Drastic Changes to Random Dungeon Finder in Patch Notes

[Baker St Irregulars]

# Dungeon Finder
* The Dungeon Finder now attempts to avoid putting damage-dealing classes with the same armor type in a group.
* Players will now get bonus rewards 7 times per week (while earning less than 980 Valor Points) instead of once a day when using Dungeon Finder.
* When there is only 1 player left in a Dungeon Finder group, they will now be able to queue for replacements as long as they queue within 2 minutes or stay in the dungeon.
* The Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms will now identify which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon.
o The least represented class icon will show within the Dungeon Finder to indicate the role that is eligible to earn the bonus reward.
o Players must queue solo with the currently indicated least represented class (by the system) and complete the dungeon up to and including the final boss in order to be eligible for the bonus reward.
o The bonus reward will be displayed to eligible (system identified as least represented) classes within the UI.
o Once the dungeon is completed the eligible player will receive a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries (account bound) with various potential rewards including: gold, rare gems, non-combat pets, and (very rare) mounts.

OK we all know about Call to Arms, but what we haven't discussed is this:

* When there is only 1 player left in a Dungeon Finder group, they will now be able to queue for replacements as long as they queue within 2 minutes or stay in the dungeon.

Everyone remembers my prediction, how I said stress on the RDF will be temporarily reduced.

I now predict that initial queuing into the RDF will actually not be reduced, and may in fact increase; but, once you get in, you will have a reduced queue time since you are now rejoining an entirely new group.

This is the Disneyland metaphor I keep using. Imagine if everyone is riding a disneyland ride, and instead of leaving the ride when it's over, they stay in their seats. Now, you have a massive varied waiting time outside of the RDF. Tanks will now be placed in these groups being formed by DPS who just finished a dungeon run, leaving those who are in the queue waiting longer. The initial excitement about the CTA Bag may, in fact, reduce the time spent waiting for their initial placement in the RDF, at the same time, initial placement in the RDF will increase because previous groups of DPS will rejoin RDF after their first dungeon.

In less than 1 month, this change is going to create a trainwreck of a waiting time bottleneck IN the RDF queue.

It's going to be a disaster, and I bet you they will get rid of it within 2 months time.

[DietzThought]

I believe what they actually mean is, when the final dungeon boss isnt killed yet, and everybody leaves but you, you can use the dungeon finder to find 4 new players to finish that dungeon.

[Guzug]

Reread the notes. I thnk you might be misunderstanding. This change is for when everyone but one person drops the group mid-run. Currently if the other 4 people drop group the fifth person can not requeue to finish the dungeon as they would if only 3 others dropped. They just need to remain in the dungeon and requeue within 2 minutes.

[Baker St Irregulars]

I believe what they actually mean is, when the final dungeon boss isnt killed yet, and everybody leaves but you, you can use the dungeon finder to find 4 new players to finish that dungeon.

I hope that is indeed the truth, and I misread it.

[Arlee]

Ummm... I think you are misunderstanding this a bit. This only matters if everyone leaves an in progress group except one person. If you queue up at the end of a dungeon it would either just give you a new group in the completed dungeon (which would be total fail piss a lot of people off) or it would just place you in the regular RDF.... you only are put at the beginning of the queue if you have an in progress dungeon.

So to use your Disneyland metaphor it isn't about people staying one when the ride finishes, it is about the ride stopping in the middle, everyone except one person jumping out; and then them letting the now open seats get filled up to finish the original ride.

[Baker St Irregulars]

See I've always had the queue come up to finish the dungeon even when I was the only one left.... but maybe that's just because I was slow in clicking the replacement button when there was 1 other left in my group, so I will take your word for it and I hope I am indeed wrong ^_^

[Miralynn]

I believe what they actually mean is, when the final dungeon boss isnt killed yet, and everybody leaves but you, you can use the dungeon finder to find 4 new players to finish that dungeon.

This. Because it's annoying as hell when you wait on a DPS queue just to get an instance people don't like (usually Deadmines or GB), then the tank and the healer ditch, and the other two DPS ditch because they don't want to wait, so you get screwed out of your entire queue time because you can't queue if you're the last one left.

