Looking for Raid

[Cohumulone 3]

But then, I have to admit to myself that I probably wouldn't do most things in this game if it wasn't for the rewards. We (raiders) tell ourselves that it's for the challenge, overcoming obstacles, working together, etc., but for a lot of us, I suspect it's the rewards, be they gear, achievements, titles, mounts, the respect of other players on the realm, etc.

Bingo. I've seen some "I don't want to feel forced to do this." Well, that's part of it. I personally don't want to do 2 hours of dailies every day. I don't want to feel forced to do it. But, if I want access to those rewards, I have to take those steps. LFR is no different. Sure, I could skip dailies completely and rely striclty on normal/heroic raid drops or crafted epics, but I evaluated that and decided that the rewards from actually griding the rep are worth effort. Why can't folks look at LFR the same way? It sucks for mechanics and is an insult to anyone who can comprehend basic raid tactics. But if that gear has any shot in giving you a competitive advantage (especially this early), then just suck it up and do it.

It is not "oh no, gear is falling out of the sky for people beneath me!" If you're a progression raider, you will outgear LFR folks in no time.

[Stoove 347]

You see, unlike a board game, such as Yahtzee

Ahem.

I think you misunderstand what I meant by "Yahtzee". I meant, of course, this man, who is "internet famous" for making dick jokes under the pretence of being a video-game critic. I suggest that you watch and read his stuff, as he has some insightful opinions on game design.

Anyway, to respond to the thrust of your point:

I'm not saying that LFR should not exist or doesn't have a role to play in the game. What I AM saying is that because of the context/challenge/gratification argument (which you may or may not have actually read and understood), LFR fails to be an engaging activity.

What I am ALSO saying is that while collecting gear is ONE reason for raiding, that is not the only reason since all of the aspects in the context/challenge/gratification argument have to work together - LFR fails on two of the three and so is not engaging. However, in standard raiding the other aspects of the context/challenge/gratification argument all work with the loot, making it an effective and engaging experience.

Finally, I am saying that LFR has a place in the game, but it's current design is limiting it - essentially, it is a worse experience because design effort is not being spent on it. It should be better, and my original post on the context/challenge/gratification argument outlined why.

[Beeba 4]

Stoove,

My last post was not solely directed to you but all comments combined and how I can best sum up my opinion and some known facts. And no I am not going to watch a video of a man making jokes about his private parts but thanks for offering the link. We at least agree that the raid finder has a place but I do not believe it has to have the three parts (context/challenge/gratification). In that line of thinking, many quests, including dailies, would have their share of failures in the first two categories as well. This would overall make WoW a failure then. Very few of the aspects of WoW can be declared a success in all three categories, in my opinion. The raid finder was not designed to be as challenging nor have the context as a normal raid. It seems to be scaled similarly the way a normal raid is versus the heroic version with the gear rewards to match. Something being a challenge is always an opinion of the individual. Some may find the raid finder more challenging than others. Perhaps you do not understand very well that not everyone perceives a challenge to the same degree. Therefore, while some may see raid finder to be a joke, others may find it hard for various reasons. I am sure for some the raid finder is as far as their raiding experience will go. In my opinion, the belief that context/challenge/gratification may be in part absolutely true. To quote from you "A good game has to have three things to be interesting; Context, Challenge, and Gratification. Without sufficient design for each of these, the game feels meaningless." So that quote indicates the game requires those three things but does not indicate a single, isolated part of the game has to have them all to be a success as long as the whole contains them. I have to go but thank you and everyone else for the great viewpoints. It may not appear at times but I do appreciate them.

[Damian 26]

Good post. LFR really annoys me due to the absolute idiots it attracts. How many of you have been in group waiting for tanks and healers only for some dps to start the fight. I'd love to drop my current guild and join a proper raiding guild but I cannot guarantee my time due to two small children. So, even though looking for raid is very annoying it does enable me to access higher level content.

[Stoove 347]

And no I am not going to watch a video of a man making jokes about his private parts but thanks for offering the link.

