2nd Wing LFR tuning is interesting

[Nelaphim-EX]

The biggest issue that I am seeing with the Siege LFR is that the vast majority of people ran to the Timeless Isle, grabbed all the 496 gear they could, and jumped right in. But the Isle does not have weapon/off hand upgrades, so their DPS is absolute garbage.

I inspected the nine lowest DPS on Nazgrim (Worst was doing 12k best out of the 'worst' was doing 40k w/4 Stacks of Determination) in the raid I tried to slog through last night. Out of those 9 people I would not even want to do a Heroic Dungeon with, one had a ToES LFR 2h, one had a MSV 2h, three had heroic dungeon weapons, and one of them had the 450 weapon you get from Arena of Annihilation.

I am not even sure how some of those people managed to get into the LFR, the math does not add up, but they were there and I will never be there again.

[pallyopness]

I think to be honest this is directly related to when during the week you actually raid it. I try to raid all LFR that I plan on doing by Thurs at the lastest as the raiders that want to do it normally do it early in the week. I made the mistake of running an alt in LFR last weekend and it was horrible and we wiped on stupid stuff over and over. I think at one point we had 5-6 stacks of the herp derp buff going on the 2nd boss in the first wing.

Last night we completed the 2nd wing on LFR in about 1.5 hrs with a few wipes but was a fairly decent group. I would suspect that every day further into the week you try LFR will get worse and worse as far as difficulty.

I know....I have never seen so many under 50k dps in my life in lfr as I do now....Im sure its due to raiders doing flex instead of lfr, which is what every raider will be doing after this is all said and done lol.

But, I do remember the lfr crowd saying they don't need carried by raiders that they will manage......yep they sure will at 3 hours per wing!!

[healzforu]

So after my experience last night I will never do LFR again. My raid group has 9 bosses down on normal and I'm in about 535+ for my healing set. The first wing wasn't too bad honestly but I think the issue with wing 2 is that Blizz is just adding far to many mechanics for example dark shaman. There are a ton of things that you need to watch out for. So now onto my experience.

Galakras: I start explaining what to do, tank pulls, we 1 shot boss with minimal explanation because the people in the towers knew what to do (thankfully) and shot down the boss. I did laugh at melee running into the tower and dying because they didn't listen when I said don't go in until the demo is dead. Did have to spam need tank in tower about 10-15 times before he finally figured out what to do.

Iron Juggernaut: I don't even bother explaining this fight short of don't stand where the tanks are standing, click on crawler mines and don't move the laser through the tar in P2. 1 shot boss.

Dark Shamans: Oh boy..wiped about 4 times on trash because 1 tank just decided to grab 4 groups, people getting MC'd, etc. I explain to kill the wolves first then tank swap when stacks fall off, you can position ashen wall as a tank, dodge everything, stay out of the big red circle. First attempt, melee get trucked by oozes. Range start dying because oozes aren't dying. Second attempt, I explain that melee needs to run from oozes. Melee dies to oozes. Third attempt, get mass rezzed next to boss, accidental pull by tanks, wipe. Fourth attempt, melee gets killed by oozes, ashen walls are scattered everywhere, I am 40k HPS above the next healer and only 3 out of the 6 healers are above 40k HPS in total. Wipe. Even with 4 stacks of determination we still missed enrage by about 15+%. /leaveraid.

Me and another guy who had done it on normal were laughing how badly we would fail on defensive stance on Nazgrim. I imagine if my group ever made it past dark shaman it would have been very bad.

So basically my view is this. Now that flex is out, the good raiders will do that and never step foot in LFR which means all that is left is the bad players that were previously getting carried by the good raiders. From my experience there are not enough good raiders that even after explaining and determination are enough to counteract all the bad raiders. Additionally there are far too many mechanics in fights for bad LFR players to handle. And dark shamans is just unreal for LFR. Even if the mechanics did no damage it's still to much, especially the falling meteor that does like 300k to the entire raid. You need to use healer CDs on that or people die even on LFR. So I wasted about 2 hours in LFR and learned my lesson to never go back. As more and more good raiders realize this LFR will get worse and worse. While I appreciate flex it is going to kill LFR or at least force Blizz to make it so faceroll you have no risk of failure.

EDIT: And before anyone mentions it, I ran LFR on Tuesday which has always been the day that most good players run it to get it out of the way in the past. So this wasn't a run on Monday night when only the bad players are left.

