How would you like to handle the "gap" between LFR and Normal raiding?

[Pua]

nah thats really horrible idea. Majority of raiders would be screwed.
just look at my server progress for example http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/eu/silvermoon
out of 66 guild who killed at least 1 boss on hc in T15, only 10 are 25man. You can't say to all this people : "sorry but either you find 15 more people or you will be stack in inferior content with all the baddies and crap gear"

I'm all for new difficulity mode - easy (or fuck it, call it casual or adventure, so people wouldnt be butthurt over the name), something between lfr and normal, with LRF ilvl gear so there;s no need for yet another set of gear.

I think to a certain extent, we're maybe at the point where we need to accept that what is best for us is not necessarily what's best for the game. 25-man raiding isn't just about the raid squad, I mean they build entire communities and the opportunities to get into raiding will always be better there.

I'm a 10-man raider, similar to yourself in many ways in game, but I accept that my preference is potentially doing the game harm.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 11:26 PM ----------

Then what's the point of running that tier? If LFR gives the same rewards and is far easier then no-one will go to the Easy difficulty raid.

Which is why LFR10N would be better. Normals need nerfing, perfect time to introduce a queuing system into Normal mode raiding to get people progressing.

Also not sure that's true.

If this setting dropped a guaranteed two drops for each boss, a guild could still progress itself up the way and get that feeling of character development that's far more controlled than the terrible set up in LFR at the moment.

[Firebert]

Personally, I think the game could be a bit clearer in that regard. I remember a buddy started playing WoW, and he picked a hunter (I know, I know). He then logically assumed that putting intellect in his gem slots was a good idea because he wanted his Arcane Shot to do more damage.

I was happy that Arcane Mages might get a fourth secondary stat before MoP because the Spirit tooltip changed to "mana regeneration while casting" instead of "while not casting".

Blizzard have made a lot of strides with this, but it could still be better I reckon.

It's probably very simple: gems that have no benefit for your class show up as red and unusable. The only snag then is players gemming full Expertise (for example) over the hard cap, which could be solved by adding the excess stats to your lowest current secondary stat (Haste/Mastery/Crit).

Similar thing can go for enchants, just to give a bit of structure to those new to stat stacking.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 11:31 PM ----------

Also not sure that's true.

If this setting dropped a guaranteed two drops for each boss, a guild could still progress itself up the way and get that feeling of character development that's far more controlled than the terrible set up in LFR at the moment.

Guilds are supposed to progress through Normals. The problem here is both the gap between LFR and Normal being too wide and Normal being too difficult for current guilds. Normal could do with nerfing and a queuable Normal LFR would close the gap up.

[Pua]

It's probably very simple: gems that have no benefit for your class show up as red and unusable. The only snag then is players gemming full Expertise (for example) over the hard cap, which could be solved by adding the excess stats to your lowest current secondary stat (Haste/Mastery/Crit).

Similar thing can go for enchants, just to give a bit of structure to those new to stat stacking.

Was just thinking why the game lets you put spirit gems in a piece of agility mail.

Other issues, however, could be fixed by highlights on the character sheet. 7.5% hit and expertise are required... Why? Who said so? Those numbers just appear dreadfully arbitrary and, again, I once did a workshop for an Arms warrior on Argent Dawn who was trying to get 100% hit from his gear.

"Omg, I don't wanna miss over 92% of the time D:"

Expertise made no real sense to him at all.

Using a colour coding system on the character sheet could help - red if you're under or over a certain cap, perhaps also providing inclinations toward haste break points for casters or the like. It could literally make easily identifiable suggestions to what stats you should be prioritising next.

I'll maybe see if I can do a mock up to make clearer what I mean.

[Deleted]

Then what's the point of running that tier? If LFR gives the same rewards and is far easier then no-one will go to the Easy difficulty raid.

Which is why LFR10N would be better. Normals need nerfing, perfect time to introduce a queuing system into Normal mode raiding to get people progressing.

you are boyond help, maybe try to red thread a bit before posting bullshit?
People were saying lfr is lacking social aspects, and they want some easy content for guilds of friends, without all the strangers in LFR.
I agree with them, and think that would be beneficial to the game, but closed minded people like you only think of ilvl, and you want nerfing normals.

