The problem of subjectivity in dungeon finder policing

Heroics haven't been a completely pleasant experience as of late, since not all players have been willing to adjust to the demands of the new design of heroics. As discontented people are wont to do, many people have been trying to think of ways to improve the heroic experience. Some of the ideas for ways to make the dungeon finder "suck less" have included systems for rating players; systems where you can "friend" players, i.e. mark them as good players and be more likely to be grouped with them in the future; and other ideas, most of which are based on the idea of players policing themselves.

The intentions behind these ideas are good, and in theory, they could work, but they all share the problem of having the potential to be abused by players. Some people will always look for a way to game the system if they can, and some people are just jerks, so no matter what Blizzard might do to try to prevent the system from being used as it wasn't intended to be used, someone will either benefit unfairly or be unfairly penalized. It's tempting to think the system could be designed to avoid that, but no design is foolproof. As an example, someone in the comments section of the WoW Insider post above had the idea to make it so that you can only mark players as bad players, which will increase their queue time. There would be no consequences for new players under this system because they would not be locked out of fast queues by a lack of up-ratings, which would be one of the worst consequences if players could be rated as good players, in addition to bad players. After all, up-rated players would be given shorter queue times (or else why up-rate players?), and if the up-rated players are being grouped together, that would give the newer players no one to group with.

But as another commenter pointed out, some players would just down-vote everyone they group with just because they can. Even worse, since down-votes would move the down-voted player farther down the queue, any down-rate you give another player would theoretically move you up the queue, assuming the down-rate isn't reciprocated. This would give players real, tangible motivation to down-rate people who don't deserve it; in other words, it wouldn't be just the jerkass players who down-rate everyone. In an attempt to moderate this kind of abuse, I had the idea of changing the system so you can still mark players as bad players based on their performance, but the more negative votes you give players, the less your negative votes will count against other players. This would discourage players from trying to game the system because the more they try to do so, the less of an effect they will have. Of course, players could abuse this system as well by just abstaining from down-rating players, which would give their votes more weight, and then using that weight to grief players they personally don't like by voting them down. Did another player win the roll for an item you wanted? If they're the only person you've ever down-rated, that could really increase their queue times. Isn't vengeance sweet?

Now, sure, Blizzard could tweak the formulas to prevent this kind of abuse, too, but the issues of players always looking for a way to game the system aside, this kind of system would still suffer from the issue of being a subjective system. A down-ranking system like the one described above depends on players down-ranking other players based on criteria shared by every other player, but people are subjective, and this might not be the case. Some players would down-rank players based on lack of skill, others would down-rank players for their attitudes, and some would probably only down-rank good players just to be ironic. Rather than a unified system for judging players, we would get players using their own standards to rate other players, standards which are not universal, and thus won't improve the dungeon finder for everyone.

What is needed is an objective system to help weed out the bad players (or at least increase their queue times). Some players have suggested that certain statistics be used to rank players, rather than a rating system. These statistics could include whether or not they use crowd control, whether they were healing efficiently, average healer mana when the tank pulled, etc. These are nice ideas, but they also have their own issues. What stats will we choose to use to judge a player? What if the player runs with a guild that chooses to run heroics in an unconventional way, a way that is successful but won't reflect well on their statistics? Or what if they consistently run with bad players and thus can't use crowd control, because their crowd control ends up being broken anyways? The fact is that it's very difficult to objectively measure player skill, no matter what statistics you use.

Another possibility is an idea I had a while ago, inspired by the achievement Ready for Raiding. What if a series of quests was set up to help players learn the skills they need to run heroics? These quests would be phased quests in which players would have simulated party members, and they would run through various typical heroic situations and train players in the skills they need to be successful in heroics. Tanks could learn to wait for the healer to regain his mana, how to hold threat against multiple targets, how to position targets, etc. DPS could learn how to crowd control, how to move out of the fire, how to prioritize kill order, etc. Healers could learn how to heal efficiently, how to best use their cooldowns, etc. All this could be done in a phased environment where the player would really be tested on whether or not they had the skills needed to run heroics. Now, players would probably feel uncomfortably forced if these quests were mandatory to run heroics, so perhaps they could be option and could reward some valor points to sweeten the deal, as well as an achievement--perhaps called "Ready for Heroics".

Or we could all just wait a few months until everyone out-gears heroics and they don't require skill to run anymore. It'll happen, it just needs time.

How am I conquering the pre-expansion slump?

