Why did M+ players become so toxic with BFA?

[ArmageddonX]

It's Raider.io - Its fostered an environment of elitism instead of just bringing people and doing your best.

[Soon-TM]

with BfA? This problem is as old as online games, dude.

M+ is just the perfect ambient to cultivate a toxic combination of Elitism and Speedrunning. Douchebags feed from it.

This. It was already a problem in Legion, but it has become even worse now, to the point that I won't be pugging M+ anymore. I rather stick with 100% guild groups and save myself the headache.

[Nerovar]

The worst thing about the shitty people in M+ is that your key always gets fucked if some retard gets butthurt over nothing. At the moment there's probably nothing worse than m+ pugging.

[Marrilaife]

That's pretty funny.

I do find, that if I do come across a dick, it's normally a tank. The person with the easiest roll in game.

Then go tank some m+ and see how it's an "easiest" job. People constantly whine left and right because they think this should be skipped, that should be pulled together with something else, you pull too little, you pull too much, you go too fast, you go too slow, you wait for healer mana, you let dps drop their buff stacks, you didn't wait, healer is oom, you put the boss in x corner not y corner, generally everyone feels entitled to claiming the best path throughout the dungeon but no one will say anything beforehand, just complain afterwards.

Why do you think for a good key there's 30 dps for every tank. Because they don't need to lead anything, they just join, play their class and then backseat drive.

llol... just go in as tank and yolo the instances until u learn them... i did that as protection paladin...

See above, the amount of trash talk tank and healers get is immense, I remember trying a DHT+13 back in Legion on a prot warrior alt, dps was crap, ninja pulling everything, then we wiped, leader left and whispered me all the expletives and how should I "never queue for dungeon again". What I did was requeue for DHT+13 with a different group on the same character and proceed to +2 it.

It's really hard to stay nice and calm and play a tank in pugs. Either you're a complete asshole, or it just slowly gets to you and you stop pugging. Atm I'm avoiding pugs like a plague, pugged maybe a couple in BFA and it was a horrid experience every single time.

lol... out of the 50 people in my guild only 5 are actively playing outside of raids and 20-30 of them log in to raid and then they log out again... my friends only want to do one 10 key then they dont do m+ again...

Yep, pretty much this, most dps players only want a ready made +10, do 1 dungeon then log off for the rest of the week. My guild has more than enough tanks to cover every dps but we have to ask friends outside of guild to fill slots because guildies are usually uninterested unless it's a ready made +10 key in a favourable dungeon. For example last week I pushed +9 with some friends so we can get a +10 for them, and then I got a guildie pop on discord complaining "why didn't you tell me you're gonna do +10 Atal'dazar I need that dungeon!" But he was not so much interested when I said I have a +9 to push and do whatever comes out of it...

but in what world do we live where "regular people" aren't able to find friends or a guild, so that they need not to PuG? Is wow only full with people who can not find other people to play with over longer terms?

Because lots of players are unhelpful, self-centered and reward-driven.

I often come help guildies with dungeons even when I've already done my m+ for the week, however many of them behave in a manner "I wanna do +10 when I want to and someone should provide me a key so I don't have to push mine". Now in pugs this is emphasized 10x more. People see "oh +10 freehold on a silver platter... shit why am I being declined?" They only want to do the dungeon when it suits them, there's rarely any reciprocity, they blame keyholders for cherry picking fotm comps and high raider.io but on the other hand they're unwilling to help friends or guildies with a lower key to get towards a higher one.

I had a guy in my guild constantly complain he's being excluded from groups, but every time I asked him to join he'd say "oh I have to take a shower", "sorry I'm going out soon", "I need to chill now", "I'm going to sleep soon", "I have to eat", I mean if someone has such a strict timetable and also won't tell you ahead of time when he wants to do his m+, how can you blame others for not bending to your whims.

I had worse in previous guilds in legion, I would have people that I'd asked when they want to do m+, schedule a date and time according to their wishes, and then they would be a no-show without previous notice they won't come.

So yeah. Pug mentality tainted everything, people don't want to be cooperative and plan anything, they're just "oh I'll log 1 day when I feel like it and I expect to get into the first group I clicked on, otherwise it's horrible and elitist I haven't got my way".

You're trying to arrange anything with people and it's impossible to get the group together because everyone wants their stuff when they want it and are unwilling to compromise and go when majority wants to go. People don't want to adjust to others and be mindful, they rather pick pugs as they pick potatoes from a box in a supermarket.