[Pua]

you are boyond help, maybe try to red thread a bit before posting bullshit?
People were saying lfr is lacking social aspects, and they want some easy content for guilds of friends, without all the strangers in LFR.
I agree with them, and think that would be beneficial to the game, but closed minded people like you only think of ilvl, and you want nerfing normals.

Jeezo, you seem very angry.

Try a glass of warm milk, maybe?

Warning; Don't spam. (Sonnillon)

[Deleted]

Was just thinking why the game lets you put spirit gems in a piece of agility mail.

Other issues, however, could be fixed by highlights on the character sheet. 7.5% hit and expertise are required... Why? Who said so? Those numbers just appear dreadfully arbitrary and, again, I once did a workshop for an Arms warrior on Argent Dawn who was trying to get 100% hit from his gear.

"Omg, I don't wanna miss over 92% of the time D:"

Expertise made no real sense to him at all.

Using a colour coding system on the character sheet could help - red if you're under or over a certain cap, perhaps also providing inclinations toward haste break points for casters or the like. It could literally make easily identifiable suggestions to what stats you should be prioritising next.

I'll maybe see if I can do a mock up to make clearer what I mean.

As far as I know you can already see how close you are to hitcap and expertice cap while looking on your character screen ingame.

[Firebert]

Was just thinking why the game lets you put spirit gems in a piece of agility mail.

Other issues, however, could be fixed by highlights on the character sheet. 7.5% hit and expertise are required... Why? Who said so? Those numbers just appear dreadfully arbitrary and, again, I once did a workshop for an Arms warrior on Argent Dawn who was trying to get 100% hit from his gear.

Affliction locks get more DPS by not being at the hitcap at high gear levels, so Hit isn't required at all. It's just a tradeoff for consistency. Similarly for Assassination Rogues and Expertise (most of their damage is magical, dodges/parries refund 80% energy and a dodged/parried Envenom still gives the buff but doesn't use up the combo points).

Using a colour coding system on the character sheet could help - red if you're under or over a certain cap, perhaps also providing inclinations toward haste break points for casters or the like. It could literally make easily identifiable suggestions to what stats you should be prioritising next.

I'll maybe see if I can do a mock up to make clearer what I mean.

There's a fine line to tread between the game that wants everyone to gem the same way and the game that doesn't want people doing things wrong. I think that indicating haste breakpoints for average players would be very confusing at best.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 11:44 PM ----------

People were saying lfr is lacking social aspects, and they want some easy content for guilds of friends, without all the strangers in LFR.

Normals is supposed to be that content.

[Deleted]

Jeezo, you seem very angry.

Try a glass of warm milk, maybe?

just shut the hell up with your stupid jokes, you are not even remotely funny and only playing smartass, when all you do is repeat same song over and over again.
Firefly got you every time and you by lack of arguments, only trying to make fun of someone Thats very low and rude.

Infracted; Don't attack other posters. (Sonnillon)

[Deleted]

I think to a certain extent, we're maybe at the point where we need to accept that what is best for us is not necessarily what's best for the game. 25-man raiding isn't just about the raid squad, I mean they build entire communities and the opportunities to get into raiding will always be better there.
I'm a 10-man raider, similar to yourself in many ways in game, but I accept that my preference is potentially doing the game harm.

Yea and that is a thing missing from the game community building. And 10 man just ain't that great for that. Basicly 25 man ends up being a school class with the guild leader being the annoyed teacher there are people that you like and people that you like less, but you get to meet a lot of people and a lot of people get exposed to each other over time for good or bad
10 man is more of a tight knit group, sure its fun for family and friends, but it does end up being a rather incestious bunch of people closed in their own little world. And it can be rather problematic to get into those groups.

[Ferocity]

I don't know - maybe look at boss cast bar?
and addons for will of emperor dance? really? you have clear indication where hit is going to land.

