Crappy Groups

[Worba]

What gets me is how people can get all the way up to 85 and be so bad at their role.

For some, maybe the majority of them, it's probably just because they spent the earlier levels blasting through quests or faceroll-easy Azeroth dungeons, the rest though... words fail.

But while bads ultimately have to take responsibility for their behavior, on a broader scope I think Blizzard despite having the best intentions focused on shooting people up to cap level superfast at the expense of class knowledge. Read: various blue quotes flat out acknowledging how stupidly easy most of the pre-cap level content is (outdoor content I'm looking at you in particular but not exclusively...), but defending it on grounds that they think players would consider a challenge at those levels more of an annoyance than anything.

To which I say BS - there should always be challenge. Whether you're with friends or playing solo. Yeah keep an EZ mode for people who are lazy, hopeless, or just short on time (and yeah I fit the last category once in a while), but also offer more challenging stuff in parallel, which gives greater rewards - at the earlier levels that would generally be things like achievements, titles, minipets, mounts etc as the rest will age off in a few levels, but still there's plenty they could be doing to proactively address cap-level badness before it reaches that stage. -.-

[Makoes]

Its particularly hoe Easy they made pre-cap content that really makes me mad, not just for how fast people blow through it, but how fast they can blow through it not knowing even some of the most basic of their classes! Its leading to far to many people reaching level cap and not knowing their class, which makes it very difficult for those of us who do know our class.

I miss when players actually got to spend time experiencing the content of the game. I really dont understand the huge rush to get to level cap...there is so much more to do pre-cap! I play for the content, not the cap, and I love the chellange of facing things at or below level.

Do you know what would be awsome in MoP, with trainers no longer teaching spells, would be if they gave information on HOW to play the class (spells and such, as well as STAT priority and gave info on roughly where what stats should be at current level)
I know tooltips on spells are great key indications...but with so many spells, it does get confusing at times as to which spells are best used in which spec/or which are more for pvp/pve.

[Worba]

I've always thought it would be neat if they had solo dungeons in the earlier levels - whose purpose was to train you for actual 5 man groups with other players.

For example you are provided with a group of NPCs, and given quests that require you to play your role in a "safe" environment where your mistakes don't cost other people time or armor repairs. The quests would get harder as you level. So initially if you're a tank it would just be something like "taunt 5 monsters". Then "hold continuous aggro on at least 2 monsters throughout the fight", etc etc

Complete enough of those and eventually you get achievements, which leads to a few titles.

Loot would specifically exclude actual armor or weapons - instead it would be consumables, with the occasional minipet, fluff item, or even a mount. But if you want your blue gear you still need to run normal dungeons with other players. And there could be a lot of breadcrumb quests leading from the "trainer dungeons" to the real ones.

That kind of thing.

Another part of the problem is that Blizzard never really addressed the issue of the ever growing level gap - back in TBC if you wanted to roll a new race, you had to get from 1-70; a little more than vanilla but nothing earthshattering; but ever since it keeps increasing until now it's 1-85, will be 1-90 in MoP. So what did they do? Accelerate XP gain. Well that keeps the overall time down, but it means you never really spend enough time at one level to enjoy your loot or grow into your abilities (even if you were challenged to need them, which you generally aren't at the pre-caps).

Not sure if that's strictly avoidable* but its preventing the game from aging gracefully.

*Personally I'd prefer to have the option of starting new toons at (cap lvl minus 59), at least for players who've already reached cap on one toon - but have XP gain normalized and not accelerated. But I suppose that would kill off the low lvl BGs (and we can't have that)...

[Makoes]

I CAN'T WIN!!!!!

One damn group wipes if I pull an extra mob, another group complains that I am being to cautious, yet another group wants a speed run then whines when we die, and then another says we are going to slow, but watching the heals I know that I am going as fast as I should, this last group the healer complained because I was following fight mechanics and avoiding avoidable damage T.T

And I am still bouncing between 1st and 2nd place for dps...as the tank.

