Raid Finder and its ridiculous drop rate

[hyphnos]

Tot since before it was released? I'm assuming you means ToES. Not saying there isn't or wasn't a problem with current tier LFR drop rates, but since 5.2 you pretty much have unlimited attempts at Past LFR gear and Galleon gear (I've gotten 60 charms a week before) At minimum he should be at 483 if he has any kind of decent playtime.

And just how pray tell have you gotten 60 charms? By finding 2 extra keys? Even if getting 60 charms a week is realistic, getting in 60 kills of LFR bosses isn't and I'd say both are not.

"unlimited" attempts at old bosses doesn't fix the fact that under the current LFR scheme, you get loot, not the loot you need.

In prior expacs, you could buy most of the slots that were missing with JPs. Running a LFR over and over to use a charm that might win you loot some of which might be useful, is hardly a good replacement for the old system.

The gigantic gaping flaw in LFR loot system is that it just distributes loot at a fixed rate with no regard to whether it can be used and the longer people run a given section more and more of what falls is wasted.

[Luko]

Weeks with out an upgrade... MAN that must've been fun. Yup.. Legit argument there. A valid argument would be the Valor gear to fill in the gaps, regardless of how terrible they are itemized.

Once upon a time, we raided to raid. Gear is a shiny little bonus that makes those raids smoother. Seriously, I can't possibly make that any more blunt. We weren't in it for the fucking carrot. That came later as a new breed of MMO player started to emerge and eventually take over. It was a blast. Hell it still is. It's all about how you play.

[Darsithis]

Once upon a time, we raided to raid. Gear is a shiny little bonus that makes those raids smoother. Seriously, I can't possibly make that any more blunt. We weren't in it for the fucking carrot. That came later as a new breed of MMO player started to emerge and eventually take over. It was a blast. Hell it still is. It's all about how you play.

I feel the same way. I raided because I loved working with my raid team to get the boss down and move on to the next. We cheered. We struggled. We challenged ourselves. The gear was good, of course, and a part of the motivation - without upgrades/gear we couldn't challenge the next level of things or feel like we grew in any capacity but it wasn't ever considered deserved. There were no complaints that something didn't drop for you; there was always next week.

[Luko]

There were no complaints that something didn't drop for you; there was always next week.

You know why? Because we were going to be there next week, upgrades or no upgrades, because we were there for the raid and the absolute joy of raiding. Truly something I wish more players would get a chance to experience.

[MasterHamster]

a perfectly fine and convenient and superior method of catching up

HAHAHA! No.

Blizzard has explained many times why 5mans giving you top-level valor and making factions nothing but bars to fill is bad for the game as a whole.

[Deatheryn]

You're not entitled to drops. I don't get this mentality lately. When I was still a 25 man raider I could go weeks without seeing an upgrade depending on drops and who needed it more/won the roll. Weeks. I remember in T11 how long it took to get my 2H mace from Magmaw.

The drops are fine. It takes a while to gear up through raiding; it always has. What incentive would you have to continuing to run LFR, getting your VP/gold if you got everything you needed the first day?

I think the problem is more of an illusion or mind fuck than anything. Before the new loot system, people at least got to see the loot and felt like they were in some way in control of the fate because they got to roll. Now, if you win nothing you see nothing and it feels like no loot has dropped at all when it actually did just not for you. So, you kill boss after boss and see no drops and it just makes the experience feel like it was all for nothing. IMO if Blizz implemented a window that showed who won what each kill it would alleviate a lot of the ripped off feelings people have.

[Selvari7]

LFR's drop rate needs to increase. Way way too low.

[subanark]

I've done lfr every week, and the only pieces that have dropped I didn't need (about 1/2 my gear needs upgrading). I also spent around 3 coins on LFR and another 4 or so on normal raid with nothing but gold.

Furthermore, our raid hasn't even tried the 2nd boss of ToT much due to having to gear up a new tank... which is taking a while to do.

[Deleted]

This has nailed my opinion of the whole LFR / gearing thing right now...

I raided at the start of the expansion for about 8 weeks, then took a break - my first real break since BC, until 2 weeks ago, when I came back fresh to try and find a new raid guild with an old alt I decided to reroll to.

