Finding groups isn’t nearly as hard as general discussion pretends it is. Below I have listed 4 tried and true methods. Also, with so many people claiming they can’t find groups then why not run some keys with the forum dwellers?
START YOUR OWN GROUP
It’s crazy to me that so many people are absolutely terrified of starting their own group. You don’t even have to talk to the people you invite. If the group goes bad then leave.
MAKE SOME FRIENDS
Friends will run keys with you if they enjoy running keys. If they aren’t on or don’t want to run keys at the time that you do then use one of these other solutions.
JOIN A GUILD WITH COMMON INTERESTS
Guildies will run keys with you if they enjoy running keys. If they aren’t on or don’t want to run keys at the time that you do then use one of these other solutions.
JOIN ONE OF THE MANY COMMUNITIES IN-GAME OR ON DISCORD
There are numerous key groups you could join, you could even look up the WoW made easy community discord and find keys or list your own there.
This doesn’t work like you think it does. What happens if you’re a lone DPS with a crappy key is you sit there forever.
What you actually need to do is look for crappy keys (e.g. Throne of the Tides) with 1 or 2 DPS and no tank or healer. There will be 50+ people applying for the Atal with 2 DPS and tank and heals, but very few applying for the ones with 1 or 2 DPS.
The secret is to heal. Do the hard/unpopular job and you will have your pick of the literally dozens of DPS who apply. When the pool of potential players for a given key at a given time are 100 DPS, 4 healers, and 7 tanks, you can make 4 groups. The 4 healers choose the best 4 tanks and try to choose the best 12 dps in total. 88 dps left out, a few tanks left out. It is also why people don’t care to join groups with lone DPS because a group without a healer might not even fill. Or if it does it will fill with a new healer who doesn’t know how in-demand they are in low pugs.
The healer shortage is also why you can get great dps in whatever key you want to heal. The very good dps have to pair down and do mid level keys, and there are still plenty of very good dps who want to actually play so they apply to the only keys they can get into (much lower level than the keys they could actually be doing btw). You don’t need to settle if you heal, be picky, you’ll probably get an awesome group in like 5 minutes even if it’s a random key like 13.
If the act of getting into a group is more anxiety and annoyance than the positives of actually performing the activity. Skipping it is a perfectly acceptable solution.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I sat there for 15 minutes on Tuesday as a lone DPS with a 19 Throne before anyone at all applied. Gave up after 25 and nobody who was good enough to time it.