Greedy Goblin

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Weekend minipost: destructive resonance

Yesterday, to speed up the queue for my girlfriend who has a new alt in WoW, I queued up with her for Looking for Raid "difficulty". It's called "Looking for Retards" by the community, and not without a reason. This abomination isn't just easier than normal, like normal is easier than heroic. It's absolutely trivialized.

In the last boss encounter, there is a mechanic called "Destructive Resonance". It's a huge, visible mine on the ground. Standing in it is usually wipe, so anyone failing to that is usually instakicked from any raid. Not from LFR!
Every single one were exploded. I was watching it. Not a single one survived. And no one died. Also no one died when the tank exploded in the middle. People lost like 20% HP. Intermission adds: barely any AoE. P4 orbs: 30% HP loss. Despite 2/3 raid wouldn't survive P2 in normal mode, no one died and the boss was oneshotted.

I'm positively disgusted by LFR. I understand that there should be a difficulty level for lesser players, but this has zero difficulty. Doing it helps nothing in preparing for normal difficulty - besides the welfare epics it hands out. It doesn't even serve as a sightseeing as the boss mechanics are invisible. I simply can't imagine a player who is so bad that LFR poses a challenge to him.

Repulsive abomination. I don't think I'll stay in WoW for much longer.

PS: I take it back. This guy would definitely find LFR challenging. Please note the Orca and the Cynnabal on the kill. It wasn't a suicide gank.

38 comments:

Esteban said...

There probably do exist people who want to continue with the interactive movie experience in a raid context, and Blizzard probably found them somewhere in their datamining. It doesn't really harm anyone.

That said, wild horses couldn't drag me back to WoW. It'd be like trying to recapture a love affair by wooing a painting of one's deceased lover.

Balkoth said...

"Repulsive abomination. I don't think I'll stay in WoW for much longer."

Come on now.

Being able to craft 670 gear with nothing but a minimal time investment is cool. Being able to get 655+ gear from garrison missions is cool. Being able to speed up "legendary" quest progress with garrison missions/work orders is cool. Being able to get a full set of 620 honor gear while AFKing in BGs is cool. Being able to eventually lose your way to 660 conquest gear is cool.

But being able to do a "raid" at the same "difficulty" as leveling quests and getting worse looking, badly itemized, and deliberately sabotaged 640 gear is the problem?

I mean, I'm saying this as a raid leader of a 3/7M guild that only raids two nights a week. Who cares about LFR? They're basically watching a video on Youtube once a week and getting handed some gear Blizzard has deliberately made bad. The top guilds didn't have even bother doing it, they were doing six runs of normal and heroic the first week. And if for some reason it makes these people happy enough to keep paying Blizzard...who cares?

No one thinks LFR is equivalent to raiding and this is doubly so now -- by nerfing it that much Blizzard sent a very clear signal that if you want to RAID, you go to normal or above.

If anything I'd think you'd like this -- makes it clear that LFR is only for people who are really, really bad.

Hell, doesn't EVE have some equivalent? Go something mind-numbing boring and easy in a safe zone for shitty rewards? Whatever.

Anonymous said...

LFR is a bit different than the standards you were holding it to. Blizzard has said it is not a training ground for normal raids. And people who want story mode are there for story - atmosphere and to see what things look like and say; if they cared about mechanics, they would not be in LFR.

IMO, LFR is a way not only for casual players to see content but IMO a cheap way for Blizzard to avoid crafting efforts. Solo/casual players need some gear progression, both to keep paying and to reward them so their garrison/achievement grinding can get easier. Besides some Diablo-style players think everything should come from RNG drops not AH.

Anonymous said...

LFR is only to view the raids, see the story unfold.

In fact, LFR should not be awarding gear at all. Or, the rewards could be Heroic Dungeon level gear (which is trivial gear).

Balkoth said...

"Or, the rewards could be Heroic Dungeon level gear (which is trivial gear)."

It basically is. 640 ilvl (heroic dungeons is 630).

