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

[HeedmySpeed]

You guys are deluded. No one will waste their lockout on LFR loot, whether you cut fifteen players out or not. I can't believe relegating 10-man to second-class is actually winning the poll, either. That would instantly cost Blizzard another million subs, easily.

You really think this "gap" of casual players who don't want to think too hard actually does 25 man raids?

25 man raids = more coordination and longer set up = more time consuming = not "casual."

It's a wierd paradigm we're seeing because, for me, why aren't these players just doing normals and taking their own time with it? It's like a raid night isn't worth having if nothing dies. I just don't get it. It takes longer for you to do so the content will last longer.

[Dvaldin]

Gotta love forums. Some responses make me wonder if anyone read Ghostcrawler's tweet on the lessons learned in MoP. Which were...

"Hmm. I'd say two things off the top of my head. 1) We wanted to offer options but didn't offer *enough* options (e.g. GL).

2) As many difficulty levels as we offered, it wasn't enough.

I said 2, but also we didn't do a good job of providing direction at L90. Also wish we had added some dungeons in maybe 5.3."

That goes both ways, as seen in Heroic Scenarios coming available later in the expansion and Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas stating that there's a group of players that want to raid, but aren't served well by the difficulty choices, such as friends & family guilds that don't remove players who don't perform at their best.

Normal and Heroic can stay as they are. Adding a third level to fill the gap between LFR and Normal regular doesn't affect anyone running those.

I might add that Challenge dungeons haven't gotten any easier, and LFR hasn't made Normals or Heroics any easier - so the argument that adding an additional level for friends & family groups will end up nerfing the other Normal and Heroic versions is absurd.

[Nekovivie]

You guys are deluded. No one will waste their lockout on LFR loot, whether you cut fifteen players out or not. I can't believe relegating 10-man to second-class is actually winning the poll, either. That would instantly cost Blizzard another million subs, easily.

For all you know they would gain subs for giving more people 'easier' and more 'casual' raid content, all the while keeping elite players happy who want 25 to be the pinnacle of raiding.

[Rhianne]

You forgot the option to increase Heroic/LFR difficulties to help prepare people for raiding. MoP heroics are the easiest heroics in the history of game (at least in my recollection), easier even than Wrath heroics. They started out stupidly easy, and are only getting easier as people continue to outgear them. If your healers never need to learn to heal in order to level/gear up, of course they're not going to be ready to heal at a raid level. It's going to be frustrating when you first enter a raid... some people thrive on that kind of challenge and adjust quickly, other people are discouraged by it.

Another option, would be to re-introduce attunements (possibly account wide), that require you complete a challenge mode dungeon (no time required) prior to entering the raid. That would challenge players, teach them to interrupt, not stand in stuff, use tanking and raid cooldowns appropriately, and force your healers to use their entire toolkits.

[Deleted]

While there is a gap, it's not because normal is too difficult - it's because LFR is too easy (not that I want it tuned differently, it's boring enough as it is).

If you have trouble clearing normal modes it's because you're deliberately running into fires or not pushing buttons for 5 seconds at a time. If you can't deal with the simple mechanichs that is normal mode - there's LFR for you, where no matter what you do you'll kill the boss.

[Osmeric]

While there is a gap, it's not because normal is too difficult - it's because LFR is too easy (not that I want it tuned differently, it's boring enough as it is).

This is obviously disconnected from reality. There is no way they could make LFR more difficult and still have it function.

[Deleted]

Remove LFR and rebalance all scenarios as 5man heroics.

[Nobleshield]

The problem isn't so much actual difficulty but there is no curve. The guilds suffering right now are the 10m hitting a wall on the second boss of the raid. If the wall was boss 4 or even 5 or 6 there wouldn't be a problem. Right now the problem is that those teams are losing morale because it feels like you accomplish nothing killing t first boss and wiping the rest of the week on the second boss.

THAT is the real problem here.

