Maybe you're just bad

We all know how easily wow players are provoked into anger so just calm down. The title was get your attention but it’s also probably true. This post is just about M+.

This is not about defending Blizzard. I don’t find the affixes fun or enjoyable this season at all but to all the people complaining about why they don’t get invited to M+. The reason M+ is so hard to get is because of bad players. Let me explain:

There are 4 kinds of players that play wow:

1.) Professional players (I’ve never run with pros so I can’t tell you anything about them. What I can say is that Blizz seems to base the game’s balance on what this minority of players thinks)

From what I understand, pro players largely stick to their inner group/guild groups because they do high content and need reliable players.

2.) Elitest, pro-wannabe players: This group is the one that is just nasty to get involved with. Horrible attitude, toxic, immature, inappropriate, silly players that talk a lot of nonsense.

This group cares about their numbers and timing keys.

3.) Bad toxic players: This is the kind of player that pulls low numbers in a key (e.g. 620 ilvl but somehow unable to pull more than 500k aoe on a trash mob…) but expects you to carry them because if you don’t allow a 27 min key to turn into a 2 hour key cuz their numbers are terrible and group keeps wiping, you’re toxic for leaving.

This group only cares about vault.

4.) Normal human beings: This group is split between good and bad players but they are minority as well.

This group cares about both vault and, for the good players among them, timing high keys in the 10-12’s. Point is, they are a mix.

If you want to know why M+ is so hard to get into or why standards for entry continue to rise to unreasonable levels, you can blame the player base.

If you can’t get into a 10 it’s because of the extreme paranoia of players at this point in the game. Originally, you would use ilvl to determine skill of a player in the game. Made sense since higher ilvl means you were doing higher content. Unfortunately ppl get carried by friends/guilds or pay for it with gold.

The response was to put equal weight/more weight on io. Players once again started getting carried or paying gold for higher io.

The response was to place priority value on logs, and for lazier players, to just check if you’ve already timed that key before. Lol, even this is not bullet proof as someone can have 2 keyed an M+ but only cuz the group carrying them was really good.

I have been in keys at lvl 10-11 (e.g. Necrotic Wake) where people didn’t know the are supposed to single target the zolamus sorcerer that is spam summoning adds. These were players that had a rating of 2400+. It’s literally not possible to have an io of 2400+ and to make a mistake like that. You were carried.

I’ve seen keys in Grim Batol where the whole damn reason a rogue is desired is because of his ability “shiv” which removes all enrage stacks on the ogre, and they aren’t doing it… or getting blown away by the twilight drake because they somehow don’t know about the push back on 10 lvl key and when you check, they have timed a 10GB. That’s not possible to not know about the push back and to die to it more than once (again more than once means it wasn’t mistake). You were carried.

When dps at ilvl 620+ are doing 500k aoe dps on a mob or heals are doing less than 700k hps on an 8+ key, it means you’re bad. Numbers are numbers. You are not able to do the key at your current skill lvl on this toon. Either improve or play a different class/spec that is more intuitive to you.

Most keys at lvl 10 require minimum 1 mill to 1.2 mill dps single target to time. Tighter keys like Grim Batol need like 1.5 mill single target dps to time and around 800k hps to heal unless tank is carrying you hard and dps are sweat pushing their defensives. That’s why you’re not getting invited. Players have had too many bad experiences giving others “a chance”.

The way you improve is by looking at warcraft logs, comparing your abilities to players doing really well, and seeing what is wrong with your rotation, talents, etc.

M+ has become an exclusive group because of carries, both players getting carries and players providing carries for gold, and just an over abundance of bad players who think the next vault piece to get their ilvl up is going to make a difference even though they are already 620+ and can’t pull 400k single target dps.

Gold is a major problem in this game because ppl use it to cheat. You can’t remove gold so you’re kinda stuck.

Your io + ilvl are really good but you can’t get invited to a 7 key? Ppl don’t know if you cheated to get it, that’s why you aren’t getting an invite. For a lot of players, the fun is beating their old score. Vault doesn’t mean anything when you get to a certain point.

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Oh I already know I’m bad at the game.

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Almost no one uses logs to vet groups for M+ simply because most runs are not logged and uploaded. Also because people are not going to comb through logs for each person they invite.

There’s also far more players who get carried unintentionally than those who pay for a service.

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Ik they won’t. Like I said, lazy. Also, checking someone’s raid logs is a good way of gauging their numbers. Doesn’t show you experience in the key but at least you know they can pull the right numbers even accounting for the spec differences in M+ compared to raids.

Raid logs don’t mean much when you are crossing different content. Raid logs also largely depends on how the raid group is doing, not just on the individual. There’s also a ton of players, like myself, who don’t raid at all.

