AOTC should be rewarded at the end of a patch.

[Battlebeard]

AoTC is the most stupid thing they added, right after achievement for boss kills.

It doesn't mean anything. Scrubs can get boosted for it or you can buy it, while good, and much better raiders get declined since they haven't killed a boss yet.

I have friends who used to raid in like top 15 world guilds, who came back after a long break and get declined for a boss that they could do sleeping on 1st try easy, and that is simply retarded.

Skill > any achievement, but 99% of all raid leaders don't understand it.

I always lead my own groups and I automatically decline anyone who link Curve. I check their armory for previous PvE experience, wether its current raid or a few years old raid feats.

[Wilderness]

Skill > any achievement, but 99% of all raid leaders don't understand it.

Sure, but the whole problem with pugging is that there are not many very reliable ways to tell how skilled someone is. Achievements, ilvl, and poking through armories can help but we've all seen plenty of people with big ilvls at the bottom of the dps meters or wiping groups because they failed mechanics.

[Twdft]

Get into russian pugs. They don't expect any communication with you and as long as you do acceptable damage/healing for your ilvl noone will kick you. Bonus: have a "raidcall" account just to be able to log on to their voice comm. Very bloated social network software you might want to be sure your virus and malware detection is good.

[Meiffert]

There's nothing wrong with quality controlling your group, but using a metric that literally requires them to have already done the content (I need experience to get a job, but I don't have experience) is asinine at best in my eyes.

There is something called progression in this game.
You pull a boss multiple times, wiping each time, but learning how to counter the fight mechanics over time.
Even strong mythic guilds, who tested the fight on PTR, are using some sort of voice communication and have very good coordination wipe multiple times on the end bosses on heroic (such as Archimonde, Helya or Gul'dan) the first time around.
For a somewhat weaker group of heroic raiders, the final boss like Archimonde or Gul'dan will likely require multiple nights of progression to learn the fight well enough to down him.

How do you want to achieve that in a pug? Even if people weren't leaving after 1 or 2 wipes, the group will inevitably disband at the end of the evening. Then you build a new group tomorrow and... do what? Start over?
I'm not saying it is absolutely impossible to progress in a pug, but it isn't something many people are interested in doing.

On top of that, for people who have already learned and killed the boss multiple times, it would be incredibly tedious to spend many hours every week to progress again.
It makes much more sense to get a group of people who have already done the work and learned the fight. And the easiest way to confirm this knowledge is having the kill and the related achievement.



About the required ilvl:

There is a strong correlation between performance and ilvl.
Is it theoretically possible that a lower geared player simply plays better? Of course. Does it happen very often? Not at all.

There are two major reasons for that:
1. With equal skill, the character with better gear will perform better, simple as that. Ilvl is a simple way to measure gear. It is not perfect, but higher ilvl will almost always mean better gear.
2. You gain ilvl by playing the game and you have better chance at higher ilvl at the more difficult content. Someone, who clears mythic raids, 10+ mythic+ dungeons and plays a lot will have better gear than someone who has 3 days /played at max level and only ran a couple LFRs.
The same person is also much more experienced and almost always a better player.


As to why the required ilvl in many groups is so extremely high:

A big misconception is that required ilvl (by the group leader) has anything to do with the difficulty of the content (as in - this raid is doable in 860).
Those two concepts have almost no correlation at all.

Instead, it's a simple supply/demand scenario:
If the group leader can get enough players in a reasonable timeframe with a certain ilvl requirement, he will set at least that.

Example:
(with required ilvl of)
- 920, your group only gets 2 applicants after waiting for an hour; the group will never form
- 915, the group will form, but because of people losing interest/patience, it will take 1-2 hours to get a full group
- 910, your group will fill in 5-10 minutes
- 900, the group will fill in a minute
- 8xx, same as 900

Under these circumstances, it makes the most sense to require between 900 (for very easy content, such as m+3 dungeon) - 910 (for harder content like heroic raids).
The fact that 850 should be enough to do the m+3 is completely irrelevant.

[Deleted]

That wouldn't fix anything, it would just make things more of a pain as far as making groups go since you'd have to armory people.