Normal is 655, Heroic 670, Mythic 685.

Soge said...

According to World Of Logs (http://www.worldoflogs.com/zone/eu-us/highmaul/imperator-margok#tabs-lfr), 1/5 of Imperator attempts end up in a wipe. It is probably balanced so that a handful of good players can carry the rest, meaning that, so long as you have a bunch with any familiarity with raiding, it is easy – Which means that you, personally, will rarely ever wipe.

For an interesting story about how easy he is, consider the following: When I went to do it this week, I, a mage, decided to pull him while the mobs in the room were still alive – just to test how facerollable the encounter was. Even with that, with everyone triggering the mines (which only damage the player that triggers them in LFR, by the way), I don't remember anyone falling under 50% HP, and the kill was still faster than doing normal mode with guildies.

Anonymous said...

I've never understood why you care so much about how other people play a game.
If that part of the content is too trivial to be challenging for you, don't play it.

Gevlon said...

It's part of the progression path, so one must play it to get gear. This time this one was my girlfriend. Yes, I should have told her to just suck up the 1 hour queue.

maxim said...

LFR doesn't have to be a part of progression path if you don't want it to be. I made exactly 1 LFR run and didn't come back since. Pretty much all the initial gear i got from garrison, challenge mode dailies and very minimal crafting. There are exactly 0 preraid best-in-slots in LFR. It is only marginally useful for padding ilvl.

As your own project has shown, Normal mode is relatively comfortably puggable. Heroic is puggable once you get ilvl up and stop being a potato on raid mechanics.

Even if you want to make use of LFR, you can still only spend maybe a couple of hours in it on any given week. Everything beyond a single clear is utter waste. That makes up for, what, 10% of your weekly playtime?

TLDR: you are getting mad at irrelevant things again

Balkoth said...

"It's part of the progression path, so one must play it to get gear."

No, it isn't?

It didn't even come out until the week Mythic came out, meaning people who were serious about progression didn't even need gear from it.

Hell, I had mostly 640s from CMs at that point anyway. We cleared normal and heroic the first week without doing LFR (it wasn't even available!). And when it did open, only three bosses with bad drops opened.

The "progression" path of LFR is leveling -> normal dungeons -> LFR.

The actual raid progression path is leveling -> heroic dungeons -> CMs (optional) -> Normal -> Heroic -> Mythic.

So kindly explain how it's part of the "progression path" because it sure wasn't for mythic or even heroic guilds. Blizzard's gone out of their way tremendously to try to make it irrelevant for people raiding normal and above.

Gevlon said...

@Balkoth, maxim: this is exactly why my girlfriend run this alt-project. The progression path of a first-wave player is extremely different from a latecomer.

In the first week the dungeons opened, we went to pug normal raid with 635 ilvl demand. 5 bosses went down.

Now she was in a 645 ilvl normal raid which struggled hard, despite having some high level boosting players.

The problem is that a latecoming player has the same ilvl as a first-wave M&S. Ilvl isn't important for the actual stats (as proven by first week 7/7 HC guilds), but as a signal of being above the M&S. You don't need a fixed ilvl for normal. You need "top 5%" ilvl, regardless how high that number is.

So at the first week when we had 635, we could grab other 635 players and kill normal bosses, because these players were all top5-10%. Now most of the 635 players are worthless firedancers who damage below the hunterpet. To be able to raid, you need to get to "top 5%" ilvl, which is around 655 now. For that, you need crafted and LFR.

Yes, that means that to have a group that is capable of clearing normal, you need to ask ilvl higher than the raid gives.

Olivier said...

Gevlon your ALOD was a planned suicide, advertised on the forums, of someone retiring from eve.

Balkoth said...

"To be able to raid, you need to get to "top 5%" ilvl, which is around 655 now. For that, you need crafted and LFR."

Whoah there. How do you need LFR for this?

