise the day it came out when I did my first one.

A Solution to the LF Queue Times

This is a tongue in cheek post and not meant to be taken seriously... or is it?

I think I have finally found the ultimate solution to the looking for systems queue issues.  The forth role selection.

When you enter the queue for any looking for content you are given a prompt that ask you to confirm your role.  The three options we are given are that of the tank, the healer and the damage dealer just like a pure damage dealer can not choose the tank or healer option.  One more should be added and called the selfish bastard.

From this moment on the hybrid classes can no longer choose damage dealer as an option.  They can now only choose between tank (if their class allows), healer (if their class allows) and selfish bastard (if they want to steal the damage dealer role from someone that does not have any other options).

How the system would work is just like it does now, it would fill a group with tanks, healers and damage dealers.  The only time it would ever choose anyone from the selfish bastards sign up would be if there are currently no mages, rogues, hunters or warlocks in queue.  As those are the classes that have no options they would always be put to the front of the line over the classes that have choices.

In time the selfish bastards would realize that they are the reason there are long queues for the LF systems.  And the system would let them know that every step of the way with pop up messages. "If you where a tank you would be entering now.", "If you were a healer you would be entering now."  Things like that.

When you sign up under the selfish bastard option you will be told exactly how many people that could have been you that had finished the instance while you sat waiting.  "Your dungeon is ready, 17 tanks have queued up and finished this dungeon already before you even entered.  One of them could have been you if you had chosen not to be a selfish bastard."

Throughout the entire process that a selfish bastard is in queue they will be notified in chat of everything a tank or healer wins, as it applies to what they could have been.  "A tank has won [xxxxx]", "A healer has won [xxxxx]".  With the vast number of people using the system that will mean their screen with forever be filled with "someone else wins something".  This notification can not be turned off.  The selfish bastard can just ignore the chat panel if they like, but it will still be there.

Would this actually be a solution?  Who knows, but a guilt trip could be fun to think about and the idea that there would be someone on the other end of the monitor screaming at the screen after seeing dozens, if not hundreds, of messages that tanks and healers have just won something and they just won gold, again, is priceless.

A selfish bastards role selection is needed in the game and it would be the solution to the LF queue times issue.

Full disclosure:  I queue as DPS on my tanks too because I refuse to tank for randoms and I would still gladly be a selfish bastard and wait a little longer.  But most aren't as stubborn as me.  They would fold to the pressure of being called a selfish bastard in due time.

Please support the selfish bastard role check option.  The only people that should ever be allowed to select the role of a damage dealer are those that can only be damage dealers.

I Miss Accountability

Don't get me wrong, I remember the hell of finding a group in those days before the looking for system was added.  I remember logging in and waiting for someone to post in trade they needed a DPS for something, anything.  I remember asking in trade looking for a group.  I remember spending hours, yes hours, try to find a group for a dungeon and sometimes still never getting to do one that day.  I remember more days than I could count where I tried on and off for four hours and never got a group.  I remember those times I did get a group and then someone would disconnect after the first pull meaning we needed to go back and look for someone again, or if it were a DPS deciding on if we should try it with only two damage dealers.

It was not fun.  Anyone that joined the game after the looking for system was introduced will never be capable of understanding what it was like.  I am not looking at those days with rose tinted glasses and saying how great they were because they were not.  They were their own small piece of hell just for you.

When the looking for system was added to the game our own little hell of trying to find a group was replaced by a different little hell, the hell of being with random people.  There are good, bad and the people that do bad on purpose because they think it is justifiable because other are bad.

But did the ease of group assembly end up losing us more than we gained?  We gained the ability to instantly assemble a group without even trying and lost any sense of accountability in the process.

The days before the dungeon finder, as I said, were not fun when you were a new player.  You basically needed to luck into a group and the only way you could do that is with continued spamming in trade or reading in trade and hoping you were the first person to respond to someone that was posting they needed someone for your role.

I had many times where I went days without finding a group.  Other days I logged in and saw someone posting and whispered right away and got lucky and was on a flight path to the dungeon within minutes.

One of the best tricks to getting a group was to hang around the stones of popular instances.  I did this a few times to get a group.  Basically what you were doing was hoping that someone dropped group or DCed and that they needed someone to fill in and they might just take you being you are already there.  Just saying in say, LFG, was usually enough to get an invite if someone needed you.

