I already made a post about abusing LFD: threaten the group that you go AFK as DPS if they don't kick M&S. Others pointed out that it might be even better to not say anything just go AFK (or say some social lie like "sorry, baby woke up, AFK for 5 mins, really sorry m8s").
However this trick beat them all.
At first I shall say that I don't need badges at all. You can't buy blue gear from badges and my lvl 22 alt has all BoAs. So I can't buy anything from them. I run LFD to examine it and to post about it. When I queued up as 232-245 healer, the hell spawned its worst scum on me. 800 DPS hunter? Check. DPS DK in +def and +spirit, using frost presence? Check. Warlock doing less than the healer? Check. "Lol m8s meg fox is so hot i wanna do her lololol"? Check.
On the other hand when I queue up as blue geared DPS, the group is usually something like this:
First I thought it's me being DPS. I mean since I'm occupying one of the DPS spots, the spots open for retards decrease by 33%. However the hopeless moron ratio with Koltas is not 33% less. I barely see one. I couldn't kick a single guy in 5 runs a row since (while being way below me or the tank) they were above 1.5K. When I run as healer I see one completely useless moron practically every time (on the top of 1-2 1.5-2K guys in full-T9).
Then it hit me. Blizzard says: "The new system will now work to match at least one experienced player for the assigned dungeon with less experienced players in the group.". It means that it will spawn into every group some green-blue-geared gemless-enchantless beings from the plane of eternal suck (I guess it is the place where gamers who did terrible things in their life get after death). However when I queue up in blue gear, I am the noob to be boosted! Granted, it usually happens the other way around, but still, I'm naturally immune to get one of those ... things.
So the trick is: get reputation+BoE blue/green set. Doesn't cost more than 500G. Put some enchants on if you want to get to FoS or PoS, leave one-two epics up if you want to go HoR. This way the dungeon finder will think you are another helpless moron in desperate need of boosting, and give you a geared group. Granted they can (and usually do) suck, but not in the 3 digits range.
In the instance you can either dress back to normal gear for fast run, or keep the blue up and post damage meter after every bossfight and send the screenshot of their replies to me. Beaten by a blue geared is quite annoying to them as they can't use the "I have real life so I have lesser gear than you" bullshit. And you can need on the epics and blues to disenchant/sell yourself.
Remember, every non-market system can be abused for your own profit. And it should be abused for the good of the mankind, as the rampart abuse will destroy the system, forcing the people to finally use the market solution. LFD can be abused by the blue trick and being AFK. How bad it can get? Can it force Blizzard to change LFD?
A picture tells more than thousand words:
One more thing must be mentioned: the socials explain the boosting that "he is a beginner, what could he do". Well, here is the solution: pay. At first one can get starter gear from the AH. Please look at my warlock who leveled as "play with GF alt". Never been in any HC (check achievements). Got his gear exactly to prove that "being beginner" is not excuse for "being sucker".
One can also pay people to boost him. Exactly because of the easy nature of heroics a pair of tank and healer can boost 3 newbies. If they all pay 2-300G, that's a nice income for the tank and the healer to do this job.
However this trick beat them all.
At first I shall say that I don't need badges at all. You can't buy blue gear from badges and my lvl 22 alt has all BoAs. So I can't buy anything from them. I run LFD to examine it and to post about it. When I queued up as 232-245 healer, the hell spawned its worst scum on me. 800 DPS hunter? Check. DPS DK in +def and +spirit, using frost presence? Check. Warlock doing less than the healer? Check. "Lol m8s meg fox is so hot i wanna do her lololol"? Check.
On the other hand when I queue up as blue geared DPS, the group is usually something like this:
First I thought it's me being DPS. I mean since I'm occupying one of the DPS spots, the spots open for retards decrease by 33%. However the hopeless moron ratio with Koltas is not 33% less. I barely see one. I couldn't kick a single guy in 5 runs a row since (while being way below me or the tank) they were above 1.5K. When I run as healer I see one completely useless moron practically every time (on the top of 1-2 1.5-2K guys in full-T9).
Then it hit me. Blizzard says: "The new system will now work to match at least one experienced player for the assigned dungeon with less experienced players in the group.". It means that it will spawn into every group some green-blue-geared gemless-enchantless beings from the plane of eternal suck (I guess it is the place where gamers who did terrible things in their life get after death). However when I queue up in blue gear, I am the noob to be boosted! Granted, it usually happens the other way around, but still, I'm naturally immune to get one of those ... things.
So the trick is: get reputation+BoE blue/green set. Doesn't cost more than 500G. Put some enchants on if you want to get to FoS or PoS, leave one-two epics up if you want to go HoR. This way the dungeon finder will think you are another helpless moron in desperate need of boosting, and give you a geared group. Granted they can (and usually do) suck, but not in the 3 digits range.
In the instance you can either dress back to normal gear for fast run, or keep the blue up and post damage meter after every bossfight and send the screenshot of their replies to me. Beaten by a blue geared is quite annoying to them as they can't use the "I have real life so I have lesser gear than you" bullshit. And you can need on the epics and blues to disenchant/sell yourself.
