Changes I Would Make To LFR

[KBWarriors]

You know, I don't have a problem with the current roll system (being individualized that is), but what I do have a problem with, is relying on RNG.

I'm not saying the entire system of RNG should be eliminated, but there could be some improvements to LFR.

Rewarding Good Behavior

Players who avoid Area effects and take no damage from Area effects during encounters have a 10% increased chance of winning loot.

Players who follow simple mechanics such as stacking up during a meteor strike for example, and do it every single time during the encounter have a 10% extra chance of winning loot.

Tanks have 20% increased chance of winning loot
Healers performing the best in heals have an additional 10% chance of winning loot (stacking with 1 and 2)
DPS who perform the best in damage on an encounter have a 10% chance of winning loot (stacking with 1 and 2)

AFKers

Players who do under a minimum amount of damage that are AFK or auto-swinging will not only receive no loot nor a 28g bag, but will be marked with a 5 minute debuff that's visible on the raid frames. You may kick a player marked with the debuff during combat and with only 5 votes.

If a player is not kicked and receives this debuff twice in a single dungeon, they will be automatically removed the dungeon and unable to queue for a Looking for Raid group for the rest of the day until reset.

Difficulty

This is where my crossroads are because while LFR was never meant as a way to gear up but a way to see the encounter for people who don't have the time to be in a real raid group; a lot of people only use it to gear up and could care less about seeing the end game boss. So, while I'm sure there will be some who disagree, this is just my opinion but here's the changes I would make.

Looking for raid encounters have had their difficulty in tune with that of normal raids.

However, in order to queue for a Looking For Raid encounter, you will have to speak to your class trainer and pass the quest chain "A Trial Of Combat".

A Trial Of Combat

This will ensure that you're raid-ready before queuing up for a dungeon and is similar to a solo scenario.

DPS

Stage 1 - You will have to avoid a small and slowly forming AoE effect on the ground while damaging a boss.
Stage 2 - Not only do you have to avoid a slowly forming AoE effect on the ground while damaging a boss, but you now must do a certain amount of damage while doing so while a timer counts down.
Stage 3 - There will be two bosses present (similar to twin encounters). The encounter will be the same as 1-2 but the screen will also tell you to switch bosses at certain points during the encounter and you must switch as the boss you're not supposed to be hitting will receive a 100% damage absorb buff and you will be timed.
Stage 4 (Final) - The AoE effect on the ground will not be as slow anymore and will do damage to a player only 2 seconds after it forms on the ground. There will be two bosses on this stage that require you to constantly switch between bosses and your damage will have a minimum requirement during a certain time.

However, adds will also spawn and while they will not attack you, you will need to switch to the adds and kill them, because if you don't, they will heal the boss, making your encounter hard due to a time constraint.

Healers

Stage 1 and 3 will be the same thing essentially but instead, you must heal a DPS NPC who will periodically take damage and periodically debuffs will be placed on them that must be cured within a certain amount of time or they will take fatal damage.
Stage 4 (Final) - While this will remain the same as the DPS trial (except that you're healing an NPC), you will now have 4 NPCs to heal and debuffs will be applied to all of them at random points during the encounter. Some of them will also receive a new debuff that will be visible and obviously different than the debuff that needs to be removed. If you remove this debuff, it will be fatal and will instantly kill the NPCs re-starting the entire trial.

Tanks

Stages 1 and 3 will be the same thing as the DPS stages.
Stage 4 (Final) - While this will be very similar to the other stages for other rolls, you instead will need to constantly taunt monsters off of NPCs players and there will be another NPC tank helping you tank the second boss. Once he has a certain amount of stacked debuffs on him, you must taunt off of him or he will receive a fatal blow.

If you die during a Trial Of Combat encounter, you will reset the entire trial and start over from Stage 1. This is a MANDATORY requirement in order to queue for Looking For Raid, due to the fact that LFR now has normal difficulty. Other players may see how many attempts it took you to complete the Trial of Combat by inspecting you and the number of attempts will be visible for all of those to see.

Items

LFR items have been tuned up to normal difficulty items due to the item change and the Ilvl required to participate has increased as well.

