Patch 4.1 Dungeon Finder Call to Arms, Lodur’s thoughts

Unless you missed it, Blizzard has announced an idea that they wish to implement in an attempt to shorten queue times and address the tank and healer shortage that has been plaguing the LFD for a while now. Here’s the actual blue post for you,

Source

In patch 4.1 we’ll be introducing Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms, a new system intended to lower queue times. Call to Arms will automatically detect which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon.

Any time the Dungeon Finder queue is longer than a few minutes for level-85 Heroics, the Call to Arms system kicks in and determines which role is the least represented. In the case of tanking being the least represented role, the “Call to Arms: Tanks” icon will display in the Dungeon Finder UI menu where class roles are selected, and will also display on the UI when the queue pops and you are selected to enter a dungeon. Regardless of your role, you’ll always be able to see which role currently has been Called to Arms, if any.

Call to Arms is meant to lower wait times by offering additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss. Every time you hit these requirements (there is no daily limit) you’ll receive a goodie bag that will contain some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir (determined by spec), a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. The pets offered come from a wide variety of sources, and include companions like the Razzashi Hatchling, Cockatiel, and Tiny Sporebat, but the mounts are those specifically only available through dungeons (not raids), like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister’s Terrace, and Deathcharger’s Reins from Stratholme.

This system is meant to address the unacceptable queue times currently being experienced by those that queue for the DPS role at max level. The long queue times are, of course, caused by a very simple lack of representation in the Dungeon Finder by tanks, and to some extent healers. We don’t feel the tanking and healing roles have any inherent issues that are causing the representation disparity, except that fulfilling them carries more responsibility. Understandably, players prefer to take on that responsibility in more organized situations than what the Dungeon Finder offers, but perhaps we can bribe them a little. While this system gives tanks and healers something extra, the incentive is being provided so that we can help players in the DPS role get into more dungeons, get better gear, and continue progressing.

While the gold, gems, flasks, and elixirs are OK incentives, we knew we needed something more substantial. We had briefly considered Valor Points and epics, but decided that wouldn’t be working toward the goal of helping DPS players progress, and ultimately wouldn’t keep tanks and healers in the Dungeon Finder system for very long. We settled on pets and dungeon-found mounts as they’re cosmetic/achievement items that players tend to try to get on their own, so why not change that up and offer them a chance to get some of those elusive pets and mounts in a way that also helps other players? Even if they don’t get a pet or mount, or get one they already have, the gold and other goodies still feel rewarding enough that it won’t feel like a waste of effort.

We think it’s a pretty solid incentive to get tanks and healers queuing, give max-level players another way to collect the pets and mounts they so desire, and above all, to improve wait times for DPS players sitting in queues. In the case of lower level dungeons, it’s actually not uncommon for DPS to be the least represented role, and so if this new system works out and we’re pleased with the results, we may consider applying this same mechanic to lower level dungeons as well.

Well there it is. Since it was first announced, people have been going crazy about it and from the general reaction you’d think the sky was falling. Well, it’s not. Lets look at the proposed rewards,

Vanity Pets: These look to be ones that can be obtained easily on your own if you decide to put the time into it. So DPS aren’t really losing anything there, it’s just a simple cookie to offer Tanks and Healers. If you’re really so worried about these pets, go ahead and get them yourself. I did, and I’m a healer.

Mounts: A lot of people are bitching about this, I can understand why, mounts are a pretty big status symbol at times, but you know what? The mounts they’ve discussed aren’t anything you can’t get by yourself, or anything DPS isn’t already soloing. Hell I’m a healer with a DPS offspec and I can solo all of the old heroics and have been in an attempt to get the mounts.

My main issue with the incentive is that it won’t really fix the problem so much as shift the issue in another direction. In the last week, I’ve queued for about 15 heroic dungeons solo. 10 of those times, I got a DPS that strapped on a shield and a sword and decided they were going to tank. Those were fantastic runs let me tell you. What I think will happen is that we’ll see more of that. People that will want the mount or pets and will try to cheat the system. So for a bit queue times may go down, but then there will be sub-par tanks and healers that people will complain about. And even then if there’s nothing you want from the random dungeon bonus, those same folks will stop queuing once they have the items they want, giving the incentive a finite amount of time. While I like the incentive idea and as a healer appreciate the thank you, it’s not a fix, it’s a bandaid. Tanking and Healing are thankless jobs lets face it. Healing and Tanking are pretty hard when you’re first starting out, and people like to criticize you often for any deficiencies you have at the role. Giving us what amounts to a Chotchkie doesn’t really help all that much as a lasting incentive.

