Except running with a guild is far easier than running in a pug. So in essence, wouldn't that be trivializing content, since you are choosing the easier way to get your gear and achievements by running with a premade group?
And if you do as you are advising, that is running in a premade, then this buff won't affect your play style since you won't get the buff.
At the moment running with PUGs is more difficult because of some of the "challenges" they present. After the "buff", they will still be more of challenge than running in a premade, due to the difference in the levels of coordination and communication.
When you factor in the long wait times, the time it takes to complete a pug run, the chances of being kicked stupidly and for no reason, and not having the same communication and coordination as in a premade, and all the other "challenges" that come with running in a pug, I would say that anyone who got their gear their gear through LFD, earned it. Much harder to get gear through a pug run, and much harder to get some of the achievements as well.
Not all Pugs are bad. I have run with some good players that pug, and have completed a lot of heroics with pugs. But still not as easy as running with my friends or guildies.
What this is really about are the egos of some people. They somehow want to feel elite and that they have stuff that no one else does, when the truth is that if you are raiding you already have better gear, and when the next tier comes out, it won't matter much anyhow.
This is why I always wondered where the need for difficult heroic 5 mans were. The casuals and similar should have never seen the crap that the new heroics threw at them. Five mans should have been the exclusive domain of those not up to raiding or without time to raid. It would have offered them their sense of accomplishment without causing the rest of the community any issues.
However one thing I have seen proven over and over through out my years playing WOW is, the number of water cooler elitist players is without measure. I mean, by the sheer numbers posting here in threads like this about how much of a nerf it is to the instances, how wow is easy mode, you would swear MMO-Champion is populated exclusively by the players doing Heroic raids day and in day out.
Yet we all know the opposite is true, I don't see very many IF any people here posting about being in on the latest realm/game firsts. I see none of their names in the top guilds. From all the gnashing of teeth and wearing sack cloth you would think they are sorely put upon to game with lesser beings.
Besides, it is too late for this buff to mater. Too many have left to care.
iMac
2012-03-05 : The day SWTOR jumped the shark
Mages are basically "warlocks for girls" - Kerrath
To the ppl QQing and whining about the nerf:
How the f**k does this affect you?
You are uber players so you are mainly raiding and do heroics normally with guildies!
Do you even PUG? Have you gone through that nightmare?
I think its extremely ironic you guys are whining about whiners and about changes that don't affect the content you are mainly playing...
Wanna flex your epeen?
Wanna feel better about yourselves?
Do something with valor in your real life. Then you wont need a GAME to feel better about yourselves.
So, this will result in ignoring many boss mechanics, cuz they wont just kill you, good job breaking your own bosses... rly.
Woo, dying for patch as I'd like to random it up to death on my many alts. Indifferent over the buff as I agree that it's hardly a magic wand for those that love gluing their digital legs to a spot. I think it was a wise decision on Blizzard's part to handle it the way they are.
This actually is pretty cool, the more pugs you have, the more damage is increased I love it, sick of 4k dps in full heroic gear making heroics feel like raid night.
Everyone complaining about the LotD change are people who don't raid, or don't raid often, and feel accomplished by being in full heroic blues. Congratulations on gearing up to that level, but if you want to still feel superior to the general WoW community start raiding. You people are the same ones who are going to complain about how casual players will be able to buy 359 gear with JP in 4.1. If this change upsets you that much, guess what, you aren't as hardcore as you think you are.
A tank and a healer group up and queue for a random.
3 DPS on another server are grouped up and queue for a random.
These 2 teams get placed together. The team of 3 DPS have found 2 players through the tool. The tank and healer combo have found 3 players through the tool.
Fill in the blank: The Luck of the Draw buff this group gets is __%.
That buff is going to make the old world dungeons even more of a joke, especially with most groups in full heirlooms now too.
Five percent.
Before I get flamed, this is my reasoning, and what I think Blizz intends:
When people group together, that is or should be considered one random element.
So since you have two teams of people, either way you look at it one of the teams is being grouped with one random element, which means a buff of 5% due to it being a small random group.
If LFD made a PUG that consisted of a group of two, another group of two, and then one more random player, then the buff should be 10% because no matter what point of view you are looking at it from, one element is grouped with two random elements. This is more of a random group then the first one.
If LFD made a group that consisted of a group of two, and then three more random people who didn't join together as a group, then the buff should be 15%, because no matter whose point of view you take, one of the elements is grouped with 3 other random elements.
I am pretty sure this is what Blizz intends: the more random elements you have the greater the buff. For the first example, of the two teams, one which consists of the tank and healer, and the other consisting of the three dps, there is less randomness. This example is closer to being a planned group so there is less of a buff, since there should be more coordination and communication.
The method above to determine the amount of the buff is the only way which it could work. Otherwise if you had a group of 4 that joined LFD together, and one random player, then you could say that the 4 players are random to the single player and the group would get a 15% buff. In fact if it doesn't work the way I described above, every single group that uses LFD would have a 15% buff, and that is not what Blizz says. They say that the more random a group is, and thus less coordination and communication, the more of a buff they will recieve up to 15%.