Punishing Bad Behavior

Players who continuously stand in Area effects and ignore mechanics will now receive a debuff after so much damage taken during LFR encounters. They will receive a stacking 5% damage taken debuff every so much damage that stacks to 500%. This will last the entire encounter, and is not removed if there is a wipe.

The Determination debuff has been removed

Those are just some of my thoughts on the current Looking for Raid system and some of the changes I would like to see in it. I would like to hear your thoughts on it. I've included a poll to see what people think.

[Vargas]

Nope.

People who perform better aren't any more deserving of loot than anyone else. Plus, people who are better geared are logically going to perform better than fresh 90's stepping into a raid for the first time. Its complete nonsense that they get the shaft for no acceptable reason.


EDIT: This is coming from someone who is typically in the top 5 for DPS in raids and who rarely dies to standing in the bad.

[crakerjack]

Wtf? LFR is meant for people who don't have time or aren't hardcore. LFR doesn't need to change at all, you do. It seems like you want to be hardcore... it seems like you want an advantage on loot based off of how hard you work. Well here's my two cents, join a hardcore raiding guild. There's a reason why we have guilds, it's for this very reason. LFR is perfect, it's doing exactly what it was made for, allowing people to see content that they normally wouldn't see otherwise. LFR drops bad gear anyways, why waste your time on it if you're going for BiS? You have too much of an ego thing going on... I could be egotistical and say I can beat you with any class 1v1, but that doesn't mean I deserve extra stuff because I'm better. WoW is a team game and as a team game... you have to share... if you don't like that, play a different game... or try and solo a raid.

[Scorp969]

the 1st part yes with some change to rewarding system not to the firs bud there will be limit of minimal dps per max ilvl
somethink like 463-60k dps 476-70k 483-80k 496-90k 500+/-100k dps
for healers it will be measured by apm

[Yizelin]

The only piece I would like to use is the Trial of Combat, since it's entirely possible to not do dungeons/heroics (did it on my Monk) and get the required iLvL for LFR. That section would act nicely as a training scenario to familiarize people with the basics of their roles.


However:

-The higher loot chance as an incentive to perform will really only work for the top tier people, so if that's the case what's the reason to do anything above the bare minimum? People as a group will not work harder only to lose to some overgeared guy looking for his last piece of loot (a person as an individual might, though).

-People who AFK (at least in my LFRs) are a non-issue, my raid frames (standuard UI) displays AFK on them and they get votekicked extremely quickly. The AFK section wouldn't change much in that regard except for adding the lockout, which may be rough.. perhaps it should just induce the deserter buff each time.

-LFR's difficulty is *meant* to be lower than Normal and to have its own progression path (loot tier + boss kills). It *should* be easy enough for a pug that has never met each other and likely won't communicate effectively to complete but receive proportionally lower rewards (matter of Risk vs Reward).
--Subnote: power gamers (hello!) will always look for an edge and in some cases getting an LFR tier of an item that is BiS (like a trinket with an awesome effect) will get them that slight gain (even if it's 0.1%). This will never change, and I think they've come to terms with that.

-While I said I like the Trial of Combat, I don't think it should be a requisite of LFR specifically. I think it should be part of the new player experience, integrated into leveling with it as an option to queue for at higher levels so people can actively tinker with gear/theorycrafting.


Normally, I would vote Other in these scenarios.. but since that's not an option, I will vote for pointless (sorry!)

[Yeahbaby]

I have seen quite a few LFR posts since the implementation of it, but this really must be the worst one so far.

And what's up with the poll? The choices are just so.. I don't even have words for any of this.

Either just stop thinking about ideas for this game or keep them to yourself, what you're doing here is a waste of everyones time.

[Sam the Wiser]

Talk about cracking the whip in LFR hehe.

[eschatological]

All this will do will make the shuffle of people in and out of LFR more pronounced, and make it harder to finish an instance.

The thing that strikes me about your proposed changes are "making it equal to normal mode in difficulty and drops." It seems like you want 25 man normal mode raiding, but don't want to put in the effort of, you know, organizing and maintaining it. And it'd be horrible.

LFR is simultaneously a mode to gear up (for raiders with alts) and a way for casual players to see the content. You can't make design changes to favor one side to the extreme harm of the other side.

