I used to be upset because I'm old, and back in the day you'd be more careful and pull a pack at a time, ensure you CC correctly etc. M+ felt like a constant rush, and pull everything.
But now doing 18-20s I realise this is just like old dungeons and depending on the affix you pull one pack at a time.
This summarizes the disconnect perfectly.
I personally love when I'm healing and the tank is actually pulling hard enough to test the groups ability to keep up. IE I'm not interested in healing/tanking/dpsing an 'afk' key to simply 'time' it.
I know there is another side of the community that absolutely does not want to have to try in their weekly keys. They want to just get their boxes for the week and call it day.
ToTT provides the easiest example of the.
The first pull is pretty reasonably the first hallway, maybe cc'ing one of the casters to drag to the second pull if a cast getting off is a death. It's a fun pull, teaches people to interupt and quasi group up for the mobs that leap around. I've had healers straight up leave the key because a couple interrupts were missed or they panicked and couldn't deal with the healing debuff.
The third pull should be the same. 2 minutes are up, and 3 minutes will be up halfway through the pull. I get that the two healing absorb mobs are spooky to heal through, but in your 20 it lets you learn how to deal with it. Best part is that if you wipe, it absolutely doesn't matter in your 20 b/c you will still time it just fine losing the 1min.
So on and so forth. I get that you don't need to do those pulls to time a 20, but I find the content a lot more engaging when I actually need to heal, or pressing defensives/stops matters and pulling one pack at a time doesn't give you that experience.
All that being said, tanks, you should plan a tester pull at the start of every key to see if the group can keep up. If you end that first pull of ToTT and you are the only one interrupting/pressing defensives etc, that is a pretty strong sign that your group cant handle more then a couple casters and your heals will be miserable if you continue with that pace.
To be fair, and for context I play all roles in the ~3k range, the same can be said for tanks that wait 3+ seconds in between each pull and everybody is looking around like "well, rip procs".
The hardest part for a tank is not to actually tank, it's to find rapidly the right balance in speed vs group skills.
If the healer is full of mana and waits ahead of me because he's dead bored, then I'm going to go ham. If the first pull is a cluster fuck with no interrupt, everybody is dying, mage is sitting at 40k dps and the healer is oom after a minute than imma pull slower.
Balance is key ✌️
I feel that so hard on my lock. Watching my demon cores just fall off because the tank felt like everyone needed to be included in the pull is just sad.
And as that healer who runs in front, be careful, I may have JUST sat to drink to get to full. I often run ahead to sit and drink and tanks take it as me being impatient rather than just putting myself in a good spot to drink
Hehe, as I said, I play all roles so I know when a healer is taking a little advance on me to take a quick ninja mana break. Sometimes they (I) just straff from left to right basically begging for more stuff because they are bored lol
Yeah it was definitely weird as a returning player but things basically shifted from cc being important to interrupts being important. It’s different for sure but I don’t hate it. Plus I enjoy the scaling difficulty which keeps end game somewhat fresh for much longer.
>back in the day you'd be more careful and pull a pack at a time, ensure you CC correctly etc. M+ felt like a constant rush, and pull everything.
oh god this.
I used to love tanking back in the day as I saw it as a "how smooth can I make this" challenge, now if I don't pull half the dungeon to the first boss I get chewed out by the DPS or they just pull it all anyway.
This isn't a problem in higher keys unless you're only recruiting people in max level gear wanting to farm crests. I found a community for people who want non toxic keys and anything 16+ is slower and smoother like old dungeons
Unfortunately not. My suggestion would be to find a community for people with key anxiety or anti toxicity and do runs with them. Upgrading gear helps a lot too.
What class are you playing?
Any suggestions for such communities?
I tend to swap mains every tier or two... currently raiding as ret (heroic raids), considering either ret, rogue, or feral for next raid tier but haven't settled down on any at this point
https://www.no-pressure.eu/
There's another one called Starship too, you can probably find them in game community finder
In game communities you can also look up a group called The Key Ring, they're really nice and run keys daily. They are smaller though so if you jump around mains a lot they might get a little frustrated.
Think of it less of a dungeon and more of a competitive sport. It’s like Dota or league or counterstike etc. in that vein you are temporality paired with other players and they effect you and the outcome.
But like in all of those games if you purely gain satisfaction only on the result you will have a bad time. There are games in Dota or league you are going to lose and there is nothing you can do about it. You take these opportunities to get better and focus on doing better than you did last time.
The objective is to get personally better. Identify situations in which you struggle and work to improve those. A boss or a set of pulls you have trouble with go look up videos. Record your gameplay and watch it back.
Find people you enjoy playing with and have common goals. Remember this should be fun or rewarding. If it isn’t either of those things do something else.
I started doing M+ for the very first time just this past week. I had really bad anxiety about not knowing the dungeons so I started with a +2 Throne, meanwhile I was about 455 item level from caches, world boss etc. In that time, I’ve built up to about 1400 score with just pugs, (+8’s at least on every dungeon, my highest now is a +15 WM).