A little late reply to that. Well, problem with those abilities that they either don't have cast bar, or in case with attenuation - don't show it's direction. Emperor dance is damn awful, as such high reaction fights have no place in RPG. And without addon's arrows it is not really that much clear where the boss will land his strike, as that lightning is tricky to see and interpret and is often quite misleading. Adding cast bars "Frontal Cleave", "Leftside Cleave", etc. and adding 0.5-1 sec timer to react would do wonders. That fight isn't that worrysome though, just that mechanic is damn annoying.

I agree with them, and think that would be beneficial to the game, but closed minded people like you only think of ilvl, and you want nerfing normals.

Will also answer this phrase. Normals ARE overtuned. Several things must change:
1. All enrage timers to be increased by around 300% (to avoid occasional 3-4-manning).
2. All high reaction abilities or obscure mechanics to be made more clear/less intrusive.
3. Amount of mechanics on all non-final bosses is to be reduced and make more forgiving (no cleansers on Horridon? Make debuff to not tick for much unless stacked too high and make PvE version of dispels, which have no cd and have less mana cost - as it was working preCata).
4. Less bugs with obscure mechanics - double-passing pheromones on same Garalon plainly sucks. Artifical learning curve on Amber Shaper should go away - remove vehicles and make casts being interruptable. Or if want to leave vehicle in place, remove parasitic growth, feeding on slimes and p3 slaughter. And so on.

Need to look back and see why same Karazhan was popular. It wasn't because it was "challenging" with bosses who had lots of mechanics. Not at all. All the other preCata raids as well, apart from final/optional bosses, raids were quite friends/family friendly. There should be no 4th/5th/etc. level of difficulty. 3 is enough - random PuG/to see content/prolly get some subpar loot (LFR), friends/family mode (Normal), hardcores and wanna-be-hardcores mode (Hc).

[Deleted]

Just to make some people in here reconsider. So many people keep referring to the 'bad success rate' of normal mode guilds, keep comparing to previous expansions etc. What you keep forgetting is that you are comparing content that was out for longer time, got nerfed, new tiers etc etc highering success rate. You cant compare ICC that was out for 1 year to 12 weeks of ToT.

So, a lot of you keeps saying "ICC10 was great, it had great success rate" and so on claiming ICC10 was so easy and good.

So we all know that ICC10 was tuned down in comparison to 25 man, so this was the 'easy mode'.
Also most guilds was 25 man so there will be a lot of guilds running multiple 10 man groups.

First week of Marrowgar, there was 25000 kills in 10 man normal.
First week Lich King was released, remember this was after staggering content so this was almost 2 months after marrowgar was released.
At that time there was 101 kills prior to the weekly reset (when EU servers went down for reset)

So the success rate in normal mode 10 (easy mode) after giving people 7 weeks to farm gear, was 0.404%.

Lets compare that with T15N. When servers went down on EU after the first week, there was 637 LS normal kills. (btw congrats adrenalina for getting kill 4 minutes before servers went down) and about 16000 jin'rokh kills, or a success rate of about 4%.

That, is, the success rate for the first week of ToT was 1000% higher than that of ICC10 normal.
This logic has a few major flaws though, but since you guys are so intent on comparing apples and oranges, I will have to do it as best as humanly possible.

1. LK had limited attempts, lowering the success rate.
2. LK was available 7 weeks after first boss allowing people to gear up for 7 weeks, highering the success rate.
3. In LK, most 25 man guilds ran 2-3 10 man groups. So the actual amount of marrowgar kills is a lot higher, further increasing the success rate.
4. 25 man gear was higher than 10 man gear, 7 weeks of farming 25 man gear that was higher item level, further increasing the success rate.

All in all, 1 reason for lowering the success rate and 3 for increasing the successrate. All in all, it is quite hard to dispute considering the 1000% increase on LK that it is fairly safe to presume it was a lot harder. But hey, I know how many people is going to pull the limited attempts card here, so lets move on further into the future.

We are now almost 3 months in ToT. We have a successrate of 30.5%, (26500 jin'rokh kills, 8084 LS kills).
So! Lets check almost 3 months into ToT.

3 months into ICC there was 3500 LK10N kills and 60500 Marrowgar10N kills. Or a success rate 5.8%.