Great post! This is the reason i decided not to even attempt lfr this tier since both my main and my main alt have the cloak. I generally run normal/heroic on my main with our raid group and then do flex and a few bosses on normal on my alt, there really is no reason to do an lfr, one 528 ilvl pieces do nothing for either of my toons and 2, i just dont wanna be stuck in there for 2-3 hours at a time. I think flex is the beginning of the end of lfr at least for the more serious raiders and those that at least have a raiding guild.

[Delaios]

I won't be entering LFR on my main anymore, just from time to time on alts to spend some seals and hopefully get a weapon or pet. I've got a few heroic ToT, some thunderforged and the rest normal ToT gear. The pathetic upgrades I'll get from SoO LFR are not worth the hassle of queueing and then spending two hours to clear it. Took me ~3 hours to get the 2nd part done today on my main, and what I got for it were vendor epics (boots and two cloaks) and gold.
They really should come up with some sort of DPS check. Under 80k on average and/or very low activity? Auto-boot. Tunneling Nazgrim despite adds being up and him being in defensive stance? Auto-boot. Shouldn't be too hard to come up with similar things for each fight.

There's also way too much trash in 2nd wing, or they just gave it too much health. Clearing the area for Dark Shamans takes ages, is boring and rewards you with nothing more than a few gold and maybe a mote or two. Mokvar the Treasurer did give me a good laugh after one shotting me by tossing a coin at me.

[Tziva]

I've only done Nazgrim on flex -- not on normal or LFR yet -- but he didn't seem bad (for comparison: we one shot; even iron juggernaut took two attempts) so I was really surprised to hear that he was the boss everyone was getting hung up on in LFR and not, like, Galrakas.

I probably won't queue for wing 2 until next week because I'm going to assume most groups are going to be struggling just due to newness. After the massive group cycling on Will of the Emperor and Garalon in Tier 14 LFR I've been more hesitant to rush in the first week to see stuff because I don't really have the time to wait until the raid gets 10 stacks of determination to win.

[NightZero88]

That being said I think the whirling axe thing hits for way too much. On my shaman (mail gear) it hit me for like 288k per tick. If I recall it ticks pretty fast and can therefore kill pretty much anyone in 2 ticks if they're even just a bit slow on their reaction time.

Not to be rude but on normal this is the mechanic you should never get hit by. On normal, if you get hit even once he summons another one. Additionally it is slow as hell, you could walk backwards and move faster than it. It should kill you in 2 hits, heck 1 hit since the mechanic is supposed to not get hit by it period.

[xavierjn]

I spent 5 hours in LFR 2 last night. I joined a group on Galakras that already had 5 stacks of the buff. After the first wipe, they passed raid lead to me and I took over. The group was honestly that bad. I see 2 sides to this.

1) First week of release, you have to expect wipes and be patient while people learn the fights. They aren't going to hit home runs their first time at bat.

2) These LFR's are just miserable, and while you do need to give time for people to learn, the actual learning curve on some of these fights is ridiculous. The problem is that these absolutely horrible experiences early on set the tone for some that will not be comfortable joining LFR next week for that wing or a newer one.

Both of those points are fine, in the end, and I do believe these LFR's will just become easier and easier as more see the fights. One thing I do wish, though, is that Blizzard made the required ilvl to SoO LFR higher than they did. Even slightly higher, say...510 or even 505. This would possibly at least force some new alts into ToT first for a week or 2 while they acquire VP to boost their ilvl, since the Timeless pieces may actually be just short of what they need to reach the ilvl requirement. It is too much to ask right now of LFR carriers to carry to the extent they have to now. These 'Timeless' alts would be fine in SoO if the fights were tuned down just a little bit more, but at their current tuning, it is an absolutely dreadful experience.

[Tziva]

They really should come up with some sort of DPS check. Under 80k on average and/or very low activity? Auto-boot. Tunneling Nazgrim despite adds being up and him being in defensive stance? Auto-boot. Shouldn't be too hard to come up with similar things for each fight.

Sure it's easy to check something like that, but it's counter to the design philosophy of LFR. LFR is supposed to be forgiving of those things on purpose. It's not tuned for people who do good DPS or perform mechanics perfectly; if LFRaiders could do that, they wouldn't be in LFR, they'd be in Flex or Normal, getting better loot in a more enjoyable atmosphere.

A person who feels like anyone should be automatically booted from LFR the second they fuck up on strategy doesn't belong in LFR themselves. It's not for you, and you're just ruining the fun for the people it is for.

I don't like wiping a zillion times on super easy bosses because people don't know what they're doing either, but this can be solved by explaining how do to the fights. If they don't listen, then fine, vote kick 'em. But people are never going to learn if it auto boots them the second they do the wrong thing, and you're also never going to finish LFR if you lose nearly all your raid group every fight and have to keep replacing them as people cycle in and out.

