Badge

"Game Over", with two weeks left until World of Warcraft soars again, I am now finished for this expansion. No tasks to perform, no reputation to gain, no vegetables to grow, no herbs to pick, no ore to mine, no animals to skin.

The bucket list that I never had is now empty and I am left without a need to logon. It is strange that at the end of an expansion I have been playing more than I have for a long time. I am tempted to take a WoW vacation for 14 days and come back refreshed for the marathon sessions that we will all take part in. Staying up into the small hours on release day, taking days off work to level up to the new maximum. Whatever my intentions are, and however hard I try, everybody else seems to be ahead of me. Only at the end of an expansion can I feel smug that I have achieved as much as possible and can enjoy watching everybody else scurrying along whilst I am able to put my feet and enjoy a long cool drink.

It is possible for me to collect some Heirloom weapons or even get unbelievably lucky and gain the last Ordos gear that I could use on my alts, but it really does not matter any more and I can no more stop the next expansion, than King Canute could stop the tide.

My new level 90 Orc Hunter, the gift from Blizzard, last night gained four new pieces of equipment, and I am surprised how quickly and well I have been able to gear up in a three week period. I am now sitting on an average iLevel of 546, and the chance of borrowing the Heirloom Warbow when the time come round.

My haul of Four new pieces of gear came at a cost, and that cost was sitting through the worst LFR group of all time. I am now utterly proud that the Horde can be that bad at PvE. I have sat through some inept Alliance LFR performances, but this was an utter disgrace. The Siege of Orgrimmar, Vale of Eternal Sorrows was the site of this disaster. Immerseus was one of the quickest cleanest kills, but the Fallen Protectors got up to 25% determination bonus. Norushen also wiped the party on four occasions, some which only lasted less than a minute.

My favourite part of the whole experience was the lack of understanding of the fights and in particular the four phases of Sha of Pride. The Manifestation of Pride that appears behind the party would be dealt with by one or on some occasions two people. Thankfully they were both Hunters, expelling the myth that Hunters are the Noob class of choice.

The only explanation I have for this whole debacle is that there are a lot of returning players or else new players with level 90's that they as yet do not understand. The only reason for the eventual success is that most people are overpowered, and it is raw power that eventually ran roughshod over the content.

I am utterly embarrassed to have witnessed such a performance but kind of delighted to know the Horde are as bad as the Alliance.

It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)

Now that Valor capping is not very difficult to achieve, my free time as turned to trying to please Wrathion in the hope that he gives me more Cloaks of Awesomeness. The downside is that I am spending time doing things I don't really want to do, with people I don't want to be with.

It is easy to think back at the time on the Wrathion Questline as being nothing more than the collection of Sigils, Secrets and Titan Runestones. The reality is that there are side roads that we would like to forget and I don't just mean having to PvP in the two new Battlegrounds, neither of which do it for me.

One such side road is the quests surrounding the Isle of Thunder, Spirit of the Storm Lord:

"Progress through the Isle of Thunder until you unlock the final courtyard. Obtain a Tempered Lightning Lance by thrusting the lance into Storm Lord Nalak and surviving long enough to siphon his power."

Forging the Lance is a fun little scenario which is far from straightforward but is rewarding in it's level of difficulty. The part where you are required to upset a World Boss and expect to live is a little bit more tricky. First time through I was on a Hunter, which just like most activities in the game they are able to solo without any difficulty. The key is being able to drop threat, so that is excellent for Hunters and Rogues, but not so good for Elemental Shaman. I tried a few tricks that are posted on the forum, but I am guessing that Blizzard fixed them some time ago.

I asked an eminent Shaman in my Guild and I expected some smart answer about casting this spell here and running over to here, then waving your pants above your head and then hand in the quest. The answer was very different, "Hang on I will log onto my Tank". I waited for awhile, my knight in shining armour soloed a world boss, and I ran away like a big girl's blouse, waved my pants above my head and then handed the quest in.

It is hardly fair that some classes can solo and other need to get a mate to help them (Thanks Elogis).

I have often stated that it is not wise to do LFR's at the weekend, but when there is nothing else to do, and you just need to kill one boss for part of the Quest chain, you think how bad can this be. The answer is worse than you can imagine. I was up to the quest Fear Itself:

"Defeat the Sha of Fear in the Terrace of Endless Spring and acquire the Chimera of Fear."

I normally like ToES it is a Raid which requires moving about 50 paces, down some stairs, and up some stairs and defeat four bosses in about 20 minutes. It's not the most taxing of instances and in particular the first boss encounter is a council style fight. I have done this fight many times and I attack the boss with the dwindling health bar. Icy Veins in it's guide states:

The strategy for this phase can be summarised relatively easily.