Remember, every non-market system can be abused for your own profit. And it should be abused for the good of the mankind, as the rampart abuse will destroy the system, forcing the people to finally use the market solution. LFD can be abused by the blue trick and being AFK. How bad it can get? Can it force Blizzard to change LFD?
A picture tells more than thousand words:
One more thing must be mentioned: the socials explain the boosting that "he is a beginner, what could he do". Well, here is the solution: pay. At first one can get starter gear from the AH. Please look at my warlock who leveled as "play with GF alt". Never been in any HC (check achievements). Got his gear exactly to prove that "being beginner" is not excuse for "being sucker".
One can also pay people to boost him. Exactly because of the easy nature of heroics a pair of tank and healer can boost 3 newbies. If they all pay 2-300G, that's a nice income for the tank and the healer to do this job.
62 comments:
I had once the opposite happen. I was PuG'ing VoA-25 and was whispered by a mage to put on my real weapon to do more damage.
Look at recount, whisperer is around 3K, I am around 6K.
I kept Thunderfury on.
LFD is supposed to take your entire inventory+bank into account, not just what you're wearing, or at least that's what was said at some point. If that's the case, then this exploit won't work.
By leaving this system in the dark, a system that still give me Oculus 50% of the time, Blizzard brings these speculation and exploitation theories upon themselves.
Gevlon, are you sure the matching of "at least one experienced player for the assigned dungeon with less experienced players in the group" is based on gear? I know most other requirements or matching systems are based on gear, but "experienced" seems to imply they use achievements to determine who is "experienced."
Wow!
Gosh, I queue up as a 232-251 healer all the time. Way better geared than anything you have, Gevlon.
And guess what? I don't have these problems.
Sure, There are some bad groups.. and when that happens I leave. Right away. No discussion, no petulent stamping of feet.
Just gone.
Because that's what's in my best interest.
I'm a goblin. What are you?
@Ilene: I'm a blogger. While "run away at the first sight of trouble" is often a good solution, I doubt if it would be interesting to anyone.
I have to research other solutions too, or I can't talk about them.
The optimal by the way is: never queue up. You don't need any badges. If you raid, you'll have raid drops, if you don't you don't need any gear.
But people want badge gear, and if they want solutions how to get it, I shall supply.
The best way to avoid the M&S is to queue up with other geared and skilled guild members/friends.
I am very curious to know the algorithm that Blizzard uses to mtch players in the LFD tool. In the end it might be just like Onyxia's deep breath: people are just matched randomly and because people only see an unrepresentative sample of all matched parties, they think they see a pattern that isn't even there.
Personally I don't require to be matched with equal geared and skilled players. Doing HoL in under 10 minutes is great the first time you manage it, but gets rather boring when repeated. Give me a couple of complete retards in my party and at least I'll have an interesting run. And if they are too retard, there is always the option to votekick and finish the dungeon with 4 or even 3 players, which is perfectly feasible with the overgearing in heroics.
I disagree with your conclusion Gevlon. What you are doing reminds me of my university studies. I had very good math teacher and he told us about mathematician vs engineer approach.
Engineer if find out that something works for x and x+1 automatically assumes that it works for every x. Mathematician needs some prove first.
If you want to point out that LFD puts M&S or bad or bad geared players together with good geared ones on purpose you have to get more data first not just personal feelings.
From what I read from blizz staff:
1) LFD should check all items (even those in the bank)
2) LFD TRIES to match people with about the same gear.
My personal experience are that sometimes I meet good ones sometimes bad ones and allmost allways there is someone with low DPS but I think it's just because there are so many bad players there. I had groups with 14k+ group dps I had groups where I had allmost 50% of all dmg done. About once a week I met someone with better dps / dmg done than me.
You may be right but to prove it I expect much more data.
Unfortunately Gevlon, raiders *do* need the emblems to get tier10 faster, especially (for example) my class (feral cat) which gets its' biggest boost from 4-piece tier gear - meaning I wont be performing on highest level possible until I get it.
But still, I gotta say: I honestly do not remember when any of the almost-every-day runs (since 3.3) I did lasted more than 10-15 minutes.
If anything, boredom is the biggest issue I noticed people experience while mindlessly plowing through AoEing 1, 2 or even 3 groups pulls & bosses die anywhere between 30 and 60 seconds.
The biggest WTF moment I had was this: http://tinypic.com/2mpjh79l.. like, can anyone get more socially emo than this guy?
Also, if you said yourself that getting an M&S is 66% chance while making a new group, doesnt the same percentage go for adding a new member after your group kicks someone? Isnt the whole thing (of kicking a slacker) basically then just a pure waste of time for anyone other than a blogger looking to create writing-worth material?
I sense some bias in your posts towards DPS in favor of tanks/healers... but do not forget that tank and healer can also be, and a lot of times are, inept in their roles...