However... I have found gearing up to the level required to do anything "interesting" or fruitful gear-wise a complete headache.

Run Hcs - did that, as dull as it is for a LOT of runs - had to buy some gear on AH to even start them, didn't luck out on drops, turned to AH and pvp of all things to get enough ilvl to enter LFR - probably dropped about 10K on gear so far ilvl bumping (something which some players don't have the luxury of).

Got into 1st stage of LFR - after going to the new isle to get a key, to run the solo instance for the charms. Did the first two parts of LFR with the lowest ilvl req - got 2 peices of gear. Not enough ilvl to do next stage, and can't get any upgrades (except shoulders) at this point from hcs now. Back to pvp / AH then... get some more ilvl later in the week, through methods that have nothing to do with pve (because at this point I'm literally cockblocked through LFR reset timer and ilvl requirements)

Go second stages of LFR with the ilvl I now had, get a bit more gear, but not enough to do newest (this tiers) LFR still. Now truly stumped, only gear buyable now to bump ilvl comes from rep factions that would take weeks to grind, and valor that would take weeks to grind (and still requires rep). Wait for reset.

LFR resets, go back to Isle of thunder, get key, enter 1 man instance, get tokens. Go back to LFR, do all parts except new and cross fingers and toes for good drops. This week due to good luck this week the many, many hours of work I put in over easter, and a considerable gold investment I have scraped up enough ilvl to get into the "new" LFR.

Normally I would not have been able to do this so "fast" due to having a job and shit to do that means I can't literally sit glued to my pc grinding for days. It happened to be easter, or I might have quit out of boredom tbh, because it would have taken much longer at smaller amounts per day.

So my point here is that - any returning players have to now rely on luck in LFR for drops, and if they don't get lucky, they are shut out for the week, as hcs only drop blues which are worthless for content being done now. There is no way to use justice points to improve your gear, and valor takes (weeks) time and rep to be useful / useable for upgrades. You can pvp for gear, but lets face it, thats not really ideal that I have to farm bgs for epics because there is no way to do the same farming in pve outside LFR and world bosses (bad drop rates).

You can't get a pug without achieves and an ilvl that is not attainable without throwing money at AH or praying to the RNG gods. You can try and make your own pug, but most players seem to find anyone that needs more than 1 ilvl upgrade from a raid uninteresting to party with Same goes with guilds really, everyone is doing content that you need a high ilvl to participate in, and the few guilds running last tier, I would feel like an ass to join, use them for gear and quit.

Basically I miss being able to reliably farm out last tiers gear through heroics, at least to a point. Being shut out for a week from doing any form of gear upgrades because of lack of ilvl / luck is insanely annoying, and but for the fact I pushed myself into BGs and had a stockpile of money and researched extensively how to squeeze out the most gear from all sources, I would be screwed again for another reset.

Basically, for anyone who has taken a break it sucks. I have played for years, often at a medium / high level of play and not being able to get back into the action in a timely fashion is insanely offputting, I still face quite a bit of work to get into a guild of decent standing, and I'm going to have to suck that up for a while longer.

It's not "entitlement" to want a sensible non-RNG way to return to raiding. We had it in the past 2 expansions with JP which are now worthless.

Part of this is true. But one thing being overlooked in the gearing process is the fact that you can earn rep with the original MoP factions a lot faster so you can buy their VP gear. You can earn rep with tilling, bonus rep with random dungeons, random scenarios and farming the rare Zandalari mobs for tokens. You can get into revered within a day with most factions when using these methods. Since the gear you can buy is ilvl 489 it should get you into all the 5.0 LFR raids and with 20 Elder Charms or so you should be able to get at least 4-5 pieces from all the LFR runs, enabling you to do the 5.2 LFRs.

But coming back to the original topic. If you're not progression raiding, doesn't matter if you're pushing heroics or normals, what will you do with better gear? Shave 10 seconds of killing mobs for dailies? It may just look nice or give you a better feeling, but practically, all that gear is useless unless you have some use for it.

[Lefrog]

And just how pray tell have you gotten 60 charms? By finding 2 extra keys? Even if getting 60 charms a week is realistic, getting in 60 kills of LFR bosses isn't and I'd say both are not.

"unlimited" attempts at old bosses doesn't fix the fact that under the current LFR scheme, you get loot, not the loot you need.