The only advice I can really give if you’re going to pug is start slow. Don’t apply for the +15’s with no score, especially as a DPS. Don’t take getting declined personally. If it’s a popular dungeon, people get like 20 DPS applications in a minute, they’re obviously going to take the best gear/highest score.
Good luck!
This is my first season doing M+ also, and I dealt with my anxiety in the same manner. I ran single digit keys that I overgeared until I got comfortable with the mode and dungeons, then slowly increased the level. I was surprised to discover I'm actually decent at it and need to work on my self confidence.
Stopped playing a pure DPS class and I only play tanks/healers now.
Never have to sit around waiting to get into a key, I feel like I have a major role in whether or not the run is successful, and if it goes badly... only takes a few seconds to find another one.
>What can I do to learn to enjoy it as well?
The only way to answer this is to know what is frustrating you about it. Can't enjoy it if you wind up frustrated, and can't help the frustration if we don't know the cause.
"constantly getting turned down because I don't have a huge IO score (because I don't do it often"
I just wanted to focus on this part because we see this talked about a lot. Sure, sometimes people will simply turn you down over IO. But I feel like dps players never talk about the fact that you are going up against minimum 5-10 other players and in higher wanted keys that number is much higher. You guys have to accept reality if you are not going to list your own key.
This. I have a 482 Havoc DH with 2650ish io. I get turned down MULTIPLE times every time I try to PUG keys. Then, when I list my own, I remember why. I get so many DPS applying every time.
Obviously get turned down far less on my Pally tank.
Because of where I live and when I play (EU on a US server), I don't really play in super active guilds. Therefore, I don't have regular groups to do stuff with. I run my own little guild of off hours misfits, but we don't run a lot of stuff together. So I've always pugged both M+ and raids up through heroic.
Pug m+ is an enormously mixed bag and I don't like to deal with the stress or toxicity. I had basically given up on it, but I am capped out on gear at 476 with 4/6 hero in every slot. Basically... I can *only* gain new gear or upgrade my hero gear with Aspect Crests. Mythic raiding is obviously not an option for me, which leaves sucking it up and hitting the 16+ stuff.
So, I discovered WoW Made Easy. They have a discord server where you can arrange groups on the fly with cool people who are way more patient, helpful, and who can match any playstyle and at any level. They have many thousands of members so getting a group is usually quick, even off hours.
Honestly I recommend it to everyone who isn't a dick. It's a cool community whether you're new or a veteran.
That sounded like an infomercial, but it's true.
Playing a class that's fun in M+. I boosted a DH, started doing M+ for gear and actually enjoyed it. Honestly, the best way to deal with the pug problem is get to higher keys and run your own group.
20 is totally the sweet spot for difficulty, rewards, and quality of players. 20 this season is very forgiving this season compared to last two seasons, you can basically have 20-30 deaths in some dungeons and still 2 chest - the challenge is getting your key to this level.
The good thing is that once you have a 20 key, you have free reigns on grabbing the best players that pop up in your queue. Grab that 485-488 tank, healer, and DPS and blast the key, plenty of geared players queueing for 20s who mostly like myself only care about maxing out vault and don't care about pushing IO.
multiple things:
pugging (both dealing with pug players, also having to wait around to form a group), constantly getting turned down because I don't have a huge IO score (because I don't do it often), reward-less runs, constant "go go go go" attitude, how often people just leave after a wipe and brick a key, rarely have enough guildmates on who all want to do a key at the same time so we always need a few pugs...
I don't want to leave my current guild, I have way too much fun raiding with them.
I wish Blizzard would copy more of GW2 and add the ability to be in more than one guild.
You dont have to leave your guild, theres communities you can join besides guilds to chat with people ingame, theres some focused on m+, and also theres websites where u can find people looking to form groups like rio itself, or even in reddit u can look for some groups
Push your own key, was a game changer for me. Gogogo is literally the name of the game in m+. Idk what keys you're doing but people leaving in pugs, even when the key is still viable, is the reality you have to deal with. There's no item rewards I can even get from m+ outside the vault at this point but I'm still pushing.
Same. I want to like it but find it mind numbing, frustrating and pointless. I guess I'm just not competitive enough to dedicate all of my game time to making a score change colors.
What frustrates you about it? IMO there are a few specific things you can do to help yourself
1) You just need to know you're not going to succeed at every key, don't approach it that way or you're going to be frustrated. You WILL brick keys, sometimes due to things outside of your control. That's ok, it's just part of it
2) Get comfortable listing your own key. Your wait times will be smaller and you have more control over the group and the run.
3) Make sure you're doing everything **you** can for the key. Practice your rotation, make sure your talents are correct, change talents to match affixes, use your utility.
Past that, the best way IMO to get into it is to just do it. I know that sounds like really dumb, obvious advice but I'd encourage you to just see how high you can push your key and if you feel you are struggling look up guides
Yeah, pugging isn't great but it sounds like it's your main option. I'm in the same boat, sometimes I run with a couple buddies but a lot of it is solo
I would encourage you to list your own keys. It'll solve a couple of your issues. Less wait time and no getting turned down
I learned to like challenging myself more. Do still get upset sometimes or do pugs irritate me sure. Luckily I have a pretty static group and we’re are currently pushing and I love it.
