Hurt

The Grumpy Elf and the Grumpy Dwarf (me), are kind of at loggerheads. What is odd is that we fundamentally agree on the same principles. For example we both agree that LFR should have been available as a 10 Man raid, I was merely stating the reasons why I think that Blizzard implemented in its current form.

I would like to take the recent post by Grumpy to highlight the commonalities in our thinking.The post was Grumpy looking back on his own predictions for the forthcoming LFR and was written in September 22nd 2011.

Will LFR kill LFD off?

Grumpy identifies that goal of the newly leveled character is to attempt to bypass 5 Man Heroics and jump into LFR as quickly as possible, I have stated this on several occasions here and here. Grumpy sees this as being LFR killing off LFD, but I am more inclined to agree with the Big Bear Butt although I can't find the post were all the asshats had left LFD for LFR and that now LFD was a much nicer place to be. Notice I said nicer and not wonderful or any other superlative you can mention. I have even seen people talking and not just screaming at each other or generally being quiet and getting on with the task in hand.

I am also not sure that LFR is a stepping stone to raiding. Some people are running LFR as their end content raid experience and not just for the gear to make the logical step to Normal level raiding. Grumpy stated quite elegantly in Is Gear The Great Motivator? that raiding gear is very useful to non-raiders as well as raiders.

LFD is more than just a tool to propel characters through the end content, it serves a great purpose for all leveling characters looking to do low level instances. I wonder how many people are currently doing content in Hellfire Penisula. Without LFD how else would you find a party of 4 Death Knights and a healer to do Hellfire Ramparts.

How Will Loot Be Handled

I agree with Grumpy that Loot distribution in LFR was terrible. Some of my characters especially the healers came out of the LFR in 2 weeks with a complete Tier set. On the other hand my melee Plate wearers have had very little in the way of drops. This is RNG at its worst and it does not make many people happy.

I believe that unlike Grumpy that the new system for MoP will be a huge improvement. Only time will tell if this going to be a success. If the figures are set too low they can always be tweaked to provide more loot. This is still destined to be the new loot system for Instances and Raids.

Bad Players and Kick Options?

LFR does need a kick function for the AFKers, Raid spoilers and the downright bad players who want to be carried. Grumpy wrote a post on how to improve a system that states, do you want to Kick Knobhead, Reason Given - Blank. I agree with Grumpy entirely on his proposed changes, so Blizzard get on with it we have a consensus of 2 on this point.

Why No 10 Player Option?

I have already covered this before and in my opinion 5 versions of Raid is enough work for Blizzard to do, and besides unless you start making 1 Tank raids this is always going to be an issue with the 5, 10 and 25 man ratios. 25 man allows more Dps to take part and the bottleneck is healers not tanks.

Who Decides Who The Raid Leader Is?

I think that everybody is in a agreement that this as been an unmitigated disaster.

What About Communication?

This is not Blizzard's forte, anybody remember the huge development costs of setting up Blizzard version of Ventrilo and Mumble. Voice chat is not and will never be a compulsary part of playing this game.

Role Checks?

I agree with Grumpy that Blizzard got this wrong and that there are just too many people cheating the system by falsely entering the queue with the wrong Role assigned. Anybody cheating the system in this way should be kicked and banned from entering the LFR for the entire week, harsh I know but there is no excuse for this kind of behaviour.

What About Gear Requirements?

LFR was gated and should be gated, but it was far too easy to bypass the checks wearing crafted PvP gear. Admittedly the 377 PvP is good gear and I have seen some people produce some very tasty figures in the PvP Blues. This in general is still  a poor design on Blizzard's part.

DBMs Anyone?

I can see where Grumpy is coming from with the idea of a Blizzard designed DBM just for the LFR. In my opinion we would all be better off and more skillful without DBM telling us where to stand when to dispel, and when to pick our noses. Far too many Raiders think they are the dogs dangly bits for being able to follow the dance moves at the correct time. The last thing we want is a Blizzard approved version of Just Dance 3. Most of the mechanics have been stripped out anyway.

Will It Get Worse?

Blizzard will maintain this feature and will probably declare it to be one of the big successes of Cata, based on the usage reports. They have made a change to the loot system and will probably make minor modifications throughout the MoP expansion.

What was the Purpose of this Exercise?

