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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Dungeon Finder and gear disparity
by Eliah Hecht 
Jan 2nd 2010 at 2:00PM
There is some confusion as to whether/how the Dungeon Finder matches characters according to internal gear score. To the best of my knowledge, it actually attempt to create a discrepancy between characters' gear, so that you're likely to wind up with a few heavily geared members 'carrying' lesser-geared members. This is directly contrary to a claim I've seen circulating that the system attempts to match internal gear scores.
If the system doesn't attempt to create disparate groups, it should, and if it does, I'm glad it does. It may be disheartening to see someone in your group in full blues or maybe even a couple greens, instead of the now-familiar suit o' purples, but as some commenters pointed out in my post on Dungeon Finder bingo, we all started out in blues and greens at 80 (with the possible exception of some crafted gear and BoEs), and heroics were designed to be run with that gear. Where are the epics supposed to come from, for a pre-raid character?
Furthermore, a less-geared character might actually need some of the gear that drops in the ilvl 200 heroics (i.e. everything except CC, FoS, PoS, and HoR), which is a nice change of pace from the usual shardfest. It may take you a few extra minutes to farm your emblems, but PuGs are about more than just you: they're about a group of people coming together to help each other out, and enjoy a dungeon.
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 11)
Jason Jan 2nd 2010 3:23PM
@omedon666
I agree 100% I've started playing my Lock again and this is what I have been doing. I won't Que for Random Heroics because I not 100% comfortable with all the Encounters. And I want my gear to be better. I'm almost ready to do Random Heroics and I've been runing ToC, FoS, HoR, PoS H Nex, HUK ,HAN, HDTK, like it's no bodies business!!
tim Jan 2nd 2010 2:21PM
If it intentionally creates a disparity, it's a minor one. I rarely if ever see a tank with less than 30k health unbuffed or a healer with less than 20k mana. In fact it's turning me into a gear snob since I catch myself thinking "uh-oh" when I see a tank with, say, 27k health. On the other hand, I've ran groups where the tank did second highest DPS... often... so there might be a larger disparity between DPS gear? Then again, that could be the result of something else entirely.
Adeany Jan 2nd 2010 5:41PM
Skill threshold is lower for DPS than healers or tanks, 'cause it is easier to carry a bad dps than a bad healer or a bad tank. The end result is that bad dps players have less of an incentive to work on actively improving how they play... and so they stay bad.
Cor Jan 2nd 2010 8:53PM
@Adeany
Amen brother!
When I feel like just running something with no pressure I uncheck the tank box and leave it on DPS.
From what I've seen the Dungeon Finder is bringing out the worst behavior in people. Also, when raid tools like Gear Score (needed for PUG raiding to know if someone has the gear needed for the raid) and Recount (who in our guild needs help doing better) start getting used in 5 man content we have lost perspective.
At this point I'm sooo tempted to drop a group when someone posts Recount in party chat. I don't because I don't want to screw the other 2 DPS but it is getting more and more tempting.
Feezee Jan 2nd 2010 2:24PM
Seen this in party chat more than once:
At the start of the run- "Oh great, your gear score is terrible, I guess I'm going to have to carry you, damm scrubs"
Then when a boss is killed- "Why are you needing on that, stupid noobs?"
The dungeon finder is great, some (a lot) of the people who use it are not.
audawak Jan 2nd 2010 5:52PM
@Feezee
If I saw stuff like that from someone at the beginning of a run I'd vote to kick. If the vote fails, I'd leave myself. It's not worth listening to. And this is on both my overgeared main and undergeared alts.
artifex Jan 2nd 2010 6:21PM
I'd agree with the vote unless it was a healer or tank. Our whole battlegroup is so short on those that sometimes we spend 20 minutes or more queued for a replacement when one drops.
I just ignore him or her, which is something else people need to get good at :) Just do the run and be glad it's not the old system, where if you ran with that person it was because he or she was on your server, and you might have to see him or her a lot.
Bazz Jan 2nd 2010 2:26PM
A good article but I can't fully agree with your statement that heroics were ment to be run in blues and greens. Back in the day when I was gearing my tank I had to run normals until my nose bled to get the best gear available from there and even after doing that it was hard to find a group as a tank for heroics. And while I do realise that a tank or healer are looked at a bit more carefully when it comes to gear then a dps class at times I believe and noticed that grouping people with higher item level gear together with people with lower item level gear usually tends to have the undergeared people not pulling their weight. And by that I dont mean doing less dps then the people that outgear the instance. Im perfectly fine with that. I have however noticed that 9/10 times the undergeared people also lack enchants / gems / gear from normal dungeons and general class or game knowledge that in the old days would get them kicked from the group or not even invited for heroics.