I like the Trial of Combat ideas, but I believe Blizz has already planned for something like that in Proving Grounds, though admittedly those have been really off the radar for awhile and might have been secretly axed.

[Musta Kyy]

I would like these changes if instead of rewarding best dps and healer, reward the best dps per ilvl and best healer per ilvl.
But there is still a problem with the system you are suggesting, on megaera for example people would multidot the heads for more dps.

Rewarding those that avoid the AoE attacks and those who stack during meteors etc. would be really nice.
But instead of rewarding best dps and healer, probably would be best to just give 5% increased loot chance to anyone doing over 70k dps for example. Should be easily doable with 480ilvl.

[KBWarriors]

Nope.

People who perform better aren't any more deserving of loot than anyone else. Plus, people who are better geared are logically going to perform better than fresh 90's stepping into a raid for the first time. Its complete nonsense that they get the shaft for no acceptable reason.


EDIT: This is coming from someone who is typically in the top 5 for DPS in raids and who rarely dies to standing in the bad.

I'm not saying people who try their best don't deserve to be rewarded just because they're not as good as the elite players, but what this goal is meant to do, is meant for them to actually try. A lot of people join LFR, just auto-swing or throw in a few attacks every once in a while to make it seem like they're not AFK. This results in a much longer LFR encounter (which I'm sure none of us want) and no one learns anything.

It's not a challenging task or time-consuming to learn your rotation now days. There are several resources and websites available to helping you properly optimize your characters via gems, enchants and rotation setups. Also, no one who does their minimum damage is going to be shafted, if they follow mechanics as said in my previous points, they'll actually have a better chance of obtaining loot.

Wtf? LFR is meant for people who don't have time or aren't hardcore. LFR doesn't need to change at all, you do. It seems like you want to be hardcore... it seems like you want an advantage on loot based off of how hard you work. Well here's my two cents, join a hardcore raiding guild. There's a reason why we have guilds, it's for this very reason. LFR is perfect, it's doing exactly what it was made for, allowing people to see content that they normally wouldn't see otherwise. LFR drops bad gear anyways, why waste your time on it if you're going for BiS? You have too much of an ego thing going on... I could be egotistical and say I can beat you with any class 1v1, but that doesn't mean I deserve extra stuff because I'm better. WoW is a team game and as a team game... you have to share... if you don't like that, play a different game... or try and solo a raid.

Aren't hardcore? I'm not saying that they should be "hardcore" but the mechanics behind normal raids are very simple. If people were to follow the mechanics and were to actually stay out of things that are harmful, there would be far less wipes, more damaging being output and LFR encounters would actually be much shorter than they currently are.

why waste your time on it if you're going for BiS?

BiS gear drops from normal raids?

I'm not sure why you're so bitter at making people follow mechanics and try to perform better? The majority of my changes are aimed at people who afk, purposefully stand in area effects and just don't care about playing as a team. The majority of people who queue up could care less about the other character next to them, but if they win a purple or not.

You would actually SAVE time and have more time to spend if people:
1 - Followed mechanics
2 - Didn't die to area effects and scream at healers
3 - Didn't wipe
4 - Did optimal damage/healing/tanking

All of these changes are aimed at rewarding those who do that. You can't force players to do that, so you can at least try and reward them for doing so.

the 1st part yes with some change to rewarding system not to the firs bud there will be limit of minimal dps per max ilvl
somethink like 463-60k dps 476-70k 483-80k 496-90k 500+/-100k dps
for healers it will be measured by apm

While I do agree with a minimum, I'm not so sure these numbers would be met in LFR. Usually there's only a couple of people at the 500+ ilvl point who are doing 100k or above and then the curve quickly goes down to 50k and seems to hover around there. That's what I'm talking about, a lot of people just join up, put in minimal effort and make the encounters take forever, but these are the same people who will scream that they didn't gear and they have incredibly horrible luck.

Well now, they can be rewarded with additional chances of winning something IF they do participate and put in optimal effort.

The only piece I would like to use is the Trial of Combat, since it's entirely possible to not do dungeons/heroics (did it on my Monk) and get the required iLvL for LFR. That section would act nicely as a training scenario to familiarize people with the basics of their roles.


