Greedy Goblin

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The tank trick again

Undergeared update: The EU team is still recruiting, you can transfer or create new alt. We have cleared 5man ICC instances in normal, HCs are planned this Saturday. Detailed recruitment here. In the US an independent group started the same project, you can find them for details of joining.

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Although this was mentioned before, I wrote a full post, because this trick is crucial in the goblinist philosophy.

The trick is simple:
  1. you find a druid, DK, warrior or paladin. Can be in any spec, any gear (as long as the LFD tool doesn't reject him for low gear).
  2. You group.
  3. You start the LFD. He queues in as tank.
  4. You get into the instance in a second. Literally.
  5. He leaves the group and the instance
  6. You are now on the top of the queue, you'll get the next tank who queues up alone. It will take 20-40 seconds, 1 minute top.
The only consequence is that the "tank" gets deserter debuff. However it last shorter than the DPS queue, so you are better off paying some dude to take this. It's pretty easy if the guy did not even want to go to a dungeon. A guildie who is about to log out, or doing dailies or about to go to BGs can do it nearly free for you.

Please note that the different queue lengths have a hidden consequence. Since tanks queue up instantly, they run more dungeons than DPS. The number of dungeons done/hour = 1/(dungeon length + queue length). If the dungeon length is equal to DPS queue length, that means that the DPS in this battlegroup run half as many dungeons than tanks. This means that tanks get their badges twice as fast. So the time is coming when the tanks are ready and no longer queue up, while the DPS still want badges. Behold 2-3 hours long DPS queue. So sooner or later the only way to get into a dungeon is the mentioned trick. The DPS queue is getting longer every day, you have no time to waste.

Now let's see why this trick is central to the goblinist philosophy? The theory is that "No governmental move can help the M&S against the market. The move will be surely and inevitably abused, creating even bigger injustice than it was before". The reason for that is simple: no system is without errors. Anything can be abused.

In market solutions the people are motivated to catch the abuser. For example in the "LFM whatever link achie and [epic]" could be abused by underachiever addon. But the raid leader could and often did inspected everyone he didn't know. He did it to protect his reserved loot (what he can't get if the raid goes down).

In communist solutions the direct participants are not motivated to stop the abuse. I mean the (real) tanks doesn't even notice anything from the tank trick, besides "how strange that when I arrive to the instance, everyone are already inside?". The healers are limited by tanks anyway. For them it's just minor annoyance that they are pulled in and have to wait inside 30 secs (without the trick they would be pulled in 30 secs later). The DPS who are inside are happy. The DPS outside can't do anything.

So: anything that is not market will be abused to the point of collapse. Soon the LFD will be useless as it will fill the dungeons with 4-men groups without tanks. If you are "moral", all you achieve is that you are in the worst situation (as the 4-men groups inside will get a tank before you, outside).


We could easily design a market system that would work. Too bad that it will never be implemented, as it's directly against Blizzard's bottom line.

At first let's see the problem: The LFD is completely blind, you have equal queue length if you are DPSing in Ensidia and if you are in unenchanted PvP gear on 0/0/71.

The common explanation for bad tank/DPS ratio is a lie. It says that "since everyone are gearing for 25 mans, the tank:DPS ratio is 2:18, and it's bad for 5-mans". At first, most people don't raid hard mode 25 mans. It's a 3-5% minority. Again: 3-5%! A bigger minority of players "raid casually", meaning farming normal mode ToC, killing 1-2 bosses in ICC normal. In their case raid composition is 3:7:15, almost perfect for 5-mans. Other minority do competitive PvP and PvP gear has enough resilience to be uncrittable and tons of stamina, so a serious PvP-er could easily be tank if he wanted badges (why would he, he has better gear at the arena vendor). The majority of players just "hang around": do some this and that, nothing worth mentioning. They want to gear up just for the sake of having "good gear".

Secondly, even the above would be true, it would be fixed quickly as lot of DPS players can have tank (or healer) offspec. Crafted or HC-dropped ilvl200 tank epics are good for any HCs, so a DPS warrior, paladin, druid or DK could get his tank gear easily, queue as tank for the badges he'll use for top DPS gear.

