What would be better than setting item level requirement...

[Djriff]

i do not like the provings ground bullshit doing it on all your toons is time consuming it should be made account wide i mean ifyou know your class whats the issue?

Doing the proving grounds as a hunter is vastly different than doing them as a warrior, or a priest, or, etc. It really doesn't take that long to do silver.

[Kazgrel]

The proving grounds idea sounds great on paper, but it's a turd in execution. I haven't even done it on any alts but I can hop into mythic dungeons with friends and pull my own weight and get gear far better than what's in heroics now.

[Tuesdays]

This game used to rely heavily on other people to help from start to finish, and people would gladly take the time to do so. Now days if someone doesn't know how to play well they are met with /kick

The only way to fix the problem, is to not be apart of the problem..

[Granyala]

People just don't want to wipe and waste time in year old content.
Most peeps are patient and nice when content is fresh and everybody is learning.

Solution to the problem? Don't make your community farm the same shit for 2 years (dungeons).

[Notdev]

This game used to rely heavily on other people to help from start to finish, and people would gladly take the time to do so. Now days if someone doesn't know how to play well they are met with /kick

The only way to fix the problem, is to not be apart of the problem..

Blizzard's fault.. when some faceless person is having issues with performance and they can be replaced in seconds by some other faceless person with a higher ilvl within seconds through the queue or group finder, there isn't much reason to stick with the first person, unless they're a friend.

[Tuesdays]

Blizzard's fault.. when some faceless person is having issues with performance and they can be replaced in seconds by some other faceless person with a higher ilvl within seconds through the queue or group finder, there isn't much reason to stick with the first person, unless they're a friend.

And Blizzard is fixing it via prune. Pretty soon the game is going to allow everyone to face roll, so everyone can participate. Only way someone can fail, is by not playing at all.

[ablib]

I had to double check to see if this was a necroed thread.

I can't believe there are people that still think Proving Grounds matter, or require it as a measure of skill.

[Nakotsu]

...for premade groups would be an option to check a box requiring "Must have passed Silver Proving Grounds" because it's BS that players can queue for mythic pugs (not talking about friends on their own) if they can't even qualify for heroics.

As a 725 tank, I can solo most dungeons even on mythic difficulty and whatever the group does is just to expedite the run for added convenience. I don't mind carrying a competent player looking to shortcut his gearing process; the only thing that really gripes me is a truly incompetent player who keeps pulling extra adds because they can't aim their AoE, or the healer who's really dps playing an off-spec they've never invested time in learning (i.e., when I'm out-healing the healer 2-1 and they can't keep themselves or dps alive, even though I solo the boss, what good are they?).

I know I would use this option often, even if I had to choose between setting this requirement and setting an item level. What about the rest of you?

You know we never use to have item lvl back in the day. Yes people might look at ur gear but overall it was a skill check if you couldnt produce you wouldnt go far.

[BiggestNoob]

I'm thinking about building an addon like oQueue that just tracks player performance in raids/groups, account-wide and per-character. That way you can see a performance score, then tying that into the official LFG so you can see player skill from applicants in your groups.

Thoughts?

I had to double check to see if this was a necroed thread.

I can't believe there are people that still think Proving Grounds matter, or require it as a measure of skill.

Tank PG requires you to taunt. Most LFR tanks can't do this. I rip threat on my druid 99.9% of the time and hold onto the boss for like 20-30 seconds. My mage is starting to rip threat too.

I think it's better to have done PG as a tank than not, so that should at least be a bare minimum.

[clevin]

Tldr: Don't want to carry people? Then find a guild and stop crying.

This is really all that needs to be said. If you hate the group finder and the groups you get there find and join a guild that fits. This is no different than telling undergreard people to make their own groups - it's ultimately on you, the player.

[BiggestNoob]

This is really all that needs to be said. If you hate the group finder and the groups you get there find and join a guild that fits. This is no different than telling undergreard people to make their own groups - it's ultimately on you, the player.

There's nothing inherently wrong with pugs via LFG, the problem is it is unnecessarily difficult to filter out the bad people, and that's a huge waste of time for everyone involved.

[clevin]

There's nothing inherently wrong with pugs via LFG, the problem is it is unnecessarily difficult to filter out the bad people, and that's a huge waste of time for everyone involved.

You realize you just said that there's nothing wrong, then pointed out problems?

When people who aren't geared complain about gear reqs the overwhelming response is to form their own groups, i.e. to take action themselves vs wanting things to change. Same here. If you want to control the players in a group, join a guild. Yes, yes, I know... you have reasons. Tough. This is one of the advantages of guilds - known people with whom you can play.

