I have found that time of day matters. Obviously this is a generalization, but I have found mid-day runs (which are mostly adults who work nights or college students) and late night runs (which are mostly adults who work days or college students) are usually great. The afternoon/evening runs, populated by younger teenagers, have been the worst. A number of things result from the overall lack of maturity of that group: the gap between actual and perceived skill, the sense of entitlement, the need to belittle/put-down/bash others, etc.

Obviously there are more mature high school students and less mature college students and adults, but that's not the norm, and maturity goes a long way.

My personal experience with the LFD feature is similar to Reddo's. It's been pretty smooth sailing, and the rocky parts weren't that awful. I sometimes thing that the negative press that using the LFD gets isn't as much about the feature itself, or the people who use it, as much as it is about the expectations of the people who don't use it, for whatever reason. I get that the hassle of some of the asshattery that goes on, and the randomness of your companions doesn't appeal to everyone. I go into it knowing that we may not finish, and that there may well be jerks, noobs, asshats, incompetents, meanies, uglies, you name it, waiting for me. I expect them to be there, so I'm not surprised, or disappointed when things aren't perfect.

I'd agree, time of day makes a big difference. Typically runs in the daytime go really smoothly for me. Late afternoons, evenings, and weekends are the pits. I don't touch the Dungeon Finder on the weekend, unless I have a whole afternoon to kill.

On a related note, I've had more headaches from guild runs than I've ever had from LFD. I haven't tanked in Cataclysm, but I have two healers that I geared using the LFD mainly because it has actually been easier and faster for me. You can bail on a LFD group if the experience isn't to your liking, try explaining to your really nice, but not so great, guildy that you really just need to end this now. You can't just bail on them, so you try to help, then suffer in silence until it is all over. Then go queue for the Dungeon Finder, where you know what to expect.

I agree with the OP. I've been tanking on my DK since they came out, and I find that the vast majority of my DF experiences are quite enjoyable, if not at least passable with no real issues.

While Cata has certainly put more pressure on DF groups, I've actually found I've had more good experiences in Cata dungeons than in Wrath ones. When people have to wait 45 minutes to get into a 90 minute run that doesn't have a lot of room for error, they tend to shape up... as opposed to Wrath heroics where the average wait was 15 minutes, the runs lasted 20, and one couldn't possibly have died or screwed up if they wanted to.

All that being said, I think Alison does have it right in that all it does take is one jerk to put a damper on the whole affair. But I find that a simple "take it easy, we're doing just fine like this" often makes the situation much more manageable.

Faltor's experience mirrors mine. I'm in an oceanic timezone, but I play on a West Coast timezone server. That means I'm playing in everyone on my battlegroup's mornings. I've gotten some absolutely awesome pugs. Full of literate, well spoken people who don't go off the deep end at the odd wipe. In fact we have fewer wipes any way. I've met a large number of people I wish I could add to my friend list.

This contrasts horribly to weekends or days I'm running the equivalent of early afternoons. I've gotten to the point where I simply don't tank during those times. Pretty much every negative experience has happened then.

I'm not saying age is the be-all end all gauge of competence, but right now it's looking to be the most consistent one.

I wish I could agree with all of you guys posting here that your LFD experiences haven't been that bad, but for me at least half of them have been nightmares, and I'm only talking about my experience since Cataclysm came out.

I refuse to tank for a full PUG, but many, many times when I've queued on my DK tank with one or two guildies, I've gotten absolutely horrible random players. And I'm not talking about horrible in terms of skill, but rather in terms of attitude and general asshattery. Let me give you just a couple of examples:

- The mage who insisted that we skip bosses and kept pulling for me because I was "too slow" and he had to go in 30 minutes. When the healer finally refused to heal him if he kept pulling, he pulled 4 packs at once, wiped us, and dropped group after cussing us all out.

- The healer who, after the first boss in heroic SFK, said that he had to "go do the dishes" and demanded that we vote-kick him. When we said we weren't wasting a vote kick and that he needed to drop and eat the debuff, he sat down and refused to move, forcing us to kick him.

- The healer who refused to heal unless we did bosses according to his own made-up strategies, and then insulted us and called us all bad players when we wiped because those strategies didn't work.


I could go on and on and on. I seem to get at least one player like this every time I queue in LFD. They'd have to make the tank bribe a LOT better in order for me to want to keep putting up with it.

I find that my LFD experiences are directly related to what I'm playing, and that as a DPS, the experience sucks the worst.

Why?

Because as a tank or healer, I control a large amount of the success/fail in my group. As a good tank or healer, I control upwards of about 75% of it.

I Can, Tank off the dps who attacks the wrong target, pick up that accidentally pulled pat off the healer, interrupt the nasty, pop defensive cd's, and out-dps most of the group.

I Can, Heal through a great deal of stupid, add my own cc and defensive cd's, bring mobs back to the tank, and otherwise carry a lot of idiocy and accident.

As a DPS I can try and CC, I can sometimes hide, I can add some interrupts, and I can watch myself. However, if it's all going to pot, I can generally only watch the trainwreck unfold.

As I primarily tank or heal, I find that most of my LFD runs are smooth, and generally painless, because I don't allow them to suck. Sure, I miss the sociability of the past, and I wouldn't mind getting that back. However, we are helped who help ourselves.