Normal difficulty raiding: friend and family?

[Libretto]

what I believed

See, this is the problem right here. What you are stating is not fact. It is belief.

[Celista]

Its not what I want, per se, but what I believed blizzard was going to provide, based on their articles.

I see no reason to suggest it,. as they were the ones who wrote out exactly that.

If I remember correctly, the initial plan was to allow the same sort of flex technology to LFR so players can queue from 10-25(?) players, not sure about the player capped number but I definitely remember reading something about LFR being able to be as low as 10 players.

Not sure if that's in the game or not, WoD had a *lot* of scrapped or otherwise adjusted features. Like a 100v100 anniversary battleground, and battle pet breeding...

[ThrashMetalFtw]

All of normal is overtuned for F+F level raiders.

The main problem F+F guilds (and pugs) have is doing the more complicated boss tactics. What F+F level players usually have is one or two guys who can nuke, one or two good healers and maybe a good tank. Everyone else is meh and basically being carried. But that's cool with the group because yeah, friends and family.

Highmaul isn't carriable. Most of the bosses get significantly easier once you load up your raid with more people i.e. complete strangers from trade/LFG tool. Most of the mechanics require everyone to know what the fuck they are doing. F+F guilds will have little johnny drag red mist through the melee on tectus, uncle alfie will arse the mushrooms up and so on and so forth. I know this because it's where my own raid group is at at the moment.

I'm faced with the same predicament I had in cata - either recruit good players and sit the non performers, imploding my guilds ethos or don't kill much of anything even on normal mode.

Blizzard either fucked up or don't care. I'm not very impressed at all. There are 4 raid modes. Two of them HC and Mythic are for highly organised raid groups with min maxers. Theres no need for LFR to be an AOE fest and then normal mode tobe also for a highly organised raid group full of min maxers as well.

You seem to have a screwed up vision of what "friends and family" raiding is supposed to be. It's supposed to to a difficulty clearable with ppl only doing 60% of their potential Dps. It's not supposed to be a difficulty where you ignore all raid mechanics and still win.

Its not what I want, per se, but what I believed blizzard was going to provide, based on their articles.

I see no reason to suggest it,. as they were the ones who wrote out exactly that.

Nope and nope. Blizzards intention with the current normal difficulty, is to mimic the raiding experience of WoTLK 10mans, which it does pretty much perfectly.



I do agree that Imperator is overtuned (or the rest of the raid is undertuned depending on how you look at it). 6/7 Normal is pretty much LFR difficulty, while Imperator normal is harder than most HC bosses.

[Deleted]

See, this is the problem right here. What you are stating is not fact. It is belief.

It's a perfectly reaonable belief, based on what blizzard themselves wrote.

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If I remember correctly, the initial plan was to allow the same sort of flex technology to LFR so players can queue from 10-25(?) players, not sure about the player capped number but I definitely remember reading something about LFR being able to be as low as 10 players.

Not sure if that's in the game or not, WoD had a *lot* of scrapped or otherwise adjusted features. Like a 100v100 anniversary battleground, and battle pet breeding...

yes, the original plan was for normal to be clearable with gear from normal 5 mans as well.

Stuff changes, but they said what they said.

[klogaroth]

If I remember correctly, the initial plan was to allow the same sort of flex technology to LFR so players can queue from 10-25(?) players, not sure about the player capped number but I definitely remember reading something about LFR being able to be as low as 10 players.

Not sure if that's in the game or not, WoD had a *lot* of scrapped or otherwise adjusted features. Like a 100v100 anniversary battleground, and battle pet breeding...

I can't remember if that made it in or not but the idea was that LFR would start by filling up with 25.

If people then left the raid would scale up and down as more people entered or left.

So if you kill Kargath and half your raid leaves you can go on to kill Butcher without having to wait for the raid to fill back up if it's taking ages.

Best way to tell if it went live would be to check the boss health with a full raid a see if it drops as people leave.

yes, the original plan was for normal to be clearable with gear from normal 5 mans as well.

I'd like a source on the bold part please.

Again - entering and clearing are 2 very different things.