[Worba]

And I am still bouncing between 1st and 2nd place for dps...as the tank.

Not uncommon actually - if you think about it, tanks are good at AOE, and generally if the group is non-bad, they will give the tank a couple seconds lead on the DPS (which actually makes a big difference when trash tends to go down in 10 seconds or less); in my experience both as tank and DPS, tanks often take the 1st or 2nd slot on the DPS meters (in pugs anyway). Not always, but I'd say it happens at least half the time.

[Kalliope]

That's true for AoE fights, but if the dps is worth their salt, they'll take over on most boss fights. They'll still appear to be behind overall, but they should at least lead on individual bosses.

Tanking is as thankless as healing. People are just ungrateful. :/

[Worba]

Yeah, I'm just talking about overall DPS, where trash DPS tends to persist and "carry" a tank's numbers through the boss fights, but you're right on a fight by fight basis, DPS numbers should normally spike on a boss fight (esp where the tank's "head start" is offset by the longer fight duration).

What bugs me though are people who reset their DPS on ~every fight including trash~, and then proceed to merrily chirp on and on about how "high" their numbers are. >.>

[Kalliope]

Those people have no idea what they're doing. xD Course, that doesn't make them any easier to deal with. But sometimes, if it comes down to needing to kick someone from a group in order to finish, being able to build a logical case against that person is useful.

[Nick]

this doesn't count as a necro, does it? yes? no? maybe? lobster? /shot

Got to love the douchebags who tell you how to play your class.

OKAY, so let me start this off saying that in no way am I at all good with a Mage.
Hunters and Druids, that's my forte.
But apparently that isn't good enough for people.
Especially when I'm a Frost Mage.

SO I get into Wailing Caverns, blah blah we get through most of it fine but then the tank bails (for a reason that escapes my mind at the moment). Clear some trash and then a Druid pops in to fill tank role.
Another thing I need to needlessly point out was I was the lowest level in the entire group.
Well, we were randomly clearing some trash when the Druid calls out my character's name in party. I respond back with a "hmmm?" and get a "you aren't very experienced are you?" in reply.

Well now color me confused because what the bloody hell did he mean by that?

I respond back "with a Mage? no not really" because I was thinking that he meant that I wasn't doing something right with a Mage (which in a low-level dungeon should not matter all that much) but he just snaps back a "you're the lowest level in here, why u got the green flag?"
Wait; hold the phone.
He was acting all snubbish because the tank dropped and I got handed dungeon leader? God, what the hell...
Thankfully the Rogue that was in there had a little more common sense than the average bear and just snirked back with a "dungeon leader don't mean nothing and he's got BoAs, dude". Well the Druid falls silent after that, the group carries on. Get to the boss next to the giant boglord, kill him, kill boglord, and the Druid has enough gall to caps in party chat "LEARN TO DO DAMAGE". Erm, excuse me?
At least the Rogue has some nice words, calmly telling me that I should switch to Fire for better damage output. But the Druid had no other words for the group after that.

This is when things get a little hairy; the Druid pops out of bear form (for what i do believe all of us was to simply heal himself) and for the next couple minutes just moonfires everything, refusing to tank. So the Hunter in the group pipes up with a "tank is pissy bout something". I could only assume that it was still me and my "horrendous" BoA-geared level 17 damage. Everything else runs pretty smoothly, at least until the Druid and Hunter drop from group right before the very last boss, leaving me and the Rogue to do it.

Which we did, by the skin of our teeth but by damn we managed to kill him, the Rogue limping along with barely 5% health left and me breathing a sigh of relief because I knew my clothed arse wasn't gonna be able to hold out long enough to kill Mr. Devourer.

