Dungeon Finder: 497 DPS = Frost Badges
December 14, 2009 by Fen
Filed under General WoW
Let’s have a little chat about the new dungeon finder tool, shall we? I love it and I hate it, like a lot of people. I wanted to share an experience I had with it last night.
I apologize in advance if I come off sounding like an elitist asshole here…
Two guildmates and I decided to hit the random daily heroic last night. We had a tank, a healer, and myself as DPS and we decided to PUG the last two spots. We IMMEDIATELY got into Halls of Stone, and once we ported in we saw that trash had been cleared already. The two pugs told us that they wiped on the first boss and their other 3 party members had left. I didn’t think anything of it, sometimes shit happens.
Little did I know that it was the three people that decided to leave that were in the right.
The two pugged folks were a hunter and a mage. The mage was doing roughly 2000 DPS, and was in almost all epic PVP gear. I don’t have any complaints about that other than I think the mage could probably do better with what he/she was wearing, but it’s nothing I’d bitch about openly. However, the mage managed to pull aggro on anything and everything that was in a quarter mile radius, and I think just about drove our poor healer insane. (I confess I also was pulling some aggro, but out of the three of us from my guild I was the only one in there on their main and I can go a little overboard.)
The mage was nothing though compared to the hunter. This hunter was (and I checked after about 10 minutes into this debacle of a heroic) in almost all “blue” quality gear, plus 4 or so epics, including a trinket. I think he might have had a couple pieces of green gear, but overall not poorly geared for heroics in the slightest (I didn’t look at WHAT that gear was until later, but I digress).
This Beast Mastery hunter managed a whopping 497 DPS over the course of the heroic. FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY SEVEN. On top of that he managed to pull/aggro stuff the tank wasn’t currently attacking and die. How you even manage to aggro and die to anything whilst doing 497 DPS is a complete mystery to me. For reference, that’s less DPS then people were doing at level 70 last expansion. I don’t play a hunter much, but I’m willing to bet the hunters in my guild have PETS that do more than that.
I’m not really sure how many times the mage and hunter died in that heroic, but the three of us on vent all agreed after their first couple of deaths that it was just going to be easier to let them die, since we were essentially 3-manning the dungeon already. Our priest was running low on mana on TRASH pulls trying to heal them, and though it’s her alt she’s plenty geared for it, and quite a good healer.
We ended up just sort of not saying much to them and just trying to plow through the heroic as quickly as possible, and after we finished I couldn’t help myself and I posted the DPS numbers into party chat. I know it’s probably a futile effort to try and help someone on another server who will probably call me a jerk for even trying, so I just said something along the lines of “How is it even possible to do 497 DPS?” and then left the group/dungeon.
I mentioned the hunter’s name (who I won’t mention here) in vent and a guild member looked him/her up on the armory. Two tanking rings, spell power boots, etc. I guess that’s how you do 497 DPS. I’d looked at the COLOR of his gear, but not what it was…
I’ve heard from a few people that the dungeon finder tool takes a look at your gear score, and then tries to match up over-geared people with “inexperienced” (read: under-geared) people. I’ve also heard that people will often throw on their PVP gear to “fool” the dungeon finder into thinking they have better gear than they really use for PVE. I’m contemplating making a set of all greens to wear to fool the damn thing the OTHER way, so it will toss me in with some geared folks. (Ok so I’m kidding there…but only HALF kidding…)
In closing, to be perfectly fair, I’ve had some GREAT groups using the dungeon finder tool as well. I actually had what I’d call an “ok” group for Oculus, which would probably be a good group anywhere else. I’ve also run across some great players in a few of those random dungeons. As much bitching as I’ve done in this post, the tool is a great way to knock out a few dungeons fast, and much better than the old LFG system…but…the next 497 DPS hunter is out there…waiting…
Hi there, I just started listening (and I know this comment is CRAZY late), great show, and I just wanted to weigh in here on how terrible LFD can be.
I leveled my druid as resto running instances before LFD – THAT was a nightmare, but it seemed to me that you had less stupid people who would stay the entire instance and not “d/c” after the first wipe…
This is the exact problem I run into using LFD, and why I almost never do randoms without a full group of guildies. There are SO MANY PEOPLE out there who won’t take all of 5 seconds to check online which stats are best for their class, their rotation, a good spec, etc. I run into so many 71 pt tanks and healers (and subs rogues) that it’s ridiculous.
Of course, the problem is that most of these people WILL NOT LISTEN to you when you say, “Hey hunter, you should go for gear with agility” (don’t say attack power, it will confuse them), or “mages don’t need defense” – Personally, I usually get responses like, “u dont pay 4 my wow” or “u cant tell me how 2 play!”
My guildies have forbidden me from checking random pugs’ gear and spec, because I will ALWAYS say something – sometimes these people listen, and that’s awesome, it makes me happy knowing that they’re going to walk away from this random with better knowledge of their class, spec, rotation, gear.
I don’t think it comes off as elitist, because those of us who spent half a minute looking up the best way to optimize dps(/tanking/heals) can be justifiably annoyed when others do not, and then have to have an attitude when we make suggestions.
Healing Outland randoms on my 65 shaman – 23/7/27 & 2 unspent talent points “ret” paladin is out there somewhere, unable to do more than 100 dps (whereas my fiancee, a mage, is pulling upwards of 1200-1500) – if I see you again… oooh you’ll get an earful from me.
…. Also, read your freaking skills. If you played that toon to 80 (and didn’t buy it off eBay), you should have some knowledge of how your class works.
/epic long comment
I think that just as much of the problem with pugs comes from “leet” players. Unbridled DPS and speed tanking make me miserable. It seems that the recornt gear explosion has caused many of our “good” players to forget that the game is intended to be played a spaciffic way. ( ie target tanks target) relying on their gear and firepower to play a style that drives others crazy.