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

[Saffa]

None of the above. There is no gap. I do LFR but will never cross to normals because i don't like any of the raiders i have met and am unwilling to swap a game i love for a chore i have to do.

[Spotnick]

You lost me at "balance with 3 who has 3".

I meant balance with 25 who has 3 difficulties.

[Sarevokcz]

Vanilla went from 60 - 92 for level 60 gear or 32 ilvls
TBC went from 95 - 164 for level 70 gear or 69 ilvls
WotLK went from 187 - 284 for level 80 gear or 97 ilvls
Cataclysm went from 312 - 416 for level 85 gear or 104 ilvls
MoP went from 429 - 541 in ToT alone for level 90 or 112 ilvls already.

Since we have at least one more raid, that number will be much more. The ilvl hyperinflation is a direct result of too many divisions as is.

Nice arbitrary numbers there bud! not sure where you got most of them tho.
vanilla is wrong, ZG had 65+ilev drops, MC had 66+
tBC is wrong, kara/t4 epics were 115 ilevel, boosted mid 2.0 patch from 110
LK is wrong, raid drops were 200+
cata is wrong, raid drops were 359+
MoP is wrong, raid drops are 476+

also why do you comparte in absolute numbers and not in ilevel % increase?
vanilla 65-92 - 41,5% increase
tBC 115-164 - 42% increase
LK 200-284 - 42% increase
cata 359-416 - 16% increase
MoP 476-541 - 13,5% insrease so far.

see how it suddenly doesnt look like ilevels are hyperinflating in MoP? Only thing that is inflating are the formulaes for %increase of stats per ilevel, which are probably too steep by now.

[Deleted]

I sincerely hope they do not go back to the ICC model. I'm a 10 man raider and enjoy the current level of challenge that it gives. If they made the 10 mans easier again I would feel forced into doing a style of raiding that I don't enjoy just to feel like I wasn't gimping my character out.

[Deleted]

MoP is wrong, raid drops are 476+

489 is the lowest raid drop.

[slime]

In dragon soul - I saw this gap, was huge (before nerf). I expected the same in MoP. I was wrong - there is almost no difference between Normal and LFR raiding in MoP. The one main thing is you have to actually pay attention to mechanics in normal - or they kill you quick. But the damage requirements seemed very similar - bosses went down at almost the same time frame pace as LFR. Again, it only seemed that the fires on the ground/the adds/the aoes were much stronger in Normal and would kill you if you didn't react quick.

So in answer to your question, I'd say have people worry more about getting mechanics right and not dying to them - before worrying about maximizing dps. Things become more difficult if you are bring 10 complete first timers to normal, from LFR, than if you are say bringing 4 noobs from LFR and 6 who already know normal.

[melodramocracy]

Make normal mode easier ultimately solves very little, as the current complaint crowd will simply shift gears and start yelling that heroics are too hard. Why anyone thinks this isn't a playerbase trend by now is beyond me.

[Kreeshak]

none of the four choices

[Deleted]

I'd like for players to get better. Normals are not "too hard".

Its not rocketscience.

[Pasture]

10m easier then 25m, drops lower ilvl loot.

The people voting for this are 25 man raiders who don't like 10 mans getting the same loot. They're not the target audience for this vote.

[Deleted]

The people voting for this are 25 man raiders who don't like 10 mans getting the same loot. They're not the target audience for this vote.

I voted for it and I raid 10 man. I never had so much fun raiding as in WotLK. It was perfect raid difficulty setups.

[Larwood]

What gap? If anything lfr is too close. Lfr is not for raiders, it's for the people who didn't raid until it was introduced, people doing normal shouldn't have to do it unless they couldn't kill a boss (just like with heroic raiders doing normal bosses).

The only problem with difficulty this tier is the balance. I mean who the fk at blizzard thought it was a good idea to have the second half of the raid be easier than the first?

