My gripe as a fresh 90 trying to raid.

[Charge me Doctor]

Why not? If I do dailies I can look away from them. In any event asking players to pug normal raids as a means of gearing up is not what the developers intend or ever intended.

---------- Post added 2013-03-11 at 07:15 AM ----------



No the odds are worse because pug groups are less likely to kill bosses than LFR is. LFR is a joke. LFR is also accessible at the click of a button. You are guaranteed to get a group if you login and click the button. Their is no guarantee a pug raid is running at the time you log in or at all even on your server.

Who cares about what developers wants you to do? Building/participation in pug raids will eventually get you a normal raid spot, while doing dailies/dungeons will not. If you really want to gear up, not just get 2 epic items per week and be OK with it, you will do pug raids.

As if you need more money than you get every month, but you refuse to get a second job because it is not intended to have two jobs

I mean, even participating in pug raids will give you a chance to get gear, and if you don't participate in pugs, you miss that chance. It is not forbidden, and if you have time to spend, do it and you will gear up (probably, since it is a wow, and drops are RNG based) faster

[HardCoder]

They definitely have made gear harder to obtain if you are not "with the program," which is normal mode raiding and grinding out valor and reps through dailies.

The easy sources of gear are:

JP - a smattering of 458 pieces
heroics - 463 gear, good luck getting "that piece" to drop though
scenario happybag - 463 around 1/2-1/3 the time, very occasionally 476
Sha of Fear - on your first kill he drops a token you can turn in for 476 boots
crafted pvp gear - 458 - some of it has very inexpensive material requirements
honor - if you don't mind grinding random BGs then the new honor gear is an option

Some valor pieces are easy to obtain. The shadow-pan assault neck should be your first purchase, although the Klaxxi neck may have been made considerably cheaper if you're in a hurry.

Most of the 476 BoEs that show up in the AH are still at least 1-2k, which may be out of your price range if you are new and broke.

If you are tanking, spamming 5-man heroics might be a good plan. You will get goodie bags some of the time too. Maybe you'll get a pet or two you can sell for some gold.

[Leonard McCoy]

Who cares about what developers wants you to do? Building/participation in pug raids will eventually get you a normal raid spot, while doing dailies/dungeons will not. If you really want to gear up, not just get 2 epic items per week and be OK with it, you will do pug raids.
As if you need more money than you get every month, but you refuse to get a second job because it is not intended to have to jobs

No it won't. In fact that's even less of a guarantee that you will get a pug group. If the developers really intended you to pug raid then they would make the game more accomodating for that. They created LFR instead of pug raiding.

They key with your example is not so much that I refuse to get a second job, that it isn't possible to get a second job in many cases because of the economy and so forth. The "second job" isn't out there by and large and isn't an option for many players. Either because they play at odd hours, they play on small servers, or they simple just don't get lucky enough and get in the raids and because ultimately those groups aren't happening by and large. The single raid lockout killed that. Even if by some magical chance you do get lucky enough to get into one your still stuck with RNG but now your also stuck dealing with a pug group attempting to kill a normal level raid boss.

Without dungeons, LFR goes from being to see content into being the defacto way for people to gear up. It makes sense from the developer perspective. LFR is much easier to gate and retard players progression as much as possible.

[HardCoder]

Either because they play at odd hours, they play on small servers, or they simple just don't get lucky enough and get in the raids and because ultimately those groups aren't happening by and large. The single raid lockout killed that.

The separate 10/25 lockout died because hardcore raiders "had" to do both and it was too much "work."

It seems that Blizzard is intent on reserving a large and prominent portion of the game for players who have a specific, rare play style. Unfortunately, that negatively affects the remaining 95% of the player base.

[kojinshugi]

The dungeon blues are 463 - a full set of them makes you 463, not 471.

Also it would be awesome if people would stop telling people to use LFR to gear up. It's too RNG based, he can go months without seeing a drop there. It's nice to get drops sure, but you can't count on it.

This is no longer true. 5.0 LFR has ridiculously high drop rates on everything. Count on 1-2 epics per WING.

[Leonard McCoy]

The separate 10/25 lockout died because hardcore raiders "had" to do both and it was too much "work."

It seems that Blizzard is intent on reserving a large and prominent portion of the game for players who have a specific, rare play style. Unfortunately, that negatively affects the remaining 95% of the player base.