And they can be even bigger assholes in their noobiness since their wait times, and this goes especially for tanks, are almost non-existent, so DPS has to put up with them?
Not to say anything about the multitude of ways a noob tank affects the group play... a DPS slacking cannot compare to that in the amounts of annoyance.
@Wickedgirl: you don't NEED badges to perform well. You might WANT to perform 3-5% better, but you don't need it. The badges will come doing ICC raid. If you get 4 pieces of T10 two weeks later, the world will not end.
Also, in average, by definition you get an average player. So if you kick an under-average guy, your group improves.
I think Jormundgard is right about the system (supposedly) taking into account your inventory as well (though not sure about bank) but even then, I like the idea of showing up in BiS blues and "being carried" but still pulling your weight and pulverizing the scrubs doing 1500.
I guess those are the ones being carried into epics, and stats don't lie: if you suck, you still suck when you have epics.
It's not 3-5% more. It's 20-30% more by switching to t10.
Are you sure the LFD checks your gear on at the moment you queue? Cause there are a lot of opinions that it goes for items that are in bags and bank also.
first, i queue as an ilvl251/264 disc priest, and i've only seen someone pull 3 digits once, ever. plenty of 1500-1800, but really 1200 is the lowest it ever gets. and i run one every day, for EoF and giggles.
that said, i don't think measuring the value of inexperienced players using recount isn't very fair.
the problem is that heroic monsters don't live long enough anymore. 1 guy who knows where his buttons are and is wearing most of t9 will decimate someone on the meters who is wearing the same gear but is 4-5 seconds slower getting to each trash pack and who isn't as familiar with the rotations to use on short-lived mobs. keyboard turners and the like simply don't stand a chance on heroic dps meters; they end up channeling blizzard for 2 ticks before the mobs are all dead and they have to drink while everyone else moves on. if you yourself weren't so aggressive then they would ultimately end up contributing more. which isn't to say being agressive is bad (its certainly faster), its just an observation. in a place like CoS where there is a fair deal of walking you can see that the trash meters are dominated by the people who are running inches behind (or ahead of) the tank.
patchwerk style bosses are a different story but the same applies to a lesser extent. most people with the dagger by their name don't see things as a competition for pieces of the boss's life bar (even though thats effectively what it is).
I don't see any other solution with 3 digit morons than to ignore them to not see them again... but sadly, the ignore list has a finite capacity.
Perhaps initiatives like elitistgroup will lead to some kind of cross server ratings (essentially a cross server pug antisocial guild). I wish there was an actual performance rating implemented in wow, but likely never, bad for business.
@Gevlon
No, your group does not improve. Your group average improves, but unless the player you kicked was actively trying to mess the rest of you guys up, your group will be weaker, maybe by only 1k dps, but still weaker.
"Well, here is the solution: pay."
What on earth are you talking about. I have always recommended the opposite. The easiest way to get a gear upgrade is through heroics and using the Dungeon Finder. Since 3.3 everyone is so OP they are generally happy to help you. Or at least just ignore you, since it is easier to just complete the dungeon than kick up a fuss.
Only idiots like you seem to think that because you have skill and high dps whatever gear you wear, everyone else should be perfoming to your level. You really take the definition of Elitist Jerk to another level.
Since 3.3 is the last content patch before Cataclism, you should be aware that heroics are NOT for skill and excellence anymore, they are for gearing up for ToGC or ICC.
/ignore gevlon
I have a pretty low tolerance for social bullshit, so my ignore is used rather frequently or I just TAB the chat window into the background. Obviously that would block out most of your hi-jinx lately Gevlon, as you are starting to fit into the 'Damage meter - lol' category.
Ultimately, you may find you end up with a greater chance of getting grouped with retards, as for every one of your 'crusades' you would expect to get ignored by the retard, plus the 2 or 3 decent players who you alienate. Not only do the good players have to agree with you in principal, but also have to approve of you taking a stand on their time.
Maybe there's another blogger somewhere running stats on his chances of getting grouped with an 'Ultimatum issuing, damage meter linking drama queen'.
You used to write posts about time versus profits, letting us all know what was possible with a few minutes of well directed play. Now, you demonstrate exactly what you used to call ape sub routines. "The group was succesful, the boss died but someone with less performamce got an equal share of the profits, I am going to invest more time and energy into fighting this grievous social injustice."
You state to the random group "there's no excuse for low DPS.." Do you really think that anyone would feel they owe some random pixels an excuse for their performamce in a largely anonymous MMORPG?
When you used your monthly subscription to play the Auction House mini game, the result was more gold for you at the expense of these slackers. Not that you spent it, but there was a bigger number displayed when you logged on so there was kind of a point. Now that you are playing 'LFD Monitor' at no direct benefit to yourself, where's the payoff?
Realistically, where do you see this going? Will the virtual world become a better place where virtual warriors earn their just reward and the virtual slackers are banished to less succesful virtual struggles?
