6461

One thing that this LFR system can’t repilicate from regular raiding is the sense of progression you get from working on an encounter for a couple lockouts until finally everything clicks.

This was always what I enjoyed most about my time playing WoW. To this day I still don’t understand the mentality of people who raid primarily because they want epic gear, not because they enjoy the challenge of raiding for its own sake. That mentality always seemed like putting the cart before the horse to me.

6462

Here’s my Hunter’s Red Beaststalker armor.

While I always liked my DS1 Beaststalker set, never cared for the yellow look. BC had a look a like set that’s red.

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6463

Cynic, is that just a screenshot of the character screen?

6464

I asked in guild chat and was told you can’t. Maybe it was turned off after people exploited the loot system. Anyway, seriously, it would be so boring.

6465

I think I got it

Marshal’s Gear. Nice that I get something unique for that horrible honor grind a few years ago. These bad quality pics were off my laptop with onboard video tethered to my iPhone :)

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My Pally.

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Haven’t decided on my others yet.

6466

It’s the exported version of the armory screen minus there gear and stats.

There’s a button (looks like a gear) that gives you the option to export the armory pic of your character.

Here’s my Rogue.

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6467

I went back to give patch 4.3 a spin yesterday, after five months of absence.

B O R I N G.

It’s too easy.
I did 4 runs on the new dungeons, seeing two of the three of them, all of them successful and relatively painless.
Got 4 pieces of loot in the process, which enabled me to queue for the PUG raid, cleared without even getting close to a single wipe.
It was busywork to collect gear. Pay the fee, get the candy. No thinking, no testing yourself, no rush.

DPSing the raid was especially boring, consisting for the most part of standing still and doing your rotation, like against an oversized training dummy. They seemed to have way too many hps, take too long to die, given how boring the process was.

I realize this is exactly what some people want, so here is a breakdown of what is on offer here:
If you play for the loot go play NOW, the sparkling pixels with big numbers attached are waiting for you to pick them up.
If you are after an exciting and involving experience, there is little to be had in the new dungeons and LFR.

Someone at the official forums gave a good definition of the feeling of these fights: they are a blur. The bodies pile so easily, the reactivity requirements so lax, that is hard to notice what the bosses are actually doing, to remember the details of the fights afterwards.
I remember well how I had to prepare for some t11 dungeons and raids fights. I remember the difficulties and execution and overcoming them in specific fights months ago.
Already can’t remember much of what happened yesterday though.

Cata heroics on release, before being nerfed multiple times and overgeared, were a different world than which you describe. Like 5 man raids, brutal fights where multiple players had unique critical roles requiring tight execution. A single mistake could spell a wipe. Groups wiped repeatedly and broke over many of the boss encounters and some of the trash pulls.

If you went in them with an “I want loot / success” mindset, they were a recipe for frustration.
But if you were for the adventure, they were amazing, epic affairs. Exciting battles when you died, big satisfactions if - not when, as success wasn’t guaranteed - you won.
They did give the votekick button a workout, cause a single lemon could irremediably spoil the salad.

6468

Ah, very cool. Thanks. I changed my pics.

6469

Sounds like WotLK is still the gold standard for mass-market dungeoning.

6470

Cata heroics, on release, were a lot of fun in guild groups. With PUGs, however, they were invariably horrific.

It was so bad that I gave up on dungeons pretty quickly into Cata (since my guild wasn’t heavy into dungeon running) and geared up for raiding almost exclusively through the fucking mind-numbing tedium of running daily quests to build faction reps.

6471

They were tuned like the 5 mans used to be tuned prior to Wrath. Forget about running something like Botanica with a pug back in the day. They were fun for groups of friends, but honestly, I don’t think that’s the majority of WoW players. The LFD tool is intended for those of us who don’t play in groups most of the time, much as the LFR tool will be now as well (and PvP battlegrounds before both, for those who do PvP). You either exclude all those people from the content, or you make it too easy for those who still play the game the old way. It’s obvious which choice will be better for more people.

I’d expect games like SWTOR to make the same choices btw, even if the mechanics are different.

