The Queue: A discussion of kicking bad puggers

We'll get right into it today with a long question from Tom (and a subsequently long answer from me).
Tom writes in to ask:
What, in your opinion, is the best way for a tank (or group leader) to handle the following frequent situation in random dungeons: one or more players that almost instantly say "GO! GO! GO!", and aren't willing to wait for the tank to let people buff or otherwise get ready? Last night I was running regular UK with a new prot Warrior, and had to take maybe 30 seconds to review my keys when someone apparently decided to start pulling the first two mobs. I did my best to get in and grab aggro, but honestly they spent more time running away from the mobs they pulled on their own than it would have cost to wait for me to pull.
After 4 or 5 fights like this, well before we hit the first boss, I had finally had enough and told them I was leaving the group, and the reasons I was leaving. My question is: should I just lay out the ground rules beforehand ("1. Please let the tank pull 2. Please don't rush me or 3. Please leave now"), or should I deal with it as an occasional problem with only a certain category of player (i.e. idiots)? A second, perhaps related, question is: how quickly to YOU pull the pin on a random group that has a jerk? Is is OK to vote to kick based solely on the person's personality?
As a tank, it's ultimately your responsibility to set the pace of the group. You're the one who has to pull, you're the one who has to mark and set CC targets, you're the one who has to move the boss around. I'd take it a step further and say that unless you've got an arrangement worked out with another person you know, you're the leader of the group.
When players are behaving badly, you'll likely be the first to notice. It's hard to miss a DPSer running ahead of you, just as it's hard to miss that DPSer who always is beating on the wrong target and pulling aggro. As the leader of the group, it's your responsibility to make sure the group runs smoothly. If people need to go, then they need to go.
Right now, I'm running in a tank/healer combo with a good friend of mine (along with another friend who's providing some DPS and CC as she can). One of us is tanking (he on his paladin, I on my warrior), and one of us is healing (he's got a shaman, and I've got a druid). Neither one of us sets the ground rules for the group at the beginning -- we expect that folks generally will know to wait for the tank and that people will CC when we ask them to. If they don't, then we politely say what needs to happen.
If they can't follow directions, we'll try again once or twice more. After that, usually the rest of the group has caught on and people are ready to kick the offending player. There have been many times, though, when I've asked a player to leave and they have, saving me the kick and associated penalties with the dungeon finder (which do stack up if you're chaining heroics for an entire day and have to kick a few people). If the player doesn't leave and continues to do bad stuff, then kick him. Group members are much more likely to follow your kick if you've tried everything and have been nice about it.
Finally, if all else fails, just leave the group. You can say something like, "Well, I've tried, but this group isn't working out. I can't tank with people not letting me get aggro. Good luck, guys." But in reality, that's just going to make you feel better (god only knows I've said that enough); if they're being jerks and not listening, you saying anything isn't going to make things better. That's why I just recommend dropping the group and re-queuing in the dungeon finder. Your queue is going to be more or less instant; they're the ones who are going to have to wait.
Personality and playstyle converge in the group -- if you don't enjoy playing with a group, you don't enjoy playing with them. Put up with some crap, but don't punish yourself, either.
Coville asked:
Has anyone else noticed the woeful lack of chainmail wrist items in Cata? I have been sporting a 333 wrist from Grim Batol since my first run through there. Why can't they give us a justice point wrist option or a blacksmith recipe?
Many people have, yes; the same goes for leather healing bracers. I think it's a little bit of an oversight from the designers -- although let's be honest here, too: It's not a huge deal. Kits are not breaking, gear isn't becoming useless -- it's just not up to the 346 standard that we all want. I'd expect in patch 4.1 there to be some more bracers that drop from those dungeons for classes that need them. Epics will also become easier to obtain through raiding as time goes on, so the problem is lessened.
I'm still wearing my 333 bracers on my resto druid, and I'm healing heroics just fine. So on the list of problems, this is probably relatively low.
Twist asked:
How is The Daily Quest formed? Do you have a list of blogs you regularly check? If so, how does one get on this list?