Well my statement about what Yahtzee is famous for was somewhat in jest. He does no-frills videogame reviews, The link I gave was in fact to an article he wrote where he postulated his context/challenge/gratification argument.

I know very well that different people find different levels challenging, but I think my point revolves around the fact that LFR isn't a significant step up in terms of difficulty and hence isn't appropriate to reward such significantly more powerful loot. My reasoning around that was explained using the context/challenge/gratification argument which I borrowed from Yahtzee, as stated.

So that quote indicates the game requires those three things but does not indicate a single, isolated part of the game has to have them all to be a success as long as the whole contains them

Since I didn't say that I assume you're putting forward your own point here rather than quoting me. It's a good point that I haven't addressed. I disagree - many games are comparatively small and simplistic in comparison to WoW, and I believe that in the terms of the context/challenge/gratification argument, we should look at the different activities in WoW as different sub-games which all require the same balance to be arrived at internally. Hence I think that LFR can be viewed on its own as a subject of the context/challenge/gratification argument. A good example would be that it wouldn't make sense for a game to be extremely challenging on one level, and for all the other levels to be both extremely easy and reward the player highly. For that reason, I think it's justified to look at sub-sections of WoW instead.

While that does leave other activities such as dailies to be also put under the spotlight of the context/challenge/gratification argument, that's a different issue. It may well be that I have other opinions of dailies, but those shouldn't affect how I talk about LFR in any way.

[Vlad 411]

Well I'm not sure about the subject about "I have to admit to myself that I probably wouldn't do most things in this game if it wasn't for the rewards." Here I'm going to use a piece of theory put forward by Ben Croshaw ("Yahtzee") about the reason games are fun to play;

A good game has to have three things to be interesting; Context, Challenge, and Gratification. Without sufficient design for each of these, the game feels meaningless.

This is significant because it lets us look at why LFR is so depressing whereas normal raids are not. To put it into WoW language:

Things to do in WoW must have the right balance of three things to be interesting; context, difficulty and loot.

We know that LFR is not difficult, so without a complete redesign (as put forward already), the context and loot have to be put in around that. Where LFR fails isn't in difficulty, it's in the balance of the other two to the difficulty.

LFR fails on context for two reasons; firstly, because although you're killing bosses, it doesn't make much sense that these badass dudes are so easy and not using everything they have to stay alive (that's a minor thing). Secondly, the real place from which raiders derive context is from the community which builds up around it. LFR has no community, there is no interaction between players. That means that one major benefit of raiding - doing something you like with people who are roughly your peers - falls flat on its face.

That leaves everything up to the last item; loot. For LFR to work in any way, the loot has to be in the same context as the other two items. It must be themed right and in the right level for it to make sense as a raid drop, but it also must be consummate to the difficulty of the encounters! Since the context doesn't make sense anyway, the rewards are probably already too high to make sense. Once we take into account the difficulty of the encounters, we see that the rewards from LFR are the only reason a significant chunk of players will find it interesting (although not all). This results in the process feeling hollow and uninteresting for a large part of the playerbase.

Admittedly loot is one of the driving factors, but I don't think for a second that if it were designed appropriately and with lesser rewards it would be uninteresting. Other activities in WoW have what LFR does not, and that is rooted in the context/challenge/gratification argument.

While you might be correct, in some ways, about LFR not being interesting enough, I think you fail to see the big picture (or maybe you don't). LFR is the way it is because it's how it has to be. It has to be this way in order to work. Bump the difficulty, complexity, or need for teamwork any higher and the LFR would fail for its intended audience. It might be an awesome experience for you - but the LFR is not for you. Normal (and heroic) raids are for you. LFR is for people who don't/can't raid, and who simply aren't interested in the same things you are.

LFR is for people who want to put in a modicum of effort and get a nice reward at the end. It's a "pretend-raiding" experience. Maybe veteran raiders can reminisce about how it was when they were in a 25-man raid back in Ulduar, aspiring guildless raiders can be awed by the feel of such a big raiding force going against a boss with 300 million HP, and so on. For these people, LFR does exactly what they want it to do.

