Greedy Goblin

Friday, January 28, 2011

Tobold wants YOU to tank for M&S!

Quick business info: I milled 5230 Stormvine and found that a stack drop 0.52 inferno inks and 4.96 Blackfallow inks (about 40-50G profit to mill a stack). I also milled 2530 whiptails and got 1.05 Inferno and 5.89 Blackfallow per stack (30-40G profit to mill). So it's not as great business as I thought, but still OK.

Tobold wrote yet another post where he "logically" prove that our moral obligation for the "community" is to be tanks or healers to decrease the length of DD queue. His logical steps look sound, but they are not. His error comes from the (untold) underlying axiom that there are tanks, healers and DD in WoW.

If we accept his axiom, then there is no problem at all! Since a 10 men raid needs 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DD, and people raid mostly 10-men, or gearing to start it, for every tank we have 2.5DD and 1.5 healer. So DD queue is instant, tank queue is short and healers must wait or queue as DD. It is quite logical that one queues to his raiding role, since he has both gear and experience for it.

Why would anyone gear for DD in a world where there are no DD spots and every guild spams "recruiting tanks and healers"? Also, if he doesn't want to raid, why does he do heroics? What will he do with the gear? This doesn't make sense.

Let's add M&S to the tank, healer, DD trinity and everything we see becomes understandable. M&S can't play tank, can't play healer and can't play DD. Oh wait, we can simplify that: M&S can't play. They still "need" gear because their current pathetic performance has one and only one reason: low gear. Since there is only 1 healer and tank spot in a heroic, their terrible performance would mean wipe. On the other hand if they take one of the 3 DD spots, there is reasonable hope that the other 2 will pick up the slack after them. Due to the high amount of M&S the DD queue became very long.

Tobold's first point is "The queues for DPS in the Dungeon Finder of World of Warcraft are long, and it would be better if they were shorter. So far, so good, I don't think anybody actually disagreed with that part." I do! I think DD queues are not long. The DD in the guild get to the dungeon instantly since they queue up with a full group. There is a long queue, but it's not for DD, it's for M&S and socially inept DD who can't find themselves a tank. This queue should be long, as it reflects to the fact that no one wants to play with these people. I'm a healer, could queue almost instantly. But I won't as I refuse not only to boost them, but even to be with them. I rather spam the guild chat for 10 mins waiting for DD to come along because it guarantees CC, 8K+ DPS on the skull (and not on the sheep) and zero "gogogog", "rofl" and the infamous "wherz my hil" coming from the bottom of the void zone.

What would happen if some of the DD would become tank or healer? There would be more groups starting but even less finished as currently there is reasonable hope that out of the 3 DD one is actually useful. However if these DDs would turn tanks and healers, who would fill the DD role? Only the drooling M&S. While it wasn't a problem in WotLK, in Cataclysm even a very skilled tank-healer duo can't carry 3 M&S. Actually, if someone would want to do something selflessly good for the community, it would be the direct opposite! He should respec DD to bring salvation to the suffering tanks and healers who have been cursed to boost the LFD fodder. Also, by being DD you elongate the DD queue, bringing rightful punishment to the M&S.

Of course the goblin way is amoral: avoid the LFD like the bubonic plague and go only with players you know, either guildies or people on your friend list. In absence of these, spam /2 and inspect the people who want to join. If they were able to find gems to those slots and their talent is not 0/0/41, they are already much better than the LFD fodder.

If you are not M&S and still on LFD, let me help. Remember, even with my "extremely selfish" attitude one can find a guild to play with, so if you are in the LFD, you are socially inept. The solution: break the barrier and reach out for people! "/2 8K single-target DD with aggro meter, CCs, gemmed, enchanted looking for group (or tank) for random heroic".

30 comments:

Leeho said...

The last statement is very true. In the start of Cata my friend, who plays druid, needed to do heroics, sometimes without guild group. He was fine with all three roles (actually he sometimes tanked or healed in 10man when needed and succeed, so we assume he was fine in dungeons too), but after some tries he queued as dps only. He explained that he will better wait longer, but with his high dps, some cc, staying alive, nuking adds, interrupting, etc he is able to carry any group of M&S. As tank or healer he couldn't, that's why he stopped to queue as tank or healer until i transferred to his realm so he could queue as tank and rely on me being good enough dps.