A shared topic on Blog Azeroth proposed by Jaedia of The Lazy Sniper asks us how we are conquering the pre-expansion slump, a slump I am definitely feeling. Sadly, I started feeling this slump long ago with the disappointment I felt with the Argent Tournament. Having gone through all of the other solo content in Wrath of the Lich King, I put high hopes in the Argent Tournament to revitalize my interest in game, but with the lackadaisical design of the daily quests, I quickly grew bored and resolved to do it only long enough to acquire enough Champion's Seals to get the Argent Pony Bridle and the five pets. Once I had those, I quit the tournament forever, and have not returned. The dungeon finder briefly reignited my interest in the game with the way it made it easy to chain run heroics, but it had the unintended effect of making me burn out even faster, to the point where I realized that there were no heroics that I liked anymore; just those I didn't hate as much as others (and I had something to hate about each one). Thus the things that were probably implemented specifically to keep people like me (non-raiders) interested in the game failed to capture my attention.

So what's a soloist to do? Why, what we soloists have always done; roll an alt! Problem is, with the remake of Azeroth coming soon, there's less motivation to go through the process of leveling a character again, when we can only assume that it will be more fun when the expansion comes out. This is made worse by the fact that all of the content begins to feel a bit stale when you have leveled multiple characters, even though you may be going through it with a new class. As such, we need to find a reason to want to level that character, other than just experiencing that content again. With that said, though, experiencing the content again isn't that bad of a reason to level an alt, since it means that the old content will be fresh in our mind after the Cataclysm happens, allowing us to appreciate the new content that much more.

But if experiencing the content to be able to appreciate the new content isn't reason enough for you to level an alt, then why should you? What has worked for me so far is the goal of having an alt that is a "pet craftsman". I leveled my shaman with the goal of having a pet jewelcrafter, and I leveled my priest with the goal of having a pet alchemist, and those are the only two alts of mine (beside my Death Knight, who had an unfair start) that made it past level 25 (they have both made it past 60 at this point). I know I said in my post reflections on leveling a shadow priest that leveling an alt is more fun with two gathering professions, but if you usually level your alts that way and are looking for a change of pace, perhaps leveling them while also working on a crafting profession is the change of pace you need.

Advice for emblem-gear-fueled dungeon speed runs

I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that the new emblem system has changed the face of the five-man dungeon scene, making it near unrecognizable compared to what it once was. Heroics these days are more comparable to running Scarlet Monastery at level 60 than Blackrock Depths. It's safe to say that much of we thought we knew about five-man dungeons has changed, and new assumptions need to replace old ones if we are to evolve to face the new challenges (or lack thereof) that await us on the other side of those instance portals (now replaced by an interface). Many have made these changes subconsciously already, but some may have avoided heroics during this time of great change, and this guide is for them. Note: This guide only applies to heroics, and only to the original Wrath heroics. The advice bellow doesn't apply to raiding or The Frozen Halls.

Tanks:
-Focus on whatever the DPS is attacking.
When it comes to trash, kill order is mostly meaningless these days. As much as you may want your DPS to attack the healer first, you will encounter DPS that just won't want to do it. Rather than getting worked up over them, it's better to just go along with it and focus on causing threat to the enemies they are attacking. Why? Let's say you focus on causing threat to the target you think should die first. This makes it easier for the DPS to over-aggro, so you will lose control of the mobs, making the battle slower. If, however, you focus on what the DPS is focusing on, you stay in control on the situation and the mobs will die faster, making the run faster, and because the mobs won't be running around doing damage to everyone, the run will be more enjoyable in general.

-Focus on AoE threat while fighting trash.
Back when kill order mattered, you would try to cause the most threat to the enemy highest on the kill order while not causing too much AoE threat because your DPS would be focusing on the target of highest priority and not trying to cause massive AoE damage. These days, DPS just want to AoE everything down, meaning if you try to focus on causing most of your threat to one target, you'll end up only holding on to that one target. Though you should use your auto-attacks to cause extra threat to whatever your DPS is attacking (as per the previous piece of advice), you should focus on using your AoE abilities rather than your single-target abilities.

DPS:
-Try to attack what the tank is attacking.
The tank losing control of trash is bad. Sure, with the kind of gear you're wearing, you can probably afford to take a few hits, but if the tank can't keep control of enemies, he can't cause as much damage to them as he could otherwise. As such, the run will be slower. The tank will be causing the most damage to his target, so it helps to focus your attacks on whoever your tank is targeting. You can turn on target-of-target in the options menu to make this easier.