However:

-The higher loot chance as an incentive to perform will really only work for the top tier people, so if that's the case what's the reason to do anything above the bare minimum? People as a group will not work harder only to lose to some overgeared guy looking for his last piece of loot (a person as an individual might, though).

-People who AFK (at least in my LFRs) are a non-issue, my raid frames (standuard UI) displays AFK on them and they get votekicked extremely quickly. The AFK section wouldn't change much in that regard except for adding the lockout, which may be rough.. perhaps it should just induce the deserter buff each time.

-LFR's difficulty is *meant* to be lower than Normal and to have its own progression path (loot tier + boss kills). It *should* be easy enough for a pug that has never met each other and likely won't communicate effectively to complete but receive proportionally lower rewards (matter of Risk vs Reward).
--Subnote: power gamers (hello!) will always look for an edge and in some cases getting an LFR tier of an item that is BiS (like a trinket with an awesome effect) will get them that slight gain (even if it's 0.1%). This will never change, and I think they've come to terms with that.

-While I said I like the Trial of Combat, I don't think it should be a requisite of LFR specifically. I think it should be part of the new player experience, integrated into leveling with it as an option to queue for at higher levels so people can actively tinker with gear/theorycrafting.


Normally, I would vote Other in these scenarios.. but since that's not an option, I will vote for pointless (sorry!)

I see what you're saying about overgeared performers but it doesn't mean they're GOING to win anything guaranteed, but it's just a slight incentive to winning something. They get a slight bonus for doing what they're supposed to do. You don't have to have the maximum ilvl to avoid area effects and follow mechanics.

Honestly, would you rather the AFKer/Auto-Shooter have 530 ilvl or the person who will follow the mechanics and play at an optimized level to help down the encounter more quickly?

As for the deserter debuff, from my personal experience when ever I hear someone get the debuff, they just hop on another game or do something else until it goes away. My personal opinion of the debuff is that it's not strong enough. People aren't discouraged from displaying poor behavior or not working together from a 30 minute time out.

If Trial of Combat wasn't a requirement and didn't give people epics, I'm not sure how many people would even attempt it or do it. A lot of people I know have no interest in doing Brawler's Guild solely because it doesn't give better gear. That's a major problem with the game now days is that, all people care about is gear and if it doesn't drop the next epic with minimal effort, they have no interest. Not every player is like this but it's happening more and more. There are so many minor and small changes that could be implemented into the game to help address this or overcome it completely.

I have seen quite a few LFR posts since the implementation of it, but this really must be the worst one so far.

And what's up with the poll? The choices are just so.. I don't even have words for any of this.

Either just stop thinking about ideas for this game or keep them to yourself, what you're doing here is a waste of everyones time.

Good to know, I'm sorry that I forced you to read this and waste your valuable time.

Talk about cracking the whip in LFR hehe.

I wish someone would crack the whip.

[Lily Crowley]

Nope.

People who perform better aren't any more deserving of loot than anyone else. Plus, people who are better geared are logically going to perform better than fresh 90's stepping into a raid for the first time. Its complete nonsense that they get the shaft for no acceptable reason.


EDIT: This is coming from someone who is typically in the top 5 for DPS in raids and who rarely dies to standing in the bad.

Oh quite on the contrary, people who strive to perform better ARE more deserving of loot/rewards that the mong-a-dozen who afk's, auto-attacks or just lols through fights not caring of the mechanics.
Better geared people are logically gonna do better dps than a freshly dinged 90 yes, but that is not the point. The freshly dinged 90 can still perform well, by actually caring about the mechanics of the fight and striving to work together with the current raid mate hes got.
By not rewarding or ignoring destructive/lazy behaviour, but actually punishing it, some people may actually learn something and shape up.

And I don't buy into the argument of "But I don't have time to get better! or I don't aim to be hardcore!", really, its requires MINIMAL effort. Download a boss mod addon and OBEY that, also you could rip your eyes away from your avatars butt and actually pay attention to the sizzling flame son the floor. Profit!

OP: I agree to everything you say here, minus the difficulty. Let LFR be hilariously easy, but do still reward people who want it to work and punish people who cba with anything. Thumbs up!

[Resentful]

Would hurt the majority of the casuals then anything and would put a whinefest within the forums.

No thanks.

I mean for god sakes your average LFR person is watching youtube half of the time afk granted I do it from time to time.