[juselara02]

That is a very fair point. But anyways, was that enough to be a dick?

[Deleted]

Well, as a shaman nobody accepts me for any m+
So I can't tell stories. But in the past I decided to only go with friends/guildes, not anymore with PUGs. Less stress, more fun. Unfortunately, since BfA we got a huge part of asshole players in our guild/raid too. They are everywhere, it's frightening. I'm pretty sure not the best gamer in the world but also not the worst. Enough for our guild. But those, who screek the loudest are heard and I don't longer discuss. Too old for this shit. So if anything went wrong it is me, cause the other cry louder or their head stick deeper in the asses of the raidlead. Now I stay on the bench. It's a bit sad, but in this game full of egoistic assholes it's the easiest way to go.
The community in the forums arrived with their behaviour in the game and nobody can do anything against it. That's sad.

[Weeps]

Some people handle failure better than others.

Some people handle stress better than others.

Some people handle deadlines (ie: m+ timer) better than others.

Some people actually feel anxiety when the clock is winding down. When it ends, it all comes out.

I don't even give a flying fuck about M+. I think the dungeons in BfA are boring AF, so I have only done 1 week of M+. That's my choice.

[Tekkommo]

Then go tank some m+ and see how it's an "easiest" job.

I do. I like to Tank, Heal and DPS them.

The toxicity has existed since vanilla, it's nothing new. The OP has just forgotten the experiences of previous expansions like a lot of people on this forum.

[lollermittens]

They need to get rid of the fucking timer and introduce more Dungeon passives/ mechanics as you increase your key level.

That's the correct way of fixing Mythic+. But Blizzard seems content on slapping a timer and calling this a difficulty increase.

The fault is both the community's and Blizzard's for encouraging this kind of behavior to be seen as acceptable.

[nodq]

I joined a +12 WM pug today. Everything went smoothly but when we got to the last boss we were 2% short because the tank didn’t pull enough trash because teaming calculation was off. The healer who didn’t say a word the whole run goes off on the tank calling him an idiot, trash tanking etc I forget all the expletives, and then leaves the group with 5ish minutes left on the timer to down the boss and get 2%.

I have been running keys up to level 23 by the end of legion and I have never seen the levels of elitism and raging among random groups like I do now. We are barely past the first month of mythic+ being out and you will get criticized so hard if you don’t know the exact pulls/routes/skips/interrupt/dispel/fear pathing/aggro range/charm/cc without any voice or pre-planning. Some groups do things totally different.

For example I did a +14 TAD last week and I had never seen T-Rex boss tanked by the stairs and didn’t know to run under them during fear so I spawned some raptors going to where I normally have. I got lit up so hard and called a brain dead tart jabrony among other things... oh it’s not like we even wiped either.

I have never seen such a level of insults/toxicity/rage quitting over even minor events in dungeons. I got my raider.io to 1123 so far on my own... but I’m starting to not have fun anymore and am starting to think it’s not worth it to try and push further. I feel like you have to walk on eggshells, be absolutely perfect and pray the way you know to do things is the same as the groups or else it’s a bust. And in B4 run with a guild group or make your own- because of the times I play I’m not able to keep a consistent m+ team together.

I don’t remember legion being anywhere close to this bad. Has the MDI and focus on raider.io causes this or have toxic players just driven most reasonable people out? M+ was my favorite part of the game coming out of legion and I was so excited for all the new dungeons and comps going into BFA... I’m feel very salty now.

So back to the title..

That was already the case in legion. Mythic+ with random people is the most toxic shit i have ever seen in WoW since 2005. When I am not able to do 1 mythic+ a week because after 5 groups where always at least someone ha such a big ego to talk shit and flame and blame and then leave the group... I have no more interest in searching for groups and especially tanks just to do this one stupid m+ for the weekly. It is annoying as fuck, these dungeons are not fun to begin with but the time investing and at the end of the day time waste is just stupid.
In Legion was the same shit when legion was new, and you could deplete your keys, people left groups left and right and you were fucked to invest even more time into this bullshit.
Of course you could search for people and make friends for it, but of that is not your goal, because you just play PvP and do not care about these boring Diablo3 dungeon running over and over again for actually nothing. Then yeh... you are stuck with all these random underaged morons with their obsessive egos that can not handle any pressure or opinions of other people whatsoever.

Problem of WoW BfA currently is, that this Diablo3 dungeon running is the only content there is for most people, besides Raids ofc which most do not do every day. And PvP is just a little portion of the playerbase, so. WoW content became = raids and mythic+ - thats it. And people get very mad and angry when they have to this shit every day for hours and only that. The result is what you just witnessed.