I mean, a 680 ring, three 670 crafted pieces, and full 640 LFR gear is (680 + 670 * 3 + 640 * 12)/16 = 648 ilvl. That's still a full 7 ilvls short of your mark. So having full LFR doesn't even meet your stated goal!

Ergo, you need to be doing normals anyway which means all LFR does is speed up the process slightly, it doesn't suddenly allow you to raid.

Hell, I have an alt Horde-side that I recently leveled and I went 3/7N in about an hour with a PUG that was asking 632 ilvl (had to leave). Was that group going to kill Imperator? No, but it could kill 3-5 bosses and get people loot which will then let you get into better groups.

"Yes, that means that to have a group that is capable of clearing normal, you need to ask ilvl higher than the raid gives."

Where is this "clearing normal" suddenly coming from (versus being to kill at least a few bosses and get gear to find a better group that can clear normal in later weeks)?

And how is it related to LFR either? People running heroic dungeons would have full 630 plus 680 ring plus some 640/655/670 crafted gear at this point and easily be 635+. With three crafted items (at least 640+), a 680 ring, and figure two Garrison 645 items (and assuming no CM gear), going from the rest being 630 to the rest being 640 is only a 10/16 * 10 = 6.25 ilvl difference. That's the effective of LFR -- at most about 6 ilvls.

Anonymous said...

Why are you disgusted? You are clearly playing a difficulty not meant for you. It would be like being disgusted by Bayonetta's "one button mode" trivializing the game, except that it actually allows handicapped players to enjoy the game.

Balkoth said...

Hell, that's not even counting the 655+ "raid missions" you get at your garrison, so throw another 655+ item or two in there and the difference drops to 5 ilvls.

Balkoth said...

"It would be like being disgusted by Bayonetta's "one button mode" trivializing the game, except that it actually allows handicapped players to enjoy the game."

Except that's not a multiplayer game. In a multiplayer game, what people can get and social expectations can affect you, unlike your example.

That said, LFR is still irrelevant...but if it gave gear equal to Mythic difficulty or something we'd have a massive, massive problem.

Gevlon said...

@Balkoth: you should clear everything every week for the stones. LFR Mar'gok gives exactly the same amount of Abrogator Stones as mythic Mar'gok.

Also, if you recently reached lvl 100, you have around 600 ilvl. You get crafted, garrison, ring and such to some slots. To the other slots, the LFR gear gives 2-3 total ilvl jump.

Can you reach high ilvl without LFR? Of course you can. At the cost of much longer grinding (gold for purchases) or more waiting (weeks while you do 3-5 normal bosses.

Balkoth said...

"@Balkoth: you should clear everything every week for the stones. LFR Mar'gok gives exactly the same amount of Abrogator Stones as mythic Mar'gok."

And how many PUGs are demanding the 690 version of the ring with the proc?

Oh, right, zero. Let's not shift the goalposts here, the ring is irrelevant for raiding normal.

"Also, if you recently reached lvl 100, you have around 600 ilvl. You get crafted, garrison, ring and such to some slots. To the other slots, the LFR gear gives 2-3 total ilvl jump."

Are you trying to say having "full" LFR (besides those other slots) gives you a total of 2-3 ilvls or that each LFR piece gives you 2-3 ilvls?

If it's the former, then...seriously? What happened to this "635 used to be okay, now you need 655" -- that's a 20 point shift, not 203.

If it's the latter, then no, each LFR piece gives a maximum of 0.625 ilvl shift because heroic dungeon gear is 630 ilvl. Which you can spam indefinitely, and even can do specifics once per day rather than per week.

"Can you reach high ilvl without LFR? Of course you can. At the cost of much longer grinding (gold for purchases) or more waiting (weeks while you do 3-5 normal bosses."

But LFR is only making a 6 point difference overall (or less). Do you see this? LFR may be the difference between being 645 and 650 worst case scenario (if you have "full" LFR gear -- which you won't in a few weeks), but it's not the difference between 635 and 655.

Gevlon said...

The stones are part of the legendary questline and should be completed.

