Update #2 - Yes, Patch 4.0.6 is next week, stop asking.




Luck of the Draw Buff
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
In case you aren't already aware, Luck of the Draw is the name of the buff you get for grouping with random people using Dungeon Finder. It currently provides a 5% buff to damage, healing, and health if you have at least one random player in your group. With patch 4.0.6, we are increasing this buff to 5% damage, healing, and health per random player, up to a maximum of 15%.

In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons. This means that the difficulty in almost all normal and Heroic dungeons for those using the Dungeon Finder tool was higher than expected. Still, with that issue corrected in 4.0.6, we feel the bump up to 15% for three or more random players found through the Dungeon Finder is a necessary change.

The intent of Luck of the Draw is to help make up for the lack of coordination, communication, and familiarity that pick up groups suffer relative to organized groups of guild members and friends. Cataclysm dungeons, especially on Heroic mode, are quite challenging and ask for more group organization than the Wrath of the Lich King dungeons did. Therefore, Luck of the Draw became relatively weaker in Cataclysm. I'm painting the picture with unfairly large brush strokes here, but in general, Heroic dungeons are of appropriate difficulty for organized groups, but just brutal on Dungeon Finder groups. Players wonder, and rightly so, why Dungeon Finder supports Cataclysm Heroic dungeons at all when the chance of success is so low.

We think buffing Luck of the Draw is a good way to go about correcting the difficulty differences because it makes things slightly easier on PUGs without depriving the organized groups of a fun challenge. We also think the bonus is modest enough that it won't encourage organized groups to split up and just PUG instead - - the success rate for PUGs relative to organized groups is just that far behind. We still think you'll have more fun and a greater chance of success running dungeons with friends, but when that isn’t possible, we hope this change will make Dungeon Finder a more pleasant experience. Also remember that patch 4.0.6 is adjusting the difficulty of some bosses that are particularly unforgiving, such as Ozruk in Heroic Stonecore, though to be fair, we are buffing some underperforming encounters as well. In addition, we are offering larger Justice Point rewards for players who just prefer the faster pace and greater success rate of normal dungeons, and by the time 4.1 comes out everyone will have access to more powerful gear, making the older content even easier. But then there'll be new challenges to face!

We'd like to thank everyone who has provided us with feedback. We do listen, even if we don't immediately deploy every design change suggested by the player community. Our intent is to make the game fun for a wide variety of players, which can be quite a challenge when you have a community this large and this varied. We hope you continue to enjoy the game, and look forward to sharing more changes (and a few surprises) in the months ahead.

-Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and was attacked by a coati as a child. (True story.)

All Rated Battleground Weeks Now 10v10
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
We’re in the process of developing a hotfix to push before next Tuesday that will change all 15vs15 rated battleground weeks into 10vs10 weeks.

Looking at participation, the 10vs10 rated battleground weeks have been far and away more popular than the 15vs15 weeks. The difference in organizational requirements as well as battleground map popularity have been a couple big factors that have led to the 10vs10 weeks seeing a great deal more action. By making this change and supporting the popular option we hope to encourage even more players and teams to participate, as they won’t have to wait out every other week, or struggle to beef up to 15 players to match the requirement.

We also have plans to adapt additional battleground maps in the future to work in the 10 player bracket to increase the variety of maps available.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Luck of the Draw Buff started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 559 Comments
  1. Adeleina's Avatar
    So now, folks, we learned that making things hard and nerfing them right after by 15% is a great idea.

    Also, punishing people for playing with people they know and like to play with is great idea. 15% less for them, I say! Stupid socializers...

    Anyway, back to thoughtless grind of heroics... 15% faster thoughtless grind inc...

    Grinding easy stuff is fun!

    ^ That was all sarcasm, in case someone didn't notice.
  1. kduv889's Avatar
    You want to know what's really pathetic?

    All of you brats complaining about heroics becoming too easy should not even be posting. If you're so freakin' good that you can down a heroic in less than an hour already, you're obviously doing a heroic simply for your VALOR POINTS. let's recall WotLK.... over 80% of heroic daily groups in PUGS skipped at least 1 boss if possible if not more to end the heroic ASAP.