6472

I really think that they should be leaving the normal difficulty where it is (well, maybe a bit harder), which makes it accessible to a much wider range of players and then have Heroic be closer to the Cata-release model. It’s called Heroic, for crying out loud!

Or, since it’s all 5-man content have a mirror of the LFR model. LFG is as difficult as things are currently, have full-group queuing (or an available option in the LF tool) be how Wrath/HoR/PoS normal was, and then Heroic close to the Cata-release heroics.

Skew the loot tables so that the best stuff is much rarer (but still available) in the LFG version, lower the <Title> points awarded, don’t give achievements. People can run it to see it and learn it, and then those that want to can move on to Normal and maybe heroic.

Once they get this LFR/Normal/Heroic raid tuning process stable, I can’t see why they WOULDN’T pass it on to the 5-mans. Unless they have stats showing that ‘enough’ of the player base already runs 5-mans (vs. the portion of the solo-only crowd that wants to run 5-mans but “can’t”), it seems like a simple enough plan.

6473

I think the plan there is that the hardcore 5 man players will do the speed runs in MoP to earn the fancy looking gear for transmogs.

6474

5 man normals at end game levels are going away in the expansion. They will only exist as leveling content. 5 man content at max levels will be heroic by default.

BTW, it would be stupid for Blizzard to screw the large majority of players who use the LFG function to do their 5 mans for the benefit of the small minority which does 5 mans manually. This is why I think regular raid content will eventually be treated the same way - most people don’t do the content with large groups of friends, they either solo or join groups via queues. The majority rules.

6475

This would be my preferred solution too. I like the easier versions of dungeons for running with PUGs, but the harder ones for running with friends/guildmates to enjoy the challenge together.

6476

Actually, Botanica didn’t give me that much trouble (I considered it one of the milk run Heroics, along with Mechanar and a couple others).

But Arcatraz, Shattered Halls / Shadow Labs, and Mana Tombs (each for different reasons) were brutal. Just as hard as pre-nerf Heroic Deadmines and Grim Batol.

Running those in the first weeks of release was a true challenge and a pleasure. Wrath had its token hard Heroic (Halls of Reflection), but nothing like that.

On the other hand, it was nice not to be wiping when I wanted to farm some Valors. :)

6477

Slabs was a hell of a challenge even without heroic.

6478

For those interested in the transmogrification feature, here are my two main characters. Neither has an especially creative getup, but it sure looks better than what I had prior to this patch.

First up, my mage, who is sporting the old Wrathful look:

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And my lovely paladin. I was shooting for a somewhat subdued blood knight look. I still need to tweak it a bit. Oh, and her pose is silly:

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6479

Ar: “Cata heroics on release, before being nerfed multiple times and overgeared, were a different world than which you describe.”

Totally agree. In LK they were hard for the first 4-6 weeks tops in pugs until you mostly were in equal or better gear. Guild groups they were tough for 2-3 weeks and only certain fights (Halls of Lightning/Stone) or say Oculus. Early on we all learned which heroics were the ones you started out on and moved up to the harder stuff. Nexus/VH/the lower vyrkul one whose name I can effing remember now were fairly easy.

Cata heroics were a bitch and a half. They were tuned for guild groups on vent till they patched in the lfd pug buffs again. I think in that first 4-6 weeks I saw healer after healer swap specs or just quit the game. I’ve spent most of this damn expansion healing instead of tanking because we’re chronically short on healers then we have 3-4 regulars and I fill in the tanking spot because the regular tank took a break.

I don’t remember getting near as frustrated with LK heroics early on. I remember being exceptionally pissed off running heroic SFK and getting stomped last december/january. There was a week or so where I seriously considered quitting, healing was not fun. I had 3 healers at 80 (pally was tank/dps) and only my druid raider has stayed healing. My priest was eventually geared up to do most of tier 11 but I just can’t stand holy priest mechanics now. My shaman has been enhance the whole expansion because when I can play him, I have no desire to heal or take the pain of gearing him up. I’d rather have longer lfd queue times and gear up heals when no one else wants it.

6480

manage to do deathwing in LFR, got the 2handed sword…

the tentacle it summons is freaking OP!!!

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I pulled 42k dps, and my tentacle did 15k dps for that fight… some serious hentai power there.