[RoKPaNda]

the 1st part yes with some change to rewarding system not to the firs bud there will be limit of minimal dps per max ilvl
somethink like 463-60k dps 476-70k 483-80k 496-90k 500+/-100k dps
for healers it will be measured by apm

OP's ideas are pretty bad, those are worse. Can cheese that so easily with healers, and the DPS numbers are way out of line with item level.

Anyway, LFR is fine as it is. It really doesn't need any changes other than those that Blizzard has for it. I've been saying this a lot lately, and I'll say it again here, if at any point LFR is tuned like normal raids and gives equivalent loot, or Blizzard adds a group finder tool for normal mode raids, the average guild that raids (Average. Not top guilds, not top server guilds, average.) is pretty much doomed, and Blizzard has specifically said that they don't want to do anything to discourage playing with your guild.

[Enosh]

This is where my crossroads are because while LFR was never meant as a way to gear up but a way to see the encounter for people who don't have the time to be in a real raid group

wrong
LFR was always meant to offer the continuation of character progression which in WoW is done through gear that before only raiders got to experience but with lesser reward and lesser challenge
the "lfr is only to see content" is one of the biggest bullshit arguments I see thrown around

Looking for raid encounters have had their difficulty in tune with that of normal raids.

no

[Ethes]

I wish they made a path of gearing up your characters that doesn't include LFR. I am generally the person with the worst luck in your raid group, as I came back to wow long after MoP had been released and I wished to play with 2 friends there wasn't much out there in terms of choices of guilds we could join (I'm quite sure pretty much nobody is looking for 2 healers and a tank).

As the guild I joined was pretty crap, I couldn't be arsed to really try gearing up outside of raids as my output was similar to what other people were doing in gear that was about 15-20 items levels higher. But the amount of crap I got for refusing to do LFR, I still find it quite unbelievable actually.

Thankfully I'll soon have completely out-geared everything I could gain from ToT LFR, which means I'll never have to do it again. Except that there are tokens for the legendary quest that drop in there. One of the other things I'm still doing the LFR in MSV for...

Seriously, I wish they just removed it or truely just made it so that you can just get epics out of there.. No quests, no bullshit! I hate LFR and yet they're trying to force it down your throat like there is no tomorrow.

Edit:
The other thing about LFR, generally people play in a sort half-assed "I just do something at random" kinda way. Which is fine, as its good enough for LFR. But If you have 1 other healer in your group actually doing something, as a healer you're bored out of your skull. I personally try to stay as far away from LFR as possible, I wish Blizzard would just try to make that possible.

Currently the only realistic options in-game for gearing up your characters for ToT are pugging old content (for which nobody will take you if you haven't done it yet and generally have silly amounts of item levels (485+ for MSV or 490+ for HoF/ToES springs to mind)), doing old content with your guild (assuming you already have one) or doing LFR. Of these 3 options the most accessable way is doing LFR.

[Onomatopoeia]

The only one I would agree with is the afk one, but if people bother going to the boss to start auto attack, they'll just use one special, or just spam one button the whole fight to avoid that.

As for your good behavior, people will either tunnel and focus on dps to be top, or just focus on avoiding the bad stuff and be very low on dps. Both rather counter intuitive to what your trying to gain from it. Besides even the better players who can do both will slip up every once and while and get hit by "fire" or they'll get in a situation where they cant avoid it. If one gets hit by the "fire" they'll just give up and be dead weight all the sudden.

Tanks and healers don't deserve a higher change at gear, that would just cause reassessment. 5.3 should help with them not queuing.

A stacking debuff for more damage for getting hit by "fire", that's just going to cause more wipes.

If anything the difficulty on some encounters needs to be lower. LFR inst a training ground, its to get people to see content and allow blizzard to justify spending time and resources and these raids. Its not meant to be hard. If you want normal level challenge, join a guild, normal is there for that, lfr isn't.

[KBWarriors]

All this will do will make the shuffle of people in and out of LFR more pronounced, and make it harder to finish an instance.

The thing that strikes me about your proposed changes are "making it equal to normal mode in difficulty and drops." It seems like you want 25 man normal mode raiding, but don't want to put in the effort of, you know, organizing and maintaining it. And it'd be horrible.