The only reason for the bad tank:DPS ratio is M&S. M&S can't be tank, or the group wipes. Can only be healer if the tank is overgeared and patient. But can be DPS without consequences. So the tank:DPS ratio is inevitably screwed, as long as the M&S is tolerated in the game. This means that some DPS will be left out. No dungeon finder can fix that. Dungeon finders can only choose which DPS gets in and which is left out.

An unequal market solution would work, because the other people would be motivated to make it work. If people would have large liberty to choose who they want to group with by setting filters for gear, achievement or simply by giving them a long-long ignore list to blacklist the M&S, and easy kicks (4 votes are enough, tank vote worth 3, healer vote worth 2) than the DPS queue would disappear. The tanks are motivated to find the best DPS as they make the run faster and less stressful. If some M&S would find a system loophole to sneak in, he'd be kicked and /ignored. It wouldn't make more tanks of course, but the M&S would be excluded from the DPS pool, so there would be less "active" DPS.

Since it is the market equilibrium, it will be done, one way or another. The current way is that informed DPS (who is aware of the tank trick) gets in, while uninformed keeps out. Of course the ethical DPS also stays out, but the "good guys always finish last" is no surprise to any goblin.

If anyone thinks Blizzard can stop that by punishing leaving tanks, think how would it affect "legitimate leavers" like "sorry m8s have to eat my dinner or my mum takes my internet". Blizzard can't separate abusers from honest leavers. Or if they ban leaving, he can just DC. I'd love to see what happens on the official forums if Blizzard starts to penalize DC.

52 comments:

Townes said...

I don't know how bad this problem will actually get. There is also supply and demand for emblems. If you aren't gearing for multiple specs (or even if you are, really), it doesn't take very many days to get in full T9 and whatever else you can buy with emblems of triumph. I've geared up two characters since the dungeon tool came out, and started with another two - no shortage of tanks.

Say you want to spend 200 emblems of triumph. This is about 40 runs using the dungeon tool if you assume 3 bosses plus 2 emblems for using the tool. Easily done in less than a week, so I assume most people have already done it.

Tal said...

Actually, now that I think about it, if you play a class that can tank, you can do the same trick even with someone who can't tank.

Queue as tank+DPS, while the other guy queues as DPS. Get in, he leaves, and you are prompted to confirm your role. Uncheck tank, and you're at the head of the queue but only as DPS.

Leeho said...

Rough calculation shows that if you raid ICC and clear both 10 and 25 except final bosses of quarters, also doing weekly raid and daily heroic, you still need like one more month or even more to get 4 pieces of t10 and 1 piece of badge gear. If you need more gear from frost badges, or do less raids, the situation is even worse.
I think that Blizzard made badge gear so expensive and badges drop nearly equal from raiding and farming just for that purpose - raiders will be simply forced to grind those dailies for really long time. (i so hate this farm of the content i outgear so much..)
And also there're a lot of ppl that doesn't raid a lot, but still doesn't like to wear blues, so they will farm heroics even longer. Yes, you can gear up from triumph pretty fast, but why stop there when you can grind your shiny t10?
That's why i think this shortage will not ruin the tool for dps any soon.

Anonymous said...

So you'd like to see the LFD tool abused to the point of collapse? You seem to be saying that would be a good thing here.

(I don't think this would have that effect though. Even if everyone uses this trick, all it means is that groups spend longer waiting inside instances than outside, and people who queue alone will still get in eventually.)

Ry said...

@Townes: Yes, there is supply and demand for emblems. However, the problem here is that the demand for emblems from DPS far outstrips the demand for emblems from Tanks, simply because the amount of DPS also far outstrips the amount of Tanks.

Some of my guildies solo-queue as DPS. In some cases, it takes several hours (!!!) to get into a dungeon. Maybe because everyone's wising up to this trick?

Me? I play a Pally and a Warrior. My Pally is a proud Maintankadin, and my Warrior's collected enough tank gear from Heroics to tank instances just fine. Sure, he's got a couple blues, but you don't need to be tricked out in epics just to do random dailies.

Of course, if I knew how to mess with the market the way some of the readers (and, of course, the blogger himself) do, I wouldn't have to bother doing those random dailies on my alt to buy Primordial Saronite...

Eaten by a Grue said...

It seems to me that promoting the trick is very ungoblinish.

If everyone does this trick, then everyone "gets ahead in the queue", which means that really, no one is ahead, and there is no benefit.