Personally i think that you should be able to see people's progress for the thing they queue for. If i queue for a NH raid then the group leader should see my progress(both acc. wide and character specific) when he hovers over my character much in the same way it's shown on the armory. The issue with this is that it would cause too much of a shitstorm so i doubt it'll ever happen but one can hope.

[Riistov]

followed immediately by...



Am I the only one that did a double take when reading that? "I have every AOTC but I use a fake achievement addon". Huh? What? I laughed. Good stuff.

I thought the same thing. Something doesn't add up.

[Baelic]

There is something called progression in this game.
You pull a boss multiple times, wiping each time, but learning how to counter the fight mechanics over time.
Even strong mythic guilds, who tested the fight on PTR, are using some sort of voice communication and have very good coordination wipe multiple times on the end bosses on heroic (such as Archimonde, Helya or Gul'dan) the first time around.
For a somewhat weaker group of heroic raiders, the final boss like Archimonde or Gul'dan will likely require multiple nights of progression to learn the fight well enough to down him.

How do you want to achieve that in a pug? Even if people weren't leaving after 1 or 2 wipes, the group will inevitably disband at the end of the evening. Then you build a new group tomorrow and... do what? Start over?
I'm not saying it is absolutely impossible to progress in a pug, but it isn't something many people are interested in doing.

On top of that, for people who have already learned and killed the boss multiple times, it would be incredibly tedious to spend many hours every week to progress again.
It makes much more sense to get a group of people who have already done the work and learned the fight. And the easiest way to confirm this knowledge is having the kill and the related achievement.

Except it isn't, what with buying AOTC runs and whatnot.

And again, we go back to "I need experience to do X, but can't get the experience" how are you going to increase the available number of experienced players by blocking them from getting experience?

I did give a solution to that, in the form of Perky Pugs (might have been in a different thread). But that's a band-aid for an otherwise community-wide problem.

The main reason why this is an issue for me, is because I run with a guild who raids regularly (we don't do Mythic cause we don't have the right number of raiders, but otherwise do progression) and I'll probably get snuffed out of AoTC cause of work. But that doesn't mean I won't have experience in the fight(s). I do try and PuG to get gear to keep up, sticking to fights I happen to know if I can.

However, by the usual logic of "AoTC or GTFO" all that experience is moot and might as well have not been gained at all. Which is super frustrating, a sentiment I'm pretty sure is shared between other players in the community.

It does make me wonder though, should progression be left to guilds and PuGs are just there for having a random good time or recruitment? Maybe that's the intent.

[Meiffert]

Except it isn't, what with buying AOTC runs and whatnot.

I never said it was perfect, just easiest.
There are raid leaders who check logs or number of kills on armory. There are others who take the simpler way of accepting the achievement.

And again, we go back to "I need experience to do X, but can't get the experience" how are you going to increase the available number of experienced players by blocking them from getting experience?

You get the experience in a progress group, typically a guild group.
There are non-guild progress groups as well (for example for cross-realm groups) organized through OpenRaid or even in-game group finder. (I assume that Perky Pugs might fill in a similar role, haven't looked into it.)

It does make me wonder though, should progression be left to guilds and PuGs are just there for having a random good time or recruitment? Maybe that's the intent.

Well, not progression in general. You can learn and progress through some content in a PuG as long as the content is reasonably short and easy.
Harder content, that might require continuous work over multiple days, such as heroic or mythic raiding, is indeed designed with the organized groups (typically guild groups) in mind.

[Sencha]

Create your own group. Problem solved.

[Chu]

Create your own group. Problem solved.

Best advice for this....... people want you to have an item level thats not even available in game yet to join their group...... so.... 'Create your own group'..... you set the requirements then..... If you start it.... they will come!

[Sencha]

Best advice for this....... people want you to have an item level thats not even available in game yet to join their group...... so.... 'Create your own group'..... you set the requirements then..... If you start it.... they will come!

An item that's not available in game? What are you talking about?

[Chu]

An item that's not available in game? What are you talking about?

Its called being facetious..... an exaggeration of what they ask for in their group and it reads 'an item 'level' not an 'item' ..... so basically let me spell it out for you.... Group in lfg asking for people to join with item level 915 minimum........ IN REALITY most people .... 'most' dont even have item level 900 or 905 yet .... so being facetious Im stating that they ask for requirements that 'MOST' people don't even have yet.... hence.... what YOU stated was best advice.... start their own group.