Anonymous said...

I do not disagree with your basic point, but socially inept and unwilling to be social to get a group together are two different things. the idea of being social with people in a computer game doesn't appeal to all.

also, 'if he doesn't want to raid, why does he do heroics' is an astoundingly ignorant and arrogant thing to say. all content is a both a means to an end (getting gear, xp, gold, rep, honor, improving skills, whatever) and an end in and of itself(challenge, the experience, discovery/exploration, fun). if you don't enjoy content but do it anyway then you quite possibly have a problem.

There is a significant portion of the wow population for whom raiding is not the primary goal of wow. For every little part of the game which you find boring, there are people that think it is the best part of the game and the only reason they keep playing: leveling, world-pvp, pets, mounts, achievements, gold, 5-man, BG, and so on.

They don't do it for social reasons, either. They do it for the same reasons one does anything in any computer game ever made: it is entertaining, relaxing, it engages parts of the brain which are stimulating or lets them forget their everyday lives and be a fantasy hero.

Stop projecting your view of proper motivations and goals on others and you will have better insights into things which are happening around you.

Pheqbeast said...

I usually just /2 and pay a tank to queue with me and stick the dungeon through, for the valor points and tabard rep.

ofcourse, I inspect him first, but still. Just get it over with.

And once I got the tank, I ask my friendlist or in /g, hopefully getting some decent ones.

Jumina said...

What is a mystery to me is the point where Tobold speaks about "social responsibility". What is it? Playing some role with your cartoon character is "social responsibility"?

Anyway I sometimes go to LFG as a tank with my alt. And you are right it's not possible to carry 3K dps M&S. Some bosses are simply out of question with them.

Anonymous said...

I don't have much to say about the post in general. I agree with it for the most part.

However, things will change and are changing rather quickly. The 3 crappy DPS will soon be able to be carried as tanks and healers gear up.

I've been doing normal difficulty dungeons for the past month (despite the LFD tool saying I could do heroics) to avoid having to deal with constant wiping with bad heroic groups, and I have been able to carry (as a healer) nearly every bad group I've run into. Tanks in full ICC gear (apparently unable to find any quest greens/blues) whose health drops almost instantly. DPS who stand in every AoE imaginable and who don't know anything about the dungeons. I've carried them all. And I'm sure I could carry them in heroics as long as I outgeared the heroics.

Why do I do it? For one, it's challenging. Healing a group with a tank and 3 DPS who know their class and know the dungeon is fairly easy. It can often even become boring if your group is both good and well-geared. Secondly, I do it because the people that the LFD tool puts in my groups don't matter to me. If I get a group of the worst players in the game, all I have to do is leave the group. If things go really bad, I'll type some expletives at them for fun and then leave the group.

That may seem silly to some. I mean, why not get a guild group or group of friends? For me, it's because guild groups have often been the worst experiences I can remember. I don't hesitate for a second to insult group members from the LFD tool if they're horrible and have screwed over the rest of the group, but you can't talk like that to guild members without being shunned or even kicked from the guild. Not a big deal if you have another guild to join, but if it's the only raiding guild that fits your schedule, then you're in between a rock and a hard place.

Kring said...

In a guild rarely the whole 10 man raid is online and would like to run the daily random at the same time. And if your raids tank runs his random at 6 pm it doesn't help you if you come online at 9 pm. Your tank might have to LFD a DD at 6 pm but you have to LFD a tank at 9 pm.

And running with your guild only works for the random heroic. If you like to join a specific heroic, 4 people would have to run the dungeon for no personal profit (no VP). What's your suggestion for those trinket slots? Or another slot you weren't able to get something blue from a quest?

zenga said...

Anonymous said...

"For me, it's because guild groups have often been the worst experiences I can remember. I don't hesitate for a second to insult group members from the LFD tool if they're horrible and have screwed over the rest of the group, but you can't talk like that to guild members without being shunned or even kicked from the guild. Not a big deal if you have another guild to join, but if it's the only raiding guild that fits your schedule, then you're in between a rock and a hard place"

I pity you that you either don't know your guild mates well enough to know in advance how they 'll perform, or even more that you have to raid with such idiots who can't even run a heroic dungeon.

