LFR release pacing for casual raiders

[Kiea]

If you are not geared enough for Throne of Thunder, you should go do the T14 raids and get gear, as other people have pointed out, LFR gear is not required to kill normal modes, but it certainly helps if the LFR gear is better than what you're currently using.

And please, stop using the word "casual" when you are just not very good, I've only raided for 2 months in MOP, and I raid 6 hours a week, so far I've done 8/16 heroic encounters in 10man, it really annoys me when people use these words incorrectly. Casual = Player with don't play a lot.

[judgementofantonidas]

If you are not geared enough for Throne of Thunder, you should go do the T14 raids and get gear, as other people have pointed out, LFR gear is not required to kill normal modes, but it certainly helps if the LFR gear is better than what you're currently using.

And please, stop using the word "casual" when you are just not very good, I've only raided for 2 months in MOP, and I raid 6 hours a week, so far I've done 8/16 heroic encounters in 10man, it really annoys me when people use these words incorrectly. Casual = Player with don't play a lot.

Two months and 8/16 heroic sounds like someone that tagged on to a group that was already clearing heroic content near the end of the current tier patch. No personal offense intended but please be honest when posting your ire at other player's opinions.

[Deleted]

There's a heavy danger with this. If the live versions are indeed easier than the PTR versions you can expect to see top end guilds do 4-5 separate raids to funnel gear to mains, this'll mean than the heroic modes wont be "as tough" as I believe they will be. Iron Qon HC and Twin Consorts HC was tested with 537 ilvl and seemed relatively easy, but 537 ilvl on the PTR would essentially be that tier's "bis". I think most of the challenge of the starting bosses will be based around the gear of the guilds doing them. Horridon seemed relatively easy, as did Jinrokh, in 522 average. I believe guilds who are able to run 4-5 separate raids can achieve a 522 ilvl average.

Well, if the raids are tuned so top raiders can't do multiple runs in normal that means that any other group will struggle heavily, which isn't in line with their design intent for normal modes. Tuning up the hc raids to account for this seems way more likely.

Two months and 8/16 heroic sounds like someone that tagged on to a group that was already clearing heroic content near the end of the current tier patch. No personal offense intended but please be honest when posting your ire at other player's opinions.

I joined a guild which was stuck in hof normal (got a bit sick of "hardcore" raiding), took less than a month to get 8/16 hc down. Considering how easy it is to gear up atm I could easily see a guild starting to raid casually reaching 8/16 hc in ~2 months if they are reasonably competent.

[Aquamonkey]

If you're concerned about not having enough gear for normal mode Throne of Thunder, perhaps your guild should revisit Heart of Fear and Terrace of the Endless Spring for some items during the first few weeks?

IKR, why do people think that they should automatically get boosted to the new tier when it comes out if they aren't ready for it?

[Deleted]

IKR, why do people think that they should automatically get boosted to the new tier when it comes out if they aren't ready for it?

Depends what it's tuned around. You won't magically get 502 ilvl from terrace/HoF, nor will you magically see the items drop that your raid has been unlucky with. I doubt there's a lot of people with 500+ ilvl without a reasonable amount of heroic kills.

[Ryuke]

Jinrohk is a joke. Everything after him has quite alot going on . i think most guilds that meet the 7 min soft enrage will kill him in less than five tries. Gives them some hope but you will be able to tell very fast upon pulling horridon if you belong in ToT

You honestly have no idea how many posts early and into mid 5.1 i've seen about guilds asking for normal stone guards to be nerfed >.> Do not underestimate how unaware players in casual guilds can be. If a ball of lightning is kited and explodes in the pool of water players are going to die. If balls of lightning are kited into other lightning fissures the stacking debuff will eventually kill the raid along with other damage. I agree jinrokh and both stone guards are very easy fights but do not underestimate the lack of awareness that typically comes from a very casual group extremely ramping up the difficulty in both of these fights.

[Moshots]

Normal mode ToT ramps up after Megaera. Ji-khun, at least on 25 normal, was pretty damn hard to both a) execute and b) meet the DPS/healing requirements, and that was in the scaled gear level of 509~. I don't expect a guild to fully complete normal mode ToT unless they're in full BiS gear from this tier.

That was ptr it means nothing on live in terms of balancing Numbers change sometimes alot after testing results get looked at. especially with what they said about making normal mode enrage timers not really matter. learning mechanics are hard? and every healing check in ptr testing normal modes I found to be easier than heroic tsulong by far.

[thunderdragon2]

LFR is meant for players who don't have time to even do normal modes, Blizzard said that somewhere.

or for alts that you want to keep geared incase the guild needs a different setup or has more dps then healers or such

---------- Post added 2013-03-03 at 10:26 PM ----------

If you are not geared enough for Throne of Thunder, you should go do the T14 raids and get gear, as other people have pointed out, LFR gear is not required to kill normal modes, but it certainly helps if the LFR gear is better than what you're currently using.

