"LF-BRS": An idea to introduce LFR gear to small scale content

[Apollet]

So one of the recent Blizzard posts focused on incorporation of meaningful LFR gear into challenging 5 man dungeons. It sparked an idea that could potentially capture 3 important issues that seem to come up:

1) Lack of meaningful 5 man progression
2) Lack of open, sprawling dungeons
3) Griefing and poor performance in large scale LFR

The idea is to release one or two 5 man dungeons with each major raid (or on the in-between patches) that have a 10 man instance capacity. The idea is that you release a UBRS/LBRS style dungeon that is tuned to be quite challenging for a 5 man group. When completed as a 5 man group, additional rewards such as mounts, currency, higher ilevel, etc. is obtained. But, when a group is formed using the new LFG tool, up to 10 people may enter the instance. The catch is, though, that the dungeon stays exactly the same as the 5 man version, except the "LFR" group members can now bring in extra heals, tanks, and dps to make mechanics easier on the 5 man fights. You can now award meaningful gear in a smaller setting to people who like the convenience of LFR but need a smaller setting to reduce the problems of 25 man.

The actual content of the dungeon would introduce an event related to the current end boss (see HoR and escape from the lich king), so that all would be able to see the final boss, even in a small setting. The event would be very challenging for a pre made 5 man group, but much easier for a group that can bring in an extra tank, or an extra dispell, or extra dps to ease certain mechanics. As for enrage timers and dps races, it would be assumed that 3 dps in a premade group would do similar amounts to 5-7 random dps in an LFG finder team. The larger dungeons would have 5-8 encounters and would likely be tuned as 5-8 minute fights.

I personally would find this extremely attractive as a casual player as I could have a meaningful, small scale catch up that I could do with my friends. If I get back after a Hiatus and it's the 3rd raid tier of WoD, I could progress through the first open 5 mans and have a quick taste of the previous tiers.

Thoughts?

[IKT]

Thoughts?

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

[Aleksej89]

I definitely want harder 5man content, and i don't care much about the gear it offers as a reward.

Challenge modes are too zergy, it is all about rushing.

I want a much tougher 5man content that is about CC and strategy and using defensive and mobility spells - something that really makes you use your class to the fullest.

[DechCJC]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

It's meant to be there as a way to see content for those who 'lack the time' to do it normally; It was never intended to be a primary source of gearing. Quite frankly it baffles me as to why anyone would want to spoil a raid on an easier difficulty, it's basically like using cheat codes; you're just ruining it for yourself, but whatever.

OT: I want challenging 5 mans, I'm tired of having nothing to do on my healer outside of raiding, I want to try and improve myself but there's nowhere to practice lol (Proving grounds isn't practice as it scales your gear down, I want to see what i'm really capable with and how fast I can heal certain health pools etc etc).

[artem123]

It's meant to be there as a way to see content for those who 'lack the time' to do it normally; It was never intended to be a primary source of gearing.

OT: I want challenging 5 mans, I'm tired of having nothing to do on my healer outside of raiding, I want to try and improve myself but there's nowhere to practice lol (Proving grounds isn't practice as it scales your gear down, I want to see what i'm really capable with and how fast I can heal certain health pools etc etc).

its not there to see content, and we all know this. its even worse to pretend at this point that its the reasoning behind it. =/

anyhow i dont really see them being able to make challenging 5mans, since people would find a way around it or itd take way to much time

[Absolucion]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

He's not even mentioning the current LFR system. Your predicative is largely off-topic.

On Topic: This is one of the best ideas I've ever read in a forum. Please do implement this.

[Goronfighter]

Quite frankly it baffles me as to why anyone would want to spoil a raid on an easier difficulty, it's basically like using cheat codes; you're just ruining it for yourself, but whatever.

^ This so much

OT: Since my guild is almost all family and rather small We love doing dungeons but we haven't done Mists' dungeons since release and its because its face roll boring

[Sandwrong]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

The weekly lockout

[Barnabas]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

You gotta wait for the tool to find 25 players and obviously 10 would fill faster. So you get faster que times. You lose those 15 players that could potentially afk and ruin your experience. The vote to kick ratio is much higher.

[Dawnshadow]

I like the idea. Optional, challenging content for organized small groups that isn't speedrunning and offers an alternative to LFR sounds perfect.

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

Because LFR isn't fun. It's a combination of vocal trolls, leeches who don't even try to contribute, vocal elitists in content that does not require elitism, vocal elitist trolling leeches, and a quiet majority of halfway decent players who actually need the gear. Unfortunately, the small but vocal number of jerks has sucked any shadow of fun out of the experience. It should be just sitting back, doing your job, and enjoying the ride, and it's not worth the queue time, the patience it takes to put up with the #$^^$#&sm or the gold spent when the trolls and leeches wipe the raid.

(Note I did not mention "bad" players. It's LFR. I don't mind if someone is underskilled and near the bottom of the meters as long as they are putting in a good faith effort.)

It's meant to be there as a way to see content for those who 'lack the time' to do it normally; It was never intended to be a primary source of gearing. Quite frankly it baffles me as to why anyone would want to spoil a raid on an easier difficulty, it's basically like using cheat codes; you're just ruining it for yourself, but whatever.