The other problem is the additional changes to how the LFD works in terms of Valor Points. The first 7 random dungeons you do will award you the points, meaning that you will no longer need to queue once a day, but can knock them all out at once if you want to. Personally I think that change will encourage more people to get random guild groups together and just knock out the heroics all at once. This then removes a whole set of potential Tanks and Healers from the pool.

Is there a better fix for the queues? I don’t know, I’m not one of the guys in charge of things over at Blizzard and I’m not sure I can really come up with a better option. Do I think it’s worth calling out that the sky is falling over the change? I don’t think so. Personally I’m enjoying the fact that Blizzard recognizes there is a problem and is looking at ways to fix it. I hope they find a happy balance, and I hope that the fix doesn’t produce a series of under-geared Tanks and Healers flooding the queues. It’s a fine line to walk, but I’m confident that Blizzard will find the fix, that they will figure out a good enough cookie to offer under represented roles without completely unbalancing the system. In the meantime though, I do not think that it’s something we should be seeing the amount of QQ we are in the last few hours, lets give them some time to see how it actually works out. Besides, it doesn’t really hurt you, it’s not taking anything away from you, and it is a slight thank you to a set of roles that is normally criticized and never thanked. That’s my opinion on the matter at least.

How about you? What do you think of the idea? Do you think there’s a better way to improve queue times?

49 thoughts on “Patch 4.1 Dungeon Finder Call to Arms, Lodur’s thoughts”

  1. I agree with Lodur, I don’t really see that this is going to fix the problem but rather introduce a whole slew of new problems.

    I have to confess, as a healer my desire to go into dungeons (both regular and heroic) has been dwindling, greatly. I’m not a raider but I try to play my toons to the best of my ability – I work on getting the best gear and best enchants and I am getting sick to death of playing with people who don’t want to bother learning their class, who don’t want to be bothered with strat, who can’t even bring their own food & beverages, etc. etc.

    They DO seem to want me to keep them alive through a myriad of stupid activities – pulling the boss AND all the adds, not moving when the boss gives you his special and painful brand of love, and of course standing in the poison. They DO want to complain that I am slowing them down when I have to mana up after a boss fight to bring the whole party back up to full life and the mana up again. (Why aren’t you eating and drinking when I am after these fights, instead of b*tching about waiting for me?) They don’t want to be bothered with doing their prep work and I’m tired of the beating that comes with that.

    What really ticks me off about this is – I liked alot of the new dungeons, I liked the chance to stand in the beam in Stonecore – to bring something to the table aside from just “heal, heal, heal.” I like getting to use my crowd control…

    I’ve gone from “Heroic Adventures” every night to working on my pet collection. There has to be something to balance this out –

    Maybe Blizz can implement a “j*ck*ss quotient” and if a DPS player dons a shield and decides to try his hand at tanking, healers get a HUGE buff to compensate having to put up with the idiocy sure to follow?

    *whew* thanks for letting me get that off my chest!

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  2. I’m afraid I have to agree here. I’ve seen my fair share of DPS geared tanks already and if firsttime healers start to appear I’m afraid lots of people (gogogo DPS style mainly) will start avoiding the LFD system. Hope for the best, let’s see…

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  3. Hello Lodur and all,

    I just wanted to add this idea for an incentive to get more players back into randoms by extending the luck of the draw outside the actual dungeon and have it reset when the dungeons resets so that way there’s no abuse.

    Coming from my experience, I used the randoms as a way to gear up for raids. I am currently raiding and not using the lfg unless I’m asked to heal for my guildies but I would probably be more than willing to go into a random if I could get a buff after completing it like luck for the rest of the day to help my raiding.

    This may seem a bit raid centered but they could extend it to giving us more gold from looting mobs and completing quests as well but it is an incentive just like doing some of the holiday events to get a bonus and then using that bonus for raids. They could even scale it so if you complete more randoms you get the bigger buff.