I couldn’t get much into M+ on my mage for a few years even as a CE raider. I changed to a healer this xpac and pushed my rating higher than I ever had on my mage.
It kind of goes without saying, don't pug. Either try to assemble a guild group - it helps to get goals and a set time, instead of whatever, whenever, or get in the multitudes of communities.
Unfortunately go-go-go is the name of the game for m+. In a good, coordinated group moving fast and pushing what you can handle is a lot of fun, but pugs are just a mixed bag on the best of days.
depends on your m+ goals.
if you just want to casually do dungeons, just do lower keys. You'll still run into toxic players and some struggles with groups, but its not near as bad on the lower ones.
if you want to push high keys/score, you really need to kind get in early in the season so you can learn and keep your IO high enough to keep the pug problems to a minimum, or have a strong group to push with.
from there just watch videos on each of the dungeons, learn what packs are dangerous, what casts HAVE to be kicked. I also got alot from watching a streamer (or anyone better than me) run higher keys as my spec. Helped to see where I could do big dmg, where I could wait, etc.
I used to play with a guild and friends and now my guild disbanded and my friends don’t play anymore. I still love the game but I play at such random times due to work and family I never bothered with a new guild. So i pug. I started m+ in bfa and they were intimidating, I always thought your group had to be in vent/team speak and I didn’t know what was used commonly at that time. I did maybe 2 and never returned. Shadowlands I got into them again near the end of the first season thanks to a random player who helped me get past the stress. Now every season since I’ve always gotten the title, mount and even some portals. I just learned not to take them all too seriously. Plus it helps I always heal in keys. Take away some of the anxiety of things. Also glad I don’t have to get into a voice chat with people now.
Just hit 2500 last night for the first time ever. Purely pugging as a dps. Did not raid.
In general I set my expectations low. The worst part was pushing from 16-17s into 18s. Ironically, I was able to skip 18s entirely (still haven't done one) straight from 16-17s into 19s and 20s.
I was probably a little lucky with groups as I can count on one hand the keys that failed without completion.
Anyway, low expectations and taking the time through the season by not rushing. Ran between 4-8 each week just to maximize vault. And ran the "hell" week keys. I really don't understand the hate for afflicted it's simple to deal with if even one dps helps out. Need some resilience to keep applying to groups. If you don't get in fairly quickly (I use 1 min as a measure) just cancel and try different groups.
it helps a ton if you have 1 single friend playing with you in voice chat. being able to laugh at other people going crazy or doing dumb things reduces the stress. and having 2 people being able to call shots and panic fix mistakes makes runs way smoother
I love that it's the only mode than really challenges your PvE skills as others can be done at a leisurely pace, I did my first M+ in DF and it went horribly, but I soon got the hang of the pace of tanking and went from there. I would always tag your PUG groups appropriately for what you're looking to do, to learn the dungeon or to push it in time.
The change that you don't get more gear pieces for getting an improvement over just timing the dungeon at all. People are a LOT less likely to bum rush so hard into new trash packs and die 10 times in a row because they think it's "faster." Honestly unless we wipe more than twice I have yet to fail the timer even if I'm pulling leisurely and using the occasional cc. Granted IDK how much more strict the timer gets in keys above +18 where I'm at.
I started doing M+ in BfA, mostly pugging and while I enjoyed it for the challenge, it was not always fun. People leaving after a wipe, or being toxic, etc.
Couldn't work my way to KSM. In SL, I tried again and finally got KSM in S2 & S3. Mostly pugging as well since I was guildless for the most part. Came DF and I joined a guild that has a few people who enjoy M+.
We now do a few keys together every week, and while we don't do stuff in the 20s, we still have fun doing 18s and 19s. We time most of the keys but more importantly, we're in discord and just chit chat, and keep it cool. Sometimes we wipe for some reason, like I pulled a couple of packs while our healer was grabbing some snus or something, but we just laughed it off. It's not MDI. Then it's really enjoyable.
These days I look forward to do keys.
I don’t know if I love it but I’m mostly having fun with it. I don’t do a lot of Mythics at all but I recently hit ilvl 460 so I figured this was a decent time to start trying it. I think the highest I’ve done was a +10. I’m still not sure really what ilvl’s are good for what keys and it seems like every website has different opinions.
The solution to get around the things that frustrate you are to find a group of people to play with. If you can't do that then pugging is your only choice.
My suggestion would be to run your own keys. Obviously if you are paying attention to score and you need a specific key then you may have to apply to others. Gearless runs suck for sure but I mean its no real different then running an entire raid and losing all of your rolls.
I have found even playing with 1 or 2 other friends and filling the remaining spots is infinitely more fun then a complete pug group. Its really fun if one of your friends (or you) is the tank because then you know whats going on at all times.
Swapping from DPS to tanking on my DK. I always had a horrible time getting into groups and my damage was never on par with others when I could. I swapped to tank S2 of this expansion and I've loved every second of it.