I know why it was and given their stance on dailies it's horse shit in my opinion. It killed pug raiding that I used to do on weekends in wotlk icc. Frankly this whole attempt to bring back tiered raiding is also catering to a minority of that minority. The real hardcore raiders don't give a fuck that I got gear from a dungeon. Children did.

[Prokne]

No the odds are worse because pug groups are less likely to kill bosses than LFR is. LFR is a joke. LFR is also accessible at the click of a button. You are guaranteed to get a group if you login and click the button. Their is no guarantee a pug raid is running at the time you log in or at all even on your server. The argument that players should be expected to pug raids because Blizzard isn't introducing any more dungeons is foolish. Players are being shoved into lfr in favor of new dungeons. Although they still insist that LFR is for casuals to see content.. and not for the gear which is a fucking fat lie now.

Yeah I meant chances of gear per boss. LFR chances are supposed to be 15%. Chance that a boss will drop a piece of gear in normal/heroic is about 10-20%. I think Blizzard expects people to use LFR in combination with old valor gear to gear up for new tiers if they just hit 90. Somehow everyone equates new heroics with new entry level raid gear for the new tier. It was only like this in Cata. In Wrath the new heroics dropped 232 gear which was 2 tiers behind and people still had to run T9 to get into ICC. I dont really see a problem with 5.4 heroics dropping 489 or 496 gear so people can get into the 5.4 RF at least( probably need ilvl 500 so some ToT LFR drops and valor gear will be required).

[heltvild]

In the start of Mists, we started the first raid with all in full blue 463 gear from HC dungeons, and now the first tier is even nerfed with 10%, can't see the problem here.

+ First raid tier LFR got bosted ALOT, and you will get atleast 2 items when you do the first 6 bosses.

[Leonard McCoy]

Yeah I meant chances of gear per boss. LFR chances are supposed to be 15%. Chance that a boss will drop a piece of gear in normal/heroic is about 10-20%. I think Blizzard expects people to use LFR in combination with old valor gear to gear up for new tiers if they just hit 90. Somehow everyone equates new heroics with new entry level raid gear for the new tier. It was only like this in Cata. In Wrath the new heroics dropped 232 gear which was 2 tiers behind and people still had to run T9 to get into ICC. I dont really see a problem with 5.4 heroics dropping 489 or 496 gear so people can get into the 5.4 RF at least( probably need ilvl 500 so some ToT LFR drops and valor gear will be required).

I don't see the problem with it dropping last tiers gear at all. I don't get their obsession with tiered raiding and rng and all kinds of fucking things in this game. It's ass backwards what they're trying to do.

[Prokne]

The separate 10/25 lockout died because hardcore raiders "had" to do both and it was too much "work."

It seems that Blizzard is intent on reserving a large and prominent portion of the game for players who have a specific, rare play style. Unfortunately, that negatively affects the remaining 95% of the player base.

They combined lockouts because they wanted to make 10mans equal to 25s. If the lockouts were still split so 25man guilds wouldnt gear up too much faster than 10s. I dont think there were many people complaining about the 2x raiding(4x raiding in T9 yes but 2x in T10 not really) but there were a lot of people complaining that there was nothing to do in Cata since you couldnt raid both sizes every week.

[Dazu]

Gearing really is not that hard. Gold is easy to make (2-3k per week from your farm for 10mins per day max) and BoE's easy enough to make. getting to 460 to start LFR is quite easy, and drop rates really should allow you to get enough to go further in the LFR. Rare spawns also are worthwhile to kill, including the 5.1 Shieldwall rares who drop 483 trinkets (get 2 different and your set). Archy and pandaria treasure items can help (Spear of Xuen is 463 when made and seems to pop quickly in MoP Archy). Klaxxi rep is worthwhile for the 489 epic ring and quick, on alts its like a 4 days of dailies or something stupid.

Do not sell an undesirable item which has higher Ilvl than what your wearing, the check counts non equipped items also, so long as you are able to equip it (ie lower armor class, required level- does not need to be bound to you though). Ask a friend to make you some of the tailoring epics for a boost and sit them in your bag etc. I did it for my wifes druid, took 1 day after to get her into LFR at 90, couple of heroics, Archy spear and 2x epic cloth pieces and sha boots and 2 Shieldwall epic trinkets. Did not need any rep items.