[ID811717]

snip

I have not noticed a big change between Legion and now.

Also, try to get everyone join some discord voice channel. It really helps when you can discuss things on voice as you go, instead of getting frustrated that someone does not play the tactics/pulls that you think are optimal, and eventually lashing out in chat. Most groups doing +12 and higher are happy to join discord. Just pick a channel, join it, and link to them. It helps even if someone does not join or if someone cannot speak (or even if you cannot speak).

And in B4 run with a guild group or make your own- because of the times I play I’m not able to keep a consistent m+ team together.

It's not just you. M+ groups are hard to form (and even harder to keep alive). Whereas most guilds just don't have more than 2-3 people interested to run high key just for the fun of pushing the boundaries.

Has the MDI and focus on raider.io causes this or have toxic players just driven most reasonable people out? M+ was my favorite part of the game coming out of legion and I was so excited for all the new dungeons and comps going into BFA... I’m feel very salty now.

I have been thinking about M+ player base quite a bit recently. I think M+ is just becoming more popular, and more people are trying to push high keys for the first time ever. There are also people who got just a taste of pushing high keys in Legion, but stopped to wait for BfA release for various reasons, and started pushing keys on a whole new level of dedication this expansion. The growth of M+ player base is bound to attract some bad blood, but things will get smoother with time.

- - - Updated - - -

I’m ranked in the top 20 for DK tanks for my realm by forming or joining good groups using discord and building relationships with good players but I still run into disgustingly toxic players from time to time. Thankfully, I’ve built up enough of a friends list base or guild mates to mitigate this problem

Things get much better if you can reach world 1000ish overall rank.
I have met a good share of toxic players somewhere in world 3000-6000 ranks in Legion, eager to rage quit keys that are depleted, and frustrated that they cannot push their score much higher (for a variety of reasons... including their toxicity).

[ID811717]

I had a player abandon his own key before the first pull in atal'dazar because I (blood dk) wanted to do Dino before zombie. I feel like I run into as many nice, fun to play with, decent players as I do complete elitist idiots, so it's not the worst, but I feel like some people are popping off over almost nothing sometimes. Feels pretty extreme compared to what I remember from mid legion.

I mean it is against the usual meta of the dungeon, he probably lost all hope for a fast clear at that point. While I don't agree with throwing in the towel, I'm shocked at how many people opt for the worst possibly strategy in many cases and declare it to be the right way, and I'm not even talking about some elaborate tricks to bypass trash that only work half of the time, clear things which have become the meta because it has proven to be the most effective way.

What do you actually mean by doing "Dino before zombie"? Dino is clearly Rezan. Who is the "zombie"? Is it Vol'kaal (boss) or is it Reanimated Honor Guard (trash mob that dk tanks control)? The meta for bdk tanks is to control Reanimated Honor Guard and go kill Rezan first. The controlled mob does not increase your DPS that much, but everything helps when going against the timer. However, if the key is below +13/+14, then there is no need to get obsessed with min-max-ing.

- - - Updated - - -

You are playing with pugs from the LFD tool.

What kind of people are there for the most part? The cunts who can't socialize, befriend and become a part of a healthy long lasting guild. So no shit people are toxic there. The people who act like normal human beings are doing mythic+'s with their guilds and friends.

The entire high end M+ community is based on pugging. Either you learn to navigate pugs, or you never get a chance to play really high keys. Guilds are for clearing weekly chests, and friend list is of no use until you have spent months befriending good players from pugs.

[Marrilaife]

I do. I like to Tank, Heal and DPS them.

The toxicity has existed since vanilla, it's nothing new. The OP has just forgotten the experiences of previous expansions like a lot of people on this forum.

Yeah, but toxicity is most often directed towards the tanks, seconded by healers.

There was literally a thread on the forums some time ago how "people should be punished for leaving m+" and the story unfolded the tank left because 2 dps were flaming him, because he didn't want to skip some mobs in temple of sethraliss.

So yeah, you either develop to be an asshole, or you don't give a fuck (and for example drop groups to not service entitled people), or you stop pugging and only run with known people.