Healers:
-Do some damage if you don't need to focus all of your time on healing.
If you and the tank are in great gear, you probably don't need to spend all of your time healing him and the group. In the olden days, it was considered unthinkable for healers to do any damage to enemy targets. After all, they need to heal when people take damage, and healing causes threat. The DPS can stop doing damage if they cause too much threat, but healers don't have that luxury. Extra threat was just something healers didn't need; it was something they couldn't afford. These days, however, you'd be lucky to break 1% of the tank's threat in an average heroic run. As such, consider dropping some damage on your enemies to make the fights go faster. This will be easier for Priests and Shamans than for Druids and Paladins, of course, since Druids need to leave Tree of Life to do damage, loosing a healing boost in the process, and Paladins can't do much damage without entering melee range, but Priests and Shamans should definitely consider dropping the odd offensive spell when they have nothing better to do. If anything, it will make the run more fun for you while you wait for your tank to drop bellow 95% health.

-Forgo mana efficiency for spell potency.
If you out-gear heroics and are rocking tier-nine or ten gear, you don't need to worry about mana. You do, however, need to worry about wiping. Heroics have become so easy these days that players simply have no patience for wiping. Now, granted, wipes are a near impossibility these days, but you still don't want them to happen. An unexpected development (adds, runners, etc.) can cause a sudden influx of damage, even in these heroics that we have all run before, so you need to stay on top of your game. In fact, being so comfortable with heroics likely leads us to make mistakes we would not have made in the days when they were difficult, if only because of sloppiness. Anyways, your main goal is to avoid a wipe, and knowing that running out of mana is a near impossibility unless you are blatantly overhealing everyone, you should feel free to use your larger, more expensive heals to reduce the chance of a wipe to near zero. It may feel wasteful, but it's only wastefulness if you can run out of whatever you are using.

Should the dungeon finder should put people of similar gear levels together?

As it stands now, the Dungeon Finder tries to create groups whose members have varying levels of gear; it tries to put people who outgear heroics to a ludicrous degree and people who are just starting to gear up together, rather than separate the two. Of course, this frequently ends up with people who are new to level 80 being put with elitist a-holes who could never fathom doing heroics in non-epics, even though we all used to do that. Many people have claimed that the Dungeon Finder should instead put people of similar gear levels together; people who are new to heroics would be put together and people who outgear them would be put together. But is this system really in everyone's best interests, or are we ignoring the risks of such a system?

Let's first look at the benefits of grouping people with similar gear together. People who out-gear heroics would stand to gain a lot from this kind of system. Most people who run heroics these days know that finishing the heroic is a given; the only thing that changes with your group composition is how long it takes to do so. As such, having "under-geared" members in your group only slows you down, but rarely if ever prevents you from finishing the heroic. If the Dungeon Finder put über-geared people together, they would get to breeze right through heroics and get their daily emblems of frost without difficulty. Many of the "best run" stories I hear about heroics are stories of groups where everyone had amazing gear and the trash and bosses died really quickly, so I don't think many players would object to more of their runs being like that.

What about the players that are still gearing up? What do they stand to gain from a system like this? Quite a lot, actually. If a player is just starting heroics, they likely don't have much experience with groups or with their class in group play. Heroics are not just a place to get gear; they also serve as a training ground for people so they can better play their characters when they move into raids. Now, let me ask you something: What does a tank learn when a healer can heal him through all his mistakes and the DPS can survive the damage they take if they overaggro? What do DPS learn when the tank causes so much threat that they don't need to worry about aggro and the healer can heal them through damage they should be avoiding? What do healers learn when tanks barely take any damage and DPS don't need to be saved immediately when they take damage? As it stands now, the Dungeon Finder spoils newer players, allowing them to get gear without the necessary experience and lessons that once accompanied it. That would be different if those new players were put with other new players: they wouldn't be carried through the heroics, so they'd learn something from it, and they'd be spared the hateful tongues of those who think one needs ilevel 232 epics to run heroics.

There's also the issue of intimidation. When a healer can't heal a tank that is chain-pulling half the instance because healers can usually heal him through that or he can't heal the DPS because they are taking damage that they should be avoiding, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. When a tank can't hold aggro because DPS refuse to watch their threat and they then chastise him for it, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. If a DPS are continually kicked from groups because they are only putting out 1.5k DPS, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. However, if people who are gearing up through heroics are put together, these issues would vanish because the potential for their existence would be lost. A new tank cannot chain-pull half the instance; a new healer can not heal the DPS through their mistakes, so he won't be expected to; and a new DPS can't pull aggro off of a comparatively geared tank. In short, players that are gearing up through heroics stand to gain a lot by being put in groups with other people who are gearing up through heroics.