To make LFR more interesting, in any way except by adding lore/graphics/sounds, is to fundamentally change its target audience and leave the people who are currently enjoying it without a place to play (heroic dungeons are too small/are not raids, normal raids are too hard/require a guild).

Good post. LFR really annoys me due to the absolute idiots it attracts. How many of you have been in group waiting for tanks and healers only for some dps to start the fight. I'd love to drop my current guild and join a proper raiding guild but I cannot guarantee my time due to two small children. So, even though looking for raid is very annoying it does enable me to access higher level content.

I don't know how valid this point are. I've heard a lot of "there are idiots in X place", but the reality is that we are the ones in LFR. We are also the ones in the dungeon finder. I've seen "idiots" in my guild, I've been shocked by the idiotic (and unexpectedly so) behaviour of friends, and I've sometimes unintentionally done things that could easily have been construed by someone else has having been very bad things, such as ninjaing items (misclick), facepulling mobs in dungeons (brainfart/distraction/tabbed out by software while autorunning), going afk (emergencies) and so on.

EDIT: By the way, I've now done the LFR (the first 3 available bosses), and I agree that it is a pretty lame overall experience. We didn't wipe, no one died, no bosses required any kind of tactical explanation. Basically, every fight was just a tank and spank.

[Peelyon 416]

EDIT: By the way, I've now done the LFR (the first 3 available bosses), and I agree that it is a pretty lame overall experience. We didn't wipe, no one died, no bosses required any kind of tactical explanation. Basically, every fight was just a tank and spank.

I do understand your points Vlad, thats why I do believe LFR is "good". It does provide the opportunity etc for players who wouldnt be able to experience the content. For me the problem is that the loot is upgradeable to heroic dungeons, and lets be honest, heroic dungeons are a harder skill level than LFR.

For someone like yourself who spends a lot of time calculating fights, working out tactics etc LFR must have been a horrible experience. For me (as a raid leader) I was hoping that LFR wouldn't be "that bad". We have around 20 people who like to socially raid and for those that hadn't been geared / levelled fast enough to enter our initial 10 man teams, this was their first chance of seeing the new content.

By Wednesday (the day of our first LFR) we had killed Stone Guard and progressed nicely on Feng in 10 man normal. Now we were looking to go into LFR with a group of 15-20 of us, to get gear and show the extras who hadn't raided so far the bosses (in the hope I could point out things like "so see you need to move out of these pools, this is how the energy works for the guardians etc etc).

Although I didnt expect it to be anywhere near as competitive, I did expect to be able to show my other raiders the majority of the mechanics, even if in a nerfed state, but it was a horrible experience. Not only for them, but for myself. It was such a let down.

Now, if the loot wasnt upgradeable on what we could obtain we wouldnt go. But however nerfed these encounters are, I dont truly believe that the audience they are catered to could honestly complete the encounters unless they outgear them, which isnt possible at this stage.

I honestly think that Blizzard know this and therfore "force" us to enter with partial raid / guild groups in the hope of boosting those that it is meant for.

When each and every fight is tank and spank it fails to give any sense of wonderment. Each room is just another room, the bosses just have a different model and it begins to lose all meaning.

[Stoove 347]

I do understand your points Vlad, thats why I do believe LFR is "good". It does provide the opportunity etc for players who wouldnt be able to experience the content. For me the problem is that the loot is upgradeable to heroic dungeons, and lets be honest, heroic dungeons are a harder skill level than LFR.

This is exactly the point that I've been trying to make at quite some considerable length. While it's simple to state, I feel that you need to thoroughly justify it - which has been why I've been going on about all this context/challenge/gratification malarkey.

While you might be correct, in some ways, about LFR not being interesting enough, I think you fail to see the big picture (or maybe you don't). LFR is the way it is because it's how it has to be. It has to be this way in order to work. Bump the difficulty, complexity, or need for teamwork any higher and the LFR would fail for its intended audience. It might be an awesome experience for you - but the LFR is not for you. Normal (and heroic) raids are for you. LFR is for people who don't/can't raid, and who simply aren't interested in the same things you are.

