Queue as dps until your heal set doesnt suck as bad.

when my shaman healer alt was able to get into H HoR before I was comfortable healing it, I would just choose to queue for specific dungeons & avoid the chance of getting stuck with it.

Does no one see that something is broken here?

We shouldn't have to dps until our healing or tanking gear is up to par for the instance we are being placed into.

We shouldn't have to lose the random bonuses (by queueing directly) because the SYSTEM is putting us into an instance we aren't geared for.

So you expect the system to not only figure out your average iLevel* but see what specs you have and whether you have gear to support that spec? But even that isn't enough, to be truly comprehensive it would have to make sure you also have a non-retarded spec, maybe glyphs and enchants as well.

Do you not see the massive jump in difficulty between what we have now and what you want?

* The LFD tool doesn't decide whether you can do the dungeon, it is purely iLevel based. I out DPS people with 1k GS on me.

Don't queue for healing in a DPS set. Blizzard's system isn't that advanced. If you all 251 DPS gear and queue for healing, it is going to put you in as a healer. If you want to heal, put on your healing set before you queue. It's no worse than someone queuing as a tank in DPS gear. Yes, Blizzard could make their tool fancier, but I would rather they didn't. The simpler it is, the better and faster it works. In short, put on the gear for the role you wish to fill.

@Bionic Radd - I'm in resto spec, in resto gear. You have no idea how the system works, so don't talk.

It does weight off-set gear, but the hundred or so pieces of level 60 & 70 nostalgia armor in my bank still doesn't prevent me from getting into the dungeons... So, the ilevel calculation has at least some complexity built in. I still suggest not trying to go for random dungeons so often if there are dungeons you wouldn't want to do as a random (ie. get your frost badges for the day, and then do specific dungeons for the rest of the night).

Then don't queue as a healer!

Just needs a supplemental change to actually recognize what type of gear you have for each roll. Like only queue tanks who have somewhere in their possession vaguely appropriate +defense gear (druids excepted of course).

The problem is if you have both your higher lvl dps gear and your low level healing gear equiped or in your bags. Until you have better healing gear, I suggest you put your dps set in the bank when you que for a random as a healer. That way it doesnt see those item level things on you. Good luck!

It checks what gear you have in your bags, too, so if you really want to get into a higher-geared group then put all your i251 into the bank and wear your saronite pvp set while searching. Then if you have Jeeves or something similar you can retrieve your gear once inside.

"So you expect the system to not only figure out your average iLevel* but see what specs you have and whether you have gear to support that spec?"

Honestly, that doesn't exactly sound impossible. Blizzard knows what stats are useful to each spec. If you queue for a tank, for example, it could just figure out what pieces would make up your best "tank set" and score that. Just think of all the nifty stuff mod designers have done in their free time. I'm sure the people who actually make the game could whip up an internal system to determine the "spec" of pieces of gear fairly quickly.

I can kind of see where doucet here is coming from, even if he started getting a little agressive about it. Advice like, "Don't queue as a healer," isn't particularly useful. He knows he can DPS his way to a full healing set, but it sounds like he's looking to actually do some healing as he gears up, which I can understand. Unfortunately, he finds it neccesary to drop group sometimes after getting queued for something his resto gear isn't ready for. I could see that being a pain, and I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard does add in some better gear checking for Cataclysm.*

*Of course, I won't be surprised if they don't, either. :D

@(cutaia)

Except then you are getting into the realm of Blizzard deciding what is The Right gear and The Right spec. Which isn't what they want to do. Not to mention doing so would take several orders magnitude more computation than the current iLevel average system.

Right now they can just set an average iLevel to allow you to LFD an instance and then never worry about it again. If they changed it to what I am talking about they would have to constantly fiddle with it as they made changes to classes (eg right now some healers need spirit, others need Mp5, it wont be that way in cata). The point is that it would introduce more room for complications than it would solve.

The LFD does quick and dirty matching to save on computing power and queue time. All it says is "these guys have high enough gear that on average they should be successful".