    Just my two cents there and thank you for all for all your hard work on this site and the podcast. You definitely make it information both helpful and entertaining.

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  4. Here is what I think will happen:

    You will get a slew of under-geared and under-skilled tanks in the queue. Those tanks will get ridiculed by and perhaps kicked by DPS. This is nothing new. However, now those tanks will keep queueing where before it just wasn’t worth the pain. They’ll get better gear, better skills, and thicker skin. Some of them will go on to be competent to good tanks, and will continue to tank heroics, thus deepening the tanking pool and shortening the queue for DPS, perhaps as much as by half or even to the level it was during WoLK (10 minutes on some realms).

    The fact is that you only get to be a better tank by tanking. There is literally no other way to do it. You can read, research, plan, etc, but until you do it it’s all abstract. People need to nurture these newbie tanks because it’s in their own best interest.

    Yes, there are people who will try to game the system. I personally think they’ll fail, but it’s also nothing new.

    Yes, there will be many more sucky tanks. But many of those suck tanks are the good-enough-to-heroic tanks of tomorrow. You can’t get to shorter queue times without enduring the learning curve. There is just no shortcut.

    And if DPS start avoiding LFD? Awesome; even shorter queue times.

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    • I agree with the “tanking makes you a better tank”, but I’m not sure if those DPS-going-tank will stay as tanks for long.

      Even tanks today, who have been tanking for a long time can’t stand tanking for long. It’s a hard role to fill and requires a lot of attention and knowing the small details.

      I’m confident that, at least, some DPS will get some respect to tanks after knowing how big are the boots they fill.

    • This is exactly what I was thinking. Totally agree with you. The burden to endure that learning curve is going to be annoying and frustrating for a significant portion of the population, though. We can only hope that the learning curve doesn’t take too long as to disengage those enduring it.

      Reducing queue times for DPS is a difficult problem no matter how it is sliced but I think this solution does have some potential. Let’s just weather the learning curve gracefully 🙂

  5. I wouldn’t worry about potentially terrible tanks. Vote kicking is still an option.

    Another thing to consider is that there is going to be a widespread nerf to the difficulty of heroic dungeons soon – Especially the encounters with tank killing mechanics. Plus, the puggers get full luck of the draw buff.

    People’s average ilevel is going to start going through the roof with the troll dungeons. Personally I am more annoyed by 4k DPS boomkins and consistent 6k DPS frost mages than I am by bad tanks.

    I think the incentives are great, my only worry is if they are enough to make the desired impact.

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    • Sure, vote kicking is an option, until you do it or participate in it a time or two. Then you get a lovely 2 hour timer between your kicks, forcing you to deal with people that you can’t kick. Lodur has been permanently stuck at a 2 hr timer on vote kicks due to a bug, and there has been no fix for it yet, can you imagine how that’s going to be when booting folks queuing as tanks and heals for this one?

  6. Hopefully as Dogsignor said, it will bring more tanks into the game, They may try it and suck badly, but think its actually quite fun and take the time to gear up and learn to play properly.

    I only ever started healing because we had a shortage of healers in our guild, I was a dedicated DPS/Tank until then and only trying healing in normals got me addicted to it.

    We shall see…..

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  7. Back when Cata first dropped I was the first healer in my guild to hit 85. While it didn’t last long (and I only really had an awful lot of free time), it meant I was running regulars… And Heroics all. the. time. I ran PUG heroics (mostly because there weren’t enough tanks to go around). I ran and ran and ran Heroics.

    Now that we’re knee-deep in raid content and I’m sittin’ pretty in all purples, I haven’t even run a random with guildies. I’m not sure that the incentives, even if on the rare occassion the Call to Arms is healers, I’ll be bothered to go LFD groups. Not because I’m “the best healer evar!1!” but because I can’t make up for the quantity of teh dum that ends up in dungeons.

    My suggestion would be to make a vote system of some kind. Like Xbox and the game score. Get a “tank” score or “deeps” score. Act like a tool and everyone can downvote you. Be patient and helpful, and people can upvote you. One of the biggest issues with tanks is that they don’t warn people they’re new to tanking (for fear of votekick without even trying) but then perform badly (eliciting a votekick) and the cycle continues. A means to offer constructive criticism might the better system. Sure, it’ll be prone to abuse, but catchall’s might be able to solve that (can’t upvote guildies, have to queue alone to get the ability to up/downvote). Who knows.