@anonymous who thinks he's smart about mathematicians- If you prove that, given N, N+1 holds true, and it is true for some N, then it is true universally. Us mathematicians use that all the time. Its called induction, and its completely logically sound.
@the article-
I have noticed this to be true gevlon. If you start researching gear scores on average of players in a group, you will usually find something like 4800, 5000, 4700, 4900, 3600. I've noticed it a ton.
I recently has a rogue hit 80. When she first started running heroics, as a dps, I was getting groups so fast (<5 mins, often around 1 min), and I realized it was because I was the retard that got picked. As gear went up, I began to see that I was no longer the retard, and queue times went back down to 15-20 mins.
So, lesson: If you are going to be grinding tons of badges (you have my pity) but don't buy anything with them, but just horde them. Then you will continue being the retard.
Also, getting the addon that makes fake achievements, and linking [Level 80] showing a date of 1 day previous is a great way to make sure you will never get kicked, regardless of how bad you are.
Not sure what classes those people where in the fights you posted. 3 digit numbers is M&S, but don't expect every class to pull 3k in blues. Arcane mages are perfect for fights which last less than 30 sec where they can empty their mana in exchange for ridiculous dps numbers. You won't keep this DPS for a longer fight...
Looks like the system does take gear in bags and bank into account.
I took my blue geared DK alt and stripped down to shorts, it would still que me for everything it would previously.
Then I took the bag with all my gear in it, put in the bank and checked again, same result.
On the plus side you can start blue geared like my DK alt did. If you simply never buy anything with your emblems until you can get it all at once you do get to run as the undergeared new guy.
I would guess its actually based on the best gear you have had equipped per slot - similar to how it checks the [epic] achievement.
While doing my own testing i found i could stay above bottom dps while naked ...
if you're going to queue for LFD in bues then make sure you put your "real" gear in the bank.
the LFD tool checks your bags.
@ fauxgt4
Yes you are right about induction. I wrote it wrong. It was about that when engineer finds out that something works for 1 and for 2 (or pick 2 following numbers not a variable) he assumes that it works for any number.
Writing it by using x in place for a constant was wrong.
Hi
I have just levelled a warlock to level 80 and want to run him in dungeons but would not wish to be the lowest on the DPS meter, can you advise the rotation of your spells to help me
Just to put it in perspective, I recently leveled my mage/warlock from ~65-80 together (I usually level 2 at a time, despite only one account, to get full use out of rested exp). I have two other 80s.
Both my mage and my lock are dressed similarly (no epics, no significantly enchanted-gemmed blues) and I feel equally skilled on both. My (arcane/frost) mage literally kicks the snot out of my (destro/demo) lock. Around twice the single target dps. Actually, to be honest, he does nearly the dps of my DK's offspec dps (full epics, some welfare, some emblem). Arcane mages in blues are absolutely unbelievable in 5 man runs.
@fauxgt4,
an addon that makes false achivements? I don't know what to think.
>>You state to the random group "there's no excuse for low DPS.." Do you really think that anyone would feel they owe some random pixels an excuse for their performamce in a largely anonymous MMORPG?
Didn't he JUST point this out this week? He flat out GAVE US The optimal solution, then pointed out what was more interesting than the optimal - something to do about it, and the results he got. He is not CREATING falsified information. Gevlon is simply trying to explain what has actually happened, then using that information to predict the future, and ideally modify it to his own benefit (and even more ideally at the cost of the M&S time and money).
Instead of theorizing, why don't you do the same work as Gevlon and then compare results? Oh, that's right, because you know you'll prove yourself wrong.
Just have to applaud Djenerativ for a spot on comment. Everything I wanted to say in regards to this post and others in the category of "look how much fail I can find in LFD while I win wearing my blues!" series.
@Djenerative: I'm lost here. I suggested to create a situation where either the run is speeded up by the kick, or increase your personal badge/played ratio by being AFK.
I'm not really sure how would it be social.
@Kristine AsK: I'm honestly surprised by your "anonymous" quality comment. I've never claimed that my performance is great. However some kind of standard must be created to compare results to. That's why I compare these bad players to a blue geared character. And yes, everyone who damage below a full-blue geared character is a complete failure in this game (unless equally geared himself). However it's not itself important. What's important is how to get rid of them or at least how to minimize their leeching.
Maybe you should stop worrying about recount so much and how others perform. Honestly, who gives a !%*&
Takes 15mins or less to do a heroic and 5mans is no measure if your looking at raw dps.
So what if I can do 5-6k on trash and slap a boss for 12k+ as arcane, most mobs die before a 2nd or 3rd cast is got off anyway.
I only do the daily for frosties now, and I dont give a stuff what the rest of the group are doing. Think in all the heroics I've done, only had 1 or 2 groups that were not that great, but so what?
I bet you spend more time telling the rest of your groups how bad they are, than the dungeon actually takes to do!
@anon
This is very true, I notice on single target trash that it dies so quick you can’t get a full rotation in there, or a kill shot because its down so quick.
@ Gev.