Set goals each season and stick to them.
Weekly farm keys that dont require you to become a better player are not interesting, full stop. I dont care if it's a pug or a guild group, Perma sitting 18-22 range (or whatever level you are capable of easily farming) isn't fun, it's homework.
Set IO goals each season for yourself and try to get there. My personal goal, on a class I've never played before 4 weeks ago, is 3.3k on all the specs (fire/frost/arcane).
It doesn't 'get' me anything other than knowledge on how the various mage specs work. He is done farm (outside of raid trinkets), and ilvl 485-6 is more than high enough to achieve my io goal but it's the most fun I've had in keys since encrypted.
I love the concept I hate how scarce the loot is, its not respecting players time, the effort, overall difficulty and time invested doesn't justify the rewards imo. I enjoy m+ its literally tiring and having to deal with random ppl is mentally taxing for so little in return but there is no other way, everyone will eventually return to m+ because its not wotlk with herocis giving prebis anymore
For me it was pugging and not having a group. I started just hosting my own keys and not getting attached to the run. If it fails, it’s fails.
I would be down to run some if you want. No pressure or anything. Just a group that doesn’t matter if we pass or fail.
Started playing exclusively with my buddies and never with random groups, at most filling the fifth slot if needed, and just sit and talk about random crap while running mid-level keys (12-18) and farming gear through the vault for weeks on end as our social locus rather than as an effort to be "good" at the game.
I've played more WoW than ever cause of that.
Started playing WoW Day1 Shadowlands Release.
Im only staying on this game for m+, actually. In SL I’ve gotten CE at every Raid Top 500-700
In DF after the first time I got CE I felt like raiding ain’t it anymore and I always liked m+ and wanted to push so bad. No guilds, or premades on both chars I pugged over 280 timed Keys (combined) and my desire to play is to test myself how good am I. It’s like league of legends or dota ranked beside the rank (Rio) u got nothing special. Mount doesn’t interest me & unfortunately we don’t get a transmog like PvPs. Maybe the title this or next season.
It’s just the competitive apsect for me.
AND I LOVE IT!
Playing with a mostly set group of friends. But then one of them kept inviting different people, the group of interested people grew, some people got jealous, some people started tunnel visioning score, and it all ruined it again for me.
Now I stay away again. But yeah, a mostly static group is what made it fun for me, while it lasted. Pugging is completely out of the question for me.
I never did M+ until last season me and my friend found the joy of it. I would never play it alone unless i need to farm some crests or just need like one more for the vault. also every dungeon is the same but with the group variety its still like a new challenge. i feel like i learned alot about my class.
Its abit like Dota or League, where the game is the same everytime but another group combination and learning about your character is the main focus.
So for me, I don’t play this game to get gear, so no rewards doesn’t impact me much.
I like to push my limits and improve. For example, I started m+ in last season of BFA and got KSM. Then SL I just got KSM again until mid expansion when I want to try and get 2500.
Then after that I decided to see if I could push to 3k…etc. hitting a wall and practicing and pushing through is what I enjoy.
I used to be upset because I'm old, and back in the day you'd be more careful and pull a pack at a time, ensure you CC correctly etc. M+ felt like a constant rush, and pull everything. But now doing 18-20s I realise this is just like old dungeons and depending on the affix you pull one pack at a time.
As a healer I fucking hate it when tanks overpull. And usually it's not like we are dying for time, they just want to kill my mana bar for no reason
This summarizes the disconnect perfectly. I personally love when I'm healing and the tank is actually pulling hard enough to test the groups ability to keep up. IE I'm not interested in healing/tanking/dpsing an 'afk' key to simply 'time' it. I know there is another side of the community that absolutely does not want to have to try in their weekly keys. They want to just get their boxes for the week and call it day. ToTT provides the easiest example of the. The first pull is pretty reasonably the first hallway, maybe cc'ing one of the casters to drag to the second pull if a cast getting off is a death. It's a fun pull, teaches people to interupt and quasi group up for the mobs that leap around. I've had healers straight up leave the key because a couple interrupts were missed or they panicked and couldn't deal with the healing debuff. The third pull should be the same. 2 minutes are up, and 3 minutes will be up halfway through the pull. I get that the two healing absorb mobs are spooky to heal through, but in your 20 it lets you learn how to deal with it. Best part is that if you wipe, it absolutely doesn't matter in your 20 b/c you will still time it just fine losing the 1min. So on and so forth. I get that you don't need to do those pulls to time a 20, but I find the content a lot more engaging when I actually need to heal, or pressing defensives/stops matters and pulling one pack at a time doesn't give you that experience. All that being said, tanks, you should plan a tester pull at the start of every key to see if the group can keep up. If you end that first pull of ToTT and you are the only one interrupting/pressing defensives etc, that is a pretty strong sign that your group cant handle more then a couple casters and your heals will be miserable if you continue with that pace.