You basically had to work your butt off to get into a group.  It was all worth it however because once you did get in a group it was your time to show everyone why you were a good person to have along.  Do well, or exceptional even, and you will be remembered.  Even antisocial people like myself would often chat with the people in the group because you had to.  These people were from your community and if you wanted to make sure you get an invite again next time they needed someone, you sure as hell wanted them to remember you as a nice person and a good player, not just one or the other.

It took me a long time, many different dungeon pugs over the course of two months stalking trade and taking an invite from every group that would give me a shot and making connections with the people on my server.  After some time doing this people started to know me, they started to know I was decent and willing to do dungeons just about any chance I got.

The time came where I no longer needed to hang around and read trade.  My chains were unlocked, I could now go out in the world and do other things.  No longer was I confined to a city if I wanted to do a dungeon.  I was now known and known to be a competent player.  I would not get an invite every day but it had gotten to the point where at least 4 of the 7 days in the week someone would whisper me looking to have me join their group.  When I was building my reputation, even on a good week, I could not get 4 dungeon runs, now I got them without even trying to get them.

That was the power of accountability.  I did groups with people that saw I was good and they wanted me around.  Sure, the nightmare of those months trying to find a group at the get go were not easy at all but being groups were assembled by hand, people were accountable for their actions.

When someone was looking for a damage dealer my name started to get around as someone that is often looking and I could hold my own.  More and more invites came.  If I had been a bad player or had been a huntard my reputation would have went the other way and it would have became increasingly harder for me to get groups.  People that were not very good were kept out of the inner circle because, not trying to be rude here but it is true, they did not deserve to be involved in group content.

Those people you see now in 480 gear that are struggling to do 12K, whether it is because they are bad players or slackers that are better but just do not try, would never see the inside of a dungeon or a raid again and that is how it should be.  Those people have no business ever being in that content because they are not capable of doing it.

Just because you can pick up a baseball bat doesn't mean you should be playing for the new york yankees, same goes for group content like dungeons or raids, just because you have the gear and are capable of entering them, doesn't mean you should be doing them.  The accountability system was a much better player run system to keep people out than the item level gating of the looking for system.

The looking for system was a wonderful addition for what it did, helped you find groups faster, but it was a horrible addition for what the game lost when it was added, and that is accountability.

People can act poorly, play poorly, or just exhibit poor work ethics and never have to worry about any repercussions.  No one is going to say in trade, he is a slacker, he ninja pulls, he ninja loots, he can not put out what is required for the content.  They do not need to worry about being invited to groups because any group is only one button away.  How they play and act means nothing now.  Nope, not even in the slightest, it no longer matters.  There is no accountability in the game any more.  You can act any way you want, play any way you want, do any thing you want and it will rarely if ever get back to hurt you.

If someone did not know how to play their class or role, it got noticed, word got out.  If someone had a bad attitude and was a problem player, word got out.  If someone was rude and insulting, word got out.  If someone had constant disconnects or AFKs, word got out.  If someone tried to get carried by letting everyone else do the work, word got out.

Just like those people added me to their friends list, the one that allowed me to get back into the world and no longer need to sit around reading trade, they put people they did not want to group with on their black list.  People shared their lists too.  Bad players names got out just as quickly as the good ones did.  If anything the bad players names got out faster because some people wanted to keep the names of the good people to themselves so they would hopefully always be available for them when they needed them.

If you needed a healer you would ask a friend and your friend would say, let me see who is on my friends list.  Do you remember those days?  I do and fondly actually, when we were missing a healer for the raid and everyone was looking through our friends lists and switching characters to see if we had one on another friends list.

We played with people because we wanted to play with them.  We played with people that were good or at least good enough.  We played we people we liked.  It took a lot longer to make groups and sometimes we still couldn't but we always played with the people that were worth playing with, that deserved to be doing the content, they are the same type of players we are.

Now with the looking for system there is no accountable, there is no consideration about who we want to play with, there is no filter to keep all those people out of there that should not even be there in the first place.  People seem to have this idea that if the system lets me sign up for the content that means I can do it and that is about as far from the truth as you could ever be.  Many people do not deserve to be there.

The bad players do not deserve to be there.  They deserve to get a bad reputation for being a bad player, which in turn will teach them to learn their role before trying to do content they are obviously not capable of doing.