Also, if the Dungeon Finder put people of similar gear levels together, there would be more of a sense of progression in heroics. If a new player starts out in heroics with players who can carry him through it, the heroics are already easy for him, and he'll probably get bored pretty quickly. If, however, he first runs heroics with people like himself, heroics will be challenging for him like they were in the early days of Wrath of the Lich King. As his gear gets better, he'll be put with people with progressively better gear, so the difficulty of heroics will go down accordingly, rather than starting easy for him when he first steps inside of them. Under a system like this, getting gear would make heroics easier for the player, rather than making him less of a burden to his groups. It would be a form of positive progression, rather than negative progression.

Now that we've gone over the easy stuff (the benefits of this system), what would the drawbacks of such a system be? One drawback for the more geared players would the potential for the widespread impatience among better-geared players to get worse. After all, no system is perfect, and people who are just gearing up would at some point be put with elitists. If the more geared players got used to being in very speedy groups, the less-geared players would be even more abused than they are now when they are inevitably put with more geared players. Rudeness is already an issue in heroics, but a system like this gives it the potential to become even worse. Still, considering just how bad rudeness had gotten in spite of mixed groups, I don't think it could get much worse. Would people who are gearing up suffer any ill effects from this system? None that they don't already suffer; they'd just suffer them less frequently.

So, in the end, everyone benefits from the mixed-group system being abolished in favor of a system by which people are put in groups with people in similar gear. It seems that the newer players would benefit the most, which is ironic, considering that the mixed-group system was probably put in place to benefit them.

How the new emblem system ruined heroics (and what could be done to save them)

I am a busy player. I don't have the time to raid or the reflexes to PvP, so I run heroics instead. I still get to play in groups, but I don't have to dedicate a large portion of my time to the game; I can simply plop down for a half-hour or hour when I have one to spare. With the death of solo content in Wrath, heroics were really all I had left, and now my last little sanctuary has been perverted by the very thing that were supposed to save it: the new emblem system.

I'm talking about the system by which heroics offer the second best emblem in the game, while the first random heroic you do each day (previously, it was the daily heroic-quest) gives you two of the best emblems in the game. There was a time when heroics only gave you emblems of heroism, the worst emblem in the game. These emblems were used to obtain gear that was good for heroics, but would never let you out-gear them. With the new emblem system, amazing gear is obtainable by people who have never stepped foot in a raid. Now, certainly, this system has benefits. People can gear up their alts rather quickly and get them into the highest tier of raiding without forcing their guild to drag them through the previous raids. Through heroics alone, I have decked out my druid in tank gear good enough that I could run Icecrown Citadel 10-man if I wanted to. The issue is, I can't, so for me, and players like me, heroics allow us to obtain amazing gear that we will never put to use. You could say that the new ICC 5-mans, the Frozen Halls, are the place to go to use that gear, but in the gear I'm in, only Halls of Reflection is a challenge, and I'm not going to run that one over and over again just because it's the only place that is difficult.

And so we see the issue. For people who only run heroics, the new emblem system allows us to get gear that only serves to make the content we are running easier. These same heroics that once provided some level of satisfaction are now hollow shells of what they once were. They are not challenging, they are not interesting, and they are not enjoyable. To pour salt in the wound, the ridiculously inflated cost of emblem of frost gear forces raiders, most of which ran heroics nauseam in order to gear up for Naxx, to run heroics each day so that they can get their gear in a timely manor. Many of them hate the heroics with a passion, and their animosity makes heroics less enjoyable to run when it rubs off on those of us who still enjoy them to some degree.

The dungeon finder only exacerbates this situation. It allows people to chain run heroics, bringing them to the point where heroics provide no challenge even faster than players would get there on their own, and it makes the groups inconsequential, promoting the kind of dickish behavior we see in heroics today. After all, when the only repercussions for your actions are being put on someone's ignore list (a punishment that is completely intangible), what motivation is there for the common man to not be a jerk? He wants his emblems, he wants them quickly, and he doesn't want to bother with the niceties that were once required to successfully complete a heroic.

Where does the solution lie? The benefits of the new emblem system are that it allows raiders to gear up their alts quickly and allows people who are only now reaching the level cap to quickly gear up for the most recent raid content. If Blizzard were to scrap the emblem system, the new solution would need to address these two problems.