• Have one tank take Protector Kaolan, and the other tank take Elder Regail and Elder Asani.
• DPS and kill the desired boss.
• Interrupt Water Bolt and Lightning Bolt whenever possible.
• Stay spread out to avoid damage splashing from Water Bolt or Lightning Prison.
• Dispel players affected by Lightning Prison.
• If Elder Asani ever summons a globe of Cleansing Waters at the location of one of the bosses, move that boss away from the orb.
• Heal the damage that raid members are taking from Touch of Sha.

While this list is rather comprehensive, we will go into some more details in the sections below.
We remind you that once the first boss is killed, the other two will be healed to full health. Therefore, there is no reason to try to cleave or multi DoT the bosses.

Notice that it does not advocate which boss to kill first and it comes with a reminder that when the first boss is killed the other two will be healed to full health. This is not the Fallen Protectors (He, She and It) were they need to all die at the same time, but it does require some organisation or at the very least some communication.

The LFR that I got lumbered in did less damage than when the Raid was current content, coupled with an inability to hit the same target. The see-saw action of the Raid resulted in a kill time of over 10 minutes.

The elemental Protectors that appear on the stairs and will divide if not killed in time, kept dividing, and the Sha of Fear also took over 10 minutes to complete. Very painful indeed, but good practice to hone your rotation.

Heaven And Hell

The topic of the week appears to be an old favourite, coming back to haunt. Just in case you have been in a coma since Tuesday, the hot topic is of course Looking for Raid. The current issue is with the new wing of the Throne of Thunder (Halls of Flesh-Shaping),  and it's current difficulty levels.

The Grumpy Elf has written 3 posts recently The ROI of LFR, Dear Blizzard, I Quit, and the recently WoW Insider featured Where are the Healers? I will attempt to gather all the issues and summarise in this article. The WoW Insider post Why Aren't More Healers Queueing for Raid Finder, comments will feature heavily.

Historically

Raid Finder was first introduced during the last patch of Cataclysm for the Raid, Dragon Soul. It was implemented in 2 parts Siege of Wyrmrest and The Fall of Deathwing. The whole Raid was tuned down from the previous very high difficulty of Firelands. Anybody who had geared up through Firelands was in a position to complete LFR within the first week of release, and in fact several guilds were able to do the Normal 10 man version within a few weeks.

The Siege of Wrymrest LFR was a ROFLstomp, but the Fall of Deathwing actually required a degree of Raid competence, that many in the LFR were unable to achieve. This brought into sharp focus who and what the LFR was designed for. Blizzard, always maintained that the primary focus was to allow everybody to witness and partake in the End Game content whilst it was still current. Previously a large amount of developers time was taken up by content that only 5% of the player base would see, and in the spirit of a more inclusive game the LFR was introduced.

The first incarnation was marked by Loot drama, Off spec needing, Guild controlling loot, Robin Hood style loot distribution (given to the most deserving) and on Spine of Deathwing we witnessed dickheads deliberately wiping Raids for the fun of it.

Mist of Pandaria initially introduced Mogu-shan Vaults (in 2 parts). Later they added Terrace of Endless Spring and Heart of Fear (in 2 parts)  The hardest part of these raids was obtaining the iLevel required to enter them, which involved extensive reputation grinds and collecting the required amount of valor up to 1000 a week.

Mogu'shan Vaults - Part 1	[Guardians of Mogu'shan]	90	460	None	09-Oct-12
Mogu'shan Vaults - Part 2	[The Vault of Mysteries]	90	460	Guardians of Mogu'shan	16-Oct-12
Heart of Fear - Part 1	[The Dread Approach]	90	470	None	06-Nov-12
Heart of Fear - Part 2	[Nightmare of Shek'zeer]	90	470	The Dread Approach	13-Nov-12
Terrace of Endless Spring	[Terrace of Endless Spring]	90	470	Nightmare of Shek'zeer	20-Nov-12
Throne of Thunder - Part 1	[Last Stand of the Zandalari]	90	480	None	12-Mar-13
Throne of Thunder - Part 2	[Forgotten Depths]	90	480	Last Stand of the Zandalari	19-Mar-13
Throne of Thunder - Part 3	[Halls of Flesh-Shaping]	90	480	Forgotten Depths	02-Apr-13
Throne of Thunder - Part 4	[Pinnacle of Storms]	90	480	Halls of Flesh-Shaping	16-Apr-13

From the table above it shows that the first LFR - Mogu'shan Vaults required iLevel 460. On attaining level 90 it was possible to acquire an iLevel of 450 by doing a Scenario for the weapon, Jewelcrafter for rings, and puchasing a full set of PvP gear. This then required people to find another 10 ilevels from Rep grinds and Heroics. Heroics offered a chance at Blue iLevel 463 and Reputation grinds like the Golden Lotus offered an Epic necklace at iLevel 489 and a Blue Chest piece at iLevel 463. The pace of gearing was slow to say the least.

