Adopted unrealistic expectations

Today my favourite druid recalled a funny incident we experienced yesterday in our good-night-PuG, which took us to Drak'Tharon Keep and teamed us up with a DK, a shaman and a mage.

To recap. The mage asked if people wanted a table, to which the DK responded with "nah let's make it a quick run". How is that even a contradiction? How does free food make a run less quick? Oh yes, I see, because you don't have a draining resource, no one else has to consider theirs either. Of course. Consequently, when I stopped before the first boss and called for "regen", seeing the mage and shaman both below 40%, the arduous DK smartly remarked after the fight "just go no time to wait all over". As usual, my response was a simple /slap. After the second boss the DK dropped group, supposedly because things were not going "quick" enough. We got a replacement-hunter within seconds (of course) and finished the dungeon without any further incidents.

The story would hardly warrant retelling, especially not on two blogs, if it wasn't for some ironic details. Like, as pointed out in the linked post, the DK wearing the "Patient" title. Yeah, right. Or, more on the subject of this post, that he was, in a way, correct - the run was going less quick than expected. I noticed that. See, I'm pulling stuff, and then there's the stuff, and ... why isn't the stuff dying? We fumbled around with those stupid spiders until they called in their entire families, pets and their pets' families and families' pets for us to fumble around with. So, I had a look at Recount, fully expecting to see the impatient DK doing something in the 4k ballpark and the other two dragging along in the 1k range (his attitude was implying more something along 5-6k, but that would not have been possible, since if even one person does that sort of damage, stuff dies quicker than it was). What did I actually see, however? Go on, guess. Oh, right, you read Alquiel's post so you know already ... right.

What we had there was a mage and a hunter, both at about 2.2k, and the DK well behind in the 1.5k vicinity. As well as me comfortably leading the way at above 2.5k, because when I pull entire rooms of stuff, those Cleaves, Thunderclaps and Shockwaves pad my numbers as well, but that's beside the point. For the sake of the point, let's make a few observations here.

1. For a heroic 5-man dungeon (excluding ToC and ICC), 1.5k DPS is, speaking in terms of feasibility, more than sufficient. This means, that if all your damage dealers perform at that level, as well as tank and healer providing their role-equivalent of 1.5k DPS, you can clear it without much trouble. You won't clear it in 15 minutes though.
   
2. Doing 2.2k DPS in a heroic 5-man dungeon (again, excluding ToC and ICC) is actually good performance. It is not a particularly good performance as measured by currently available gear, but measured by the approached content, it is good nevertheless. Although again, it won't make you clear the dungeon in 15 minutes.
   
3. Damaging below the tank (especially if your tank is a warrior) is not exactly a badge of honour, but one has to keep in mind, that a tank's DPS is not a universal measure, but a moving target. As Gevlon recently pointed out, an iLevel200-DPSer damaging below the iLevel245-tank isn't slacking, he's doing content appropriate for him, while the tank is doing content he vastly overgears.
   
4. The Dungeon Finder matches groups with a "mentoring" principle in mind. It always attempts to place one or two people who just barely qualify for that specific dungeon into a group that could, give or take, clear it on their own. It's a good way to ensure a smooth transition from levelling into group content.
   
5. If you're lucky, your group will consist of a seriously overgeared tank, a slightly overgeared healer (this is more for the benefit of the healer, since overgeared healing tends to become slightly boring), 1-2 barely geared DPS and 1-2 vastly overgeared DPS. This may enable you to blast through a dungeon in 15 minutes.
   
6. Being regularly matched into groups as described above creates the somewhat skewed perception, that dungeons can always be cleared in 15 minutes, even if you are the underperforming DPS yourself. A case can be made, that the longer you linger at scrub-level, the more often you're matched with T10-DPSers who will AoE the entire dungeon faster than a mage can summon a table.
   
7. Scrubs think a dungeon can be cleared in 15 minutes just by yelling "gogogo" at the tank convincingly enough. Those who actually effect the fast clear may know better.
   
8. In our PuG yesterday, the vastly overgeared people were the tank and the healer, while the DPS were merely "appropriate" or "good". While this setup pretty much guarantees you a smooth and uneventful run, it also means things will take a little more time.
   
9. The dicknight was so used to being carried, that he failed to realise, that the speed of a run is, among other factors, a direct function of his DPS-contribution.
   
10. He further failed to realise that his DPS-contribution sucked.