[Sevenfold]

All those options suck. Running heroics to get gear for LFR is an rng crap shoot. Let's say you accomplish it though. It just leaves you forced to run dailies. Or be stuck with RNG from lfr (which is limited to once a week). Or grind out loosing bgs for honor gear.

The combination of above SUCKS. Few of those options are guaranteed to pay out and the ones that are are massive unrewarding grinds. That's JUST to get to current lfr. Never mind the massive grind once you get to current lfr and current gear lvl.

Gearing up isn't any different now than it has ever been. You can run heroics, scenarios, and raids until you get what you want, you can level your professions and purchase/farm mats and patterns to make what you want, you can do dailies and spend valor on what you want. You can do some combination of all of those things or you can completely avoid doing the things you don't like, focusing on doing the things you enjoy.

Pretty much the only thing you CAN'T do is avoid playing the game entirely. If you won't run dungeons, raid, or queue for LFR because drops aren't guaranteed and you can't or won't spend gold to purchase/craft epics and you won't do dailies because they don't offer instant gratification and you won't PvP because you might lose sometimes then you're going to find it very hard to gear up. In that case, though, it doesn't really matter what your gear looks like because you don't actually want to do anything the game offers. Transmog your quest greens to something that looks nice and just AFK in your favorite city, because stepping outside of it post-90 would almost certainly involve doing something that "sucks".

[Leonard McCoy]

They combined lockouts because they wanted to make 10mans equal to 25s. If the lockouts were still split so 25man guilds wouldnt gear up too much faster than 10s. I dont think there were many people complaining about the 2x raiding(4x raiding in T9 yes but 2x in T10 not really) but there were a lot of people complaining that there was nothing to do in Cata since you couldnt raid both sizes every week.

If it takes them 9 months to release a patch in mists people will complain about nothing to do. That really doesn't matter cataclysm or mists.

---------- Post added 2013-03-11 at 07:39 AM ----------

Gearing up isn't any different now than it has ever been. You can run heroics, scenarios, and raids until you get what you want, you can level your professions and purchase/farm mats and patterns to make what you want, you can do dailies and spend valor on what you want. You can do some combination of all of those things or you can completely avoid doing the things you don't like, focusing on doing the things you enjoy.

Pretty much the only thing you CAN'T do is avoid playing the game entirely. If you won't run dungeons, raid, or queue for LFR because drops aren't guaranteed and you can't or won't spend gold to purchase/craft epics and you won't do dailies because they don't offer instant gratification and you won't PvP because you might lose sometimes then you're going to find it very hard to gear up. In that case, though, it doesn't really matter what your gear looks like because you don't actually want to do anything the game offers. Transmog your quest greens to something that looks nice and just AFK in your favorite city, because stepping outside of it post-90 would almost certainly involve doing something that "sucks".

No you can't. I can't run heroics to get the valor gear that I want because it is locked behind rep. Therefor it is not like it was before. In fact most of what you listed to do is severely gated or hamstrung. It all SUCKS and requires massive amounts grinding. I want to play the game when it rewards me for my time invested. The game currently doesn't do that well enough. In fact people who bitched about having "nothing to do" are the players who don't want to play the game. They just want the piece of cheese at the end of the maze. I acknowledge that and don't go around telling other people they don't want to play the game.

[Garkanh]

getting readdy for lfr take 4 hours tops if you are werry unlucky with heroic dungeon gear. or well, it may take a bit longer now that you can't upgrade your ilvl 463 blues to ilvl 471, but still, getting to 460 is no issue at all, and once you have that, lfr is your friend to gear up really fast.

[Alvito]

You can buy JP gear and get into raids if you are a decent player. If you are looking for the game to find you a group you can lurch around with like LFR then you need slightly more gear and you can do that and work your way up. If you think that you should be able to just jump into the 2nd tier of raiding as soon as you hit lvl cap and don't want to spend a bunch of time on gearing then you shouldn't bother raiding you wont last long.

[Prokne]

I don't see the problem with it dropping last tiers gear at all. I don't get their obsession with tiered raiding and rng and all kinds of fucking things in this game. It's ass backwards what they're trying to do.

