Opinion: You don't need to read/watch a guide before doing a normal dungeon

I have seen the sentiment thrown around in the ongoing discussion around tanks and the “go go go” attitude towards dungeons that it is impolite to go into a normal dungeon with a clean slate, i.e. no prior knowledge of what to expect in the dungeon. I have seen a lot of “you should take five minutes and read a guide before doing the dungeon” and “If you don’t want to get kicked for being slow, make your own group”.

I think that those statements are kind of wild, and come from a place of entitlement. I think it’s perfectly reasonable that people come to a game like WoW (an MMORPG) and want to have a sense of discovery while playing. It’s not real life. It’s not work. Not everyone wants to do homework before playing content. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to want to go into a dungeon blind and figure it out for themselves. That’s a big draw of gaming in general - discovering things and overcoming challenges.

I also think it’s perfectly okay to want to read guides before doing content, as well. Achieving efficiency and mastery over content can be equally fun, but I definitely think that you shouldn’t expect other players to do homework before running content.

(There is, in my opinion, a design-side problem with difficulty/pacing of dungeons and tuning of tanks that I think Blizzard should address, but these are my thoughts on the community side of the topic).

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Who says that? It’s normal lol.

Yeah correct. VTK works on majority rules, if you play in a way that annoys people enough to kick you consistently, then making your own group is the solution here.

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Where have you seen this philosophy? I’ve never seen anyone demand a guide for Normal. It’s Normal… it’s pretty easy to facesmash even when running blind and no one will blame you for wanting to experience it blind for your first run.

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That’s all well and good, but consider: You have at least four other people with you. You wanting to smash your head against a wall could very well cause the time (and stress) to the rest of the party.

It’s different than playing something like Elden Ring blind, because most of the time it’s just you.

This isn’t saying you need to install DBM and pay attention to the flashy alerts, but at least reading the Adventure Guide about the encounters, or asking, ‘Hey! I’m new, anything I need to know?’ upon starting the dungeon would be fine enough!

Note that I’m just saying this in general, I don’t think anyone really cares in Normals…

I never read or watch boss guides, every time I’ve tried to in the past I got nothing out of it because I learn best by actually experiencing the mechanics myself. If no one explains anything DBM at least gives me enough info to figure things out fairly quickly.

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Stop being selfish and wasting everyone’s time.

2 mins on YouTube is all anyone is asking for.

EDIT: thought this was RAID. I agree with OP.

for a normal dungeon and LFR used to fall in this as well, you shouldn’t die from your mistake or you should be able to learn what to do by doing

a normal dungeon shouldn’t cause people ‘stress’ and time.

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Which I emphasized! The general point still stands.

That is correct but it is a bit obvious. No one should be expected to read guides on anything that is on the group finder.

Jeez and people wonder why sometimes there’s a tank shortage. It’s a normal you don’t need to do that and no one should feel obligated to for normal dungeons

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Sorry. I read “normal RAID” in my head.

You’re right, normal dungeons don’t need YouTube.

I’ll go have some coffee…

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Reading or watching a guide is no substitute for actually DOING it, some of us could watch that two minute video ten times and still not really understand what’s going on. Everyone learns in different ways, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this.

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For a dungeon? Sure.

Not ok for raids and not ok for keys past a point. Your cute little foray in innocence costs other people in their time and consumables.

I don’t watch videos for anything! I do however read the adventure guide, and that has always been enough to get me through what ever content I want to do. I think a lot of people overlook the journal, but they shouldn’t because it’s really good and basically tells you exactly what to lookout for. Plus, it tells you a little bit of lore about the dungeon and some extra info about the bosses that add a little something extra to the experience. :dracthyr_heart:

For normal Dungeons? No. And the major reason is stuff is going to melt entirely too fast to even properly execute most of the mechanics. Same thing on Heroics.

Beyond that, for me at least, it kind of starts M0-- Where mechanics start to be relevant. At least, the ones you’ve been skipping through Normals and heroics.

At that point, it’s not a new dungeon, there’s no point in discovery left and you SHOULD be doing your homework.

Just personally, I like to get familiar with dungeons on a DPS, before I start tanking, or even healing. That’s more just me trying to control how well I can perform while tanking. I don’t judge people who like to have a fresh introduction to a dungeon while tanking. It’s just that it’s usually much smoother when the tank knows exactly where to go, how much to pull, what to LOS, what to focus, interrupts, etc.

I definitely don’t ever read guides, either way. Maybe in a raid, but I don’t mind learning dungeons through trial and error. “Oh, I died to a massive fireball. Maybe I’ll avoid that fireball in future.”

When it comes to things like that, some of us remember the Malgorok situation, in MoP. You were actually meant to stand in the big purple goo, to clear the debuff you had. Or…remove your healing absorb or whatever tf it was.

Point is, not everything is immediately obvious and you need to get used to it. That’s part of what makes some dungeons so much fun. :dracthyr_nod:

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This is a poor excuse to a point. I learn best by doing too, but I am also capable of reading or being told key things and applying that knowledge ahead of time.

For example knowing a boss has a breath attack and to keep the boss turned around is something I can be told/watch and understand and execute on.

Wanna know who didn’t watch videos or read a guide?
Leeroy Jenkins didn’t!
And we all saw happened when he ran into that whelp room unprepared… total party wipe!

Don’t be a Leeroy!

(laughs at his own joke post)

I honestly think this was me on my DK doing normals and heroics… I’d ask myself can I solo this boss also?

Players never needed it , they can learn on the go .

The problem comes when its not a learning group :stuck_out_tongue:

That kind of thing is easy to figure out in real time too, new boss mechanics are often similar to previous mechanics so anyone with a bit of experience and DBM can often understand what’s going on without being told.

Or when the group has members who either don’t try to learn or are simply incapable of it.