Dungeon Finder Grouping Algorithm Problem

#0 - March 24, 2010, 5:50 p.m.

Since the patch there seem to be a problem with the grouping algorithm used by Dungeon Finder. My BF and I have been, both together and individually, have been placed in groups of severely under-geared players. As an example, a 5500 GearScore Death Knight was put in Heroic Pit of Saron with 4 other players with GS of 2400, 2700, 3300, and 4000. The healer was 2400 GS. The group was a complete failure since the tank could not hold aggro and the healer couldn't keep them alive. The wipes cost a great deal of gold AND he got the deserter debuff when he finally gave up. So he couldn't even get his frost emblems since he had to leave for work.

I was put in a Heroic UP group with players between 2400-3300 GS who had never been to UP before. I have a GS of 5600. I managed to teach them the instance, heal, and DPS - taking over an hour - when I was really looking for a quick random before bed.

If someone has 2000 GS OVER the rest of the group, they should be paid for their efforts because it costs so much gold in wipes, and time. I don't mean to sound like I don't want to help, but we GM our own guild and we are constantly helping guild members and don't like to be forced to also teach random pugs an instance that they shouldn't even be in yet when we are limited in time. These players are completely in greens and the tanks didn't even know what "defense capped" meant.

Have others experienced this problem?

Malkorix

#34 - March 24, 2010, 7:19 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Pretty much this. Blizzard and the game mechanics do not use an addon called Gearscore to decide who should be grouped together. There is an internal check of the iLvl of a player's gear to determine whether a player is eligible, and an effort to match up similarly geared people, but the system does have a lot more variables involved than just gear.

As someone else mentioned early on, the game mechanic does start reducing requirements for grouping players together if the time is getting "excessive". In addition, it doesn't make adjustments for healing gear and DPS gear and tank gear. So a Ret Pally with rather good gear and a Holy offspec with meh gear can get put into a top-end heroic with an assigned role as healer. (been there, done that)

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Ultimately, if you feel you have an idea for how the system could be fine-tuned, feel free to post that on the Suggestions Forum.

If you want to be absolutely sure you're never grouped with someone who doesn't meet your personal requirements, put together your group manually on your own realm using your addon to accept or deny, and then queue through the Random Dungeon Finder as a pre-made. If you join the queue as one or two players, do so with the knowledge it could put you with players at a different gear level and that you may have to adjust your own playstyle to have a successful run.

Couldn't have said it better myself!