I think my last bit of faith in the WoW "pug" community has been killed today.

[Dragoncurry]

I honestly think you guys are making a lot of this up, or exaggerating greatly. Look at Phatthealz armory, as a 549 with a ele neck in inventory to make it 550 (554 now after I got upgrades) shaman healer, I pugged into normal SoO for all of wing 1, Nazgrim, and Flex off of Oqueue, and downed those bosses. I literally log on now 1-2x a week when I'm not playing Civ 5 and Dota 2, it's not like I'm scouring Oqueue. This is there when I log on.

Like, I don't understand why it's so difficult for you guys to shrug things off. Maybe it's because I play dota 2 and when I miss a last hit, I get peruvians and russians throwing the game that when someone calls me a "cunt" for saying "no" I just laugh. Cuz fuck them, I don't care. There's billions of groups, they can suck my dick, I know when I am rude and when I am not.

[Pua]

Basically, everyone who is good has already gotten their ahead of the curve achievement and has stopped raiding. I see not point in continuing once you have the wolf. Unless you're achievement running

That's effectively my problem. I stopped raiding after killing Lei Shen back in tier 15, and I've recently decided to try and get a wolf. Alas, I'm too far behind on item level for anyone to invite me, no matter my raiding history, and flex groups (where you can drag up your item level) are typically dreadful; assuming I can even get invited. One group wanted an item level of 550 as well as the Curve achievement. My only other options are to grind valor until I'm blue in the face, or grind Burdens of Eternity which don't drop.

I even tried oQueue and got nowhere.

And yeah, my experience is that the community is worse than ever it was (playing since 2.1). People will obviously argue that it's always been this bad, but that's just not my experience. Every extra queue provides more opportunities for anonymous griefing, and the community has gotten worse as a result... As well as other design decisions that have put the community at its own throat. Personally, I think the real downturn happened in Cataclysm and nothing has been able to stop it from deteriorating.

[Deleted]

You know what I did? I left and didn't go back.
You do have that option, I think the game would survive without your l33t mad skillz

Oh boy, they are allready here.

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Seriously though, GJ on walking out on a restaurant. Sure is the same thing as a game you´ve dedicated a good part of your life to.
I wonder whats wrong with people that they actually defend this kind of behaviour and call someone that disproves of total retardation of a community a whiner.

[Darsithis]

90% of the people in this game are bad. In a 25 man group you'll maybe get 2 or 3 people that can outshine everyone else in their role, the rest are just dead weight.

Your hyperbole is ridiculous. You can't carry 22 other people in a 25 man fight. 3 or 4, probably. But not 22

One term....
CROSS REALM

People are no more accountable for acting like a cunt..
Up until the cross realm feature came along, everyone knew how they can and will in fact be blacklisted on the realm.

They weren't then, either. People started over with new names all the time. Even then there were always new players and pug leaders who didn't know the person. The community has had toxic elements from the start.

[Deleted]

Gearscore, and later ilvl, killed the community more than anything. Even in your arguments you are often stating people's ilvl and others in your raid won't take people based on ilvl. Ilvl ilvl ilvl.

Well, the funny thin about ilvl is people want you to be literally higher than what drops from the raid. I wish this was an exaggeration, but it's not. It comes from an assumption that everyone massively sucks and that gear will fix it. Not only is this lazy, it is poisonously destructive. Raids are tuned to be cleared (admittedly with a degree of real challenge) with the gear of the previous tier. A 525 ilvl whatever is technically geared for SoO normal. Yes. Yes. That is how the design works. If they are underperforming it is because they are underperforming.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had elitists rage about gearscore and ilvl since Wrath and it has always been so stupid to me from the beginning.

I hade this issue back in Wrath already. "Wanna clear normal ICC? Make sure you got the HC version of the gear from there minimum!"
Like what the actual fuck? Logic, people!? XD

[Deleted]

There's a reason I try to avoid pugging like the plague.

[Deleted]

I've had my fair share of terrible people in flex but I usually ignore it because most people outgear SoO so much by now that 1 person wont be a problem for the most part.

[Khorm]

I hade this issue back in Wrath already. "Wanna clear normal ICC? Make sure you got the HC version of the gear from there minimum!"
Like what the actual fuck? Logic, people!? XD

Such a fallacy. Before Gearscore and ilvl people talked about their gear in terms of tier. I.e. I have full T1, I have T4/5. LFM Gruul, T4 minimum. Equipment requirements have always been in the game.