[Horizon]

Have LFR drop the same ilvl as HCs

[hablix]

Barring a return to the WotLK model:

1. Make Normals easier
2. Make Heroics easier
3. Add in a few Ulduar-style hard modes and an optional "prestige" boss each tier for cutting edge guilds (this way they don't exhaust themselves into extinction, contending with ~3+1 HARD hard fights instead of a full tier of them)

[alfaqup]

I don't see the problem with the current lfr - normal gap. I think the main problem with that is that all the herps and derps were able to get by pugging through cata and all of a sudden think if they can't do normal then it is overtuned. You can probably still get through normal mode now with a herp and derp or two in there, but it is less forgiving.

Let's take Horridon since it is brought up as a "brick wall" that all these guilds are hitting. What is the main issue with this boss that people are having? Too many different adds? Is it hard because you have to choose a certain trouble mob that you need to focus fire for each door? Or is the inability to focus fire the real issue? How many guilds that are hitting this brick wall really sitting down and trying to figure out where their issue on the boss is instead of just blaming the wipes on overtuning? How much of the issue is patience that people lack as seen in LFR (even with determination) where it is "I dont want to wipe on this, I'm just going to quit."

The only thing I can see as a solution is to make a LFR a difficulty choice, that way you can take your group of 10 or 25 of herps and derps and down everything as a guild. Have it share a lockout with Normal/Heroic, but make it a guild activity. Also leave the option for people without organized groups to still queue for LFR. Adding a 4th difficulty is just going to make tuning and creating content more of a pain in the ass for the developers, and make it look even more convoluted from the outside.

But the real message I want to convey is for people who say Normal is overtuned. If you are hitting a block on a normal boss in ToT, how much effort are you really putting towards actually figuring out where the problem is? People who have already cleared normal, have already put this effort, watching videos, reading strats, etc. Personally I am in a 1/13H guild we raid twice a week, and we have been stuck on Heroic Jikun for a few weeks, and our issue is that we have not been fielding a consistent raid team on our nights when we are attempting heroic jikun, and I have to be honest is sucks. But until we fix the guild issue we are not going to get past this fight, but instead of taking a step back and seeing what the issue is I could have just as easily said Heroic Ji-kun is overtuned f this bs.

Also blizzard has been pretty clever with T15, there is a nerf that has been built into this tier, if you keep up with your legendary quests (through lfr even) your entire dps squad should have gotten their legendary metas and thus increasing your entire raids dps. Along with tanks decreasing damage taken, healers, etc, etc.

[fangless]

in a perfect world, raids would be 1 difficulty (imo) with a blanket 10% nerf to LFR and determination adding 5% every wipe.

in a 12 boss raid, it'd be split into 4 separate LFR queues, each progressively harder than the last (so every 3 bosses there is a step up in difficulty).

additional activated "ulduar style" hardmodes on bosses where it felt appropriate to add a hardmode (so not forcing every boss to have hardmode).

separate 10 and 25 man raids - not lockouts, raids, like tier 4. none of this 1 size fits all bollocks which just leads to fighting over which is more difficult. if you dont have a 25 man guild, do it in LFR or god forbid, work with other guilds on your realm (promoting realm communities), but also...

add 10 man raids to LFR

add a separate queue to LFR with activated hardmodes enabled, but require a minor attunement (killing last boss in normal LFR) 10% nerf and determination buff turned off.

You could of just said go back to BC, but then no one would listen to you :P


The issue with this tier was that normals were tune in line with 25 man difficulty, but as 25 player guilds are usually more aligned with heroic raiding, the bar was set a bit too high. I'm sure Blizzard is aware of this, and will re-adjust for Seige. Then we can just give up on this needing 10 difficulties or whatever people are proposing. Maybe some people should realize that raiding isn't for them.

[RickJamesLich]

Personally I think they should just take LFR out of the game, it sounds like even the people that it's targeted for are starting to realize it's stupid easy - yeah, it gives epics for very little work, but what's the point of the epics if all you're going to do is LFR anyway, where you don't need em in the first place.

But anyways, if they did end up making a "more difficult than LFR" mode, I'm pretty sure the people that do LFR wouldn't like it because you'd have to conform to a schedule and likely use vent, and if you didn't need that stuff, the raid would be so easy they'd end up getting bored there too.