With ilvl: you have 17x ilvl 600 when you reach max level (simplification). You buy/craft/quest some pieces of 670: creating a mix of 600 and 670. Replacing one piece of 600 with a 645 will elevate your total ilvl by 2-3.

Balkoth said...

"The stones are part of the legendary questline and should be completed."

You're shifting the goalposts again. If LFR dropped no gear and awarded 10% of the stones of Normal/Heroic/Mythic then by your logic it would still be mandatory and part of progression.

Come on now, no one outside of hardcore guilds would expect that and people in hardcore guilds are full clearing at least normal.

"Replacing one piece of 600 with a 645 will elevate your total ilvl by 2-3."

LFR is 640, not 645.

Replacing a 600 with a 630 will also raise your ilvl by 2, why aren't you complaining about the easy heroic dungeons?

I mean, you'll be lucky if you get two 640 items in one week of LFR. You can have every slot be at least 630 blues (with probably some warforged and/or socketed) in the same week from heroic dungeons.

Anonymous said...

@Balkoth: "Except that's not a multiplayer game. In a multiplayer game, what people can get and social expectations can affect you, unlike your example."

This doesn't change the fact that multiple tier of difficulties exist and the bottom one is meant to be extremely accessible.

On top of that, Is LFR actually about the multiplayer aspects? My longstanding opinion is that many parts of WoW are enjoyed more often as singleplayer, with other players being either background noise or even a nuisance.

In LFR there are other players with you, but how many actually care about them? I bet many would find perfectly acceptable to replace them with NPCs and some would find it actually an improvement.

Balkoth said...

P.S. If you're seriously arguing that you have to pursue any upgrade no matter how small then you could also get six 655 pieces doing nothing but farming Apexis crystal. It would completely suck trying to farm them outside the daily quest for 800/1000, but you COULD do it. And "should" be done if any possibly upgrade is worth it.

But I'm guessing neither you nor your girlfriend farmed all that 655 gear out (nor did I or anyone I know or have even heard of).

Gevlon said...

Apexis comes very slow, so you CAN'T get upgrades from there.

Dungeons give 630 and they are considereably harder (in level-appropriate group) than LFR.

LFR should be giving 615 max.

Anonymous said...

LFR is not for real raiders, why would you quit over a difficulty you have no business with?

Balkoth said...

"This doesn't change the fact that multiple tier of difficulties exist and the bottom one is meant to be extremely accessible."

We're talking about the rewards, not the accessibility. If LFR gave zero gear or legendary quest items Gevlon wouldn't have any problem.

Blizzard's done a ton to make LFR less and less attractive to raiders, which makes me happy -- Gevlon just thinks they didn't go far enough.

"I bet many would find perfectly acceptable to replace them with NPCs and some would find it actually an improvement."

I'm sure they would find it an improvement! But yeah, this isn't the issue we're discussing at all. NPCs or not, the concern is the reward for it.

"Apexis comes very slow, so you CAN'T get upgrades from there."

Why not?

Can easily farm several hundred crystals per hour.

"LFR should be giving 615 max."

That's the ilvl of normal dungeons. You also realize that LFR requires 615 ilvl (or 610, forget which) to queue?

Look, I think very little of LFR (http://balkothsword.blogspot.com/2014/04/no-sorry-lfr-is-not-raiding.html) and had severe concerns with the lockout system in WoD (http://balkothsword.blogspot.com/2014/04/woo-hoo-thank-you-blizzard-down-to.html , http://balkothsword.blogspot.com/2014/05/more-thoughts-on-wod-lockouts-and-loot.html), but you're being ridiculous here.

LFR is done after getting normal dungeon gear, so it's going to be above normal dungeons. Given that some of the people doing LFR also will have done heroic dungeons (good enough to make it through heroic dungeons, not good enough to do normal raids), it's also going to be above heroic dungeons.

I mean, literally think about what your "argument" is:

If...