In the current system people like that tend to get carried trough the entire instance before the 15 min kick timer is even up, maybe if they were grouped with people with a symilar item level their imput would be needed more and they would be talked to properly about improving their class instead of just frowned upon and ignored untill the end of the dungeon as I usually see happening. This offcourse doesnt apply to the people that lack better gear but have taken the time to read about their class and properly gem and enchant their gear.
Fairlane Jan 2nd 2010 3:32PM
"I have however noticed that 9/10 times the undergeared people also lack enchants / gems ..."
This is key. Personally, I do not care if a player isn't dripping purple AS LONG AS they are gemmed, enchanted and itemized properly. Too frequently I've seen characters with itemizations that are all over the place: Defense, Spellpower and Spirit on a Ret Pally? Seriously?
Conversely, If I'm grouped with a Ret Pally whose gear is brimming with +20Str gems, I'm pretty certain that the person behind the toon knows what he's doing. Sadly, I'm equally certain that it will soon begin raining frogs, the seas will boil, and the moon will turn to blood.
TL;DR: Know more about your class than which buttons to push.
ecwfrk Jan 2nd 2010 4:26PM
I don't drop gems and enchants on stuff I'm going to replace as soon as I get enough enough Emblems.
Well, I have a JC mule and a bank full of trash gems so I'll toss some green gems in there. But I wouldn't expect everyone to bother if they upgrade a blue with an epic dropped in a Heroic to hold them over until they have the emblems to replace it with T9.
Now if they have T9 or emblem gear and none of it is gemmed or enchanted, that's different. But I certainly wouldn't expect people to drop a couple hundred gold or more to enchant and epic gem something they're just gonna vendor away once they earn enough emblems.
Bazz Jan 2nd 2010 4:57PM
I understand your reasoning ecwfrk but how do you expect people to not complain or help you clear instances when you havent put the same amount of effort into gemming and enchanting your gear as they did. More importantly the people who outgear the instance probably started off raiding early in the expantion in fully gemmed blues that you now deemed unworthy to be gemmed since you will replace them anyway. I dont see why it is not reasonable for them to expect people to put in the same amount of work and go trough the same steps they did to get to where they are.
Heilig Jan 2nd 2010 6:37PM
Because the situation is not the same now as it was then, that's why. Those same min/maxers are taking alts through the DF system right now and are not enchanting stop-gap gear that they will replace in a few hours of dungeons. When the best helmet available was my T7.5 that 12 other people were rolling on with me, I would enchant my tempered titansteel helm. I was going to keep it for weeks, possibly. Now, I hit 80 and i didn't even buy a tempered hat. Because I knew that in about 3 hours I would have my T9 hat. That, I enchanted.
The situation I described didn't exist when Wrath was fresh and heroics were more than badge farm. Don't expect people to take the same actions that they did then.
Marcosius Jan 2nd 2010 7:50PM
Fully agreeing with ecwfrk. Because, le gasp, there are still people that don't make 5000g a day, me being one of them, I don't really have that kind of money to gem and enchant all of my BLUE gear which I'm going to replace anyway later on. That is, of course I do snoop around for some of the 1-10g enchants and gems on the AH, but depending on your realm economy you might not even have much selection on those. At the moment my ele shaman has orange +expertise+hit gems (and +expert is obviously useless) on her kilt because there simply weren't any other gems that didn't cost obscene amounts of gold, considering it was just a HFC: Ramps item.
Fairlane Jan 2nd 2010 8:38PM
Please note that I didn't say everything must be enchanted and/or gemmed (or even at all), but it seems I wasn't clear. Sorry about that.
If you're going to wear gear, enchant gear, or gem gear, please know more about how this game (and your character's spec in particular, ideally) works than "bigger numbers must be better because they're bigger" or "stamina gives me HP, which means I can stay alive longer in this stupid cloth robe."
In sum: If you are pushing more than 3 stats, you're likely doing something wrong. You should probably look into that.
ecwfrk Jan 3rd 2010 2:16AM
"I understand your reasoning ecwfrk but how do you expect people to not complain or help you clear instances when you havent put the same amount of effort into gemming and enchanting your gear as they did."
By expecting them to understand they're running Heroics, not ICC 25.
Anything that happened before 3.3 is irrelevant. Anyone after 3.3 who invests tons of money min/maxing anything less then T9 is a fool. There's no point to spending 100s of gold just to appease some old "Back in my day we put Berzerking on Blues!" codger. Save that cash you'd spend on gems and enchants and put Epic Gems and the best possible enchants on your T9 when you get it.