So if you check 3 months into ICC, ToT is only 525% easier.
Now, exact same things apply as above with 25 man guilds, seperate lockouts and limited attempts.

So, if you actually look like at the actual stats, instead of looking at the stats after 1 year of 30% buff, we instead notice a different trend. The oh so highly held ICC10N that was so easy and new player friendly was a lot harder than ToT.
The success rate of the first week in ToT was 1000% higher and the success rate 3 months into the tier was 525% higher in ToT.

Feel free to check yourself. Does this perhaps mean that *gasp* ToT normals are the easieset raid tier in a long long long time.

[Firebert]

Does this perhaps mean that *gasp* ToT normals are the easieset raid tier in a long long long time?

Probably. But the community has changed in such a way that it is still too difficult. 4 million people have left and we've had a few more years of the "Call of Duty" instant gratification crowd percolating into WoW. The difficulty needs to change with the audience. I'm sure that people would be disappointed if LK was as difficult as Ragnaros 1.0, and I'm sure that people are disappointed that Stone Guards are approaching LK difficulty (to them).

[Deleted]

Just to make some people in here reconsider. So many people keep referring to the 'bad success rate' of normal mode guilds, keep comparing to previous expansions etc. What you keep forgetting is that you are comparing content that was out for longer time, got nerfed, new tiers etc etc highering success rate. You cant compare ICC that was out for 1 year to 12 weeks of ToT.

So, a lot of you keeps saying "ICC10 was great, it had great success rate" and so on claiming ICC10 was so easy and good.

So we all know that ICC10 was tuned down in comparison to 25 man, so this was the 'easy mode'.
Also most guilds was 25 man so there will be a lot of guilds running multiple 10 man groups.

First week of Marrowgar, there was 25000 kills in 10 man normal.
First week Lich King was released, remember this was after staggering content so this was almost 2 months after marrowgar was released.
At that time there was 101 kills prior to the weekly reset (when EU servers went down for reset)

So the success rate in normal mode 10 (easy mode) after giving people 7 weeks to farm gear, was 0.404%.

Lets compare that with T15N. When servers went down on EU after the first week, there was 637 LS normal kills. (btw congrats adrenalina for getting kill 4 minutes before servers went down) and about 16000 jin'rokh kills, or a success rate of about 4%.

That, is, the success rate for the first week of ToT was 1000% higher than that of ICC10 normal.
This logic has a few major flaws though, but since you guys are so intent on comparing apples and oranges, I will have to do it as best as humanly possible.

1. LK had limited attempts, lowering the success rate.
2. LK was available 7 weeks after first boss allowing people to gear up for 7 weeks, highering the success rate.
3. In LK, most 25 man guilds ran 2-3 10 man groups. So the actual amount of marrowgar kills is a lot higher, further increasing the success rate.
4. 25 man gear was higher than 10 man gear, 7 weeks of farming 25 man gear that was higher item level, further increasing the success rate.

All in all, 1 reason for lowering the success rate and 3 for increasing the successrate. All in all, it is quite hard to dispute considering the 1000% increase on LK that it is fairly safe to presume it was a lot harder. But hey, I know how many people is going to pull the limited attempts card here, so lets move on further into the future.

We are now almost 3 months in ToT. We have a successrate of 30.5%, (26500 jin'rokh kills, 8084 LS kills).
So! Lets check almost 3 months into ToT.

3 months into ICC there was 3500 LK10N kills and 60500 Marrowgar10N kills. Or a success rate 5.8%.

So if you check 3 months into ICC, ToT is only 525% easier.
Now, exact same things apply as above with 25 man guilds, seperate lockouts and limited attempts.

So, if you actually look like at the actual stats, instead of looking at the stats after 1 year of 30% buff, we instead notice a different trend. The oh so highly held ICC10N that was so easy and new player friendly was a lot harder than ToT.
The success rate of the first week in ToT was 1000% higher and the success rate 3 months into the tier was 525% higher in ToT.

Feel free to check yourself. Does this perhaps mean that *gasp* ToT normals are the easieset raid tier in a long long long time.

