Hate Pugs? You'll hate them even more now!

[Cadaverine]

I like the idea, as it's a royal pain in the ass finding groups for anything other than heroics on the two servers I play on.  Especially difficult to get groups for TBC dungeons.  That said, it's gonna be a complete mess with all the abusing that goes on.  Then again, they could have some rules in mind to keep it to a minimum.  Who knows.  I just need to find a guild that likes running old dungeons as well as the new ones, I guess.

[kildorn]

That's what my current H-ToC LFG list looks like as well.

My lock still gets invites within 5 minutes of entering said queue, though.

ToC isn't being targeted by this. Everything that isn't ToC (and thus rarely run, since the loot is so much worse) is the target.

[Paelos]

Yep it'll just be even more dps overload with nobody actually doing a job.

[Merusk]

That's what everyone's HTOC queue looks like.  Folks looking to gear-up alts with the purple rain.  It's made it easy to get groups for my alt priest though.  Leveling up the pally tank now, should be fun.

[Rasix]

You have people using the LFG system on your servers? Must be nice.

[Merusk]

All the time.. along with /trade and zone spam

[AutomaticZen]

Cross-server instances?  This sounds great.  But there must be a catch somewhere...



Oh there it is.  Real screenshot from my servers h-toc queue just now.

There's a reason I'm a Prot/Holy Paladin.  I'm always in demand.  In some fashion.

Except for that 10-man this weekend.  They needed a Ret Pally.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I tried making an enhance shaman and finding groups once i hit 80 last week. I couldn't find shit, even with everyone doing the loot pinata toc.  So, I switched to resto, did the normal version a few times and within a week i had a full set of epic healing and enhance gear from there and naxx10 pugs/conquest tokens.

[Gobbeldygook]

I tried making an enhance shaman and finding groups once i hit 80 last week. I couldn't find shit, even with everyone doing the loot pinata toc.  So, I switched to resto, did the normal version a few times and within a week i had a full set of epic healing and enhance gear from there and naxx10 pugs/conquest tokens.

This was my experience with my resto shaman.  I rolled a shaman to heal and just made a point of picking up all the offspec loot I could.  Now my enhancement set is probably as good as my resto set, if not better.  The endless scourge of death knights, retadins, and shitty DPS warriors has its benefits for non-plate classes.

[Shrike]

Not my experience with enhance. I put up a LFG flag, and I'm finding I have to /tell people, "Whomever gets me an invite first." I think it's mostly because of tremor and cleansing totems, but I don't lack for ToC groups. At all. Of course, I didn't just hit 80 as enhance. Still, I feel appreciated, which is more than I can say for most TBC content.

Now, good ToC groups are another matter. Tank (hah!) DKs are very close to getting on my NFE list. DW tank DKs are already there. Lack of threat, wet paper bag syndrome, out and out stupidity...I could go on.  If I don't know you and you're a DK attempting to tank, I'm gone. Too many excrutiatingly bad experiences with these morons lately.

[Hindenburg]

Curiously enough, most of my terrible ToC experiences come from having shaman healers.

Lack of threat? lol. If 4.5k tps in a 5man isn't enough, you're doing it wrong. But yes, DW tanks should gtfo. As should unholy tanks. And most blood tanks.

[Righ]

Cross-server instances?  This sounds great.  But there must be a catch somewhere...



Oh there it is.  Real screenshot from my servers h-toc queue just now.

The DK at the top is called Hlem. Any relation to our Helm who plays as Hlem from time to time?

Fake edit: Armory search says The Venture Company, so probably.

[Selby]

Not my experience with enhance. I put up a LFG flag, and I'm finding I have to /tell people, "Whomever gets me an invite first." I think it's mostly because of tremor and cleansing totems, but I don't lack for ToC groups. At all. Of course, I didn't just hit 80 as enhance. Still, I feel appreciated, which is more than I can say for most TBC content.