[blaqkmagick]

Not to be rude but on normal this is the mechanic you should never get hit by. On normal, if you get hit even once he summons another one. Additionally it is slow as hell, you could walk backwards and move faster than it. It should kill you in 2 hits, heck 1 hit since the mechanic is supposed to not get hit by it period.

I guess I was tunnel vision-ing at 1am but I thought it kind of just jumped around haphazardly, no? Is it something you can see coming towards you? If so, whoops.

EDIT: Yep, just watched a youtube video of the LFR encounter. Clearly I wasn't paying enough attention :S

[Thelxi]

It seems Blizzard was happy with their little LFR Lei Shen tuning experiment, and now most will be utilizing determination and repair bots for a few months at least. I don't even want to know what Garrosh will do to LFR groups.

[Osmeric]

Sure it's easy to check something like that, but it's counter to the design philosophy of LFR.

The design philosophy of LFR can be understood if you realize it doesn't even require your gear to be gemmed or enchanted (or even spec-appropriate).

[yuca247]

One thing me and my brother noticed is, the earlier in the week you do lfr the smoother the run. Our theory is most decent players that do lfr on their main get it out of the way early, usually tues or wed. Later on in the week, you've got . . . not so decent players going on their undergeared alts so it's a wipefest left and right. Maybe it's just our experience, but we've seen it enough to actually believe it to be true.

[Osmeric]

It seems Blizzard was happy with their little LFR Lei Shen tuning experiment, and now most will be utilizing determination and repair bots for a few months at least. I don't even want to know what Garrosh will do to LFR groups.

I don't think they'd be very happy with the consequences of this scenario. This is the last tier. LFR heroes don't need to gear up for anything else. If LFR becomes obnoxious, people will just stop running it (and many will unsub).

Nerfs are incoming.

https://twitter.com/Rygarius/status/382689853475139584

Giving a heads up that additional tuning hotfixes are getting tested for Nazgrim on Raid Finder.

[NightZero88]

If you look at LFR across previous expansions it always seems to go in this order:
Wing opens on week 1: Normal raiders run it looking for trinkets/weapons/tier/etc to fill out their slots early in the week. Raid gets progressively worse as the week goes on.
Week 2: Same as above
Week 3-end of tier: As more raiders leave as they don't need gear anymore, the quality of the raid goes down as less good players are around to carry the bad players.

Towards the end of DS LFRs were so bad people were stuck on spine etc for hours. With ToT they introduced determination and it did help. I have no idea how bad LFR was at the end of the tier because I started raiding in normals and never went back but I assume it was similar. Now with SoO I expect the same thing. The difference this tier however is with the introduction to flex you never have the beginning part with good raiders carrying the bad so I see one of two things happening. The bad players will get better and LFR will improve or people will just give up on it and it'll be terrible all the time and people will try to get carried in flex instead.

[Tziva]

The design philosophy of LFR can be understood if you realize it doesn't even require your gear to be gemmed or enchanted (or even spec-appropriate).

Ungemmed/unenchanted gear irritates me on a personal level a great deal, but it's also not necessary for LFR.

I wouldn't complain if part of the ilvl check included verifying that a person has at least X% of things gemmed and enchanted, though, but I don't think that's necessary.

I'm still gonna be irritated over those people though.

[hablix]

I don't know whether it will sort itself out or whether we will see (more) nerfs later in the week.

But I guess we'll know pretty soon.

Blizzard needs to figure out a better way to immersively describe encounters. Dungeon Journal is a terrible way to learn about an encounter (it's a useful way to learn a detail about an ability). I'm opposed to watching videos and reading "strats" as a player who is interested in the immersion of the game.

But you wind up in these encounters and the only way you can figure them out from the actual experience is to mouseover debuffs, look at the combat log, et cetera.

Not very satisfying either.

I actually think the fights reflect player feedback in this regard. None of them really have confusing mechanics (so far) that require reading a strategy guide in a major way, or amount to solving puzzles. Most of them are centered around movement, positioning and playing your class vs. solving mechanics. This is what makes them so fun to me. The dark shaman fight is a prime example of this... it is epic as hell, awesome to behold, challenging on an individual level, and all around a cool fight without any real mystery as to how to do it or any need to decipher a strategy guide or the dungeon journal. Other fights that do have special mechanics at least make them a more or less individual responsibility of everyone, and on Flex at least don't wipe the raid if they're done incorrectly, like Norushen on Flex where doing the orbs gives you bonus damage to the boss but doesn't blow people up if you don't do them.