Once Mogu'shan was available, the loot table increased to include iLevel 476 Epics, but the droprate was poor even with the Elder Charms of Good Fortune. In order to achieve an average iLevel of 470 you would need several gear drops from LFR Mogu'shan Vaults.

The Throne of Thunder requires iLevel 480 and the 2 previous LFR's Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring only providing iLevel 483 Epic gear. This is off-set by the higher level gear available from Operation Shieldwall, Shado Pan Assault  and the Kirin Tor Offensive Quartermasters.

At this stage of the Expansion, there is no reason to into Mogu'shan Vaults if your aim is to go to LFR Throne of Thunder, unless this is you chosen method for obtaining valor, or you are looking to use up that huge supply of Elder Charms of Good Fortune that drop from the Island of Thunder.

The gear has been tuned up for all 5 of the original LFR's unless you are called the Grumpy Elf, but the gear drops from the 3 new Throne of Thunder LFR's appears to be very poor, I personally am on 0 from 14 and other people are on worse stats than that.

Current Situation

The tuning of the new raids is considerably higher on the Throne of Thunder than any previous LFR, and they appear to be getting even harder. The early bosses are easily overcome once the fight is known but the newly released Halls of Flesh-Shaping is proving to be beyond the skills of the average LFR (non-raider) and there are issues with some of the fight designs which I am guessing are going to be hotfixed very soon.

Compounding this problem is the shortage of healers. This is a simple issue of mathematics and of course other much more complexed issues thrown in. The mathematics section is as follows:

	Tank	Healer	DPS'er
Scenario	any	any	any
5 Man Heroic	1	1	3
10 Man Raid	2	2.5	5.5
25 Man LFR	2	6	17

 In general the DPS'er are the ones with the queue times, because they are by far the largest population of players. At 5 and 10 man level the ratio is the same and the role in shortage demand is the Tank. If the 10 man Raid takes 3 Healers and only 5 DPS'ers then it is Healers in short supply and DPS'ers get squeezed for another position, but in LFR Tanks are plentiful, DPS'ers get statistically more places available to them but the number of Healers required is quite high. It can be argued that by making the LFR easier (reduce the damage taken by the Raid) and reduce the number of Healers to 5 the issue will almost disappear.

The counter argument to this, is that DPS'ers are not currently moving out of the bad, so if you reduce the likelihood of death, the bad players will just keep doing these things and not learning from the situation.

The Healers are expected to power over these issues of Players standing in the bad stuff, and as consequence shoulder the blame and the stress.

Another problem with the current design philosophy from Blizzard is that this expansion as been Alt unfriendly, with a situation that only a Raid Healer would level as a main character, and casuals would normally have a damage dealer as their main character. Any Alt would therefore have to gear up with one set of gear to do the Reputation grinds and then work on creating a second set just to the LFR's. The only solution to this is to stop the need for carrying 2 sets of gear and to remove spirit as the Mana regeneration stat and to convert Intellect or in the case of Paladins Strength  into a useful stat or Agility in the case of Enhancement Shaman.

The mana pools in Mists of Pandaria are not bottomless pits and any fight with significant raid damage is leaving Healers short of mana at some point during the fight. With my fledgling Shaman, I am often required to hurl a lightning bolt or two just to keep the mana at a sensible level.

Any increases to the power of healers or an increase mana pools will just result in Healers having to over power DPS'ers standing in the bad stuff, so yet again the same problem is re-curring.

Blizzard have the difficult task of making every encounter different from any previous encounters, but the LFR still needs to be easier to overcome them, due to the lack of team communication available. Can you imagine the scenario if LFR had to fight an up-to-date Heigan the Unclean. 20 People would be dead before you got to the other side of the room.

I am curious to see what would happen if DPS'ers lost DPS from standing in the bad instead of huge amounts of Hit Points. Most damage dealers pride themselves on their recount numbers so if you hit them in the pocket and slow down their spell speeds, or would they not care because it is only LFR. Maybe Blizzard could finally use the April Fools joke about Epeen, and a bright coloured phallus could grow on the head of any idiot who stands in the bad for longer than a few seconds.

The next point might be slightly controversial, but I am of the understanding that female players are more likely to play Healers than Tanks. This might lead to less Healers in the LFR's due to Females deliberately avoiding the foul mouthed and abusive cesspits that LFR's sometime turn into. In general I am far too busy trying to fulfil my role that read the drivel that appears in Raid Chat, beside I am a man, and as every woman knows we cannot multi-task.