1, you're not in a guild
2, you weren't playing at WoD launch
3, you're obsessed with getting the legendary items ASAP
4, you're not obsessed enough to farm Apexis Crystals
5, you're not willing to make your own group
6, you're not willing to sign up for a planned raid on something like OpenRaid
7, you don't have any friends who run groups

then yes, you may "have" to do a boss or two in LFR to get all the legendary stones for the week. Note that this has nothing to do with whether you can get into a PUG because they don't give a damn about the 690 ring.

And it's not about the gear because there's no guarantee you'll get anything, let alone anything useful.

This is a non-issue, Gevlon.

LFR is not there to challenge people. It's not there to train people. It's to give people who enjoy playing WoW for social reasons (which you don't) something super easy to do, like "story mode" in single player games, that gives them some crappily itemized and weak gear.

If you do LFR at the same time you're trying to do normal, best case you *might* shave a week or two off full clearing normal (gain like 1 ilvl per week with LFR, may help you get into a better normal group). But LFR isn't magically going to boost your ilvl by 10 points, or even 3 points, the very first week (relative to what you could get if LFR dropped 615 gear like you desire). Maybe 3 points if you got insanely lucky with like 4 drops.

And if your biggest complaint about WoW is that you feel obliged to spend an hour per week doing something boring and unfun in order to catch up then...yeah.

(And yes, LFR will take like an hour for all three sections -- hire a healer to queue with if necessary, they'll easily be willing to go for 250-500g per section or something).

Seriously, just go enjoy raiding. Stop obsessing over gaining 1 ilvl a week from LFR and finishing your epic ring like a week or two sooner if you find it that terrible.

Anonymous said...

@Balkoth: he is not moving goal posts at all, nor is he stating that you should farm Apexis crystals to improve your gear.

All he is trying to say is that doing LFR is the rational way of gearing currently, as it's the most time efficient method.

Not doing it is like trying to climb a mountain instead of using the road, it's more difficult but at the same time it just uses up more time for the same result

Samus said...

@Balkoth

I pretty much agree with your overall point, that LFR does not offer any kind of amazing rewards. You will have no problem distinguishing actual raiders from players who have only done LFR, there will be a substantial gap in item level. They removed Justice and Valor points, the old welfare mechanic, and those were not really any different.

However, I do think LFR is part of the progression for new players or alts. Eventually, you will hit 615 item level. In the next hour, what is the most efficient use of your time? I think it is pretty clearly LFR. (Also keep in mind, 90% of players will NEVER be capable of doing Challenge Mode, so it isn't a gearing option for most.)

Sure, you don't have to do LFR, but you could say that about just about every element of gearing. You could skip the legendary ring quest, or crafted upgrades, or item enchants, or follower missions. And you would be perfectly fine, perfectly capable of running normal raids. But all of those things are still part of the most efficient progression path, and LFR is too.

Stojly said...

I see the absolutely laughable level of WoD's LFR as GREAT move from Blizzard.

In MoP, LFR was easy, but you could still wipe if you were just ignoring mechanics. This led a lot of new players to believe that LFR was actually raiding, just as valid as Normal or Heroic mode. Gear was the same name, same look, just a bit lower itemlvl.

With WoD's difficulty, NOBODY can think that any longer. You can't wipe (I TRIED. I intentionally exploded every mind in Imperator, stood with Fixate in the middle of the raid, and tried to explode as much people as I could in the last phase and we still killed him). Even gear looks much worse (might not matter to you, but matters to those who LFR is for). I see this as a nice message from Blizzard.

The message to LFR players is no longer 'You are playing on easier difficulty'. Now it's 'You are playing on trash-difficulty for brain-dead'. This isn't what we want you to play'. And that's great!

maxim said...

@Gevlon
The observation that the average moves along with the player population is indeed interesting :D
I guess i can agree that for a newly levelled player LFR is probably unavoidable.
But then all the more reason to have it about as braindead as questing, don't you think?

