How would you like to handle the "gap" between LFR and Normal raiding?

[Deleted]

But the first tier wasn't hard, so you can't really say the players had no where to go back to in preparation. If you couldn't do T14, which many players did in heroic blues, then... I'd argue that raiding just isn't for you. Flat out.

First tier was brutal. Check the attrition rate, even amongst those who could hack the stone guards.

[fangless]

I think the LFR-Normal gap has nothing to do with the reason recruitment took a nose-dive. The attitude of those that are raiding is self-harming. Blizzard fixed this self-harming attitude that was killing raiding (that is, the percentage of raiders that saw content was drastically falling) by rushing in and introducing LFR. If Blizzard really care about Normal raiding participation then they'll go the same way: LFR10N.

I don't know about other heroic guilds, but we wouldn't, and don't, take people fresh out of LFR. It does nothing for us. We take players that are around the same level of experience. Each expansion, you get your progress reset, and a new chance (if you're actually as good as you think you are) to join a guild at the start.

Adding LFR isn't giving heroic guilds any additional players to recruit from, not by a long shot.

First tier was brutal. Check the attrition rate, even amongst those who could hack the stone guards.

But gear =! skill !!! The mantra of the casual! Everyone was on equal ground as far as gear, and they always are, at the start of the expansion. There's nothing more they can do to help people out in getting started.

[Firebert]

Adding LFR isn't giving heroic guilds any additional players to recruit from, not by a long shot.

LFR wasn't meant for heroic guilds when it was added. It was meant to keep raiding going as something Blizzard should create for its subs, due to the tiny exposure of Firelands.

[Nobleshield]

"Yeah guys, lets stop our ToT H raiding and go back to T14 with these new guys, we need more people for the roster", or,
"Yeah guys, lets start talking to players in other guilds tonight and get them to come to our guild to raid with us instead of their guild", or,
"Yeah guys, lets all go to this server because our current server is dead, you're footing your own transfers though", or
"Yeah guys, lets stop our ToT H raiding permanently, there's no-one left anywhere to fill the roster and we're too good to take anyone less than us".

Other than the last two isn't that how it worked in the "golden age" aka TBC? Poach from other guilds or halt progression and go back to older content.

Still the attitude of so many here just stinks. "If you can't clear it maybe raiding isn't for you". Yeah that's a good way to piss players off.

[Deleted]

Could be nice if LFR was a little more challenging, for now it's just boring.

[Deleted]

But gear =! skill !!! The mantra of the casual! Everyone was on equal ground as far as gear, and they always are, at the start of the expansion. There's nothing more they can do to help people out in getting started.

If everyone is on an equal footing and 75% of the people trying normal mode fail, then there is something wrong with normal mode, not the people.

[Deleted]

I wanna see how can you predict direction of attenuation on HoF 1st boss by sound, Overwhelming Strike on HoF 2nd boss, the whole horrible dance thing in MSV last boss, Horridon's Triple Puncture, and so on. It probably worked well in WotLK, as there was only boss fight which was designed around having DBM - LK (Shadow Traps and Valkyr/Defile timers). But now DBM is a must, as most fights are designed around having such addon, as well as blizzard went overboard with timing and reaction.

I don't know - maybe look at boss cast bar?
and addons for will of emperor dance? really? you have clear indication where hit is going to land.

[crakerjack]

If people can't even do normal raiding... why should I care about them? Their level of skill is way lower than mine so I never have to worry about them... not to mention bad players make PvP more fun. Everyone is ripping on bad players, but would WoW really be fun if everyone was skilled? Not really. It's not my fault people don't know their classes and use only their pve rotation rather than every ability that their class possesses.

[Otimus]

I don't know about other heroic guilds, but we wouldn't, and don't, take people fresh out of LFR. It does nothing for us. We take players that are around the same level of experience. Each expansion, you get your progress reset, and a new chance (if you're actually as good as you think you are) to join a guild at the start.

Adding LFR isn't giving heroic guilds any additional players to recruit from, not by a long shot.





But gear =! skill !!! The mantra of the casual! Everyone was on equal ground as far as gear, and they always are, at the start of the expansion. There's nothing more they can do to help people out in getting started.

So, your idea of "equal footing" is being there at the very beginning of an expansion, or be screwed?

[Melkandor]

If everyone is on an equal footing and 75% of the people trying normal mode fail, then there is something wrong with normal mode, not the people.

That is such a ridiculous statement. What are you spewing out onto this forum?
There is something wrong with new raiders nowadays. They are not being taught to try their hardest and perform to their maximum capabilities. Because Blizzard made Cata and WotLK easy mode for raiders like you, now a lot of the raiders are just terrible players who can barely go 2/12 in ToT, let alone clear any heroic modes. When I joined this game back in TBC, I always thought to myself how if I kept pushing myself to my limits on my character I can go raid BT and other high end raids. In TBC, all I ended up clearing was Karazhan. In WotLK, I cleared a lot of the content, including 4/5 H ToGC on 25m, and 11/12 H ICC 25m. And wanna know why? Because back when I joined, there wasn't any of this LF-whatever BS that plagues the community. If you wanted to get anywhere, you had to work for it. But now Blizzard shot themselves in the foot by targeting the casual demographic, because it causes new players to stay bad, and encourages people not to learn from their mistakes if they're gonna get their shiny pixels at the end of the day no matter how terrible they are.

[Otimus]

Other than the last two isn't that how it worked in the "golden age" aka TBC? Poach from other guilds or halt progression and go back to older content.

Still the attitude of so many here just stinks. "If you can't clear it maybe raiding isn't for you". Yeah that's a good way to piss players off.

