Wonder why you always seem to get the lower level instances, and nothing as exciting as POS or FOS, it’s probably your gear,
Dps are moaning at their wait time on randoms, and which is the very reason why I heal them when I solo. It’s a quicker queue I find. So when you finally get an instance, and it pops, and your on the loading screen crying at getting the same instance in a row, it might just be the luck of the draw on the gear level of your team. It’s not a reflection of skill or talent, it seems to be based on the gearscore/item level of your gea.r So if you have someone in greens, from level 60 – they will only ever see the lower end instances. ( hows that for incentive to get better gear… variety!)
Sure it’s probably manipulatable – stick on some random higher level gear thats useless to get in, then swap back to your normal gear.
I took the above screenie in a Voilet hold Heroic. One of the lower ended instances, so it’s not suprising that one we ended up there considering one of my guildys was one of those undergeared.
When your queuing, all you need is one undergeared person to slot themselves in your party by rng, and your in a lower end instance because they can’t go anywhere else.
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
I’m pretty sure the gear check uses all gear, including the bank. This is why you will sometimes see people in unusually bad gear: they’re not in their normal role.
I’d be the type to try to sneak in bad gear so that I can get fast, easy instances.
I do wish they had a “You need a brain” check to go along with this 😉 Oh the people that come into these instances kill me sometimes… literally!
It’s been funny watching this change. When 3.3 released my Warrior was blue PvP crafted gear in every slot except weapon and ranged. I was able to queue for the original heroics, but not ToC or ICC.
After replacing a few pieces of gear and getting my first T9 piece, I was able to queue for ToC heroic.
Now, replacing another few pieces and getting a 2nd piece of T9, I can queue for anything.
The system is VERY forgiving of gear. I think I’m still wearing 5 or 6 pieces of resilience gear and a blue ilvl 200 mace… but I can queue for heroic Halls of Reflection… 😐
I have to say, I have not found any completely undergeared people yet. More with a… say… unconventional talent spec. Of course in theory people should just not complete the first two instances if their gear is lowish – which would prevent them for getting queued into a Halls of Reflection heroic.
Nothing to stop a tank and a healer to take them through, though. And then completely and totally fail on the timed HoR event. We did with our guildies – it was fun, but it hurt.
http://ramblingdwarf.blogspot.com/2010/01/random-screenshot-snippet-moment.html
There is a screenshot of recount somewhere on that page. 1500 dps on average is not enough for the last of the new ones.
Hell of a fight though.. all tricks and everything. Our healer even used her fire elemental totem.
I experimented with something similar just yesterday. I suspected that my heirloom gear might be holding me back. Altough at level 75 it is the best priest gear I own, gear score doesn’t seem to think so. Normally I get AN and Old Kingdom over and over and over (and over and over!) again even though others are available to me. I put on a blue robe and shoulders (cannot think of which ones atm) and *poof* I got in VH. My spell power is 1170 and for level 75 I think that is pretty darn good, but heaven forbid gear score not be pleased.
I’m in almost mostly 264 and 251 gear and i never get the new dungeons for the randoms. I always get the same ones HoS, HoL, Gundrak etc…
Have you done the prequests? – You will need to que for them specifically untill you get the chain done. Don’t forget to talk to jaina ( or like me you will need to run it the next day to do it again.
@Kaozz – I really know what you’re talking about 😀 But I’m afraid there’s no “fair” way of judging players skill. Many games try this (think of League of Legends) and fail miserably.
At least everyone HAS the right gear – if they don’t use the random item method pugnacious was talking about. I can remember times when our tank/healer/whatever had only really, really green gear and couldn’t take any damage..