I guess the fact that LFR gives better gear than challenge dailies does indeed kinda irk me. If it was me, i'd make LFR give 635 gear (and challenge dailies give 645)

That all being said, it seems to me that you are trying to draw far-reaching conclusions on exceedingly small samples. This is poor practice.

Nothing you said cannot be explained by simply having a bad luck with a pug on a given night.

Balkoth said...

"@Balkoth: he is not moving goal posts at all, nor is he stating that you should farm Apexis crystals to improve your gear."

Yes, he is.

Originally he said that he was disgusted by the fact LFR has no difficulty. Called the gear "welfare epics" (which is true) but strongly indicated he was upset with the lack of difficulty, not the power of the rewards.

Then he shifted to saying

"It's part of the progression path, so one must play it to get gear"

I pointed out how it was in fact not the path of progression for the people who actually DID have to min-max their gear (serious raiders).

The he shifted to

"Now most of the 635 players are worthless firedancers who damage below the hunterpet. To be able to raid, you need to get to "top 5%" ilvl, which is around 655 now. For that, you need crafted and LFR."

Now he's not claiming it's part of a natural progression path, just that you can't get into normal runs without LFR gear. Claiming you need LFR gear to get 655 ilvl.

So then I pointed out how even a full set of LFR gear would make like a 6 ilvl difference -- and would certainly not get you to 655 ilvl unless you have a large amount of normal gear already.

Then he shifted to saying

"you should clear everything every week for the stones. LFR Mar'gok gives exactly the same amount of Abrogator Stones as mythic Mar'gok."

So now it's not about min-maxing gear progression, it's about getting the maximum number of legendary stones per week. Which means that even if LFR dropped no gear except for the legendary stones, Gevlon would STILL have a problem.

So now it's not even about the gear either!

We've gone from the problem is the lack of difficulty to claiming it's part of the progression path to it being needed to get into normal to it being needed to maximize legendary progress until you can full clear normal. But while you MUST maximize legendary progress and MUST do LFR for chances at 640 gear, grinding Apexis Crystals is completely optional.

That is most definitely shifting the goalposts. Every time I counter an argument he goes "Uh...I actually meant THIS instead!"

"All he is trying to say is that doing LFR is the rational way of gearing currently, as it's the most time efficient method."

If you showed up late to the party, as it were, you've always had to grind Justice/Honor/Timeless Isle/etc. And we're not talking about being required to grind for hours each week...we're literally talking about an hour or so tops to maybe (if you're lucky) gain 1 more ilvl per week (though obviously this gear may be replaced by normal drops, world boss drops, crafted gear, or garrison mission gear).

"Not doing it is like trying to climb a mountain instead of using the road, it's more difficult but at the same time it just uses up more time for the same result"

If I have a choice between a scenic drive up the mountain that I enjoy which takes 90 minutes and a dull, boring drive up the mountain that takes 80 minutes, does it REALLY matter? The difference is negligible. And, like I said, you can only go the dull way for an hour per week, the rest of the time involves heroic dungeons, challenge modes, or normal raids. It's not like you have to do the boring route for hours every day or something.

Balkoth said...

"Eventually, you will hit 615 item level. In the next hour, what is the most efficient use of your time?"

The question is not what the most efficient use of your time is, the question is how MUCH more efficient is it. If LFR is 0.01% more efficient than heroic dungeons, who cares. If LFR is 1000% more efficient than heroic dungeons, that's a potential problem.

And again, the difference between someone does LFR every week and someone who doesn't do LFR every week is going to be at MOST about 4 ilvl after an entire month. Likely only a 2-3 ilvl difference if you're making crafted gear, doing garrison missions for 645 items and the 655+ raid missions, and getting normal loot from 5+ bosses.

LFR will not magically make you 655 instead of 640, it might make you 643 instead of 640.

"Sure, you don't have to do LFR, but you could say that about just about every element of gearing."

And it's completely true. The question is what demands your environment makes of you. If someone in *my* guild missed a boss on normal, heroic, AND mythic for some reason I'd certainly expect them to kill the boss in a PUG or LFR for the stones. But I lead a mythic raiding guild.

