Enjoy LFD Now

The new LFD (Looking For Dungeon) System is great. The developers did an excellent job with the design of the systems. There are plenty of rewards for people at all levels and all Tiers of Level 80 from the guy who just dinged all the way up to the guy who was farming Heroic Anub’arak the night before the Patch.
Right now, you have an abundance of T9 raiders carrying people in random LFG groups. I’ve done this several times myself. I’ll be in a group where I’m first on DPS, Damage Done, and Damage Taken. If I would have used Judgment of Light, I might have been first in Healing Done as well. I’ve had the same thing happen on my Hunter where I’m the only DPS in the group over 3k.
Enjoy it now, and if you are a lowered geared toon, get all the dungeons run as fast as you can, because this isn’t going to last.
The Tier 9 Raiders are in the LFG for one reason, Emblems of Frost. I typically only run the Random Heroic for the two Emblems of Frost it provides. I don’t need Triumphs; I’m swimming in the bloody things. In a few weeks, my Hunter alt won’t need them either.
What you have to realize is that right now, all the T9 Raiders need Emblems of Frost. You can’t buy your 264 T9 with a Token until you have the 251 from Emblems of Frost. The Daily Random provides more Emblems (14) over a week than all of the current Bosses open in Ice Crown (8). In addition, because Tier 9 Raiders are clearing the first wing so quickly, they have down time during the week and they are running Random Heroics.
But in a few weeks, Ice Crown is going to have plenty of Bosses open. A new Wing will open shortly after New Year, then another just a couple of weeks after that. Tier 9 Raiders, and especially those lovely Tier 9 Tanks with 40k plus unbuffed Hit Points are going to be spending more time raiding and less time in LFD. And even when they aren’t raiding, they will be getting to the point where they don’t need Emblems of Frost nearly as much as they do now.
The Developers have already acknowledged the system is reliant on the number of Tanks queuing up. As more Bosses in Ice Crown open up and Raiders buy what they need with Frost Emblems, the number of people and the number of tanks available will dwindle. Those 10 and 15 minute wait times could become 20 to 30 minutes. And when you finally do get a group, it might be sorely lacking in T9 Raiders able to carry an entire heroic on their shoulders.

Comments

Anonymous said…
i agree with you totally. I quit for about 4 months and use the heroics to get my frost and some triumphs to at least get the 232 tier 9 so i can be viable with my guild.

In most cases i am the top dps as you, most damage taken and smash through everything. I dont mind helping out, but the tank should not be kicking your ass on the dps charts.
Hana said…
In a way it already feels like the quality of my pugs are going down. I was tanking a run with one of my guildie's bringing his mage alt and the rest were puggers.

None of the pug dps broke 1.5k overall, and the mage managed an astonishing 600 dps on boss fights (which I wouldn't have believed if my friend hadn't pointed it out to me). It was the worst pug dps I'd seen since the new Dungeon Finder system went in.

I just go one heroic run each night on my druid and my paladin and then I'm done. Both have tanking specs so it's easy to get a group, but once I no longer need the frost emblems I'm not going to be showing up anymore.
Salt said…
I don't think it'll be that bad. I agree, having one DPS doing 3k makes the run faster...but for every random heroic I've done where there's one person who is obviously head-and-shoulders over the rest of the group, there's been another where it seems like the mythical "gear-checking" function was in play, and it feels like we're actually working for our emblems.

And...I don't really mind putting forth effort. :-)
Grimadin said…
I came to this same conclusion last week. I run the random daily on 4 toons at the moment, a prot pally, a enhance shammy (with an almost passable resto set) a hunter and a mage. After queuing with my tank a bunch of times, the wait time as a dps is painful, and its only going to get worse. More of the people who can tank, need to tank, atleast for heroics. Its such an easy way to get badges, and a bit of a break from the everyday. I know this won't happen, but its fun to dream.
While I've definitely had the experience of having wildly different contributions from the random PUGs, remember that damage meters, especially Recount, are NOT accurate cross-server, meaning that anyone from another server will see different numbers than you do.

The mods apparently compensate somewhat if everyone's physically close to one another, but ranged damage and heals especially will be misrepresented much of the time.

But concerning your meta-point, I'm right there with you. I've grabbed my Trial trophies and in the process of blasting my way through PUGs to get my pug dog, I've upgraded my remaining T9 armor and now only do the daily random on my main for my frost badges.
TangoGuy said…
I agree with you 100%. I do try and do a random heroic now and then (I'm a Prot/Holy pala) and sometimes I just want to heal. I notice it takes perhaps 5x longer to get a group as a healer, although still not long, shows that there is a shortage of tanks.

Some pugs are terrible as well, mainly having bad dps. I did get a group once though (and only once so far!) where none of the dps were below 6k and that was awesome =)
Aurik said…
I want to point out that 'T9 raiders' are not the only people who can 'carry' others through heroics and that many heroics can be got through *easily* without being T9 geared. I've also seen plenty of t9 raiders who don't carry their weight in heroics because they can't be bothered with them.