Gotta keep this trick semi-secret if you want to reap its benefit.

Anonymous said...

The other day I had a DK who had queued as a tank, but instantly announced that he had neither tank spec nor gear. He asked if we were prepared to take him (he would be playing the role of tank).

We could have easily kicked him, as it would have put us on top of the queue for the next tank, but somehow the DPS are so much programmed that they are at the mercy of the tank, that they did not even realize this. I as a healer didn't mind the challenge to keep him up. Although we kicked him halfway eventually when he went DC for more than 2 minutes.

On topic:
I think today you are totally right, Gevlon. The shortage of tanks doesn't need to be there if more players were prepared to use their off-spec for a tank role. They don't, because they cannot or do not dare. I laugh at these dps warriors that rather accept a 20+ minute dungeon queue than that they bother to spec for tanking.

Anonymous said...

@Eaten by Grue:
If everyone does this trick, it makes matters even worse. You'd be waiting as long as you are now, but you would be waiting inside the instance instead of outside, where you could do dailies, professions or whatever you like.

We would essentially be going back to the pre-LFD-tool-era, where you'd be invited to an incomplete party, that excludes you from going your own way and where you'd be asked every 5 minutes "does anyone of you know a tank?".

If this trick proliferates it will either make lots of people stop doing dungeons, or Blizzard would have to close the loophole. Maybe the penalty for dropping out of a group that hasn't really started should be like 50% damage to all your gear (make that also unequipped gear to prevent naked tanks) and a 20 minutes ressurrection sickness?

Ry said...

@Anon:

"I laugh at these dps warriors that rather accept a 20+ minute dungeon queue than that they bother to spec for tanking."

Absolutely right. I made the decision to begin tanking on my Warrior after sitting through a couple of queues. Unless you can honestly say that you can make full, productive use of your time spent queueing - something which I find highly unlikely, to put it mildly - you will eventually break even, and then begin to profit, on learning how to tank. It took me about half an hour or so of reading EJ, and that was for a Warrior. I've taught friends to tank (just holding aggro) as Pallies in literally five minutes.

Gevlon said...

@Eaten by a Grue: why would I keep it secret. I don't do any instances (my blue gear is full)

@Anonymous: text modified to answer your question

Anonymous said...

I think in the end that this will discriminate against new players to a server, whether good or bad. On my rogue main I don't use the LFG system to run for emblems. I have enough contacts with very good players from my years over the server to be able to organise my groups from scratch. We sometimes use the LFG system to find an extra DPS that we might be lacking.

Be aware that the majority of those contacts I originally made running instances on my own server. You ran with a good player, you made him your friend, you asked him to run again, and you developed a good relationship. For new players to a server that option is effectively gone. Leveling my mage a different server for the Undergeared project, I have run nearly every instance multiple times up to Scarlet Monastary. I have made exactly one contact from these runs. You are at a supreme disadvantage at end game with this new system.

After a while, if this goes the way Gevlon thinks it will, pretty much the only effective method of finding a group will be spamming trade chat in dalaran or whispering a tank that you see to help you out.

Anonymous said...

"I laugh at these dps warriors that rather accept a 20+ minute dungeon queue than that they bother to spec for tanking."

If I'm not in the mood to tank and have time to kill, then 20 mins spent reading or playing bejewelled is nothing.

Sten Düring said...

There's another reason for the tank-shortage.

DPS-abuse.

I made a second tank on a "LFM GS and achi " -idiocy realm.

When I ran my first heroic I had already crafted all five pieces of tanking-plate plus the shield, and the AT-emblem weapon, and I was decently decked out in levelling, reputation and crafted blues as well. Add BiS enchants and epic gems in every slot.

That left me at some 25 - 26k health and safely above crit-min, even for raid-content.

During the first day of chainrunning heroics I didn't enter a single instance without DPS crying bloody murder about the noob tank.
Now, how those brilliant and experienced players in ilevel 213 - 232 gear managed to pump out an awesome 1400 - 1800 dps is beyond me, but then again I was the noob tank.

By day two I had reached the minimum acceptable health for tanking a heroic, ie 32k unbuffed, which coincidentally was what people wanted for ToC 10 normal back in the days.
By day two, being a tank as I am, I also rather obviously started averaging spot number two in dps and most damage done.