LFR is simultaneously a mode to gear up (for raiders with alts) and a way for casual players to see the content. You can't make design changes to favor one side to the extreme harm of the other side.

I like the Trial of Combat ideas, but I believe Blizz has already planned for something like that in Proving Grounds, though admittedly those have been really off the radar for awhile and might have been secretly axed.

I'm one of those people that actually like queuing up for a raid because not everyone likes having a raid schedule anymore. I used to be a raid leader and organizing a group that isn't tight-knit can be a bit of a nightmare for a 25 man group. People who are supposed to be on don't log on, some people have connection issues, schedules change, etc. The number of 25 mans is continuously decreasing and I'm scared to see the numbers of 25 man guilds still alive come the next expansion.

A lot of them have stayed alive for so long because their hardcore progression guilds but I'm talking about just regular 25 man raiding guilds. Some people have guilds they like and wouldn't want to do LFR even if it was at a normal difficulty but some people I know are frustrated with the issues of keeping up a 25 man guild and maintaining it. I know it can be difficult at times myself.

I've heard of them wanting to do something like Proving Grounds or something, but maybe it's a 5.4 feature and maybe it's a 6.0 feature. Who knows?

I would like these changes if instead of rewarding best dps and healer, reward the best dps per ilvl and best healer per ilvl.
But there is still a problem with the system you are suggesting, on megaera for example people would multidot the heads for more dps.

Rewarding those that avoid the AoE attacks and those who stack during meteors etc. would be really nice.
But instead of rewarding best dps and healer, probably would be best to just give 5% increased loot chance to anyone doing over 70k dps for example. Should be easily doable with 480ilvl.

No sole system would be perfect, but that's why you can always tune up and make improvements to systems in place.

It should be easily doable and it's not that people can't do it, but a lot of people just don't care. Especially after they've run LFR a few times, they join up, hit a button every once in a while and keep it around 40-50k to make it seem like they're not AFK.

The best run I've ever had was when an organized pre-made joined the LFR, followed all the mechanics and did their rotations properly. The runs were incredibly fast and we didn't have one wipe. They weren't super-over geared all stars, they were around 490-500 ilvl on average from the ones I inspected. If we could get more people to do that without a pre-made but out of habit, LFR would be a far more enjoyable experience than the current attitude of "ugh, got get another alt to do the LFRs and go collect my 12 28g bags."

No joke though, 11/12 28g bags last week =( Oon and Nalak also gave me a nice shiny pile of 56g + 56 more gold.

[RoKPaNda]

Seriously, I wish they just removed it or truely just made it so that you can just get epics out of there.. No quests, no bullshit! I hate LFR and yet they're trying to force it down your throat like there is no tomorrow.

They're not. In your example Blizzard isn't forcing LFR down your throat, Blizzard doesn't want you to feel like you have to do it. If your guild is pressuring you into doing LFR then your guild is forcing it down your throat. Unless your guild is cutting edge, they shouldn't be worried about you getting your legendary drops a week later or whatever because you didn't do LFR. I don't want to take the legendary quest drops away from LFR players, but perhaps make it so that each week a character can only get those drops via LFR or Normal, not both. Not sure how they'd go about that though.

But yeah, in your example it's your guild that's forcing you, not Blizzard.

[KBWarriors]

I mean for god sakes your average LFR person is watching youtube half of the time afk granted I do it from time to time.

You don't see a problem with a system like that in place that allows people to do that and have a fair shot at winning loot as the same people who are trying to down the encounter?

Take Horridon for example. You usually have maybe half (I've never counted) of the DPS trying to kill the adds and the other half sitting on the boss going "meh, the other DPS will kill it."

I'm not asking for miracles or saying that everyone should be an elitist who uses spread sheets and calculates their BiS performance to a .01% improvement, but people should at least try to win the loot they want or need.

[Inthislzon]

I, for one, think that the first part of the post would be a nice addition, if you do bosses properly you get an increased chance to get loot. As loot is not shared anymore it would have no negative effects (should everyone do it right, everyone gets that bonus).

Also, while rewarding every DPS over... lets say 70k? sounds a nice idea, what about healers? The one healing the most isn't always the "best", and same goes for tanks. So that makes for a bad change.