In prior expacs, you could buy most of the slots that were missing with JPs. Running a LFR over and over to use a charm that might win you loot some of which might be useful, is hardly a good replacement for the old system.

The gigantic gaping flaw in LFR loot system is that it just distributes loot at a fixed rate with no regard to whether it can be used and the longer people run a given section more and more of what falls is wasted.

Not saying LFR is anywhere near as good as the old method for catching up, but I seems to me that Blizzard doesn't want it to. I was merely arguing that getting 480 to be able to see current content since 5.2 isn't too hard.

You have:
Open raid normals (16x2) - x2 is for coin usage
LFR (16x??)
Sha (1x2)
Galleon (1x??)
Valor gear -496 ilvl
Honor gear - 483 ilvl
Conquest gear
Rep quests at revered/exalted
476/496 crafted

Now once you do get into current tier stuff, the low and random nature of the drop rates does make it suck, even if all you plan on doing is LFR ToT this tier. I know people who stuck to LFR last tier who never got their 2 piece.

[Pann]

I feel like I'm slowly going crazy trying to bring rational discussion into threads like this. Ok ok, hear me out. I know it sounds like lunacy, but give it a chance.

See, the people who have all that stuff going on and are for whatever reason not raiding on a schedule but still interested in raiding (I can't make that sound any less weird) at least know that their schedule is weird and will always be held back by their time restraints, right? Good, we're on the same page. That being said, they understand that it is going to likely take them much MUCH longer than normal raiders to gear up and that should not only be expected, but totally acceptable. Right? Or is this more of that crazy talk?

Ok, so that brings us back to my original point. The one about the self entitlement and people getting mad over the lack of drops they've done nothing to achieve outside of logging in and autoattacking for 45 minutes. Where did THAT come from? When did the community start feeling like the game owes them ANYTHING let alone a constant stream of upgrades for their non-raiding gameplay? On second thought, when did people start trying to defend and justify that sort of crazy talk? I feel like I'm lost, here.

You are missing the point, the majority of the player base are not interested in raiding and never have been, for them raiding is neither the be all and end all nor the pinnacle of the game. Whilst they are not interesting in raiding, luckily for Blizzard, they are interested in progressing characters for years these players had been content to take a back seat to the raiders and earn worse gear than them through running heroics, maybe the odd PUG. Now they find that there is no alternative to progress their character than to repeatedly run LFR, now you have people running content they don't necessarily like and couple a low drop chance with slow rate to acquire rep and valour points you find many people feel they are not progressing as they would like and that they wasting their time.

Already the gear available to a non-raider is worse than that a raider can earn why should they take MUCH longer to earn it? Why is a raider's time more important than those who are not? Why is that non-raiders who make up the majority of the subscriber base should continue to subsidise the development of content they are not interested in for raiders to enjoy only to handed the shitty end of the stick all the time?

[Booniehat]

I get the "don't be entitled" argument. But I sincerely doubt people expect 1 drop per boss. I admit since TOT I've actually had rather good luck. But during the 5.0-5.1, I had dry spells of 4-5 weeks. And I can tell you that's not fun. People aren't bitching about no loot per se - it's the fact that

A) A lot of loot gets wasted because you already have it. And honestly Id be glad to trade it away but I can't.
B) The chance to get loot doesnt increase during a dry spell, and that feeling blows.

But here's some arguments as to why LFR should be a bit more generous with drops. Honestly I think most of you already know the arguments but maybe haven't seen them summarized. Its a little late for me right now so excuse if I'm a bit disorganized:

1. In "real" raids, you have a implicit stacking chance to get gear. I.e. As your guild/raid gets gear, chance of the next drop being yours is cumulative. Please don't bring up "in the ole' days" arguments... it's not relevant or timely to the discussion. Furthermore, people say it like some sort of badge of pride that proves they're somehow more determined than others. I'd say that among these "real raider" many of them realize the plain fact that it SUCKS to be in that situation.

