I recently got into Mythic + dungeon crawling and worked my way up to doing 10+ keystones every week.
Raider IO has been an amazing assistance when it comes to forming groups, especially for my Alliance toons.
Horde seems to have a much better hang of running difficult content in comparison to alliance. Not an opinion, but fact, based on personal experience.
I always use my own key, and this is where Raider IO really helps me in deciding who I should invite, by telling me:
- How many +10 runs a player requesting to join has done
- How many +10 runs a player has done in time
- If the player has done my specific keystone in time before
- What the highest keystone the player has done overall
- How active the player is in running mythic keystones overall
This information is exceptional to forming a solid group, that will be able to upgrade my keystone or just to basically secure me my weekly chest.
The problem with ITEM LEVEL is that none of this information is available and therefore left to the unknown. But the benefit, is that you are able to form groups with players of equal or better skill than your own.
It was a pretty hard hit to my ego, when I realized that I was unable to do mythic 13+ due to my own item level, but also my personal lack of skill. However, this was something that I had to accept and have accepted.
The addon has been taking a lot of flack since its implementation, because beforehand, you could not tell if a player was skilled/experienced and therefore, you were forced to carry them.
The lesser skilled players are very vocal on the forums, because they refuse to accept that they just don’t have the potential to do higher difficulty content. But within their rights, I suppose, because World of Warcraft has beforehand always been about having to carry a less experience player through content, in past expansions.
But no one ever bothered to think of the toll it took on experienced players. It is a huge drag and uncomfortable experience to have a party member that:
- Does less DPS than the tank
- Is toxic
- Clueless on tactics
- Never uses a interrupt
- Rage quits
In the end, because there is no consequence, the experienced players are suffering a hit and the less experienced player gets away without consequence. There is no deserter debuff for ditching a keystone run either, like there is with casual content.
So players are now disliking Raider IO because suddenly, they are unable to get into groups, get carried and get free gear like they used too. This is unquestionable, a bad change. But you cannot blame the creators of a addon, call the keystone community elitist and expect Activision Blizzard to ban the addon on the grounds, that you can’t get your weekly chest with the highest possible reward, simply because you suck at the game.
What you can do, is blame Activision Blizzard, for not giving you any preparation for higher difficulty content.
Dungeons, throughout all the old expansions are dumbed down and so easy that they don’t require any thought what so ever. You zoom through 120 levels without barely learning anything.
You only have a small window at the beginning of every new expansion, to get engaged into dungeon crawling, learn the tactics and start pushing keystones.
You start with normal 110-120 dungeon, elevate to Heroics, Mythics and then start doing keystones.
If you DON’T, well… then you get left behind. Raider IO records yours score from previous seasons, and without a decent score, getting ahead or even with the curve can be very difficult. So when a new season starts, you better run as many keystones as high as possible within the first week, otherwise you are pretty much dumped with the bunch that refuse to use the addon to begin with (unless you had a powerful score from last season).
So those are the pros and cons of Raider IO. Far more interesting and important is, what caused the creation of the addon. Because the creation of the addon, is ultimate a response to a flaw with the game itself. Two decisions led to this:
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Activision Blizzard wanted every player to experience everything, regardless of skill, so they made everything easy and available to everyone.
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Activision Blizzard then decided to add higher difficulty content with better rewards, which is not available to everyone
TL;DR
Not checking a player for Raider IO score, is like not checking a players CR+EXP is when looking for Arena Partners.
- But you don’t hear people complaining on the forums, about PvP’ers not giving out free boosts to rating/wins to those that suck at PvP.
- Why the hell should Keystone runners give out free boosts, to those that suck at PvE?
A possible solution, would be to having older dungeons scale in difficulty accordingly with their release dates. Classic Dungeons are the easiest, TBC dungeons get harder, Wotlk dungeons even harder and so on… requiring people to at the latest expansion dungeons, know tactics and their class/spec to a high standard. To elevate the individual players skill, as they level up their toon. Crazy, I know.
A solution to the crybabies wanting free arena boosts, would be solo queue, rather than PvE World Quests that give out free conquest points. Even crazier in Ion Hazzikostas World of Raidcraft, I know, I know…
But until then, Raider IO, is the best solution to grouping with players of equal or better skill.
your key, your rules, it’s not like anyone forcing you not to use it ))