Another issue that seems to occupy peoples thoughts is that of incentives. Maybe Tanks and Healers deserve more Valor, Reputation or perhaps a choice of gear if for some miraculous reason that something does drop they get a choice of 2 items, Healer or Tank and the DPS equivalent. Maybe tokens that then allow you choose your gear at your own leisure.

The queue times for LFR are heavily stacked in the favour of Healers, but this means very often coming into a struggling group already, and from experience the counter always seem to be stuck at 4/6 healers, I am not sure why 4 Healers choose to be so stubborn.

During Dragon Soul people used to jump the queues by selecting Healing and DPS'ing for the entire Raid. This does not help the healers in any way shape or form who have to make up the numbers. The fights are designed to be done with 6 Healers, and every attempt with less, always seems to turn out badly.

Summary

In summary, LFR as always been a problem area. The original issues centred around loot and loot drama. The new LFR's are difficult and unrewarding. Queue times are long and Healers are in short supply.

Something needs to change, but nobody has a panacea to the LFR ills. Right now I am taking a break away from the LFR and plan to return when Blizzard makes some changes.

2 or 3 Hours spent to do 3 bosses was the biggest problem with the Zul Heroics in Cataclysm. Nobody seems to have that kind of time to spend in game with little or no reward, this is what Grumpy calls the Return on Investment. Socialist will see this as "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work", right now it is too much work for not enough pay (plenty of gold, but no bloody loot).

Slowhand

Another weekly reset prompts the rush to Valor cap, and another chance at those elusive iLevel 502 gear from LFR Throne of Thunder. I checked this morning that there is in fact a loot table because after 7 bosses and 7 tokens, there only seems to money in that Raid. I am not the only person having problems with loot so it begs the question, what is the percentage chance of getting loot. The old MoP LFR's seem to be spewing out drops these days, but the new Raid is tighter than a camel's arse in a sandstorm.

Last Stand of the Zandalari as predicted was relatively easy last night. After 2 weeks most people know what they are doing, and it certainly helps with the DPSers are bringing in a minimum of 60K DPS. The boss fight mechanics in LFR are relatively straightforward and most people have adapted to ensure that a start of the week at least the Last Stand of the Zandalari will be easy going without too many wipes. I will reserve judgement on the Forgotten Depths until I have completed all 3 bosses so far I have only seen Ji-Kun.

I did notice that the viaduct with the gushing wind and the Banshees wailing above, claims far more lives than it should do. I fell foul of this area several times last week but now I have learnt to run straight and strafe left into the wind and avoiding the whirlwinds. It should be second nature to anyone who Mario Carts.

My server is now onto the 4th Stage of the Island of Thunder, and let another solo Scenario is available. I particularly enjoy these solo Scenarios and To The Skies is no different. They are not particularly difficult although it is possible to make things uncomfortable with some badly timed pulls.

After completing my Dailies on the Island, I got an extra quest for On Her Magic-ey Secret Service, which sends you back to the mines. As we are in a no-fly zone and I could not find a portal, how do you get back to the Mines? I even tried to mount the big blue bird at the Alliance Base (wipe that smirk of your face).

I am not also detecting that my characters are getting relatively stronger as the weeks go by. I tend not to enchant Blue items, but now I am sporting a complete set of shiny epics, I have fully enchanted my gear. The shoulder enchant alone is a massive boost, the Greater Tiger Claw Inscription provides a whopping 200 Agility 100 Critical Strike. I have said it before and I will no doubt say it again that the Stat inflation is completely out of control. I getting stronger every week, not by improving but purely from either having a lot of luck in LFR (fat chance) or the Valor upgrades that are guaranteed.

I am starting to wonder whether spell rotations are like playing the guitar. I have played the guitar for 30+ years and I am familiar with the basics, and can play lots of chords, I even know some scales, but I never seem to get any better. As a teenager I had a Japanese Fender Start copy, which never stayed in tune and I always assumed that it was the guitar that was at fault for my poor performance. A friend of my brothers came to stay and he picked up the guitar tuned it briefly before playing some great Blues guitar. This was not possible, this was my crappy guitar, that sounded so sweet.

As an adult, I am fortunate enough to own a Fender acoustic and a Fender Telecaster, neither of these great instruments have allowed me to be the superb guitarist than I know I should be. I am starting to think that I will never manage to eek out my DPS to anywhere near it's maximum ability, and even if I purchased a full gaming rig, I am sure it would not make me a great Hunter, Mage or Elemental Shaman. Sometimes you just have to realise the level of your own ability and after that you can only try your best.

From this point of view, it easy to see why I tend to raid as a Healer. The metrics are completely different, and HPS is not a great measure of success. The performance is based on, whether the boss died, how many raiders are still standing and how much mana have I got left.