The first one could be addressed by making emblems bind-to-account, thus allowing raiders to send their excess emblems to their alts. Some may object to that idea, since heroics are supposed to give people practice with their characters, practice they need to perform well in a raid. However, the kind of heroic runs that have become prominent since patch 3.3 (the "silent but deadly" speed runs) are hardly good places to train oneself for raiding. Overgeared healers can heal the tank and DPS through their mistakes, and overgeared tanks make threat a non-issue for DPS, while overgeared DPS make the bosses die so quickly that the encounters are nothing more than tank-and-spanks. This particular issue could be solved if the dungeon finder only put people with similar gear together in groups. That would mean the people who need to do the heroics slowly and need the practice would be put with people like themselves, while the impatient people who outgear the heroics would be put with people like themselves and could burst through the content. While this might be a good short-term solution, it doesn't address the larger issues of the emblem system.

However, if all Blizzard does is scrap the emblem system while making emblems BoA, that wouldn't address the fact that the new emblem system helps people who have only recently hit 80 get into the current tier of raiding, saving them the trouble of finding people who will run them through the previous tiers. If heroics only dropped the worst emblems, there would need to be a way for people to still get good gear without going through the old raids. I propose that, when Cataclysm hits, with each patch that Blizzard releases a raid, they also release a 5-man dungeon or two, like how with the release of Icecrown Citadel, they added The Frozen Halls. These new dungeons would be harder than other heroics, obviously, but to compensate, they would drop the emblems and gear that are better than the last tier of heroics. To use the current heroics as an example, some Ulduar-based 5-man would have been released with patch 3.1, and it would have dropped emblems of valor. Trial of the Champion would have dropped emblems of conquest, and the Frozen Halls would have dropped emblems of triumph (perhaps the Halls of Reflection could have dropped emblems of frost, considering how hard it is).

Yes, this would mean that heroics would become a new kind of progression, but is that such a bad thing? They are very popular now, so it wouldn't be a bad idea for Blizzard to cater to the part of their fanbase that likes heroics more than raids. This system would also mean that people could gear up for the current tier of content through heroics, which are quick and don't require a lot of preparation, rather than by running old raids, which takes a long time and requires more preparation and people.

So, to summarize the changes I propose:
1. When Cataclysm is released, the heroics that are available upon the launch date with drop the same emblem as the starter 10-man raids, while the 25-man versions will drop the next tier of emblems. As patches are released, the new raids will give better emblems, but the base emblems in old heroics will not change.
2. Emblems will become bind-on-account so that raiders can use their extra emblems to gear up their alts.
3. With each raid that is released, one, two, or three new 5-mans will be released, the heroic versions of which will drop the same emblem as the 10-man version of their corresponding raid. This will allow people to gear themselves up for the current raid content without running old content.

Edit: I would just like to add that these are preliminary ideas to inspire others to come up with truly great solutions; they are not meant to be end-all-be-all fixes.

Signs you are approaching burnout

I am currently suffering from WoW burnout, severe WoW burnout. It came as the result of chain-running heroics with the Dungeon Finder and thinking more about the loot than the heroics themselves. It was easily avoidable, but I missed the warning signs that let me know I was going down this path. While there are many posts out there on WoW sites that let you know what to do when you have burnout, I have seen fewer posts about how to avoid burnout, so I thought I'd discuss the warning signs here. If any of these are happening to you, be proactive and do something to prevent your burnout. Try another part of the game, level an alt, or just cut down on your WoW time.

You start thinking more about the results than the experience
There are many rewards in WoW. They come in the form of loot, achievements, mounts, pets, and other such items, but they all have one thing in common: if you make acquiring them your reason for playing, you will suffer burnout. Focusing on loot, titles, etc. distracts you from the main reason you should be playing WoW: to enjoy yourself. This allows you to easily fall into playing habits that lead you to burnout, like playing more often than you would otherwise or getting overly worked up about a wipe. As I said in my post on my issue with speed runners in random heroics, if you focus more on the results then the process, you need to re-examine your priorities.

You do things out of habit rather than out of choice
Like prioritizing results before the process, doing things out of habit rather than because you consider them fun (like running a heroic each day just for the badges or doing dailies just for the money) is a recipe for disaster. If you aren't thinking about why you are doing what you are doing in game, you probably won't cut back or stop when it starts to annoy you. By the time you ask yourself why you are doing that random heroic each day when you don't even like any of the heroics any more or why you are doing the Argent Tournament dailies each day when they really aren't that fun, the damage is already done.

