Heroic dungeons; are guilds mandatory now?

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

Running a heroic dungeon for your first time, or in the beginning of gearing up while still having "meh" gear... is it impossible to pug a heroic?

I ran, or tried to run, a few heroics and each time I had to leave, was kicked or everyone else left because I was new at heroic tanking.
Know the tacts, ran the normals countless times and got pretty much the best pre-heroic gear.

Do we really need guilds to get through those first heroics?

[Glomp]

People are generally very impatient and unwilling to help you learn where to start.

For example the other day I played Portal 2 COOP for the first time with some random person online, turns out they expected me to speed through every chamber and not make a single mistake. Because yknow.. new players should know everything already.

Go with a guild if you can, even a really casual one, it'll make your life easier.

[Willelm]

No. It's certainly not impossible. Just join the group and say you're new to tanking. You might run into people who are too impatient to bother or don't feel like hand-holding, but you're playing with - easily - another 100,000+ other players. One of them is bound to give you some advice.

You could always head on over to Elitist Jerks or another class forums and read up on your class. Go hit a dummy for some light priority practice and then queue up and see how it goes.

The only way to get better is to practice, but practice right. Heroics are designed for people who have run the normals and have the gear. But a big mistake I see tanks making (and I am not saying you're one of them, this is just an example), is they are still putting in pure stam gems into their gear. They are completely ignoring avoidance stats, and aren't taking advantage of the reforging system (ie they are reforging parry to stam or dodge to parry).

Other than that though if you're taking too long in heroics or getting kicked it means that it's your performance. It hurts to realize you have to make adjustments to be better but it's something you've just got to keep at.

[Termak]

If you have decent 330+ gear with atleast green gems and cheap enchats and know the basics, tanking most heroics is fine. Just ask people use CC and not try to just lolzerg as they most likely usually do. Theres always some bad groups, but you should find good groups too.

[Deleted]

its not. if u finished quests in twilight highlands, and get some rep gear, you cna have prettymuch full, or atleast 75% 346 gear before starting heroics. and if u know taccs then it shouldnt be a problem. most healers and dps are so overgeared atm, so if they are not complete morons, its hsouldnt matter if ur tanking gear isnt all that good.

just keep quing, u got instant que as tank anyway ^^

[xStevooo]

I had both new heroics down with PuG's (not great geared) just over an hour after the servers came up. I mean there's absolutely nothing fresh in ZA/ZG as long as people aren't standing in ugly looking crap it's a breeze, just a bit more healing intensive.
The original hc's? absolute faceroll in today's gear.
I've cheated the ilvl on a couple of my fresh 85 healers and never had a problem flying through them.

[Azutael]

Nah, been doing just fine for a very long time without a guild. Ofcourse you will run into alot of impatient people, retards, morons, braindead people etcetc.
But if you yourself have got the patience, you will manage in the end .P

I would highly recomend guild groups though, or run with someone you know. It just makes it less frustrating, probably more fun and ofc faster.

[Deleted]

Running a heroic dungeon for your first time, or in the beginning of gearing up while still having "meh" gear... is it impossible to pug a heroic?

I ran, or tried to run, a few heroics and each time I had to leave, was kicked or everyone else left because I was new at heroic tanking.
Know the tacts, ran the normals countless times and got pretty much the best pre-heroic gear.

Do we really need guilds to get through those first heroics?

Nope, I healed my first few heroics on my priest quing solo, cheated the system with leather stuffi n my backs from rep and still had no problems healing it even with similar geared tanks. same goes for my tank (both are my alts)

[Soisoisoi]

I PuGd heroics the day I dinged, when everyone was still in levelling crap. Though I guess all the people that leveled fast are pretty 'decent' players, so it wasn't that bad.

These days, it's best to get as much gear as possible beforehand. Everything you can from Reps and crafted(if you can afford it), and 333 instance/quest loot for every other slot... And at least one guildy. :P

[klaps_05]

everyone just wants to get in and be done with it in 15min - guess what - if you are not decked in 359/372 be rdy to spend an hour in the dungeon, carefully pulling, ccing and drinking after every mob pack.

[Deleted]

I joined a pug on my prot warrior, and was put into ZG for the first time, group only had the lynx boss left before the final one. I straight up said I don't know the tactics, and luckily one of the group members explained to me, I'm like okay, it's a simple fight. However he told me to pull 1-2 adds a time, as soon as the fight start, I pull 1-2 and the rest of the group are like 'FFS TANK PULL 4'.

That's just how pugs are, none of them bothered to tell me before the pull, they only complain after.


However, the hardest fights in the instances, in my opinion, are Zanzil and Jin'Do, both of which can be kinda RNGmessy, but essentially, they're both quite simple, but need relatively decent dps. I've been in groups where a few members just simply cannot get their head around what to do, and are pulling 4-6k dps, repeatedly over 5+ tries. If that's the case, I would have no problem asking them to leave.

[.Nensec]

Ive pugged multiple zandalar heroics on my holydin aswell as my mage. Tend to wipe alot, yes but they are doable once you weed out the people who leave once they die