The pressure can be greater for healers, but most damage dealers know that it was really their fault for standing in the bad.

Looking For Love

This is not an advert for a dating agency, and yes I am still happily married (is that an Oxymoron?). Today's topic is in fact Looking for Raid (LFR). To the best of my knowledge Whitesnake or any other band have never actually written a song titled "Looking for Raid", so you are stuck with my cheesy title.

Mists of Pandaria is the first expansion to feature LFR for all of it's Raid content. It is not perfect but it offers a glimpse at the Raids without the heavy co-ordination required for doing in Normal or Heroic versions. The main advantage for a lot of people is the timing aspect, Raids take time to setup, with calendar entries and strict Raiding times. European servers suffer with an approximate 2 hour time difference between players living + or - 1 hour of the CET (Paris Time). Raids need to finish early enough to allow Eastern Europeans to go to bed at a sensible hour and start late enough to let the UK and Irish residents get home from work.

LFR allows people outside the core hours to get the Raid experience. The MoP expansion started off slowly for myself with gearing difficulties and motivation issues in terms of Daily quests and Reputation grinds. My choice was to level up professions and 4 characters. Operation: Shieldwall provided some easily gained gear improvements and the new quest hub on Island of Thunder allows the same. LFR has been gated in terms of iLevel and it is only now in patch 5.2 that I have started doing weekly LFR runs.

My current progress shows that I have not yet completed a single LFR full Raid. The actually boss kills are as follows:

 

The first part of Mogu'shan Vaults, shows 3 completions, even though I have never actually seen the first boss, and a complete run of the second part. Heart of Fear is the same but with only 2 completions, and I don't think I qualify for the second part yet. Throne of Thunder was the run I did last night.

 

Mogu'shan Vaults and Heart of Fear have been very under whelming experiences so far, but I really enjoyed Throne of Thunder. MV and HoF are just completely disorganised and are horrible fights.

 

Throne of Thunder feels more epic, everybody is still finding their feet and a wipefest ensued. It was great. After every wipe we would have a change of personnel and discuss tactics and then we kick backside. This is what Raiding is about, learn, adapt, improve and kick butt. The downside to this is that I see these first 3 bosses becoming, rather easy when the general populace knows what they are doing. By wiping I learnt the fights in a way that just turning up late for LFR in MV and HoF did not. I am being dragged along without a full understanding of the fight, with people who are still learning with me.

 

If I can take you back to the last expansion (kicking and screaming no doubt), Spine was a pain to understand the tactics, and in many cases it was better to do nothing than do the wrong thing. Once you knew to relax, it meant all the cooldowns were available for the big burst damage to separate the plates from Deathwing. This fight became very easy in LFR unless you had a rogue idiot, deliberately activating all the adds at the same time.

 

It took 2 hours to do 3 bosses in Throne of Thunder but it was worth it, I just hope next time I have more luck with the loot.

Waiting For An Alibi

Looking For Raid (LFR) words to send a shiver down anybody's spine. I have partaken twice this week and have had flawless raids on both occasions. I apologise to anybody who was in these raids because I was definitely in the bottom quadrant on both occasions. At least I do actually know what I am doing and didn't bring in the extra slimes or upset Yor’Sajh the Unsleeping and bring him into the fight whilst the slime where still up.

I am not even going to discuss the 45 minute wait, for 5 healers to show up. The change to the UI now shows the make up of the party and with LFR it is always a healer shortage. I have mentioned this way to many times in the past to discuss it now.

Today's topic is the new Personal Loot System. Now the old system did not work properly and almost everybody is in agreement on that. The system could be manipulated in several ways:

1. Guild runs - in which everybody rolled Need on all items to then pass on to the lucky recipient.
2. Individuals rolling need in hope of battering for something they actually needed.
3. Individuals rolling need and then doing the job of distributing to the most needy.

The system was in build with it's own QQ and griefing, people would beg for items and scream in Raid chat and pester in whisper.

Now in theory the new Personal Loot System, is designed to avoid all of the above and make the system fairer. Does it work in practice? Here is the description from Wowpedia.

Loot rules

Raid Finder uses a system called Personal Loot. When a boss is killed, every player has a fixed percentage chance of receiving a loot item. For each player, the game will decide based on a fixed percentage chance whether the player will receive loot. If so, the game will then select a class-appropriate item from the boss's loot table and immediately deposit the item into the player's inventory. All players who do not receive a loot item will instead be issued a bag of gold. All loot gained through this method is Bind on Pickup and can not be traded with other players.

