LFR: Nightmares

[Javster]

Back when LFR was introduced, you'd get a bad group and wipe a few times on Spine and Madness...

Now you get a halfway competent group together in LFR and you'll spend 2 hours wiping on the first boss...

So last night I decided to run the new LFR instance with a few guildies and see what it's all about. Wind Lord Mel'jarak is the first boss of the second half of Heart of Fear. Overall, I don't think the fight(s) are "over-tuned". Most of these bosses don't hit particularly hard. I think the issue we have is whenever there's a decent amount of coordination required. Will of the Emperor is still a pain in the butt week to week. I'll spam the strategy, yet DPS will try and burn the bosses down. On Feng, people with Arcane Resonance will not move out of the raid, on Garalon melle will step into the purple circle and initiate a crush. And now my favorite Wind-Lord Mel'jarak. People will fail to keep the ads cc'ed...

We wiped 18 times with mostly the same group on Mel'jarak with a decent amount of DPS and heals and tanks weren't terrible...

I'm not really complaining, I use LFR to supplement my gear as my casual guild works through regular raid content. I'm just wondering if LFR encounters should be tuned in such a way that mechanics aren't as important, but maybe bosses hit harder?

Just thinking out loud here....

[Tinsoul]

You could wipe a long time on Madness. And it was a 15 minute fight.

Mechanics where a single mistake (aside from the tanks I suppose) can cause a wipe don't really belong in LFR, if for no other reason then griefing potential. They can be there, but tuned accordingly. The encounters should be skewed towards attrition.

That said, the group I was in 1-shot the new section of LFR. The sketchiest boss for me has been Will, and that is a fight that is purely attrition.

[Ceejjay]

I think it's easy for people to forget that these are mostly growing pains.

This stuff is all still fairly new. Any group content in wow naturally nerfs itself over time. the average gear level of the playerbase rises, and people become more comfortable with the fights. In a few weeks all these will be cake for even the worst LFR groups.

I always think back to cata. When cata launched people were PISSED about how difficult heroic 5 mans were. All of the forums were a rage and begging for nerfs. Near the end of cata, the exact same heroics were being called out as being pathetically easy and disappointing from blizz. The content didn't change, the players did.

The same thing will happen with these raids. Right now, you need to get a competent group to complete some of the LFRs. But just keep trying, and the LFR groups will get there.

[Vargas]

You could wipe a long time on Madness. And it was a 15 minute fight.

Mechanics where a single mistake (aside from the tanks I suppose) can cause a wipe don't really belong in LFR, if for no other reason then griefing potential. They can be there, but tuned accordingly. The encounters should be skewed towards attrition.

That said, the group I was in 1-shot the new section of LFR. The sketchiest boss for me has been Will, and that is a fight that is purely attrition.

While I do appreciate the mechanics themselves, in LFR yeah its a bad idea to have mechanics than can wipe you if one non-tank screws the pooch. Those sort of mechanics are best left to coordinated guild efforts; I also agree that if they are to tone down those mechanics the bosses themselves should either have more HP or hit harder to make up for it.

[thedingleberry]

I'm not really complaining, I use LFR to supplement my gear as my casual guild works through regular raid content. I'm just wondering if LFR encounters should be tuned in such a way that mechanics aren't as important, but maybe bosses hit harder?

They already are tuned way down where all but maybe one mechanic can be ignored. Anymore, and they mind as well just mail you all the gear from every boss. It will just take a few weeks for the people that don't research the fights to figure out and get into a pattern of executing what they need to. You can't really go into these raids the first day or two and expect success since most of the people don't bother to open the journal or read the raid chat, unless you are lucky with the queue.

That said, i went into garalon many times and we wiped because of kite fail. The next day, i went in and volunteered to be a kiter. We one shot him. If more people would just volunteer and execute correctly, it would be so easy and fast to clear every lfr raid every week.

[Desh]

You don't need to CC adds for Wind Lord in LFR. Just group 'em all up and AoE them down. My favourite LFR fight because I can finally play Survival.

[Simon_Moon]

I think it's easy for people to forget that these are mostly growing pains.

This stuff is all still fairly new. Any group content in wow naturally nerfs itself over time. the average gear level of the playerbase rises, and people become more comfortable with the fights. In a few weeks all these will be cake for even the worst LFR groups.

The pain will grow indeed, competent players won't need gear from lfr anymore when the people that made madness such a pain will hit level 470.

[Deleted]

I went in with 15 people from my guild, we one shotted it.

Of course I went in again with my alt (alone) and omg the pain... I'll never return >_<

[Doktor Faustus]

AFK players, or slackers who do the bare minimum to prevent a kick vote.

[iamthedevil]

Sometimes you get a good group, sometimes you get a bad group. There is nothing else to it. A lot of people play this game, get over it.

[NightZero88]

All the people who say that these are just growing pains and it'll get better are forgetting one small factor, one person can wipe the raid on a bunch of these fights.

If garalon wasn't nerfed so that crush had a timer someone can just stand under the boss and wipe the group. It is still possible to do so by running into the pheromone kiter, grabbing it and running it into melee.