You start resenting the parts of the game you "need" to play in order to play the parts you enjoy
If you are a raider and you hate doing a random heroic each day, but you do it anyway for the emblems of frost, you need to really think about why you are running heroics. If you do any sort of group content (raids or heroics) and you hate doing dailies to pay for the repair bills, why are you doing them? You may think of me as idealistic for saying that you shouldn't do anything in this game that you can't make yourself enjoy, but as someone who has suffered the latter problem, I can tell you that those kinds of thoughts are not unconquerable. If you still "need" to run that content, try changing your mindset to one that allows you to enjoy it.

You start doing things you once resented other people for doing
This was the final sign for me that I was playing too much. I can't stand when anyone other than the tank pull enemies. However, during an Ahn'kahet run that I was healing, the tank only pulled one enemy out of a pack of four. He had Death and Decay down, so I body-pulled the other three to bring them into his D&D, just to speed things up. When I realized what I had done, I knew it was time for a break. Becoming what you once despised is a sure sign of burnout, and also a sign that your pre-burnout self what not have approved of what you are doing.

If you recognize any of those signs in yourself, you are likely on the path to burnout, if you aren't already there. If there are any signs that I missed, let me know in the comments section.

A post-dungoen-finder guide to instance etiquette

When I wrote my first guide to basic instance etiquette, I didn't expect that my work would be done, but I did at least think that it would at least last another patch. However, with the advent of patch 3.3 and the dungeon finder, it has become clear to me that the old rules governing instance etiq0uette have once again become inadequate. New behaviors have come up that are so horrifying that I am afraid to even run random dungeons these days, even though I am a tank and that solves about 25% of my potential problems. But rather than complain about this issue, I will instead compose some guidelines that we should all follow for a smooth instance run. Let's hope this does some good.

As a final word before I start this, if this all seems obvious to you, that is a good thing; it means you are likely not part of the problem.

Everyone:
-The fact that you will likely never see these people again is not an excuse to be a jerk. A little courtesy goes a long way and will make the run smoother for everyone.
-If you haven't run that particular instance before, say so. People will be more forgiving of your mistakes and will likely explain the boss fights to you.
-Do not kick people just because they don't have all ilevel 232 epics. No one needs über gear to run a heroic. Heroics were designed to be run in gear obtained from normals (ilevel 187 blues), reputations (ilevel 187 blues, 200 blues, or 200 epics), and BoE crafted items (ilevel 200 blues or epics). Remember the days when Wrath first came out? Everyone was in that kind of gear, if you were lucky; seeing someone in a heroic with low-level quest greens and blues wasn't uncommon in those days. If one person--or even four people--in your group has that kind of gear, you can still complete the heroic. Ninety nine times out of one hundred, you'll be able to carry the person in "sub-par" (I use the term sarcastically) gear and won't even notice their presence.*
-Likewise, if you are in the minimum gear for heroics, it helps to let your group know. If you are a DPS, this won't matter too much, but if you are a healer, the tank needs to know that he can't chain pull half the instance and the DPS need to know that they will have to avoid damage during the boss fights, and if you are a tank, the DPS need to know that they need to watch their threat and the healer needs to know that he/she may actually need to stay on his/her toes.
-Most items cannot be traded cross-realm, with two exceptions: conjured items and BoP items that dropped during that run. As such, there is no reason to flip out if someone accidentally picks need on an item you wanted and wins it; just ask for him to trade it.
-If you know an upcoming boss drops an item you need that is a lower tier of armor than what you can wear (like if you can wear leather and you need a cloth item the boss drops), let your group know so they know to pass on it and not hit the DE button.
-Don't link damage meters or recount. I have never sen anything good come from doing so. Only link them if one person is doing such bad DPS (as in triple digits) that you want to kick them, and you need to convince the group to do so.

Tanks:
-If someone is low on mana, see whether they are drinking to regenerate that mana. If they are, don't pull.
-Do not pull enemies when the healer doesn't have the mana to heal you, and make sure you give the healer enough time to regenerate that mana.
-Don't pull more enemies than your healer can handle. Pull one pack at first. If you healer has any trouble healing you through that, you'll know you can't chain pull during this run.
-Don't go so quickly that your group can't even loot the corpses. Wait until everyone is next to you before you pull. This is especially true for bosses.
-You should still go pretty quickly, since these days, with everyone in such amazing gear, you can, and most people will be glad you did so. Just go as fast as you can without violating any of the above rules.
-Don't body-pull enemies without causing any threat to them; if you do that, your healer will get aggro and die.
-Don't focus on AoE threat when everyone in your group is attacking one enemy at a time. Don't focus on single-target threat when your group is AoE'ing everything down.