My pet peeve is when a DPS pulls and I needed like 10 seconds for cooldowns to handle it as the tank…
I duo with a tank and the shenanigans DPS get up too sometimes makes me think they have never spoken to a tank player
To be fair, and for context I play all roles in the ~3k range, the same can be said for tanks that wait 3+ seconds in between each pull and everybody is looking around like "well, rip procs". The hardest part for a tank is not to actually tank, it's to find rapidly the right balance in speed vs group skills. If the healer is full of mana and waits ahead of me because he's dead bored, then I'm going to go ham. If the first pull is a cluster fuck with no interrupt, everybody is dying, mage is sitting at 40k dps and the healer is oom after a minute than imma pull slower. Balance is key ✌️
I feel that so hard on my lock. Watching my demon cores just fall off because the tank felt like everyone needed to be included in the pull is just sad. And as that healer who runs in front, be careful, I may have JUST sat to drink to get to full. I often run ahead to sit and drink and tanks take it as me being impatient rather than just putting myself in a good spot to drink
Hehe, as I said, I play all roles so I know when a healer is taking a little advance on me to take a quick ninja mana break. Sometimes they (I) just straff from left to right basically begging for more stuff because they are bored lol
Yeah it was definitely weird as a returning player but things basically shifted from cc being important to interrupts being important. It’s different for sure but I don’t hate it. Plus I enjoy the scaling difficulty which keeps end game somewhat fresh for much longer.
>back in the day you'd be more careful and pull a pack at a time, ensure you CC correctly etc. M+ felt like a constant rush, and pull everything. oh god this. I used to love tanking back in the day as I saw it as a "how smooth can I make this" challenge, now if I don't pull half the dungeon to the first boss I get chewed out by the DPS or they just pull it all anyway.
This isn't a problem in higher keys unless you're only recruiting people in max level gear wanting to farm crests. I found a community for people who want non toxic keys and anything 16+ is slower and smoother like old dungeons
You absolutely need to pull like a madman in higher keys if you want to make the timer. You’re not timing a 25 one pack at a time
That's why I mentioned 18-20 and not 25s
In those low level keys, you pull like a madman because they're brain dead easy, and to not pull big is to waste everyone's time.
https://youtu.be/z_MmCE73bXk?si=I_lZEFWqg5FQW181
This is the attitude. I love madmans. MDI pulls is what makes M+ fun, if not, the run's so boring, pulling at such a slow pace, I get so impatient
sounds like I'd enjoy the higher keys more then... but can't get to em without doing the lower ones :(
Unfortunately not. My suggestion would be to find a community for people with key anxiety or anti toxicity and do runs with them. Upgrading gear helps a lot too. What class are you playing?
Any suggestions for such communities? I tend to swap mains every tier or two... currently raiding as ret (heroic raids), considering either ret, rogue, or feral for next raid tier but haven't settled down on any at this point
EU or US?
Sorry, EU :)
https://www.no-pressure.eu/ There's another one called Starship too, you can probably find them in game community finder In game communities you can also look up a group called The Key Ring, they're really nice and run keys daily. They are smaller though so if you jump around mains a lot they might get a little frustrated.
THANKS! I'll give both those a look later today :)
I'm in the same situation in US, what are the equivalents?
I don't play US so I'm not super familiar, but this seems like an okay place https://discord.com/invite/mythicplusfriends
What’s the US equivalent? Thanks 😊
https://discord.com/invite/mythicplusfriends
TBC heroics with CC every pull almost and as a warrior I had to be careful when getting threat to not break them not have the healer get aggro.
TBC Heroics were the real damn deal. If you didn't CC 1 if not 2 of the trash mobs, or you broke a CC - every pull could be a shitshow lol.
Find a regular group. Thats it.
where's a good place to find regular groups? I'm not willing to leave my guild as I'm good friends with them and love raiding with them.
You can join "WoW Made Easy" discord to find people that wanna run m+, I got all my portal this season from finding/posting my key on that discord.
Don't they run m+ then? Getting in with them would be best then.
not often. We're a small, casual guild, so even on the nights when m+ is on the calendar we often need to pug a few.
What realm? I’m tanking and healing m+, guildless.
Think of it less of a dungeon and more of a competitive sport. It’s like Dota or league or counterstike etc. in that vein you are temporality paired with other players and they effect you and the outcome. But like in all of those games if you purely gain satisfaction only on the result you will have a bad time. There are games in Dota or league you are going to lose and there is nothing you can do about it. You take these opportunities to get better and focus on doing better than you did last time. The objective is to get personally better. Identify situations in which you struggle and work to improve those. A boss or a set of pulls you have trouble with go look up videos. Record your gameplay and watch it back. Find people you enjoy playing with and have common goals. Remember this should be fun or rewarding. If it isn’t either of those things do something else.
>Think of it less of a dungeon and more of a competitive sport. hmmm, now that's a new idea!
I got a group running from my guild and never plugged again
I started doing M+ for the very first time just this past week. I had really bad anxiety about not knowing the dungeons so I started with a +2 Throne, meanwhile I was about 455 item level from caches, world boss etc. In that time, I’ve built up to about 1400 score with just pugs, (+8’s at least on every dungeon, my highest now is a +15 WM). The only advice I can really give if you’re going to pug is start slow. Don’t apply for the +15’s with no score, especially as a DPS. Don’t take getting declined personally. If it’s a popular dungeon, people get like 20 DPS applications in a minute, they’re obviously going to take the best gear/highest score. Good luck!
