Hi, and welcome to Azeroth!
I’m sorry I didn’t answer last night. I saw your post, but hoped that someone else would take it. I have a gloomy view of the culture of dungeon running in this game, and I didn’t want too much of that to influence you, so take that into account when reading my response.
Why does this happen? Regular dungeon-runners are like regular commuters through a busy traffic area. They do it All. The Time. They know All. The. Shortcuts. They know All. The. Mechanics. They know when their cooldowns are coming back, and when to sprint. They’ve done it hundreds of times before, and they’ll do it hundreds of time this expansion too. What they want is to get through it at max speed. If they can’t do that, the next best thing is to bully and be mean to new players and people who don’t know the routes. That’s the way it is.
Because of this, about 30% of all WoW players almost never run dungeons or raids. That is, they might occasionally if they really feel forced to, but they avoid them. Becauseof what you and your wife experienced. I mean, why put yourself through that? About 30% are the regulars, who love running them, though they complain a lot about the specifics of them, or rewards.
The devs seem almost gleeful about excluding a third of their playerbase from dungeons, so don’t expect them to change anytime soon.
Resources:
- look up wowhead.com, find the page for each boss, and READ THE COMMENTS. The comments are 99% of the value of Wowhead.
For example, the highest rated comment on Vol’kaal says: https://www.wowhead.com/npc=129399/volkaal#comments:id=2597195
Burn all 3 totems down to almost nothing, stop dps if needed, kill all 3 at once.
That is pretty much all you need to know about Vol’kaal. Tank keeps him busy, kiting him round the triangle. DPS kill the totems evenly. Healer tops up anyone taking damage.
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Put the boss name into YouTube and you’ll get videos of how to kill. Quality of explanation will range from excellent to abysmal. You’ll get to know some names of Youtubers that produce quality stuff if you try enough of them - viewcount is probably a good indication.
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For Class advice and information, see https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/class-guides
Questions:
- Do BfA dungeons scale properly? No. Nothing instanced scales properly below max level. I’ve given up even trying to derive rules of thumb to explain scaling. There was a point where Level 10s were doing multiple times the damage of Level 40s in dungeons; I don’t know whather that still applies.
In the world, in questing, it is usually true that a character of any given level in Chromie Time will have the same approximate strength against any regular mob of the same level. Sometimes there are glitches, as we have seen in the adjustments for this pre-patch, but generally they get this right. Gear does play a significant part, but given an average ilevel of gear for your level, your strength is pretty constant in the world.
In levelling dungeons, things are all over the place, And they change with patches. I haven’t run one in this pre-patch, so I won’t essay a guess.
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Scaling in battlegrounds is subject to the same comments as dungeons. Both are instances, with their own rules.
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I don’t know of any guilds on Doomhammer. There is a cross-realm Community called Scared of Dungeons (Alliance) Scared of Dungeons EU EN filled with nice people. You can Join Community with the code 7bgYbgSrwM but it really only applies to max-level characters. You will find that almost everything applies only to max level characters. It takes only a few hours to reach max level, and then you spend two years AT max level, so you can understand that people don’t pay a great deal of attention to what happens below it.
Rogue
I play Mage and Paladin, mostly, I am definitely the Worst Priest In The Game, bar none. I am perhaps not quite the worst Shaman, Monk, or Rogue, but I’m close - a contender in all three classes.
So I’m ill-equipped to give Rogue advice. I can make some comments, from observation and reading.
Rogues are one of the best classes in the game for dungeons and raids. Classes do go up and down relatively as the devs spin the wheel of buffing and nerfing, but with their three DPS specs, Rogues nearly always have at least one spec that is top-tier.
Rogues don’t get a great deal of use out of their Stealth in dungeons, but Rogues do provide Shroud of Concealment utility for their party, making everyone temporarily stealthy. This is a critical time-saver with a party that is sufficiently organised to know when to use it and to keep everyone together.
Rogues have a lot of defensive abilities. I think it quite likely that your wife hasn’t had to use them when questing with you in the world. Your pet will be taking the aggro, so she probably hasn’t had to incorporate defensive abilities like Feint to reduce damage taken. Maybe she hasn’t even noticed where these are.
Here’s a paragraph from icy-veins.com the best generic guide on how to play your class.
Blockquote
Defensive Utility
All Rogues come ready made with a dizzying phalanx of defensive cooldowns, which make them the best candidate for soaking required mechanics and dealing with heavy incoming damage.
Feint reduces AoE damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds for only 35 Energy. When talented into
Elusiveness it also reduces all other damage by 20% and grants
Evasion a 10% damage mitigation. This is one of the most overpowered abilities in the game and a huge asset on fights with heavy raid damage.
Cloak of Shadows provides magic immunity for a second, followed by 4 seconds where all spells will miss. This spell is mostly used for clearing debuffs that might otherwise force you out of melee range. Cloak of Shadows is also a fantastic tool for soaking abilities that do not pierce immunities.
Cheat Death is a talent that allows you to escape lethal damage once every 6 minutes. The damage cannot exceed more than twice your maximum health. Cheat Death is great for soaking mechanics that pierce immunities and damage reductions, as it guarantees your survival. It is also great for encounters with bursty damage that might take you by surprise, as you get a get out of jail free card once every 6 minutes.
Crimson Vial provides a respectable amount of healing on a very short cooldown. Use this often in boss encounters.
However, we should also have the more general talk about the difference between ranged and melee DPS specs.
You correctly point out that as a ranged Hunter, many things are easier for you. Rogues and other melee classes have to be quick on their feet to avoid damage, and be ready to mitigate and heal it. While people do play both melee and ranged classes, they do tend to have a preference for one or another. And you don’t know your preference until you try. It could be that your wife would prefer a ranged class. Or it could just be that she hasn’t yet grokked that dungeons require a different playstylle from rogues than questing. Or it could just be that she was put off by not knwing the mechanics, and the attemped votekick. I don’t know, but keep all that in mind.
There is a VAST amount to know about this game. Please ask again if we can be of any help. 