What would you have done in the old days when there wasn’t a recount? IMO recount is a tool best used for improving yourself, not other people.
also, you keep saying DPS, but then you post damage done meters... DPS doesn’t mean anything in recount, it doesn't calculate the average for each fight, it goes by what you are at when the fight ends or you die. DPS is a number that can be manipulated very easy on recount.
Gevlon said:
However it's not itself important. What's important is how to get rid of them or at least how to minimize their leeching.
This game is largely dominated by what you refer to as "socials" and casuals.
Blizzard seem to acknowledge this, and is taking the game further in this casual direction.
So minimizing this so called leeching, is a waste of time, since socials and casuals will always greatly outnumber the hard core's and elitists.
You can try, but I would recommend a more subtle way than throwing a DPS meter tantrum and demanding justice. Most people are actually very nice, and don't care if a DPS is below average.
I am certain that LFD does not check what you're wearing when you queue. I've queued up in my grey set (ilvl 90) and green set (ilvl 175) before, and the groups I get don't get any better.
I remember when I used to pvp.... it was pre BC and some in BC. After the folks afk/botting got so bad pvp became not fun. It was bad enough dealing with the herd of cats of AV but to have 20% just botting was terrible and not fun.
wow. A lot of work to try and fix a broken system. doesn't seem to match the goblin ethic you preach.
Are you sure your raiding hasn't sucked you into the LEET Ape subroutines that raiders tend to fall into?
@Sam: sure. I haven't initiated the kick of anyone below 1500 DPS. Also I did not commented on anyone's gear.
A l33t would demand top gear (if you don't have T10, you are a slacker), and top DPS.
Demanding adequacy is not elitism. If I say "you must not be illiterate to read this blog", I'm not an elitist.
An elitist would exclude everyone except an 5-10% elite. I just want to exclude the bottom 30-50%.
@Gevlon
Since I have just written a post about saying sorry, when sorry is due: I'll start with apologizing for not writing a constructive comment.
Our starting point have always been radically different. You are trying to understand why people play this game without caring to be good players. I'm wondering why we care so much about performing well in a game. Your approach have many presumptions and will likely lead to a reductionist answer.
I find your latest search for answers rather poor. If your claim is to find out how to speed up runs, then you should explore more then one avenue. So far, all you have done is post meters and say "hey, look at me. I can do it. You do it too!". You have not explored anything, you have recorded some reactions to how you like to play.
What you have found so far is that breaking social norms (repeatedly posting dmg meters and commenting how well you perform in them, and how others are not i) have not gained you massive amounts of support. Which is a find, just not a new or intersting one.
You claim you are researching the LFD tool to give advice to your goblin following, but you are failing the Science101 by seeking evidence for the answer you have already provided.
You presume before you started that getting rid of "leechers" would be the best strategy, instead of investigating if it actually is worth the time/effort for the groups overall goal.
In such Djenerative was spot on about what you are now doing:
"You used to write posts about time versus profits, letting us all know what was possible with a few minutes of well directed play. Now, you demonstrate exactly what you used to call ape sub routines. "The group was succesful, the boss died but someone with less performamce got an equal share of the profits, I am going to invest more time and energy into fighting this grievous social injustice.""
If you keep ignoring the social and moral values you embed into the game, and pretend that you are detached and 100% rational about what you do in game, then you are not going to find any meaningful answers. Cause you would be making it up.
@Kristine Ask: improving the group by removing a below average member and replace it with a random member (who is "average" if random is truly random) is obvious.
Granted, one may claim that trying to improve this member can work or work better. If you want to claim this, bring your own research, especially since it's counter-intuitive (if he wanted to learn, he had learn previously).
So simply by providing a working tip how to kick (or by tricking LFD prevent to come) a useless member I've improved the group, therefore my own emblem/hour.
By telling that you can go AFK if they don't kick him, I've also increased the emblems/played.
Your comment did not bring any evidence that my suggestions does not work, nor you brought evidence that other solutions work better.
Kind of weird, but last night during a PoS run, I found out that technically, my Resto Druid was the one to be 'boosted' I had the lowest gearscore with 4630 while the Tank had 5500+ and the dps were all 5100+... Can't complain though. Half hour later, I had a 4727 Gearscore, so it works for me :D Not to mention that was the smoothest PoS run I've ever been in...
My rules to PUG by:
1) I will NEVER PUG tanks or healers in H-HOR. It never works. Don't do it.
2) Always find one other person that you trust to run with. It cuts the suck factor tremendously. My gear average is around 251 (warlock). I always run the random with my wife (average around 245 (s-priest). We NEVER have group problems, possibly because our gear is good enough that the matching system matches us with reasonably-geared tanks and healers. At some point your DPS is so high that it doesn't matter much if your healer sucks...
3) Recount DPS for DoT classes is worthless at high gear levels, particularly on trash. The mobs die so fast that DoT's can't tick. My wife is a 5-6k DPS raider in 10 man. She busts her butt to pull 2.5k in heroics with our normal group because her DoTs can't tick.