Blizzard maintains that statistically you have more chance of being rewarded with this system. The big question is what is the "fixed percentage" ? The answer seem to be that nobody knows or else nobody is saying. So far I have killed 6 bosses and I am now personally 150 Gold richer.

If the droprate is 25% then I am just unlucky. If the droprate is 12.5% then you would have to complete the full Dragon Soul LFR to have a realistic chance of loot. If the rate is even lower then you can't even rely on a drop every week and then it is RNG gods as to which piece each week you might win. As I am writing this, it obvious that the Valor system does a much better job of assigning the right gear to the right person. So why no make it 600 Valor for each wing, put the LFR Tier gear or iLevel appropriate gear back in the Valor vendors inventory and let us equip solely through tokens.

Alternatively match loot with peoples inventory and/or  iLevels and make the percentages higher at the lower levels, and reducing with every item obtained. Do not distribute Tier shoulders to somebody with 5 already in their bags but without a helm after 12 runs.

Honestly I really want this system to work, but in it's current format it is going to end in tears.

If you are not in position to raid every week or even at all, but can jump into LFR due to unsociable hours, shortage of time, unwillingness to join a normal raid, then LFR is not offering a suitable gearing path, and is purely a tour bus of the current content. In my opinion it will be an empty bus in a few months.

Holiday

Sorry Real Life finally caught up with me, and I have had a busy time trying to stop my 2 children from turning into Phineas and Ferb. It was the first 2 weeks of their summer holiday, and in an attempt to make it better than last year when I was unemployed for the whole of August, I have run around and filled their days with trips out. Luckily this year coincided with the London 2012 Olympics and Team GB have done the nation proud by collecting far more medals than a small island deserves. Hats off to Jamica who now officially have the best sprinters by a mile.

I have also managed to play some WoW in between the trips out and the Olympics and today proved to be a fruitful experience. Not only did I manage to get 3 LFR's completed without any hiccups but I also had a very interesting experience.

In the last of the 3 LFR's on Friday night, (yes, I know I said never do LFR or LFD at a weekend) I ran my Death Knight "Blamebob" through the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple. I have had severe issues getting Plate armour drops for my Warrior and Death Knight in all expansions so much so that I usually don't even bother trying. According to the stats I have run LFR 6 times on my DK and 4 times on my Warrior. In total that is 9 runs with 4 bosses in each dropping 4 pieces of loot, now if my maths are correct that is 144 drops without picking up a single Tier piece.

Run number 10 yielded my first Tier piece - the Gloves (Gauntlets of the Corrupted Vanquisher) from Warlord Zon'ozz. No sooner was I celebrating my win, I got the whisper, "Please give me the Gloves". No, bugger off was my first thought. I ignored the first request hoping he would go away. "Please I need the Gloves to complete the set", Yes, I understand it is difficult to get the missing piece of any set. "Bob, you already have the gloves can I have the token", No, have I missed something? I check my inventory and I see Time Strand Gauntlets, iLevel 378, that is not the Tier Gloves, they are a quest reward from End Time.

There is something slightly odd about my Death Knight in that I can not click on item links or reply to whispers. This is the only character which this applies to and I am guessing it is a faulty addon or a corrupt profile. I finally figure out a way to speak to my unwanted admirer, sensing that this is like Michael Palin's old ex leper, from the Life of Brian. I explained that the Gloves were not a Tier Piece and would he kindly sod off. The old ex leper took his queue to end the conversation and we moved on to Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. In a rare lucky streak Yor'sahj decided to donate his trousers to my Death Knight. The old ex leper sensing his moment pounced again in the hope that my luck would make me more benevolent towards him.

In an attempt to cut the begging short, I decided to let the Raid know that today was my lucky day after weeks of bad luck. That is the point when the Raid turned very surreal, the responses consisted of "Well done Bob", "Bob for President", "We Love Bob" and lots of other equally silly quotes. Funnily enough it developed a life of its own and it was like another part of the Life of Brian, when Pilate and Biggus Dickus are offering clemency for one of the criminals scheduled for Crucifixion.
I half expected to see "Release Bob".

I decided the best cause of action was to avoid further scrutiny and make sure I didn't die to any of the frosty spikey things that Hagara likes to chuck at people. "Oh look Bob's going wild", head down try to stay alive through the tears of laughter and embarrassment.

Hagara The Stormbinder dies and offers up a further blessing to the RNG gods, Shoulders of the Corrupted Vanquisher. I paused long and hard before pressing Need. Several left the raid after saying "Bye Bob". This time and kind of much to my relieve I didn't win the Shoulders. The old ex leper started a campaign demanding that the unfortunate soul who had won the shoulders should donate them to Bob, because it was the right thing to do. It was time to beat a hasty retreat and thank everybody and disappear back to the anonymity of my own realm.