I agree though that players should be reviewing Details or logs for ways to self-improve, but no one vetting groups will do it. It’s not even out of laziness. RIO is still the gold standard for vetting M+ even if players are being carried unintentionally or intentionally. While the number on it’s own doesn’t mean much there’s still other things to consider.

Are the top scoring runs timed or untimed?
What is the best timed run for the dungeon being applied to?
How many keys have been timed in a specific key bracket?

If you have a player who is 2800 with 15 keys timed in the 10-11 range or a 2700 player with 30 keys timed you can get a sense of who will have better understanding of their class and the nuances of the dungeon.

Score + Best Timed Run for the Dungeon + Overall # of Keys Completed.

This gives you a better picture than just a number. Also for hybrid specs, making sure their scores are coming from the spec they are applying from.

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This is simply not true. These players dont even play in the 8-10 range on alts for weekly keys. They generally stick to 12+ and play with friends. The fact Blizzard created affixes specifically for the lower key crowd and removed affixes for the high key crowd is evidence of this, as well as tuning the dungeons to the maximum rewards.

Healer overall HPS means literally nothing in keys. I can say this as a healer main for many seasons now. Did the group live? Healer did their job (yes, my life is significantly easier when people play correctly, but my point still stands).

I agree with most of the rest of your post. Example, I played a bit of fury warrior this season and completely understand why they don’t invite my warrior after pugging some while gearing a blood dk. Some of them with the same or more io/gear as my warrior cant even pull half the dps i can, while some outperform me (I’m not great either, I literally never played fury until this season). You never know what you will get with pugs, which is why people will wait for a more sure thing then roll the dice on a questionable.

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100%. I just explained this in another thread.

I didn’t mean affix design. I meant class balance. I don’t care enough about this point to argue about it though so I’ll just leave it as is.

you know all those bad players you’re always hearing about on the forums?

tries to flick lighter and drops it

well i’m the worst one

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Tries to stamp out fire they started

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That’s incorrect. Raid logs are extremely specific and in no way are based on the group aside from the additional buffs you’d get from having a larger group. They are extremely specific to a player’s performance down to even comparisons against other ppl of his class and specific ilvl. It’s one of the best ways to measure skill.

Well outside of enhancement shaman staying OP for as long as it did and the OPness of yet another mid-season rework (prot paladin) this season I feel has been relatively balanced. What else do you wish to see them tune? If you are basing it solely on what the meta is, if it is 0.01% better, the top end will choose it and everyone else will follow whether or not its good for them/their given pug situation.

Idk this seems like a little bit of a stretch. How many mechanics are they picking up? I don’t think me being able to perform my single target rotation will prove I can perform other mechanics in mythic plus (kicks, stops, aoe damage, ST while in AOE specs etc). I would agree that raid logs are generally going to be better than m+ logs for glancing quickly to see how they measure up.

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It really didn’t feel that way after my class was absolutely gutted after RWF was over. For once, at least, they didn’t leave warrior completely obliterated with nerfs the rest of the season after doing that, though.

Fury got nerfed prior to race, a knee jerk reaction to be sure. Like I said i’ve played fury this season, and after the last round of buffs i’ve had no issues with damage. Sure, i’m not doing enhance damage but it is more than serviceable. It’s not like I do tank damage every pull.

I will always admit to not being the best player/healer in the world. I have been able to get KSM and KSH for the last few seasons on either my hpal or my resto sham and usually end up being within the top 5-10 healers on my realm.

Before every season, I watch videos on the dungeons, I read up on my class and abilities, I study the affixes. I use various different websites to “educate” myself. I start out on the lowest key possible for every dungeon and work my way up. Do I make mistakes? Yes but less so with practice.

What I’ve been seeing is a whole lot of other people making mistakes with alarming consistency, even at higher level keys such as +8 on to +10s. Things go badly because no one will be using their damage mitigation abilities at exactly when they’re supposed to be using them and the dungeons are now very unforgiving for that sort of mistake, unfortunately. Then what I get is people calling me a “bad healer” because they don’t understand that they’re the ones who are bad. And I know when they’re being bad, because my VRA tells me so (or should I say, it doesn’t tell me–because I hear no abilities going off when I know they should be using them).

I think it’s a combination of the dungeon level squish, things being unbalanced, over-tuned, etc, and people “being bad”, for what it’s worth.

I could go on, but that’s just my $0.02 for now.

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Overall damage/healing metrics vary wildly between groups depending on fight duration and pull size.

there’s one more category OP missed: The Scr00bz0rz

Which one are you?

Are you serious? Your individual parse/logs has a significant dependence on the performance of the overall raid group. This includes encounter times, how well everyone else is doing mechanics, ect.

I suggest you stop looking at logs if you think logs are entirely individual.

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What are you smoking?

Cheese them by having some people NOT DO dps (at certain points.) heh.

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