---------- Post added 2013-05-20 at 08:08 PM ----------

I also want to add, a moderator should add in a "fine as it is" option, considering that most of the posts here are saying that lol.

[Nobleshield]

I also want to add, a moderator should add in a "fine as it is" option, considering that most of the posts here are saying that lol.

As many others have already stated, it is NOT fine as it is. The people here claiming everything is fine doesn't magically make it the truth. There are issues with the current model; Blizzard themselves have acknowledged this so putting your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala everything is fine lalalala" isn't going to do anything.

[RickJamesLich]

As many others have already stated, it is NOT fine as it is. The people here claiming everything is fine doesn't magically make it the truth. There are issues with the current model; Blizzard themselves have acknowledged this so putting your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala everything is fine lalalala" isn't going to do anything.

Whether it's fine or not is a matter of opinion, one that appears to be the majority on this board, through various arguments lol. The "it's fine as it is" is option is perfectly viable, blizz can't change everything based off of the whims of a minority of people lol.

[Zydas]

I've been on these forums for a while, and that's potentially the most arrogant comment I've ever come across. You're judging someone (me, in this case) whom you don't know, have never seen play, and have no basis to judge his ability on. Luckily, we can remedy this; my signature gives you the option to figure out who you're talking to so, before coming back with more elitist twaddle, take a look through my details.

Firstly:

Nobody is talking about "tuning raids for special needs" (I fixed your spelling, by the way - no need to thank me). The issue is that normal raids are statistically too difficult for players approaching raiding as beginners, and the WoW Progress numbers insinuate this very, very heavily. It's not rocket science. You may say that a progress raider should enjoy the hard work and wipes, but new players will not enjoy it - particularly on normal mode encounters where they may play perfectly, and it only takes one person to wipe them.

Part of the problem with normal mode raiding, particularly for newcomers, is the time investment involved. A "casual" player is one whose playtime is limited, commonly it's completely divorced from a person's ability to play. In order for them to beat the gearing hump, they're forced into a thankless LFR farm, dailies and valor grinding. To learn an encounter, a commitment to outside sources will be required so that encounters can be studied before pulled; good luck figuring out Dark Animus with only the Dungeon Journal to help you. Now, you've already proven that you lack any semblance of an understanding of other people, so I'll make this clear:

The current raiding model is pricing casuals out entirely, because it's demanding a time investment many can't hope to meet. The "gap" discussed has as much to do with time as it does with skill. Potentially more so.

Secondly:

You're utterly ignoring the individuals who simply want to play with their friends and enjoy a bit of progression on their own terms - these are the players that were brought in and given the best content during Wrath of the Lich King, but have since been utterly ignored by Blizzard because Cataclysm heralded the developers decision to listen to people like you. Except, your own argument is self contradictory and you don't see why. You said "normals are easy", an implication that you burned through them in no time and started work on heroic modes. Is that a fair assumption? In which case, let me ask you this:

Why are you so bothered about "easy" content being made more accessible for other people?

Heroic modes are there for the committed and dedicated players, and LFR is there for those who can't (or choose not to) commit to a set raiding schedule. The ultra-casual and the ultra-committed have their areas for raiding. So who does normal mode serve? Currently, it's hammering the people it's supposedly aimed at, something that's statistically proven by the way, so we can safely say that IT'S TOO HARD.

Thirdly:

Let's forget your rambling comment and stick a pin in the fact that it was a snowflake comment designed to look impressive to those who lack the capability to think for themselves. It's fine, there are plenty of you.

Let's instead concentrate on what could be described as the "recruitment churn". Recently, two very well-known American guilds tried to band together for progression and have since called it a day. Prior to the launch of MoP, the best progression guild in the world (our Finnish chums) called time on 25-man progression due to a lack of recruits that fitted their own criteria. Hell, many top progression guilds are now closing the doors on recruiting tanks because the recruits they're getting just aren't up to it. The problem here is that the players YOU presumably want in YOUR guild are barely getting out of the gates because the raiding model isn't helping them to learn the game, or properly develop as players. The way it used to work saw a casual player enjoy his 10-man content, find he was one of the better players in his guild, and then look to join a 25-man guild. If he then wanted to make the bigger commitment, he could look for server leading guilds and apply for consideration if they had a spot available.