The Grumpy Elf has posted some of the best material about the game in the last few weeks. It all started with Do you Really Think That This Is Acceptable? which was the last of a series of posts about Blizzard bashing, boredom with WoW, all noobs are crap. I thought that Grumpy needed a break from WoW at this point.

After this Grumpy wrote a 5 part series and how to get better at the game, and then some of the most interesting if not wordy posts.

What I am trying to say is that I have had a pop at Grumpy in the past and he called me a hypocrite last night, but essentially we share quite a lot of views even though they are coming from completely different angles.

I believe that Blizzard knows what they doing, it just that they sometimes need to sway left then right in order to steady the ship.

LFD and LFR are 2 of the best features implemented for an MMO. The biggest problem sometimes is not the implementation but the way that the player base abuses them.

 

Do You Want To Know A Secret?

It's not really much of a secret, but I didn't want to ruin the title. My little hint is not to run LFR and/or LFD on the night before reset day.

LFR was the first attempt on my Death Knight to complete the second half of Fall of Deathwing. I knew it was going to be chaos when I teleported at the beginning of the instance on 3/4 and a mount of bodies where Ultraxion had beat them to a pulp. I fail to understand how difficult it can be to standstill go through your entire rotation and then once every minute or so press a big purple button in the middle of your screen.

When a LFR starts wiping the biggest issue is retaining its Tank and Healers, and in particular the healers due to requiring 6 of them and ignoring the DPS who queued as Healer to bypass the 10 minutes wait. So after a few minutes a ready check was taken still missing 1 tank and 2 healers and then they promptly started the fight. One minute later we are all roaming around in the grey world of the Caverns of Time with a big angel hovering above us.

The bickering and shouting starts and half the party leaves, 10 minutes later still short of a tank and 2 healers someone starts the raid again. Do they ever learn?

Next up LFD on my stumpy little Warrior. I have completed all the New 5 Man Heroics on this character but was still armed with a Season 9 PvP 2 handed sword. If I can't do LFR I might as well complete a few LFD's. Twice I got End Time and twice I left group in utter frustration, the worst bit was when the healer left group in the middle of a boss fight. Luckily in the wasted hour I did down 1 boss and bagged myself a 2 hander for the pain.

My tip of the day is complete the groups and raid aspects at the beginning of the week, and go fishing before reset day.

P.S.. I also heard LFR is bad over the weekend. so if you are on the EU realms stick to Wednesday and Thursdays.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

I am just starting to wonder if the WoW community have now set their expectations so low that we are now able to get what we need. In business it is quite common to hear people talking about setting low expectations, so that if you manage to exceed the lowered threshold that you look good for over achieving your target.

Big Bear Butt was impressed that he got a nice clean LFD run. Most people are relieved to complete Deathwing on LFR and are mightily impressed if it happens without a wipe. Matthew Rossi wrote about the fears of lesser geared players when a well geared Tank appears in their little universe in the original Cata 5 man Heroics.

Blizzard after the mistakes made in the Cataclysm expansion are on to a surefire winner with the Panda Expansion. Our collective expectations are on the floor, how can it not be an improvement on it's predecessor?

Even the Grumpy Elf is looking for excuses why players are not hitting the levels of performance that he perceives to be attainable by the average player. Obviously with statistics if the bad players and the new players start to perform as well as the average players, then the average players then start to drop into the below average category. In theory the removal of the talent trees will reduce the need for theorycrafting and the amount of damage done by similar geared players should be a lot closer. The new mage design sounds like similar rotations and skills with different coloured spells -Blue for Frost, Red for Fire, and Purple for Arcane.

In the post Metal Guru, I argued that benchmarking is subjective and not fact based. Not every gamer has the latest rig with a steaming hot Graphics Card and more network bandwidth than Facebook. It is the problem that we are trying to compare apples and bananas.

In a recent gearing exercise for my warrior, and based on my general poor performance with melee classes, I was pleased to be doing 10K DPS in Heroic End Time. The tank decided that my poor performance was just cause for some trolling. I kept quiet and let the Troll troll, it was not that I could generate better numbers if I tried. So it was much relish when the Heroic: End Time Achievement appeared on the screen and the Tank left group in disgust.

I admit that I am not the best player in the world and I am far worse with melee than ranged, but I will not apologise for trying my hardest  even if the end results look like I am only doing white damage.