See above; all I'm trying to justify is the statement that Peelyon made. The loot is inappropriate for the difficulty, for the reasons I outlined. Either an adjustment in difficulty or an adjustment in loot would be required to make LFR make any kind of sense =]

[Stasis 36]

The loot is inappropriate for the difficulty, for the reasons I outlined. Either an adjustment in difficulty or an adjustment in loot would be required to make LFR make any kind of sense =]

The loot iLevel does reflect the difficulty imo. It's the same iLevel as the freebie crafted 'epics', and slightly better than the blues from the freshly-dinged-90 dungeons.

And the difficulty... LFR is the equivalent of a screaming mob of football hooligans; anything requiring more coordination than the direction to run and who to beat up isn't going to meet much success. And I think the main point is, that as raiders in raiding guilds, we're insulated from the 'great unwashed masses' to a certain extent, but LFR drops us right into their sweaty laps. It's not supposed to be challenging to anyone, really, it's just so everyone can have a glimpse at the raiding content. So they feel that they're getting value for money. It certainly doesn't have any effect on my WoW experience if they get 476 items for facerolling LFR Bosses. I personally don't care what anyone outside of my Guild is wearing tbh.

I approach the LFR as an extra annoying daily quest. It's required, to a degree, for early raid gear, same as the 5-man dungeons, but outside of that it's just an annoyance I put up with once a week. I certainly don't assign any more value to it than that.

[Ryieahna 10]

Well, here's my spill about LFR. My guild has four people in it, and at least two of us like to imagine that if we ever decided to branch off from it that we would be able to make it in a raiding guild on our server. Obviously we are not able to tackle end game content as a guild (and we aren't overly interested in expanding) and the pugs on our server can be less than reliable on a good day, So LFR gives us a chance to see some stuff that we normally wouldn't.

That being said, none of us particularly *LIKE* LFR and it feels like a chore most of the time if we do queue for it.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Ryieahna

[Sneakyferret 12]

^ As said by majority of the posts in this thread, Its just for people to see the content. If they want to experience it themselves, then they either got to join a guild that raids or constantly pug around for a group.

And as said by Stasis, Its all the same ilvl as our craftable gear, so if anyone is gonna want to advance, they will have to experience the actual content themselves and earn it in a normal run.

As for the actual difficulty itself, let me ask you this. Do you really want to spend extra time than it already takes to clear with random people who you will never see again, all because of constant wipes just so the group can progress and do it all over again with a brand new group the next week?.

[Vlad 411]

I don't think that there are any particular problems with the loot dropped by LFR. It's a pretend-raid experience, and it drops pretend-raid gear. If the gear wasn't epic, or wasn't better than the 5 man heroic dungeons, it would totally defeat the purpose of the experience.

On the other hand, the gear is also vastly inferior to actual raid gear (and normal modes themselves are pretty easy), so that no real raider is going to be overtaken (where, one might ask?) by an LFR raider.

Blizzard is well aware that people need incentives to do things. That's what WoW is, after all - one big collection of tasks that you are incentivized (eh?) to do.

LFR is dumbed down, I agree. But it's still not really on par with a heroic 5-man dungeon, certainly not with the level of difficulty for Mists of Pandaria's dungeons. The heroic dungeons are trivial, and they drop 463. LFR is trivial, but on a different scale, and drops slightly better gear. It's clear to me that Blizzard doesn't really care about gear progression below the 389 item level, basically, which is fine by me.

[Vladamyr 169]

I don't think that there are any particular problems with the loot dropped by LFR. It's a pretend-raid experience, and it drops pretend-raid gear. If the gear wasn't epic, or wasn't better than the 5 man heroic dungeons, it would totally defeat the purpose of the experience.

Totally disagree with this. I still feel gated if I am in a progression group and that simply should not be the case.

[Sneakyferret 12]

Oh snap Vlad, your twin disagrees with you. :P

For that ilvl range we have multiple ways of gaining equipment.