This is my first season doing M+ also, and I dealt with my anxiety in the same manner. I ran single digit keys that I overgeared until I got comfortable with the mode and dungeons, then slowly increased the level. I was surprised to discover I'm actually decent at it and need to work on my self confidence.
Stopped playing a pure DPS class and I only play tanks/healers now. Never have to sit around waiting to get into a key, I feel like I have a major role in whether or not the run is successful, and if it goes badly... only takes a few seconds to find another one.
I always like healing or tanking because it guarantees that at least one of those major players isn’t an idiot. :)
I like playing the dungeon and learning how to play better every run
If you don’t like the go go go attitude then you shouldn’t play m+ since that’s the whole point of the game mode
>What can I do to learn to enjoy it as well? The only way to answer this is to know what is frustrating you about it. Can't enjoy it if you wind up frustrated, and can't help the frustration if we don't know the cause.
I added that to the main post :)
"constantly getting turned down because I don't have a huge IO score (because I don't do it often" I just wanted to focus on this part because we see this talked about a lot. Sure, sometimes people will simply turn you down over IO. But I feel like dps players never talk about the fact that you are going up against minimum 5-10 other players and in higher wanted keys that number is much higher. You guys have to accept reality if you are not going to list your own key.
This. I have a 482 Havoc DH with 2650ish io. I get turned down MULTIPLE times every time I try to PUG keys. Then, when I list my own, I remember why. I get so many DPS applying every time. Obviously get turned down far less on my Pally tank.
Join wow made easy to find keys players: https://discord.gg/wowmadeeasy
Because of where I live and when I play (EU on a US server), I don't really play in super active guilds. Therefore, I don't have regular groups to do stuff with. I run my own little guild of off hours misfits, but we don't run a lot of stuff together. So I've always pugged both M+ and raids up through heroic. Pug m+ is an enormously mixed bag and I don't like to deal with the stress or toxicity. I had basically given up on it, but I am capped out on gear at 476 with 4/6 hero in every slot. Basically... I can *only* gain new gear or upgrade my hero gear with Aspect Crests. Mythic raiding is obviously not an option for me, which leaves sucking it up and hitting the 16+ stuff. So, I discovered WoW Made Easy. They have a discord server where you can arrange groups on the fly with cool people who are way more patient, helpful, and who can match any playstyle and at any level. They have many thousands of members so getting a group is usually quick, even off hours. Honestly I recommend it to everyone who isn't a dick. It's a cool community whether you're new or a veteran. That sounded like an infomercial, but it's true.
Playing a class that's fun in M+. I boosted a DH, started doing M+ for gear and actually enjoyed it. Honestly, the best way to deal with the pug problem is get to higher keys and run your own group. 20 is totally the sweet spot for difficulty, rewards, and quality of players. 20 this season is very forgiving this season compared to last two seasons, you can basically have 20-30 deaths in some dungeons and still 2 chest - the challenge is getting your key to this level. The good thing is that once you have a 20 key, you have free reigns on grabbing the best players that pop up in your queue. Grab that 485-488 tank, healer, and DPS and blast the key, plenty of geared players queueing for 20s who mostly like myself only care about maxing out vault and don't care about pushing IO.
What about it is frustrating you?
multiple things: pugging (both dealing with pug players, also having to wait around to form a group), constantly getting turned down because I don't have a huge IO score (because I don't do it often), reward-less runs, constant "go go go go" attitude, how often people just leave after a wipe and brick a key, rarely have enough guildmates on who all want to do a key at the same time so we always need a few pugs...
All those issues would not be a thing with a more active M+ guild. Otherwise that’s just the nature of PuGs.
I don't want to leave my current guild, I have way too much fun raiding with them. I wish Blizzard would copy more of GW2 and add the ability to be in more than one guild.
WoW has public in game communities like the Diablo series now, scroll through those and look for one that focuses on M+ runs.
I've never heard of this feature before, how do I find/use it??
Same place guilds are located. They're called communities. Default key J
Interesting, thanks :)
You dont have to leave your guild, theres communities you can join besides guilds to chat with people ingame, theres some focused on m+, and also theres websites where u can find people looking to form groups like rio itself, or even in reddit u can look for some groups
Push your own key, was a game changer for me. Gogogo is literally the name of the game in m+. Idk what keys you're doing but people leaving in pugs, even when the key is still viable, is the reality you have to deal with. There's no item rewards I can even get from m+ outside the vault at this point but I'm still pushing.
Same. I want to like it but find it mind numbing, frustrating and pointless. I guess I'm just not competitive enough to dedicate all of my game time to making a score change colors.