    So I ask you brats, why are you complaining again? How long has Cata been out? Why are you still FARMING HEROICS if you're so damn good that you can clear a heroic in an hour?

    Not only has Blizz given you options to take 0% - 15% increased dmg buff but they have not trivialized these heroic bosses.

    The vast majority of heroic pug's don't wipe because they don't have enough HP (not since the 2nd week of Cata release) or enough dmg but they wipe because of avoidable mechanics which will ONE SHOT you or nearly so. Healers who cast 2.4 cast speed heals during heavy dmg is not something a 15% buff will fix.

    Signed and delivered, stay small nerds

    Hco - Laughing Skull - Alliance
  1. Patty's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Simca View Post
    It's only a nerf if you pug. In a guild group, you won't get the buff.

    It's an amazing solution, in my opinion.

    I sure wouldn't have thought of it.
    I agree.. Very clever solution to the whine..

    Good job Blizzard
  1. Aphrel's Avatar
    well this is intresting, heroics are already a joke with the minimum gear. not to mention how easy they are with epics. and now they buff healign dmg and hp with 15%. and this is only the first patch of cataclysm. heroics in teh last patch of this expansion will probobly be solo-content.
  1. Flummox's Avatar
    "Been having a lot of trouble with heroics lately, taking forever long and it seems the group has no coordination or organization. Even after a few wipes when we finally have a strategy down, DPS is so crummy OOMing becomes an issue and we wipe again!"

    "Are you Pugging?"

    "Why, yes I am"

    "Well you're an idiot, run with your guild man, and if you have no decent guilds around on your server pay money to transfer! This *IS* an MMO after all. Scrub. I run all my heroics with *my* guild, because my E-Peen throbs all through the night. We get them done in eleven minutes."

    "Well that wasn't particularly nice."

    <A few months later>

    "Wow, they gave a damage buff? Pugging might not be so darn bad! Maybe I'll go at it again!"

    "THEY BUFFT PUGS? I RUN ALL MY HEROIX WITH GUILDIEZ AND IM OUTRAGED! OUTRAGED!"
  1. Weenietot's Avatar
    I didn't realize a 15% damage buff will allow players to CC mobs without hitting anything.
  1. Shamslam's Avatar
    Lol. We had a priest in pvp gear/greens who cheated the system do a H BRC in 90 minutes with a tank who also cheated the system. Was the nerf really needed?

    I mean it's whatever though. I learned a long time ago to just do guild runs.

    I do have to agree with above poster though. How's this gonna stop the people who are too retarded to CC or people who break it all the time. How's it gonna fix the morons doing 4k DPS? Make them do 4.5k DPS? And the real question...how the hell is it going to stop the insta gib mechanics that retards love to get hit by?
  1. Rilec's Avatar
    Grrrr, I'm so angry that changes to old content that no longer affects me will be helping random pug groups. Blizzard might as well mail out full heroic mode raid epics and send everyone a check irl for $50,000. Grrrr.

    Seriously though, go do raids. They're a lot of fun. There are even hard-modes for people to enjoy.
  1. DiamondTear's Avatar
    I was hoping they'd do this. Seemed like a pretty obvious solution.

    To all the naysayers: if PUGs are where you go to look for a challenge, why not try a raid?
  1. Xuany's Avatar
    lol I love Blizzard add "nerfs" to instances and watching the communities response. Their goal is to have a higher instance completion ratio all around for pugs than it is now. Those groups w/o you in it, being this pro elitist you are, are actually failing. Regardless of someones newness/noobness they should be able to complete an instance and leave raiding to those who can handle it. Whats the big deal anyway, my guild pulls heroics like Wrath, and pugs will be doing the same in the next tier...
  1. Beasty's Avatar
    It's a good solution, pugging is/was a horrible way to experience the game, sometimes it was just not possible to do it with friends for whatever reason and you were unduly punished for this. We shall see if this helps.
  1. Nest's Avatar
    Why wasn't I surprised that I saw Ghostcrawlers name in that forum post... ;>
  1. Azshira's Avatar
    First post from GC I read in a long while.
  1. Bluenose's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by nalle View Post
    Have only done 15 or so heroic pugs in cata, but most of them took 1 hour tops, and this was about 1 month after release.

