Call to Arms = Math Fail!

[SirLancelittle]

Normally I try not to jump to conclusions about Blizzard's decision (as they generally are more experienced and have spent more time thinking about Wow than I have). However, when it comes to the new Call to Arms bonus, I feel like Blizzard is missing an obvious problem with the new call to arms math...

Tanks already have a huge advantage when it comes to queuing for heroics. Instant queues (instead of the 45 mins it was for dps today) plus it is easy as a tank to find a dps who will pay you 50-100g for your instant queue. I can only conclude, therefore, that the bonus of flasks or gold will not provide any additional motivation for tanks to queue. That leaves pets and mounts as the primary motivation.

From everything I've seen when it comes to mounts versus pets everyone is going to care about the mounts. After all most of the pets can be bought at the AH for relatively cheap if you really cared. So the real draw will be the chance to get one of three epic mounts. But here is where the math doesn't work.

Let's say the drop rate of a given mount from Call of Arms is the same as the drop rate from running an old instance for it. This would be a 1% drop chance. Sounds pretty low until you realize many players run over 100 heroics per expansion. With a 1% drop chance this means you would average over 1 mount per expansion, meaning essentially every tank would have at least 1 of the three epic mounts. Well if every tank has it then suddenly its value (which is mostly how rare it is) is gone.

So lets say blizzard realizes this and drops the drop rate so that mounts are still rare. Suddenly we have a drop rate more like .01% (so that more like 1-5% of people will have the mount). Well let's image that you are a dps right now and you are considering tanking. You haven't done it thus far because tanking is more of hassle, you don't have the gear, etc. You haven't done it despite the fact it would make you gold and save you tons of time. Are you really going to change now if there is only a .01% chance you will get anything out of it?

[Kärmä]

Tanks already have a huge advantage when it comes to queuing for heroics. Instant queues (instead of the 45 mins it was for dps today) plus it is easy as a tank to find a dps who will pay you 50-100g for your instant queue. I can only conclude, therefore, that the bonus of flasks or gold will not provide any additional motivation for tanks to queue. That leaves pets and mounts as the primary motivation.

You have to solo queue for the rewards.

[Deleted]

Getting a instant group is not enough?
Granted alot of groups flat out fail, you can do alot more as a tank then you can as DPS.

I would most likely say it depends on how big the chance is to get flasks, lets face it, the droprate of those mounts will be retardedly low so your going to look at the other rewards - gold, gems, flasks.

[Aoek1]

they only listed a few mounts im sure there are more, :example the blue drake from Utguard thats a heroic mount is it not? im sure they will put in all the mounts that drop for all heroics in that line up.

[P4R45171K]

So what I can see is that you are QQing that either you being a DPS you have to still wait X amount of time, or you are a tank/healer who doesn't care about it, an if that's the case I juss gatta say this.

Shut up, no one cares what QQ you post here.

(User infracted for this post)

[Hottie4Hire]

The flasks are stupid. If you're queuing as a tank, you will get Flask of Steelskin. Any remotely decent tank will be able to tell you that these flasks are utterly worthless and will continue to be utterly worthless even after the buff.

[Eorayn]

I don't see this as QQ.

[Twotonsteak]

The idea is fail. It was fail when they used it as "incentive" to get more people to complete Oculus. It's fail now. There's already a problem with tanks that think they're gods gift to the game with a completely ignorant (and often incompetent) concept of what DPS do. Seriously if I had a dollar for every tank that said, "all DPS have to do is worry about big numbers," I'd buy Blizzard and kick whoever I had this "Call to Arms" idea in the nads.

[Sand Person]

im guessing the queue time will be longer cause even more dps will be trying for that ish. watch. blizz likes it on paper but it wont work in practice.

[Xenorun]

The flasks are stupid. If you're queuing as a tank, you will get Flask of Steelskin. Any remotely decent tank will be able to tell you that these flasks are utterly worthless and will continue to be utterly worthless even after the buff.

Not entirely true. Once they get buffed, they'll be situational. Whereas they're currently just flat out bad. Some fights will favor it. For the most part though.. Resistance + Mastery Elixirs gg

[Strafferen]

Imo, the worst that can happen, is some of the DPS toons that never has tanked anything besides Rush-Wailing Caverns or the likes, will pick up tanking as offspec and start running as this... Without care and knowledge about how to tank, nor willingness to learn either.

Granted, there's alot of good tanks out there playing as DPS, but... My god, there's many of the opposite side as well. DK's attempting to tank in DPS gear (cause they don't have any tankgear), thus failing on every trash pull.

- I applaud Blizzard Entertainment for realising there's a problem with queuetimers. I just fear this will end up doing more damage, than helping.

