2nd Wing LFR tuning is interesting

[Thallidomaniac]

Blizzard needs to figure out how to test LFR with groups of people other than hardcore raiders on PTR.

That's easier said than done. There are a lot of people that don't even know that PTR exists.

[Mormolyce]

DBM wouldn't really help that much with LFR Nazgrim in its current version though. It does alert you of stance changes but doesn't give you advice about what they mean or what you might want to do in response.

I think there's a big problem with the concept of the encounter when, again, pretty much every time I have done it, you will have a period where there are no adds and Nazgrim is in defensive stance. And the "right" thing for the group to do is nothing, at least if it's a group with LFR-level skills.

IMO that's just broken. It's certainly not "fun" to be sitting around in the middle of an encounter watching the enrage timer tick. Whatever other problems the encounter has, that's the worst and most unfixable one and the one that makes Blizzard look like a bunch of idiots.

If DBM doesn't matter then it's irrelevant anyway. DBM doesn't teach strats.

First week a wing opens the forums are full of QQ about how it's too hard for LFR, then a few weeks later most people have had practice at it and it's no big deal. Remember when Horridon was too hard? Even Lei Shen was pretty much a certain kill by the end, and that was really pushing the limits of LFR's capabilities. Shrug.

Blizzard needs to figure out how to test LFR with groups of people other than hardcore raiders on PTR.

How? Put guns to the heads of casuals and make them play on the PTR?

[Normie]

It is perfectly fine to DPS him through defensive stance if you are doing LFR.
If 1 person fails once a second, he gains 3 rage. If 25 players fail each one once a secone, he still gais only 3 rage.

That is exactly how I suggested to be done after hitting hard engage twice (people dying early and ofc those doing 30k dps). And we killed it in that attempt.

That's an interesting observation. I didn't know it worked like that.

There is pretty much always at least one person DPSing him during the defensive phase for one reason or another.

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If DBM doesn't matter then it's irrelevant anyway. DBM doesn't teach strats.

First week a wing opens the forums are full of QQ about how it's too hard for LFR, then a few weeks later most people have had practice at it and it's no big deal. Remember when Horridon was too hard? Even Lei Shen was pretty much a certain kill by the end, and that was really pushing the limits of LFR's capabilities. Shrug.

There are nerfs to LFR. Sometimes pretty serious ones.

I don't think Horridon was ever "too hard." Awkward maybe. Lei Shen on the other hand, if a bunch of people hadn't memorized the 4-color strategy, no one would ever have killed him in LFR.

How? Put guns to the heads of casuals and make them play on the PTR?

It's not a simple thing to do. I'm a "casual who plays a WHOLE lot" and while I found the MoP beta interesting, I generally avoid PTR because I don't want to be doing something for the second/third/tenth time when I see it in the "new" patch.

But somewhere out there there is a way to test encounters in a way that adjusts for the lack of coordination that random/LFR groups have.

[Deleted]

Some websites have "Learn LFR bosses in 10 secondes" guides (1-3 sentences to describes the encounter), Blizzard should display them on the loading screen for LFR so people have a clue.

It could even been done in a immersive way: a friendly NPC could talk to the group before, during or after the fight saying something like "Wyrm wants the towers to be taken: SENT SMALL GROUPS TO CAPTURE THEM" or "I fought this general orc a long time ago: DON'T ATTACK HIM WHILE HIS IN DEF STANCE, or he'll crush you" or "Look! We can free our friends by standing on these ORANGE lock!" etc.

In fight, those NPC could act as mini raid leader for LFR and would allow people that don't want to read icy-veins kind of guide to learn the fight while playing.

[zorn711]

I had guild flex group. We cleared both wings in 2:20. I then spent 8 hours in LFR and only have 2 bosses down to show for it -- one took 8 stacks of suck.

I think tomorrow I'm going to try to get a static group together that shows at least a flex achieve and see what we can do.

For what LFR is suppose to be, a chance for casuals to see the content, I think things are overly tuned. People come in with, no enchants, no gems, no DBM, no current knowledge of the fights, and very little class skill and these fights eat the groups alive. Even with 4-5 strong DPS -- we can't carry everyone because they do dumb shit like dps in distance.