If you think the raid was designed for you to not even equip the gear from the bosses you killed on the way to the end boss........then........just.............what..........

[Hayro1]

It's a perfectly reaonable belief, based on what blizzard themselves wrote.

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yes, the original plan was for normal to be clearable with gear from normal 5 mans as well.

Stuff changes, but they said what they said.

You were stating your belief as fact, and misinterpreting what was actually said. The things you claim they say/said/etc aren't actually what was said, not even was it hinted at. Also, what? where did they say it was planned for it to be clearable with gear from NORMAL 5-mans? I'd love to read it. They gave you tons of gearing options, Heroics, daily CM's, BoE's, crafted gear, PvP stuff, Garrison missions, even a raid mission that gave you NORMAL quality gear.

[Deleted]

You were stating your belief as fact, and misinterpreting what was actually said.

No, i didn't.

The things you claim they say/said/etc aren't actually what was said, not even was it hinted at. Also, what? where did they say it was planned for it to be clearable with gear from NORMAL 5-mans? I'd love to read it. They gave you tons of gearing options, Heroics, daily CM's, BoE's, crafted gear, PvP stuff, Garrison missions, even a raid mission that gave you NORMAL quality gear.

You aren't worth the effort.

[klogaroth]

No, i didn't.



You aren't worth the effort.

Or you misread the original quote.

I don't have it to hand but it was demonstrating progression, not clearance. That you would be able to start working on normal mode raids with normal mode 5 man gear.

There was never a statement that you should be killing normal mode Mar'gok fully decked in normal mode 5 man gear.

As it happens there was time enough at the start of WoD for most people to run some heroic dungeons before entering any raid of any kind, so that may have had a bearing on the tuning of the fights. It's hard to tell what the tuning of early normal bosses would be like against a raid that had done normal mode 5 mans only, since there weren't really many groups going in there who hadn't obtained at least a fair few bits of heroic 5 man gear by then.

[Deleted]

Or you misread the original quote.

I don't have it to hand but it was demonstrating progression, not clearance. That you would be able to start working on normal mode raids with normal mode 5 man gear.

There was never a statement that you should be killing normal mode Mar'gok fully decked in normal mode 5 man gear.

As it happens there was time enough at the start of WoD for most people to run some heroic dungeons before entering any raid of any kind, so that may have had a bearing on the tuning of the fights. It's hard to tell what the tuning of early normal bosses would be like against a raid that had done normal mode 5 mans only, since there weren't really many groups going in there who hadn't obtained at least a fair few bits of heroic 5 man gear by then.

The original plan was for normal to lead to normal and HC to lead to HC, with LFR being irrelevent except for sightseeing.

I can't be arsed digging it out, but that's what it said. Obviously, it's not turned out like that, especially if you are low on the skill side.

[Dracodraco]

If you can do the mechanics on normal mode (and you have to in order to kill anything) you can also do the mechanics on HC mode.

If you cannot do the mechanics on normal mode, then you have no endgame raiding content.

This makes normal pretty pointless, irrelevent to both groups of players.

Heroic, fuckups kills you and there's actual enrage timers/you need high output. That's the difference - normal mode, you can take the worst geared scrubs and go with 5 healers with 15 people, and still never get close to butchers enrage etc... Heroic? You better be fucking optimised. THAT is the difference. THAT is the point of friends+family - being able to take everyone you want a long, as long as they can actually play the game. So what if there's 4 mages, 3 warlocks, a shadow priest and two ret paladins as dps? Doesn't matter, setups are irrelevant. F+F. Doesn't matter if they do shit dps, enrage timers are impossible to reach. F+F. Mechanics HAS to be followed in a raid, though - that's the one thing that makes this an actual GAME, and not just a "click here for free loot".

[Deleted]

Heroic, fuckups kills you and there's actual enrage timers/you need high output. That's the difference - normal mode, you can take the worst geared scrubs and go with 5 healers with 15 people, and still never get close to butchers enrage etc...

No, you can't.