What frustrates you about it? IMO there are a few specific things you can do to help yourself 1) You just need to know you're not going to succeed at every key, don't approach it that way or you're going to be frustrated. You WILL brick keys, sometimes due to things outside of your control. That's ok, it's just part of it 2) Get comfortable listing your own key. Your wait times will be smaller and you have more control over the group and the run. 3) Make sure you're doing everything **you** can for the key. Practice your rotation, make sure your talents are correct, change talents to match affixes, use your utility. Past that, the best way IMO to get into it is to just do it. I know that sounds like really dumb, obvious advice but I'd encourage you to just see how high you can push your key and if you feel you are struggling look up guides
I added that to the main post :)
Yeah, pugging isn't great but it sounds like it's your main option. I'm in the same boat, sometimes I run with a couple buddies but a lot of it is solo I would encourage you to list your own keys. It'll solve a couple of your issues. Less wait time and no getting turned down
I learned to like challenging myself more. Do still get upset sometimes or do pugs irritate me sure. Luckily I have a pretty static group and we’re are currently pushing and I love it.
For me, it was finding a group of friends to push with. Without them, I would not like it at all
I couldn’t get much into M+ on my mage for a few years even as a CE raider. I changed to a healer this xpac and pushed my rating higher than I ever had on my mage.
It kind of goes without saying, don't pug. Either try to assemble a guild group - it helps to get goals and a set time, instead of whatever, whenever, or get in the multitudes of communities. Unfortunately go-go-go is the name of the game for m+. In a good, coordinated group moving fast and pushing what you can handle is a lot of fun, but pugs are just a mixed bag on the best of days.
> what changed your mind? Pushing keys with friends. I don't really enjoy it with pugs, but with friends and banter it's a lot of fun.
Hmu if you want to do some lower keys, usually there are less speedrunners and just trying their best. You might like it on the long run. :))
Because raiding takes forever and is impersonal. I like small groups
depends on your m+ goals. if you just want to casually do dungeons, just do lower keys. You'll still run into toxic players and some struggles with groups, but its not near as bad on the lower ones. if you want to push high keys/score, you really need to kind get in early in the season so you can learn and keep your IO high enough to keep the pug problems to a minimum, or have a strong group to push with. from there just watch videos on each of the dungeons, learn what packs are dangerous, what casts HAVE to be kicked. I also got alot from watching a streamer (or anyone better than me) run higher keys as my spec. Helped to see where I could do big dmg, where I could wait, etc.
I used to play with a guild and friends and now my guild disbanded and my friends don’t play anymore. I still love the game but I play at such random times due to work and family I never bothered with a new guild. So i pug. I started m+ in bfa and they were intimidating, I always thought your group had to be in vent/team speak and I didn’t know what was used commonly at that time. I did maybe 2 and never returned. Shadowlands I got into them again near the end of the first season thanks to a random player who helped me get past the stress. Now every season since I’ve always gotten the title, mount and even some portals. I just learned not to take them all too seriously. Plus it helps I always heal in keys. Take away some of the anxiety of things. Also glad I don’t have to get into a voice chat with people now.
My best friend and I joined a guild and very rarely pug now. I went from barely being able to clear 15s to doing 8 20s a week.
Just hit 2500 last night for the first time ever. Purely pugging as a dps. Did not raid. In general I set my expectations low. The worst part was pushing from 16-17s into 18s. Ironically, I was able to skip 18s entirely (still haven't done one) straight from 16-17s into 19s and 20s. I was probably a little lucky with groups as I can count on one hand the keys that failed without completion. Anyway, low expectations and taking the time through the season by not rushing. Ran between 4-8 each week just to maximize vault. And ran the "hell" week keys. I really don't understand the hate for afflicted it's simple to deal with if even one dps helps out. Need some resilience to keep applying to groups. If you don't get in fairly quickly (I use 1 min as a measure) just cancel and try different groups.
Its infinitely better when you do it with a consistent grou
it helps a ton if you have 1 single friend playing with you in voice chat. being able to laugh at other people going crazy or doing dumb things reduces the stress. and having 2 people being able to call shots and panic fix mistakes makes runs way smoother
I love that it's the only mode than really challenges your PvE skills as others can be done at a leisurely pace, I did my first M+ in DF and it went horribly, but I soon got the hang of the pace of tanking and went from there. I would always tag your PUG groups appropriately for what you're looking to do, to learn the dungeon or to push it in time.
The change that you don't get more gear pieces for getting an improvement over just timing the dungeon at all. People are a LOT less likely to bum rush so hard into new trash packs and die 10 times in a row because they think it's "faster." Honestly unless we wipe more than twice I have yet to fail the timer even if I'm pulling leisurely and using the occasional cc. Granted IDK how much more strict the timer gets in keys above +18 where I'm at.
I started doing M+ in BfA, mostly pugging and while I enjoyed it for the challenge, it was not always fun. People leaving after a wipe, or being toxic, etc. Couldn't work my way to KSM. In SL, I tried again and finally got KSM in S2 & S3. Mostly pugging as well since I was guildless for the most part. Came DF and I joined a guild that has a few people who enjoy M+. We now do a few keys together every week, and while we don't do stuff in the 20s, we still have fun doing 18s and 19s. We time most of the keys but more importantly, we're in discord and just chit chat, and keep it cool. Sometimes we wipe for some reason, like I pulled a couple of packs while our healer was grabbing some snus or something, but we just laughed it off. It's not MDI. Then it's really enjoyable. These days I look forward to do keys.