The easiest role in a mythic+ is a dps solely because there's 3 of them so at least one can completely slack. I can't believe how many dps with high raider.io scores I met during Legion in pugs and find out they can't interrupt, stun, purge etc. because probably always the other people did it for them. Tank and healer can't have anyone covering for them, while for example in a raid with multiple healers there can be some slackers (I often see it, there are healers who mindlessly spam aoe and leave spot healing, dispelling, etc. to others)

Tanking is also easier in a raid than in m+ because usually you have predefined positions for the boss by the raidleader / tactics. In a mythic+ there are often multiple approaches to pulls (especially depending on affixes or class composition), so it's actually more complicated to tank than any other role which doesn't have to plan any pulls, just follows the tank.

That would be all fine and dandy, but you have examples even from this thread how people instead of following the tank start backseat driving and complaining. Like the story of doing dino before Volkaal in Atal'Dazar.

[ID811717]

Few days ago, Ive been in WM +8 on alt on different server and been grouped with my mains guildies. I just couldnt believe how they overwhelmed the tank with insults for missing the timer by 17 seconds, because we had to backtrack to kill more trash. Words like cancer, kill yourself, retard - I just couldnt believe those are the same people Im rading with for last 2 years. I played few m+ with them, our guild tank were doing mistakes, but they were totally calm, were even joking about it.
Interesting what anonimity does to people.

Hell yeah, nearly every toxic player out there is someone's polite and friendly guild mate.
That is why it helps so much when you join voice comms for M+ runs. People get out of their shells and start to communicate and cooperate.

- - - Updated - - -

I've personally left a lot of keys because the players in them are not capable, though I don't consider this toxic if I don't really say anything. Often this is greeted by horrible personal insults in whisper, asking me to die or get cancer or whatever. All I do is report those players.

I don't mind when someone says "sorry, this is taking too long, too painful, I have to go" and quits the group. But if someone just silently quits the group (especially mid-pull, especially a tank) - that's disrespectful towards everyone else. I see no reason to cause any drama, in whispers or otherwise. But on a higher level of play, when you meet the same people over and over again, I'm making sure that such players are not invited in my groups again. The bad reputation spread around. Funny enough, some people in the past have tried changing their names to get a clean slate in the high end M+ community.

[Druantis]

Agree toxicity levels have risen for BFA mythic pluses, and agree most raids have reduced toxic levels in BFA for a simple reason.

I was in a Legion mythic raiding guild that had switched servers and invited me along. The one other balance druid on raid team would post parses EVERY single pull and call me out -- because I only had high purple/low orange and he always had high orange parses on kills (he also had high orange on every pull even with first attempts on bosses). I thought it was because he was actually that much better of a player than me and had gotten lucky with bis legendary at the time in the first week. He of course demanded (and got) all the best raid drops.

Turns out it was because he was using a rotation bot and was banned during a wave. His excuse, of course, was that wow was suddenly shitty and he was only using a fish bot to help the team with feasts. Team lost all that gear to him and progression because we had to recruit core players (three of his friends including raid lead were also banned). This is when I found out these even existed and starting following their discords and sites.

That guild broke up and then three more mythic raid guilds consolidated and broke over subsequent rotation bot ban waves. He, of course, came back to shitty wow six months later claiming he originally left of his own volition because Druids were shit and now he only plays Monk. Blizz targeted these rotation bots for the first time (only going after farming bots before that) when they decided to push for esport status, and most of the public ones were banned (tens of thousands of players). Apparently he is now a raid leader for a toxic mythic team (coincidentally started playing again after the new round of bots came out) and still somehow manages to type "corrective" insults during every pull.

My point: if you see someone trash talking/whispering you in BFA mythic pluses/raids in chat window (or eating/drinking loudly on discord) DURING pulls and still doing godly dps/hps/tanking simply right click on their name and report them for rotation botting. Because ANYONE can easily focus on mechanics if they have nothing else to do. If they are not botting, no harm done -- blizz sure as hell isn't going to ban them because of your opinion. If they are, it is more data points to help blizz target the recent round of updated rotation bots (which are much less public -- with players only in the thousands using them now, and so far I've only seen them in mythic pluses).

These bots were also rampant in Legion pvp (the new rotation bots focus on pve because they think blizz will leave them alone) and also the reason people could sell pilot runs and play specs they've never touched before at the highest levels.

No point in arguing with the inbred sociopaths who use these bots to be "leet" anyways -- they are never wrong. Blizz will be banning these new bots in the next several weeks anyways (always on a Sunday to reduce customer service issues) -- they just had one October 3-6 for a russian bot (so if anyone on your teams suddenly isn't playing...) the only downside is that mythic plus queues take longer and far fewer players will be "perfect."