    This ramble-comment is brought to you by healer-frustration. Cause no matter how good my gear is, I can’t heal through stupid.

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    • Actually, I love the idea of a “role score” the only problem is the potential for bitter people to downvote, and lets be honest there’s a lot of bitter folks in wow lately lol. But the concept is solid.

    • What would be nice to me, is at *minimum* requiring at least a tank-oriented gear piece in (almost?) ever slot.

      I say almost, since there’s a piece of gear here-and-there that’s a bit ambiguous, and can be modified with reforging. (offhand, i’m thinking of the mastery TB trinket. not specifically tank since there’s no avoidance or stam, but is pretty popular among tanks)

  8. Tanks shouldn’t need an extra incentive to queue as a tank, their incentive is already an instant queue and this is just singling out people who want to play a pure dps class as they won’t have the option to get these mounts or pets

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    • Sure they do, they can go to the instances that drop these mounts and pets and farm them, just like they’ve been doing in some cases for years. It’s not actively taking a single thing away from DPS. None of the pets or mounts are exclusive to the call to arms, they all exists other places in game. places that are arguably a lot easier for pure DPS to farm for them than it is Healers or Tanks.

    • You’re looking at it all wrong. This might be an extra reason for tanks to queue, but the pay off is for the DPS in the shorter queue. What would you suggest instead? Give DPS a reward? More gold the longer the wait is?

      The whole point of this is to get more tanks and healers to queue. The more that queue the short the wait for DPS. If it *really*really* works out well, there could be soo many more tanks and healers queuing that they start havin to wait a little bit. I don’t see that happening, but it could in theory.

  9. As a tank, I don’t step into randoms at all unless a guildie needs it. I’m not in raid purps but at the same time, there isn’t alot of upgrades in heroics for me so it makes randoms pointless other then the daily random for valor. And even that is only so good. This change, for me at least, still isn’t enough for me to want to go into ques alone but I’m sure for some it might be.

    It will decrease wait time but for the classes that are pure dps or players that only like to dps, they get the short end of the stick…again. Unfortunately there isn’t a solid solution to this. DPS is easier to play then a tank or a healer. As the blame chain usually works its: healers > tanks > dps.

    For those worrying about DPS queueing as tanks, most players won’t go through with it long enough to make it painful. Votekick ftw! You do get the occasional dps queueing as tank but in general this isn’t the case.

    Love the idea with the role score. There’s bound to be people abusing it but at the same time it’ll give players more reason to up their performance.

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  10. Hmmm, some good points for sure. I absolutely agree about there being too much QQQ, and the sky is not falling. I also think this will be a good thing overall. Now, I’ll admit, I’ve never queued as a DPS outside of a guild run, so I don’t understand the pain they feel, but the complaits I’ve seen DPS giving about this system confuse me. They they that we are going to reward tanks even more, in that they already have no queue time they don’t need more reward. That’s not the point at all though, the point is that it will bring in more tanks and that will reduce the wait time for the DPS. Anyhow, none of that is what I came here to say.

    What I wanted to say, was that I agree with some of the other commenters. Yes, of course, this will bring in bad tanks and bad healers. Yes, that’s how you learn, by doing it. Yes, some of them won’t last. However, yes, some of them will continue and become better. More and better tanks/healers, how in the world can you compain about that? Sure, there might be some growing pains as they gear and learn, but that’s to be expected.

    Also, remember that in order to to get the reward, you have to queue solo. That means you get what? I full 20% luck of the draw buff? I would hope that will help overcome some of the lack of gear these tanks/healers might(will) have.

    I donno, I think sometimes I look at things a little different. When I get into a PUG, and the tank sucks, I think of it as a chance to learn and become a better healer.

    Oh, another thought here. I’ve seen plenty of people saying they won’t do this, because they already have those three mounts. Did they forget to read the whole thing? It says “…like the…” What does that mean? That means these three mounts are examples, that it’s not an all inclusive list of every drop you could ever get.