2. LFR is not really "no effort" Part 1: Contrary to what people keep claiming. It does take a massive amount of time. In general, depending on my gear situation I will have to run usually FOUR to SIX wings of LFR. I don't know about you but my queues are 45 mins to 1 hour each. That's at least 4-5 hours of time just sitting in a queue. I know, time is not = effort, but time is still a cost. It's not "free". It's a massive timesink and honestly not a very fun one. Drops help ease the pain of wiping 5 times to tortos because of derps who tunnel the boss.

3. LFR is not really "no effort" Part 2: Each actual run, especially in TOT, takes about a hour each (Those who have had 4+ stacks of determination will know I'm being generous with the time it takes to finish a run). How much trash is in that place? And maybe you guys login to LFR to just afk, but I try my best to perform well enough because I KNOW people are slacking, and I want to finish the damn raid ASAP. So I actually contribute by leading nest teams, spelling out strategies, etc. And I'm not the only one.

4. LFR is a catch up mechanic. There are no new dungeons (and will not be any till next expansion). So why make a catchup mechanic be so streaky? If I was a fresh player eager to raid right now, how long before I can even step foot in a TOT raid, realistically? If I'm lucky, I'm Normal TOT ready in a month. That's if I rush to iLevel 480 (cheese it with PVP gear?) and run TOT LFR every week. Imagine you rolled on a new server and start from scratch, eager to get into normal raiding. How long before you can even be geared enough for N TOT? 3-4 months? I understand MMOs need time but there is a balance between "instant 90 full epic" and "Takes 4 months to be raid ready" and I believe MOP is skewed towards the latter.

5. Why do normal/heroic raiders with awesome 522 -541(a flipping 20-40 ilevels better) gear care about people who want 502 gear thats barely an upgrade to T14 normal gear? Does it matter at all, in the grand scheme of things? Some people want gear not for entitlement but because they do want to progress their character in their own terms.

6. Normal raiding is a lot harder (relative) than it was in the past 2 expansions (I cant comment on before, no experience). MOP raids are intentionally overtuned (5.0 N Elegon, N Garajal, N Garalong being ridiculous DPS checks for normals). Some people aren't as leet as you heroic raiders, but they want to raid and may get better. But perhaps they need that little gear bump to help them along. Again, why is this a bad thing and why act like they're stealing your loot?

7. The "C" word. Casuals. believe it or not these guys want to have a good time, and they make up the overwhelming majority of the player base who funds Blizzard who makes the awesome Heroic Raids. Just because you raided 40M hardcore in Vanilla doesn't make you a better person (or even a customer, honestly) than they are. At worst, they want to get (relatively) crap 502 gear compared to your 522 swag. Most of them, even after 3-4 months, won't breach 510 ilevel probably. So again... why is this a problem?


Honestly... All due respect, can we stop with the "back in vanilla I went without gear for 2 years" stories. The game's a different beast and the gear check (especially MOP) for normals is steep. The normals today are overtuned BECAUSE of LFR - stated explicitly by Blizz. So people are asking for that LFR gear to help compensate for harder normals. God forbid other people need some help to raid.

[Otimus]

Although I've been eerily lucky in this expansion with LFR drops (About two weeks after TOE came out in LFR, I had a LFR-quality BIS set on one of my characters!), I wouldn't mind if they implimented some sort of mechanism to counter-act extreme bad luck.

Like, I had an idea earlier, where each time you use a bonus roll coin, and get nothing, you get a token, and when you combine, oh, let's say.. about 10-15 of those tokens, you get a special coin that 100% guarantees you some sort of loot on a boss if you use it. (It'll be random, and you COULD get duplicates!)

That'd be very hard to abuse, nor would it just flat out give you something for nothing, it'd only effect the bonus roll coins, plus, it'd keep some people playing past a certain level of frustration, which all around would probably be good for most everyone.

[Darmalus]

You're not entitled to drops. I don't get this mentality lately.

Lots of people who never got to see the inside of a raid are now doing LFR. I think it's culture shock. Going from unlimited attempts for your drop in 5 man heroics to one try per week per boss (2 with bonus rolls) is hard for people to get used to.

[Otimus]

Lots of people who never got to see the inside of a raid are now doing LFR. I think it's culture shock. Going from unlimited attempts for your drop in 5 man heroics to one try per week per boss (2 with bonus rolls) is hard for people to get used to.

Also, I think a lot of people don't know if you have a bunch of elder coins stockpiled, you can actually re-run the LFR's over and over again for more loot attempts using the coins.