And please, stop using the word "casual" when you are just not very good, I've only raided for 2 months in MOP, and I raid 6 hours a week, so far I've done 8/16 heroic encounters in 10man, it really annoys me when people use these words incorrectly. Casual = Player with don't play a lot.

2 questions are they removing the requirement of killing empress to enter terrace nextweek?

and do u realy think pugs or guilds that have every got to amber shaper to be able to kill it?

[crunk]

friends guild is casual. they raid nine hours a week and are 16/16H. you aren't casual, you're just not very good at either the game or time management. if you're clearing 16/16 normal every week, youre geared enough for tot. if you're not, well, what have you been doing these last few months?

[Johnmatrix]

I stopped heroic raiding after dragon soul because i just can't and want to put so much time on raiding anymore. LFR and occasional normal modes with friends is what i do now in addition to just pvping and challenge modes. I was disappointed to hear about this "opening after a couple of weeks and each wing every couple of weeks". Why was I disappointed? Because after 6 months I would like to have something new to do. I would have liked to see the first wing in the first week when arenas are closed. Now there is pretty much nothing proper I can do next week. Having them opened week by week like before would be great (and i still hope they will instead of every couple weeks).

The one thing that makes me slightly annoyed is people crying about "LFR being mandatory for us normal or HC raiders, please open it slowly". Nothing is never mandatory in this game. When I raided DS back in the days, LFR was more of a chance to get more loot than a mandatory place to get as much ilvl as possible. It was not an issue for me. The real loot dropped from the weekly raids anyway. If you don't have enough time or motivation to run LFR, don't do it. You will most likely get your loot eventually from your guild raids. If you have too much time in your hands and wan't to have the biggest possible ilvl in the first week, go do LFR but don't cry about it. It's a personal choise.

Now, as a plain LFR raider, I feel like it should not be my problem that some people can't handle their issues. The only thing I regularly raid is LFR and I would like to do it when the patch hits like everyone else. LFR opening during 2 month period to not make it attractive for raiders would be idiotic. It would punish people who actually raid LFR for loot and enjoyment. Think about having to play the same wing in normal modes for 2 weeks, starting from 3rd week of patch and then getting 3 new bosses every 2 weeks. Who would seriously enjoy it? Gearing through LFR can be slow anyways because it's more about luck than raiding with a guild. How does it make me feel that some wannabe normal mode raiders think that I should not be able to do what I want because they feel forced to do it too? Freaking annoyed of course. How would you feel?

This rant may be pointless because that quote wasn't 100% based on knowledge, more of a guess. Anyway the point stands. LFR feeling mandatory is your personal issue. Don't make others suffer for it.

friends guild is casual. they raid nine hours a week and are 16/16H. you aren't casual, you're just not very good at either the game or time management. if you're clearing 16/16 normal every week, youre geared enough for tot. if you're not, well, what have you been doing these last few months?

Depends on the definition of casual. Personally I think 9 hours a week is more in the middle of casual and hardcore. In addition, after experiencing my share of raiding in this game, i can hardly believe that 16/16 guild plays just the 9 hours every week. I think its more likely +/- 9 hours. Sometimes when doing progress, you just can't and dont want to stop when the clock says so.

[ZakAtack]

What's hard about Jin'rokh? If you get a lightning orb fixated on you, get out of the water. Then get back in the water and DPS. Pretty sure there's a tank swap and maybe some unavoidable AoE damage. Horridon seems much more like Stone Guard 2.0.

If you're casual, aren't you by definition not as concerned about progression? I don't like to equate casual and bad but casual has to mean something, and I've taken it to mean, doesn't raid as many hours per week as others and is not overly concerned about killing every boss every week.

Besides, they said you can reasonably beat Council even without full T14 gear, but past that you'll start to have trouble. They said DPS enrages wouldn't be as big a factor, a la Garalon, not that they would be completely removed.

[happyzod]

friends guild is casual. they raid nine hours a week and are 16/16H. you aren't casual, you're just not very good at either the game or time management. if you're clearing 16/16 normal every week, youre geared enough for tot. if you're not, well, what have you been doing these last few months?

Raiding 9 hours a week is casual now? Your friend's guild is not casual. It raids 9 hours a week. It is in the top 5% of all guilds.

[Aquamonkey]

Raiding 9 hours a week is casual now? Your friend's guild is not casual. It raids 9 hours a week. It is in the top 5% of all guilds.

9 hours a week was always pretty casual. That usually implies 3 days of 3hrs each. The more hardcore guilds raid 5+ days a week for 3+ hours each day.

EDIT: Casual/hardcore is more than just time spent raiding, though. It is also attitude towards raiding. Like how forgiving they are of people making mistakes and lax they are with people showing up or maximizing their performance. There are plenty of guilds that raid low amount of hours but are very strict.

[bclumas]

There's nothing wrong with slowly releasing the LFR content in batches every couple of weeks. While I understand that you are eager to get into running through LFR, experiencing the bosses and the storyline, there really is no reason to push the entire instance open this first week or in larger clumps in less amount of time. As stated above, you've already designated yourself as a casual player. While we will agree that different people have different definitions of casual (you might call me "hardcore" for raiding 3 nights per week), I consider myself casual because of the way that I approach the game. People, like yourself, who are not interested in pushing the game to its limits are, what most would consider, the casual playerbase that makes up the community.