We now have instant access to dungeons and raids and no one is being held accountable for their actions.  Was the complete dismantling of community and self moderated group content really worth what we gave up for one button group assembly?

Sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say no.

But one thing I always say is that I missed being able to be in a group where everyone was at least a decent player capable of doing the content because it was built with people that earned the right to be in that group by the accountability system we had in place before the looking for system.

Sometimes I wonder if what we lost is worth what we got.  We sold our souls for an easier system and lost our community in the process.

What a Horrible Random... or Was It?

There are some things that newer hunters just do not understand or perhaps there are some things older hunters just take for granted and have not grown to learn better.  This is a story about that.  New hunter and old hunter.

I am the old hunter.  Mind you I am not old school by any means but compared to someone that started in cataclysm I could be called an old timer with ease.  Not to mention the fact that one of the reasons I fell in love with the hunter class was the old school feel to them.  Kiting, jump shots, etc.  I would spend hours on end, just for fun mind you, practicing the jump shot and kiting elite mobs around un'goro.  But enough of that, on to the story at hand.

A returning player from the guild had just hit 90 and I said I would queue up with him for a dungeon figuring that having my little boost to DPS will help with him being a fresh 90.  I figured if he is doing less it would not hurt having a guild mate with him to do a little more and pick up the slack so he does not hinder the group any being a returning player and a new 90.  As it turns out, it was not needed, he did fantastic, but that is not what this story is about.  It is about us being in the dungeon and the people on vent.

I was explaining the fights to him as it was his first time doing all of them and we were talking about the run on vent with some other people on as well.  One of the other people was a hunter who started a few months into cataclysm.  He is an amazing hunter, I've taught him most everything I know and I would have to say when it comes to DPS the student has surpassed the teacher.  I can beat him sometimes but it is no easy task, he really does everything perfect and makes me have to try to be better all the time just to keep up.  But after listening to him on vent I would have to say I guess I did not teach him everything about being a hunter.

So me and the fresh 90 druid pop into the dungeon and the tank pulls as soon as we zone in.  One problem, the healer had not zoned in yet and the tank is not one of those super geared DKs.  I see this and blow everything I have knowing the only chance we have is to down these mobs before the tank dies.  I tell the druid to blow everything as I noticed we were currently healerless.

All but one of the mobs go down and being he was close to death and coming after me I go kite mode and we kill him a few seconds later.  I say it was a close call on vent and the guild mate hunter says it sounds like I am in a fun one, being sarcastic of course.  I laugh and say it looks like it.

Seems the healer DCed while coming into the instance, we wait another minute or two and then kick them.  Sad part is we see him zone in nearly the exact second the kick goes through.  I felt so bad, but at least he is a healer and will not have to wait that long.  Being DCed was not his fault.  Either way, we get a new healer and go on our way.

Next pack of mobs the tank loses one and it goes straight for the healer.  I trap it.  We kill everything and me and the druid turn to the mob I trapped to kill that one now but the tank moves ahead.  Just like he had not noticed one got away from him he did not notice I had trapped it.  At least the 3rd DPS remembered, I believe it was a warrior but I don't exactly recall.  We down the one mob quickly as I turn growl on my pet and MD to it.  It only takes a second, the healer moved up a little so they could heal the tank and us and by this little event I can tell that the healer had noticed what I had noticed, this tank doesn't seem to have any situational awareness and this will be an interesting run.

I say this to the druid on vent and the other hunter is listening and he starts complaining for me I guess.  The dungeon goes on and we have pull after pull with mobs all over the place, bosses that have aggro issues, the healer getting torn apart by any caster we run into.

I am trapping freely, silencing shot goes off for anything that I can interrupt, I don't think I have used scatter shot so much in a dungeon that I wasn't soloing.  I even used intimidation a few times and I am nearly sure I have never even once used it in a random since I switched back to BM this expansion.  I am picking and choosing mobs to taunt with my pet and healing it as best I could while kiting another because I am out of ways to control all the mobs running around while the tank is doing... I have no clue.

One pull, the boss in Mogu'shan Palace with the adds, the tank figures it is his job to tank the boss and pulls that and completely ignores adds.  I trap one, set to burn another, and have to play keep the mob off the healer as best I can.  It becomes a delicate balance of being the only one doing good damage so should I burn things as fast as I can or work control to try and get things in order.