I dont really have a problem with it either. A T-2 ilvl for new heroics would be a compromise between no new heroics(or 463 heroics) and Cata style 4.3 heroics. It would help you gear faster but not insanely quick since you would most likely have to do some previous content. The only thing I dont like about skipping tiers is that it makes people not do content(because it doesnt have good gear) which is their fault anyway.

[Dazu]

Yeah I meant chances of gear per boss. LFR chances are supposed to be 15%. Chance that a boss will drop a piece of gear in normal/heroic is about 10-20%. I think Blizzard expects people to use LFR in combination with old valor gear to gear up for new tiers if they just hit 90. Somehow everyone equates new heroics with new entry level raid gear for the new tier. It was only like this in Cata. In Wrath the new heroics dropped 232 gear which was 2 tiers behind and people still had to run T9 to get into ICC. I dont really see a problem with 5.4 heroics dropping 489 or 496 gear so people can get into the 5.4 RF at least( probably need ilvl 500 so some ToT LFR drops and valor gear will be required).

The ICC heroics dropped ilvl 232 gear, which was the same as the tier previous to ICC (ToC 10man dropped 232). 232 was more than enough for ICC normals starting out. ToC 5man heroic dropped ilvl 219 which was the same as 10man normal Ulduar excepting hard modes etc. Cata repeated this model.

Difference was there was no LFR to fill in item gaps, and to prevent the problems of BC in gearing up new players/alts etc for raiding guilds the heroics were tuned higher. LFR allows people to gear up decently over time.

Problem is everyone seems to think you need a much higher ilvl of gear than you really do for a specific tier, such as asking for 200+ ilvl to do Naxx 10man in Wrath and 390+ for DS

[HardCoder]

In the start of Mists, we started the first raid with all in full blue 463 gear from HC dungeons, and now the first tier is even nerfed with 10%, can't see the problem here.

+ First raid tier LFR got bosted ALOT, and you will get atleast 2 items when you do the first 6 bosses.

It's the entire 476 tier. It may be that drop rates were increased more in some parts than others. I run it on 2 toons and I can't say that it seems like I am drowning in gear. You still need to get to 470 to get into HoF/ToES and you have only 6 bosses to farm once a week at 460.

Getting elder coins is different now -- as far as I know you can only get them from the Isle of Thunder via a treasure run (I got 7 my first time but was fairly unlucky I think, most folks seem to get a dozen or so without going into the traps) or in chests.

---------- Post added 2013-03-10 at 11:47 PM ----------

Problem is everyone seems to think you need a much higher ilvl of gear than you really do for a specific tier, such as asking for 200+ ilvl to do Naxx 10man in Wrath and 390+ for DS

Well, that's because it's easier to raid with a group of people who have already farmed it and who don't need the gear.

[Leonard McCoy]

I dont really have a problem with it either. A T-2 ilvl for new heroics would be a compromise between no new heroics(or 463 heroics) and Cata style 4.3 heroics. It would help you gear faster but not insanely quick since you would most likely have to do some previous content. The only thing I dont like about skipping tiers is that it makes people not do content(because it doesnt have good gear) which is their fault anyway.

But I don't see why not doing old content is a problem. It's old. It's not new. I don't understand why you think it's important to make people go back and do old content. It doesn't make any sense to me.

I also do not understand what the hate for the 4.3 heroic was. I don't understand the problem with getting geared up to current ilvl fast. LIke even in 4.3 I never had the best gear, or even the best gear from normal raiding. I had good gear but it wasn't the best by any means.

[admeteora]

forcing people to go through all the old content for a long time when they reach lvl 90 is really stupid. nobody wants to be behind the pack, it will discourage people. The problem is not missing content, its the feeling of being behind everyone for a long time. As we go along the expansion it will be increasingly frustrating for new players. They will give up when they see that they have to go through heroics then weeks of one LFR, then weeks of another LFR and a third, fourth LFR. On top of that the whole set of reputations. people that start at the beginning of an expansion see the content when it comes out with everyone else and aren't slapped in the face with all of it at once. It is completely different for a new player later in the expansion. You can't say "oh I did it so you should do it too!!", you saw the content when it was fresh and you didn't have that feeling of being behind forever.

I think they should allow you to get a chance on the drops of old LFR as many times as you want in a week and give you a reputation buff for old reputations as you go along. that way you aren't forced to just wait it out for weeks to catch up.