@michael.doucet

As you've probably guessed many people either didn't read your post properly or aren't paying attention to what the LFD actually does when you choose a random dungeon.

People, the Dungeon Finder CAN select the healer choice by default and WILL give you NO OTHER OPTION by calculating your toon's stats when you randomly queue. As many people have noted, the only way out of it is to choose a specific dungeon and choose a specific role. I don't play a healer, but many of my guildies who play druids, shamans, etc. have talked about dealing with this while currently leveling alts, and it was often a topic of Trade drama, and the official forums just after the LFD debuted.

Sheesh!

Queue naked!

As a fresh 80 tank I got queued for hFOS, then after I did that, hPOS. I did HPOS 5 times already and I only have 4 pieces of triumph gear, all through randoms. I started getting hFOS before I had single tier piece, if I recall (I had the 245 bracers, 226 boots, and 219 neck, and a smattering of 200/187 stuff).

I hate that place. I hate that blizz throws you into something you are way undergeared for. My tank set had avg ilvl 200, and my dps was probably ilvl 150. Not only that, but most of the group was ilvl 200 or so, even the healer. So, yeah, idk what the heck is going on. But a ilvl200 group is in no way shape or form ready for hFOS.

I also hate that if you leave you are a 'deserter' even though the game stuck you in something 2 tiers above your head. Now, granted, we got through most of those runs, and it was fun and challenging, but come on blizz, fix it! Just calculate the avg ilvl of your gear and stick you in something appropriate. Its not perfect but its much better than whatever system they have now.

In defense of the downvoted guy, he's complaining about getting picked to heal one dungeon specifically - Halls of Reflection on Heroic, the hardest 5-man in the game at the moment. Sure, you might be able to fly through them with your mains in raiding gear, but they are far harder than heroic UK or OK or HoL. This guy's resto gear might be good enough or even great for all the pre-3.2 Wrath heroics while still not being good enough for the four newest 5-mans, particularly the last and hardest of them.

What this guy should do if he wants to use the LFD system is apologize and drop group if the system puts him in HHoR. Or maybe take one shot just to give the group a chance but drop group and apologize if they wipe. He has to wait 15 minutes to re-queue for a random, and they only have to wait for a better-geared healer to come along, and he still gets the stat bonus and ending award for using the LFD system when he does any other dungeon.

HOWEVER, it's unfortunate at the very least, and arguably bad design on Blizzard's part, to put one really hard dungeon in randomly with all the rest. They could have done lots of things to prevent it. (Allow people to exclude dungeons from the random selection? Not putting people in the post-3.3 dungeons if they don't have pieces of T9 for their chosen role? Have a separate random selection that excludes the post-3.3 dungeons? Don't put HHoR in the random dungeon finder at all? Who knows. All options have problems, but there are options.) But as far as we can tell they have done nothing to address this issue, and the announced change to the vote-kick system would make it worse. That's not to say it's not worth doing overall, but still.

All this is assuming that his healing gear is good enough for all other heroics except for HoR (let's say no greens, average ilvl 187+ at the very least). If it's not, then yeah, he is the problem and shouldn't be queueing to heal.

>People, the Dungeon Finder CAN select the healer choice by default and WILL give you NO OTHER OPTION by calculating your toon's stats when you randomly queue.

Except...you can turn off the Healer Role when queuing up for a group. Why is he so resistant to that?

Probably because Healers have faster queues than DPS.

It's that simple.

Yeah, I don't understand what is so hard about not checking the healer box. If all you check is dps, all you will get is dps.

Is it inconvenient for michael.doucet? A little. Is it inconvenient for the other 4 people to have to sit around and wait for another healer because he's decided to drop group, and there are no healers to be had for 10 minutes? Often very much so, at least in my BG.

What he is really saying is that his desire to play the way he wants trumps the fun of the other people he will be randomly queuing with. I don't have a lot of sympathy for his position. If you don't want to heal, don't queue as a healer.