I have zero sympathy with moron dps in a mix of blue gear and ilevel 245 epics, all horribly enchanted and gemmed, if enchanted or gemmed at all, doing a masterful job of barely crawling above 1k dps. Especially as these idiots all too often abuse a new tank actually trying to do a needed job.

I queue for five seconds and collect my Frost Emblems. I also run the occasional hc with good dps on my server to make them collect their two Frost Emblems. Because I'm a kind and generous person? No way in hell! Because I'm maintaining a network of non-retard dps to pug raids with in order to spend less time wiping and more time collecting better tanking-gear.

A decent tank knows his or her own value.
A good tank knows the value of a good dps.
Be a good dps.
Don't rely on stupid 'tank tricks'.
Piggy-back on a decent or good tank for your heroics. It's a win-win deal.

Rambus said...

Too bad most of these DPS don't spend the 20 minutes reading up on what is happening in instances they will be entering. Even in UK, after I turn the final boss, I get melee DPS (usually rogues) standing in front of the boss, even after I warn them to stay at the back. They have to go out of their way to get in front of the boss, so I guess they are just knuckleheads.

Anonymous said...

I don't think gevlon WANTS the tank trick abused. I think that he's trying to tell us that it WILL be abused, no matter what people do. Hopefully blizzard will realize this before everyone is doing this and take the appropate action.

The free market is the only system that will ensure everyone is honest. Every other system will have loopholes and be abused. Its just human nature.

Quicksilver said...

I seriously dont understand where all these fail-pug and dps-abuse stories come from.

On my battlegroup (EU-Blackout Alliance Side - a pretty fail one for alliance as I noticed from the 35-40% win ratio on bgs) I have ran random pugs with different characters, from good geared tank, healer and dps my newbie level 80 alts and I really have had absolutely no problem whatsoever.

Sure, there have been 1k dps slackers. Even the occasional bad healer/tank, but I cant seem to understand your pain. Ok, you get into a fail group, you quickly asses its power (by gearscore, inspect or watch them in action). If its a painful run, you leave. You are tank/healer and dps are bad-mouthing you, you ignore them, they kick you - you requeue. You get deserter debuff - you go do some battlegrounds or play another char all together.

I do agree that 2 months from now the queue for dps will be longer than today. But thats nothing different from other patches. If people get their gear they will stop running them

Unknown said...

@Gevlon: You are not really thinking in advance here. Eventually, you will be back in hte LFG system. If you plan on getting Cataclysm, you will be back in it.

Dread said...

You might as well just pay someone to tank it for you. I'd do it.

Anonymous said...

While not without its flaws, there is a simple interim solution.

If you join the random dungeon queue as a group, then you are effectively bound to those players. If a player in your group were to leave, then your whole (pre-existing) group is removed from the dungeon. This would not have to apply the whole way through the dungeon. It could be unlocked as early as downing the first boss.

It is still imperfect, as there has to be a level of queue jumping tip that makes it worth queueing with the DPS and playing to the trigger point (if one were to be implemented).

You will also get complaints from players who claim that they are being punished because their guild member or friend had to leave legitimately. I do not really have an answer for that scenario - but I can see how it can be countered by questioning the legitimacy of such needs to leave an activity that takes place in a fairly short time frame.

Just my initial thought on seeing this technique of queueing.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the tank does see notification when joining an instance that is in progress (even when no bosses have been killed). And its quite easy to just decline that queue, requeue, and get a fresh group within 30 seconds.

However, I'm almost inclined to think that a group smart enough to abuse this trick would likely be stronger than the random fresh group.

Steven Riniker said...

Or blizzard could just change it so that if someone drops from pre-made group within the first 0-15mins, the group doesn't go back to the top of the queue and is instead disbanded with each solo person or premade without a dropped player returning to whatever queue position they held prior (the top).

Anyone that joined from the premade the person dropped from is dropped completely from the queue system and must requeue from stracth.

Sort of like how it already is if you queue as a premade and someone doesn't click "ready" to zone into the instance, your group will be removed from the queue completely.

Kraazy said...

