What's the "Don't merge heroic raid IDs" restriction for?

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

I've been asking myself over the past few weeks what the restriction for merging heroic IDs is for.

We play on EU-Antonidas, the German Alliance server with the biggest population.
A few weeks ago, when my guild was at 1, maybe 2, HCs there never was a problem to find decent replacement for our second raid night, even when we killed Animus the first night and wanted to do some heroic attempts on Qon. Yesterday I've been searching for almost 8 hours for a tank to kill Qon HC and to put a few attempts into Twins HC but there was not a single one who even answered to my desperate macro spamming.

I have a theory that this is because anyone who could kill Qon is already killing at least Jin'Rokh with any pug he joins, making him unavailable for our raid group.
And now the question is, what purpose does this restriction serve? What exactly are the advantages of disabling people who kill the first loot Piñata on HC to find another group and finish the raid with a few more HC bosses?

Maybe you know the answer, I don't know it and nobody in my raid group does.

Kaldonir

[Wycked]

Guild A-super progressed Guild B-pretty damn close. Guild A stuck on a fight like spine. Guild B-isnt there yet. Oh hey guild B can we borrow all your rogues/mages that you geared up in your raid for a night? Thanks, we're world first now.

[Deleted]

Guild A-super progressed Guild B-pretty damn close. Guild A stuck on a fight like spine. Guild B-isnt there yet. Oh hey guild B can we borrow all your rogues/mages that you geared up in your raid for a night? Thanks, we're world first now.

And what purpose does this restriction serves at this point in the "World first race"?

[Wycked]

Hey guild B, let us borrow your rogues/mages when we want next tier and we'll carry half your raid to whatever boss you wanna kill next. Use your main raid up to where you can, we'll do the same and mix it up, get us all the lewts and jump your rank up in the process.

- - - Updated - - -

Even worse, Guild A goes super hardcore, 10 alt raids. Since guild A clears progression in 2-3 weeks guild A gets smart, feeds all the loots to 2-3 players from each alt raid every week and then uses the 900 super ilvl main raid to clear progression the first week. lawl methods we beat you by 2 weeks lawlawlawl. Next tier Method since their euro's has to one up the us newbs. 25 alt raids, all the loots from every raid goes to 1 person in each raid...supper 1000 ilvl main raid beats guild A and goes back to the lawls of world firstness

[TOM_RUS]

It serves nothing but Blizzard stupidity.

[Deleted]

Hey guild B, let us borrow your rogues/mages when we want next tier and we'll carry half your raid to whatever boss you wanna kill next. Use your main raid up to where you can, we'll do the same and mix it up, get us all the lewts and jump your rank up in the process.

- - - Updated - - -

Even worse, Guild A goes super hardcore, 10 alt raids. Since guild A clears progression in 2-3 weeks guild A gets smart, feeds all the loots to 2-3 players from each alt raid every week and then uses the 900 super ilvl main raid to clear progression the first week. lawl methods we beat you by 2 weeks lawlawlawl. Next tier Method since their euro's has to one up the us newbs. 25 alt raids, all the loots from every raid goes to 1 person in each raid...supper 1000 ilvl main raid beats guild A and goes back to the lawls of world firstness

I don't understand what your first scenario is about, could you please explain it again?
And for the second scenario: what exactly does the ID restriction serve? This can all be done without merging IDs.

[Wycked]

I don't understand what your first scenario is about, could you please explain it again?
And for the second scenario: what exactly does the ID restriction serve? This can all be done without merging IDs.

Negative ghostrider. First scenario = two guilds member sharing for mutual progression

second scenario is one guild that say cleared 11/13H the first week running multiple alt runs that week and the next week then merging all the best geared from all the alt runs into one mega run at the end of that week to kill the lei shens.

[Deleted]

It's because Blizz cares more about the tiny handful of elite guilds not doing something they don't want them to (such as funnelling gear to mains, which they do on normals btw) during the brief world first race, than they do about the hundreds/thousands of guilds that disband or struggle to keep going because of the resulting restrictions. (no flexible lockouts etc.)

It's completely illogical and hurts a large number of paying customers, but then again...a few celebrities always come first right? (gotta keep the masses of fanboys and worshippers in line)

Really they should just lift the restrictions after a month or two, as there aren't usually problems before then (content is still fresh etc.) and it allows even the individual servers to get their race out of the way (if there is any competition) without any so-called "exploits". (not that Blizz would care anyway as there's no celebrities involved at that point)

[Deleted]

Negative ghostrider. First scenario = two guilds member sharing for mutual progression

second scenario is one guild that say cleared 11/13H the first week running multiple alt runs that week and the next week then merging all the best geared from all the alt runs into one mega run at the end of that week to kill the lei shens.

Ah, now I got it.

Then my suggestion would be to disable the restriction with patches like 5.1 and 5.3, so anyone who does HCs at this point can merge IDs as wildly as he wants.

[Lynarii]

It's mostly to prevent ID manipulation. Lets take Heroic Dark Animus as an example. It was a very difficult fight for the guilds first progressing on it. Killing it once did NOT mean you were going to walk in the next week and one-shot it one handed while sipping a martini. So you had to make a choice. Do you let the instance reset and get all the loot leading up to H-DA again, or do you preserve your lockout and push onward. The loot is valuable, but also would take a few hours to clear if everything goes right, and if you get stuck on your DA repeat you can lose a whole night or more. That's a lot of time when you're racing for the top.

