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by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 3rd 2011 at 4:00PM
Sometimes the problem is you. (Sometimes, it's even me. I know you're shocked.)
If you've been playing WoW for a while, one fact is indisputable. You learned how to play your class or role by playing. It is in groups that we learn our toolkits, how to perform our role properly, and each dungeon or raid we run not only teaches us how to run that dungeon or raid but gives us the context we need to tackle new content down the road. We learn by doing, and moreover, we learn by interacting with our groups, be they guild runs or pickup groups. PUGs can be hard schools, but they're invaluable in jogging you out of your comfort zone and getting you to think about what you do and why.
If you think of your instance runs as where you go to farm a quick batch of justice or valor points, you're part of the problem.
You are there to learn and even to teach.
You are there to work together with four other people you may or may not even know. You are there to share knowledge, to help the group succeed, to learn skills you'll need later, and to help other people learn them. While some people will always have better reflexes than others, the general difficulty of even current heroics is not so great that a group cannot succeed even doing things with a brute force approach, trying to smash down every pull. What group coordination and information sharing can accomplish is to make it all much easier, take less mana on the part of your healer, and train everyone (including you, no matter who you are and what your role is) to do things more efficiently and with less downtime.
Part of the problem
Modern heroics are designed to effectively cause a good group to reeducate its members. When game design changes, it's the players, not the designers, who do the work of teaching each other what to do. If you're not willing to learn (no matter how awesome you think you are) and not willing to teach, then you're not helping the group succeed. That's what it all comes down to.
If you think you're too good to do either one of these things, then don't queue. You're not helping. It doesn't matter how well geared you are, how long you've been playing, or how awesome your numbers are, if you decide to be a drag on the group by not listening to what others share with you or not sharing what you yourself know. If you're going to get impatient, slag everyone off and leave the group in a huff, you just wasted everyone's time, including your own.
Right now, we're all learning. We're all teaching. If you can do either of these, you can get through a PUG. It's that simple.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
mj Jan 3rd 2011 6:58PM
The question may be, do they read at all?
Trilynne Jan 3rd 2011 5:27PM
There are certainly some weird attitudes out there in PuG land... tanked my first heroic today with 3 other guildies and a rogue found via RDF. After the rogue found out it was our first time, he asked if we were 'Fresh lvl 85'. 0.o It boggled my mind! Cata has been out for less than a month, I'd say we're ALL still fresh 85s. xP Nevertheless, he was not a jerk, and gave us a few tips that helped the run go pretty smoothly. Hooray for +1 non-d-bag random dps! :D
davidfalling Jan 3rd 2011 6:09PM
Great post. I don't understand why someone would pay to play this game and then not pay attention and work with the group they just willingly queued up for... It's quite counter-productive, but yet it happens all the time. As a DPS player, it can be quite frustrating when I've just waited in a queue for 35-45+ minutes only to get in a group with one or more players who don't want to learn OR teach. They just want to get quick JP and get angry/ rage-quit when the group wipes.
Bottom line: Work with the group you get! It's in everyone's best interest to work together and teach eachother the fights/ strats. It's more fun that way, and you'll wipe less.
Ash Jan 3rd 2011 6:24PM
Main reason is because they have learnt the content and expect everyone else has too, sadly this is not the case when the content is less than a few months old, as people are still experiencing for the first, second, third time, and people see the "good old days" of wrath, but fail to remember that we didn't know those encounters 18 months ago, and I had groups wipe on me even though they were much more brute force encounters than cata's regularly when new content appeared, a few months in, everyone had gear, new the strats and it became less of an issue, a lot of people haven't lost the elitest arsehole mindset that the end of wrath generated when none of the hcs were even a challenge.
Kevin Jan 3rd 2011 6:18PM
Exactly!
Ash Jan 3rd 2011 6:22PM
Good article, with the initial skill reshuffle, I went from an amazing healer, to an awful one, as I had a whole new toolbox and spells I relied on weren't doing what I expecting, and I had to relearn, I don't feel confident yet, still working on getting to 85, but I'll learn to make my class tick again, but really the 4.0.1 patch was a massive game changer, this combined that my healer being ICC geared at the end of wrath, and could face roll through hcs, earlier hcs (HOS etc) I was capable of ignoring the hits mobs laid on me if I dumped a lot of heals and it wasn't an issue if a tank lost aggro, as sometimes you still bumped into new tanks looking to get to raid gear. We're all used to out-gearing the content, and most of us no longer do, it's back to building up to raid gear, building up to later raid gear, and we will look back at all the hcs in a years time and see face-roll material, but I remember getting smacked around in wotlk hcs when I first hit 80, and cata's hcs seem a little bit more complex from everything I've seen.
QQinsider Jan 3rd 2011 8:29PM
Pointless article, the people who need to read it won't, and even if they did they'd take no notice of it.
What it comes down to is the golden rule of any multiplayer game - if you design the game in such a way that it allows people act like assholes, then a sizeable number of them will.