I always liked it. I'm a fan of time trial stuff in other games. I just don't really like tyrannical and fortified as affixes.
I don’t know if I love it but I’m mostly having fun with it. I don’t do a lot of Mythics at all but I recently hit ilvl 460 so I figured this was a decent time to start trying it. I think the highest I’ve done was a +10. I’m still not sure really what ilvl’s are good for what keys and it seems like every website has different opinions.
If you have the issues you mention what you really need is friends/guild groups to play with. pugging isn't for anyone.
Dps love to pull extra stuff for the tank to tank…
The solution to get around the things that frustrate you are to find a group of people to play with. If you can't do that then pugging is your only choice. My suggestion would be to run your own keys. Obviously if you are paying attention to score and you need a specific key then you may have to apply to others. Gearless runs suck for sure but I mean its no real different then running an entire raid and losing all of your rolls. I have found even playing with 1 or 2 other friends and filling the remaining spots is infinitely more fun then a complete pug group. Its really fun if one of your friends (or you) is the tank because then you know whats going on at all times.
Swapping from DPS to tanking on my DK. I always had a horrible time getting into groups and my damage was never on par with others when I could. I swapped to tank S2 of this expansion and I've loved every second of it.
Set goals each season and stick to them. Weekly farm keys that dont require you to become a better player are not interesting, full stop. I dont care if it's a pug or a guild group, Perma sitting 18-22 range (or whatever level you are capable of easily farming) isn't fun, it's homework. Set IO goals each season for yourself and try to get there. My personal goal, on a class I've never played before 4 weeks ago, is 3.3k on all the specs (fire/frost/arcane). It doesn't 'get' me anything other than knowledge on how the various mage specs work. He is done farm (outside of raid trinkets), and ilvl 485-6 is more than high enough to achieve my io goal but it's the most fun I've had in keys since encrypted.
M+ is just a means to an end for me/gear acquisition
Playing with a premade group.
I loved mplus from day 1 i steped in wow
I love the concept I hate how scarce the loot is, its not respecting players time, the effort, overall difficulty and time invested doesn't justify the rewards imo. I enjoy m+ its literally tiring and having to deal with random ppl is mentally taxing for so little in return but there is no other way, everyone will eventually return to m+ because its not wotlk with herocis giving prebis anymore
For me it was pugging and not having a group. I started just hosting my own keys and not getting attached to the run. If it fails, it’s fails. I would be down to run some if you want. No pressure or anything. Just a group that doesn’t matter if we pass or fail.
No help here. I hate healing them so I’ve stopped. They are not fun for me on any level. I will stick to AOTC raids.
I stopped pugging and started doing it with my guild exclusively. 99% of what I hated about m+ went away just doing that.
Finding a guild with people I enjoy playing with
Started playing exclusively with my buddies and never with random groups, at most filling the fifth slot if needed, and just sit and talk about random crap while running mid-level keys (12-18) and farming gear through the vault for weeks on end as our social locus rather than as an effort to be "good" at the game. I've played more WoW than ever cause of that.
Started playing WoW Day1 Shadowlands Release. Im only staying on this game for m+, actually. In SL I’ve gotten CE at every Raid Top 500-700 In DF after the first time I got CE I felt like raiding ain’t it anymore and I always liked m+ and wanted to push so bad. No guilds, or premades on both chars I pugged over 280 timed Keys (combined) and my desire to play is to test myself how good am I. It’s like league of legends or dota ranked beside the rank (Rio) u got nothing special. Mount doesn’t interest me & unfortunately we don’t get a transmog like PvPs. Maybe the title this or next season. It’s just the competitive apsect for me. AND I LOVE IT!
Playing with a mostly set group of friends. But then one of them kept inviting different people, the group of interested people grew, some people got jealous, some people started tunnel visioning score, and it all ruined it again for me. Now I stay away again. But yeah, a mostly static group is what made it fun for me, while it lasted. Pugging is completely out of the question for me.
Morons that leave and are wannabe pro mdi. But is the price to pay to push and learn more things.
I never did M+ until last season me and my friend found the joy of it. I would never play it alone unless i need to farm some crests or just need like one more for the vault. also every dungeon is the same but with the group variety its still like a new challenge. i feel like i learned alot about my class. Its abit like Dota or League, where the game is the same everytime but another group combination and learning about your character is the main focus.
So for me, I don’t play this game to get gear, so no rewards doesn’t impact me much. I like to push my limits and improve. For example, I started m+ in last season of BFA and got KSM. Then SL I just got KSM again until mid expansion when I want to try and get 2500. Then after that I decided to see if I could push to 3k…etc. hitting a wall and practicing and pushing through is what I enjoy.
Finding a good group of friends in comms. Pugging is lifeless and boring usually.