• LFR 476 gear
• Craftable 476 gear
• World bosses (once a week for Sha, as many times a week for Galleon as long as he spawns)
• Valor Points gear (480+ ilvl)
• Normal/Heroic raid runs

Majority of the bosses are all execution/movement based so its more about staying alive over straight up dps racing (excluding 1 or 2 of the fights), so it can be done with purely dungeon heroic gear. All the extra gear passed that and below normal raiding is optional.

[Vladamyr 169]

Sorry, I should have expounded more. Also looking at that last post that may have been short. It's early here and not meant to be snappy

The legendary quest drops in LFR are a problem for me. Within the scope of my raiding experience (we are not realm first progression group, maybe a top 10 Horde guild on skywall) I personally don't like the gear gating. I feel like i am forced to run LFR to earn an early raid spot. From my little viewpoint, I disagree with Blizzards ilvl's for gear from LFR and truly wish it was equivalent to Heroic dungeons. I do wish Heroic dungeons were the early cata difficulty and I wish JP mattered in some possible way.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Vladamyr

[Sneakyferret 12]

I agree on the cata difficulty part, mainly because when i first ran Mogu Palace on normal, the dungeon was actually quite tricky for the level range it required. Than when i started up my first heroic, i was nervous because it ended up being Mogu Palace, yet we seemed to have easily face rolled it compared to the normal version of it at the time. . . But i think the main part that made early Cata heroics so difficult was the extremely tight mana healers had.

Also agree on LFR, but this is only part 1 so maybe the later parts down the next few patches might require more of normal clears. If not at least they should make the drop rate way better in normal so it takes much longer to earn it with just LFR alone.

Unless they make higher lv JP gear once we finish terrance in preperation for the raids after that, It will mainly stick to being using for either heirlooms or resources/mats.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Sneakyferret

[Varchild 3]

Good day everyone.

My opinion is, raid finder is nice to people who approach the game in some other ways, such as content and content only.

Al tough we all want rewards, not all of us players are the same. I like to play Wow, but also Wii, and PS3, and some PC games, and no, that's not the only thing I do, I go to work, share time with my wife, visit family, work on my yard, and some other things.

I play and I crave to know whats up next, and I want to advance and follow the plot, and game play is important, but not everyone play for that, but for the content as story.

LFR is a thank you blizzard because I don't care about titles, achievements or gear item levels, I only wanted to be able to go through the story, and I was able to, I was there with people that killed Deathwing in 'Very easy mode', I know (because I also ran Siege in normal once and yes, it is HARD but nice) but I don't care, I only wanted to see it through, and I did.

I don;t consider myself mediocre player, I read about my class, I know my stat priority, my rotation, how to adapt it to diferent situations when to use my cooldowns, I read about encounters before getting into them and I also try to watch at least one video from someone who already did, I reforge often when changing gear, and I can tell u I do whatever other people hardcore would do, except.

Devoting so much time to hard modes that consume to many time. It's not wrong at all, but is personal preference, and not because other people want to do things that way we all have to, right? I rather use time somewhere else, and that give so much importance to numbers (aka item level, dps charts, achievement points...) at the end, is any of that really getting out or matter outside Azeroth? No, it's just a game.

I respect players for how they behave, for what they are as payers, and not for what they do. Titles, heroic modes beaten, realm first, and so many other things won't determine my respect for anyone more, than a Hello when getting into a pug, or addressing other politely even if not very friendly.

So, seems a little off topic but I wanted to say, not all LFR people is bad at what they do, not all are jerks, and not all want to dedicate to mechanics. Some just want to see, and said, yeah, I was able to experiment the story until the end.

I don't mean to be disrespectful to anyone and I am not against any of the reasons why you play the game, but always be reminded, we are not all the same.

LFR is a joke, from many points of view, and I agree with anything other can demand about making it a little more challenging, or lowering the rewards, or anything, at the end, the point is experiment, for many, not everyone.

Have a nice day, see ya around.