If you could play it fast and loose with Heroic lockouts like you can with normal, it's VERY possible to just get a character saved in between each boss, and then have them extend lockouts to cherry pick the bosses you want to kill and skip the ones you don't. And world racing guilds would do that kind of thing in a heartbeat. Hell, remember when Stars server transferred their entire guild just to get their Firelands lockout cleared so they could get a head start?

[Deleted]

It's mostly to prevent ID manipulation. Lets take Heroic Dark Animus as an example. It was a very difficult fight for the guilds first progressing on it. Killing it once did NOT mean you were going to walk in the next week and one-shot it one handed while sipping a martini. So you had to make a choice. Do you let the instance reset and get all the loot leading up to H-DA again, or do you preserve your lockout and push onward. The loot is valuable, but also would take a few hours to clear if everything goes right, and if you get stuck on your DA repeat you can lose a whole night or more. That's a lot of time when you're racing for the top.

If you could play it fast and loose with Heroic lockouts like you can with normal, it's VERY possible to just get a character saved in between each boss, and then have them extend lockouts to cherry pick the bosses you want to kill and skip the ones you don't. And world racing guilds would do that kind of thing in a heartbeat. Hell, remember when Stars server transferred their entire guild just to get their Firelands lockout cleared so they could get a head start?

I have marked the important parts.
So why don't Blizzard just pull the switch after the world first race is over?

[Deleted]

That's precisely my point...it only affects the first few weeks of a raid tier (depending on what server you're on) so there's no reason really why the restrictions can't be taken off once the world/server first races are done. (it could even be introduced alongside item upgrades as a kind of catch-up mechanic for struggling guilds etc. if it was done at the intermediate patch)

[Deleted]

That's precisely my point...it only affects the first few weeks of a raid tier (depending on what server you're on) so there's no reason really why the restrictions can't be taken off once the world/server first races are done. (it could even be introduced alongside item upgrades as a kind of catch-up mechanic for struggling guilds etc. if it was done at the intermediate patch)

Well, maybe we should submit suggestions with the "Submit Suggestion" feature. I don't think anything will happen, but we'll see.

[Deleted]

I have marked the important parts.
So why don't Blizzard just pull the switch after the world first race is over?

Realm competition, just cause it isnt a world first doesn't mean the competition is over for everyone...
Sucks for you that you couldnt find a tank for your mid week, mid clear run, but doesn't mean you should fuck over thousands of guilds...

[Surfd]

It essentially exists to prevent "Pyramid scheme" raiding.
IE, you have 100 people who can raid. Some of them are good, some of them are average, some of them are medeocre.
You split those 100 people into 4 25 man raids. Each group clears the first 2 / 3 bosses, gives the loot to the best people in each group.
You then keep the 50 best people out of those 4 raids, merge into 2 25 man raids, and clear 2 more bosses. Repeat gearing strategy.
You then keep the best 25 people out of those 2 remaining raids, merge into 1 25 man raid, and see if you can clear 1 more boss.

Essentially this is designed to force raid groups to stop where the natural progression limit for the group is. Normally, you would have 4 raids stopped at the 4th boss. Without the ID restriction, you could simply shuffle gear to the best players and keep slimming the number of groups untill you have an unnatural amount of loot from multiple combined raids allowing for much greater then normal depth of progression in a single raid lockout for one group at the end.

Basicly, think of the initial exploiting that went on with LFR when the gear that dropped could be traded, and apply it to Heroic Raiding.

[Deleted]

Realm competition, just cause it isnt a world first doesn't mean the competition is over for everyone...
Sucks for you that you couldnt find a tank for your mid week, mid clear run, but doesn't mean you should fuck over thousands of guilds...

So I suppose what you want to tell us is, that a guild that hasn't cleared ToT HC after 2 months suddenly gets an awesome advantage above another guild because they can use their alts to funnel gear into their mains from all the bosses where one half of the raid doesn't even need any items from anymore? Please get real.

[Deleted]

So I suppose what you want to tell us is, that a guild that hasn't cleared ToT HC after 2 months suddenly gets an awesome advantage above another guild because they can use their alts to funnel gear into their mains from all the bosses where one half of the raid doesn't even need any items from anymore? Please get real.

If i begged some friends i could get 4-5, 13/13, 545+ ilvl for whatever boss i could be struggling on, while still allowing them to farm lei shen/raden, do you think our realm rankings would go up or down ?
Please get real...

[Deleted]

If i begged some friends i could get 4-5, 13/13, 545+ ilvl for whatever boss i could be struggling on, while still allowing them to farm lei shen/raden, do you think our realm rankings would go up or down ?
Please get real...

If you do this, your competitor has the same opportunity to do this. (And if he doesn't, you still "cheated" and you can see on wowprogress that suddenly not 25 but 15 guild members have killed the boss. Odd.) Also the amount of guilds who would really be affected by this shrinks with every day, so at some point it is "justifiable" as its just the lesser evil, even from your point of view.

[cFortyfive]

Antonidas never surprises.
Considering that heroic content is still exclusive enough I do not see how this is a problem at all.

[Deleted]

If you do this, your competitor has the same opportunity to do this. (And if he doesn't, you still "cheated" and you can see on wowprogress that suddenly not 25 but 15 guild members have killed the boss. Odd.) Also the amount of guilds who would really be affected by this shrinks with every day, so at some point it is "justifiable" as its just the lesser evil, even from your point of view.

Just cause everyone can do it doesn't make it right... It's bad enough 25man guilds can "steal" 10man ranks, now you want everyone to hop ID's, why not enable cross realm raiding for current content while we're at it ?

You still have the option to run as you please in normal mode, if you cant get a proper group for heroic, sucks for you. But opening up exploting to help you, isn't the right way to go about it. Maybe plan ahead and recruit some ?