When my MD is off cooldown I decided not to waste it on the tank any more being he doesn't seem to think holding the adds is all that important.  I had dismissed my pet and called another one I knew I had in tenacity spec and MDed to it, one mob at a time.  I made sure the druid was on the same target as me and he and I burnt down the adds one at a time as the other DPS and the tank focused the boss.  I was trapping the one eating the healer but apparently traps have diminishing returns against these mobs so I had to use scatter a few times as well.

I am calling out moves for the druid, picking targets to go after one at a time to burn them based on which ones are making the healers life hell and which ones I have trapped already being it seems they can not be trapped twice.  We could have tried to just burn the boss but with mobs beating on the healer and the DPS in there that would have been a wipe no doubt.

When we are down to one add and I have everything on cooldown I tell the druid to go to the boss and do a little kiting on the add after I make sure I have its attention. Then with a jump and turn and disengage I land directly on the tank and the boss and feign death and somehow, to my amazement it works, the tank takes the aggro and we finish that one and the boss off.

All this time the hunter on vent is complaining about how horrible this run sounds and how he would have dropped group already.  I never said a word in reference to his comments, we just kept moving on.

Going up to the last boss the tank runs away from the healer again and it is a blow everything moment once more.  A little fancy dancing with some serious BM burst on the AoE with that random buff and it tends to be no real problem and requires no additional tricks on my part.

Last boss the tank finds a way to die from basically standing in everything he can find to stand in and the other DPS, being melee, follows him step for step through every bit of bad he can find and that leaves just me, the druid and the healer up to fight the last bits of the fight.  I turn my pets growl on and call stampede and that ends up being just enough to get us through the fight and finish it off in a adrenaline pumping few seconds to end the run.

This whole time the hunter is saying how he wouldn't do this, wouldn't do that, couldn't do this, couldn't do that. I listened to him the entire run and was left thinking there is something I did not teach him when I taught him how to be a hunter.  I did not teach him how to be an actual hunter.  I taught him how to do hunter DPS.  I did not go far enough.  I failed him really.

I said to him it was not a bad run at all.  No wipes and it was fun and exciting and I got to do what a hunter is supposed to do.  I controlled the battle, protected the healer and still managed to pull numbers most classes could never even imagine while doing all the little things I had to do.  It was a great run, an exciting run and I had a lot of fun.

I said to him, it was a fantastic run, one of the best I have had in ages, it reminded me what it really means to be a hunter.  It had been so long it seems.

I left it at me telling him that I would teach him all these little tricks and how to bind those lesser used things in simple to get to places so if and when something like this happens to him instead of it being a wipe or dropping group he can do all those little things and stand tall at the end of a fight and proudly proclaim, I am a hunter.  No problem.

I used at least 35 completely different abilities that dungeon run and every single one of them was needed.  I used Hunters Mark, Serpent Sting, Cobra Shot, Arcane Shot, Bestial Wrath, Kill Command, Glaive Toss, Lynx Rush, Dire Beast, Rapid Fire, Readiness, Kill Shot, Ice Trap, Frost Trap, Explosive Trap, Snake Trap, Concussive Shot, Distracting Shot, Tranquilizing Shot. Silencing Shot, Scatter Shot, Intimidation, Mend Pet, Dismiss Pet, Call Pet, Stampede, Deterrence, Disengage, Feign Death, Misdirection, Aspect of the Hawk, Aspect of the Fox, Growl, Spirit Mend, Shield Shell and maybe more all at one moment or another.

What other class can say they can do all that and more?  It might have not been the best run ever and if I were on any other class I probably would have called it a horrible run but I was not on any other class I was on a hunter and the run was just fine.

Somewhere along the line I failed as a teacher if the hunter I taught on vent was calling it a horrible run based on hearing what I was saying and all I was doing.

On any other class it would have been a horrible run.  On a hunter, it was an exciting run.  Like it or not, that run needed a hunter to be in it because handling chaos is what hunters do best and that run was awesome.  It made me feel like a real hunter again.  I had a tim allen moment where I felt like grunting when it was all said and done.

Now the question is, how to I teach that hunter that?  How do I explain to someone that never needed to do any of those things that those things are really what being a hunter is all about?  Well, those things and awesome DPS at the same time. ;)