[Salystra]

I don't think the tuning is any harder than the usual LFR, it is just the fact most of those that are doing LFR didn't even try flex so they have no clue of what to do. Give it a week and it will flow smoother.

Flex is meant to be a step up not a step down LFR is meant to be the lower level of skill/focus required to get the instance done.


After the horror stories here I don't think ill bother going anytime soon.

[Crispin]

And then they say LFR is for people who don't have enough time for organized raiding . I've never raided 5,5 hours in one sitting in the years that I've raided.

There's a huge difference on spending time when you happen to have it, and planning 2-4 nights a week ahead.

And I've done several 8 hour raiding sessions.

[Deleted]

I was afraid of going LFR after I have read this thread here. Wipes on every boss sounded hilarious. Yesterday I had the chance to get in there.

Galakras and the Iron Juggernaut were easy, no wipes, mostly no deaths. I thought you were overreacting. Then the dark shamans came, holy shit.
Dying in the fire, melees dying to the green adds (I am missing the correct word atm o0) because they instantly had to push their damage with an AE effect on them, instant aggroing and dying. Just those two things killed them from try to try. 7 Buffs in the end. Even that try would have been hilarious I guess, but some cripples left (of course the 40k dps awesomoes leav at first) and there were some others that did their 300k with 35% more dmg, too. The bosses fell pretty fast then, saved the asses.

And Nazgrim? The same again. Don't attack the boss on defense stance...."boom, my mighty 40k dps will help to bring him down in this stance! That is why I ignore the adds. And the whirling axe, I mean, when I am dying it's the healers mistake"

6 Buffs in the ende. Was a long trip

My bet goes for a nerf. And I know, when the hardcore casual-baddies (those, who have no time AND are bad because t is something different) come at the weekend I must prevent myself from visiting the 2nd wing with an alt.

[Deleted]

Obviously he is lying. He comment about 27 stacks of determination proves that. It doesn´t go past 10.

Nothing to see here, just another raider lying about how bad people are in LFR.

Boss 1: 10 stacks
Boss 2: 10 stacks
Boss 3: ...

See where this is going?

Havent tried second wing yet, but i can see some fights being a PITA. I tried Klaxxi and Siegecrafter LFR on the PTR.. that was a nightmare.

[announced]

im scared to do lfr galakras on 2nd wing.. i swear if no1 stacks im gonna imagine a big fireball hitting 800k dmg on the entire raid.. every 5 seconds. flex/normal ftw

[Normie]

im scared to do lfr galakras on 2nd wing.. i swear if no1 stacks im gonna imagine a big fireball hitting 800k dmg on the entire raid.. every 5 seconds. flex/normal ftw

I think if people just stop worrying about defensive stance on Nazgrim, plus whatever nerfs Blizzard has coming, it will be reasonable. Currently the group can't afford to hold off on boss DPS during the defensive stance phase, because that essentially guarantees you an enrage until you have several stacks of determination.

Dark Shaman is going to depend a lot on tanking. The one time I've been able to get to Dark Shaman so far, we 2-shot it. But I thought that was shockingly good, because if you have tanks that insist on kiting the bosses all over Org (which ours did), your melee have to be something out of this world to do any useful damage. It's such an unstructured encounter and no one has come up with an LFR-simple formula for it yet. But tomorrow is another day.

Galakras is all about whether you have a tower group (same as Ji-Kun but more important). I think it will settle down to 1-shots pretty quickly. But if the tower group isn't functional then it will take as many tries as it takes to get the tower group functional.

Juggernaut seems pretty close to tank and spank. I've done it twice and both groups 1-shot it with no particular difficulty.

[Osmeric]

YOU pointed out that 496 would be an issue in the 2nd half of LFR. I merely made the incredibly obvious point that people will get upgrades and not BE 496 for very long when they get there. Unlike you, probably, I've done LFR both weeks do far. My take? 4 upgrades. In 3 wings.

Good thing I didn't dispute that part, isn't it?