PUGging most or all of the group activity in a MMO is one of the things WoW has gotten wrong. It's fine to allow it, but it shouldn't be the primary way a player experiences group content. That it is simply encourages a single player outlook with other players being more or less disposable pieces.

[BiggestNoob]

You realize you just said that there's nothing wrong, then pointed out problems?

You dropped the adjective inherent. There is a problem, but the solution isn't "don't ever make pugs." The solution I'm talking about is "make making pugs better."

I don't want to have to join a guild for every one of my alts just because my guild doesn't want to run 4 raids a week.

When people who aren't geared complain about gear reqs the overwhelming response is to form their own groups, i.e. to take action themselves vs wanting things to change. Same here. If you want to control the players in a group, join a guild. Yes, yes, I know... you have reasons. Tough. This is one of the advantages of guilds - known people with whom you can play.

The problem is that I know I have 25ish great players in my guild that would dominate the content even on shitty alts. They just aren't going to be willing to raid 20-25 hours a week during farm for alts.

Guilds that are still working through mythic or heroic are generally full of shitty players, so I'd have to join another active 13/13 mythic guild on an alt and raid in their main raid if I want to play my alt. I can tell you right now if I baleful up a brand new alt I've never played before, that within a few hours I'll be doing 95% DPS on it and be one of the highest DPS in any raid that isn't full of 740s and rings .. and I know all the fights incredibly well. Most guilds aren't even willing to go that far unless you've shown you can do it at least once within the same guild, so I can't go jump on a US top 100 guild for farm on my alt just because it's not my main, even if someone wants to give up a raid spot and the guild isn't bringing in a trial (which is unlikely).

Alternatively, if I just want to go clear heroic for a chance at a few pieces I'm missing, pugging is the best solution, just a bit painful atm. We have this problem where at 700 I was beating 725+ people consistently, and now at 719 my mage is beating 740 players regularly, yet still doesn't get invited to pugs because I haven't hit an arbitrary floor (even with CE from October), and nobody is going to look at WCL. So even if I go clear 13/13 mythic on my alt and do 90% overalls and 98%+ bracket on every boss, it doesn't mean I get invited to pugs when realistically inviting me means the pug is highly likely to succeed over inviting virtually anyone else regardless of ilvl. The reason the only solution to this problem right now is guilds is because they do significant screening and require lots of evidence that you're a good player for you even to get a chance. Why not just solve that problem in LFG? There are problems with guilds too which aren't as apparent in LFG.

Just yesterday I went to do a mythic dungeon on my mage and got rejected from 12 groups before I was accepted, even at 719 (not fast filling groups, they were still partially empty after the decline). The group that accepted me did a sub 10 minute mythic and I was > 250k on every boss, and the leader of the group even commented on it. That's a lot of unnecessary churn for someone who is basically guaranteed to make a mythic group successful and speed it up dramatically just because we have nothing to determine whether that's the case. Joining a guild seems heavy handed as fuck for a mythic dungeon.

PUGging most or all of the group activity in a MMO is one of the things WoW has gotten wrong. It's fine to allow it, but it shouldn't be the primary way a player experiences group content. That it is simply encourages a single player outlook with other players being more or less disposable pieces.

I disagree. I think this is how guilds form, and an obvious next step once there's something to make building successful PUGs much easier is some kind of scheduling system so a person who puts together a PUG can say "we'll do this again on this schedule" and people who come along and like it can just have an addon figure out all the timing shit for them. Strictly better than what OpenRaid currently offers, but not quite a guild. And this kind of accessibility and ease of potentially creating new guilds could be huge for the community.

[Spotnick]

How are they going to put that in place? Highest level kill you have? The speed of the kills? People would just buy carries so they could pretend they were the pve version of a 2400 player and derp around in groups. It is kinda hard to rate pve based on raids/dungeons since there are other people that can easily carry you.

Well, there is already one, it's the wowprogress point system.

It's not perfect, but it's a start..

You'll never stop people from buying boosts.. but those will be kicked in no time, only way to avoid that would be a feedback system, but even that is random.. I saw plenty of people get 5 stars on openraid even if they play their class poorly just because the raid went well, and if you don't give them 5 stars they will hate you...

But like I said, they will never implement such a system because the whole PVE system is based on carrying people. I have no idea why PVP is the only place where skills matter in this game.

[BiggestNoob]

Well, there is already one, it's the wowprogress point system.

It's not perfect, but it's a start..