[Stasis 36]

The legendary quest drops in LFR are a problem for me. Within the scope of my raiding experience (we are not realm first progression group, maybe a top 10 Horde guild on skywall) I personally don't like the gear gating. I feel like i am forced to run LFR to earn an early raid spot. From my little viewpoint, I disagree with Blizzards ilvl's for gear from LFR and truly wish it was equivalent to Heroic dungeons.

See, I feel the complete opposite. I like that LFR is an important (crucial?) aspect to getting geared for real raiding. It's the same as having to run faction rep or grinding out this-or-that for raid consumables, it's just something that needs to be done during your down-time to improve your raid toon. At worst it's just an annoying hour (or a glorious beat the meters by 20k hour, depending on your mood).

I also like that it drops the legendary Sigil. It forces more raiders to continue to run LFR and makes the experience slightly better for the group. Could you imagine how impossibly painful it would be if no raiders ever ran it? At least this way Bosses are killable and people see how awesome real raiders are, and maybe provide some incentive to more people to join raiding Guilds. And I don't mind if casuals will end up with the LFR legendary; it doesn't change my game experience at all.

What I don't like is that the groups tend to be so, so bad. We wiped twice last night, once on the Stone Guard when the vocal 'raid leaders' RAGED at the DPS for dpsing the wrong target and causing it to petrify the raid... lol, and on the Troll Boss due to people not killing adds in the spirit realm. And we killed Feng with most of the raid dead due to stupidity. Blizzard NEEDS real raiders to make LFR work, thank God they're making it more attractive to run.

And again, at worst it's an annoying hour. But likely a more productive hour than most out-of-raid content in WoW.

[Peelyon 416]

Varchild - some great points made there, and pplayers like yourself are a good reason why Blizzard should cater the content accordingly. However like you mentioned, you just want to see the content, you dont care about rewards etc which is why the majority of us that like to play the game on normal or heroic mode are frustrated by having to compete at a lower difficulty to ensure we can compete with other guilds on our servers etc.

Sadly its a shame that players like yourself are in a minority. The number of "casuals" that use the wrong gear, dont gem / enchant, dont watch a video or care about anything far outweigh the ones like you. Its given many of us who enjoy structured groups a twisted and poor view of LFR as a whole.

Thanks for your comments though, hopefully LFR will continue to improve and grow for all of us!

[Stoove 347]

I really like this thread because it's managed to get away from the hackneyed "but you're just elitist"/"but you're just casual" repeated points which dominate discussions on the WoW official forums.

This has been incredibly interesting and I want to see more opinions ^_^

[Peelyon 416]

Sooooooo

Just tried 2nd part of LFR - Now I've not seen any of these bosses on normal and I generally only keep on the boss I am progressing with so not really done much more than a casual read up of the tactics either.

Spirit Kings - Seemed another tank and spank, some of the very easy mechanics such as the "defile" void zones and the wave of guards - people know it wont kill them therefore refuse to move anyway (so just makes them selfish - another bad point ofc).

Elegon - I've watched this video so know a tiny bit more than him, but someone who had obviously cleared the boss on normal made it VERY clear that you needed to move in p3 to avoid the floor. He gave ample warning, told players 4-5 times before the pull. Only 4 out of the entire raid group actually survived. Now personally I'm not sure what my take is on this.... we complain of the faceroll difficulty but obviously a one shot mechanic if it is going to take 80% of the raid group with it may be a bit uhm hard? Now dont get me wrong I dont mind wiping, and obviously for a large number of players it was first time seeing the boss etc, but after the wipe the amount of time wasted MOANING about the wipe etc.

It took us 20 minutes to get a full 25 group to the boss ressed and buffed. Queue a hunter who had aspect of the pack on and wouldnt remove it. 10 minutes later after "hunter buff deduction" we managed to work who the individual was and voted to kick. Before he is removed the "troll" decides to pull the boss then leaves /; is kicked. The boss then turns grey and although Im not sure what would have happened if we would have continued - the group decides to wipe.

Another 20 minutes later and I decide I've had enough.

Thankfully I now have 476 / 489 gear in the slots required for the first 3 bosses in MV so wont be attending that half again, and we are doing a guild run of 20+ tomorrow for the 2nd half (I went in today to have a little cheeky look at the bosses and see if I could get loot early for our main raid tonight).