If you put a group together in /g and you refuse to take a moron in just because of the fact that he is a moron, risking a g-kick for that, then I pity you even more to be in a such a guild.

There are alternatives: server transfer, reroll, or make your own group.

jouissance said...

Doing heroics with a guild group is an option only if you have the time every single day (assuming youre after valor points) to hang around and wait for a spot/group to form.

Or if you are, like yourself, a GM, who will even in the most theoretically anti-social guild such as your own, always have more willing people to come group with you. Social pressures that drive a lot of M&S, also drive your own guild members (just in different aspects or quantities).

If, however, one is anti-social in terms of not forging any "obligations implied" relationships and comes from a guild space of no-official-power, they can have different priorities.

For example: I am a pretty good dpser of the hybrid variety, and not just in terms of pure numbers.
For me "begging" guildies to form a group was not something i wanted to do.

Other, more important, thing was I did not want to wait. A lot of times in non-raid days I only log in to do the daily, since we are only getting up to 9 raid bosses per week. I off-specced tanking. I wait 3 seconds in the queue, and more times than not I do get M&S, but not the horror type ones.

Now, the thing I abhorred in WOTLK is that tanks became a class of pretty obnoxious people, thinking they can go afk any time they wish, or do whatever else, knowing their behavior or stupidity will be tolerated with extra patience just because waiting for another tank takes long.

now I find myself (ab)using that same thing(since the queues jumped from 15 mins of WOTLK to 30+ mins in Cata): I use it to name and shame bad dps/healer and ultimately kick them after the next pull.

I would say I did around 100 heroics so far. 90% of those finished successfully, albeit with more or less issues. 10% were hell I could get out of easily, log off to my banking alts to clean out bags and put up auctions, come back in 30 mins and get insta queue again.

Tobold is wrong in that "social responsibility" should make you tank/heal. Its the pure "selfish" reasons that produce the best results overall, as usual.

Lightglow said...

M&S have already found a way around it; they que together with a plateweared/druid (that selects tank role) that drops as soon as they enter dungeon. This way they are first in line for a real tank. I used to do my daily random usling the lfg tool (and tanking); not anymore.

chewy said...

I often think you're rather obsessed with M&S but on this occasion I entirely share your views. I'm dps but I refuse to queue only to find I'm supporting people that haven't come prepared and aren't willing to be methodical or organised (including tanks and healers).

Interestingly I haven't suffered overtly. My gear is reasonable and stocked from reputation, raid drops and AH/crafting. I run heroics less often than I could but only with my guild companions who I know and trust. The whole experience is far more pleasant and if that means I have to wait longer for the next set of badge gear, so be it.

I don't agree with Tobold that I have any moral or social obligation to re-roll a tank/healer to recreate the horrible LFD state we had at the end of Wotlk. Like yourself, I'm happy with the current situation.

Caramael said...

@Lightglow: doesn't the LFD popup display "this dungeon is in progress" when they do that? I always requeue when I see that message.

Riptor said...

So Tobold refers his argument to WoW being a Team effort. According to him we must rethink our Roles; even reroll for the better good of the “Team”. I don’t know what kind of Teams Tobold refers to but I was under the impression that a Team usually has a Coach/Leader who takes responsibility in training, assigning tasks and, if need be, benching Teammates that hold the Team back or are just plain to bad/low skilled.
Under this Aspect, one could state that Raiding Guilds, as well as PvP Groups to some extent, could be referred to as teams as there are “Coaches” that fulfill the above mentioned tasks. In the PUG, from what I read here, there are temporary Coaches (especially when it comes to benching) that may change from Raid to Raid. Never the less there is some sort of higher Power present when a “team” sets out to do something in WoW. Also these teams are self regulatory when it comes to Skill and Outset.
How in the World does he wholeheartedly apply this Principle to LFD???

thehampster said...

@Caramael

That's not a bad idea. But once in awhile when I enter a "dungeon in progress," it'll turn out that the group is on the last boss or close to it. Nothing beats getting my valor points in just 5 minutes!

Campitor said...

The M&S will always thrive and continue to hide in dps classes until Blizzard changes the game mechanics to provide them direct and obvious feedback on poor performance.

