Do you agree "if you don't raid, you don't need raid gear"?

[Bigbamboozal]

This is a classic play school mentality. "I have a Tonka Truck and you don't ha ha" I thought must people out grew that by the time they are young adults.

Only if you have a completely fail moment in the reading comprehension department....
Otherwise it's a 'I worked hard and got my reward, it does not bother me that people who did nonheroic raids get a cut down version'.
So if I translated it to your analogy, I think it'd be closer to "right on, we all got wheels, sure mine is a little nicer, but hey, you ain't walking, good on you".
In fact I usually find people like the person you quoted to be closer to the mindset of an actual hardcore. No snowflake treatment needed, I has a time stamp sorta thing.
I'd rather 5 million of that poster than 1 more of the usual.

[apepi]

They earned the ease by doing content that is more challenging than non-raids.

It's fair and square. Anyone can raid if they chose to. If you choose not to, then don't complain about getting raid gear.

I think Brawler's guild should be like challenge mode for one person, not dependent on how good your gear is.

[Lightwysh]

This is a classic play school mentality. "I have a Tonka Truck and you don't ha ha" I thought must people out grew that by the time they are young adults.

This is the very reason "hardcore" raiders want tier removed from lfr.

In the end it doesn't really matter, but I think lfr should have the same type just lower quality gear available to raiding flex+. The best way to resolve the "I have to run lfr to get my set bonus so I can play in real raids" argument is to have a lockout on per boss gear. Kill a boss in lfr, no loot off that boss in flex+. It solves all the loot drama aside from the special snowflake mentality. Plus us lfr Heroes can have our shit Ilvl tier and be happy.

[Polybius]

You don't need it if you don't raid. It's for raiding, after all.

[Stonez1982]

Raid gear is for progression in raids. I never had an issue with the way things used to be (Wrath). New raid, shiney.. go raid on main for 3/4th the expansion. When the lull comes and my alts get a turn, I always liked the catch up dungeons and the "a little under" raid gear that I could get.

The annoyance comes when i would play alts(mists) and get semi-rocked in the new outside raid pve content and be gear stuck unless I LFR'd a bunch to get "good enough gear/ weapon" to progress at a semi decent pace.

[Freaknsweet]

Only if you have a completely fail moment in the reading comprehension department....
Otherwise it's a 'I worked hard and got my reward, it does not bother me that people who did nonheroic raids get a cut down version'.
So if I translated it to your analogy, I think it'd be closer to "right on, we all got wheels, sure mine is a little nicer, but hey, you ain't walking, good on you".
In fact I usually find people like the person you quoted to be closer to the mindset of an actual hardcore. No snowflake treatment needed, I has a time stamp sorta thing.
I'd rather 5 million of that poster than 1 more of the usual.

I don't follow good sir , can you elaborate further.

[threads]

People shouldn't be rewarded for things that require no effort.

In WoD you will get geared from lfr way faster than now, which will help you in getting into normal (flex).

[NuLogic]

Yep I don't pvp so pvp gear is pretty useless for me.

[klogaroth]

This is the very reason "hardcore" raiders want tier removed from lfr.

In the end it doesn't really matter, but I think lfr should have the same type just lower quality gear available to raiding flex+. The best way to resolve the "I have to run lfr to get my set bonus so I can play in real raids" argument is to have a lockout on per boss gear. Kill a boss in lfr, no loot off that boss in flex+. It solves all the loot drama aside from the special snowflake mentality. Plus us lfr Heroes can have our shit Ilvl tier and be happy.

Actually the reason plenty of people want this change to happen has little to do with creating a gap between people doing LFR and people doing hard modes.
The reason is so that people don't just cap, run LFR a few times and think that there's no point in progressing any further.

Far from wanting to create a rift, plenty of raiders would really like to see a big new influx of people to raiding in WoD.

What this change does is create a reason for people to venture beyond LFR.

[Simulacrum]

Gear is the game's means of character progression. The gear's in-game utility is a secondary concern.

[Freaknsweet]

Actually the reason plenty of people want this change to happen has little to do with creating a gap between people doing LFR and people doing hard modes.
The reason is so that people don't just cap, run LFR a few times and think that there's no point in progressing any further.

Far from wanting to create a rift, plenty of raiders would really like to see a big new influx of people to raiding in WoD.

What this change does is create a reason for people to venture beyond LFR.

It could be , I would argue that does people had no intention to raid any further to begin with regardless of the change. In other word they were never a nominee for higher level raiding difficulty. I guess will have to wait and see. Its gonna an interest expansion I can tell you that.