If you didn't start raiding at the start of the expansion and don't have a raiding guild, how do you get the gear to raid without doing LFR? Your only options are LFR or to find a group that's still running the older tier raids, and usually part of the requirement to pug any given raid is the achievement for clearing the raid you want to pug. And if you don't know the raid you really can't lead a pug yourself, unfortunately.

[IKT]

The weekly lockout

You've got 4 wings of ToT and 2+2+1 wings in tier 1, and timeless island and crafting gear, I think there are more than enough catchup mechanics.

The one thing I don't want is shitty 5 man dungeons I'm stuck running over and over and over. I'll take LFR over DS 5 mans any day of the week.

You gotta wait for the tool to find 25 players and obviously 10 would fill faster.

Finding double the number of tanks would not obviously fill faster. Remember the 45 minute waits for cata heroics? It was because of a lack of tanks.

[Tyradin]

I don't see how anyone could bitch about the weekly lockout being a problem and preventing you from catching up at a reasonable pace. I just finished my 6th 90 today, and in 1 hour and 1 min played @ 90 I was in SoO LFR already...hour later im already ~510-515 ilvl. The catch up is insanely fast right now.

[DechCJC]

its not there to see content, and we all know this. its even worse to pretend at this point that its the reasoning behind it. =/

anyhow i dont really see them being able to make challenging 5mans, since people would find a way around it or itd take way to much time

Well, it was originally the reasoning behind LFR being in the game, but it has since (d)evolved into what it is today. Thankfully they seem to be looking for ways to address this problem in WoD as I seriously believe that Blizzard 'wants' players to at least participate in flexi mode. They've already took steps towards it with the timeless isle, which doesn't solve all of the problems by any means, but it's a start.

Regarding 5 mans, it doesn't have to be 'banging your head against the wall' hard (as much as i'd enjoy that), but anything's better than the zergfest that it is today. I thought Cataclysm heroics were fine, even in pug groups - It's like a LoL game, if you start getting pissed off at each other then the group is going to fall apart and you're going to fail horribly. It's all about being patient and working as a team, individual skill has to matter a little bit but it should be more about just not losing your head after one wipe. I honestly felt like the Cataclysm heroics were where they should be, I had my fair share of pugs and guild runs and frankly the difficulty didn't change much between the two assuming that everyone in the party was willing to work with each other and keep a calm head through-out any wipes.

They could also just bring in the determination buff and reward players with extra for performing flawlessly, or they could just reward you with extra valor to match the difficulty of the dungeon instead.

[Apollet]

The resounding sentiment seems to be that people would like to see the challenging content but everyone's arguing about the merits of a separate lfr 25 and hardmode, isolated 5 mans. please discuss the topic at hand of combining the 2 to introduce a meaningful progression path for very small groups

[Krazzorx]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

Not every non-raider wants their endgame to solely be LFR. There's a reason they aren't even doing Flex.

[ablib]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

The long queue, the fail rates, the weekly lockout, the low chance at gear compared to 5 mans.

[crunk]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

id rather get my friends together on skype and have a good time doing our own thing instead of waiting around on a queue and then praying to god we didn't just join up with 20 windowlickers.


also, its really boring doing the same content on 3 difficulties to "catch up" so i can do it all again on the 4th real difficulty.

[Aschark]

Meaningful 5 man progression is definitely something everyone wants.

This would not be meaningful 5 man progression, just a new variety of LFR. A hard 5 man dungeon that gets to bring in 5 extra LFR players to help them deal with content intended for half the amount of players?

Sorry, but I just can't stop laughing.

[rpdrichard]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

Weekly lockout instead of daily, increases toxic behavior, it would be good to have 5-mans as an alternative path to enter raids instead of LFR

[Shahad]

What's wrong with using LFR as a catchup mechanic?

It's got completely random loot on a weekly lockout (ergo, it's not farmable and makes you more subject to RNG), it's got extremely long queues and each wing can take an hour to complete, it's the same fucking content that people already do on their mains (when talking bout alts), it provides an extremely toxic environment and you simply matter less in a 25 man than in a 5 man.

Using LFR as a catchup mechanic instead of dungeons was one of the most utterly retarded things blizzard has done so far.

- - - Updated - - -

You've got 4 wings of ToT and 2+2+1 wings in tier 1, and timeless island and crafting gear, I think there are more than enough catchup mechanics.

The one thing I don't want is shitty 5 man dungeons I'm stuck running over and over and over. I'll take LFR over DS 5 mans any day of the week.

Catchup to enter the latest LFR? I agree. But who gives a frack about the latest LFR? I want dungeons that give flex-level loot so I can pug Normal mode. THAT'S what you can call a catchup mechanic. The HoT heroics gave 378 gear, which allowed you to do Normal DS. And don't give me that nonsense about invalidating the previous tier. I haven't been in ToT once since 5.4 on any character, bar my main to finish up some achievements.

Because running the same raid instance 2-3 times a weeks to catchup to Normal mode is OBVIOUSLY fucking better than running unique dungeons, am I right? The HoT heroics (the first two, at least), were great instances with important lore moments and beautiful scenery. Same with the Zulroics. They are more enjoyable forms of content to anyone's who's already run the current tier raid (or will run it) simply in virtue of them not being the current tier raid.

And I would like to add the developers already mentioned that they would make launch dungeons stay relevant in difficulty and rewards throughout an expansion. This means the new heroics won't be invalidating the old one and the pool of random dungeons will grow bigger.