That individual had probably hit the big ding, done some heroics to gear up, learned to ply his trade in the relatively forgiving environment of 10-man content, then made the step up if he had the time and ability to do so.

Alas, that curve is now entirely broken. Players going into LFR don't learn anything because you can literally AFK your way through an encounter. If that player then wants to step up, being relatively new to the game, he's likely to get utterly smashed when he attempts this difficulty of normal mode, and will probably be vilified by the likes of you. Because only masochists, idiots and children put up with that type of scorn from prepubescent tough guys on the Internet, decent people find better things to do with their time and depart. This takes more potential emerging talent out of the raiding pool and makes the top guilds have less capable players from which to draw from.

TL, DR?

You haven't a clue what you're talking about, your argument is nothing more than a baby spitting its dummy out because someone else has a toy, and you don't even realise that your opinion is hurting your own guild.

Here endeth the lesson.

Agreed 100%. Wrath made the casual raid scene and their subs hit the peak. Since cata with 10=25 they've completely alienated casual raiders. My current guild is 3/13 HC 25m, so i dont plan on raiding normal or 10m lol. however the gradual ramping of difficulty doesnt exist. its not a learning curve but a learning cliff. Heroic dungeons this expansion were so easy i could do them blindfolded while slapping my balls on my keyboard, and LFR is no better. And with many unprepared players falling on their faces in normals they cant possibly develop into heroic raiders. I know all you 10m raiders will disagree and say you're gunna unsub if blizzard goes back to a wrath like raid model, but its the best way to save a deteriorating raid scene, and i guarantee over half of you will find a HC 25m guild and be more than happy. If they went back it would be bad at first, but after all the dust settles well have a better game a healthier raiding community.

[Voolawl]

There really should be a "Fine as is" option. It seems like it is fine and it boils down to a L2P issue.

[maxalyss]

A 4th difficulty would be really weird. Other human beings have downed 12/12 Normal. Thousands and thousands upon thousands of people just decided they wanted to do normal modes and were determined to do it. If it currently is too hard you have to put in effort to find out why.

[Adp]

It's clear that we are hearkening back to 40 man raids. This is the only setting where 20+ people can be at the lvl of afk for a boss fight and the raid pulls out the win. Sound good?

In all honesty I think the expectations of the players nowadays is just ridiculous.. Everything must be optimal. Commonly I'll see people need the achievement to a raid just to start raiding it.. People need a certain ilvl, they need exact gemming, they need proper reforge, they need the right enchants. All this just to start?

I would not be opposed to nerfing normal modes to a state where the above issues aren't so important as just learning the encounters properly (I mean there should be some level of gear requirement of course but all the marginal areas like gemming, reforging, enchants.. those shouldn't be super important to down normal bosses)

[Deleted]

"ToT 10man normal is too difficult"

MMO-C seems to be full of people who agree that the current raid tier is too difficult for the "average" 10man raiding team. I wanted to address some of the frequent comments that crop-up in these threads.

1.) "I could pug XX raid in WoTLK/Cata without issues, why can't I progress through ToT with a casual 10man team?!"

In WoTLK 10man raids were significantly easier than 25man and there was no "LFR" system. Having split raid difficulties made sense, as did the 10/25man separate lockouts. Pre-cataclysm the lockouts were unified and 10/25man raids were brought more in line with eachother, difficulty-wise so that more serious raid guilds didn't need to have 25people to be able to see challenging content. This was likely in response to reduced realm populations.

Along with Dragon Soul came LFR, a necessary evil which allowed those who wouldn't otherwise see raid content to... well... see "raid" content. This filled a bit of a void left by the "easy wotlk 10man" raids.