The problem is that behaving badly in LFD has no repercussions at all. The harder dungeons have just amplified the issue. Even when there was no effort required to faceroll a WotLK heroic it still wasn't uncommon to meet unpleasant people in LFD. It just wasn't such a big deal, you ignored them for the short duration of the run or you left and got another group in 10-15 minutes.
There needs to be some accountability introduced back into the system, like there was when pugs were realm only. If you behaved like an asshole back then people would get to hear about it, and you'd soon be on a lot of ignore lists and with no invites. Same for the asshat guilds that votekick perfectly good players just before the last boss to get one of their friends in. You did that in TBC and your guild would soon find it's reputation being splattered all over trade.
So how to do this? Apart from getting rid of cross-server LFD entirely I have no idea, but that's what I'm paying Blizzard every month for - to make a game that works properly and is fun to play. What I'm not paying for is a 45 minute queue followed by a 50:50 chance of total frustration caused by people who are completely free to carry on doing the same thing over and over again.
Billaos Jan 4th 2011 8:35PM
There should be a rating system for players. At the end of the run, you can rate your buddies with a negative, neutral or positive vote. Higher ratings would give priority on queue order, and maybe low enough ratings would keep you from using the LFD at all.
Also on the topic of queues, deserter debuffs should get cumulatively longer, to prevent "screw you, my queue is only 5 minutes anyway" drop happy tanks and healers.
Finally, a huge deserter debuff should be applied to assholes that drop group during combat, ESPECIALLY during boss fights.
BethioMoo Jan 4th 2011 9:57PM
I haven't looked at it yet, but I hear there's a rating system associated with the gearscore/playerscore addon.
Hiwa Jan 3rd 2011 9:24PM
I'm convinced, and a few others have mentioned the same thing, that the people who need to know this just don't read.
You'd be surprised how many pugs I've gone into where it's obvious that the players have no clue that this isn't Wrath anymore. How have they managed to go 1 1/2 years ignoring all the information on class changes (including their own), instance changes, and (for me the most frustrating), changes to healer mana pools?
Every single pug, without fail, has had at least half of its members stand there between pulls while I'm drinking and eating to get my mana and health back. When I tell them to eat they respond that they don't carry food. They don't carry bandages. They don't have health pots. The warlock either doesn't put up a soul well or the players don't use them. They stand there, half health, and expect me to jump up and heal them.
I actually had a tank tell me the other day, "I'm not healing myself between pulls, that's YOUR job." Tank, I don't even waste mana on myself between pulls. I carry food. I've actually started to use lifeblood on myself when things get too hairy. I'm even maxing my bandaging, so at least I can throw a bandage on people when my mana bar is empty and I'm praying for an OoC proc.
But the people who need to know this seem to have spent the last year in la-la-land. All they know or care about Cata is the cool mounts and cool new achieves and showing off their huge ugly proto-drakes in the middle of Orgrimmar.
It's no joke. I'm performing miracles, pulling mana out of nowhere, to keep the tank alive at least, only to have dps complain that I'm being stingy with their heals.
Sigh.
But you know what? I love healing. I will never play another role. I was born to be a druid healer, and I intend to be just as amazing at it with its new restrictions as I was before.
chrissedoff Jan 3rd 2011 11:10PM
i'm proud to be part of the problem if the solution is a kneejerk defense of every decision blizzard makes.
Moridin Jan 4th 2011 4:32AM
I only give a group 3 opportunities to make amends for mistakes before I start kicking them or leaving. I os tank for my guild raids but ms dps. I often find myself tanking by the end of a heroic because there are some stubborn douchebags out there. One tank I ran with was using warglaive to tank with and was bad bad bad. Then a healer was using pvp trinkets from 80 to heal with.
People know the average item level required for this crap but they insist on being assholes. I'm supposed to care for these tools?
LittleHamster Jan 4th 2011 6:56AM
[quote]If you think of your instance runs as where you go to farm a quick batch of justice or valor points, you're part of the problem.[/quote]
This is the part I don't agree with. Yes, I'm here for a quick batch of valor point. (I'm so glad I don't have to do it every day now because we are reaching most of the cap from farm bosses. I don't get any loot anymore for both dps and tanking, I'm exalted with all the factions. I use my justice points to de to shards. What do you think we actually do heroics for? The 70 valor point. It's steadily getting harder to get a guild group together for heroics, that I have to pug a few times last week. (I ran exclusively guild groups during the original heroics gear up phase).
The quality of puggers from LFD have been staggeringly bad. I had a healing telling me that blitz damage from GB is linked to distance from boss, while I tried to explain to him that he needed to move. I have a pugger telling us we were idiots when me and a guildie chatted about getting the tier pieces from valor points because apparently we can't earn more than 70 a day. Another pugger said my tanking was wiping the pug in DM despite my light of dawn title, and having the achievement for 5min vanessa.
The problem with a lot of puggers I see is both bad play, no gems, no enchants, and unwillingness to actually look up boss mechanics. And when a wipe happens, their first instinct is point their fingers at someone else. It's always a joy when you meet a pugger that can actually play.
