I am beginning to loathe the dungeon finder tool but not for the reason you’d think. It’s true that most of my recent experiences with it in Cata have been terribad.
I have encountered tanks who think we should be able to heal them through everything, tanks who think we don’t need cc, tanks who regularly break cc then don’t bother to pickup the breaks. I’ve butt heads with dps who go afk, dps who can’t target of target, and dps who get really mad when they die from standing in the poop.
But none of this really bothers me. Aside from the occasional ground slam, I am now at the point where I can heal through anything a pug group has to throw at me. I dislike the LFD tool for a totally different reason altogether.
Before the LFD tool, most of my time in-game was spent tanking. This was before I fell head over heals for holy. I collected healers like they were epic mounts. I had a continuously updated friends list full of healers from the server who I had run with and knew were reliable.
I used to be a go-to tank for a lot of healers as well. I would get whispers when I logged in because folks were just waiting to see a tank who was available to get in a quick daily. Random people would even offer me gold to tank for them. Of course I would never take it but it was nice to feel needed.
I don’t want to come off wrong here. I’m not hatin’ me some LFG because I don’t feel popular anymore. I’m rallying against it because it has removed the need to group up with players from my server community.
This constant need to find reliable players to pug heroics was the best reason for interacting with the community. Now with segregation between 10 man and 25 man raids and the LFD tool, the only players I regularly interact with are my guildies.
I miss the days of LFGs and LFMs laced between the ongoing steam of verbal diarrhea that is Trade chat. I miss socializing with members of Bladefist while casually making our way through AN or UP; chatting about old guilds like 40 Man Failboat and infamous players like Blackball and Panobad.
Is this the case on most servers nowadays? That there is little reason for venturing outside the social confides of your guild and meeting new people in a social game like WoW has become a chore? What sort of things are you doing to meet new people on your server?
Wow! It’s almost like you were in my mumble listening to the *exact same conversation* as me and a bunch of my guildies. I’ve noticed the same thing. My friends list used to be a “Who’s Who” of tanks and dps that I knew could be counted on to join the party and play well (and still manage to enjoy each other’s company.)
I miss it, too. Although, I keep telling myself, there’s nothing saying we can’t spam trade/ server to fill a 5man. There’s nothing that MAKES us use the lfd tool. I’ve yet to try it because I have so many guildies that I can run with, but next time I have to pug, I’m going to see if it can’t be done the old-fashioned way.
Do you think we could start a grassroots movement to boycott the LFD Tool? It seems like a lot of folks aren’t having as much fun with it but ppl continue to use it because it is so convenient.
Im thinking that 4.1 will help us out with this as we’ll be able to chain together all our valor LFDs in one go if we feel like it.
What I’m starting to get tired of is people expecting the healer to make up for bad encounter management. I was surprised that I actually felt like I had been punched in the head when I got kicked from a H Stonecore group after 3 Corborous wipes. Kicked from vent pug and then booted. I just don’t know how we are expected to compensate for 10-20 adds running around the fight and people flying every direction. Can you tell Im a little bitter? The fight shouldn’t be hard if the adds are burned and the fire isn’t stood in…
How do you guys deal with boss wipes? I start getting the angry whispers after the first time the group goes down.
LFD was one of the reasons I abandoned my 6 L80 WoW toons several months ago. There was no way I was ever again going to chase after imbecilic tanks in 5-man pugs. Quality of general game play had deteriorated to the point where it was pathetic.
It wasn’t boss wipes that turned me off. That happened only two or three times in the course of over a thousand boss fights that I successfully healed. It was the lack of leadership, tactical skill and situational awareness typical of WoW tanks. Mix in the anonymity, impatience and lack of social interaction you find in WoW PUGs and you have a good reason to look for another game to play.