-There was a year between the release of ICC (wasn't the last raid but was the most pugged) and Cataclysm. By the time the majority were seeing/pugging it past normal mode the instance had been given that 30% buff to damage/healing etc.

-There was nearly 10months between the release of DS and MoP. By the time the majority (including me) were seeing/pugging it past normal mode it had multiple nerfs (up to 35% iirc)

-ToT has been out about 2 and a half months - no nerfs as of yet. 5.3 is bringing back valor ilvl upgrades and this is, in effect a nerf. By the end of this reset your entire raid team could have an extra 4ilvls. That's a huge gain.

-Blizzard are kicking out more content at an increased pace. This means less time to progress on current tiers but is that necessarily a bad thing? SoO will likely be the "current" raid tier for a hell of a lot longer than ToT is, at which time you'll find more pugs forming and casual guild groups being able to clear the content.

2.) "I pay the same amount as you, why shouldn't I be able to clear the content?"

I hate this comment and see it far too much. It's like me saying "I pay the same amount for the gym, why don't I have rock hard abs?!" (hint, it's something to do with danish pastries - nom). Content can't just be "tuned for the masses".

MoP encounters are all about the mechanics. In the past there have been a fair few "zerg and heal until it dies" type encounters and now, especially on normal mode bezerk timers aren't really an issue. It's all about managing the multiple mechanics that are thrown at you effectively. I can see where this might be an issue for some raid teams but there's only so many times Blizzard can do a "tank and spank" encounter. WoW has to evolve, the majority of raiders DO want the game to evolve over time and, unfortunately that can leave some of the more social/lesser skilled groups left behind.

I'd consider myself and the rest of the team I raid with the definition of casual. Somewhere in the past we used to raid fairly seriously. For some that was DS, others ICC, for me the last time I raided seriously was clearing naxx40 in vanilla. Nowadays I raidlog with a night or two in between to get bonus roll coins. We have one or two people in the group who have issues with mechanics or pumping out DPS but we still managed to kill Lei Shen in about a month and a half. This isn't me saying "ZOMG, WE'RE AWESOME" because (in reality) we're anything but. However, I would consider us the "average" 10man normal team that content is tuned for and we still care enough to do a bit of WoL research or theorycrafting on the nights that we don't raid. I guess some people just don't have the time or inclination to do this and I can understand that but, like so many things in life the more you put in, the more you get out.

3.) The problem of LFR

LFR was one of those additions to WoW that helped and hindered at the same time. In one instance it gave people who, for one reason or another couldn't/wouldn't find an organised raid team a chance to "see the content" (as Blizzard put it) quickly and easily along with gaining some relatively decent gear. On the other hand LFR (and LFD, to a lesser extent) enables people to take the "path of least resistance" along with acting like jerks under the veil of anonymity. It's human nature, the majority of people will take the easy route and when LFR/Heroic dungeons need no skill whatsoever to complete there's no promotion/encouragement to actually get better and improve. This leaves a wide gap between LFR and normal raiding that was once filled by difficult dungeons (Challenge modes don't count - they're optional, hard dungeons were there before as gear-step to raiding) or less difficult normal modes and LFR was never meant to be an "introduction to raiding". It gives some people hope and, ultimately unrealistic expectations of being able to go from facerolling LFR to clearing normal mode, organised raids.

4.) What can be done?

There's not much that can be done during this expansion. LFR is here to stay so it will continue to be the go-to response to "we can't clear normal modes" even though it's not organised raiding content. If 10man normal modes were to be brought down in skill-level and drop lower ilvl loot then you'd hear a fair outcry. Making 10man normal the "easy" mode would create another gap between 10man normal-heroic that could only be filled in a 25man normal raid... Which is beyond the reach of a lot of today's realm populations. You'd hear complaints that 10man normal was too easy and that 10man heroic was too hard without any way of bridging that gap. Myself, and a lot of the WoW raiding population would likely be caught in that gap.

I honestly don't believe raids should be made easier. There's more ways to see the content now than ever before and it saddens me that there are more people than ever calling for nerfs to content rather than rising to the challenge. Isn't that what raiding's supposed to be?