TL;DR: as a tank, it is super helpful to have a place to practice.
I had an issue running a priory +8 the other day. i pulled to a bad spot, another player wasn’t positioned well, we pulled a bunch extra, wiped, etc.
as we got going again, it was clear that this group was not working well together and the run was ended.
fine. it happens.
I went to raider io and reviewed its recommended pug route. i prefer to go left. but the mob packs it suggested and the skips it did were unfamiliar to me.
since this dungeon is part of the current expansion, and I have decent gear and it is late in the expansion, I was able to go in solo on normal and experiment with the route.
once I got comfortable with the pathing and how the skips worked, I found a +2 group. I wanted to see how the actual % worked with the route to ensure I would get 100%. I told them I was experimenting with a route. we blew the place up and got 100% quite efficiently.
then, I went back to a +8 and got a 2star run.
the point of this longish story is that I was able to figure out the problem with my pathing and had a place to practice this on my own (not a follower dungeon where I would have to deal with the party NPCs pulling stuff I didn’t want which they do all the time) before exposing someone else’s key to my experiment.
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I wouldn’t mind a kill % bar on all dungeons on the condition that they aren’t required for completing the dungeon. Maybe just offer a bonus sachel of some gold and cheap consumables. Ran into the same problem, wanting to feel out a dungeon by running it solo, but getting no info on what was really needed for the route
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The practice for an 8 key is the normal, heroic, mythic and 2-7 key levels below it.
And if you hit 8 as ceiling for whatever reason then like… that’s fine? Not everyone is going to get a 3k IO there first time out.
that is an interesting idea.
what I also found out about priory, that I hand’t really paid attention to before, is the mob composition is different on mythic than it is on normal/heroic. there is at least one patrol pack on mythic that isn’t there on normal. so even the normal dungeon is not a perfect replica of the mythic version.
playing it is one thing obviously but alternatively, download MDT and just plan the route out that way
i agree that a ceiling is fine. but I knew that could do the +8. i had 2 chested the 7 with no issues.
however, a tank needs a place to look and plan and understand where a timer isn’t ticking away. and as I noted above, normal/heroic mob composition isn’t always the same as mythic. and you don’t get a live % count in normal to see if you really have gotten the % you need.
I have had times where I have mapped out a route in MDT with a 100% completion but in an actual run, pulling everything in my plan, we still needed % after the last boss.
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Add an M+ version of Follower Dungeons with the same timer and Percentage requirements. That would be a great way to practice for anyone new to M+ and/or just new to a role in there like Tanks.
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interesting idea, but the NPCs would have to be a LOT smarter than they are now. in follower dungeons now, they pull all sorts of mobs.
an M+ follower dungeon would have to be programmed so that the party NPCs only attack stuff the tank has threat on.
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I think it’s more accurate that they act like derps since a new Tank will be going into low keys where derps live.
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To bad there isn’t an addon to do something like this.
100%. As tank looking to improve, I spend a lot of time reviewing my runs, practicing by soloing M-0s or just walking through my route in normal dungeons. Some suggestions, things that have worked for me:
- ThreeChest-dot-io: Website that lets you see routes others are using, including top 10 timed runs from each dungeon.
- Warcraft Recorder: App that records your runs, so you can watch movies of yourself afterwards. You can see how pulls got away from you, catch where you let some elite clip you in the back, see how you could have positioned mobs differently to avoid a buttpull…
At the end of the day, spending time and effort to improve your game skills is more rewarding than any loot drop, and does more for your longterm accomplishments.
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Thats fair, i just wish it didn’t rely entirely on external information or going in blind and hoping for the best on low keys. Seeing other peoples routes is good once ive got a sense of what mobs contribute how much when compared to the threat they pose. I have a terrible time remembering anything that doesn’t have a “why” attached. And i don’t think people just trying to progress in low keys appreciate a bunch of experimental nonsense.
That said, we could have in game tools for seeing other people’s routes as well. Delves laid a bit of the groundwork already. Have an option to summon a ghost of one of your friends for their best run of your dungeon. Dissapears beyond a certain radius (when you fall behind) and pauses. Resumes when you get close again.
It could just be the dungeon map with the mobs shown, grouping highlited, and pull order like addons do now, but i like it when information like that can be conveyed through the world
I’d argue that having to pull trash after the last boss isn’t neccesarily a bad thing; during my last few Eco-Domes we cleared the boss short some percentage and were able to clean it up by killing half a pack of Adds and (having met criteria for % and bosses) the rest of the adds defaulted to passive training dummies as a result.
I am recently beginning to learn this would have an amazing utility. I’d love to have a ‘danger room’ in my house to pull up w/e and practice.
I have what I call a memory leak. I do not hold onto information easily it slips. I need to repeat repeat repeat to see everything I need to see and learn what I need to learn.
I don’t feel it’s right to subject people to my learning curve.
I would love to pull up holodeck version of last boss in Taza-Streets, to practice the mini-game of using symbol-teleports.
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in an of itself, no it isn’t and ara-kara is an example. the “standard route” right now does that on purpose in order to skip 3 large mobs down the center.
operation floodgate seems to have some variation on mob counts. some of the mobs in the water pat enough to miss being pulled it i am not careful and I end up missing 1% at the end.
There is a special burden on the tank to know the popular routes.
If you’re in the first wave of a season you can get the tools to help create them or you can run as DPS to learn them.
And using the popular routes are important, especially in tight instance, so the rest of the team knows the areas where they can easily butt pull something and what needs to be interrupted.
And there’s really not a good way to practice other than doing keys. Most people don’t learn anything from success, they learn from failures. And you don’t learn how not to butt pull an area or what needs to be interrupted, or where the healing spikes are going to be until you test yourself on the actual content.
No way. It’s just a training system.