I just need to vent to you guys a bit...I am a very frustrated hunter lately. It has been hard to even play Drach lately, when I log on, I want to go hunt pets, kill stuff, but mainly I want to run some dungeons. This has been the frustrating part. As all of you know, the que time for these dungeons are ridiculous as a dps, for heroics last night it was 45 mins, and that's actually pretty good on my server lately. It's a pain to wait around for a group, and then the really frustrating aspect sets in for me.
The typical scenario has gone something like this, we get to the first boss, and it's hard, which is awesome in my opinion, finally a challenge. It requires strategy, and if someone messes up, the tank bails, just leaves the group. This has happened so many times, I expect it to happen. Then the rest of us are left having to wait another 45 mins for another group or a tank to join an in progress group which sometimes could take longer.
Last night, I got into a group for Shadowfang Keep, which is a really fun one. We have trouble with the first boss because people are missing their stuns and interrupts, but we keep at it and finally bring him down. It was a lot of fun. And then out of the blue, I find myself zoning back into Stormwind! I'm like what the heck just happened, and then realize I was booted from the group with no warning or explanation at all. It couldn't have been my dps output, I checked recount and was leading the pack with around 10k overall, and the next closest was 8k, and it trailed off big time after that, so I was pissed and there is nothing I could do about it....except wait another 45-55 mins for another chance at the group disbanding.
It's been like this for a while now, and it's making me not enjoy Huntering much. I read Ghostcrawler's blog about the dungeons being hard, and as expected he doesn't really care, or what is more likely just doesn't understand or want to understand, just wants his "baby" (the dungeon finder) to be seen as a success. The best advice he gave was to know what you're doing...gee thanks..., it's kind of hard to know what to do when you never get a chance to even complete a dungeon without everyone bailing. I don't want them to make the dungeons easier, but they have to do something about this. I can't wait around 45 mins to get a chance at a dungeon that is inevitably going to fall apart and waste my evening. There should be stiffer consequences for a tank that bails on a group, they need to make it more worthwhile to stick with it and work together. If that's their big goal like he says it is (us working together and figuring things out), then by God make it more worthwhile for a group to stick it out because right now it's not happening at all. A tank, or healer even, can just bail, wait a few minutes and then re-que and instantly have a new group while the dps are left in the lurch and have to wait another hour in hopes of a mature and patient tank to tackle a dungeon with.
I know I should get into a guild, and run them with people I know, and for a while I've been in a guild and we did a few together and it was a lot of fun, but the guild leader is having to leave so basically the guild is going to fall apart, and I'll have to look for another guild and wade through all the immaturity until I can find another decent group of people.
I know this is a lot, and in fact I should probably just make this a blog post instead of here at the forums, but I mainly just need to vent to my hunter brothers and sisters, because no one else will understand. My wife doesn't lol, God bless her she just knows that I've been frustrated lately when I play in the evenings.
I've even gone so far as to create another character, I've been playing a dwarf shaman and healing, and it's been a lot of fun. Really easy and boring, but hey it's been better then the trainwreck of pug's I've been wading through lately.
-Drach the Frustrated One
I feel your pain man.
The penalties for dropping out of a DF group definitely need to be harsher, and the rewards for staying need to be better. Also, there should be some sort of notification to the person being kicked from a group. They ask for a reason why when you initiate the kick, that should be shared with the kicked player if the vote succeeds.
As for remedying your situation, short of a server transfer to a better battlegroup and thus a better pool of players for the DF to pick from or doing some serious legwork trying to find a new guild to run with you're probably out of luck. It's pretty much the same everywhere. Too few tanks and heals, to many dps. It's gotten to the point where I won't even do a dungeon unless i'm in a group with at least 2 other people i trust so that we're the majority if any smartass tries to kick one of us, and I always try to have 1 of my friends be a tank or heals so that I know that our queue time will be shorter. I do have the advantage of being part of a pretty good sized guild filled with mostly above average players that understand the content is tough, so I haven't had to deal with most of the bad stuff from the DF in a while now.
As for Ghostcrawler's post, I was pleasantly surprised that he didn't cave to the whining. Sure there's the obvious undertones that he doesn't care as long as his DungeonFinder is working, which it is in only the most basic of fashions and has lots of room for improvement, but the basic message is clearly 'Wrath is over, Learn to Play' and that makes me smile. All of Wrath made me cry, there were only a few fights that were any challenge at all, and most of those are fights with vehicle components (Malygos and Flame Leviathan HM) or vastly complex strategies that quickly took them from the 'fun challenge' into the 'just shoot me' realm of difficulty (Mimiron HM and Yogg Alone in the Dark). Even the coup de grace of the entire expansion, Arthas himself, was a wretched disappointment to me, Illidan was harder by far as was most of SWP. FFS by the end of the expansion people were arranging pugs to do Arthas' hard mode...it was a freakin joke. The fact that Cata seems to have started where Wrath finished is a good indicator to me that I'm in for a lot of engaging gameplay and enjoyable encounters in the future.