[Sencha]

Its called being facetious..... an exaggeration of what they ask for in their group and it reads 'an item 'level' not an 'item' ..... so basically let me spell it out for you.... Group in lfg asking for people to join with item level 915 minimum........ IN REALITY most people .... 'most' dont even have item level 900 or 905 yet .... so being facetious Im stating that they ask for requirements that 'MOST' people don't even have yet.... hence.... what YOU stated was best advice.... start their own group.

Sorry I misread.

What I meant is if there are so many people complaining about high level requirement, then those people can create a group with a lower ilvl. Many people will be happy to join (unless they just want to be carried by higher ilvl players).

[GreenJesus]

AoTC is the most stupid thing they added, right after achievement for boss kills.

It doesn't mean anything. Scrubs can get boosted for it or you can buy it, while good, and much better raiders get declined since they haven't killed a boss yet.

I have friends who used to raid in like top 15 world guilds, who came back after a long break and get declined for a boss that they could do sleeping on 1st try easy, and that is simply retarded.

Skill > any achievement, but 99% of all raid leaders don't understand it.

I always lead my own groups and I automatically decline anyone who link Curve. I check their armory for previous PvE experience, wether its current raid or a few years old raid feats.

I think it is silly to automatically decline people since MOST people expect raid leaders to desire it. It would be like if a boss punished interviewees that brought a resume because he doesn't believe in them.

[micwini]

If you're too lazy or not good enough a leader to make your own group, you don't deserve to be invited in the first place.

[Mosotti]

I made no mistakes across the entire run of the 10 bosses.

You should go for world first next time. No mistake, higher dps than much bigger ilvl players, you're a lost gem.

[reokotsae]

You should go for world first next time. No mistake, higher dps than much bigger ilvl players, you're a lost gem.

or apply for any of the thousands upon thousands of guilds happy with heroic as their top end content and slam it out in a group you don't have to dazzle with ilvl and achievements all well being usually easier to apply to than an average pug.

[Soluna]

You should go for world first next time. No mistake, higher dps than much bigger ilvl players, you're a lost gem.

I never said that I compare to world first people. And not making mistakes in an HC run after making an extensive research on tactics and watching fatboss videos is not difficult. And not my fault people just don't know how to dps. I never said that my dps as a warlock is that of Serenity's or Method's, or Exorsus' warlocks (just mentioning a few of the best guilds, there are players in others too). In fact, I don't believe that my dps compares to any of the top 100 guilds warlocks, simply because a) most of them know how to play all their speccs really well and b) affli is so good right now, yet I hit like a wet noodle when I specc into that. I can only play destro and demo.

[Deleted]

Achievements are proof of doing stuff. Doing stuff might have given that player some sort of knowledge of the fight.

I would prefer if Blizzard implemented some sort of account grading like if you cleared all Heroic raid before Mythic release your account gets lets say silver flag or something which is shown when searching for group, Gold for clearing raid Mythic in 2 months, Diamond for clearing Mythic raid in 1 month. So pug raid leaders could easily see what kind of caliber players queued without having to personally armory them.

And people should be moving to linking Cutting Edge, Curve is fine for first month.

I would love if blizzard moved from using iLVL to wowlog percentiles for group finder. So you could easily see if the person knows his class or not, do you wana take hunter who is 20% for his class or 90% i know which i would want in my 5man groups.

[Marrilaife]

or apply for any of the thousands upon thousands of guilds happy with heroic as their top end content and slam it out in a group you don't have to dazzle with ilvl and achievements all well being usually easier to apply to than an average pug.

The commitment aversion in the community is so widespread majority will whine about having to jump through hoops to get into pugs, but still stick to pugging rather than join a guild even though most heroic raiding guilds have lower requirements to entry and are less prone to kick players for mistakes (because they're casual guilds) than pugs.

Best excuse I heard on MMO champ was "I pug so I don't have to deal with elitist pricks", even though the concentration of "elitist pricks" is much higher in pugs than in non-mythic guilds (or even than in mythic guilds tbh).