    Anyhow, now I’m rambling, so now I’ll stop.

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  11. I think it is neat that blizzard is trying to do some positive incentives for tanks and healers in the LFD world.

    I usually ask my guild to do a random heroic for guild xp but when there are no takers I end up doing LFD for the heck of it.

    As a healer, I must say heroics are like doing a workout. Because people are more geared at this point, heroics have manifested into a shadow of WotLK pulls where CC is nonexistent. It’s definitely manageable now and most of the time it doesn’t cause a wipe but the mechanics that required CC at the start of Cataclysm still exist making the healer “heal” while the rest of the group pew pews.

    This isn’t really something to QQ about because if you are healing chances are you enjoy healing and this is just a part of life.

    As far as the incentives go. Yes it is nice. I have been trying to get the stupid chicken mount from Kael’thas for weeks now and no luck. Do I think my chances of getting that mount through LFD is better than doing the daily grind? Not by any means. I’ll still take a trip to Magister’s Terrace even when this new Call To Arms is implemented. But in the end, healers/tanks/dps? will have a chance to get an extra goody and surprises are the best.

    The result of this goody bag might lead to under-geared/inexperienced tanks and healers to hit the queues at first, but it will not be trending. People already use Vote To Kick freely when a player is not performing up to the standard. And I don’t know about other people, but being a fail isn’t fun by any means, not even for a goody bag.

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  12. I wonder if something could be done to just increase the number of players in a dungeon. For example if the dps queue is really long, then allow 6 player dungeons (1 tank, 1 healer, 4 dps). You might have to give the dps players some sort of negative luck of the draw to get the damage right but it would get the queue times down. Of course the downside to this is that it increases competition for gear and increase the available buffs (something that again a negative luck of the draw could help with). Just a thought.

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  13. Until they give tanks incentives they really care about that affect them, they’ll probably not have more tanks.

    More gold, flasks and the like is nice. But ultimately for most tanks doing it past the first daily of the day is pointless for them; they’re only in it for the valor points, and often they’re only doing THAT to earn money.

    So you need to do multiple things, I think.
    1. Make the pets/mounts BoA. This will encourage alt tanks of good mains to do some tanking if they want that thing.
    2. Give some valor points as a reward. Not a lot; you don’t want to make it insanely beneficial. But some.
    3. Increase the cap of valor points only through this system. All valor points earned this way don’t count towards your weekly cap.

    So for example – if every extra heroic past the first during the CtA system gave 20 valor points that were above and beyond a cap, a tank could gain tons of valor points just by running heroics all day long.

    The thing about the valor points – before people scream how unfair this is – is that it directly affects the gear levels of the tanks in question. That only improves the overall quality of the tanks in the pool and makes it smoother for everyone.

    Ultimately I think that roles should give out different rewards in terms of valor points. If you want to queue as DPS, that’s fine – but you don’t get as many VP. That’s what tanks really care about (especially early on). Why not enable this further?

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  14. It’s a nice idea, with some obvious flaws. But to be honest, if i’m queuing as DPS i want the shortest time possible. I’ve nothing against Vote Kicking a bad tank.

    That being said, my tank is my main. I think it’s nice that theres a little ‘extra’ being put to whatever is needed the most (hint: always tanks), but at the same time…. all these rewards *are* available outside of randoms. I even already have Anzu. For at least a decent number of (relatively) competent tanks, this won’t really get them to queue any more than they already do. Which is to say not at all.

    I might do it on occasion though. As someone said on the official forums though, the requirement of solo-queuing is a pretty big negative. I think you should at least be able to bring 1 person with you. Even the white chocobo isn’t worth a full on pug >.>

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  15. Make the dungeons fun and they will come.

    A rare mount will not do anything to make the experience fun and will for the most part provide little incentive to go to any new lengths.

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  16. As a player formerly with a healing main that now tanks 90% of the time, I can’t complain about it raining free shinies on me. Of course, as people have said, I’m not sure change will help the problem of pug tank entitlement that frustrated me to the point that I changed mains. But as someone that lost some WoW friends with pure dps classes due to the queue timer, if it addresses that problem it’s a success, even if it’s not perfect.

