Where have all the Raiders Gone?

[Rexxr]

I just stopped raiding in Cata and refuse to go back. After raiding in Vanilla, TBC, and wrath i just have the time, desire, guild drama over loot, and I would never do LFR because if it is anything like LFG 90% of people are dumb it would a lot of bitching and complain and failing.

[Googolplex]

LFR mass murdered guilds, and completely wiped our PuG normal Raids. LFR is awesome! Not...

[Glorious Leader]

Hm, I killed 3 bosses in normal. I am honored with Shado pan asault. How? LFR gives you rep and some of the quests in that new island (Champions of the Thunder king I believe). I have 5 items from valor and this week I'll get my sixth item. 1 item from neutral, 3 items from friendly, 3 items from honored.

First of all LFR hasn't been around for the whole time. The first week it wasn't around. So the second week you have trash to get to honored. At honored you only got 3 bosses in the first week you weren't getting very far with it. Now the fact that you only get rep from EITHER lfr or the normal boss you kill means you aren't stacking it that fast. I've done lfr religiously since it was out and I'm 3324/120000 honored atm. I bought the neck piece the first week. The trinket last week. I've got two piece t15 and I'm not going to break it even if it is only lfr AND after the bracers ill be more or less done. Bracers and cape I've already got better but the pieces hidden behind revered and exalted I do need badly.

So again I will be valor capped and not have anything to buy because this rep is ass backwards. The guilds who aren't struggling and are have already cleared the raid by and large don't need the pieces. The guilds who are struggling need the gear but aren't getting the rep and their valor will sit in their bags and go to waste I guess until 5.3 when they can upgrade stuff.

[SodiumChloride]

Blizzard has not done such thing. They applied a 10% nerf to old content, which is less than what was aplied in the last expansions.

What they nshould do is design CURRENT NORMAL DIFFICULTY for NORMAL PLAYERS SKILL LEVEL.

Not that hard to understand really.

GC has outright stated that in normal mode, the DPS checks aren't "tight" - at least they are not suppose to be; they messed up with Galaron and the like. If you do the mechanics right, you will progress - barring being horribly undergeared.

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...01850597576705

Since DPS checks are less of an issue on normal, the only challenging part is mechanics. So if you nerf the mechanics ... guess what LFR is.

[Glorious Leader]

I have yet to see any new 25 man guilds on any servers I play. The only 25 guilds I see actually are the ones left from Wotlk, and they are slowly dwindling too.

25 mans are much easier but I agree I don't see them coming back. It's a fucking hassle and to be honest in alot of cases the people you would take to recruit your 25 man would need you to go back and do the old raids or you would have to wait for them to have lfr pay off. Now if you go back and take them to do the old raids theirs a good chance it won't pay off in gear for them and the guys who are already geared out will be getting loot and you'll just be pissing in the fucking wind wasting time. If you do wait for lfr to g ear them out well potentially that could take weeks. You could be looking at anywhere from a month to two months of getting people enough gear to start a 25 man. It's just all so fucking slow and all so many barriers to entry

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 01:20 PM ----------

GC has outright stated that in normal mode, the DPS checks aren't "tight". If you do the mechanics right, you will progress - barring being horribly undergeared.

Since DPS checks are less of an issue on normal, the only challenging part is mechanics. So if you nerf the mechanics ... guess what LFR is.

Oh? The nerfs this week say otherwise. GC won't actually ever admit it was to tight but the hot fixes to Horridon suggest otherwise.

[Deleted]

First of all LFR hasn't been around for the whole time. The first week it wasn't around. So the second week you have trash to get to honored. At honored you only got 3 bosses in the first week you weren't getting very far with it. Now the fact that you only get rep from EITHER lfr or the normal boss you kill means you aren't stacking it that fast. I've done lfr religiously since it was out and I'm 3324/120000 honored atm. I bought the neck piece the first week. The trinket last week. I've got two piece t15 and I'm not going to break it even if it is only lfr AND after the bracers ill be more or less done. Bracers and cape I've already got better but the pieces hidden behind revered and exalted I do need badly.

So again I will be valor capped and not have anything to buy because this rep is ass backwards. The guilds who aren't struggling and are have already cleared the raid by and large don't need the pieces. The guilds who are struggling need the gear but aren't getting the rep and their valor will sit in their bags and go to waste I guess until 5.3 when they can upgrade stuff.

So you are basically saying that almost half of your gear is new? That sounds good. Maybe your other guildies aren't that great geared?

[Glorious Leader]

So you are basically saying that almost half of your gear is new? That sounds good. Maybe your other guildies aren't that great geared?

I actually got some luck this tier unlike the last but I don't see what the rest of my guild has to do with the story. I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem and it's a problem that doesn't need to exist. Rep in this tier is ASS BACKWARDS and it's all because rep is tied to valor gear. Remove the tie. Let people pick what pieces they want to buy, don't let fucking rep determine what they can and can't purchase.