DPS:
-It is not your job to pull enemies. If you don't like the pace the tank is going, tough it out. The only possible exception to this rule is if you are in a place where pulling patrols at opportune times is important in order to avoid pulling more enemies than you can handle. If your tank is about the finish killing the mobs you are fighting now and the patrol is in just the right place to pull it, then it is partially excusable to pull the enemy if you tank doesn't look like he has noticed it. Still, when this happens, it's best to try to bring that enemy to the tank so the tank will pick him up, either actively or accidentally with his AoE. Note that this situation will rarely, if ever, happen for you.
-Just because you and the healer out-gear the instance doesn't give you the excuse to act stupid and pull threat or take easily avoidable damage, such as standing in the fire.
-Turn on Target of Target in your interface menu and use it to attack whatever your tank is attacking. As a tank, there is nothing more annoying than a DPS who attacks enemies that I am not focusing on, even when they are behind me and are thus clearly not whom I am causing the most threat to.

Healers:
-As sad as I am to have to say this, you aren't allowed to pull enemies either (yes, I have seen healers do that).
-You should heal DPS through the occasional mistake, but saving them from their serial stupidity is not your responsibility. Do so if you are bored, but know that they will only learn their lesson when the see their repair bills.

*This rule obviously doesn't apply to the new Frozen Halls instances, and to some extent heroic Trial of the Champion. The gear requirements for those instances are much higher, and someone in all quest blues just won't be able to pull their weight unless their presence is offset by someone in full Trial of the Grand Crusader gear.

Should tier 9 gear be the standard in heroics?

This edition of WoW.com's The Queue stated that tier nine has become the new standard of gear in heroics, meaning that if you gear is better, then your are considered over-qualified for heroics, and if it is worse, you are under-qualified. From a purely objective perspective, this is a ludicrous idea. Heroics were designed to be easy enough that a group of people in ilevel 200 blue-quality gear could do them; after all, heroics are the next logical step after normals. Tier nine gear is a large step above blues, so where does this standard come from?

Put simply, we are spoiled. The new emblem system that Blizzard has added (where the second-best emblem is the base emblem that drops from any heroic or raid bosses that don't drop the best emblem, and the best emblem is awarded by your first daily heroic and the weekly raid quests) has made getting raid quality gear possible without stepping into a raid, and as such, even the average Joe can get amazing gear. In the time between patch 3.2 (when the new emblem system was first implemented) and patch 3.3 (when the dungeon finder was released), many people took advantage of that system, which made emblems of conquest the new base emblem, in place of emblems of heroism. Those who took the time to run heroics could get very powerful gear with these new emblems, and Casual Carl (yes, I just made that name up) could get raid-quality gear without dedicating the time to raiding, since heroics were short, and thus he could do them on his own time. As such, everyone and their mother was running around in gear that was much better than what they could get in heroics. In other words, those who ran heroics the most soon out-geared them.

Once patch-3.3 was released, many people started chain running heroics, and if it wasn't clear before, it became obvious that very few people were running heroics for gear these days. After all, emblems of conquest allow access to ilevel 232 gear, the kind available in 10-man Trial of the Crusader. It was as if these people had skipped two tiers of raiding. The ridiculous extent to which people out-geared heroics became obvious, and because so many people fit that standard, it became the norm. The consequence of such a mass over-gearing was that heroics became easy. Very easy. Previously difficult fights became trivial and people stopped using the strategies that were once necessary for success, or at least only used them to make the fights interesting. I've seen fights end so quickly that the bosses weren't even able to use the abilities that made the fight difficult. Everything has become a tank-and-spank. (Except Oculus; thank goodness I have only had to run it once.)

That is, unless, there is someone in your group who doesn't out-gear the heroic, or at least doesn't out-gear it to a ludicrous degree. Then the run goes from ridiculously easy to pretty easy. After all, you are only likely to see one such person in a heroic, and you probably won't notice their presence unless you are used to running heroics with fellow guild-members who are decked out in gear from 25-man TotGC. That's if the under-geared "offender" is a DPS, though. If he is a healer, then all that means is that the tank can't chain pull enemies in the instance like he may be used to doing. If he is a tank, then that means that healer needs to stay on his/her toes and the DPS needs to watch their threat. These are more significant inconveniences than the boss not dying fast enough to not use his main ability.

Back to the main question: should the standard for gear in heroics be tier nine? Since the standard can be defined what most people qualify for, tier nine already is the de jure standard. However, the implication of such a standard is that anyone who queues for a heroic with gear worse than tier nine is a burden to the group and should potentially be kicked. If tier nine were the de facto standard, this would be true. So, should tier nine be the de facto standard for heroics?

