Brief Guide to LFD tool to help temper the QQ

[klurejr]

This guide is not for people who raid and exist in large guilds where there is always people to play with. This is for the casual player.

Over the past few weeks I see thread after thread of people complaining about one thing after the other in regards to the LFD tool, the tank sucks, the healer sucks, the DPS Stand in fire, wipefest, Ninja Looter, etc, etc, etc.

It seems the overwhelming response from people is GUILD RUNS or fail.

While that is definitely a solution if you have enough members on all the time that are wiling to play with you, but I have yet to see an educated reply for those from Small guilds, or the very casual player who is not in a guild that just wants to enjoy doing a Dungeon run.

I started playing back in Vanilla, and knew from my guild wars days that Healers are always in demand and a good way to get into groups fast, so My original Main toon, which is still my main today is a Human Priest. And back then as many of you recall, LFD did not exist. Duel Spec did not exist. So the best way for me to level up as a healing priest with only 2 friends who played at the time was to head to town and spam the trade and local channels to find a group for a specific dungeon. Then we all put on our running boots (no mounts before lvl 40 back then) and ran to the Dungeon and Summoned those who are geographically challenged.

So, with that brief history lesson be thankful you can be running dailies and sit in que until a spot comes up and you get ported directly to the action.

Onto the meat.

20-85 Leveling
Unless you really like grinding out quest after quest, keep your toon in the que (if you have the time of course). This will get you more experience running a dungeon in the WOW format. You will see boss fights get progressively harder. And unlike the lvl 85 normal and heroic content you can make big mistakes on healing and tanking and not wipe on the content as you level up.(I use the word harder simply to denote progress in skill, as many of you will acknowledge very little content is "hard" unless you are a brand new player.) It is pretty painless these days for the most part.

Doing all the Cata Dungeons available from 80-85 will help you prepare for the increased difficulty when you start heroics. Doing all the lvl 85 Dungeons BEFORE you consider Heroics will also help you learn the content. I highly recommend at the very least doing each dungeon on normal at least once before you jump to heroic. Personally I am doing them a few times just to get my rep up for rep rewards, and other il333 drops from the bosses. I want to be prepared mentally and geared.

Time Management
Before you join the LFD que, take a look at the clock. Do you have enough time to finish a dungeon if it started immediately? Is mom making dinner on the stove and you will be called out to set the table in about 15 min? Are you expecting an important call? I get the feeling many people never consider these things. I always do. I sometimes work from home and at times have time to run some dailies, or go fishing, but I have ot be ready at a moments notice to answer my phone and devote my full attention to my customers needs. If you might get interrupted by something you know about, don't que up. Obviously there are unforeseen occurrences that can interrupt. I would like to make a side note to the work from home or stay at home parents. Don't Que for a dungeon while your child is up and running around the house. They need to be supervised. I once had a mom say in chat: "ahhhh one sec!"

Then a min later she came back on and said her 2 year old had picked up a sharp knife and was running around the house........ /facepalm

Really? This is not fair to your child number one, and it is not fair to the group.

This is not to say if your kid is down for their normal afternoon 2 hour nap and they happen to wake up early there is a problem, just choose where your attention is going to be. No one wants to wait for a constantly afk player, you have 4 other humans at the other end of your group waiting on you.

I am in no way including bathroom breaks in this section, obviously we all need those at unexpected times.

Communication is your friend
You may know a dungeon like the back of your hand, or you may be new to the content and have no idea what pulls do what, where do patrols cruise, etc, etc. Just because you do not know, does not mean you are not qualified to play with those who do. Every single encounter in the game was "new content" at some point in every players life.
So, if you don't know about a fight, trash pull, etc, Speak up. You wont get booted for being new to content, in fact experienced players will thank you and I have found are normally very helpful when they know someone needs a little info.
If you do know, Speak up. Don't be arrogant, just let the group know from the start that you have run the dungeon numerous times and can answer any questions if needed. This will help the shy or timid to open up and let you know.

If you are a DPS with a good CC let people know, If you are not good at using your CC let people know, they might have tips for you. Many people have played multiple toons and know the best way to do things when it comes to CC. Just because you are not the Tank does not mean you cannot speak up and let the tank know, Hey! Let me CC that mob please, I will even mark him with my mark for CC.
Here is a great resource for making Marking Marcos:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Raid_target_icons

I was healing a run the other day and had to remind the Tank that the boomkin in the group could either Hibernate a dragon, or Cyclon a humanoid to take some damage off him. He thanked me because he had completely forgotten about the Hibernate ability. I was not having trouble healing him when he pulled the bigger groups, but the CC sure did make the group kills go smoother, and amounted for less random damage on the DPS.