I guess some people still need to lower their expectations

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Looking For Raid, it's been a mixed bag in the last few weeks. I thought that maybe things were starting to get better until last night.

The Good

I have actually managed to finish a lot of LFD's this week. The current weekly routine is based around the 6 characters that are attuned (high enough iLevel). BM Hunter and Resto Shaman are now 95% geared from LFD and gain very little from partaking in this event. Holy Paladin and Tree Drood are gearing up nicely. MM Hunter is performing very well with substandard gear, how much better is Marksman than Beastmastery in terms of Dps. I get the feeling that MM uses less spells than any other class in it's standard routine. The biggest disappointment is Frost Mage, so much so that I now have a very uncomfortable Fire Mage, who mashes the buttons, with slightly better results.

The good part is I have managed to complete about 10-12 different runs. Some of them even went very smoothly.

The Bad

My MM Hunter is having terrible luck with gear, 4 runs through the Siege and 2 runs Killing Deathwing. From these 6 runs I have so far won Tier Gloves and a ring, also I have a weapon but thats another story.

I have now witnessed a wipe on all 8 bosses. I am not even sure it is possible to wipe on Morchok, but yes it happened last night. During Earths Vengence phase, I witnessed 4 people run off behind the obstacles and straight into a bunch of adds. The adds took a shine to the tanks and it was game over.

The Ugly

Everybody is aware of the practice of some people needing on everything and then trying to trade after. The other big issue is the last of the 4 bosses means that people can need and run, which makes it hard for the people who genuinely need a weapon off Deathwing. Last night I witnessed a new trick which I consider to be far worse.

My MM Hunter who has had a bad run of luck so far in the quest for gear, was fortunate enough to win Vishanka the hunter's bow. Within seconds I was being petitioned by another Hunter to give it to him. There was no trading of items, he wanted the item and felt that he was more deserving than me. I left raid rather than confront him and continued to receive whispers from him until I logged off and changed characters.

The other night I witnessed a repeat of Darla at the Spine of Deathwing . Maybe this kind of idiocy has gone viral. It is bad that somebody should to do this in the place, but to read it and copy it is beyond believe.

The Late Show

Just a little something I have been pondering recently. If you have been away from the game for some time and have just returned via a Scroll of Resurrection or just a bit of pre Panda curiosity, or in my case have undergeared alts, what is the easiest way to get some gear quickly?

I have all my healers in LFR Dragon Soul equipment but what about gearing up those pesky damage dealers. In my opinion and it will probably get me lynched, get hold of the latest crafted PvP set. This will be enough to get into the the 4.3 Heroic 5 mans. As your gear will be 25% gimped by having resilience dripping from your gear, I suggest supplementing this with the BoE i Level 378 Justice gear. There is plenty floating on the market, that will cover the wrist option, and maybe some gloves and boots. One of the best ways to increase Dps is to obtain the best weapon that you can afford. In my case I have used the Blacksmith crafted i Level 365 weapons. They are still expensive to craft due to the large quantities of Truegold required. Depending on your level of competence put some cheap enchants, and get some buff foods and possible some flasks/elixirs.

Start at the 1st of the linear set of Heroics End Time. Oddly enough this instance is probably the hardest of the 3. Each instance comes with 2 or 3 quests all rewarding i Level 378 gear, 150 valor points for completion and 70 Justice points per boss, not forgetting the random Boss loot.

In case you are worried about your own performance especially wearing PvP gear, you can get a Guild run or alternatively use the LFD which is probably a nicer environment than you remember because most of the angry noobs can be found hanging out and wiping in LFR. Klepsacovic wrote about this phenomenon back in February. Other tips for LFD are either be nice and chatty or quiet as a mouse and hope nobody notices your sub par performance.

The 2nd Heroic instance Well of Eternity comes with some hefty buffs so don't get too excited about your 30-40K Dps score at the end of the instance. From experience the early buffs seem to favour melee and the later buffs benefit ranged.

The 3rd Heroic instance Hour of Twilight is straight forward with exception of some adds on the run down to Wyrmrest. My tip is to kill the Borer first, they are easy to spot looking like an eye on a stalk.

After running the full set, run the random version a few times and hopefully you get to fill your troublesome gear slots, mainly Trinkets and then you should be able to enter the roller-coaster ride that is LFR.