Some counter examples would be Stone Guard (particularly Normal mode on release) where the mechanics are confusing and the onus is squarely on the tanks to get it right, Maghera where on Normal the key apparently is to kill serpents in the correct order or the raid wipes, Iron Qon which despite doing every week for months I still don't know how I get stunned/frozen in the later phases or if it's avoidable, Lei Shen where once again it's on the tanks to figure out how to properly tank and move the boss to manage his charge level or w/e and the raid wipes if they get it wrong. Not saying any of those are bad fights, just that there has been a lot of player feedback about these kinds of mechanics and the bosses in SoO seem to reflect that and are even better for it.

All that said, Nazgrim LFR is probably overtuned, but only for having too much HP rather than the Defense stance thing. My raid had 3 failstacks when we killed him and still only killed him moments after hitting the berserk timer. At least one of the three wipes was in fact a wipe caused by him going berserk. It really sucks in LFR to have 3 wipes on a boss that were close to if not 10 minutes each.

TL;DR: I'm also opposed to the idea of needing to watch videos and/or read strats to do a fight, but thankfully the boss fights in SoO are more in agreement with that philosophy than previous tiers and are still challenging anyway.

[Osmeric]

Ungemmed/unenchanted gear irritates me on a personal level a great deal, but it's also not necessary for LFR.

Most of the people for whom it isn't necessary are going to have it anyway, just because you don't become good by being a slacker.

Yes, it's very irritating that just such a filter isn't included.

[DetectiveJohnKimble]

I guess I was tunnel vision-ing at 1am but I thought it kind of just jumped around haphazardly, no? Is it something you can see coming towards you? If so, whoops.

EDIT: Yep, just watched a youtube video of the LFR encounter. Clearly I wasn't paying enough attention :S

And now LFR makes so much more sense. Huge whirling blade in your face? No biggie.

Anyway, the tuning seems a bit high for what LFR is supposed to be about. I'm guessing they'll lower parts of the 2nd wing like they did for HOF.

[hablix]

One thing to consider re: "this is the first week, once people are geared up it will be easier."

I had a belt drop in LFR yesterday, ilvl 528. I already have an upgraded 522 belt. In order for that 528 belt to be useful, I'd have to spend my valor upgrading it. But I'm saving my Valor for Flex drops. For many of my slots, the LFR gear isn't useful, since I have all the 522 Valor gear plus some Oondasta pieces, all of them upgraded.

I imagine many LFR-exlusive players are in a similar situation. They have most or all of the old 522 gear already upgraded so the current LFR gear offers, at most, +6 ilvls on these slots... after half a week's worth of Valor per piece. Also, many formerly LFR-exlusive players are likely graduating on to Flex, meaning that along with the N/H players who have moved to Flex from LFR, the only people left in LFR are people who don't care about succeeding in it: leechers, AFK'ers, alts with Timeless Isle gear slopped together.

SoO would probably have been properly tuned if not for the introduction of Flex, by which I mean it would have had the proper balance of N/H raiders and people who cared about succeeding to carry the AFKers, leechers and autoattackers. But now that demographic has moved on to Flex and there's few left over to carry LFR anymore.

[pallyopness]

One thing to consider re: "this is the first week, once people are geared up it will be easier."

I had a belt drop in LFR yesterday, ilvl 528. I already have an upgraded 522 belt. In order for that 528 belt to be useful, I'd have to spend my valor upgrading it. But I'm saving my Valor for Flex drops. For many of my slots, the LFR gear isn't useful, since I have all the 522 Valor gear plus some Oondasta pieces, all of them upgraded.

I imagine many LFR-exlusive players are in a similar situation. They have most or all of the old 522 gear already upgraded so the current LFR gear offers, at most, +6 ilvls on these slots... after half a week's worth of Valor per piece. Also, many formerly LFR-exlusive players are likely graduating on to Flex, meaning that along with the N/H players who have moved to Flex from LFR, the only people left in LFR are people who don't care about succeeding in it: leechers, AFK'ers, alts with Timeless Isle gear slopped together.

SoO would probably have been properly tuned if not for the introduction of Flex, by which I mean it would have had the proper balance of N/H raiders and people who cared about succeeding to carry the AFKers, leechers and autoattackers. But now that demographic has moved on to Flex and there's few left over to carry LFR anymore.

I see no problem with this lol. That demographic didn't want help anyway. So be it, I say!!