[Amunetia]

Okay let me pose this situation to you that I am positive will arise from all of this. Because of these rewards some dps that isnt very bright and thinks they can tank in either dps gear, dps spec or worse both. So the group as soon as they can kicks this tank. Next tank pops up, hey look at that another person who really shouldnt be tanking but is because they want rewards. Well now due to blizzards new kick policy you cant really kick that 2nd tank. What to do. Well at this point the group in all honesty will fall apart if the dps and healers are lucky they missed the dungeon debuff. If they're not well you wait 30 mins, requeue and hope not to be in this same situation again. But in this scenario the dps and healers have now spent more time waiting to do the heroic as they would as of now. Precisely why I dont pug on my chars.

[tibben]

They're just missing the point with Call to Arms. Very few tanks are going to be motivated to join a bunch of random fail pugs through LFD regardless of what Blizzard offers them. Maybe this will make a 35 minute queue into a 33 minute queue, but most decent tanks aren't going to give a crap about a chance to get a mount, which they won't get anyway since half the heroics they join will either fail or take an hour to finish. I'm certain that every tank in my guild that runs a heroic will run with guild mates if they choose to run any at all. None of us need any valor points anymore anyway except on some of our alts, which we will always choose to run with guild mates anyway.

[Deleted]

The idea is fail. It was fail when they used it as "incentive" to get more people to complete Oculus. It's fail now. There's already a problem with tanks that think they're gods gift to the game with a completely ignorant (and often incompetent) concept of what DPS do. Seriously if I had a dollar for every tank that said, "all DPS have to do is worry about big numbers," I'd buy Blizzard and kick whoever I had this "Call to Arms" idea in the nads.

And everytime i, as a Tank, hear "Whats *inser random CC* *you just need to do you DPS-like Rotation* or *Tanking is easy* i would get a Dollar i would be VERY rich.
I surely seen some Tanks that are "high in the sky" with their noses(as DPS). But there are also Tanks, that are friendly. Hell i don´t even have problems to explain Bosses for the 500th time, no problem.
complete overgeneralisations are bullshit btw.

Also:
"QQ my que is sooo long"
*Blizz implements a system that encourages the least played role, in this case, Tanks to sign in the Finder to shorten the que*
"QQ Tanks get stuff i don´t"

-.-
WoW-Players, no way to do it right....


EDIT:
@Above me:
I see it in a similar way, but it may encourage some DPS to Tank.
(okay there is a possibility they´ll hit a Brickwall but it should shorten the ques a bit at least)

[QQingshaman]

this will work to some degree me thinks, there are 4 classes that can tank, and 4 classes that can heal. healing is less demanding than tanking atm, and less "scary", so you see shortages of tanks, but never healers. but then again this could be because 3/4 healer classes wear the same gear for healing and deepsing, where as none of the tanks do.

i think that the main problem is that there are fewer tanks, they get geared faster, and then stop doing heroics. i think this will help to remedy it at least a little.

[SirLancelittle]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of my post. For the record, I'm a healer so in many ways this affects me the least. I'm not trying to argue whether or not it is fair to give tanks more loot than everyone else. I'm arguing the using epic mounts is not a good solution because the drop chances are impossible to balance. You can't make the chance high enough to encourage people to run while keeping it low enough to keep the mounts rare.

[Ineras]

I can see this failing.... Pet/mount collectors that have never tanked before queueing up as tanks and then not being able to do the dungeon and subsequently getting kicked until a tank comes along that has been queueing as a tank all along in cata. This basically defeats the purpose of the change.

Tanks queueing before change = 200
New tanks queueing because of rewards = 100
Total tanks = 300
Tanks that get kicked because they end up failing = ~100
Groups able to finish a dungeon = ~200

This is just me being pessimistic though.

[dicertification]

My first thought after reading about call to arms dungeon queuing was I should get my dk leveled amd do some tanking. I think this will bring more tanks into dungeons, even of it is short lived, and I'm sure there will be a number of people trying to farm mounts out of it.

[Deleted]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of my post. For the record, I'm a healer so in many ways this affects me the least. I'm not trying to argue whether or not it is fair to give tanks more loot than everyone else. I'm arguing the using epic mounts is not a good solution because the drop chances are impossible to balance. You can't make the chance high enough to encourage people to run while keeping it low enough to keep the mounts rare.

Since the example Mounts are from instances easily soloable with every class at 85 its right now not even an issue.
Also i really think the Dropchance WILL be very low to keep the system worthwhile.
And to be really honest(Tank myself). If i ever wanted to get the Mounts, i would have farmed it. Now it will be a niche extra chanche for a Bonus.

[Chaltione]

The OP is ignoring a noticable portion of the playerbase: Tanks that have the gear they want, and don't bother to do heroics anymore, but at the same time wants vanity items.

I'll gladly queue up on my fully decked tank(s) with this system up than do Stratholme ... one ... more ... time.