It's pretty much Blizzard's mantra, too, it'd seem. Their idea is to shovel everyone into LFR, and cater to a minority.

[Melkandor]

If people can't even do normal raiding... why should I care about them? Their level of skill is way lower than mine so I never have to worry about them... not to mention bad players make PvP more fun. Everyone is ripping on bad players, but would WoW really be fun if everyone was skilled? Not really. It's not my fault people don't know their classes and use only their pve rotation rather than every ability that their class possesses.

And that's the attitude of somebody who isn't confident in their own skill. I prefer to be evenly matched with my opponents because I like competitiveness. Farmville and other casual games are all over the Internet. Seriously, nobody's there to outskill you, so you can feel like youre the best player there is.

[wow2011]

If everyone is on an equal footing and 75% of the people trying normal mode fail, then there is something wrong with normal mode, not the people.

Ion has speculated that there may be an audience for LFR difficulty for organized groups. Maybe Blizzard is thinking of a 3 tier difficulty model for 5.4 raid. Perhaps Blizzard will introduce easy mode afterall. Having more difficulty level and letting player choose which "league" they want to play in would be healthy for the game imo.

[Shahad]

But the first tier wasn't hard, so you can't really say the players had no where to go back to in preparation. If you couldn't do T14, which many players did in heroic blues, then... I'd argue that raiding just isn't for you. Flat out.

T14 provided a significant challenge for a significant portion of the playerbase. You and I finding it easy is completely irrelevant.
And locking such a large portion of players out of content is generally a bad thing to do. "Get better or GTFO" hasn't proven to produce any results.

[Melkandor]

T14 provided a significant challenge for a significant portion of the playerbase. You and I finding it easy is completely irrelevant.
And locking such a large portion of players out of content is generally a bad thing to do. "Get better or GTFO" hasn't proven to produce any results.

But the content is there with LFR. Just scaled-down numbers and gear drops, but the content is still there to see. And if players really want to see Normal Mode content, then maybe they should step up their own game instead of complaining that they can't kill things because their skill level is low.

[Shahad]

Any spell can proc Arcane Missiles, so FFB is intended. Arcane Missiles is in the core abilities tab.

Mage bombs aren't in the core abilities tab, and hence aren't ever supposed to be used.

Pick one.

FFB is not intended in anyway and no one could rationally justify it ever. And if you read the spec's passive you can see that Arcane charges are an important part of the playstyle and they only get generated by AB. Anyone with some kind of brain matter would figure out what spells he's supposed to use without ever alt-tabbing out of the game. The only thing you would need to check an outside source for is for optimisation, which you don't even really need unless pushing for world firsts. Properly executing raid mechanics is much more important than raw throughput.

Mage bombs are a talented spell that cause damage with low maintenance. Again, you don't need an EJ post to tell you that you are supposed to use it.

Having an LFR10N mode that sits between LFR and Normal would get far more exposure and would (hopefully) give an achievement that raiding guilds would actually value, such that recruitment would be a whole lot easier.

Both ideas are essentially the same.

[Deleted]

But the content is there with LFR. Just scaled-down numbers and gear drops, but the content is still there to see. And if players really want to see Normal Mode content, then maybe they should step up their own game instead of complaining that they can't kill things because their skill level is low.

just stop it, it's pointless. Me and few came with this logic very often, but no - they dont want to get better, all they want is to hand them gear on silver platter, and pat on the back, how good raiders they are. All for nothing, thats their motto.

[Deleted]

That is such a ridiculous statement. What are you spewing out onto this forum?

it's called common sense.

There is something wrong with new raiders nowadays. They are not being taught to try their hardest and perform to their maximum capabilities.

They never were. In old wow this meant they never raided. In new wow, they get to do LFR, previously on new wow they got to do normal modes (in ICC and DS.)

Because Blizzard made Cata and WotLK easy mode for raiders like you, now a lot of the raiders are just terrible players who can barely go 2/12 in ToT, let alone clear any heroic modes.

Wotlk was accessible, cata was not (until they lost millions of subs and nerfed FL and then released the crowd pleasing DS.

When I joined this game back in TBC, I always thought to myself how if I kept pushing myself to my limits on my character I can go raid BT and other high end raids. In TBC, all I ended up clearing was Karazhan. In WotLK, I cleared a lot of the content, including 4/5 H ToGC on 25m, and 11/12 H ICC 25m. And wanna know why? Because back when I joined, there wasn't any of this LF-whatever BS that plagues the community. If you wanted to get anywhere, you had to work for it. But now Blizzard shot themselves in the foot by targeting the casual demographic, because it causes new players to stay bad, and encourages people not to learn from their mistakes if they're gonna get their shiny pixels at the end of the day no matter how terrible they are.

You might have done that, next to no one else did. The argument here is that people who want a mode of content that they can do in a group without becoming either a sociopath guild hopper or an aspergers sufferer level theory crafter should be in place.

[Melkandor]

just stop it, it's pointless. Me and few came with this logic very often, but no - they dont want to get better, all they want is to hand them gear on silver platter, and pat on the back, how good raiders they are. All for nothing, thats their motto.

Well it needs to change, because that's what's going to end up causing this game to collapse around itself.

[Deleted]

But the content is there with LFR. Just scaled-down numbers and gear drops, but the content is still there to see. And if players really want to see Normal Mode content, then maybe they should step up their own game instead of complaining that they can't kill things because their skill level is low.

The game has heroic mode for those who want a challenge. No need to make normal mode a complete ballache.

Pretty simple.