Alot of it has to do with your gear.  If you are pulling a 2400 gear score in wow-heroes or the armory has you in all ilvl 219 & 226 gear, people are going to pick you over that fresh 80 with some blues and greens or even that relatively decently geared person with mostly heroics and Naxx-10 gear.  I've found that since I'm done with all of the EoC farming, heroics are pretty easy to get in as a mage.  The last 4 days I've gotten in to a group within 5-10m of putting myself in LFG and usually I'm the 2nd or 3rd one in the party (healer and tank already in), with the occasional person being booted for low gear.  Simple put, they want someone who has obviously done this before and is going to make it go as smoothly as possible.  A well geared DPS contributes to this.  But if you are a healer or tank, your options are MUCH wider, but then you also run the risk of having to deal with considerably more people wanting you in their group.  My druid never has a hard time getting in to runs when I put myself down as healing.

[Der Helm]

The DK at the top is called Hlem. Any relation to our Helm who plays as Hlem from time to time?

Fake edit: Armory search says The Venture Company, so probably.

  Yep. That is me. 

[Sjofn]

The Horde server I play on is SO shitty, it cannot possibly hurt to have cross server PuGs. <3

[Shrike]

Curiously enough, most of my terrible ToC experiences come from having shaman healers.

Lack of threat? lol. If 4.5k tps in a 5man isn't enough, you're doing it wrong. But yes, DW tanks should gtfo. As should unholy tanks. And most blood tanks.

Yeah, lack of threat. It's something that's cropping up a lot more than it should. When I get a WF proc and immediately get aggro, the tank isn't getting it done. Period. It's not entirely a DK issue (had a really bad warrior last week), but it's way over-represented there. DW DKs are simply the worst offenders (haven't seen one yet that knew what the fuck he was doing).

[Rendakor]

I was DW tank specced on my DK for exactly one heroic. It was godawful, and that was with 2 219 tank swords. I'm currently blood-tank, and find myself much more durable than I was as frost. Having a 5k self heal as part of my rotation helps a lot. Unlike most tanks I see, I slot my red gem slots with Str/Sta and my yellows with Hit/Sta or Crit/Sta; missing a set bonus is losing out on part of an item's itemization, and that is stupid IMO. Threat stats are not AS important as tank stats, but not useless to the point where they can be neglected. 34k unbuffed hp is plenty, imo.

[Sjofn]

I also tried out DW tanking exactly once. I felt fine durability-wise, but my threat was shitty, shitty, shitty. I'm 2h frost tanking now, and my threat still feels lower than it was before the patch, but that could just be me being cranky about frost strike being normal instead of the pure love it once was. I'm considering switching to blood tank for the hell of it (I played around with it before and kinda liked it), but I probably won't.

I've tanked some with my druid lately. He's overpowered as fuck. 

[Khaldun]

Had the same issue with a DW DK tank in ToC just yesterday. As a rogue, I was Tricks-of-the-Trading him every time it was off CD, using Feint, and I was still pulling threat from him within two seconds of Tricks ending. A bit of that was gear disparity, a bit of it was his inability to tank, but some of it was just plain inadequate threat generation for the class to be tanking.

[Nevermore]

The big problem with DW tanking is they didn't add Rune Strike to ToT.  I think the theory was that you'd be able to get them off much faster anyway, but you simply don't have enough runic power to do that.  If they didn't want to add Rune Strike double hits to ToT, they should have at least added a discount on the runic power cost of using it.

I haven't had too much trouble tanking as 2h Frost, but then they haven't let me I haven't tanked anything tougher than Nax yet.  Plus I'm using a dps sigil even when tanking.

[Hindenburg]

You mean the sigil of the vengeful heart? That thing is perfect for both blood and frost dk's.

[Nevermore]

Actually no, I'm using Sigil of Awareness.  They nerfed the Frost Strike damage bonus on Vengeful Heart.