You'll never stop people from buying boosts.. but those will be kicked in no time, only way to avoid that would be a feedback system, but even that is random.. I saw plenty of people get 5 stars on openraid even if they play their class poorly just because the raid went well, and if you don't give them 5 stars they will hate you...

But like I said, they will never implement such a system because the whole PVE system is based on carrying people. I have no idea why PVP is the only place where skills matter in this game.

The idea I was leaning towards was an addon that people used that would track performance, a bit closer to looking at the event log like on WCL. Then it'd use a weighted average of recent performance to determine capability. With a rating strongly correlated with performance, you could say that this raid might take 5000 rating to complete, so 10 people with a 500 rating could do it, and if someone is rated 800, someone else could be 200 and the group would still likely be able to complete the content.

The hard part is preventing it from being gamed. A player's personal addon could track their performance, but would need signoff from others running the same addon (basically "that looks correct" confirmation) via a signature tied to each event. Then when looking for a group, a user can publish their rating and it can be verified if needed (so someone can't just modify their addon to report some arbitrary rating).

[GhostSkull]

I don't understand why a challenge from the dungeon is highly desired, but a challenge presented by other players is completely unacceptable. A run where no one does anything wrong is boring.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I tank my mythic dungeon runs on Thursday nights. In Shadowmoon this week I had a hunter keep pulling threat and I can't figure it out. I mean, at 727 you don't expect threat issues from anyone. I asked if he had a pet on growl (hadn't seen one, but I'm scratching my head here), but he assured me he was MM and not using a pet. After he dies on first boss, he gets motivated to figure it out himself. "What's this 'Distracting Shot'? Maybe that shouldn't be part of my rotation..." <facepalm>

Proving Grounds doesn't guarantee someone will do good dps. It is a very basic IQ test. I mean, you at least have to focus healers first, learn to use the floating orbs to your advantage, and sort out which buttons do AoE vs. single target. Any player who can figure that stuff out will be functioning at a high enough level to not use distracting shot as part of their basic rotation.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't understand why a challenge from the dungeon is highly desired, but a challenge presented by other players is completely unacceptable. A run where no one does anything wrong is boring.

Occasional derp moments from reasonably competent players are a good chance to laugh together and move on. Someone with a boosted character who can't be bothered to learn their spec should not be inflicting themselves on groups until they sort it out.

[Alvito]

Well, there is already one, it's the wowprogress point system.

It's not perfect, but it's a start..

You'll never stop people from buying boosts.. but those will be kicked in no time, only way to avoid that would be a feedback system, but even that is random.. I saw plenty of people get 5 stars on openraid even if they play their class poorly just because the raid went well, and if you don't give them 5 stars they will hate you...

But like I said, they will never implement such a system because the whole PVE system is based on carrying people. I have no idea why PVP is the only place where skills matter in this game.

That point system is just based on if you were 1st to kill a boss and then how soon after the 1st group you killed it. So alts and rerolls would be at a huge disadvantage. The vote system on openraid was nice for awhile but that even gets skewed by false up or down votes. As for pvp being the only place skill matters that isn't entirely true either. It is easy enough to be carried in pvp or just play the flavor of the month class/spec. In PVE you are limited a bit more on how you reroll for specs/classes.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You can see if people have completed the proving grounds already. When people sign up, you can hower over their name and it shows which lvl of proving grounds they have done. You might not see it a lot since many players skip the hc dungeons lvl.

Yeah I remembered that after I started this post. I have gone back to looking at those since I remembered, whereas before I was setting an item-level and auto-accept. I was trying to be democratic and not cherry-pick lol, but I expect some basic competence. To clarify, I understand we're all learning - even the elite players got that way because they're always looking for ways to improve - but I wouldn't inflict myself on groups until I at least knew my basic abilities, had my action bars sorted out, and felt like I could perform my role at an acceptable level. Players who can't do those things should go quest some more and do solo stuff until they know what they're doing.

- - - Updated - - -

Proving grounds doesn't fix stupid. Especially with how incredibly easy silver is to get.

I'd say the difficulty of Proving Grounds is right on par with mythic dungeons. Yeah they're easy too if you don't act stupid (we all have our moments, but overall). Except you can't get carried in Proving Grounds. Or outgear them. They are an acceptable test for "too stupid to raid", imho. To be fair, it's really more like "hasn't yet learned this spec well enough to fill their role competently in group instances".

[Iskariott]

Since the proving grounds is actually easiest with an item level around 600-615 i guess this is useless. also to remind you of this: proving grounds is a series of 1 minute dps checks. and it is not about doing maximum dps, but to react on the enemies that will come next wave. as such you specc differently as you would in a raid.