[SoundOfGuns]

Considering this game is full of morons who think they are "t3h sh13t! for whatever reason and are smug as fuck when they see "Uh his gear is not of that color and that style. lol noob" im by now of the opinion they should throw fucking heroic-gear out for everyone and their dog and then play the game to see which of those loudmouthed people are actually just lucky to be in a group that carries them and who's struggle to raid has nothing todo with their skills. But that is beside the point i guess...

Of course raid-gear is for raiders... but i am a bit puzzled some do not consider LFR raiding. It actually is, believe it or not. Dumbed down, yes. Ridiclously easy at times, no doubt, but that doesn't change the fact these people are raiding and im pretty fine when they get a weaker T-Set for their own. If you really want to distinguish then please, wear the set of the color of your difficulty and the problem is solved. I grant LFR-Raiders their cheaper T-Sets. Not entirely unselfish tho as i till to this day have been sitting there with an LFR-Helmet... ...while the rest is partly Normal- and Heroic-Mode. I also only got the set-bonus through it because im wearing a different pair of gloves with superior stats. Go figure.

edit: I actually agree with Freaknsweet and his quoter tho. It could serve as a motivator to push people towards the other difficulties instead of being satisfied with LFR... but i doubt it will work like that. People that go LFR to get that Gear probably also care enough to went to do the next step anyway. And people who don't care about the Tier-Sets are likely to not care then as well... So (to me) it seems like all we get is nothing and i lose an additional chance to make up for the pissing bullshit blizzard calls "loot-system".

[klogaroth]

It could be , I would argue that does people had no intention to raid any further to begin with regardless of the change. In other word they were never a nominee for higher level raiding difficulty. I guess will have to wait and see. Its gonna an interest expansion I can tell you that.

Granted there are going to be people who even after trying the new flex raids and group finder don't like them and decide to stick to LFR, but I actually don't think that is going to be that many people. Certainly I would expect only a few of those people who do move on to normal mode will continue on to mythic mode.

Normal modes through the group finder shouldn't take much longer to put together than the LFR queue takes anyway, they may even form faster. So the time isn't going to be too much of an issue. As far as difficulty goes often flex runs are a lot smoother than LFR, and in terms of the actual relative difficulty of them there isn't really that big a gap.

Planned raids, whilst not possible for everyone, are better still. You start to get to know people, you know that after 1 wipe your tank isn't just going to leave the group, you know what to expect a bit more. You aren't queueing up thinking "I hope I don't get a raid full of dicks". Unless you joined a guild of dicks, then it's your fault.

[Itisamuh]

I don't really care, it's a pretty meaningless issue to me. Gear is gear, and as long as it's good enough to stay relevant in that content for the next tier, that's all I need. Which is why I don't like arena gear and raid gear being better for battlegrounds than honor gear, but that's another issue.

[Drithien]

Blizzard is crazy about gear lately.
The last patch creates 4 tiers. ilevel difference is 50+.

Now it tries to give LFR no tier bonus and bad looking gear.
The argument is "if you don't raid, you don't need raid gear".

Do you agree?

I don't see where they made that argument. Gear from LFR is still raiding gear.

What is more, the pieces of gear missing from LFR in Warlords is more an attempt to offer an incentive for players to move towards at least Normal-mode raiding, and actually experience some legitimate raid encounters; than a punishment for not doing so, or an attempt to increase the prestige of players that do.

So it seems to me that this is more your argument than theirs. And it would help everyone reading such a post for this distinction to be made, so everything is clear.

As for your argument: World of WarCraft is a videogame, nobody needs anything in a videogame, ever. So, your, possibly exaggerated, argument is false in my opinion.

Now, if it is indeed exaggerated, and you don't really mean "need," but would write something like "desire"/"wish"/etc if you were more literal: then I think that the problem does not as much lie with the "If you don't raid, you shouldn't want for raid gear" attitude, but an underlying problem of the game: as a whole, World of WarCraft is too focused on raiding. An activity that is not much of an inherent interest to the majority of the game's players.

But it's the one PvE activity with the most attention paid to by the game's developers, the one with the most work being put on, the one advertised the most, the one where the developers of the game try to shoehorn almost everyone in; and as a result, the only endgame PvE piece of content that offers as high and as engaging a development of a player's character.

As much as raid-focused players -that seem like an overwhelming majority in places such as these forums, but pose such a minuscule minority in the actual game's community- don't realize its value, and on the contrary quite often even outright despise it; levelling is what most players enjoy the most in a role-playing game such as this. The reason is primarily the continuous development of their character. Always some more power to be attained, a new rank of a spell, a new ability; something to shake the paradigm of how the character plays.

That is until you reach the final level, and all that is removed pretty much. No new abilities, more powerful versions of existing ones... nothing. In WoW in particular, with its quite limited development concepts in the first place, the change is even more disappointing: there were not that many things to gain while levelling to begin with, courtesy of the extreme streamlining of the game, and the ridiculousness that is the game's current levelling experience; but at the endgame things get even worse than the quite bad that they already are.