[quietstrm07]

All I can say is, I hope people with dps toons try and queue on Tuesdays/Wednesdays because I'm sure a decent number of tanks will spam their random heroics (probably for the new heroics for the geared tanks) early in the week to get them over and done with

[Deleted]

More variables to assemble a group, can't be good in my opinion..

[Blackeyecycle]

I believe what they actually mean is, when the final dungeon boss isnt killed yet, and everybody leaves but you, you can use the dungeon finder to find 4 new players to finish that dungeon.

This is also the way I interpreted it. Hoping that's correct.

[Baker St Irregulars]

All I can say is, I hope people with dps toons try and queue on Tuesdays/Wednesdays because I'm sure a decent number of tanks will spam their random heroics (probably for the new heroics for the geared tanks) early in the week to get them over and done with

Yeah, this:
* Players will now get bonus rewards 7 times per week (while earning less than 980 Valor Points) instead of once a day when using Dungeon Finder.

Is definitely going to screw with different days of the week. I'm waiting to see how it'll effect DPS queue time if all tanks get their randoms done early, leaving weekends potentially tankless...

[Arlee]

All I can say is, I hope people with dps toons try and queue on Tuesdays/Wednesdays because I'm sure a decent number of tanks will spam their random heroics (probably for the new heroics for the geared tanks) early in the week to get them over and done with

I was thinking this too... but I had a chat with our guild's mt and he pointed out something I hadn't thought of previously. A lot of guilds raid during the week so those tanks are probably more likely to do their heroics later in the week when they aren't raiding. So given that, I think overall it might even out some.

[Deleted]

OK we all know about Call to Arms, but what we haven't discussed is this:


Everyone remembers my prediction, how I said stress on the RDF will be temporarily reduced.

I now predict that initial queuing into the RDF will actually not be reduced, and may in fact increase; but, once you get in, you will have a reduced queue time since you are now rejoining an entirely new group.

This is the Disneyland metaphor I keep using. Imagine if everyone is riding a disneyland ride, and instead of leaving the ride when it's over, they stay in their seats. Now, you have a massive varied waiting time outside of the RDF. Tanks will now be placed in these groups being formed by DPS who just finished a dungeon run, leaving those who are in the queue waiting longer. The initial excitement about the CTA Bag may, in fact, reduce the time spent waiting for their initial placement in the RDF, at the same time, initial placement in the RDF will increase because previous groups of DPS will rejoin RDF after their first dungeon.

In less than 1 month, this change is going to create a trainwreck of a waiting time bottleneck IN the RDF queue.

It's going to be a disaster, and I bet you they will get rid of it within 2 months time.

I have been thinking that the point of the new system is stopping pugs from working and forcing guild joining/guild running.

Anything you can think of, blizzard can as well - so when they do something apparently dumb, perhaps they simply have a different aim than the one they publicly state?

Hmm maybe that sounds a bit tinfoil.....

[Deleted]

i actualy think, it will be an incentive to push more players towards tanking and healing.... im pretty sure blizzard factored in that everyone can be a dps but not every class can tank/heal, so as soon as certain "saturation" of them is in the que or in a dungeon the CtA will get turned off automaticly...

a LOT of player will want to bring their alts to ilvl346 as soon as possible and most people i know who play hybrids collect alternative gear "just to have it" ....now they will use it... in most cases badly, hehe... but everyone has to learn at some point


this wont change the balance of the game and we wont see tanks and healers suddenly overtake the dps playerbase.... but it will most certainly shorten the queue-time for dps and bribe more people into tanking/healing

although your disney-land ride argument makes a lot of sense... im sure there is a priority system in place which will keep continueing groups from snatching away tanks... also you have to remember that CtA loot-bag is only for people who go solo into the RDF... so bag-farming tanks will be bouncing around grps all the time... we'll have to wait and see how it plays out

[Knough]

This is the Disneyland metaphor I keep using. Imagine if everyone is riding a disneyland ride, and instead of leaving the ride when it's over, they stay in their seats.

No, they go on the ride, but partway through everything needed to make the ride go but them drops out, instead of queueing for a nonbroken ride, if they stay on it (or queue withing 2 min) then they can fix it not lose it.

[Bubblebarbie]

After waiting in a half an hour queue you should be able to finish your dungeon even if all the bads leave which is what I think they mean. Your now able to queue even if everyone else leaves.

I'm excited about the satchel and because of it my priest will be joining more queues!