If it doesn't work the way I describe above, then when would a group ever get the 5% buff?
When people join as a group, they are considered one random element, other wise this buff wouldn't scale per randomness.
Last edited by shadowboxer123; 2011-02-05 at 11:43 PM.
Dear Blizzard I have an idea, why don't you allow us to Group queue up either as a) "regulation" i.e. at the body count the Designers intended and you know you'll get a 10v10 map, or b) allow people to queue as a "skirmish" 5v5, 10v10, 15v15, with a random map, even AV and Conquest. I fail to see how this has any draw backs. 15v15 sucks coz of the maps (cough cough Strand), so if you open up AV and Conquest to any size group, you'll see 15v15 skyrocket in popularity.
That's a fine guess. The other fine guess is 10% (the largest sub-group randomed for 2 additional people).
We don't now the answer to that, and won't until we either see it on the PTR or live.
---------- Post added 2011-02-06 at 12:28 AM ----------
I'm tired of this kind of dismissive attitude. The leveling experience should not be hard. It should be easy, but with some pain points. Some mind control here, some bad stuff on the ground there. Just enough to teach new players the ropes without discouraging them.
Right now, here's how I see the 5-man experience (keep in mind, I've been playing since tier 3, so I don't have a PERFECT perspective here, either, but I'm trying to see this like a newb):
levels 15-30: mostly very good. Introductions are not trivial for new players, but they are for old hands. As it should be.
levels 30-45: A good ramp-up. Many new abilities come into play, and players get a taste of things like mind control and wave bosses.
levels 45-60: Much work needed. BRD would be a great quartet of dungeons, but as it is now, it's painful at best. The final wing of DM is designed for players that aren't rocketing up and will thus see it once or twice only. Love the changes to ST, though.
levels 60-69: A good deal of work is needed. TBC leveling is too fast to bounce players into strongly gimmicked dungeons (the land of infinite mind control, etc.) that, again, they'll see 1-3 times tops. It would be nice if the 50s ramped up into the 60s and the whole thing felt like the game was getting more complex consistently.
levels 70-79: Too easy, given the ramp-up in TBC. Should be re-tuned to bridge between TBC and Cata
levels 80-85: A bit too hard from the start. It would be nice if ToT were a little bit harder than HoL and then it ramped up from there. Part of this is the gear gap (Blizzard, please just give up on the relevance of 80 purples and scale the gear in WotLK up so that level 79 dungeons drop ilvl 250 blues) and part of it is the change in the approach. Some tuning of WotLK dungeons is clearly needed.
This is wrong. There were many complaints about parts of Ulduar being too hard and they were well founded and nerfs resulted. The trash packs in XT's room are a prime example. Originally they were far too hard to get rid of. The Faction Champions in ToC were also justifiably complained about and they were nerfed as well. Personally the only part of LK that I thought was too easy was the 5 man content. The raids were all, including Naxx, tuned pretty well for the gear you had when you first entered them and none of them were too easy. The ICC buff was well done and also necessary. A lot of people hit roadblocks in there that they only got past when the buff increased. There was not a single guild on my server that downed LK on 25 man Heroic mode, even with the full buff in effect. To me, the raiding in LK was the best Blizzard has ever offered.
Last edited by Dch48; 2011-02-06 at 12:40 AM.
Desktop ------------------------------- Laptop- Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU ---------------AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS with Radeon 680M graphics
AMD RX 6600XT GPU -------------------AMD Radeon RX 6800S discrete graphics
16 GB DDR4-3200 RAM ----------------16 GB DDR5-4800 RAM
1 TB WD Black SN770 NVMe SSD ------1 TB WD Black SN850 NVMe SSD
This expansion, all my random heroics have been with guild groups, because of the the horror that is a PuG. I like this change, because now I may be able to get my daily valor on days when my guildmates are offline.
The first boss that comes to mind is Beauty...she's almost impossible in Heroic while the last boss is one of the easiest bosses for heroics. The hardest boss should be last with heroics, with the best loot imo, because this would help groups stick together until the dungeon is complete. I get a lot of heroic PUGs falling apart at the end, right before the last boss. It's really nerve-wrecking.
2 months of their dungeon buff not working and they didn't even know it. Amazing.
You are wrong. Running in a premade group is not trivializing the CONTENT. The content is HARDER in guild groups because guild groups do not have the buff. Guild groups and premades are simply more coordinated and better skilled, typically. But guild groups and premades still have to get bosses down without the buff. So running premades for heroics is just the smarter way to go about things.
Furthermore, you seem to misunderstand. I do not care about the nerfs to heroics. I welcome them. I am merely noting that heroic achievements and gear is fast becoming meaningless. When the content is do-able by almost anyone then it is no longer special or unique in any way when you do it. But this was all inevitable anyway. As the population becomes more geared, and as Blizzard steadily nerfs heroics to the ground, it is no longer impressive when heroics are completed. I really don't care if every wow player in the world can pug a Heroic and aoe their way to glory in 20 minutes anymore. So enjoy your sense of accomplishment. I sincerely hope they nerf heroics to be doable in 10 mins or less so I can spend less time getting my VP.