This was a singularly unique occasion when the WoW community really came alive and did something spontaneous. I am still laughing as I write this.

Thanks All it was a good night all round.

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.

Run To The Hills

In the post Metal Guru I was trying to make sense of the Death Knight. I have covered Glyphs and Talents and got stuck at the Rotation stage. Before I try to tackle rotation here are some other things to consider.

Stats, Reforging and Gems

Strength is by far your most important stat. This is the case for Warriors and I presume Ret Pallies or anything thing that likes to smash you in the face very hard.

Gems: Always choose a Bold Inferno Ruby unless a socket provides 20 or more Strength or 40 or more of another important stat. In the latter case, use either Fierce Ember Topaz or Etched Demonseye as appropriate.
Reforging: Reforge to Hit up to the hit cap. Then, reforge to Haste, or Crit if that’s not possible. Never reforge Haste to anything else, including Hit.

The standard figures for Hit and Expertise apply. Just remembered that Hunters will need to load up on expertise for MoP. The important numbers are Hit Cap 961 and Expertise cap of 26

In order of importance stack Haste, Crit, Mastery,

Rotation/Priority

With a little help from MMO Melting Pot here is the list again.

Single-Target

Top Priority: Diseases and Dark Transformation. Apply or reapply diseases as first priority, preferably using Outbreak, and use Dark Transformation whenever it’s available.
Second Priority: Death and Decay or Scourge Strike if Death Runes are available. Use DnD even on single-target fights. Use Scourge Strike if DnD is on cooldown.
Third Priority: Death Coil IF Sudden Doom is up or Festering Strike. Only use Festering Strike here if it will extend your diseases.
Fourth Priority: Death and Decay or Scourge Strike. This is your bread-and-butter.

From my understanding of the term Diseases this includes:

Icy Touch - Infects target with Frost Fever
Plague Strike - Infects target with Blood Plague
Pestilence - Spreads Frost Fever and Blood Plague to other targets with 10 yard radius (AOE diseases)
Outbreak - Applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague instantly
Festering Strike - Increases the duration Frost Fever and Blood Plague

Dark Transformation - turns your ghoul into a killing machine. The icon flashes when available.

Experiment

Using LFR Siege of Wyrmrest -  I attempted to use more diseases than previously. Reading the above I was probably overdoing the use of Pestilence. Scourge Strike and Blood Strike I used as filler attacks, and Death Coil and Death Strike as the equivalent of finishing moves. Death Strike was used for healing top ups.

Results

I am still wearing the  PVP set with 397 Bracers and Boots and achieved around 15.5K overall. I still think with some tweaks to the rotation and to the talents I can get better results especially around Blood Tap and Anti Magic Shell. After checking MAXdps I have discovered that I am not using Festering Strike, so this also needs to be worked in to the priority.

Benchmarking

WoW lends itself to certain expectations of what is acceptable DPS and what is not, however in the process of researching this post it appears there is no definitive opinion or tool to determine what is acceptable DPS for your current gearscore. Blizzard has imposed some gating of content - 5 Man Heroics needs 329, 346 and 353, with  LFR set at 372 but we don't know anything definitive about the expectations for someone who just meets the requirements.

The de facto way to gear up, is buy PvP set at 377 do the 3 new 5 man Heroics swap the cache of PvE gear for the PvP. Buy the 397 Boots and Bracers from people selling the Valor points and then enter the LFR. So somebody with a mixture of Blue PvP and 378 and 397 PvE Purples and for the sake of argument they managed to get a 378 Weapon. What average DPS should they be able to produce without the huge buffs from Well of Eternity and Madness of Deathwing?

I am guessing that somewhere in the region of 10-12K is the bare minimum for the Siege of Wrymrest and around 15K for Fall of Deathwing. These figures will rattle the troll cages, but I think they are quite reasonable. Personally I prefer to be doing 18K + before attempting Fall of Deathwing, I guess I just don't like being in position 17-19 for damage done and when the inevitable wipe comes I am public enemy number one. In my opinion lFR is more about doing the right things at the right time than smashing out the numbers, Higher DPS which comes naturally from gear just makes us all a little lazier.

Mid Term Report

Showing signs of improvement but with some areas needing extra work. I will hone my skills in the LFD, and may attempt Fall of Deathwing if I can get my numbers up sufficiently. Plan to redo the talent tree as per EJ and make more use of Blood Tap, Anti Magic Shell and Festering Strike. A few drops of the Tier set would also be nice.

 

The Winner Takes It All

Congratulations to England on topping the Group stage and missing Spain in the Quarter Finals.

Congratulations also to the LFR who late on Tuesday night (before a reset - historically the worst time to join random strangers to complete an objective), completed the process in good time and without any deaths (except Deathwing of course).