When a tank does a bad job everyone knows it immediately because he loses aggro, mobs roam around untanked during an encounter, 1 hit and he goes down to 25%, etc. Everyone knows when a healer is doing a poorly; they recieve zero heals or don't see him casting, or the heal is such a pitfully low amount it wasn't worth getting.

The moronic dps don't have any such feedback. And the little feedback they do recieve they shift the blame of poor performance onto everyone/everything else. If they die in a fire they think its because the healing sucks, if they pull aggro its because the tank sucks. If they do poor damage no one knows it unless someone displays recount after every encounter.

The 5-man part of the game is designed to expect excellence from tanks and healers but is very tolerant of poorly performing dps. That paradigm has to change if you want to see more tanks and healers queuing in the LFG system.

tytalus said...

"this dungeon is in progress" message seems to appear if some bosses have been downed. I usually get that one in places like h-BRC, where the second boss requires some coordination and M&S groups can't manage.

Eaten by a Grue said...

Gevlon, your argument assumes that M&S are primarily DPS, not healers or tanks. However you offer no support for this reasoning beyond that his is how you feel.

Tobold is still wrong though, but for a simpler reason. There is no such thing as moral responsibility here. This is a game, a form of entertainment. All we really owe each other, is to perhaps be civil. If most people have more fun with dps classes, well, it's a game, and they can play how they want.

If there is a shortage of tanks and healers, Blizzard needs to either make those activities more fun or provide greater in game rewards in other ways.

Lars Norberg said...

Tobold acts under the illusion that all human beings are intelligent.

This is not the case.

Anonymous said...

"/2 8K single-target DD with aggro meter, CCs, gemmed, enchanted looking for group (or tank) for random heroic"."

I would invite that person straight away.

zahorijs said...

During last week I have done about 30 HCs as healer. I leave only if my healing is not enough. Such HCs were 3. I think that most of M&S have realized that queue time is just too long for them. And kicking useless players is not a problem lately. Reason "useless moron" goes through with flying colors.

Orange said...

This post is spot-on. It's probably the main reason most healers/tanks dread queuing for LFG, unless they actually enjoy the challenge of carrying a group.

Myself, I only queue as a tank because it's instant and for the most part I can get through any non-Grim Batol/Stonecore dungeon in a reasonable time with the average LFG group. I'll definitely try the /2 thing though and see what kind of response I get.

chewy said...

I want to add an analogy:

Imagine that instead of playing characters we are all musicians. We have a mechanism that brings us all together randomly like LFD. When we arrive we have vocalist, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums. Our task is to play various popular pieces.

The rhythm and lead guitarist are practiced, they've tuned their instruments, they have learnt the pieces. The drummer has only brought one stick with him and the bass player has only 3 strings on his bass. The vocalist sort of knows some of the words.

Immediately the drummer starts banging away with his one stick and the vocalist starts yelling along some words while the bass player just hits one string constantly. The guitarists try to stay in time but the resultant cacophony is awful.

The drummer yells at the guitarists to learn to play, the bass player quits, the vocalist yells at the drummer that he started too early and the guitarists just look at each other in bewilderment.

So should they learn to play drums or should they find people who can play ?

*vlad* said...

Tobold's idea would work fine in a universe where all players had equal ability/intelligence. Nothing wrong with theorising.

Symbolsix said...

Maybe my experience has been better than average, but I reached the same conclusion as Tobold with the same reasoning as Gevlon.

My main still does a daily with the guild, mostly, but my alt (a death knight) is left to use the random dungeon finder. Quite frankly, queuing as a tanking is *far* less painful than queuing as a DPS, in my personal experience. I believe the reasons for this are:

1) By queuing as a tank, I am able to ensure that the role that the role that is usually hardest to play and most important to the group's success is filled with a capable player. Being dropped into a dungeon with three bad DPS is painful, but can be salvaged. Being grouped with a bad tank means it's generally better to force the group to kick you and get back in the queue.

2) By being the tank, I have the authority of being the role in shortest supply, and I can use this to force bad players out of the group. When I am scrupulously courteous yet still firm when pointing out that someone is dragging the group down, the discussion either remains reasonable, in which case the truth comes out and the player either picks up or gets kicked, or the *other* player makes the discussion turn sour, and any socials in the group become willing to kick them then.

From the point of view of rational self interest, I strongly recommend putting a tank set together if your toon is an appropriate class, even if you'll only using for heroics, and *especially* if you don't have time to sit in the queue for long periods.