[mrcodez]

I joined a +12 WM pug today. Everything went smoothly but when we got to the last boss we were 2% short because the tank didn’t pull enough trash because teaming calculation was off. The healer who didn’t say a word the whole run goes off on the tank calling him an idiot, trash tanking etc I forget all the expletives, and then leaves the group with 5ish minutes left on the timer to down the boss and get 2%.

I have been running keys up to level 23 by the end of legion and I have never seen the levels of elitism and raging among random groups like I do now. We are barely past the first month of mythic+ being out and you will get criticized so hard if you don’t know the exact pulls/routes/skips/interrupt/dispel/fear pathing/aggro range/charm/cc without any voice or pre-planning. Some groups do things totally different.

For example I did a +14 TAD last week and I had never seen T-Rex boss tanked by the stairs and didn’t know to run under them during fear so I spawned some raptors going to where I normally have. I got lit up so hard and called a brain dead tart jabrony among other things... oh it’s not like we even wiped either.

I have never seen such a level of insults/toxicity/rage quitting over even minor events in dungeons. I got my raider.io to 1123 so far on my own... but I’m starting to not have fun anymore and am starting to think it’s not worth it to try and push further. I feel like you have to walk on eggshells, be absolutely perfect and pray the way you know to do things is the same as the groups or else it’s a bust. And in B4 run with a guild group or make your own- because of the times I play I’m not able to keep a consistent m+ team together.

I don’t remember legion being anywhere close to this bad. Has the MDI and focus on raider.io causes this or have toxic players just driven most reasonable people out? M+ was my favorite part of the game coming out of legion and I was so excited for all the new dungeons and comps going into BFA... I’m feel very salty now.

So back to the title..

Pretty strange behavior and I've run into similar situations, at much lower keys. It's odd to me because right now M+ runs are far more forgiving for "failing" than they were when introduced. If you don't complete a run in time you get 1-2 less pieces of gear in the chest but still get loot. You also still get weekly chest loot for a +12. If you're into it, you also get raider.io points.
Not finishing in time really has no negative other than slightly less of a chance at gear. I seem to still win gear on "failed" M+ runs because there is still gear in the chest. I'd love to finish all of them within time but...it's not *that* big of a deal.

[ID811717]

Yeah, but toxicity is most often directed towards the tanks, seconded by healers.

It really takes two to tango. I am frequently playing healer specs at different key levels in pugs (I mean, I have been pugging M+ a lot for 1.5 years now). I very rarely get any toxicity get directed at me, like, may be once in 50-100 runs? And most often that's coming from a player in low keys, with bad situational awareness, who would die to heavy avoidable damage and assume it was healer's fault.

Sure, if I happened to call out everyone who fails in stupid ways, I would find lots of toxic drama. But why bother? Likewise, if there is ever a toxic remark, why bother replying? If a player is bad -- or toxic -- just finish the run and make sure to not run more keys with them. I have no incentive to argue with them during an M+ run, resulting in two distracted players not performing at their best (myself and the antagonist). More generally, just try to have some sense of self-worth; if someone is impolite, there is probably no reason you have to prove anything to them. Just ignore them.

I agree it's harder as a tank, because the mere fact that you pull or not pull something can serve as a response to someone's request to do something, and hence escalate a conflict. But in most cases you can still easily avoid taking ownership of that drama.

The easiest role in a mythic+ is a dps solely because there's 3 of them so at least one can completely slack. I can't believe how many dps with high raider.io scores I met during Legion in pugs and find out they can't interrupt, stun, purge etc. because probably always the other people did it for them. Tank and healer can't have anyone covering for them, while for example in a raid with multiple healers there can be some slackers (I often see it, there are healers who mindlessly spam aoe and leave spot healing, dispelling, etc. to others)

The bad gameplay you listed in both M+ and raids is not indicative of player's true ability. In my case, there were days in Legion where I would spend 6-10 hours pushing +26 keys with an M+ group, sitting on voice comms, focused on performing as best as we can. Guess what happened when we were done and some of us decided to go do +15s for whatever reason (often "just for fun")? Yes, a big fun fiesta happened, ignoring most mechanics and trolling anything that moves. I imagine some mythic raiders join their weekly keys with weird mindsets too, including "chill out and tunnel my DPS", fully acknowledging that they are underperforming. But either not caring about it, or being confident they can fix things if shit hits the fan.

[RobertMugabe]

I joined a +12 WM pug today. Everything went smoothly but when we got to the last boss we were 2% short because the tank didn’t pull enough trash because teaming calculation was off. The healer who didn’t say a word the whole run goes off on the tank calling him an idiot, trash tanking etc I forget all the expletives, and then leaves the group with 5ish minutes left on the timer to down the boss and get 2%.