The people who have progressed enough to have the raid rep to buy the items by and large not only don't need the items they are more or less banked or sold or vendored within the first month. Why are they being rewarded with stuff they don't need (and by and large don't even want after the first month) when the people who need it aren't gonna have access to it?

[namelessone]

Well that is all fine then but what is wrong with LFR then? I am not trying to insult you btw - it is an honest question.

I think the problem might be size. Filling up a 10-man with buddies and having fun might still be possible, filling up a 25-man on most servers is not.

[SodiumChloride]

Oh? The nerfs this week say otherwise. GC won't actually ever admit it was to tight but the hot fixes to Horridon suggest otherwise.

Edited my post. Was a bit too quick on the submit.

GC has outright stated that in normal mode, the DPS checks aren't "tight" - at least they are not suppose to be; they messed up with Galaron and the like. If you do the mechanics right, you will progress - barring being horribly undergeared.

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...01850597576705

Since DPS checks are less of an issue on normal, the only challenging part is mechanics. So if you nerf the mechanics ... guess what LFR is.

As for never admitting ...

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...29735584751616

[namelessone]

LFR mass murdered guilds, and completely wiped our PuG normal Raids. LFR is awesome! Not...

Way to confuse cause and effect, my friend. People go to LFR because they don't want to play with your guild, it's not LFR fault.

[Glorious Leader]

Edited my post. Was a bit too quick on the submit.



As for never admitting ...

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...29735584751616

Right and I'm telling you the hotfixes this week are basically admitting the current tier is to hard both as a dps check and mechanic wise. Enrage timers mean very little on alot of these bosses because well you usually die before you hit them anyway. Your dps needs to kill adds fast enough on Horridon or down turtle shells fast enough or kill the stupid bats fast enough. None of it has to do with enrage timers but are all tight dps checks which have all been nerfed by hot fixes. They did nerf some of the mechanics to. Slow turtle shells and all.

They admitted enrage timers sucked nothing about current tuning or the overload on mechanics for each boss. Well outside of hot fixing the shit out of the fights as an admission. You can and should take it as such actually. I doubt you'll get anything more. This is the same group of developers who wrote a blog telling you how to learn to play in cataclysm.

[Deleted]

LFR mass murdered guilds, and completely wiped our PuG normal Raids. LFR is awesome! Not...

Hmm, I don't see it that way. I think that PuGs were killed by the tuning of 10m normals. When people realized that 'normal' PuGs don't work they started to ask achievements and gear. Only players who have done the bosses can get into PuGs because you can't carry people.

[melodramocracy]

Yea I wanted beer league raiding. Normals in wrath were exactly that. Just enough challenge that your pals could get together and have some fun but not so much challenge that you and your pals felt over whelmed. I wanted casual normal raiding. In my opinion 10 man normals really ought to be the casuals raiders raid of choice. They aren't anymore and it's precisely because of the difficulty. It sucks.

And that's the issue. There is no definitive 'normal' in terms of overall difficulty, because there's such a large range of player skill out there. On smaller realms, quite a few guilds struggled through even normal mode ICC, had trouble getting through Ulduar while it was a relevant tier (pre ToC). I distinctly remember folks pugging just the trash in the lobby of ICC for rep, and wiping to it.

Now that LFR is in place, it seems illogical to not expect normal modes to get a bit tougher than they historically had been.

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 09:41 AM ----------

Hmm, I don't see it that way. I think that PuGs were killed by the tuning of 10m normals. When people realized that 'normal' PuGs don't work they started to ask achievements and gear. Only players who have done the bosses can get into PuGs because you can't carry people.

Depends on what server you're on. I see pug recruitment all day on mine, with nothing more than fairly reasonable gear requirements and a working mic / chat program. Ironically, on the smaller server I used to be on in Wrath / Cata, that's where you had to be overgeared to the teeth and have full clear experience to even be considered for a pug.

[SodiumChloride]

Right and I'm telling you the hotfixes this week are basically admitting the current tier is to hard both as a dps check and mechanic wise. Enrage timers mean very little on alot of these bosses because well you usually die before you hit them anyway. Your dps needs to kill adds fast enough on Horridon or down turtle shells fast enough or kill the stupid bats fast enough. None of it has to do with enrage timers but are all tight dps checks which have all been nerfed by hot fixes. They did nerf some of the mechanics to. Slow turtle shells and all.

They admitted enrage timers sucked nothing about current tuning or the overload on mechanics for each boss. Well outside of hot fixing the shit out of the fights as an admission. You can and should take it as such actually. I doubt you'll get anything more. This is the same group of developers who wrote a blog telling you how to learn to play in cataclysm.

Just clarifying GC's announced "design intent".

And that said, you want an apology every time they nerf something because they messed up on the tuning?

[Glorious Leader]

And that's the issue. There is no definitive 'normal' in terms of overall difficulty, because there's such a large range of player skill out there. On smaller realms, quite a few guilds struggled through even normal mode ICC, had trouble getting through Ulduar while it was a relevant tier (pre ToC). I distinctly remember folks pugging just the trash in the lobby of ICC for rep, and wiping to it.