In fact, one of the best pugs I've had so far people were all ~2k dps, and I was tanking on my undergeared warrior. It went smoothly and I didn't have some t9 geared asshat pulling aggro just so he could show he can do 6k dps in Utgarde Pinnacle.

Whilst I can agree there might be a slightly longer wait once the newness wears off, I also can hope that the 'uber leet dps' heads off with those same tanks and allow people to enjoy heroics without 'omg this must be over in 15mins or I'm leaving' (yes, had this happen).

Given that anyone can get basic T9, and that there are plenty of people out there who are skilled and cannot raid, I won't cry too much when I stop being 'carried' by T9 raiders...

/hug
Ruhtra said…
You speak the truth sir. I have given healing a break because I tend to get the retarded tanks who are undergeared but think they are in the big leagues.

That being said, I have still ended up in groups where I topped the damage charts and healing charts. I am down to running only one or two random heroics a day (unless a guildie needs some help).

At this point I have not been running my Lock or Hunter with any random. Instead I save them for guild runs. I just cannot handle the badness that is LFD/LFG currently.
RatherNotSay said…
I really disagree with a lot of what is said, but who knows, maybe I am the odd ball?

Sure we may outgear some and could carry a group if needed, but honestly these are heroics for people who have item level 187 - 200, what do you expect?

If anything, shouldn't we try to help these people and by help, I mean not make them feel like a useless piece of dung? Sorry, but this sounded more like an arragont post than anything else.

I gurantee that if all the current overgeared tanks stopped running heroics that people would still be running them the same old way (aka form a group and hit trade and lfg channel advertising the need for a tank or healer).
Honors Code said…
That wasn't how I intended it to come off, but I can see how it might read that way.

Sorry about that.
Unknown said…
As a well geared healer I'm getting really fed up with the lax attitude of some of the DPS I've met in LFG. Constantly standing in fire even while looting the boss, ignoring DBM alerts to stop dpsing etc. I've also gone from doing 6 a day to just the one for the emblems of frost.

Most of the tanks have been fine apart from the odd one who chain pulls when I'm on 0 mana.

Meanwhile my 29k health DK tank gets complaints when joining heroics for not having enought health. I used to heal these in blues with a tank with about 24k and DPS without any epics. The point of heroics is to gear up! The community has to take some responsbility for gearing up new tanks (and healers) or the queues will just get worse. The 5 mins longer you spend clearing the heroic will be 5 mins less you spend in Dalaran queueing next week.
Unknown said…
While i agree that heroics are the upgrade paths for new 80's i still do believe you have a responsibility to get geared enough to run them, there are many gearing methods available to a new 80 including the new ICC and TOC 5 man regulars, if your a new 80, please run these a few times they are easy and the gear is good. Last night we had a warrior tank with the horseman helm and the titansteel bonecrusher he didn't have the right amount of defense and everything else was blue or green .... yes we should have kicked him because he was under geared but i just didn't have the time to wait for another tank so the 25 man heroic geared healer and i carried him through it, nonetheless he shouldn't have been queuing for heroics.
Bacon said…
I dunno, I have a feeling that Raiders will continue to run the random heroics for Frost Emblems for a while. Reason being is Primordial Saronite is the main component to getting gear patterns and also for making that gear item.

My boots alone will take 5 primordial to make and another for the pattern. That's a total of a 138 frost emblems, not to mention the other 30 emblems I need for the new druid idol and then 50 for the cloak. If anything I'll be running the random for a long time because I'm too cheap to fork over thousands of gold for primordial saronite.
Ken Bowen said…
My biggest beef with some of the PuG groups is how big of a hurry everyone seems to be in. When I'm taking if I dare stop for one second to make sure my healer has mana, I get a "Go tank!" or even a couple of times have had a dps run forward and pull and then drop aggro to purposely mess the group up. Usually those people are promptly kicked, but I think the cross realm thing is making people bigger jerks than normal.
Anonymous said…
It's not so much that the tanks are T9, it's just that they're tanks. Once they finish picking up odds-and-ends for Triumph, they'll likely only be running the random daily for Frost. The number of tanks will go down and the queue time will go up. I'm a tank and that's what I'll be doing.

Prior to the LFG tool, I'd get some guildies and 3/4 man the daily. We saw no reason to grab a pugger, the risk/reward just wasn't there. Frankly, if we could queue for random instances with 4, we probably would.
Wrathy said…
I agree with you honors, and for what it's worth I disagree with the people who say that these heroics are for gearing people up, and as such bad play is ok. I have seen tge two ends of the spectrum in the 3.3 LFD. My tank averages 5k dps for the instances with bursts up to 7.5k on trash. I am usually 50% of the damage done, and have no problem with this because of the gear I har.

I also run five mans on my fresh green machine blood dk and beat most of my raid. The problem with the system is there is no accountability for performance. Anyone in full epics (of any item level) can pull 3k dps easily, yet these full t9 people rarely do.

Finally, I have A LOT of gear to get, but even so, I will only run one a day, as any more give me nothig of value. Emblems of triumph are worthless to me, I had 200+ before the patch. Now while I completely understand I am the vast minority when it comes to gear level, people are fast approaching my level with all the 264 tanking gear available.

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