I have been running keys up to level 23 by the end of legion and I have never seen the levels of elitism and raging among random groups like I do now. We are barely past the first month of mythic+ being out and you will get criticized so hard if you don’t know the exact pulls/routes/skips/interrupt/dispel/fear pathing/aggro range/charm/cc without any voice or pre-planning. Some groups do things totally different.

For example I did a +14 TAD last week and I had never seen T-Rex boss tanked by the stairs and didn’t know to run under them during fear so I spawned some raptors going to where I normally have. I got lit up so hard and called a brain dead tart jabrony among other things... oh it’s not like we even wiped either.

I have never seen such a level of insults/toxicity/rage quitting over even minor events in dungeons. I got my raider.io to 1123 so far on my own... but I’m starting to not have fun anymore and am starting to think it’s not worth it to try and push further. I feel like you have to walk on eggshells, be absolutely perfect and pray the way you know to do things is the same as the groups or else it’s a bust. And in B4 run with a guild group or make your own- because of the times I play I’m not able to keep a consistent m+ team together.

I don’t remember legion being anywhere close to this bad. Has the MDI and focus on raider.io causes this or have toxic players just driven most reasonable people out? M+ was my favorite part of the game coming out of legion and I was so excited for all the new dungeons and comps going into BFA... I’m feel very salty now.

So back to the title..

[Updates] Based on responses

1. No. Nowhere did I say that M+ during legion was free or void of Toxic people, I am pointing out that based on my experience playing multiple characters in BFA that it seems noticeably more -frequent/extreme/rampant than in legion. Anecdotal I know, but there is no other way to measure this. Most other people are observing similar patterns it seems.

2. I have a raider.io score above 1k. Getting groups is super easy for me and I'm not having any challenges in that department. I am pointing out how its becoming not fun and people seem much more toxic than when I was running 20+ keys back in legion. I am starting to lose interest. I'm not trying to get "carried".

3. No, not all people in pugs are toxic. I do have a friends list with good people I have met doing them but they: Might not be online, playing an alt, running with other people, raiding, pet battles, farming. So access isn't always there.

4. I am in a mythic raiding guild and we tend to do keys after raid that go way better then pugs. However that is only 2 days a week and please refer back to how I cite that it was my favorite activity so on off days I do resort to pugging.



I think the best responses I've seen as to why it has become so toxic is the following:

A: At the beginning of legion not many people did keystones
B: At the beginning of legion people mostly did+3 as that was the most efficient way to farm legos
C: At the beginning of legion there was no MDI, no raider.io, no reason to go above a +10.
D: With the focus on raider.io if they invite you because of your score they expect you to be perfect
E: With the MDI becoming so popular there is an increase of people who treat every run like they are in the MDI
F: M+ is just the perfect ambient to cultivate a toxic combination of Elitism and Speedrunning. Douchebags feed from it.

Will add more as I see good ones, thanks for the constructive responses.

M+ Players were already super toxic in Legion. Pointless thread tbh

[drakath]

I mean it is against the usual meta of the dungeon, he probably lost all hope for a fast clear at that point. While I don't agree with throwing in the towel, I'm shocked at how many people opt for the worst possibly strategy in many cases and declare it to be the right way, and I'm not even talking about some elaborate tricks to bypass trash that only work half of the time, clear things which have become the meta because it has proven to be the most effective way.

I hear you, but imo Atal is a pretty flexible dungeon in terms routes, and you can't really rely on people having invis pots in pugs, or really even having the spatial awareness to sneak passed certain packs, so most of the time if I'm running without a premade, I pick a direct, easy to navigate route that doesn't go over %. Specifically for pugging Atal, I find people get the most value out of hero on Priestess and Vol'kaal, so I do Rezan in between. Is it a perfect run? Not at all, but it's low risk. All in all, it's no sweat to me if people want to ditch their keys, I'm ranked like top 20 for blood DKs on my server, and top 75 for tanks, so I basically get instant invites for any group, but it's still pretty mind blowing how heated people get.

[Tekkommo]

Yeah, but toxicity is most often directed towards the tanks, seconded by healers.

There was literally a thread on the forums some time ago how "people should be punished for leaving m+" and the story unfolded the tank left because 2 dps were flaming him, because he didn't want to skip some mobs in temple of sethraliss.

Not in my experience (and not saying it doesn't happen), but I don't even see a lot of it. Most pugs I join are all friendly.