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  17. Overall net gain for me. I stopped doing heroics on my priest weeks ago. I’d only go in if I was needed every once in a while to heal. But with the potential incentive, I wouldn’t mind setting aside some time and ducking into an LFD randomly. I like pets and mounts. But I don’t like them enough to go grind and RNG dice roll them. I just don’t have the time unfortunately. I suspect other players are in similar situations where it becomes more of a “Why not?” type of deal.

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  18. It never fails to amaze me–WoW players can complain about anything. People complain about groups taking hours to assemble; Blizzard introduces LFD. LFD pairs you with people not on your server to speed up group formation; people complain about LFD destroying the community. LFD queue times increase because tons of people like the idea of getting into a group automatically and with no effort; players complain about those long queue times (that they themselves create). Blizzard tries to shorten queue times by enticing tanks into the LFD queue; players complain that they don’t want THOSE tanks, only the good ones.

    Holy shnick people, get some perspective here. I read the announcement and thought “cool. maybe I should dust off my prot pally”; little did I know that the appropriate reaction was to bemoan the inevitable downfall of player quality in LFD (the players who, incidentally, everyone already complains about …) *sigh*

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    • Blizzards in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t position. They have to figure out something to try and entice more people to play under-represented roles, and honestly there’s no easy way to do that. No matter what they do someone will complain, or feel slighted it seems. The ironic thing is that the people complaining the most about it are the ones that complain about the queue times to begin with. Like I said above though, I think Blizzard will find a happy balance and people will still either queue or won’t depending on their inclination, but I don’t think things will change all that much.

    • I could be wrong, I am often enough, but I do think that the QQ is the vocal minority. The people that are happy about the game don’t go to the forums and post as much as those that are not happy. I belive that when this is introduced we will see improvment because people will like it, even if they are not talking about how much they like it.

  19. Definitely agree with Dogsignor, the playerbase as a whole just hasn’t had the time yet to gear up multiple specs. Adding incentive to tank will bring in a slew of noob tanks and beakers but they are bound to get better and to get gear, which will give them more incentive to keep with that spec instead of just dps, at least for random dungeon queues. Growing pains, gotta live with them some times.

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    • Completely agree with the, “growing pains.” It may be tough to deal with at first as players new to tanking or healing give it a go but it could pay off in the long run. More players will be flexible enough to fulfil different roles and understand each other better. *Wishful thinking* You may actually get into a situation where the dps actually understands how to aid the tank/healer as they have tried it themselves.

      All in all I think Call to Arms is a good change but it may have some teething problems which we have to put up with.

  20. The bag will be providing cross factional items, which DPS won’t be able to access as easily as you state. If at all. Additionally, the mounts that drop in heroics can be farmed but once a day. This new feature allows someone to essentially farm H MgT multiple times in a day. If they removed the pre cata lockout on heroics, maybe then you could say there was equal opportunity.

    My issue is attitude. The attitude that 5 years ago, before LFD was even conceived, I deliberately picked a class (warlock) to be a mouthbreathing, disposable piece of scum that does nothing in a 5man but stare vacantly at the boss while the tank and healer do everything. That’s pretty much a direct quote from the forums btw. I heal at a raid level, I don’t consider healing to be any more difficult than playing a warlock. I don’t believe that tanks are special snowflakes that deserve more than anyone else.
    I keep getting told I made a choice being a warlock so suck it up. Well the tanks made their choice to be a tank, they should follow their own advice.

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    • I understand your point, but then you’re still missing the point where Blizzard is looking for ways and incentives to lower queue times for DPS, like warlocks, that they’ve been seeing for a while now. 35-45+ minutes in a queue as a DPS is pretty horrid. Not to mention that the DPS are the ones asking for a lower queue time. While I understand the fact that there is a feeling of being slighted, do you see another way that they could lower queues so that the wild sea of people that have been complaining about the queue times?

      Also, I’m happy you raid at a raid level, but healing heroics is a very scary endeavor for new 85’s, and so often times they opt not to do them for fear of being vote kicked, letting the group down or in an attempt to learn the fights as DPS before they attempt to heal them. Everyone starts somewhere, not everyone is at raid level healing.

    • No, I’m not missing the point. I get the point. I dislike the underpinning attitude. Just because I don’t agree with it, doesn’t mean I don’t comprehend it. No, I don’t have a solution, but I also don’t consider bribery and divisive actions as a solution.