That same environment does not apply to most people. For example, I guarantee that 99% of the people we're referring to are not double potting on every boss. Getting 50 seconds of 1000 intellect on a four minute fight like Butcher is worth over 200 intellect. A neck like http://www.wowhead.com/item=113833&bonus=0 is just worth over 200 intellect as well. So not double potioning is like not wearing a necklace at all.

But do people double pot in normal? Usually not.

Do people use the augment runes for a further 50 intellect (which is like upgrading that neck to 670)? Certainly not.

The min-max argument is ringing patently false because these people are not min-maxing where it's actually more important anyway.

Anonymous said...

Blogger Olivier said...

Gevlon your ALOD was a planned suicide, advertised on the forums, of someone retiring from eve.




https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=396290

Cheers

Gevlon said...

@Balkoth: "difficulty" is always defined against rewards. Killing lvl 1 wolves in Elwyn Forest is easier than LFR (you can AoE-oneshot a whole pack), yet no one complaints because they give vendortrash and no XP for anyone over lvl 10.

The problem with LFR is that it's trivially easy, yet give superior reward to HC instances (people wipe in HC instances) and even challenge modes (most people don't have gold). It's equal to 1 week worth of crafting building or running Apexis quests for a week.

Finally, it counts into the legendary quest, giving the BEST reward in the game, that no other way, even Mythic raiding can beat.

Just because I'm trying to explain it to you with pointing to different parts of the game, I'm not shifting goalposts.

The problem is pre-potting is that you don't need performance to get into groups. You need ilvl. It's true that a guy knowing his class, flasking, potting and pre-potting is better than a guy with 15 ilvl higher and slacking. But guess who gets the invite! Sure, the slacker might get a kick later, but the first guy won't even get a chance.

Gear is no longer the tool to get high DPS. DPS is the tool to get the boss down for gear.

Balkoth said...

"But guess who gets the invite!"

The guy who has contacts with other people who know of groups that need people or can vouch for him.

But if you're not willing to join a guild and don't have any *gasp* social contacts then it can suck to find a group, sure. It took me a while to find some on my 633 priest.

But guess what? The groups I was good enough to join were wanting 645+ ilvl. Even if I had gotten 4 more items from LFR in those two weeks I'd still be like 10 ilvl short of that.

LFR just does not make the difference you think it does.

"Finally, it counts into the legendary quest, giving the BEST reward in the game, that no other way, even Mythic raiding can beat."

So let's ask a simple question: if LFR gave *zero* loot but still dropped legendary stones, would you still be upset?

Betting the answer is yes, but you may surprise me.

Samus said...

@Gevlon

One thing I will say is, wait until the next patch to see what they do. In the old welfare system, last week's top tier gear was suddenly available for Justice points. Will they bump up the rewards for LFR? LFR in the next patch might be better, or it might be way worse. (Would anyone here really be surprised if LFR gave 670 or 685 next patch?) We will see.

Balkoth said...

"Will they bump up the rewards for LFR?"

For the new LFR, sure. Blackrock Foundry LFR is 650 (everything is adjusted +10 ilvls).

Next tier? Who knows.

Presumably it'll require about 645 ilvl to queue. Could see the drops being as high as 680 (15 ilvls below Normal if we assume +30 ilvls for a new tier) or as low as 670 (+25 ilvls over the minimum queueing ilvl).

Guessing it'll be in that range, though.

Anonymous said...

As of this moment in time, the proper "gear catch-up" mechanism is to queue for Ashran and run side-quests.

With the conquest point catch-up mechanic in place, I was able to EASILY farm 6,250 conq last week, and buy three pieces of iLvl660 gear that is properly stat-allocated for my class & spec (and won't be replaced until the back-half of Heroic BF)

Anonymous said...

Augment Rune is nice for ranks and Butcher. Since they go for about 100g each, going semi AFK in LFR for some Augment Runes is quite nice.