I agree, that's the beauty of rolling tank classes even if it's not your thing. Heroics are always only 5 seconds away from first pull. I think a lot of people with tank classes have tried to tank, but found out they suck, which means they probably suck at dps also (for their gear level). I could see Blizzard buffing tanks so hard that everyone can just faceroll a tank, thus making queue times faster. The game is only getting more easy to play.

baseball said...

Another issue, Gevlon, is that I see more and more tanks hiring themselves out as mercenaries (like you noted a few days ago). Bring an extra DPS or two not only infaltes the tanks' profit by 20-50g, it means that the 4 pack of system abusers don't get that specific tank.

So while this system will probably work, it'll still be faster and easier for DPS to hire a tnak outside of the instance and then queue.

Orcstar said...

With those "tank-queue" tricks it would be easily Identifiable that people are abusing this.

It's easy, quickly check which realm the tank is from and see if someone else is from the realm. If both the tank and 1 other are from that realm and the tank instantly leaves at the start, I would keep quiet and somewhere half through the dungeon do a votekick on the "abusing" player.

There would probably pop up addons to just identify this behaviour.

Gevlon said...

@Anyone with any "solution" against the abuse: it would surely hurt innocent (or claimed to be innocent) people. They would make noise and QQ. Of course Blizzard can proceed but they usually don't walk over QQ-ing casuals (QQ-ing HC is different, as he won't stop playing, so his QQ can be ignored)

@Baseball: indeed. One of the market solutions are buying yourself a real tank. However it FURTHER damages the LFD as your paid tank will be inaccessible for the LFD people.

zi said...

damn about the guild - i wish i could join, but i just decided to quit WoW /crai. Anyway the tank trick might be a bit problematic because some people have bad habit of doing the same thing someone else does aka leave :/

Anonymous said...

"Other minority do competitive PvP and PvP gear has enough resilience to be uncrittable and tons of stamina, so a serious PvP-er could easily be tank if he wanted badges "

This statement is incorrect. Resilience has no affect on PVE encounters, it has been changed to affect only damage from other PLAYERS.

Anonymous said...

I agree with what's said. There are 2 reasons I don't do it:
1 - I don't want to ask someone who can tank to do this and have them blow up at me how unethical it is (call me a social, but I don't like confrontations)
2 - That's the time I use to craft glyphs on main, or level professions on my alt. Or scan AH on another alt ... (I run with 3 toons - alt-oholic)

But for those who just have enough time to run one dungeon, I highly recommend the trick. The only ones penalized are DPS'rs who don't do the trick themselves. And they don't even know why they have a long wait, so they aren't even hurt by it.

dyslexic said...

Thoughts from a tank...

The majority of DPS players are M&S because tanking or healing requires an little more knowledge of the game mechanics that M&S can be bother to learn. You can't be a M&S and play a tank or a healer. You can try, but other players will see very quickly that you're crap and will not group with you. It's not that tanking and healing is hard, it's just dps is easier, and it's easier to hide the fact you're a M&S if you dps.

This wasn't always the case.

Players forget that in tBC dps players had a CC responsibility in groups. There was a time good hunters were judged on their ability to Ice trap square, kiting circle and dps Skull at the same time. Since the need to CC has been removed for all the instance (and nearly every raid encounter) DPS players are pushed farther into the M&S ranks. They can continue to hide behind big damage meters while failing at game mechanics. If you doubt this, check a fight where interrupts are a key element of the fight. If you check recount you will most likely see 1 player doing all the interrupts, even though nearly every class has an interrupt ability. Because CC is no longer a dps responsiblity, the general M&S quota of dps players has increased during this expansion. (this is not to say wow should return to hour long 5 mans where every pull had to be marked and CC'd. it is what it is now)

David said...

There are ways blizzard could at least increase the tank population.

1)Decrease the cost of Dual Specs. Most level 80's I see have Dual. Most under 80's I see do not. So most players get to level 80 on a DPS build of some sort with out having dipped into tanking (or healing for some) at all.

2)Provide some sort of buff to tanks in randoms that makes tanking a bit easier. Be it a threat increase or a dodge buff.

3) We have to wait for cataclysm to do anything about the idiotic Defense stat.

How is this Goblinish? Tanks seem to be in short supply. Blizzard, to keep customers happy, needs to increase that supply or lower the demand somehow. Lowering the demand is not ideal for Blizzard since demand = paying customers. A little bit of help to make tanking just a bit less demanding (especially gear wise) would inspire more classes that can tank to do so. This makes tanking classes (customers) happier and and increase in tanks makes non tank classes/cutomers happier as well. A Goblin win for all.