On wind lord anyone with an AoE stun can break all CC as soon as the group runs in. This will be less of an issue later on once peoples DPS is higher but that likely won't be until next tier as the LFR gear does not increase by much. This happened to my group 5 times. We even got down to just CCing 1 mender, we explained it after every wipe, adds would run in, CCs would instantly break. Finally we just said screw it and focused the mender. I (as a healer) just spammed the spear on another mender to stop his heal.

The problem with these fights as compared to DS is no fight in DS could 1 player screw over everyone else except if it was a tank and that was easy to see. Even with people killing the tendons it still wasn't bad and you could easily see who that was and vote kick them. Breaking the CC on wind lord cannot be tracked far as I can tell and same with garalon since there is so much stuff going on at once. Mechanics where people can grief an entire raid should not be permitted in LFR and Blizz should know better. People WILL grief just to be assholes.

[Arngrim310]

We just did it earlier. If you just CC the menders (since people dont like to dispel in LFR) its an easy kill. AoE the rest and then kill the menders.

[Shekita]

I always think back to cata When cata launched people were PISSED about how difficult heroic 5 mans were. All of the forums were a rage and begging for nerfs. .

Are you being serious??? Cata heroics were never difficult. The hardest part was the grind to get the gearscore [which we all bypassed with pvp gear].

I don't remember a single moment in Cata where people were complaining about heroics. Heroics haven't been difficult since TBC honestly. In cata you could literally bang your face on the keyboard and get through a heroic intact.

[UnderworldSoup]

I don't remember a single moment in Cata where people were complaining about heroics.

Did you play at all during Cataclysm's launch? Your memory is pretty bad if you don't remember all the complaining about the difficulty of the dungeons - sure they weren't bad for raiders or high end guild groups, but they were intended to be pugged. They were leagues above any previous dungeons that pugs had encountered and Blizzard finally acknowledged it after 5.1.

In cata you could literally bang your face on the keyboard and get through a heroic intact.

During the first two to three weeks after launch? Nope.

[Deleted]

Are you being serious??? Cata heroics were never difficult. The hardest part was the grind to get the gearscore [which we all bypassed with pvp gear].

I don't remember a single moment in Cata where people were complaining about heroics. Heroics haven't been difficult since TBC honestly. In cata you could literally bang your face on the keyboard and get through a heroic intact.

First trash packs in Stone core, 2nd boss in Stone core, 2nd last boss in tol'vir, Grim batol trash, grim batol bosses especially the last, Commander in Shadowfang, last boss without a dispell, first boss in halls.

All these bosses were absolutely atrocious considering a lot of people were pulling below 10k on average in pugs.

[Deleted]

As a healer and the group not having a clue in cata hc's could make them a pain when gearing up.

I agree with those that say that some of the mechanics just don't work for lfr. The thing that strikes me ironic is that the same people wiping the groups were those that would do all the tank qq'ing in DS lfr

Bad Dps in lfr need to actually learn the mechanics now, instead of just ignoring the button, like they would on ultra.

[Snaige]

Are you being serious??? Cata heroics were never difficult. The hardest part was the grind to get the gearscore [which we all bypassed with pvp gear].

I don't remember a single moment in Cata where people were complaining about heroics. Heroics haven't been difficult since TBC honestly. In cata you could literally bang your face on the keyboard and get through a heroic intact.

Did you start playing in late cata- ds or firelands patches? Else you must have a terrible memory. Cata start was a god damn nightmare. In stonecore hc, most tanks would just insta leave when they saw what they teleported into. I lost a lost a few good friends, all casual players, who, however, have been doing dungeons since vanilla - they quit the game because random dungeons were too hard to the point where it is just not fun anymore.

Lfr now is not as easy as dragon soul was, but not super hard. There is nothing particularly hard, however some mechanics can complicate the fights a lot if one person makes a mistake. One person stands in the raid with arcane resonance - poof, most ppl are dead, if not dead, healers are oom. One person breaks the cced adds out - poof, chaos, ppl die, wipe. One person doesn't manage to press the button to interrupt amber explosion - yay healers going oom. One person takes a nap under garalon - yay more job for the healers, one person fears the raid on the empress fight - same thing again. I can't really say I like this approach. The person who makes the mistake should be punished, not the whole raid in lfr. Good example would be not being able to press the button on Ultraxion - you fail - you die. Not you fail - whole raid dies. Such mechanics belong to normal/heroic raids, not to lfr.

[Biggles Worth]

Are you being serious??? Cata heroics were never difficult. The hardest part was the grind to get the gearscore [which we all bypassed with pvp gear].

I don't remember a single moment in Cata where people were complaining about heroics. Heroics haven't been difficult since TBC honestly. In cata you could literally bang your face on the keyboard and get through a heroic intact.

yeah I agree, I never understood why people said they were hard. I have glory of the hero the 1st week...

[Adornus]

Guild group of alts one shot everything. It just comes down to people knowing some of the fights as most mechanics can be avoided.

Feng and Arcane Resonance... that's an LOL though.

[Deleted]

They just nerfed Garalon. They'll dumb down every fight the same way soon enough.