      There’s no feeling of being slighted, I got told today on one of the Bliz sites that I am disposable and to “learn my place”. I don’t actually want the bag, I don’t care about the bag. It’s the attitude I have a problem with. That attitude is now official Blizzard policy.

      As for new tanks and healers, sure it can be very scary. I never said otherwise – I said I don’t consider one to be harder than the other. I’ve had guildies, pure dps classes, not willing to go into pugs because of the abuse for not knowing an instance they’ve never seen. However, this Call to Arms isn’t going to support them, because you have to queue solo. I consider the best thing for a new tank or healer is to go with a group of friends, people who you feel comfortable with. Who will be patient and constructive and support you. Not queue solo in the LFD.

      The majority of complaints about queue times I’ve seen made by hybrid classes. The ones that have the choice. I don’t frequent the Bliz forums a great deal tho, so I can’t really say if the ‘pures’ have been equally as bad. I honestly don’t see this as a solution. I honestly don’t believe it will work for any meaningful period of time. I think the way it has been presented is poor, I think it has condoned a subset of players with poor attitudes, and I disagree with the philosophy behind it. Bribery isn’t a good choice.

      Hopefully, I’m wrong.

    • I’ve found myself quite vocal against the idea of adding something to the game only a handful of people are ever likely to have a chance at receiving.

      Bribery isn’t a novel and intelligent way to fix a problem, but instead reeks of desperation and lack of willingness to spend extra time and money that in fact could fix this problem.

      I 100% agree the attitude thats been brought out on the forums by so many tanks and even the comments here by tanks and healers shows exactly what they think of people who could be their friends and guild mates if not for chance.

      Also, look at the comments here. “We love this idea!” Followed by, “we hate that it’s going to bring out people who have to learn, and may not be great!”. So on the one hand you praise the fix and on the other hand you dismiss it; which shows just how bad attitudes towards other players runs rampant amongst a certain subset of WoW’s player base.

      I don’t want a bag of bribery to work on my tank, and I don’t want anyone else to get a bag of bribery either because it neither fixes or address’s the issue.

      Tanking is fine. Dungeons are fine. It’s the bad attitude from players that isn’t due to the anonymity of lfd system and frankly much of the bad attitude stems from the tanks as much as any other role. You chose a role, fill or don’t, I don’t care, but shut up about how hard it is because it’s no harder then healing or dpsing, unless of course you were talking about BC and before when tanks didn’t have half the tools they have now to create and manage threat.

    • Let me state my view another way.

      A queue reduction could be achieved by not allowing hybrids to queue as dps in the LFD. That would reduce the number of DPS even if tank and healer numbers remained unchanged.

      If that had been the announcement, I’d have been arguing against that as well. That policy would actually be great for me, but I think that kind of treatment of people is wrong. I don’t think the ends justifies the means, in either my hypothetical or the CtA that they are introducing.

    • @Meerkat,

      I’m not clear on what solution that money and time could provide, other than perhaps the development of tankless dungeons, and that would be just weird. The queue is 100% player driven, and the things that keep the tanks out of the queue are far from technical.

    • @D

      I have to disagree with you on one thing: I consider bribery an extremely viable tactic.

      When I play my hunter I would gladly offer a bribe of MY OWN gold into some magic pot if it meant tanks would queue faster just to get that bribe.

  21. For anyone leaving the group (votekicked or otherwise) when the dungeon is not finished, i’d like to see a way to leave comments for the next incoming person. There’s been several times i’ve been vk’d or voluntarily dropped group after ppl refuse to manage threat or stand in the bad and blame the healer for their own shortcomings. I’ve always pitied the poor bugger who’s had to come into such a group after me.

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  22. Just a thought to think of, there are a lot of very good tanks out there, (and healers for that matter), who don’t like to go into pug groups due to the amount of abuse they take from DPS, usually for not holding threat, and usually because the DPS mouthing off is attacking the wrong targets. As a healer, that DPS dies quite often. I am at a stage where I can heal through stupid most of the time, but I don’t heal through rude.

    Maybe, if the ‘bad’ dps, the kind who mouth of at tanks and healers, thought about having a change of attitude, the tanks and healers who only do guild runs may be tempted to pug more often.