Unknown said...

The LFD would work much better if it was more open. Instead of server generating groups from a queue, allow everyone interested in an instance be placed in a large, cross-realm, AH style group clearing house.

Provide mechanism for rep (+/-), feedback, inspection, and large personal blacklist. Allow buying/selling of group spots. Participants place order in the "book" (not chat, but equivalent to "wtb random heroic with ilvl 219 tank, rep > +10, not on blacklist for 10g, OR WTS random heroidc, 20g, no rep < 0, etc). The computerized system is then just an order matching system. No queues, etc

Alexei said...

How about a rating system, where, at the end of a dungeon, or upon a player leaving prematurely, the rest of the group has a chance to give a positive or negative impression of the character. Then the dungeon finder would give priority to the players with higher rating than others.

The biggest fault with this, unfortunately, would probably be with new tanks. I recently entered a dungeon where all the players were already there and no trash had been cleared. I said, "so I'm guessing you guys kicked the last tank" and they replied "yeah, he only had 24k hp, but you'll be fine". I didn't reply and started clearing trash. After a few pulls I'd noticed that none of the DPS were doing more than 2k, then I proceeded to chew them out for kicking the tank when they were obviously incompetent themselves and dropped group. Had there been a rating system in place they would probably have all downrated this poor tank who, as far as I know, may have been completely competent, just undergeared. I'll find out first hand soon though, because I have a tankadin about to hit 80.

I'd have submitted this to mean people of the week, but I have a much much better submission I'm editing.

I do think that the tank pool will never completely dry up. My main toon is a tank in ToGC and ICC 25 gear and I'll still chain-run heroics to buy things like BoAs for my alts. Also, as a jewelcrafter, running chain heroics to buy epic gems isn't terrible gold-per-hour. It comes out to 300-500g per hour for me. Not spectacular, but it beats gathering professions. It's also a no-brainer way to make gold and I know there are plenty who do it.

/sorry for the wall of text

Dread said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...

""Other minority do competitive PvP and PvP gear has enough resilience to be uncrittable and tons of stamina, so a serious PvP-er could easily be tank if he wanted badges "

This statement is incorrect. Resilience has no affect on PVE encounters, it has been changed to affect only damage from other PLAYERS."

This is wrong. Resilience does not reduce PVE damage, but it will get you uncrittable. 5.4% reduction to critical strikes will allow you to tank without taking a crit in a heroic, 5.6% in a raid. You get no avoidance from it whatsoever, but it's not impossible and has both high health and high armor.

Anonymous said...

Given the growing use of this "cheat", I expect Blizzard to add a fix of some kind.

Perhaps doubling the leaving-the-group penalty and making it sustain so if you log off and log back on an hour later, your time penalty remains.
To counter this, anyone who goes in as a tank and completes it should get double emblems.

Guthammer said...

Gelvon,

I can see 2 streams of data that can be analyzed and produce relatively low numbers of false positives:

First off most queue jumpers will have the "bought" tank drop before the first boss, and probably even before the first pull.

The second is that the dropping tank and at least 1 of the DPS must be from the same server.

Combining the two, while generating some QQ, will produce a very small number of false positives. If you turn it into a weekly pattern matching check and look for multiple repetitions of queue jumping the false positive rate should fall to nearly 0.

Additionally, your thesis rests on the presumption that Blizzard isn't willing to take the heat to put in an effective but unpopular solution. I would be willing to be that you are wrong.

Guthammer said...

No!

The system breaks if you increase the badge reward for tanks.

The faster I can grind through my triumph needs the sooner I will queue for just one heroic a day.

There needs to be some reward--maybe gold--but not extra badges of triumph.

Anonymous said...

Your 5th paragraph has illustrated what I've been trying to point out for months. 'Goblinist Philosophy' is not a virtuous or ambitious one, but rather one that takes advantage of anyone simply because they can.

Goblins have become not the 'financially aware' or 'economically intelligent' that they once were, but rather those that have no problem with abusing and exploiting others and blizzard's procedures for their own profit. I believe that many wealthy businessmen follow this same philosophy, but more often than not they end up in jail because it is both unethical and illegal.