Heroic? You better be fucking optimised. THAT is the difference. THAT is the point of friends+family - being able to take everyone you want a long, as long as they can actually play the game. So what if there's 4 mages, 3 warlocks, a shadow priest and two ret paladins as dps? Doesn't matter, setups are irrelevant. F+F. Doesn't matter if they do shit dps, enrage timers are impossible to reach. F+F. Mechanics HAS to be followed in a raid, though - that's the one thing that makes this an actual GAME, and not just a "click here for free loot".

Please tell me what you consider to be "shit dps".

[Celista]

I'm pretty sure that it was LFR not normal mode that was supposed to be balanced around normal dungeon gear, progression for nomal mode raiding is supposed to be normal dungeons -> CMs/Heroic dungeons/LFR -> Normal mode.

Please tell me what you consider to be "shit dps".

Depends on ilvl, our guild alt runs were 15-20k first week of normal mode raiding but we had some people that were (a lot, due to BoEs and CM gear) more geared than others. Supposedly you can clear normal mode with 10k dps but that sounds a little painful...

15k is probably a good starting point for normal modes (? not really sure what the average guild is doing nowadays).

[CthulhuFhtagn]

The original plan was for normal to lead to normal and HC to lead to HC, with LFR being irrelevent except for sightseeing

I'm gonna go ahead and say you probably misinterpreted that like you misinterpreted the watercooler article.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Please tell me what you consider to be "shit dps".

Join an LFR and see. You can get by with a slight improvement for 6/7 normal.

As for what's to be expected from someone who's not just autoattacking, 13-15k single-target is extremely doable for every class with entry-lvl gear, and should be enough to kill bosses (assuming your guild has actually done some HCs, and didn't jump into Highmaul with freshly dinged iLvl 590 chars...). If that's too high for your raiders, there's not much more to say. You can't cure stupidity and willful ignorance.

[Binko]

So in other words Blizzard got rid of MoP LFR and Flex Difficulty.

This exactly. And the 10% or 20% of the playerbase who play at the level of MoP Normal and above simply can't wrap their heads around it. All they can do is endlessly repeat "you should work harder so you can be more like me".

What they are incapable of grasping is that the majority of WoW players don't think being like them is worth the time, effort, stress and grind. Most WoW players understand that this is just a silly video game and the goal is to have fun, enjoy some exciting group adventures and advance through moderately challenging content.

Blizzard has been pushing the concept that raiding is for everybody. But then they stupify LFR to the point that is just a dull chore to get through while leaving WoD Normal at roughly the level of MoP Normal. What percent of the MoP playerbase were clearing Normal mode back in the first couple of months? Maybe 20% or 30% with 10% moving on to higher difficulties.

So where's the Raid Tier for everybody else, the one that falls between the currentl brain-dead WoD LFR and the challenging MoP normal? The tier that was supposed to be for small guilds and F&F guilds and groups of casuals? It doesn't exist.

[Mahourai]

So where's the Raid Tier for everybody else, the one that falls between the currentl brain-dead WoD LFR and the challenging MoP normal? The tier that was supposed to be for small guilds and F&F guilds and groups of casuals? It doesn't exist.

It's Normal. If you think current Normal is the same as MoP normal, you're just wrong.

[Deleted]

It's Normal. If you think current Normal is the same as MoP normal, you're just wrong.

He's right you know.

In MoP F+F guilds had to give up raiding at stone guards, now they get to kill kargath and then wipe on butcher a bit before finally giving up at tectus.

[Mahourai]

He's right you know.

In MoP F+F guilds had to give up raiding at stone guards, now they get to kill kargath and then wipe on butcher a bit before finally giving up at tectus.

"Friends and Family" is not a skill level.

[Jayehn]

Stop confusing normal mode with LFR. What you want is already in the game, and it's called "LFR".

Except it's not. It's just not.

What he wants in the game is a difficulty level that allows him to play with his friends regardless of their skill and doesn't group him up with a bunch of random folks from the internet. That difficulty does not exist. It may even be something as simple as the LFR difficulty without forcing him to also share the raid with folks from the Raid Finder, but what you are insinuating (that his needs are currently met) is flat out false.

[Deleted]

"Friends and Family" is not a skill level.

"Fuckwit" is not a debating tactic.

Infracted.