You can't compare ICC guild clears to Tot guild clears for the simple reason that people could (and did, en masse) pug ICC, you can't pug Tot.*

You can't compare ICC clears to Tot clears (until this patch) because there was no gear catch up mechanism to help with normal modes. ICC had the spammable 5 mans which handed gear out like candy. In 5.2 there was LFR. Gated, limited chances at gear and that gear wasn't very good either. 20 ilvl below.

In any event, the points been made time and again - normal mode should be clearable by average players in the time they have to clear it before the next tier launches. Whether that time is two months or two years doesn't change a damn thing.


*The fact that you can't pug tot is proof in and of itself that its overtuned, btw.

[Deleted]

You can't compare ICC guild clears to Tot guild clears for the simple reason that people could (and did, en masse) pug ICC, you can't pug Tot.*

What bullshit is this? There are regularly 12/12 pugs on my realm.

Is that the only thing you have to say? Anyone can pug first boss aswell. Really. Come with something better please.

[Ferocity]

Feel free to check yourself. Does this perhaps mean that *gasp* ToT normals are the easieset raid tier in a long long long time.

In some world maybe. In example in the world where people can pug 12/12. Your numbers are also many times twisted, as don't forget there were many many many pugs doing ICC, who weren't killing LK. On many servers people don't even bother to make a pug to do 1/12 (in best case). I have already shown before the way such numbers could be read. With pugging pretty much dead, all that "success rate" starts looking quite grim.

[Deleted]

Just to make some people in here reconsider. So many people keep referring to the 'bad success rate' of normal mode guilds, keep comparing to previous expansions etc. What you keep forgetting is that you are comparing content that was out for longer time, got nerfed, new tiers etc etc highering success rate. You cant compare ICC that was out for 1 year to 12 weeks of ToT.

So, a lot of you keeps saying "ICC10 was great, it had great success rate" and so on claiming ICC10 was so easy and good.

So we all know that ICC10 was tuned down in comparison to 25 man, so this was the 'easy mode'.
Also most guilds was 25 man so there will be a lot of guilds running multiple 10 man groups.

First week of Marrowgar, there was 25000 kills in 10 man normal.
First week Lich King was released, remember this was after staggering content so this was almost 2 months after marrowgar was released.
At that time there was 101 kills prior to the weekly reset (when EU servers went down for reset)

So the success rate in normal mode 10 (easy mode) after giving people 7 weeks to farm gear, was 0.404%.

Lets compare that with T15N. When servers went down on EU after the first week, there was 637 LS normal kills. (btw congrats adrenalina for getting kill 4 minutes before servers went down) and about 16000 jin'rokh kills, or a success rate of about 4%.

That, is, the success rate for the first week of ToT was 1000% higher than that of ICC10 normal.
This logic has a few major flaws though, but since you guys are so intent on comparing apples and oranges, I will have to do it as best as humanly possible.

1. LK had limited attempts, lowering the success rate.
2. LK was available 7 weeks after first boss allowing people to gear up for 7 weeks, highering the success rate.
3. In LK, most 25 man guilds ran 2-3 10 man groups. So the actual amount of marrowgar kills is a lot higher, further increasing the success rate.
4. 25 man gear was higher than 10 man gear, 7 weeks of farming 25 man gear that was higher item level, further increasing the success rate.

All in all, 1 reason for lowering the success rate and 3 for increasing the successrate. All in all, it is quite hard to dispute considering the 1000% increase on LK that it is fairly safe to presume it was a lot harder. But hey, I know how many people is going to pull the limited attempts card here, so lets move on further into the future.

We are now almost 3 months in ToT. We have a successrate of 30.5%, (26500 jin'rokh kills, 8084 LS kills).
So! Lets check almost 3 months into ToT.

3 months into ICC there was 3500 LK10N kills and 60500 Marrowgar10N kills. Or a success rate 5.8%.

So if you check 3 months into ICC, ToT is only 525% easier.
Now, exact same things apply as above with 25 man guilds, seperate lockouts and limited attempts.