Sven said...

I'd like to see a general change to the LFG system. The first person to leave a full group of 5 before the last boss is down should get a triple penalty (i.e. 45 mins). All others would get the regular 15 minute debuff as now.

Now this won't entirely prevent the tank trick, but it will increase the cost of it and the hence reduce the prevalence. Secondly, it will make people think twice about quitting instances they don't like (e.g. Oculus) or rage-quitting because they think they're superior to others (whih is rarely the case incidentally - I've never seen a *good* tank leave a struggling group - they see it as their responsibility to guide it though to success. All the rage-quits I've seen have been from lousy tanks with big egos, fed by the ease with which they can get groups).

Unknown said...

IMO, the market will correct this trick soon anyway.

Tanks are getting tired of running random incompetent, rude, or poorly geared DPS.

The solution for the tanks is simple. Fill in those DPS slots with:
A) guildmates
B) if not all slots filled grab friends
C) if still have open slots find random people in lookingforgroup or trade channels. Charging fees is optional

Guildmates are preferred because you are get more frost emblems which helps them get better gear which leads to easier raiding.

Friends are second best. These will either be RL friends or people you have run with in the past that you know don't suck.

Random people from your server are better than cross-realm people. You can check their gear, enchants, etc. And if they are obnoxious or bad you can blacklist them. If they are good you can friend them. If they are real good you might even add them to your guild.

Filling in the healer slot is optional. Sometimes find bad healers but rarely find annoying healers. Unless the tank's gear is quest green/blues they can make it through most heroics with a bad healer.

Con: takes 1-2 minutes to form up rather than more than 3 clicks and a few seconds
Pros: Runs will tend to be faster, smoother, and more fun.


Sidebar 1: #1 rude/annoying thing:
DPS pulling extra groups for the tank. Especially fun if healer is oom or the tank is feared/stunned/silenced and can't taunt the new group.


Sidebar 2: Poorly geared DPS is referring to:
A) warriors with spirit gems, warlocks with agility rings, etc. I have actually seen these geniuses.
B) people who seem to have skipped every quest since Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord and managed to not get a single green drop either. If over 50% of your items are i134(not counting BoA gear, shirts,tabards) or less gear level, goto the AH and spend a few gold, do some dailies for rep gear, or do some quests.

Druids/Pallies/DKs/Shammys: you can get an adequate i150 totem/libram/sigil/idol in roughly 10-15m in grizzly hills. http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filter=sl=28;cr=118;crs=37836;crv=0

Anonymous said...

I don't think the tank shortage will eventuate. Tanks take half the time to get their badges, but all tanks have a second spec so need to collect twice the badges.

Also there are always alts and new people, the good players will realise they can gear more quickly as tank (if the alt can) so will provide tanks into the future.

Maaya said...

I've been seeing this since the first week of 3.3 already. Funny that what tipped me off was seeing the same "tank" leaving three dungeons in an afternoon like that, each time leaving behind at least one other from his same realm. I checked his armory and he was in DPS spec with DPS gear, and didn't even have dual spec.

I offer this solution:

1. Apply the dungeon cooldown to all characters on that account.

This has no impact whatsoever on "honest leavers". It makes dungeon-jumping viable only to people with multiple accounts.

AND IN ADDITION:

2. "Pre-mades" join and leave as a whole.

So if you make a group of 3 and join the queue, and once in the dungeon, one of you leave group, then the remaining two is also immediately kicked (with your cooldowns on you). The "honest queuers" get to stay at the top of the queue.

Ends said...

@David:
1)Decrease the cost of Dual Specs. Most level 80's I see have Dual. Most under 80's I see do not. So most players get to level 80 on a DPS build of some sort with out having dipped into tanking (or healing for some) at all.

The sort of M&S that don't have 1000 gold before 70, much less 80, won't cut it as tanks.
I know the personally their are two main reasons that my lowbies have not gotten dual-spec before 80:
1) The bug where trained spells aren't auto-updated on your action bars for your non-active spec.
Having to swap specs and re-drag every spell from your spellbook to your action bars each time you train sucks big time...especially when you consider you'll be training every level starting at 70.