Anne is the curator of The Daily Quest, and she has a list of blogs on her RSS feed. Chances are, we're already reading your blog if it's been around a bit, but if it's new, feel free to drop us a tip or leave a note in the comments of The Daily Quest about it. A word of caution, though -- we can't feature everything, and we generally only feature stories from blogs and sites that have been around a bit. We'd love to be able to give everyone a spotlight, but alas, that's not something we can do.
Filed under: The Queue






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 11)
Boz Feb 24th 2011 11:04AM
So I see that Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman are returning as 5-man heroics. This is all well and good, except the loot will be i353 epics. Instead of getting excited (ooh, purples!), I'm dreading these two instances popping every queue, just as the ICC dungeons popped relentlessly after Patch 3.3.0.
Is there anything Blizzard is doing - or even can do - to prevent the newest patch dungeons from coming up every random? Maybe the ability to exclude up to x number of dungeons? A cooldown for specific instances? Something?
Erzfiend Feb 24th 2011 11:09AM
Well, once you get a heroic dungeon and are locked to it, you can't get it again until the resets.
If you mean that you just don't want it to appear, the only way is to queue for the other dungeons specifically.
The new 5-mans will also have an ilevel requirement of 346 before you can queue for them in the DF.
Erzfiend Feb 24th 2011 11:12AM
To clarify, you become locked after you kill at least one boss.
Aalokor Feb 24th 2011 11:13AM
If you get sick of a dungeon, don't queue for it. Queue specifically for something else.
If you're queueing for random, you're implicitly agreeing to help out with people queueing for specific dungeons, whatever they may be.
walkman222222 Feb 24th 2011 11:18AM
I think what he is saying is, he doesn't want every random heroic que after he reaches the ilvl requirement to give him those two dungeons. Even though you do get locked to the heroic, it can still pop in your random que. Atleast that is how it was in Wrath. (I pvp more now, so I don't really know if things have changed) But yes I do hope Blizzard doesn't make the new dungeons pop every single time, like they did with the ICC heroics.
Aalokor Feb 24th 2011 11:18AM
@Erzfiend that doesn't really apply to random queues, which i'm assuming is what he's talking about
Foxfyr Feb 24th 2011 11:18AM
Even if you're locked you can still get a heroic you've already done come up randomly.
The reason the new ones seem to come up more often is that there are countless people sitting in the queue waiting for them specifically. And you end up getting matched with them.
Not a lot Blizzard can do about that without making wait times unnecessarily long for people.
Grovinofdarkhour Feb 24th 2011 11:24AM
What I don't want to see is the current raid tier get made gear-unnecessary by higher-level 5-mans - the way Trial of the Champion made Naxx unnecessary, and the ICC 5-mans made Ulduar unnecessary. I guess if the gear's 353 and not 359, it hopefully won't be as bad as last time.
People who want to raid should really try to learn to do it successfully, not just wait for the shortcut.
Sorro Feb 24th 2011 11:25AM
Actually, Erz, when queueing for a random heroic, you can get a dungeon you're already locked to. So you could potentially keep getting ZA/ZG all day.
Erzfiend Feb 24th 2011 11:27AM
@Aalokor
Well yeah, if you queue for a random you could potentially get those dungeons each time. Lots of people, myself included, always felt that the DF hated them because they would get Halls of Stone or something every time, even though that was obviously not the case. If you straight up don't want to do a dungeon, you'll have to queue specifically.
And yes, if you have done a heroic specifically and then queue for a random, you can still get that dungeon again. Did it a lot in Wrath when I was trying to get the Engraved Gargoyle Femur to drop from PoS.
Boz Feb 24th 2011 11:28AM
Foxfyr got it right, and after running Halls of Reflection endlessly in WotLK as my random for the day - typically followed by the Healer dropping after Marwyn if Ephemeral Snowflake didn't drop - I'm not looking forward to a repeat as folks queue for whatever piece of gear they need, then dropping group.
This is not to say I don't like Zul'Gurub or Zul'Aman, only that I enjoy a variety of dungeons when I run my daily.
