Can someone explain why the heroic dungeon queue takes 15+min in a game with probably 100k+ active players?

Community General Discussion
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Hey everyone,

I’ve been running heroic dungeons lately, and I’ve noticed that the queue times have been consistently over 15 minutes, even when the estimated time is around 6 minutes. Given that World of Warcraft likely has a huge active player base, I’m finding it hard to understand why it’s taking so long to get matched, especially in content that should be pretty popular.

Is there something I’m missing? Are there fewer tanks/healers running heroics, or is it just a queue system issue? I’d love to hear if anyone else is experiencing this or if there are any tips to speed things up.

Thanks in advance!

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Tanks get matched as soon as they queue. Healers queue in at a slightly higher rate usually and thus take a minute or two; dps queue in at a much higher rate and thus, the 15 minute wait.

Tanks are the limiter usually.

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It doesn’t help that the largest group content available, raids, doesn’t follow a 1:1:3 ratio of players. Even at scale. You can have a ten man raid or a twenty five man raid and you only ever need 2 tanks tops. Healing varies greatly with your raid’s gear level and the difficulty. I’ve seen 25 man raid teams healed by 2 healers or more but the average is less than 1 per 5 players.

Then you break up into five man content and now you have this abundance of DPS to tanks and healers. Tanks are the worst because you only need 2 and even in LFR it only queues 2 tanks for 25 people.

Even IF, and this is a huge IF, there was a consistent desire to play each role by the player-base, and even IF, every class was equally balanced so that you weren’t drawn to a particular class over another, we’d still have a shortage of tanks, then likely healers for the available pool of DPS who queue.

Now, people know you get faster ques with tanks and healers in your group. Most tanks and healers worth anything have a friends list a mile long. While they could queue by themselves, their usually queued with at least one other individual. Follow that formula to an extreme and you usually have a tank / healer queue together or a tank/dps or a healer/dps. So it grabs a tank and healer… it grabs a healer and a dps… those DPS shortcut the line because of the shortage of tanks or healers…and all the other dps get to fill that one individual slot that is left.

This plays significantly into the reason why when you have a group of 2 or more DPS it can take a lot longer to get a que. Your not eligible to get the tanks or healers that are grouped with other players that would make your group incompatible. If your 2 DPS, and you get 1 tank and a dps that are grouped… you can only get a healer solo qued…or vice versa.

Interestingly to combat this they changed the rewards they give the roles that are in high demand so that you can’t earn those if your grouped.

The other thing is this is why you get such disparaging variance in quality of tanks in queue because - anyone can play anything they want and the system has no concept of skill. You get a lot of players who DPS as their main spec who YOLO it as a Tank in queued content and have no idea what they are doing or the gear for it either they just wanted a faster que.

Its another reason you can sometimes find situations where a tank or healer leaves the group as soon as you enter the dungeon. Someone has two accoutns, their using their second account to skip the line for their DPS, and then they just drop the healer or tank on the other account. Because its a group in progress it gets priority for the next solo qued role and bam.

It all explains why queues are Fd up.

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Because we are the DPS rabble.
There is a million of us to one tank.

I knew the job would be like this when I took it.

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Not enough tanks, pure and simple. Roll a tank, queues are instant.

On my prot pal alt, i get insta queue, then if its a dungeon I don’t know (lots of new ones suddenly added), I just quit. That group, I hope, gets a new tank fast enough, otherwise, sucks to be them. I’m not tanking a dungeon I don’t know.

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They should probably lower the threshold for satchels to get more people in queue. I’ve had nearly instant queues as a healer when there were no satchels up. Some people will only queue at this point for a satchel.

They should also add an in-game satchel alert option so you don’t have to get an addon to be notified when one is up.

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Tank changes for TWW are going to prove to be a disaster.

You heard it here first!

Don’t call me chicken little!

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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I wouldn’t mind the queue times if the freaking dungeons ever dropped loot.

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I never had to wait that long unless I pick a specific dungeon. Dps queue has been 5 mins average

On a side note they should start giving deserter debuff to those who miss their queue., make those adhd people wait 30 mins. That will learn them

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  1. You overestimate how many active subs there are in this game.
  2. I got an instant queue last night, got these new boots and left after 1st boss :laughing:
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Might depend on what faction you are. As an Alliance Rogue + Mage, my q’s were about 3-6 minute average while leveling. Heroics take about 4-7 min average q.

I think Horde is in significant decline. They need to open up Q to cross faction

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Up front box sales must be super soft if you are waiting for a queue to pop at the start of an expansion.

This expansion needed more time to cook.

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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You’re dps. 15 mintues isnt that bad, and it has more to do with tanks than anything else.

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The tank changes that they pushed the last minute on the beta has proven to be a big problem so far.

But we shall see how it unfolds when the season “officially” starts.

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

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We don’t have any content challenging enough yet to see if those changes were good or bad. Heroics have been a joke since they opened last week.

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That’s wild!

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I’ve leveled entirely as tank or healer, and most of my classes are becoming pretty gear capped. I still need valor stones but that isn’t as much something I care about, and world quests have those.

Add on to that the hassle of pugging or queueing as a tank or healer and you will start seeing less, because the ones that main those specs are already done with gearing for now.

I will say I jumped on earlier only to be met with a dps that immediately got mad when I only pulled the first pack in priory. (I always do this as a way to make sure everyone is loaded in and it’s easier to pull big in the center room). He started blowing up chat and pulling everything to the boss, I was just over it, initiated a vote kick that failed so I left. This was actually the first dungeon I’ve left this expansion. With people like that it’s no wonder people don’t want to tank or heal.

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Yeah, for sure. 5 in a row so far, haven’t got a run in yet on the new prot pal alt, lol. It’s ok, i got other stuff to do.

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make friends with a tank or healer, or roll one yourself

like others have said, there are too many dps queuing for the amount of tanks and/or healers that are available right now

there’s also something to be said about being patient with new tanks so they keep queuing, but most people would rather drop slurs and votekick them for some reason

4 Likes
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Its 15 mins cuz everyone is DPS and they wanna do the same thing your doing