2) Collecting gear for 2 specs is a pain in the ass. I think Blizzard's plan to remove Defense as a stat and have uncritability come from talents speaks to just how big of a problem this is while leveling.

Flex said...

The easy solution to the eventual problem is level a druid or pally, join as a tank, and spend your squillions of badges on the healing and dps gear you really want.

Anonymous said...

I highly doubt we will ever see it, but i DO like the idea of a ranking system once the run is complete (or falls apart).

And ratings that apply to a persons whole account.
A way to get the M&S readily put to the bottom of the list.

How to apply it to heals/tanks im not sure. Make ratings worth less if you tank/heal?

Elli @ Khaz'Goroth

Robviously said...

Penalizing the queue-jumping tank with a longer DF lockout while not penalizing the queue-jumping dps will not solve the problem: the tank will make less money, but he'll still make the money with virtually no effort, so he'll continue doing it.

Gevlon says that any solution will hurt the innocent. That doesn't mean that every solution is worse than the current system. The current system hurts innocent non-queue-jumpers.

One sure-fire solution is to prevent queuing as a group. That might not be a popular solution, as the innocent are those who just want to run randoms with friends.

Another solution is to change the rules for partially pre-formed groups, so that if one pre-formed group member leaves/disconnects, the remaining pre-formed members are forced out but have their DF lockouts removed. Blizzard can measure how often members of a pre-formed group leave/DC now (and can probably fairly accurately remove the queue-jumpers from their data), and estimate how many innocents would be penalized by this system.

Kring said...

The community already took care of that. :-)

There is the tank abuse which means that less and less tanks queue up alone. I know I don't. And the nice thing is, tanks don't have to. They always find a guild member who queues up with them.

Anonymous said...

My priest puts out 1.4k DPS in her DISCIPLINE SPEC AND HEALING GEAR in heroics, and any DPS who can't beat that is a waste of life.

DPS should thank their lucky stars that the random system automatically creates a 5-player party. Our tanks are putting out as much damage as three DPSers used to put out when we started heroics...so really, why bother to bring DPS at all? If we could queue up with just a tank and an off-healer, we would.

Unknown said...

Don't be a lazy person and only dps Gevlon... Roll a tank or a healer, you get instant queues, and you don't have to cut in line. How is your "queue with a tank and the tank bails" plan any different than cutting in line at the supermarket?

Your method looks good on paper, but all it does it make queue times longer for the people that don't do this.

Anonymous said...

@Christopher D: Why are you trying to talk to Gevlon in a social way? He doesn't run with randoms as he has access to a guild that was created to not have M & S.

Rolling a tank class does nothing for someone who wants to play one of the other six. This plan is more like having your friend with the VIP pass get you backstage and then leave, or perhaps saving you a place in line to some show. If anyone would like shorter queue times they should either work on those social skills and "make friends" with tanks or suck it up and hire one. Those that don't... well what about them?

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, while I understand the goblin analysis of a non-market solution doomed to failure, how does goblinism account for "good faith?"

I am not a lawyer but it is my understanding that in the real world, people enter into negotiations and agreements with the intention of actually living up to them.

To us socials, "good faith" is absent in the anonymity of the Internet (and MMOs). Thus, random LFG is doomed to abuse and failure in the goblin world-view.

Heretofore, I saw goblinism as taking advantage of information and maximizing resources for selfish gain. You were upfront about your intentions, whether selling vendor items or funding a raiding guild so as to see that content.

Teaming with a tank who has no intention of actually playing seems different.

Anonymous said...

Actually, there is a simple solution without a lot of collateral damage.

If a premade group queues in the LFD system and one of them leaves inside the dungeon, all other members of that premade group are removed as well. Only those players would stay inside the dungeon that were chosen by the LFD tool.

This would make it impossible to use a tank bait to put yourself on top of the queue to get a real tank.

Taemojitsu said...

>The only reason for the bad tank:DPS ratio is M&S. M&S can't be tank, or the group wipes.

Correction: 'M&S' can't tank, because they'll get kicked and a new tank recruited in 30 seconds due to low number of tanks. Any tank could do perfectly fine with a proper CC strategy and intelligent tactics by the other players, but this is slower than AoEing everything and gives lower badges/hour so no point in waiting. People who could tank choose not to, because they feel the required gearing or playstyle in WoW isn't fun.