Bristal said...

I essentially agree with your main point that adding more (competent?) tanks/healers wouldn't lower the DPS queue much, if at all. Primarily because competent and connected tanks/healers typically don't need to use the Finder as much.

When I log in, I'm all over my guild tanks for a heroic. They don't need the Finder (other than in a pre-made), they are sought after.

However the spirit of your argument (all DPS who need the Dungeon Finder are idiots) is just ignorant and blithely mean.

You seem to be classifying the Dungeon Finder as your newest "welfare mechanic".

The Dungeon Finder is not broken. I don't care how long the queues are. It works just fine. It's just that running multiple heroics is not as valuable as it used to be in Wrath. And most tanks/healers are running with guilds.

But if I can't find anyone to tank, I can still queue and get a run in about half an hour. I'm not sure how Tobold classifies that as "broken" or a "problem".

Anonymous said...

The question is what is the point of a queue if you still have to manually group?

And what would one expect from the game? As casual it's not illogical to assume that a queue function actually works in a reasonable timeframe. 40min are partly longer than the heroic itself. I believe its unaceptable if the queue takes half of a playing session.
-------------------------

On another note:I've played priest / warrior / rogue in heroics and i found tank/healer not harder than dd, partly its easier, noone can tell if i make a mistake unless its so huge that someone dies.
losing aggro: np hp everywhere
not healing?: np hp and defensive cooldowns,aggro redirect everywhere, we killed heroic bosses with healer gone (dc / afk)

Personally i believe the tank problem is selfmade. If people wouldnt have started the propaganda about how hard it is and how tanks are supposed to know everything and lead the group we most likely wouldnt have the problem that most potential tanks stay in dd spec.

Anonymous said...

When I needed heroics on my DK I specced tank. It's far faster to gear up by queing as tank and the DPS requirements are pretty low in most instances. Now that I only need a couple heroics per week to cap I have dps/pvp specs. My druid alt was tank specced for gearing/rep, again had no issues with gearing up quickly. Now that he's raiding I do the occasional heroic as dps and run dps/pvp specs.

Dinged my priest 85 a couple weeks ago...ouch. Not having the option to tank has massively slowed my gearing down. Only now do I have enough gear to really consider signing as healer (shadow MS). I truly dread dinging my hunter, gearing that char is going to be so slow.

Regardless of "Team Play" a tank capable char that chooses to gear up by signing as DPS is a M&S. The gear/rep per hour as tank is unmatched, the difficulty of the role isn't high and the starter gear is easy to achieve.

Kelindria said...

Personally I find the current system to be working quite well. This is due to the fact that the majority of skilled players I encounter are able to succeed quite easily in almost all heroic encounters.

The M&S however at least in my lfd runs are kicked because you can't finish with them whether they are tanks, healers or dps. These wotlk tanks/healers who never were good enough to raid with now are rerolling dps. The tanks/ healers who actually do come through the lfd system are Raid Ready skilled players which makes raiding fun for me.

The skilled dps coming through the lfd system are either thriving in the system since they are not kicked being as they are skilled while the useless M&S are since you are unable to finish without doing so.

From a gearing point most of the long que nonsense is washed away by how easy it is to gear. Doing 4-5 heroics a week will cap you for gear in terms of JP in about 3 weeks. Unless you are a fresh 85 ready for heroics who is skilled you are the only minority really held back by the long ques. If you fit into this group you should in alot of the cases be able to find guildies to run with you.

Going to a system that supports more M&S to join tank/healer roles imo wrecks the game. M&S won't stay in the roles unless they are easy enough for them to feel they are winning. If they have the heroic gear it means they end up in my raids more frequently to put it simply.

Anonymous said...

"Why would anyone gear for DD in a world where there are no DD spots and every guild spams "recruiting tanks and healers"?"

This is only true for guilds that are either extremely casual on attendance requirements (and thus have to recruit extra tanks to have at least 2 available when there's a raid) or guilds that are simply extremely bad and full of M&S who play DPS since as DPS they can get carried but as tank they can't so they're constantly looking for tanks that can carry them.

