LFD "random" heroic problem

[Klesh]

Question for those who just cleare 2 or 3 heroics so far: Are you getting the dungeons you cleared as random regularly? Am getting them about every 50th queue. Not fun at all.

[Mercurio]

Yep, this is a major issue. I ran into it when trying to get blue drakes for my teams by getting Occulus from the Random Heroics in the months before Cata came out.

I started keeping a log of which "randoms" I got each time to track exactly how bad it got. I was able to do this on four teams, so it didn't take THAT long to queue over 200 times, but still, it did take a while.

Random Queues: 204
Occulus Hits: 4

Given the number of heroics out there, with 204 queues I should have hit each 13 times on average if they were equally weighted. Obviously, they weren't. (I'm looking at you, Old Kingdom, which came up more than six times as many times as Occulus).

I can kinda see why they do this, but it turns out to be:
Blizzard: Ah, I see you really like some of the heroics I created for you. Well, to the extent you enjoy them, we'll do our best to ensure you rarely get them from the random heroic. The ones you hate the very most? Ah, we'll make sure you get those a lot! After all, we designed this game for your enjoyment.

It is for this very reason that I'm not entering any dungeeons as I level up with my 2nd team (currently level 84.5). My strategy will be to try to get one of them at least the minimum gear to queue for random heroics without entering any dungeons. Then I'll visit the entrance for only BRC and Vortex Pinnacle, sub him in for one of my heroic running team members, and queue up. Since the number of heroics available to that toon is very small, my hope is to get the heroics I want. Then I can sub back in my 5th original group's team member (though that one team member won't get the random heroic reward). As I figure out other heroics, I can visit those entrances with my new level 85 heroic queue guy.

Trying to be creative in beating the system until I figure out other heroics.

[crowdx]

I have started to do the same for my current team, taking a lvl 80 subbing into the team once he has discovered the BRC entrance and then doing the random dungeon (non-heroic). This makes it 100% BRC on the random.
As for the "Random" part of the LFD tool, I think it is random with the caveat that they do not have an infinite number of dungeon available and so once the popular dungeons are capped they start to throw up the unpopular ones.
So their code probably is an algorithm which states "check for dungeons with free slots, select based on random algorithm" , this would then drop all the full "popular" dungeons before picking the random dungeon and so obviously a lot of the "unpopular" dungeons would keep showing up when queuing in LFD.

[Klesh]

The exact same thing am doing now too. Leveling a toon without discovering any dungeon entrances. But I can see it: The only possible instances will be DM, SFK and VP, but because some toons in the group already cleared SFK and VP, I'll be getting 49 out of 50 times DM... This system is as broken as tanks reforging most of their hit and expertise to mastery, cause threat isn't an issue for them. Or the "let me grab some ilvl 333+ CLOTH BoEs to be able to queue as TANK for heroics" mentality. Working as intended I guess.

As for the "Random" part of the LFD tool, I think it is random with the caveat that they do not have an infinite number of dungeon available and so once the popular dungeons are capped they start to throw up the unpopular ones.
So their code probably is an algorithm which states "check for dungeons with free slots, select based on random algorithm" , this would then drop all the full "popular" dungeons before picking the random dungeon and so obviously a lot of the "unpopular" dungeons would keep showing up when queuing in LFD.

Not at all. They seem to just check for completed heroics. Before I cleared VP I got that dungeon every 3rd queue or so (I still need 2 daggers from that stupid first boss). As soon as I've cleared that place, am not getting VP anymore.

[crowdx]

The exact same thing am doing now too. Leveling a toon without discovering any dungeon entrances. But I can see it: The only possible instances will be DM, SFK and VP, but because some toons in the group already cleared SFK and VP, I'll be getting 49 out of 50 times DM... This system is as broken as tanks reforging most of their hit and expertise to mastery, cause threat isn't an issue for them. Or the "let me grab some ilvl 333+ CLOTH BoEs to be able to queue as TANK for heroics" mentality. Working as intended I guess.

Not at all. They seem to just check for completed heroics. Before I cleared VP I got that dungeon every 3rd queue or so (I still need 2 daggers from that stupid first boss). As soon as I've cleared that place, am not getting VP anymore.

Good point and it could also be that VP is an easier heroic and so many more people are now doing it and so hitting the number of dungeons cap (although really I am not 100% sure there are caps of the number of specific dungeons blizz runs)
I would love to know exactly how they do it though cause in Wotlk this was always a pain when doing LFD.

[Multibocks]

When my tank queues he always gets Stonecore. I hate that fucking instance, can't get puggies to not die for the first two bosses.

[Klesh]

Small update:
Wednesday: 38th queue was VP
Thursday: no random heroic VP or SFK, so no Valor Points
Friday: 38th queue was SFK
Saturday:
I've leveled a toon to 85 without discovering any cata dungeons except of VP (so all I can get is SFK, VP and DM). Tried to queue 4 times and got 3 DMs till SFK opened. Will have to test a few more times the next couple of days. Looks promising so far, but it could have been pure luck for today.

(and yes, 38 queues = about 10 hours of queuing to get a 2 out of 9 dungeon, LFD is f'ed up)

Last update: Queued 12 times so far using the toon with only 3 possible cata heroics. Got 6 Deadmines, 4 SFK and 2 VP.