Ask yourself this question: how many guilds do you think will have cleared all 12 bosses of Throne of Thunder on normal difficulty 7.5 days from today? Not so much, I'd assume. Going on, how many of those that cleared all 12 bosses had exactly 0 heroic-mode bosses killed from the previous tier? I'd guess not so many. You're probably wondering "but how does this relate to LFR?" You have to consider where the majority of the playerbase is stuck at: roughly 14-16 out of 16 normal-mode T14 bosses. With that said, Blizzard has already announced (as stated above) that the first three bosses of the instance are capable of being beaten by organized groups with roughly the progression I just mentioned. If the difficulty were to ramp up from there on, and the raiding population remains relatively the same as it does now, you can predict that the average group of players will take roughly one to two months (or more) to completely clear this instance on normal difficulty. If you, then, equate this to LFR "raiding" (loosely termed) you would see that this same "progression" is brought to the most casual playerbase in a similar fashion.

Why do you feel that this is an invalid solution? You're asking to experience the content at a more rapid pace than those accessing the content directly. What will you do once you've cleared through LFR several times in the coming months? Will you complain that content is being brought too slowly and in small amounts? Will you spend all of your time doing LFR on the PTR and experiencing the content, ruining it for yourself on Live and starting this cycle over again? I'm not trying to sound jaded, so excuse the cynical side of me that's coming out, but I fail to see how this is not a way to cater to your desire to "raid" at a pace comparable to the actual raiding community.

[Magpai]

If you're concerned about not having enough gear for normal mode Throne of Thunder, perhaps your guild should revisit Heart of Fear and Terrace of the Endless Spring for some items during the first few weeks?

Definitely agree with this. Blizz has said they don't want people just vaulting over previous tiers when the next comes out. It's still new progression if you haven't killed them on normal, and if you have, then you should be fine gearwise for working on Throne of Thunder.

[HardCoder]

There's a heavy danger with this. If the live versions are indeed easier than the PTR versions you can expect to see top end guilds do 4-5 separate raids to funnel gear to mains, this'll mean than the heroic modes wont be "as tough" as I believe they will be.

Maybe 1000 players will be disappointed if HM are "too easy." They write blogs and all but who cares, really.

[Magpai]

There's a heavy danger with this. If the live versions are indeed easier than the PTR versions you can expect to see top end guilds do 4-5 separate raids to funnel gear to mains, this'll mean than the heroic modes wont be "as tough" as I believe they will be.

Who cares how tough hard modes are to some 80-hour a week raiding zealots? Is Blizzard supposed to take all of their gaming the system and alt-running into account when tuning these bosses for them? That would be a pointless arms race that would leave anyone who doesn't engage in such foolishness with no chance at any hard mode progression. Unless you think only those that are willing to run the raid 5 times a week on alts deserve to see heroics.

[Deleted]

Having to wait 1 or 2 months (depending on if the patch schedule is LFR section release every 1 or 2 weeks) for all the LFRs to unlock is just crappy for casual raiders who only get like 6 hours or so a week. I'm not sure it's possible for those types of guilds to exist anymore. Those type of players really don't get an extreme amount of time to play so they need all the LFR upgrades they can get to chop down normal modes. Does this mean that these types of players should just wait a few months after the patch is out to re-sub? My personal opinion is: yes.

no offense but i doubt normal raids is made for said casual play and the old raids will have increased drops and lfr will open a little bit a time which is more then enough for an actual casual playing person.

[HardCoder]

no offense but i doubt normal raids is made for said casual play and the old raids will have increased drops and lfr will open a little bit a time which is more then enough for an actual casual playing person.

There have to be a bunch of toons that aren't geared 480 yet anyway. I missed a few weeks of LFR late last year but my priest who runs pretty regularly otherwise just hit 479, and that includes upgraded trinkets and sha-touched weapon. But ... I don't run dailies, so only one piece of VP gear.

Anyway, point being, running the old raids will still be relevant for many people in LFR. I'll probably start running it on a couple more alts.

[Sesshou]

So the OP is whining that LFR isn't giving his guild free epics to do the real raiding content with? When I clicked the thread, I thought he might have a fairly valid point about how the LFR people unfairly have to wait on content... If you need LFR content to down normal modes, and by the way the purpose of LFR is NOT to gear people for normal modes, it isn't because you only raid 6 hours or because you are casual... its because your raid is failing on some basic level of the game.

You, at this point if you have been raiding the whole tier, should have enough gear for the first several bosses of ToT normal and if you only raid 6 hours a week, you will have killed them several times before you get to the ones with the harder 'gear checks' meaning you have 522 gear.

Now sure, people do use LFR gear to help them in normal, but that isn't the purpose of it. Thats like complaining your bike doesn't fly... it isn't suppose to.