/salute

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.

Just Another Reset Day

In the 2 Months or so since patch 4.3 dropped, I have made numerous Deathwing kills in LFR. The items I covet most are the weapons. Every week I see them either not appear on the right character or simply lose badly on the roll.

Hunters have double the chance with the much sort after Polearm and less sort after but much more important Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth bow, which as a Dwarf I would of course prefer it to be a bow. The bow would provide much needed DPS and would stop me using my beloved PvP gun.

My LFR adventure started with a straightforward Ultraxion kill and a wipe on Warmaster Blackhorn. A wipe on Blackhorn, ok lets find another group. The next group is 3/8. My favourite I get a chance of a weapon and 250 Valor points for killing one dragon, that is my kind of deal. The raid goes swimmingly my personal DPS is well up on previous attempts, now for the shinnies.

Waiting anxiously for someone to loot the chest, the items popup on the screen. No Polearm but look there is the object of my affection sat at the bottom underneath the usual Rogue dagger. I quickly click Need, and cancel all the other objects. Time rolls by ever so slowly waiting for the clock to tick down. The raid is down to about 12 people. The results flash in, I slowly scroll up the list and find the bow. The first thing I notice is there are only 2 people needing the bow, I am in with a chance.

Underneath is the result but my brain is not computing, its a 50:50 chance is all I can think of. Finally I read the text properly and my heart sinks, this was my best chance ever and it still was not to be.

Uttering curses and damning my infamous bad luck, A trade window opens, and sat in the trade box is Vishanka. Is this person tormenting me? I cautiously click trade and the window disappeared. No message appears. I check the bags and there is no item. Did he want money? was he just tormenting me? Suffering from lag, the message appears that I have indeed received the bow. I quickly look through the list of people to thank him for this most gracious offer. "Cheers Mate" was the best I could come up with under the circumstances. The reply "Sorry mate I misclicked need, LOL"

A frantic emotional roller coaster had occurred in front of me lasting no more than 15-20 seconds. I went to whisper further thanks only to find he was no longer in the Raid. Thank you stranger I look forward to slaying many more Internet Dragons with my new bow.

On a side note and with much less drama my Shammy Healer came out with Maw of the Dragonlord.

A good night all round.

Reset Day

Wednesday, WoW reset day for the European servers. For the average altaholic that means several runs at the Looking For Raid. The Cataclysm expansion as been a hard slog for those with more than a main character to gear up.

At present that means 3 characters doing both parts of Dragon Soul and 2 doing the first part only.
The 3 characters doing the full Raid are Hunter, Shaman and Mage with Druid and Paladin cutting their teeth on the first 4 bosses.

After 2 Months of running weekly LFR's I have yet to snag a single weapon on any of my runs. Mostly it is not down to bad roll but it is more often a result of the wrong weapons for the current character. I am sure the Shaman could have won a Bow and Polearm and the Hunter a healing Staff or Mace. At this rate the Hunter will still be sporting the Season 10 PvP Rifle .

Last night was a complete disaster. The general consensus amongst most bloggers is that LFR is just too damn easy. Well I can safely say that depends on the 24 people that you are sharing the lootfest with. Entering the raid at 3/8 (Not sure why Blizzard didn't use 7/8) I felt that luck was on my side, 250 Valor, a chance at a weapon for 15 minutes coasting against Deathwing. I should have known better.

The chances are the healers had dropped out because the raid was less than useless. After 2 failed attempts and wipes on the far right handside were the flailing tentacles need to be single targeted, I decided it was time to review what was going wrong. Most LFR's I have taken part in the DPS is normally around 20K+. A quick check of the meters revealed a large chunk on 30-40K so it wasn't for lack of firepower. One of the Tanks was dying very easily when the party turned round to face the trouble at the back. On one occasion I went back to try to find him to give a heal and move on back to the party. I couldn't actually find him, I can only think he was fighting Deathwing via a coastal assault.

The biggest issue I noticed was that my Shaman was top of the Healing tables, and further more I was struggling for mana for large parts of the fight. Is it so difficult for DPS to move an inch to stand in the lovely blue glow of my Healing Rain. I do blame Blizz for sending out confusing signals. For 6 years the mantra was always don't stand in the nasty stuff. Now we have had 1 year of don't stand in the nasty stuff but stand in this nice stuff instead. All this whilst trying to maintain a rotation and switch targets. This particular fight does not require much movement and no nasty stuff on the floor. So c'mon DPS huddle up and keep those green bars up. I have no real desire to waste all my mana because you can't be arsed to move.

Next week I want a nice gentle stroll tossing out the occasional heal, and a nice healing weapon would more than make up for it.