I usually run a guild run on fridays so I try to do alt raids during the week nights because I have 3 60s. Last phase I never had trouble getting a ST group going around this time. Now it’s like even if I do heat 1 it takes over an hour to fill a pug raid and my server has almost no guilds running at this time. It’s either super late night or super early mornings.
Is MC that much harder to pug for most people or was there such a population drop off from phase 3 that it’s just due to numbers?
I feel like a massive part of this is how unfriendly SoD is with leveling alts. The pain that is 1-60 is usually not enough to stop alts, but having to then run around the entire world getting runes, then farm enough FR to do H2. Some specs are just plain bad like ret and ele.
I’ve pretty much exclusively pugged since phase 4 launched and it’s a nightmare. The average player is incapable of even doing heat 1 mechanics in these pugs. The raid host has no issue with a raid taking 4 hours due to the hard res. It’s just not a fun experience.
I pugged MC once. It was awful.
Here’s my theory - Heat Levels, while amazing for guilds, really amazing for guilds, have become the bane of PUGs for one simple reason - the wheat rises, the chaff sinks. And if you are starting from the bottom… it’s all chaff. Oh lord there’s some chaff down there. I literally just left the PUG on Rag because I was not having a good time.
My alt is basically in the freezer until our guild does alt-night because only bad players are still in heat 1 but I don’t want to pay gold out the nose to skip it.
Don’t want to play HL1 with the zugs, but don’t want to pay hundreds of gold to go into HL2 on one of numerous alts. Whole point of alts is that I want to be able to bounce around and not be locked down to one alt, but the heat system and needing to pay gold to skip to “real raiding” / avoid zug groups really makes that uncomfortable.
i really don’t understand why people say ele is bad… i top overall damage every raid
single target boss damage is a lil lower than most but idc overall damage is the only metric that matters
No one is making alts because they are too busy pvping on the forums.
I do agree gearing alts up is painful and FR gear is crazy expensive on most servers still.
I’ve cleared more MC pugs than ony pugs; the onyxia pugs are so awful I cannot understand it because her mechanics are not that difficult to do.
I do hope blizzard can implement something to help get things back on track though because the last thing I want to do is just raid log one night a week for phase 4.
game is SoDead 
Warthin is coming out. People are waiting to push key and participate in the RWF and whatnot.
The real problem is nobody does grouping
We had to replace one for mc3 and I got 10 people instantly first post(although its all hunters warriors rogues)
Made a pug for MC1 Sunday and was flooded with whispers
I think time also matters, if I stay up later than I want to on work nights I can find more groups but that wasn’t an issue in phase 3.
pay hundreds of gold for heat 2??? you people are just bad at the game apparently. The cloak enchant and boots from duke give you 40fr. That’s enough for heat 2 with totem/aura. 2 pieces of gear that cost 20g is all you need for heat 2. If you can’t get that well than stay in heat 1 till you get some tier pieces. Also how can you not afford a couple hundred gold? I’ve got like 18k atm you make 350g a week per char from just dailies
Those dailies are not enjoyable.
I have 3k gold but I don’t do dailies because I use income from my transmutes strategically.
check so you don’t want to do what’s need to do heat 2 you just wanna complain about not doing heat 2
Just like I was able to raid in BFD, raid in Gnomer, and raid in ST without having to pay hundreds of gold.
Also, I don’t know what Alliance-side pugs you’re playing in where you have multiple holy paladins you can rely on for resistance (also you shouldn’t rely on aura anyways since certain fights are going to cause you to ourange). That’s not really a thing on Alliance.
Theres no difference in the heat drops, just your requirement to have more fr.
You want to do something made for people who want more of a challenge but you are unwilling to invest in its requirements.
Thats a you problem
what about heat 1 ?
Theres a player drop but its a lot of reasons:
The xp boost more than makes up for the time you have to move around the world
raiding playerbase got split into 3. Lotta groups dont even bother with pugs if they are doing heat 2/3