[Aurabolt]

Gearscore, and later ilvl, killed the community more than anything. Even in your arguments you are often stating people's ilvl and others in your raid won't take people based on ilvl. Ilvl ilvl ilvl.

Well, the funny thin about ilvl is people want you to be literally higher than what drops from the raid. I wish this was an exaggeration, but it's not. It comes from an assumption that everyone massively sucks and that gear will fix it. Not only is this lazy, it is poisonously destructive. Raids are tuned to be cleared (admittedly with a degree of real challenge) with the gear of the previous tier. A 525 ilvl whatever is technically geared for SoO normal. Yes. Yes. That is how the design works. If they are underperforming it is because they are underperforming.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had elitists rage about gearscore and ilvl since Wrath and it has always been so stupid to me from the beginning.

Someone finally said it.

THIS is the reason LFR and LFD were created in the first place. Folks who were technically geared enough to get into the current tier were being shut out for not having strong gear, 8/10 times through no fault of their own. 8/10 times they're doing the instance for the first time or the RNG Gods forsook them on loot drops. Not the popular reasons people like to throw around.

For those who started playing WoW from Cata onward or just skipped WotLK, Gearscore was a system used server-side to shut people out of PUG Raids and Dungeons pre-LFD. It got so bad, LFD was introduced mid-Wrath to help address the problem the majority of players were having: They were geared enough to get into a dungeon or heroic but were turned away because their Gearscore wasn't close to or above 2000 (the minimum to even be considered for Naxx 25). After the Vote to Kick feature was tweaked at the end of Wrath to address abuse of the system, Blizzard started giving Tanks and Later Healers a little something extra to address toxic behavior.

...See where I'm going with this?

The whole "Dumbing down of WoW" conspiracy theory people like to bitch about is just Blizzard doing its job to ensure folks don't have to put up with toxic players if they can avoid it.

[darklady]

Gearscore, and later ilvl, killed the community more than anything. Even in your arguments you are often stating people's ilvl and others in your raid won't take people based on ilvl. Ilvl ilvl ilvl.

Well, the funny thin about ilvl is people want you to be literally higher than what drops from the raid. I wish this was an exaggeration, but it's not. It comes from an assumption that everyone massively sucks and that gear will fix it. Not only is this lazy, it is poisonously destructive. Raids are tuned to be cleared (admittedly with a degree of real challenge) with the gear of the previous tier. A 525 ilvl whatever is technically geared for SoO normal. Yes. Yes. That is how the design works. If they are underperforming it is because they are underperforming.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had elitists rage about gearscore and ilvl since Wrath and it has always been so stupid to me from the beginning.

I didn't think you were ranting, and I agree with you 100%. I have often wondered what would happen if Blizzard added a similar ilevel requirement to dungeon and raid groups, to prevent the situation you just described, and other carries and zergs across the board. Something like everyone in the raid has to be +/- 3 ilevel of each other. I have a feeling it would make people like the OP quit the game in droves, but that wouldn't be a bad thing. It would revive the community and the teamwork part of guilds. Bliz will never do it, but a girl can dream.

[roahn the warlock]

I've never had a bad flex, and I started with an ilvl of 523

[Dole4011]

It's the end of the expansion, with a tier which is running way too long. This means most skilled players have long since stopped raiding anything below normal (if they are still raiding at all), unless they are on an alt that is undergeared (which will presumably move to normal before long). Also, the extra time for the casuals to catch up has given them now the opportunity to reach gear levels that suggest they are ready for flex. Unfortunately these people didn't even pay attention to the mechanics in LFR, let alone flex. So now they are expecting the same bad play they see in LFR to work for flex, and that almost always leads to blaming a tank that knows what they are doing.

I have two toons that tank. When you are doing LFR or flex, there is a roughly 50% chance that the other tank will either be bad at tanking, or just not know any of the fight mechanics. It makes tanking incredibly difficult. It's doubly frustrating when you have tanked normals on that toon, and people talk to you like you don't know the fights.

There's not much you can do except what you tried to do with that second group which you ran. Tell people before you queue it up that you know what you're doing, and that if anyone tries to give you a crap strat or whines in general, you'll just remove them from the group. Then it won't be a surprise when someone like that mage is immediately shown the door. You're still going to have to deal with morons showing up, because at this point flex is LFR 1.5. The addition of the extra upgrade slots really encouraged more people to start running flex that have no idea what to do in there.

QFT.

If it were a fresh tier, there'd be a lot more solid players running. However, it's mostly chaff now.