It's not the content that's a problem at the moment, it's the player base and the Wrath inspired belief that the game should be mindnumbingly simple. People are to accustomed to free loot in heroics, they don't know their class or bother trying to, they read a couple forum posts about what rotation or priority they should be using for maximized effect in whatever role they're filling and then assume that all their supposed to do. When that doesn't work they act like children and quit or whine that the game is broken because they're not being handed their goodies on a silver platter. They treat ilvl like the end all/be all of what makes a player good and will take someone with a higher ilvl over someone that actually knows how to play.
For a long time I've wished to be able to go back and play Vanilla WoW again, and I think this is the closest I'll get to that. So as aggrevating as some of the stuff is, I'm loving it so far. Just stear clear of the DF when you can, and serously, find a good guild. It's worth the effort doing the research on the guilds that are out there and looking for players. Find one that's doing what you want to do and then go have fun.
You're right, I'm totally glad he didn't cave, and I hope he doesn't, but there still needs to be some sort of tweaking. I'm seriously considering a character transfer, or race swapping to Horde, I have heard better things from that side, and had better experiences when I leveled as Horde on a diferent character. Thanks for the encouragement!
Harriel's post is one of the best posts I've seen on the subject. From a tanks perspective, things are rough at the moment even with talented DPS. The short queue's are nice; but I know of tanks and healers that aren't even interested in playing those roles because they can be so difficult. A lot of the healers that I have had the misfortune of pug'ing with make me want to scream.
The best solution I can come up with Drach is for you to come to Darkspear. I just started a guild and we are always looking for more players 🙂 You'd be more than welcome.
I haven't bothered pugging on my priest in a while now, heroics aren't too overwhelmingly bad if you get a decently geared team(IE, not people just hitting the 329 item level req) and most people know what to do, and people be willing to communicate, sadly, wrath got rid of the communication part that was so much a part of the heroics in TBC.
The DPS to healer/tank gap is vastly exaggerated by people who aren't willing to take even the slightest risk, it's unfortunate and sadly there really isn't anything that you can do about it. While my priests mainspec is Shadow, I do have stuff to go heals, I'm not the best healer, but I get the job done.
Boba, I agree, the post from Harriel is very good. It makes the distinction I was trying to make much clearer. I don't have a problem with the content, I love the content. I think the difficulty of the dungeons is perfect, it's just not getting a chance to enjoy the content that is my problem lol.
Really, thank you guys for agreeing with me and saying I did good with that post 🙂
As for the gear cap and doing heroics, I was on the leading edge of the gear cap when it came to doing heroics and I can tell you, that 329 cap is more than enough to get you through those encounters if you know what you're doing. It doesn't leave a lot of room for error, but it's totally possible and I'd even say more enjoyable doing the heroics with a lower ilvl because everything feels more urgent. You sit there, nervously, itchin to hit that cooldown that's gonna save the day or that's gonna push your dps over the minimum of what's needed to get through the fight. I've been through it as a hunter and as a warrior tank now, and on both toons I was running the heroics at the bare minimum ilvl with a full group of guildies that were also just barely able to queue and we did just fine. I even cheesed the ilvl on my warrior to get me from 327 to 329 by keeping some paly quest rewards that were higher ilvl than what i was wearing, so I was tanking heroics under the gear cap and it wasn't that huge an issue really.
On average it's about an hour que for random heroics on my server if doing a pick up group. Thankfully I've found a great guild and can get my instance runs in with them. One slight problem is though, the guild has many Hunters in it and all are pretty active. The groups tend to have quite a few Hunters in them and lack variety. So being the nice guy that I am, I've stepped up and started leveling my Retribution Paladin to ad a bit more "choices" in the groups.
Nice Anj! That is hillarious, thanks for sharing that with us :), My fave is that Hunters are uncommonly good looking, and we have a higher IQ than most lol...brilliant!
Takaas said:
On average it's about an hour que for random heroics on my server if doing a pick up group. Thankfully I've found a great guild and can get my instance runs in with them. One slight problem is though, the guild has many Hunters in it and all are pretty active. The groups tend to have quite a few Hunters in them and lack variety. So being the nice guy that I am, I've stepped up and started leveling my Retribution Paladin to ad a bit more "choices" in the groups.
Same here in our guild – we are DPS and hunter heavy. I'm going to start levelling a priest and learn how to heal. Many epic fails in my future. I only know DPS and burn burn burn.
Abby, I actually started a dwarf shaman healer, and it is the easiest thing in the world. I think it's easier than anything i've done so far. Be sure and get the HealBot addon, makes it cakewalk!
Awww.../comfort, he meant bad dk's, not elite ones like you, it took a great hunter to make a good dk 🙂
Is it time to put our bows and guns down, and branch out into the other classes of tanking and healing?