Kinrain Jan 4th 2011 6:46PM
As a Tank I have found the majority of PUGs to be an unholy nightmare.
I've had some great pugs with nice people that like to move fast but stop for mana, discuss tactics and accept that sometimes bad things happen to good tanks (Flame mobs spawning on top of you in Grim Batol for instance).
But i've had far more groups with people that scream 'GOGOGO' and 'l2tank pala' and people that pull new groups of mobs when the healer is low on mana. The one that annoyed me most was the dps that was going all out all the time on the wrong mobs and managing to pull aggro off me then screaming at me when I told him to target the right mob and control his threat.
I remember when a good dps watched the threat meter instead of the dps meter to maximise his damage without pulling aggro.
I think that as there is no accountability anymore some people's manners have been thrown away. It used to be you treated your healer and your tank, hell everyone, with respect because to do otherwise would ruin your reputation and result in not getting another group or raid. Thats certainly not the case anymore.
DoubleCrit Jan 4th 2011 10:12AM
"Since we posted a solid guide to good behavior in groups today,"
Everything was solid except the part about DBM. You should replace that with "Read about the encounter first"
Suggesting DBM makes you look a little...lazy. Sorry I had to use that word.
Amanda A. Jan 4th 2011 12:10PM
Do both. I don't dungeon often, so my memorization of the abilities of the 20 or so new bosses is imperfect. Sometimes, DBM's prompts are very useful to remind me about a mechanic I'd forgotten. It's a tool.
clok1966 Jan 4th 2011 11:15AM
I been away a long time (2 years) and came back, Im having some real problems grasping the new way classes work. And Im sure are others, but the same OLD things in groups are still here. As an Ex guild Leader and ex guild member (cant deal wit hte drama anymore) LFG is all that is left, and sadly right now, its worse than Guilds (I know, some guilds are great, just like some people win in vegas, its just I have had no luck). recently I was in a group (low low level) in BFD, we lost 4 healers for several reason, some there own, some the tanks, and some DPS issues, not trying to lay blame (yet). I kept saying wait for tank to grab agro, assist tank etc.. NICELY! we wiped a few times I kept comming back, I kept my DPS (as a dps ) at #1 or #2, I kept pulling adds off Healer, I assisted tank. After 4 healer drops, 2 DPS drops, and about 6 wipes the TANK lights all brazers at Naga statue.. I say "Please, not all at once" we wipe. the responce I get was "noob hunter" (which is kinda true with my lack of knowledge on the Hunter class right now). I asked how I made may mistake (with intentions of correcting it) and was told I attacked first.. mntioned no, I was assisting tank and did not attack untill the healer had pulled agro off tank (attacked the targets on Healer).. to which i was told Logs shnow different. Which they didnt, but how do you argue or even handle that? me and tank where only original members of group, so I guess it was me or tank messing up.. All I know is assit tank so I dont pull agro, try keep healer alive if they pull agro.. Not sure why but this ONE incident has soured me enouhg I havent played in several days... I know, thick skin and all.. Its the FIRST group I have ever dropped from in mayb 3-500 LFG runs.. just to many people who cant accept that they may have issues with playstyle ( myslef included i guess) the game is getting worse, not better in some respects.
Ahoni Jan 4th 2011 11:53AM
Healing my way to 85 on my resto druid, I have a macro that states ..
"You get healed when you move OUT of bad"
Gnarlynarz Jan 4th 2011 3:31PM
And please for Pete's Sake, roll for YOUR SPEC, if I'm tanking, and a TANKING PIECE drops, and I don't have it, let me get it? I won't roll on your DPS gears if you don't have 'em, please don't roll on the stuff I've been running to get for days.
The most frustrating thing in the world when I get told to "cry more" when I ask to get the piece and the guy say's he can tank too. IF YOU WANT TANKING STUFF, GO TANK! ARGHAGHRAGARHGAR
hoombaba.feathermoon Jan 4th 2011 9:10PM
"We learn by doing..."
Which leads to the problem that some above pointed out - you spend most of your learning time in WoW playing solo, and solo questing does nothing to teach you how to play in a group.
It might not be Blizzard's fault that group members fail, but they are in the best position to help fix it. We need a training center quest hub that gives solo quests based on your role - a series of quests where you help NPCs attack dungeon-boss level mobs. NPCs play the other roles, and they tell you what you need to do to help the group. For dps you could have a 'tank-n-spank' quest that you fail if you pull aggro and take any damage at all, then a quest to kill certain adds only after the tank picks them up, one to keep a certain mob CC'd, say it one-shots the tank and you fail if it gets loose , etc. etc. Likewise for healing and tanking.
Each player should be required to complete the whole series of quests before they can sign up in the LFD for that role. Maybe even require re-training every 10 levels.
It won't fix everything - but at least everyone will come into PUGs having been exposed to how things work in a 5-player group and what the expectations are for your role.