[Paranoid Android]

Listen I don't raid anymore and just pvp but I do LFR for yes gear, valor cap and sometimes to kill boredom. I laugh at OP and others who think they are "entitled" to gear drops from LFR. First off LFR is brain dead raiding, you are not really doing anything as a group because boss mechanics really do not figure into fights at all. Second, if I guess if gear is that important, actually raiding in a guild is a good reason for gettin gear. While I am true believer in raiding as a guild is for team and achievement of guild, it does at least, generally distribute loot on some sort of equal basis.

So again sorry I'm the old WoW fart who again sees that this game is becoming more of just a gear grab game. People feeling entitled that they should get gear drops for doing that very very hard LFR (massive sarcasm). Again even when I raided in guild I remember shoulders off Yogg-25 never dropped for me. First it was RNG that my token was low and people who had more "DKP" would recieve the shoulders. Well, ToC opened up and I missed out but I never felt entitled to getting my shoulders.

[Nico87]

Blizzard have already stated that they will increase the loot rate from coins by progressively increasing your chances if you miss out with a coin.

Example (numbers are random):

Coin 1: 10% chance - no loot
Coin 2: 20% chance - no loot
Coin 3: 30% chance - no loot
Coin 4: 40% chance - no loot

etc.

[wariofan1]

Once upon a time, we raided to raid. Gear is a shiny little bonus that makes those raids smoother. Seriously, I can't possibly make that any more blunt. We weren't in it for the fucking carrot. That came later as a new breed of MMO player started to emerge and eventually take over. It was a blast. Hell it still is. It's all about how you play.

Holy shit, another guy with the same mentality as me. The only reason I care about items is so that I can experience raids. I mean, in the end it's all about having fun, isn't that what video games are supposed to do, provide entertainment? When I log into WoW on a wednesday I'm not guaranteed a new item, but I know for a fact that I'll have lots of fun regardless.

[SamR]

At this point, I have already had my suspicion confirmed that the term "really easy" was hyperbole with regards to alts under the 480 iLvL required for the ToT LFR, which is fine, because that is what I already thought was the case. I was just curious if there was something painfully obvious I overlooked.

It was since the original comment that prompted me to ask the question was in regards to avenues to use to catchup to 480, the "friendly and up rep" pieces from SPA can't really be considered as catchup options. (Once you have hit 480+, you can do the ToT LFR, so you have effectively already caught up)

The neutral piece, however, absolutely can.

The discussion "thread" I made my original comment on wasn't just about catching up to ToT LFR. It was about overall catch up mechanisms that existed in the game. Let me quote myself here:

5.0 LFR is the catch-up mechanism for 5.2 raids. You could make a case that 5.2 valor gear is a catch-up mechanic as well. 5.2 normals are not tuned with 5.2 LFR gear in mind.

And 5.0 LFR drops lots of loot, especially when you're elder coining on every single boss.

And the post I was responding to:

The problem is that LFR is supposed to be a catch up mechanic to allow people to get into the current raids. You can't have a catch-up mechanic with a weekly lockout that doesn't drop gear. It's really not fair when you took away a reliable, repeatable, quicker means of getting gear. You didn't have to spend months running your 25 man raid to get gear to let you walk into the current raid. No one is asking for real raiding drops to be changed.

I was stating that it was easy to get Shado-Pan Assault to friendly in terms of overall catch mechanisms as regards to the "LFR is a catch up for raids" discussion we were having. As you said yourself, it's pretty trivial once you get to ilvl 480. If it weren't so trivial, there might still be trash runs going on which is only slightly less trivial.

So, no, ilvl 522 gear is not the best catch up for ToT LFR which drops gear 20 ilvls lower. It is, however, a significant component of the overall catch-up framework which can take a new level 90 to gear levels sufficient to do ToT normal raids.

[Otimus]

Blizzard have already stated that they will increase the loot rate from coins by progressively increasing your chances if you miss out with a coin.

Example (numbers are random):

Coin 1: 10% chance - no loot
Coin 2: 20% chance - no loot
Coin 3: 30% chance - no loot
Coin 4: 40% chance - no loot

etc.

Really? That's a good change. I can't see why anyone would complain about that.