4) Kicking someone is a waste of time unless you can't do the content. Just keep moving.
Gevlon said:
"improving the group by removing a below average member and replace it with a random member (who is "average" if random is truly random) is obvious."
It is not at all obvious. What does "improving the group" mean? Is having a "good" group the goal or getting the emblems?
If your stated goal is still maximizing emblems:played ratio then you must account for the time spent on drama. As you are well aware, there is opportunity cost associated with all action. Is it not possible that simply ignoring the subpar dps, and facerolling the instance is more profitable than wasting time whining?
It is one thing to call out the slackers and while moving to the next pack, but to hold up the whole group while throwing a fit, is surely a waste of time.
For the win: queue in vendor whites or naked!
I'm pretty confident that it doesn't look at my whole inventory or bank because I've got 3 really good sets of gear (disc/shadow/pvp) so my average ilvl is probably very high and I queue in vendor whites with great results!
My main spec is raid shadow. My offspec is pvp disc. I prefer to run heroics as disc because the queue is, of course, considerably shorter.
Healing H.HoR is impossible for me as pvp disc. Healing H.PoS is very difficult for me as pvp disc. So I never want those dungeons. Instead, because I only need to run dungeons for 2x frost emblems, any dungeon will suffice and the faster I'm done the better.
So I queue in vendor gear. I stopped by an armor merchant in orgrimmar and bought a pretty set of matching level five (??) gear and I queue in that. The results are FANTASTIC.
Over the last couple of weeks while I've been doing this (at least daily) I've seen:
- Mostly GD
- Often UP and DTK
- Sometimes Nexus, UK, HoL, CoS and VH
- and pretty much nothing else.
I can't think of a single time that I got a fail tank. I usually get two great dps, and sometimes a third one too.
I have only had a tank drop instance on me once. (As soon as I zone in I immediately switch to my ilvl232+ gear.) As an added bonus, because I have a nice group composition, I FREQUENTLY dps as disc (for around 1.2k dps overall) or heal part time in shadow spec (manage around 3k dps overall because I have to drop shadowform and heal every now and again).
Oh, I just wanted to mention too: when healing, I let shitty dps die. I don't ever heal crap dps on bosses. I dont care if they are new, ungeared or just crap. If they are under 1.5k they dont get any heals or dispels. They can pot and bandage (pshhh... as if they spent the time necessary for either of these.) I only rez them if I'm the only one able to rez. If the tank is a pally, he's gonna have to rez them b/c I'm not.
I think Gevlon enjoys feeling superior to the bad players, and makes it a point to insult them, and try and band togther 4 people to kick the bad player. This just seems mean, as it doesn't really benefit anyone. UNless the player is AFK, or pulling to cause wipes.
It's really not hard to enchant/gem/spec/stick to a rotation, yet some people don't get it. Either they don't know how, or they don't care. There is really no reason for Gevlon to be so rude to these people. I'd love to see Gevlon join an ICC raid, even with ICC gear and see where his DPS falls on fights that really matter, progression fights.
I'm guessing seeing as Gevlon had to pay to get into a progressive raiding guild, which didn't work out he now feels the need to "take it out" on scrubs who don't know how to play. You're not elitist, but you're still a jerk. You're a bully, and I'm done reading your blog if you are just going to give bad players a hard time.
Hello Gevlon, long time reader here..
The way I see it is that this is just a big Experiment . The linking recount and blue gear limits are just controls. Of course as an experiment progresses it goes through different stages, some which might appear contradictory when taken out of context. But that's all.
If I'm seeing it the right way, can you make it clear to these people.
Also, to the other readers: can't you see the purpose of the "mean" way that he treats others in this blog? It's obviously just part of the way he stimulates readers into reacting and thus continuing to make this blog a success. It's a writing technique.
Keep up the good work, Gevlon :)
"Well, a 232-245 warlock doing 40% less than me is bad enough"
TLDR: skill < gear
The Recount DPS for a fight is not enough information to determine if someone is a slacker.
A) question about your recount settings, Is merge pet damage with owner damage enabled? For a demo speced warlock that is easily 800 DPS
B) what abilities did he use or not use? Was meta used in each boss fight? Was he using a spellstone, firestone, or neither?
C) his DPS on the 1st 2 fights(1.5k range) was worse than the 3rd fight(2.7k range). The first fight has stone shatter, if he or his FG got hit with that then his DPS would drop a lot. The second fight has both stuns and movement(don't stand in ashtrays). He has 2 instant cast spells which are DOTs, unless one of those needs refreshing, no damage during movement. Conversely there are adds in the 3rd fight which could boost his numbers.
Now we can tell a lot by looking at his spec and to some degree his gear. http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Dragonblight&cn=Severen&gn=Subterfuge
A) Demo is the lowest DPS of the 3 lock trees. It is also one of the easiest to do adequate damage with.
