My solution so far to get invites has been to time M+7-9 keys to get a decent rio and I improved my ilvl a bit with pvp gear and the vault.
Gonna try to get invited to +10-15 now but I’m not sure it’s something you can do in pug.
make your own group
10-11s definitely are puggable, even when you’re a casual like myself and play Alliance. Anything higher than that… arguable. Tried to look for some 14-15s out of pure curiosity and a solid 70% of the groups were just boost ads, with maybe 1-2 keys being available.
Not to sound mean or anything, but 4.5k isn’t that mindblowing… If that’s your average overall dps, sure, then you should probably get into higher groups were that the merit people would be inviting you for.
Building up r.io score is probably the best way assuming you’re not going to be doing your own groups (which is always the best way, since you’re guaranteed a spot). Make sure you’ve done all the dungeons and gotten score for them. You always need something to stand out, the leaders won’t be able to use foresight and see how great of a player you are going to be.
Personally no matter the key number, I would take the first dps that show up, while keeping an eye on interrupts/not overstacking hunters or melee.
But usually for any given key, healers and tanks are not making the group alone. Any tank and healer worth their salt has tons of friends to play with. So you are not competing for 3 dps spots per party, usually more like 1 spot per party at most. Someone else was just faster.
Sometimes it’s as simple as a name. The other day declined a 190 dps for a M+4 for having a really gross, vulgar name that can’t be repeated on the forums.
a friend of mine had rio score of 1000, 203~4 ilvl and people still didn’t invite him in a lot of groups.
That’s just the typical life of a pug player. doesn’t matter how geared or good you are.
Level up your key up to +10 and time it.
Im not inviting anyone to +10 who didnt time a +10 before.
Here is my experience for any key. Roll a tank and
- your que time is instant
- your itemlevel can be much lower than needed
- be god
- have tons of friend requests after the run
There is plenty of mechanics even on trash in SL, so i dont realy find it thst boring and “just staying there”
I dont fancy bein dps apart from rbgs and i used to heal for like 5 years or so and dont realy plan to come back to healing pve.
GL standing still on Bears in HOA in a 15+ setting or even 14. 
was response to Ana:p
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Kiting and knowing when to book it / rotate CDs has been a big part of tanking this xpack. It’s definitely more interesting then pull and stand still.
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It is not the same, no. On top of all the mechanics that the healer and dps have to follow, the tank must also know how to position every pack and boss. They must also know the most effective route to take.
The tank holds the most responsibility and must have very good knowledge of the game. The tank is the one that sets the pace of the dungeon. A tank must know the limits of how much they can tank and also the limits and capabilities of the rest of the team.
A tank also has the least room for error. If you fail a mechanic at a high key you’ll likely get 1 shotted and if the tank dies, then the whole group wipes.
With all that being said, a good tank has the potential to carry the whole group.
If you fail a mechanic at a high key as any spec you most likely will wipe, it won’t happen immediately, but dps checks won’t let you finish if we are talking about really high keys where the tank can actually get one-shot.
Again with the game knowledge, this is the same for the healers and dpses, you need to know when to interrupt, when to help with cc/kiting and so on.
As for the route, on some affixes it might change slightly and it was more complicated in last season of bfa but atm it will be 1-2 routes that you copy from high end players.
Who knows, maybe the tanks I get to heal are really terrible and so when I started tanking I was really surprised that I don’t drop down to 20% hp on every pull because I use my rotation, and it’s not hard, and since I started healing and learned all mechanics there so maybe I have a bias, but for me healing is def more demanding, and fun, at least for pugging.
Be a meta spec, have high ilvl, have high RIO (do all instances).
It’s pretty bad, yes. It’s going to be worse than before too, because with loot chances decreased significantly there are heavy incentives to do just one run per week tops. This will decrease the total number of runs and that will echo in everything. In particular, the requirements will become harsher than they were before.
Also, we are in season 1, that doesn’t help either. The level from which requirements become ridiculous is lower now than it will likely be in the next season.
This might hold true on a boss, but not on trash packs.
Yes and additionally to all that the tank must know how to position.
Yes, but you need to study the route of 8 dungeons before you can hop on tanking, or have prior experience. You can just do high level keys as healer or DPS without that knowledge.
If you are staying at relatively good health without much effort, then that probably means you can pull an additional pack.
At higher keys, you will also get affixes such as bolstering, sanguine, and bursting, all of which require planned pulls.
Pulling more with bolstering when pugs cant coordinate dmg just turns into a long drawn out fight with wasted cds and a lot of kiting, personally I hate it when tanks rush and pull 2 packs only to then waste time running around. On other weeks more trash can be def doable.
Some fights have less mechanics for tanks then for dpses/healers, ToP Kul’Tharok, Last boss of necrotic, and probably more. What I was expecting for tanks was specifics things they need to do, what I was met with was a dps that takes less dmg and has to do less usually.
For the most part tho, and especially for lower keys, tanks are the most boring role, I thought people don’t play them because of the challenge etc, but that’s not it, it’s just plain boring. And if I have to hit +15s to experience some fun on tanks, well then I prefer to heal/dps ^^
Apply, Whipser, Patient and be friendly. It often helps. But yea as dps we need too be more patient than anything.
Don’t know about that m8. I’m seeing a spike of tanks recently. I find difficult joining a group myself.
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