The only thing that remains really is raw increase of existing power. Which happens through gear and only.

What is more there is next to nothing other than whacking things in dungeons in endgame to keep players happily occupied; nothing as advanced as raiding is. There is no in-depth exploration for example. No need for special equipment to help a character survive a hostile environment, like a pair of sturdy boots for example to not fall apart from the toxicity of an area's soil, or warm enough to offer adequate protection against the horrible chill of a mountain's slopes. Nope, boots in this game help in upgrading your stamina/intellect/etc bars and only. Because the game is that shallow and limited. Even though most of its players wish it were not.

And here is the problem: with only beating on things in dungeons being most of what endgame is about, and the only means to advance your character in any way being by default to be able to beat harder, what are all the people that don't like, are not interested, or just don't have the time to participate in Heroic and Mythic raiding to do?

If the game was a proper -not even advanced, just proper at this point would do- open-world role-playing game, with actual respect for the players and their varying playstyles; then all parts of the game would be adequately developed for, and would be suitably advanced. Starting with exploring (open world) and shaping of character and questing (role playing) of course. If someone in such a scenario was into survival in the wild for example, a tent that would help him stay somewhat safe while recovering would be worth ten epic-quality belts. An advanced gnomish engineer wouldn't even notice someone's shiny new axe, if it was next to the missing part of the schematics of Blow-your-self-up-and-probably-not-survive-atron 3512. A player dabbling in questing wouldn't notice a whole squad of decked out raiders passing by if he was immersed in an actually gripping storyline. But no, in this open-world role-playing game, the world is so small and mostly shallow and non-interactive, the activities so bland and few, that sooner or later the only thing to look forward to is increasing your generic attributes, even if provided with an actually interesting-to-you activity of good quality, you would hardly know anything about raiding, much less busy yourself thinking about its rewards.

So I think that it's good that potential raiders are given an incentive to enjoy actual raiding. And with the new Normal mode even more than ever before. The problem with the whole thing is that raiding is not as popular as to warranty such attention from the developers on the cost of other activities that would offer so much more enjoyment to the majority of the millions of people that make this such a successful game to begin with. So people that genuinely don't want to raid have nothing else but raiding to do for the most part.

[cFortyfive]

Considering this game is full of morons who think they are "t3h sh13t! for whatever reason and are smug as fuck when they see "Uh his gear is not of that color and that style. lol noob"

You sound pretty mad to be perfectly honest. On your question why lfr is no raiding - easy. There is no chance of failure. Success is guaranteed even regardless of you being actually physically present.
I am aware that the concept of actually playing a game is probably not what the future holds for mainstream gaming as a lot of monetizing concepts of other titles clearly show but I don't see why you shouldn't at least be honest about it.

[hotmess]

I somewhat agree with it. I don't think non-raiders need raiding gear because.. they aren't raiding and getting the proper gear to progress in raiding. But I feel if LFR is all that people do (on top of say, dailies, dungeons, scenarios etc -- everything but actual raiding) then they should be able to progress their gear enough that they can be "OP" in max level questing content. I know, I know.. questing is easy. Dailies are easy and repetitive and boring, BUT, people should be able to progress gear wise enough that they can possible handle "group" quests alone fairly easy. Especially if we get more content like the Timeless Isle, the Isle of Thunder (was that the name of it?) and The Isle of Giants.

Any other reason to "need raid gear" to not raid, imo, just seems invalid and greedy.

[Kainara]

Because everything is life is relative.

How rare something is, depends on how many people have it. When everyone and their grandmother has something, it becomes not rare and worthless. Value goes up when it is less common, and eventually more rare.

Less people in tier will make them more rare, therefore in their mind worth more. When everyone has it, it becomes something common that not worth happy about.

That is why some of the semi hardcore players want the lower rank people unable to get the same items, achievements, and even want them removed for the next tier. Whereas the VERY hardcore don't really care about it, because they know what they have is more rare than everyone else's anyway.

Jealousy is not a legitimate argument to deny other people playing the game to have access to something. You don't reward childish behavior.

[tss]

The whole notion that you don't need gear if you're not gonna do raid progress is, in my opinion, a weak excuse to justify people's disdain for LFR. If heroic (soon mythic) raids were tuned in such a way that they dropped no gear and were all about the challenge, you can bet the same people saying LFR players don't need gear would be flooding rivers with their tears over not being rewarded.

But you're looking at it wrong. Mythic gear drops are to help you progress in Mythic, just as LFR gear is to help you "progress" in LFR. Then, if you wish to move up a difficulty level, you do so once you've attained a suitable item level from your current difficulty.

[PrairieChicken]

Do LFR need gear? Yes
Do LFR need RAID gear? No