And yes, they'll have a bit more experience in the style of SoO raiding. It's no sub for years of raiding, but they'll have been through rather hectic add fights like Dark Shaman and Nazgrim.

And I pointed out that two wings of LFR is likely to make very little difference in their performance. These are largely not noobs we're talking about; they're people who have played the game for a while and are at or near their competence plateau.

The only way the latter parts of LFR are going to see average competence increase is if there's a great filtering of players, if the lesser LFR players disproportionately start giving up. But why should they do that? More likely, the better ones will keep moving to Flex, and average competence in LFR will decrease, not increase.

[Snorkles]

My biggest grief was with tanks mouthing off. We went through 4 tanks yesterday who kept calling everyone noobs then rage quitting even though pretty much everyone was doing it correct - the adds were getting killed, people weren't DPSing in def stance (except maybe one random lock). Nazgrim though, he was everywhere at the back, at the front, in the middle, there wasn't a spot in the room they wouldn't tank him. This seemed to make the whole thing a lot messier. Plus they kept tanking him next to warshamans and healing tide totems. =/

I wish there was some reward for seeing a group through from start to finish though, biggest issue I've had historically throughout LFR is people bailing every 10 seconds.

[Palatank]

After reading all this yesterday, i was afraid to try second wing, but i was very bored and got courage to do it.
And results were:
1st boss: one shot
2nd boss: one shot
3rd boss: 2 wipes, because other tank and me only knew general tactics and need to coordinate better. After 2 tries we found solution and killed boss
4th boss: 3 wipes, one because hunter pulled boss while clearing trash, and 2 because lock and hunter decided to attack boss in DS. After they left, we one shot him.

In general, it was not hard but fun because little thinking is needed and we also explained tactics before fight.
but then again, maybe i was lucky.

[Auggers]

First boss - 1 shout
Second - 1 shot
Third - 1 wipe because of unexpected pull
Last - 1 wipe

Took nearly 2 hours, would have been a little annoyed by the time if I didn't come out with 3 new pieces of gear.

[Normie]

My biggest grief was with tanks mouthing off. We went through 4 tanks yesterday [...]

I wish there was some reward for seeing a group through from start to finish though, biggest issue I've had historically throughout LFR is people bailing every 10 seconds.

It's frustrating ... I run LFR mostly in the wee hours Pacific, and it can take a very long time to replace a tank, as in 20-30 minutes.

So in addition to all the time spent almost killing a boss 3 or 5 times, there's the time spent trying to find more trash to kill in Org while waiting for a tank, et cetera.

Maybe there needs to be something done to make tanking in LFR more straightforward and more desirable.

[Topcraft]

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.

Yes let's take away any sort of learning curve and explain how the fight will work from A - Z. Also, please implement autorotation so I don't have to think about which button I have to push next, I mean, reading all the spell tooltips is just not very satisfying. I want to sit back and enjoy the game, not think about it, geez.

P.s. Where da epix?

Figuring out how the puzzle works from all the pieces you get from the dungeon journal IS immersion into the game. Don't like watching videos to prepare yourself for a fight? Don't do it. I'm not sure your raid leader will agree though.

[Deleted]

They should make Nazgrim untargettable during the add phase for DPS only, so they won't get cocky or greedy when he's almost down.

[Deleted]

I really enjoyed the difficulty of 2nd wing LFR. My stats:
1st boss one shot
2nd boss one wipe
3rd boss 3 wipes
4th boss 4 wipes (we hit enrage one try lol)
5 wipes on trash total
Over all spent 2h in it.

lol, it seems like we been in same raid... same thing happened to me

[evoker]

I tried both wings last night and it was an OK experience overall. I guess since it's the start of the week, the higher geared people do them to fill some holes (as did I - damn trinkets). We one-shotted everything apart from the Shamans and Nazgrim. Every time we reached a boss people were willing to listen to tactics. I had leader and being a RL for my guild, my leading instincts kicked in and explained the fights fast and we were OK.

My only "problem" was that I was doing double the DPS from the 2nd DPS in the raid but that's a general comment for LFR.