B) His spec is not optimal for raiding, heroics, or soloing. No decimate, no master conjuror = bad demo lock
C) only 1 of his major glyphs is good for his spec
D) his choices for badge gear are poor. Look at the rings for example: http://www.wowhead.com/?compare=47732;47733
It's a given that the warlock was pretty terrible given his gear, but I feel your numbers might be inflated. Were you flasked? Did you use Speed Pots? Did you have a food buff? If so, I feel you have widen the gap between your performance and your so-called M&S.
Not everyone uses flasks, food or pots in 5-mans, nor should they feel obligated to use them.
@TheLumpyOne: he used no metamorphosis. Never. He used firestone, although I told him to use spellstone.
@Heiliger: I use very cheap lvl70 consumables. You can buy fish sticks and such for silvers.
Those are some very nice numbers for a blue geared mage but i find that arcane has the natural ability to inflate numbers, if you want a more fair comparison of DPS figures frost might be better to run with.
another point to make is that bosses in heroics go down rediculously fast and as such i have a tendancy to only cast Arcane Blast with all my cooldowns blown when we reach them, this usualy ends with me doing nearly 50% of overall damage to the boss and haveing to use invisability to drop aggro mid fight.
The boss is usualy dead before i run out of mana and i can evocate before the next trash pull so it spikes my numbers to a reiculous level making it unfair to classes that can't pull off similar spike damage.
Have you considered trying to pay the underperforming DPS to do better?
At the beginning of the run, announce something like "I'm in all-blue gear. If you can get better DPS than me on each boss fight, I'll pay you 50g when you do." Give the other players an incentive to do better.
Threatening to kick doesn't work because the "I farmed it so its free" M&S don't care about getting kicked -- they'll just get back in the queue and run another dungeon without a goblin like you. They don't care if they have to wait a bit. The only numbers they care about are the # of badges and the ilvl of gear, not DPS or queue times. They like how they play and don't have a reason to change. So give them a reason to do better, and maybe they will.
I don't think I ever seen a Warcraft blog posting that made me more upset.
Let me get this straight ... you don't need badges. So you don't need to run heroics for your character for upgrades. And yet you pop into heroics to try to find anyone pulling below 1500 dps just so you can kick them? Causing totally unwarranted drama and wasting people's time as they try to get badges so they can upgrade their character's gear.
And to top it off, you seem to be under the impression that a damage meter is a completely infallible tool. Damage meters like Recount are very situational and are influenced by the performance of the other members of your party and the mechanics of the instance. You can do 2000 dps standing still on a training dummy and then run an instance with one or two epic-equipped players and watch your dps fall through the floor since mobs can die so fast in an heroic. This is especially true for classes that depend upon dots to do a lot of their damage such as warlocks or survival hunters. The mobs die too fast for more than a couple of ticks of a dot to go off and let's not even talk about boss fights where the dps has to constantly move, further lowering the dps output of those classes that need to remain still to cast, shoot, or melee hit. A damage meter cannot tell you everything about the situation behind the numbers.
To top it all off, I've seen people post damage meters after boss fights and seen three completely different sets of numbers show up on my screen. They are not reliable ways to measure accurate snapshots of damage output.
But the thing that just blows me away about all of this is the fact that you think your goal of rooting out "M&S" or "bad players" is more important than the other players' ability to run and complete an instance in a timely and enjoyable manner. In any of the examples that you site, did the player cause a wipe, pull unnecessary mobs, say offensive things in party chat, or cause the group to spend 2 hours in the instance rather than the usual 20 minutes? No, of course not. All they did was break the rules of your unannounced personal experiment. If you were leading a raid you would have every right to want your dps to perform; but you have no moral or philosophical standing over other players to pull this kind of nonsense in a PuG, especially using a damage meter as your main point of evidence.
Get over yourself. The only one abusing the LFD in these situations is you.
I don't understand why you are promoting 'that it might be even better to not say anything just go AFK'. Surely this completely contradicts your entire post, as this effectively the same as doing 0 DPS? Furthermore, I don't see the point at all in finding ways to not play a game that you are paying for.
I don't know why you do these heroic runs if gear is not your concern now and if you are just deciding to boycott them half the time.
Having said that, I think that this idea of forcing yourself to be the poorly geared, inexperienced player is very good, should it work fully, and would allow us to run much more secure groups.
I think that LFD does not only check what you wear but what gear you have in inventory and bank in order to "classify" you as a noob. So it does not work wearing inferior items :)
With regard to: "Remember, every non-market system can be abused for your own profit. And it should be abused for the good of the mankind, as the rampart abuse will destroy the system, forcing the people to finally use the market solution. LFD can be abused by the blue trick and being AFK. How bad it can get? Can it force Blizzard to change LFD?"
How do you propose to change the LFD system to a market system, and why is that necessary? I have to say from personal experience, the LFD system works great. I just used it this week after about a year of not playing. I have run about 15 dungeons. Only one wipe, and that's because we were trying to do a quest wrong.
The system is not broken - the system works smoothly.
no gevlon I generally initiate the kick on anybody who starts drama. Almost always the better geared assholes who waste my time. And as I said the run nearly always goes perfectly after I dump em.
