I bit the bullet and bought some more epics for my Cleric last night.  That got me to the 8300 gearscore (8328 I think I had) to give the Tier 2 dungeons a shot.  Queuing for a T2 dungeon was instant, even without a dungeon delve active.  Load it up, unequip all my gear to address the threat bug (go naked, re-equip) and look at the party.  2 wizards, 1 rogue and a great weapon fighter.  No tank.  Well, this should be fun.

We died on the first pull.  Not like a little died but more along the lines of stepping in dog poo wipe.  I let the party attack then put my Astral Shield down.  5 seconds later, everything but 1 target are on me.  I used a lot of potions that fight but still died. Without a healer, the only character than can survive for any amount of time is a well-played Rogue.  That wasn’t enough here.

Tried it again and this time we made some progress.  The wizards remembered that they were called Control Wizards for a reason.  They kept things together, the GWF and Rogue took care of the damage and I healed.  We couldn’t just run up to enemies either, we needed to pull them to us to avoid the natural chain pulls that occur in the game.  Aggro ranges are odd.

We get to the first boss, some guy with a mouth for a head.  That’s got to suck.  Anyways, he has 3 spawning pools around him that continuously spawn adds, 4 at a time.  So not only do you have a giant mouth attacking you, there is like a dozen enemies at the same time.  Threat being non-existent without a tank, I died a few times.  We somehow had the boss teleport to our spawning area and that let us kill him and move on.  Weird bug.

Moving on, we get to see more and more of these giants who deal 75% of my health in a single hit.  Fun!  There were some absolutely insane pulls on this trek and my hat is off to the group for surviving it.  Very impressive.

Then we get to the last boss.  He’s a super mega giant with 2 friendly giants around him.  Plus some other trash. And there are what seems to be 4 portals in the room that summon Berserkers.  If you don’t know what these guys are, they start off weak and once they hit 25% hit points, they hit like a convoy of Mac trucks.  I can heal 2 of them at once but 4, plus 2 giants, plus a boss?  What?

First attempt was ok, we killed one giant them got swamped.  Second attempt we tried to nuke the boss. I put Astral Seal on the boss, which causes players to heal when attacking.  That turned the ENTIRE ROOM on my butt and I died within 15 seconds.  Third attempt was tying to clean out a side of the room, no luck there.  Did I mention everything respawns in the boss room when you die?  No?  Anyways, we wiped a solid 6 times and everyone was out of repair kits at the end.   Healing isn’t the problem, threat is.  And it’s a massive one.

See, I’ve been spoiled by WoW and every other LFD tool in existence.  Games have 3 roles, tank, healer and DPS.  A LFD tool should fill in those slots appropriately.  That a Cleric is the only class that can heal and that a Guardian Fighter is the only class that can tank, you would think this would be simple to implement.  Healer/Tank + 3 anything else.  I mean anything.  Worse is that if someone leaves your group, you can’t replace them.  Aghhh!

Guild runs are cool but I have yet to find a guild that runs more than 2 teams at any given time.  And because dungeons are long, you could wait an hour or more for a team to be ready.  LFD with a premade group and people to fill the slots makes sense.  Just for the love of pete, please make sure there’s a tank and a healer or just don’t make a group.