So errr - yeah!

:)

Just as a very last note - I do feel for casuals who use LFR for their "main content" - must leave a horrible experience imprinted on the mind though. Elegon and Spirit Kings look like wicked bosses on normal yet LFR just seems such an underwhelming experience!

[Rystrave 1]

Whereas I've never enjoyed doing LFR, I've only really done it to gear up my offspec. Does this make me a bad person, for taking gear that other people "need?"

My guild is a casual progression guild who raids on a normal basis (twice a week, but we don't bang our head against the wall if something doesn't go well), so once in a while I may need to DPS. The only way to get enough gear to match with my MS is to either 1) get enough JP/VP and purchase it, which is used for my MS first, or 2) run LFR and hope I win something.

[Peelyon 416]

I suppose it depends by taking what other people "need". I suppose in general terms MS > OS however if you queued as a dps and were competitive then arguably you had every right to the gear as they did.

However that is all in the past with the new method of loot now anyway. Arguably the groups would never form if players like yourselves didnt sign up to try and gear an alt or a second or third set of gear etc anyway.

[Gwaine 2]

Good Evening/Morning all

Just thought i would give my 2 cents on this topic.

I think there are both pro's and con's to the LFR system. Yes it gives alot more people the chance to see the content i believe i read somewhere that something like 100 times more people saw DW compared to Kel'Thuzad, which in itself i think is great, but im not sure it balances out what i feel it takes away from the normal modes. For me it takes away all sense of achievement in downing a normal mode boss, i think it takes away the majority of the encounter designs, in DS it made a joke of some of the mechanics. Take Warlord Zon'ozz for example in LFR the ball meant nothing it was left to a tank to keep it away from the wall and that was it, and Warmaster Blackhorn was it possible for the ship to ever be in danger in LFR? No just kill the adds, kill the boss and forget about the rest. Its almost like Blizz just strips encounters down to the bone and says "that will do for LFR". Is that what we really want? Face roll for loot? Not for me thanks.

I agree with Stoove in the fact that i would rather not have to run LFR id rather just wait and dive into the normal modes with my raid group but how can you pass up on the upgrades which all in all will help get the group through the normal modes when it comes to it. You also have the added bonus of getting a feel for the certain mechanics that are in both normal and LFR which is extremely helpful. But after all, these guilds that are pushing world and realm firsts did they have time to waste on LFR? Nope. They did their practice on the beta and went for it regardless of only having heroic gear. Just because they play more than we do doesnt mean we cant do the same as them just may take us a little longer lol but when it comes time to raid the normal modes be it guild or pug we all know its going to come down to the same old requests "link LFR achieve" and "must have 480+ ilvl" which is going to be extremely difficult to get without actually taking part in LFR.

But could it be true that things are maybe changing.....

I completed the second part of MV tonight and i must say i thought it was fantastic, especially the final encounter, it feels so good to have a boss that even on LFR isnt a complete walk over. It took my group 3 wipes to get those buggers down and i must say i was glad to get the practice in. Its so refreshing to have a very active tanking fight again and it did take me a few tries to get the hang of dodging the Devastating Combo but i had great fun doing it. I think tonight was the most fun i have ever had in an LFR i think mostly because it felt like there was a decent challenge in these encounters, it wasnt just all tactics out the window and just bull in, it actually require some thought.

Lets hope this feeling lasts more than a couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading

Gwaine

[Stoove 347]

I still haven't actually done LFR, because I'm stubborn enough to try making a point and good enough that nobody notices I'm lacking the gear (yet). It's working out well for me so far, since reforging strategies and talent usage are some of my strong points. Unfortunately, I know I could be doing better with that gear and it sucks that I feel compelled to do something I hate on principle.

About Gwaine's point on top guilds getting LFR gear: actually I thought Method did run LFR for the easy gear, though they didn't ascribe that to their win.

I agree with Stoove

Oh you charmer! I thought I'd seen you somewhere before, what a coincidence ^_^