What will you run?

[Amirya]

And why I have yet to paladin tank anything beyond heroic dungeons. I'll tank flex/normal if I'm asked to, but fuck if I will LFR.

[Paxen]

Honestly the reason I stopped tanking in LFR was because no one cared to explain the fights and I couldn't pull and read the dungeon journal at the same time. One time I said "Hey guys can anyone explain this boss to me, I've never done him" and someone actually inspected me, called me a noob with bad gear, and votekicked me from the raid. So now unless I'm feeling confident I just queue as Ret and herp all the derps and no one cares.

Same here. Nail in the coffin for me was Ultraxion (so waaay back), when I said it was my first time tanking, whispered my (afk) cotank, had already read up on the dungeon journal and still wiped the raid because noone and nowhere hinted that you had to specifically taunt each and every trash mob (and I had done that fight as dps several times). Who the hell pulls with a taunt?

[Thels]

I might have been in luck, as when I returned to the game a week before MoP came out, I ran the entirety of LFR twice (not knowing I would get zero loot for doing it a second time ). I explained that I had just gotten back to the game and every time someone was patient enough to explain to me what to do, usually my co-tank, but sometimes other random people.

[Koatanga]

I was tanking Tsulong in LFR. In norm, I am used to parking the dragon next to the sunbeam facing out from the centre of the circle, so that his breath would only hit me, and so that both ranged and melee have a quick trot to the sunbeam to reset their stacks. I had this ret pally in LFR insisting I was doing it wrong and absolutely haranguing me about how the boss should be far away from the beam. He even went to the extent of taunting the boss from me, which got him immediately pasted. He then went on to argue about it for the rest of the fight, while dead.

So I said "screw this" and went heals the next time I ran it. For the next 3 runs I did, we couldn't get past Tsulong because the DPS refused to kill the adds in the day phase. It's not like there's anything else for them to do in that phase, so why not kill the adds? The mind boggles. Anyway, I thought it was funny that they are "experts" on the fight but can't execute even the simplest of mechanics.

[Worldie]

To be honest after I've been told that people in heroic dark animus aoe the adds by some hunter, I just started to giggle anytime someone pretends to be cluesome. I just link them my actual hc kill achi, and wait for them to fail at giving me theirs and say how "they got a friend in top guild"

[daishan]

A few weeks back I had a hunter yelling that we needed to wipe on durumu because the idiot tank (me) had pulled before a 2nd tank had been found...
Needless to say that hunter died on maze phase with half the raid

[Worldie]

Well tecnically if you arent good geared or a paladin or have a pocked pala who HoPs you, you can't solotank Durumu

[Thels]

But if you do, then the 2nd tank is mere backup. Same for Iron Qon.

The annoying thing is that since the first bosses of those 2 wings are so easily one-tanked by a paladin, several paladins insist on solo-tanking the entire instance. Most of the time they're specced into Clemency, just to chain BoP/Salve on you, so they can insist on tanking themselves. And then on Lei Shen they go tank the boss in the overcharged platform, because that's how it's done on HC.

[Ruldar]

Yeah, changed my vote. Ran a Flex SoO earlier today that I found via Openraid, worked quite well.

[econ21]

I may have to look at Openraid, as I am starting to doubt whether I can do Flex as well as normal modes with my guild.

I should have expected it, but Flex feels closer to a normal guild raid than to LFR - both in terms of time to run and organisational requirements. Given restrictions on my raiding times, I may not be able to join my guild when/if it does Flex and it's not clear on my server there will be Flex pug runs in weekends when I have available.

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

[Flex]

The good thing with Flex is if your guild runs flex from 7 to 10 server and you can only log in at 8 server you can do that!

We have a few people that can only do that, so it works out nicely.

[Thels]

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

It's been pretty clear that that combination simply doesn't work out. It's why dungeons have become a lot easier. It's just not going to be pretty when challenging content is combined with random match-making.

[Sabindeus]

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

It's been pretty clear that that combination simply doesn't work out. It's why dungeons have become a lot easier. It's just not going to be pretty when challenging content is combined with random match-making.

I'd love to see a PvE rating, similar to MMR or the kind of ranking used in competitive online games, based on your success and time to success instead of win ratio.

[econ21]

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

It's been pretty clear that that combination simply doesn't work out. It's why dungeons have become a lot easier. It's just not going to be pretty when challenging content is combined with random match-making.

I think that's one of those Blizzard received wisdoms that I find really ... unimaginative. (I want to use a less kind adjective, but it would be aimed at Blizzard, not you, Thels.) Another example being that tanks should not be viable in PvP, which I think has been debated without agreement here.

Take heroic scenarios - why can't there be a queuing tool for them? Why is asking trade chat for a group going to be any more reliable than a queuing tool? They are not that complex or require social interaction (I never speak on mine, except for a "hi") - you just need to be geared and competent. Geared is easy to require; competence - well a gold proving ground would do, I suspect. I'm dismayed they got rid of the gear requirement - those things are going to be horrid with someone in 450 gear and I don't want to armory people for a 10 min quickie.

5 mans - again, I don't see why they can't work. Take the Zuls. They were fun and challenging. Just set an ilevel, require people have cleared a normal version that is gentler and have a gold on a proving ground. Sorted. No, instead we have to have mindless zerg 5 mans. Or do some weird unrewarding speed run for the "challenge". Yuck.

Ditto LFR. It can have mechanics, even Blizzard recognises this. Elegon, Durumu, Lei Shen etc. They are fine: without some challenges, LFR would just be boring and Blizzard might as well give you a moss chest with your loot chance after you queued for 1 hour. Just maybe give a bit more thought to how to educate people. Perhaps DBM type warnings to identify mechanics? I'm fairly into WoW and do usually research unfamiliar fights but even I am reluctant to read those long journal entries. There's something about logging into WoW that is unconducive to reading thousands of words of text. I have a vague memory of WoW starting to give educational raid warnings - I think I got told I failed a mechanic for some reason but can't recall the specifics.

[halabar]

Having now run SoO LFR2, with a guild group.. omg. No way going to do that for alts with pug groups.