Basically what they should do is smooth out progression so the next boss is always harder than the previous, make it so you can't switch up in difficulty from one boss from the next, and make it so you can't get loot off the same boss in both lfr and normal/heroic. You don't fix this problem by adding more and more difficulty settings, you fix it by making the difficulty ramp smoother on the settings we have.

Perspective: our guild composition is terrible, we have 3 spriests, we raid once a week and not even every week. But we're not bad players. We're currently working on N durumu (40% after 30 mins working on it). This is about where we should be to finish the raid before 5.4. The only way to not finish the tier in time is to be worse than us; to be very casual, have a shit comp, AND be bad players. That's how it should be, if you're useless you shouldn't be finishing - you can already see all the bosses in lfr.

[Pua]

Why is there no "It's fine the way it is" option.

Because it's not fine the way it is.

[Larwood]

As for the options in the poll, the first 3 are not solutions to the supposed problem. If you make the gap smaller by turning normal into easy mode all you're doing is creating a new gap between easy and heroic.

[Deleted]

I would be quite happy to see a more casual 10m mode introduced. I don't think it would need an ilvl reduction though. There could just be more incentives for those who tackle the regular normal modes then progress onto Heroic.

There is also an insane ilvl difference between 10 and 25. I'm fine with some difference to incentivise 25m, but the difference is unfair currently and far outweighs the challenge gap.

10m Casual - No TF loot, 2 loots per boss, slightly delayed HC unlock.
10m - TF loot, 2 loots per boss, plus a chance(25%) of one extra drop
25m - TF loot, 6 loots per boss

25m would still have more loot per person and more TF loot.

The higher TF drop rate in 25m is fine, as long as the 25m encounters are balanced around having higher ilvl, which they currently aren't.

[tyrindor]

Where's the option to "Keep it as-is". Talk about a biased poll.

LFR is easy and a joke, there should be a big gap between that normals, and then again for heroics. If I had my way there would be even bigger gaps between LFR/Normal/Heroic. You get rewards the more work you put into the game, people downing heroics are putting lots of time into the game and SHOULD be rewarded better. Just because you can't, doesn't mean you should get near the same gear level for way less effort.

I raid about 16hr/week, and people raiding 2-3hr/week are generally only ~20 ilevels lower than me. That's not major, and I miss classic where raiders putting in this much time were easily identified. Now lots of people just blend together, unless your on a really bad server that only has 1 heroic guild.

[Prokne]

The people voting for this are 25 man raiders who don't like 10 mans getting the same loot. They're not the target audience for this vote.

25m normal has the same gap between LFR and normal as 10m so yeah any raider is the target of the poll. I wouldnt care if 10man had better loot if I could do 25 but gear levels do matter to the people who raid for gear. These people go to which every size is easiest to get into for gear if the levels are the same which right now is 10man causing reduced recruiting pools for 25mans. This is the opposite of what you want since 25s require a larger recruiting pool because of higher turnover. So the best way to boost 25s is to get the swing raiders back that went to 10s for easy loot.

[Deleted]

Because it's not fine the way it is.

Tuning raids for "speciel needs" would destroy raiding. Normal mode are EASY. If you can't handle them stick to LFR, it's created for people like you.

[Enosh]

Where's the option to "Keep it as-is". Talk about a biased poll.

blizzard lost 1.3 million subs

if you think it will stay "as it is" you are just kidding yourself
changes are coming with 5.4, the question is what exactly blizzard thinks is the problem, they already did say that they see there is an issue with lfr being too easy and not really social and normals too hard for some

of course them saying they see it's a problem doesn't mean they actually think it is worth fixing, maybe they think further sub loss can be prevented by making normals even harder in 5.4

idk what they are going to do but I am quite sure 5.4 will bring some changes in that regard
although depending on when the next expansion comes they might leave it for 6.0

[ro9ue]

Should be LFR and a Normal mode, that's it. And normal mode should be half puggable and eventually have increasing debuffs. I really don't think there's a good market for hardcore players anymore. If there are any hardmodes I think it should be like Ulduar where you do the encounter differently.