So, if you actually look like at the actual stats, instead of looking at the stats after 1 year of 30% buff, we instead notice a different trend. The oh so highly held ICC10N that was so easy and new player friendly was a lot harder than ToT.
The success rate of the first week in ToT was 1000% higher and the success rate 3 months into the tier was 525% higher in ToT.

Feel free to check yourself. Does this perhaps mean that *gasp* ToT normals are the easieset raid tier in a long long long time.

What you do not take into account is that the bad guilds who managed to kill marrowgar have died away. The players from those guilds have quit or gone to LFR.
Or said with some exxageration the complete morons are gone.
The skilllevel that is required to succed now a days is higher. So it is not unreasonable to expect that if you have cut away the morons that you will see a higher succes rate from the raimaining raiders.

Basicly you do not have bad guilds with their progress messing the statistic for guilds completing the tier up anymore for the good surviving guilds.

And seriously look at it 26k guilds killing jinrokh vs 60k killing marrowgar. over 50% of guilds just gone.

[Deleted]

You can't compare ICC clears to Tot clears (until this patch) because there was no gear catch up mechanism to help with normal modes. ICC had the spammable 5 mans which handed gear out like candy. In 5.2 there was LFR. Gated, limited chances at gear and that gear wasn't very good either. 20 ilvl below.

So, wait, it is easier to gear up in ICC. How is this supposed to help your argument?

[Ferocity]

What bullshit is this? There are regularly 12/12 pugs on my realm.

Is that the only thing you have to say? Anyone can pug first boss aswell. Really. Come with something better please.

I already caught you on this one. In what world do you live? On most servers pugs can do 1/12 at best, so they don't even bother to form just for 1 boss.

[Deleted]

And seriously look at it 26k guilds killing jinrokh vs 60k killing marrowgar. over 50% of guilds just gone.

Raiding community lowered a lot, a 26k to 60k drop is not a lot tbh, considering that there are less subs now and that more people are LFR raiding. Still, if we presumed 26k kills on Marrowgar aswell, there was still less kills on LK than LS. So with a larger community there was less kills on the final boss.

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 11:17 PM ----------

I already caught you on this one. In what world do you live? On most servers pugs can do 1/12 at best, so they don't even bother to form just for 1 boss.

Well, I am not the only that has been saying that. in this thread a lot of players have been saying that. I play on Eu-Frostmane, so granted, it is one of the highest populated EU servers. I can understand it is hard on dead servers.

A little late reply to that. Well, problem with those abilities that they either don't have cast bar, or in case with attenuation - don't show it's direction. Emperor dance is damn awful, as such high reaction fights have no place in RPG. And without addon's arrows it is not really that much clear where the boss will land his strike, as that lightning is tricky to see and interpret and is often quite misleading. Adding cast bars "Frontal Cleave", "Leftside Cleave", etc. and adding 0.5-1 sec timer to react would do wonders. That fight isn't that worrysome though, just that mechanic is damn annoying.

I gotta be completely honest here, I never even noticed that boss mods display which way to go. I was unaware of this feature. From the first week, I just looked at the boss swings. They are very visible in which direction he is gonna attack you.

Emperor lifts up his legs and weapon in the air preparing to do the hulahula dance. Run out.
Emperor leans forward with both his weapons and a huge white 'lightning', run behind him.
Emperor lifts up his weapon on left shoulder and gets a huge white lightning arc on the right side. Go to the left side of him and vice versa for the other side.

Now, I gotta be completely honest, I run with ultra settings on everything, so if you have lower settings, maybe it is harder to see, I do not know since I have not tried. But at ultra settings it was very very easy to see this. I failed once or twice on the first attempt. After that I never failed ever again. Same goes for my co-tank. It was very easy for the both of us without boss mods.

I dont know if graphic settings can be the issue here.

[Deleted]

So, wait, it is easier to gear up in ICC. How is this supposed to help your argument?

It was easier to gear up for ICC than it is (or was) for tot.

Given how far behind most groups were on ilvl for tot (due to massively overtuned T14) this matters when comparing completion rates.

I'm glad you have accepted that your comparions doesn't work on all the other points I raised, though. Thanks for dropping the issue.