(cutaia) Feb 24th 2011 11:34AM
Boz,
It kind of appears that *maybe* there will be a separate choice in the dungeon finder. Patch notes show this:
"New dungeons available for partial testing.
* Zul'Aman has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring a revamp of the original dungeon and improved loot!
* Zul'Gurub has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot!
* Both dungeons will be in a new Dungeon Finder difficulty tier above the current level-85 Heroic dungeons and offer epic-quality item level 353 loot."
...and MMO-Champion datamining found mention of this as related to the LFD tool:
"Random Cataclysm Heroic Tier 2"
And Grovin,
As nice as it is to have a healthy respect for the raid progression, I think we can pretty much assume that the new 5-mans will help folks get into the 4.1 raids and by 4.2 there will be no gear-related reason to step into BWD/BoT/TotFW.
It makes sense, though. It allows us to more easily get alts into our raid group or switch mains without expecting our guild to run one person through older raids for gear. It also allows new players to get into raiding. It's always difficult to pug raids besides the most current content, because the demand is lower. I'm personally glad they won't force new level 85s to go on a futile search for BWD groups 6 months from now. Especially considering that pugging BWD on a weekly basis means they'd finally gear up for Firelands by the time Deathwing was released.
Grovinofdarkhour Feb 24th 2011 11:46AM
@cutaia
I know what you say is true. It still makes me sad, though.
I remember seeing people start proclaiming they'd never set foot in Ulduar again, because now they could run 5-mans that would drop the same ilvl gear, and they'd be in ToC quicker. And in some cases, these were people who just weren't doing a very good job in Ulduar, because they hadn't really "learned raiding" yet, and so they were basically upgrading from being a bad raider in one tier to being a bad raider in the next tier. And it just struck me as so not-how-it's-supposed-to-be-done, it was heartbreaking.
Danreial Feb 24th 2011 12:11PM
Actually, it would be quite simple to prevent being sent into the new instances. Since there's a higher average iLevel lockout than current heroics (346 rather than 329 if I recall correctly), wouldn't you just be able to remove or replace gear until you're under 346 before queueing?
LynMars Feb 24th 2011 12:28PM
We were having a hideously frustrating time in Heroic GB once; Forgemaster was being buggy, and our tank was a guildie who was trying to gear her tank up still, so we tried to requeue to get something a little less frustrating.
It dumped us right back into a fresh, uncleared Grim Batol. We decided to queue for a specific instance someone needed instead.
It's ALWAYS been a feature of the random queue to potentially give you the same Heroic you've already been locked to, but since it's random, it's not a guarantee to happen with the variety of instances available.
wutsconflag Feb 24th 2011 12:34PM
@Grovin:
Yes, and sadly, that's just the way raiding works these days.
Saeadame Feb 24th 2011 3:04PM
^Danreial
This would be EXACTLY what you would have to do to avoid those dungeons. Which, also, would make it potentially more difficult to do whatever your role is (although not too much... I'm healing on a resto druid with average ilvl 349 and it's not too difficult, I don't think the 3 extra average ilvl points make much of a difference).
Pyromelter Feb 24th 2011 3:44PM
You can game the system yourself (assuming you're a tank). Just put gear in the bank while you are standing next to a banker to get your ilevel down to 344 or something. When your queue pops in 3 seconds, open your bank, take your items back into your inventory and equip them.
Anyway I don't see what's so wrong about running the higher level dungeons. It was nice to be able to do more than just sleepwalk through a 5-man, even if it was easy and i'd done it many times before. Plus, you got all those abyss crystals, meaning you'll be able to stockpile some maelstrom crystals for higher level enchants.
As far as running older raids, at some point I hope in 4.1 they'll put in weekly raid quests again to give more of an incentive to kill the older bosses.
Skyrei Feb 24th 2011 5:58PM
-Danreial/Saeadame
That would work except that it takes the highest item level from what you're wearing, your bags as well as, your bank.
So, in order to drop iLevel you find and sell/delete the highest item level.
pancakes Feb 25th 2011 8:33AM
Most likely the reason people got HoR more often than other dungeons is because people dropped group as soon as they saw the HoR loading screen, thus freeing up space in groups for HoR.