    I just don't see the need for this since it doesn't really take that long in the first place (queues yes, the dungeons themselves no).

    15% is alot.
    Highlighted the important part, You really have done very little heroics and can't really comment on the state of them.

    I've now geared 3 characters and 5 different specs through heroics and the amount of bad healers, bad dps or low hp tanks is quite astonishing.

    This buff should go a long way to making up for the extremely bad players.
  1. retrofade's Avatar
    Thank God... no heroic PUG I've been in has ever made it past the first boss, in any dungeon. It got to the point where I just stopped bothering with trying, and started leveling alts instead.
  1. mmoc1f234b9ee4's Avatar
    Who really cares? If the heroics were already too easy then shouldn't you all be raiding now? If so how will this affect you?
  1. BobAwesome's Avatar
    I've started to notice that the only people who complain about the difficulty of heroics are the ones who don't raid. I guess that makes sense. If people struggled with raids (ie, 90% of raiders who think they're hardcore) and blizz nerfed the raid difficulty, those 90% would complain as well.

    It seems to me, the only ones not complaining are the ones who just enjoy playing.
  1. Bruin's Avatar
    I think the Luck of the Draw buff is a good change. When I run heroics with my friends/guild, yeah, its to get my daily VPs, but its also usually where we mess with the achievements and such. When I'm running with a PUG, I am just there for the points and don't really want to be there any longer than I need to be. Heroics shouldn't last 2 hours. Yeah, I'm sure some one will talk about how long the old dungeons were (Blackrock Depths comes to mind), but these current dungeons are no where CLOSE to the scale in size that those classic dungeons are, so why should a dungeon that is maybe at best 1/3 of the size take just as long? Quite simply, it shouldn't.

    Do players need to L2play? Of course they do. But have you recently leveled a new character to 85? Have you run those lower dungeons? At NO point anywhere before 85 does it require any actual skill/coordination to get through a dungeon. Oh sure, there's a "difficult" mechanic here or there, but nothing compares to the difficulty jump in the 85 heroics from anything prior - unless you're an experienced raider, at which point, you're probably running with your friends/guildies anyhow.

    So why is it a good thing that Blizzard "nerfed" heroics for "casuals"? Because they've built the game that way from the ground up. Raids are, and always have been, where the men are separated from the boys. And Blizzard gave us Heroic Raids in the last expansion. Seems like the challenge is there IF you want it. It shouldn't be forced upon you, ESPECIALLY when nothing in the game prepares you for it.

    Just my $.02
  1. Duster505's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Susej View Post
    You're failing to see his point. Blizzard shoudn't put Zone wide buffs in places where they are not needed.

    If heroics are HONETSLY THIS HARD FOR PUGGERS. Stop, just stop. Rethink what the problem is. Are you a DPS Class? Is your spec correct for your role? Are you missing gems or enchants? Are you gemming or enchanting the wrong stat?

    There is NO LOGICAL excuse for this change other than.

    "We enjoy watching the selecet handful of players with brains get upset when we drop 15%-30% passive buffs to Health, Healing and Damage.

    Next thing you know you're going to be able to CC with luck of the Draw. It will mark pulls for you all through out the instance and ensure your healer doesn't go OOM.
    Now - you stop and think for a sec. Who added LFD tool into the game ? And for whom ? BLizzard added this feature but did NOT support it in any way shape or form with the new Cataclysm dungeons. THey ingored every person that pointed out he issues and they are STILL ignoring quite a few. This "fix" will not solve many of the issues that LFD tool has. THe true issue is that the Dungeons are not scalable to class - specs - or itemlevels. It still makes the dungeons horribily boring and repetitive over any lenght of time. Add 10 or 100% buff or nerf and its still the same crappy place with same dull mecanics after few months.

    So... wth do you care ? Run with your guildfriends. Oh... sorry .. didn't know it would destroy you game enjoyment that others can actually play too.
  1. Gahgoots's Avatar
    Good news. Finally cut down on the time it takes to run instances, since I work full time and can't play 8 hours a day like all the "hardcore" players.

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