If you want to get into more serious raiding you will have by far the hardest time doing it as a tank. If my guild were to need a tank we would either

a) see if one of the raiders with perfect attendance is willing to reroll
b) ask around with friends and guildies if they know someone they would vouch for
c) disband the guild and free the raiders to look for a guild that has the tanking covered

If we suddenly find out that we have no rogues or warlocks it's no problem pretty much randomly asking around for one as just taking some for trial for farm runs and kicking them if they suck is simple.

If a rogue or a warlock applies to us saying that they'll miss a raid or two in a month, we think that's great attendance. If a tank were to say that he will miss a raid night once or twice a month, it's no thanks, we can't have a tank with such poor attendance.

Getting tanking covered is the number 1 priority of any progress guild and the more hardcore a player you are, the more you are disincentivized from tanking: the better progress a guild has, the more likely that it already has tanking fully covered and you have no chance of a spot unless you reroll DPS.

Azuriel said...

Another logical fail post, Gevlon. =/

"If we accept his axiom, then there is no problem at all! [...] So DD queue is instant, tank queue is short and healers must wait or queue as DD. It is quite logical that one queues to his raiding role, since he has both gear and experience for it."

1) Even if there is 10m raiding parity in the population (e.g. 1 tank, 2.5 DPS, 1.5 heals), that doesn't mean there is parity in when/if they queue. Even if we assume the 10m raiding group has 90% attendance in grouping together or using the LFD tool, that means at any given time there are 45 DPS and 45 healers hanging out in the queue without a tank.

2) One is probably right more times than wrong in assuming people queue as their raiding role, but that is merely an assumption based on anecdotal experience.

3) Completely ignores alts. As a tank, I have DPS alts. It does not necessarily follow that DPS would have a tank alt. Thus if the two of us queue once on mains, and once on alts, the queue gets worse.

"Also, if he doesn't want to raid, why does he do heroics? What will he do with the gear? This doesn't make sense."

It makes about as much sense as someone who wants to raid, but doesn't want to be in Paragon. In other words, people may have different goals than you.

"I do! I think DD queues are not long. The DD in the guild get to the dungeon instantly since they queue up with a full group. There is a long queue, but it's not for DD, it's for M&S and socially inept DD who can't find themselves a tank. This queue should be long, as it reflects to the fact that no one wants to play with these people."

1) See the 90% attendance thing above.

2) [b]Even if you hate/wish ill of the M&S, keeping them subscribed is in your best interests[/b]. That is assuming you enjoy the present quality of WoW and wish it to be maintained for as long as you continue playing. Ergo, even if you believe the long DPS queue is a justified "tax on stupid," you don't actually want the queue to be longer than it would take for M&S to unsubscribe.

I suppose it's possible you could pull a Matrix line and say "There are levels of survival we are willing to accept."

The Gnome of Zurich said...

Olga: he isn't really carrying m&s as DPS, because you just can't, unless you are so overpowered that you can nearly solo the dungeon.

What's happening is that most tanks and healers, even in randoms, are at least minimally competent, because they are so much harder to carry, exactly as Gevlon says that almost all of the truly incompetent players give up playing tanks and healers. When they heal or tank, their runs almost never succeed. In fact, they often had trouble even in wrath heroics which everyone said were completely trivial. OTOH, when they dps, their runs sometimes succeed in spite of them (when at least one other dps is good, or in wrath, pretty much all the time).

What that dynamic means is that if you queue as a DPS and are good, you can count on having one half-decent player in each of the critical roles, and that may be enough to carry a group.

On my resto/ele shammy, I've taken to queueing as DPS whenever I don't care too much about the wait for this exact reason. I can't cover for dps as a healer anymore, not the way cata sucks mana out of you. (I healed dungeons in ele and sometimes topped the dps charts as well during wrath and while leveling).

But as DPS I can cover for a *slightly* weak healer on healing intensive fights, since my non-aoe dps rotation is mana positive, and I can insure that interrupts get done, at least one DPS stays out of the fire, etc. And I can even go resto for a two healer setup if that makes sense (usually only if at least one other DPS is good).

The average group I have as DPS is better than the average group I have as a healer, because the difference between me and a typical LFD healer is smaller than between me and a typical LFD DPS. Some of that is that I'm a better DPS than healer as my first and longest raiding character was a mage. But mostly it's that the average LFD DPS is quite bad.