God no! Here's why: in case you haven't run heroics recently, they are incredibly boring. Granted, as a tank, it's more fun for me than in is for other people, but I recently tried healing a run with a competent tank, and it was a very uneventful time. I kept Rejuvenation on him and that healed 95% of all the damage he took. Sometimes I threw out a Regrowth of Wild Growth just for the hell of it. Overall, the experience was one I would not care to repeat. Now, if the tank had not been over-geared, the run would have been much more fun. I would have been throwing out Nourishes and it would have been a more interesting experience. Point is, "under-geared" people make heroics interesting because they bring us back to a time when strategy was required and we couldn't blast our way through heroics half-asleep. They make heroics fun again. (If you are still complaining that they make the run slower, you may wish to read my last philosophy post.)

Happy New Years everyone! As a special treat for the new decade, I am posting this post right before I go to bed after staying up until midnight.

My issue with speed runners in random heroics

As anyone who has run a few random heroics recently knows, the new Dungeon Finder tool is a fantastic thing, but one issue that seems to have that comes up repeatedly is people who want to run the instance as fast as possible, to the point where the DPS (and occasionally the healers) pull enemies before the tank is ready to do so, just because they think the tank is going too slowly. When this happens to me, I usually let the DPS tank the mobs for a while, but I digress. Such occurrences are symptomatic of a larger problem I see appearing in the 5-man scene: the idea that 5-mans are only meant to be run for emblems. Forget the lore, forget the encounters, forget the money, the enchanting materials, the satisfaction of taking down an enemy you could not take on your own, the social element of the experience; it's all about getting through there as quickly as possible so that you can get your emblems and leave. I see this as a problem.

Let me begin by explaining how I view fun. My definition of fun is when you enjoy something for the process, not just the results. Let's look at something simple, like biking. Biking is exercise, so it's easy to enjoy biking for the benefits it gives you in that respect. However, if you don't enjoying riding a bike, you probably won't enjoy biking, in spite of the benefits it brings you. Biking is the process; the benefits are the results. In other words, biking is a means to an end, whereas the benefits are the end itself. Thus, in order to enjoy something, you need to enjoy the means to the end, not just the end itself. Otherwise, your fun activity becomes a chore--something you don't enjoy doing, but derive satisfaction from finishing.

I'd like to state one more assumption that I don't think anyone will disagree with: the purpose of emblems is getting gear. As I have said before in this blog, the only practical purpose of gear is allowing you to complete more difficult content, so it follows that that is the purpose of emblems as well: allowing you to see more content. Thus emblem are themselves a means to an end, so it is feasible that someone could enjoy their collection. However, it isn't that simple. Emblems are themselves an end as well, and random heroics are the means to that end. As such, in a transitive sort of way, random heroics are a means to the end of seeing more content. In other words, you are running content so that you can see more content.

What does this all mean? It means that I think that anyone who has ever uttered "I am only here for the emblems" in a random heroic needs to reexamine their priorities. Emblems are just an end that comes from the heroic run, and thus, if you only run heroics to gain emblems, then heroics are just a chore, not something that is actually fun. Now, I'm not saying that you need to find heroics fun. If you have run each of Wrath's heroics ad nauseam, no one can blame you for not enjoying them. All I am saying is, why are you doing something that you see as a chore, rather than something you see as fun? Sure, some of you may say that you need the gear so that you can go into raids, but what are raids other than suped-up 5-mans that require more people, time, and skill to take down? If you can't enjoy heroics, how much can you really enjoy raids?

Maybe I'm just prejudiced because I don't raid, but I say that if you don't enjoy heroics but feel the need to run them anyways, it's your responsibility to make them interesting. Just because you view them as a chore doesn't give you the right to force that view upon others, some of whom may actually enjoy heroics. Now, when I say "make it interesting," I don't mean pulling for the tank or trying to go so fast that your tank's health bar frequently dips bellow 10% on trash. That's just dumb. Instead, go for some achievements or help other people with theirs. Strike up a conversation during your run. Go overkill and pretend the run is more difficult than it actually is. Healers, you could overheal. Tanks, you could use your defensive cooldowns when you go from taking negligible damage to noticeable damage and pretend they are necessary. DPS, you could (gasp!) follow the strategies you used to use for the boss before you outgeared the dungeon. I assure you that all of these things will make a heroic run more interesting, for I have done them all myself.

Finally, to my readers: merry Christmas, happy belated Hanukkah, joyous early Kwanzaa, and happy belated Festivus.