[Xanthippe]

I don't think it's possible for me to hate pugs more than I already do, but this at least gives me hope of getting into instances I'm unable to get into.  Recently rerolled a DK, and the only instances I've been able to find groups for while leveling are Hellfire, Nexus and UK.  Maybe I'm in a minority, but I like to run instances to see them/experience them, rather than for loot, which is only a secondary goal for me.

Also started playing my priest again, and finding that healing is now fun.  My warlock respecced destro (fun and powerful).  My frost mage is in Outlands (fun).  Everything is fun but my hunter, sadly.  It seems Blizzard still has no clue what to do with hunters.

[Nevermore]

Going from mana usage to focus seems to indicate a pretty major overhaul for Hunters.

[Sjofn]

I love my hunter, I'm just one of the Tanks with a Capital T in our guild, so I very rarely get to play her in a guild-run raid.

[Ingmar]

Hunters are currently:

- in the top 4 DPS on every Trial of the Crusader boss fight so far, and #1 on one of them
- on two of the eight world's best arena teams that played at Blizzcon
- incredibly powerful and easy to play in solo PVE/leveling situations

I'm not sure I'm getting what the problem is. Yeah, they lose a lot to DKs in battlegrounds.

[kildorn]

I don't think it's possible for me to hate pugs more than I already do, but this at least gives me hope of getting into instances I'm unable to get into.  Recently rerolled a DK, and the only instances I've been able to find groups for while leveling are Hellfire, Nexus and UK.  Maybe I'm in a minority, but I like to run instances to see them/experience them, rather than for loot, which is only a secondary goal for me.

Also started playing my priest again, and finding that healing is now fun.  My warlock respecced destro (fun and powerful).  My frost mage is in Outlands (fun).  Everything is fun but my hunter, sadly.  It seems Blizzard still has no clue what to do with hunters.

Healing is indeed fun now. They even gave paladins a HoT!  *runs from sjofn*

[Sjofn]

Healing is indeed fun now. They even gave paladins a HoT!  *runs from sjofn*

SJOFN SMASH PRIEST

[Soulflame]

They gave paladins TWO HoTs!

Too bad the one (2T8) is utter garbage, and the other is eh until you get 4T9... after which you have the great choice of being a tier behind in order to make a gimmick HoT on one player (or more if you have smart paladins) almost worthwhile.

/grumble

[Ingmar]

That's the same ugly choice prot warriors and resto druids with 4 pc T8 have to make, etc.

[Merusk]

Why in hell are DKs even trying to 2h tank?  1h tanking works for pallys and warriors because of their other threat tools, like Shield Slam, Devastate, and RF.  You've got rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle for a reason.. you're supposed to be 2h tanking!   Your damage dealt is your threat.

[Ingmar]

Because you can I think is the main answer. People do a lot of odd things, like playing darkness bonedancers in DAOC or melee blasters in CoH or melee hunters in WoW, just to prove it can be done.

Which is fine until you get into situations where the group wouldn't have wiped or something similar if you were on a "proper" spec. At that point I think the fact that it might be costing other people repair bills or time or whatever makes the choice a little iffy, but it all depends on how the people you're playing with feel about it.

[Rendakor]

Why in hell are DKs even trying to dual wield tank?  1h tanking works for pallys and warriors because of their other threat tools, like Shield Slam, Devastate, and RF.  You've got rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle for a reason.. you're supposed to be 2h tanking!   Your damage dealt is your threat.

FIFY.

[Merusk]

Whoops, yeah, thanks.

[Sjofn]

Why in hell are DKs even trying to 2h tank?  1h tanking works for pallys and warriors because of their other threat tools, like Shield Slam, Devastate, and RF.  You've got rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle for a reason.. you're supposed to be 2h tanking!   Your damage dealt is your threat.

I tried it because they had put the DW talents into my tank tree of choice and I wanted to see if it could work. I tried it in Naxx instead of Ulduar for a reason. :P

Plus my human lady looks like she's churning butter when she uses a 2h weapon, QQ.