Macros are your friend
If you are a tank, know all the fights and prefer to mark targets and lead the group, as many tanks do, make yourself a quick little macro that you can click upon forming a new LFD group to inform everyone. For Example:

/greet
/say Hello, My name is tanktoon and I will be tanking the dungeon for you. Please allow me to do all the pulling, watch your threat, kill order is Skull - X then Star. CC will be marked as moon and diamond. If you do happen to get aggro from a mob please run to me, not away from me. Please do not hesitate to ask about encounters or pulls, I would be more then happy to explain them to you.

Or if you are the healer:

/greet
/say hello, I will be your healer for the run. Please note most of my attention will be on the Tank, I will do my best to heal your pets as I can, but if you have pots and bandages do not be afraid to use them, I wont be offended. If you do not understand the mechanics of a fight please let us know in advance, because if you stand in the fire chances are you will die.

Another thing that might be useful and avoid downtime is to let other know about group buffs or other items that can help the group. My friend is a Pally Tank and after his tanking macro he pops another one that stats he has engineering skill with Jeeves and portable mailbox in case anyone needs a repair or to get something out of the mail, this will stop people from zoning out if they broke something or did not have a change to repair before the dungeon started. I personally do not know how people don't get in the habit of repairing every chance they have, but hey, it is their play style not mine. I happen to have a bunch of extra Fish Feast's left over, and I will drop one every time a new group forms and pop my macro that it is on the ground, that way players who have no cooking skills can at least get a small buff to help the overall performance of the group. Also if you have extra lvl 80 flasks let people know, they wont do much good for heroics or raiding, but for normal dungeons they help a bit.

Boss Fights

I spoke about communication earlier and asking or offering help. I want to add this. EACH time you come to a boss, normal or heroic, ask AGAIN if anyone needs a quick explanation on the fight or what their role will be. Some people may only be familiar with the first 2 bosses cause the last time they came to that dungeon the group fell apart, etc, etc. A quick min or two of typing an explanation of the important stuff will be faster then wiping - running back in and starting over. Don't get upset if someone needs an explanation before you begin, helping more people to be better only helps everyone in the long run. I had done no research at all on the fights in Lost city before I randomly healed if for the first time, so I asked for the important stuff on each encounter just so I knew what was coming and could adapt as needed. We had one wipe because I went oom not realizing how the mechanics of the second phase worked, and was able to distribute my heals better and save the right CD's the second time around. I then explained the mechanics to my wife when she healed it for the first time a few days later and there was no wipe. Knowledge share is a good thing.

If you ask and no one speaks up that they don't know the fight I still recommend tanks have the /ready command on macro just to make sure before you go charging in.

If you ask and no one speaks up and they stand in the fire, not kill adds when they should, etc etc. Feel free to /kick People who refuse to communicate shall not get a free ride.

Loot from bosses and BOE dropped from trash:
Obviously we now have the need before greed system from Blizz forced on LFD groups, and while it is pretty good, it certainly lacks on other points. If you are concerned about loot, perhaps looking for something in particular, perhaps gear that does not match your current spec, let people know. As a healer or tank I have a personal rule that I will only roll on an out of spec item if no one else wants it, or no one else cares, I find this out by asking. Some people may not be cool with it, some might be. Adapt to the group, you are playing with random people it is not always gonna go your way.

Recently I was running a random as Shadow DPS, and the druid healer rolled on a hit rating caster trinket that dropped of the first boss. I mentioned it after he won it that is was a dps trinket and he just dropped group during the next pull with no explanation. I would of been ok with it if he asked first, or said something like hey I am only healing this because I need the trinket for my main dps set. I have also seen similar instances where the person rolled on an item by accident and thankfully you can trade items with others, and many times I have seen loot transfer from one person to the other. A little communication goes a long way.

As for BOE's we could hope in a perfect world that people would all greed on them, but if someone can actually equip it, I am always ok with giving up the roll for them. Remember, this is a game, the loot is pixels on a screen, and you can always try again.


Conclusion
You have seen a pattern in this read, Communication. You have a keyboard, use it. If you type slow, have macros on the ready, they are easy to make and use.

If you refuse to communicate with your LFD group failure rates are going to be higher. Painful Heroic runs are 20% gear and 80% communication failure. (I just made up that stat, not based on anything but my experience)

I am sure most of this has been said before, and will be said again, and I am sure I could improve this guide, please let me know how it can be improved if you have ideas I missed. This guide is not for people who raid and exist in large guilds where there is always people to play with. This is for the casual player.

Thanks for reading, the large wall of text has just Crit you for 110k, guess you should of seen it coming, or perhaps you forgot to ask.