Now that LFR is in place, it seems illogical to not expect normal modes to get a bit tougher than they historically had been.

No it isn't illogical at all. The logical thing is to make normal raiding medium. Medium relative to what the vast majority of the raiding player base can do. Medium relative to what the game has had in the past. Medium relative to what other video games call Medium. yes it's a large range of player skill, the logical thing would be to tune normal content to grab a large chunk of that player skill. the logical thing would be to provide a normal raid that provides some challenge and some ease. the logical thing would be to allow for wider tuning GIVEN the large range of player skill. The logical thing is basically the opposite of everythign they've done, well up until today when they hot fixed the shit out of bosses.

If you think expecting a difficulty change of this degree was only logical well then you have your answer where all the raiders have gone. They said fuck "logic". In the end it's a snowball effect and it just piles on and on and less and less players will run normals.


---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 01:44 PM ----------

Just clarifying GC's announced "design intent".

And that said, you want an apology every time they nerf something because they messed up on the tuning?

I don't really give a fuck if they apologize. I'd rather they just do instead of talk. I'm happy with the hot fixes, hope to see more. They could be omerta for this entire expansion and I wouldn't care as long as shit worked right.

[SodiumChloride]

I don't really give a fuck if they apologize. I'd rather they just do instead of talk. I'm happy with the hot fixes, hope to see more. They could be omerta for this entire expansion and I wouldn't care as long as shit worked right.

Well, they are keeping an eye on things. If they aren't getting the progression numbers they want, they will nerf the trouble spots.

But they are normally a tad be slow in responding. It takes time for players to try the boss. It takes time for them to gather and analyse the statistics, after which they have to decide on what adjustments to make.

[Glorious Leader]

Well, they are keeping an eye on things. If they aren't getting the progression numbers they want, they will nerf the trouble spots.

But they are normally a tad be slow in responding. It takes time for players to try the boss. It takes time for them to gather and analyse the statistics, after which they have to decide on what adjustments to make.

What happened to public testing? My suspicion is this patch was rushed hard.

[Septik]

I have to chime in on this, something struck me about 10 pages back about the need for 3-4 'easier' bosses at the start vs the ONE this tier, and I think that is pretty spot on. Looking at my crap ass server we have 2 guilds that were decent. The top one eventually cleared all the content on heroic pre 5.2, the #2 guild was close but I dont think they got heroic sha. Either way, these 2 guilds consist of the majority (but not all) of the 'good' raiders on our server. So far this tier that #1 guild is at 1/13H and the 2nd guild is at 6 or 7/12N. Looking at their rosters, I don't see any key players missing, I've raided with most of them in one way or another over the years and they are mostly still playing, just not doing nearly as good as they did last tier or even in cata. And it's not just them, the guilds that were stuck on garalon (without counting ones that skipped to terrace and then came back for it, a lot of 3/6 HoF, 3-4/4 Terrace guilds) last tier, are now all stuck on Horridon, just like the old gypsy woman said they would. And it's pretty sickening, for a new tier to drop and have it require heroic gear from the previous tier for NORMAL, else get stuck on the 2nd boss, its stupid. And to make it worse Blizz is adamant about that not being the case. None of the raiders in my team had a 4pc tier bonus without half of it being LFR gear at best. Some got leggs/hands from sha, i didnt, i had 496 pants and the rest 483 tier peices. Most of our weaps were LFR sha touched, everything else was ok give or take some bad luck with trinkets. Take that gear into ToT and Horridon becomes difficult. The challenge is nice, but it would be nicer to get in a couple bosses before such a large roadblock.

[SodiumChloride]

What happened to public testing? My suspicion is this patch was rushed hard.

/shrug

I believe the whole expansion has been rushed hard. LOL.

Look at the horrible PVP balance at the start of MoP.

Either that or GC has given up on "testing" based on the reasoning that no amount of testing can compete with real world data (a.k.a live server data) - part of me wants to agree, the other part wants them to test anyway, test more, hopefully there will be less screw ups.

[Glorious Leader]

/shrug

I believe the whole expansion has been rushed hard. LOL.

Look at the horrible PVP balance at the start of MoP.

Either that or GC has given up on "testing" based on the reasoning that no amount of testing can compete with real world data (a.k.a live server data) - part of me wants to agree, the other part wants them to test anyway, test more, hopefully there will be less screw ups.

Like it depends who does ptr testing primarily. See the key isn't to then tune based solely on the ptr I guess. Like if the folks doing shit on the ptr are the cream of the crop or better than the average bear your goal should then be to detune a little bit for normals so that it becomes more accessible. I think when they tuned ToT it was on the impression that it was your everyday raider on the ptr and if they could do it well it ought to be tougher.

It's not just the tuning though. Theirs other things as well. Durumu is the worst, I can't believe that mechanic left testing like that.