Ilnara Jan 2nd 2010 2:26PM
Heard GC say it also counts the gear in your bags (and maybe bank).. so maybe your epically geared DPS DK decides to tank, and all you have is the crappy blue crafted Def set - It still sees that you have a epics someplace and groups you with like geared players.
ecwfrk Jan 2nd 2010 4:09PM
According to Blizz, this is how the matchmaking system works:
"Players will be grouped together based on several conditions, including:
* Level
* Class type and designated role
* Prior dungeon experience
The Dungeon Finder will use these conditions to create the most balanced and well-rounded group possible. Waiting for long periods of time for these conditions to be met is not always favorable, though. To help with this, the Dungeon Finder will expand its search more and more as time goes by. The longer you’ve been waiting, the more lenient the Dungeon Finder will be when searching for compatible group members."
Now the "including" could mean gear is included, but in my experience the LFD tool doesn't seem to care much about gear at all and, with heroics at least, seems to match people based on prior experience over everything else.
I have an 80 DPS that had never ran heroics at all pre-3.3 but had fairly good gear (around 4200GS when the patch dropped) from crafted items, raiding, BOEs from the AH and such.
When I'd check the achievements of the other DPS I was grouped with, most of whom were almost always poorly geared compared to me, they'd done very few Heroics as well. While tanks and healers, as they are far more rare, would vary wildly. Likely because the LFD tool stopped caring about trying to find someone with as little experience as we had and instead threw us in with whoever was available to reduce time in the queue.
And as I've done more and more Heroics with that char, the pattern seems to be holding as the DPS I get grouped with tends to have roughly the same experience with whichever dungeon we're in while the tanks and healers still vary quite a bit. If I'm dropped into OK and have done it 20 times before, the other DPS will usually have done it a similar number of times (within 2 or 3) while the tank and healer could have done it twice or 50 times. Which, quite naturally, means that the DPS I get grouped with tend to be better geared then they were when my char had very little dungeon experience while the Tank and Healer are still a crap shoot as they could either be ICC 25 geared with a 5500GS or a fresh 80 in Blues with a 2500GS.
Also, as I've been taking my trade mule alts (who also have never done Heroics before) through heroics to get Emblems of Frost I've noticed that their queue times are much lower. With my 2 main chars, both of which now have run well over 100 Heroics each, if the tool says it's a 15 minute wait, I usually wait 15 minutes. But with my mules (who always go as DPS since their gear is terrible), none of which has more than 20 Heroic runs total, if it says 15 minutes, I still end up in a group within 5 minutes. Perhaps because there's a lot more inexperienced people floating around the queue and it doesn't have to wait for the system to become more lenient before finding a match for them.
arcady0 Jan 2nd 2010 10:33PM
I wonder if that 'prior dungeon experience' is account wide or toon wide?
When my 3rd 80 tank dinged 80 after the 3.3 patch, I was in argent/wymrest gear, some tempered saronite stuff, and about 4 or 5 greens.
- 19k health and def capped.
I knew I was ready for heroics. And for the most part the tool agreed, and tossed me into them. But it did lock me out of ToC reg, even though I've healed that on a 78, and know it very well from my other two tanks. Enough to know that I was ready for it (and it unlocked for me shortly after - I think the third tank first tanked it at 23k health).
Previous Dungeon Experience seems a very vague qualifier.
I have also noticed that the tool loves to put me into H:HoR, and my toon still has plenty of blues. I personally feel she's undergeared for the place - but Blizzard seems to think I have what it takes. So maybe it is looking at account wide experience...
ecwfrk Jan 3rd 2010 2:28AM
"I wonder if that 'prior dungeon experience' is account wide or toon wide?"
Blizz never considers other chars on your account for such things. It's definitely linked only to the toon.
"But it did lock me out of ToC reg"
The lockout *is* based solely on gear.
Only the matchmaking system considers your experience.
[quote]I have also noticed that the tool loves to put me into H:HoR[/quote]
It goes to figure you'd get that a lot as soon a you are first attuned as it'd be the dungeon you match up in experience with other players the most often. No one had any experience there before 3.3 so the pool of players with little H HoR experience is significantly larger so the LFD tool will have an easier time finding matches for you for that Instance.
Malakite Jan 2nd 2010 2:31PM
It's all well and good that it mixes things up, that's fine. What's not fine, is some fresh 80 in mostly greens, a couple blues healing for the new 5 mans (heroic or not, that has happened to me, more than once and should not). I'm a pretty well geared tank with 42k+ buffed HP & we could barely clear trash. I don't know how they end up in there, but Blizzard has some kinks to work out.
That being said, it's rather refreshing & even a little fun ending up in the old school heroics (Nexus, UK, etc) with undergeared PuGs. Makes them a little more challenging & satisfying since there's excitement when that first purple drops for them. And someone NEEDING that blue drop? Wow... that's a rarity.