[Finduilas]

I had something similar happen to me in a random heroic on one of my hunters. It was one of the old heroics and each of my hunters has at least 2 pieces from lfr and overall a minimum equip of 378 pieces in pve gear (pvp is much better on most). I do dungeons and LFR as BM, why not? I got into the dungeon and recount tells me after a few groups that I deal between 40 and 47% of all the damage, it gets even better on the first boss when I reach 50%. Then someone in group just puts in "hunter you shold go surv". I was all "huh? why?" and then the answer was "you'll deal more damage this way, BM sucks". I just posted recount where I was about 25k average dps with a 378 weapon and told him to complain to his mom. It was very quiet after that. I play BM since Burning Crusade, I know how to play it and deal damage. In LFR I regularely am better than most other hunters, the exceptions are surv hunters in raid gear. People telling me how to play my class when I'm good at what I'm doing, I hate it. In this particular dungeon my pet ended up tanking trash mobs and one boss because the tank died too often (low health, crappy gear and crappy healer). You can't do this with a MM pet.

[Nick]

I can't remember all of them but ever since I started running with two friends on an alt Alli server (Elune, to be exact)...

The amount of stupidity and douchebaggery I have seen since we started running randoms on our alts since level 15.
THE LIMIT DOES NOT EXIST.
UGH.

[Sar]

Tanking is as thankless as healing. People are just ungrateful. :/

As a main spec Paladin Tank (my hunter is my main alt) I concur wholeheartedly with this sentiment.

This is why I VERY rarely bother with LFR or 5 mans as a tank, because the absolute idiots you get in them makes you want to give up the game completely at times. I would much rather tank for my guild in Heroic DS (6/8 like a lot of guilds lol) than do a simple 5 man or LFR.

DPSing (either as my 397 geared Arms warrior or my newly dinged BM hunter) on the other hand isn't as bad, as people have no expectation other than your DPS numbers, and half the time DPS in 5 mans are shockingly low/bad for their gear/level. My first heroic dungeon at 85 in gear actually below the iLevel requirement (thank you intellect cloth quest rewards in my bags!) resulted in me being top DPS for the entire dungeon, with the closest player doing about 66% of my dps, and that was the tank.... 0_o

Here's hoping MoP fixes the LFR gear drop issues for good (source of a lot of grief), and players and the community in general, somehow, become nice again.

[Equeon]

Got told by someone in a PUG DS run (they couldn't get past spine and needed a DPS) that I should switch specs.
I was currently using one of my spirit beasts, and a mage whispers me "what other pets u got"
I return "with me currently?" and he says "yeah"
I tell him "two spirit beasts, a turtle, a core hound, and a silithid"
He replies "oh you're BM" and I say "yes"
Then he goes on to say "oh ok but u should respec mm or the other one if u want to do any damage, but its ok"

I'm like... what? You don't even know which specs do what, let alone what their names are, and you're telling me how to spec my main? I really wish BM didn't get such a bad reputation in Wrath, because it seems all the non-hunter oriented people are biased against it...

[Serendipity82]

Got told by someone in a PUG DS run (they couldn't get past spine and needed a DPS) that I should switch specs.
I was currently using one of my spirit beasts, and a mage whispers me "what other pets u got"
I return "with me currently?" and he says "yeah"
I tell him "two spirit beasts, a turtle, a core hound, and a silithid"
He replies "oh you're BM" and I say "yes"
Then he goes on to say "oh ok but u should respec mm or the other one if u want to do any damage, but its ok"

I'm like... what? You don't even know which specs do what, let alone what their names are, and you're telling me how to spec my main? I really wish BM didn't get such a bad reputation in Wrath, because it seems all the non-hunter oriented people are biased against it...

100% this. I got that all the time in DS pugs. Which is why I don't do them so much anymore XD

[Kalliope]

All I can think is "man, that guy is going to be FURIOUS with all the BM hunters in MoP!"

[Sar]

"or the other one" lol

Sometimes randomers crack me up

Just REALLY happy that BM is one of the top, if not top DPS spec for hunters initially at least in Mists. BM is the only reason I ever wanted to play a hunter to begin with. That said, we have 2 excellent hunters in our guild atm, one is BM and the other is MM. Both really good players, and the difference in dps is like 3-5% max. Piddling amounts really.