People who start bitching about gear start drama. Drama causes people to leave and wastes my time. As long as they don't cause repeated wipes it's usually more efficient to just finish the run and get my loot.
And trying to improve the general pool of puggers is a fools games. You might as well try to change human nature while your at it. Or in your words its the "Ape subroutine' causing someone to waste thier time fixing the social.
In fact I'd go as far to say I usually find it easier to fix bad players than deal wthose that barge in and start demanding that things be done the way they want them.
Those generally logical players cause so much drama they just aren't worth the benefit of thier gear or experience.
In raids or out of them.
Olga, I can say having done 0 research that there is no way your numbers are right. If the tier bonus alone is increasing it by 20-30% there is something wrong. Now if we are talking about you switching in 4 264 piece t10 for 4 232 piece.... nah I cant even give it to you there. 20-30% is insane.
If you pulled 6k in t9 you are claiming that the t10 bonus set bonuses is going to put you around 7800? no way.
@Lupius
If you had actually checked you could have proven this. Toss on some crap gear, go into the specific dungeon. Can you pick HoR? No, you can't.
For those arguing that it is not beneficial to kick, remember that to start gaining time you only need to make up the damage that the slacker would have done until his replacement arrives. If you are replacing a 500 dps with a 2000 dps, you will start gaining time after just 2 1/4 times the time it takes the replacement to arrive. The question then is how to speed up the process.
I think the real problem here is how you approach this Gevlon. The only reason you do heroics is to LOOK for trouble. Where trouble is looked for, trouble will be found.
When you tell people "Hey you suck, I'm in blues and do more dps than you" you will upset most people. Even the people that are good (for the most part) will think you're a jerk. I know that when I do randoms I have no trouble. On the occasion I get a bad player it is far easier to let them suck. Stopping and creating drama (again, for the most part) is usually counter productive.
Although, all this and what I've read of your posts point to this last point. And do not take this as an insult, Gevlon. It is simply something that I've noticed as I've been following your blog (and not a bad thing).
You really do not appear to give a f%&$ what anyone thinks about your posts. You are here creating posts for your blog, which you must enjoy. If people like what you do, great! If people think you are being a jerk or stupid then you don't care. I'm not passing judgment here, I'm just commenting on my observation.
This reminds me of your old post about paying to get someone to teach how to do high dps with their class.
I healed a group today doing 7000, 6500, 5500 dps. They were well-geared, but it's rare for me to break 3K on any of my semi-geared dps alts. I'd never do it in blues. Just wouldn't. I'm missing something.
Now I'm curious what it is. It's not just slacking. I get the gear and gem and enchant. It's not being a moron. I read EJ, I use the right rotations. I have been known to stand out of the bad stuff. It can't just be that I lack 17-year-old reflexes; I gather you aren't 17.
The warlock is easily incompetent. You can tell by several gems (spell pen in his chest, bracers should be a pure SP, trinket should be SP). Just realized, 10 MP5 enchant on his chest, the best example.
His gear is also mix and match, he was paying more attention to spirit (relatively healer) then he was getting better pieces making him gem for hit. Gear's awash in crit, and lacks in haste. Several MP5 pieces. He might be gearing up, but I'm betting that he's been picking up subpar upgrades and looking at a weaker itemization.
@anonymous Re: Lupius
I just queued naked into HHoR naked and gear in the bank on my druid.
I generally enjoy reading your blog about morons, slackers and retards, and the such. Even when straight up bashing them, I felt it wasn't ever over the top.
This abuse on the LFD, is more like abuse on your fellow players. Sure, having people below 1500 DPS will slow the progression of the raid, and I understand that replacing him with someone of 3000 DPS will increase the number of monsters killed per minute and get the dungeon done faster, but unless that person is doing zero damage, is away from the keyboard, or pulling mobs and wiping the group, there's no reason to kick him if the fights can be done without wiping.
These people are paying their 15$/month to play, and they have the right to do 1100 DPS in a heroic with one hand while eating breakfast. You have the right to do the same thing. So, kicking them isn't a proper answer. The LFD finder is a system where you WILLINGLY put yourself in a situation where the next 15-30 minutes of your game time is depending on 5 other random people. You sacrifice the right to have an ICC25 man quality group because it is a place for low-geared, low-skilled people to literally water-slide through the content.
You might see this as an experiment to gain currency, but you're tactics are for one of a place where chopping people's ankles off with undercuts is expected and known. In LFD, it makes you less of a goblin, and more of a dipshit.
I also cannot help but feel that the words you are writing are channeling some gratification in pointing out that you're better than these people and trying to make them look like idiots. Honestly, some of these people are new, (even if somewhat geared) to the game, or even young to the point where being elite just isn't a concept they understand. They're here to play the game. Of course you're going to see people swearing and insulting others after you point this out because they're offended by being ridiculed.
This whole experiment is honestly seeing how big of a baby you can be.
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