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  23. When I started playing I remember grouping a lot, not with friends but with random strangers I met while questing, some of who became friends. Sadly this is no longer the norm, because classes have become too powerful too quickly and can complete all quests solo, there are very few quests that now demand a companion and the introduction of phasing and vehicles only exaggerate this. While I don’t have a definitive answer I do have a generic solution which is to encourage team work rather than bribery of one of the team to play with the others.

    The responsibility to play really well lies with the tanks and healers and the DPS just do their thing. Already the need for CC is going as tanks and healers become more capable of dealing with the combined incoming damage removing the need for crowd control (although the pulls go faster and smoother with it) which was the one thing that DPS were expected to do a few months back. This regression to the Wrath AOE fest heroics is bad for new tanks/healers as they don’t have the gear to deal with the high incoming damage.

    DPS need some responsibility to the group and CC was one way.

    The only other way I can see is to give all classes the ability to dispel all poison, magic, curses and diseases but only on themselves and to make these things hit harder (maybe always a % of health rather than a fixed number of HP) meaning they are responsible to some degree for their survival. Personally I was always confused by Blizzard’s decision to pass this responsibility solely to healing specs and this would mean taking the ability to dispel others would be removed from healers. And when players die publish the reason for death into /p or /ra chat for all to see. I’m not anti-dispel and if another way of adding DPS responsibility to survival were implemented I will happily continue to dispel my friends and group memebers.

    TLDR? Encourage group play, give DPS more responsibility for their survivability.

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  24. Forgive me if I restate something already said, but I didn’t have time to read through all of the comments. I have dual mains (prot pally and a hunter) and I think there are a few things that could be done to lessen DPS queue times

    1: shorten the blasted dungeons! Part of the reason these dungeons are such a pain is that they are soooo long. with an uber geared group you are still hard pressed to get through deadmines in less than an hour.

    2: make the valor points BOA. If the valor points were boa I know that I would be more apt to run them on my tank versus my hunter for the shortened queue times knowing that my hunter wasn’t missing out.

    3: Disallow full guild runs. I know a lot of tanks that only run dungeons “in guild” with a full guild group. If the random disallowed this or (even better) provided scaling valor points depending on the number of people in the group when you queue, I think that this would go a long ways to get random DPS into these groups.

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  25. Okay, you know why tanks/healers go away from LFD? Because of crappy DPSers. You know why there seems to be only crappy DPS in the queue? Because the good DPS have no incentive to go anymore.

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  26. I am Pally Tank and love it. I have never even used my DPS spec and all my gear is tank gear. Currenly sitting at IL 350. I know the heroics now like the back of my hand and can tank them with ease.

    You know what? IT DIDN’T START that way. You want to know why I think tanks don’t Q? Because of arrogant, know it all, eliltest DPS who have no freaking clue how hard it is to tank and do stupid things than blame the tank. God forbid it is your first time in a place. Somehow a tank is suppose to be born with a full knowledge of every dungeon or else he is a fail tank. The DPS who know the place wont tell you, just say to go watch videos.

    I have all the guides printed out. I do watch the videos. But guess what? Until you have run a dungeon a few times, you aren’t going to be the greatest at it. Sorry, but I watched the PTR vids on the new dungeons for 2hrs last night. Took notes, etc. Still when I run them, it is not going to be easy.

    Example: First Heroic I ever went into, I annouced: First time here on heroic. I have the notes, and I have done it many times on regular, anything I should know? (my item level was 344 at this point so it is not like I was massively under geared)

    Repsonse: “LEAVE”.

    Moral of the Story: If you want more tanks, especially good tanks, don’t treat them like crap, and be a little understanding when they doing a place for the first couple of times. One of the reasons after I would run my daily I wouldn’t re-q was because of jerk DPS’s I run into. I only run them if a guild mate wants me to.

    Cheers,

    Whack

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  27. I like the CTA, though, as a healer, I rarely use it. And I don’t tank. I am thinking it would be easier to just go hit Sethekk Halls or Magister’s Terrace once a day than to deal with some of the people I’ve been stuck with recently. Maybe it’s better in normal Heroics, but the ZA/ZG PuGs have been painful.

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