Thundering LFR thoughts

I did a LFR for Throne of Thunder (or ToT as it is being called in the off-channels) and it was ahem interesting…I was unlucky enough to joining a run already in progress and on the final boss of that LFR session – Council. What I saw was expected and I’ll share a little.

For starters, the LFR mini-game has not changed and is still present, meaning:

• an idiot still trolled the raid by pulling with missing players/roles, and left before being kicked. I feel there should be a way to make that player’s life worse somehow because he wasted 10 minutes of 20-ish people’s time.
• an impatient player still yelled and whined about “just pull” and was a general pain through out the encounters. These people make me not want to read /raid channel.
• nobody “knew” the strat, despite the raid leader explaining it really clearly,
• many Dps did terrible jobs of staying alive and also actually doing damage. We sat around 80k dps for most attempts, did about 105k on the kill, but 5-7 players were doing less than 40k, and some less than 20k dps. Doing 20k dos with a 30% buff is unthinkable.
• gear level was low for some characters present, but honestly how they played was far more a factor.
• I battlerez’ed another character in each attempt, but I think the attitude is to wipe and reset rather than push in LFR.

Oh, but we have new enhancements to the system to help:

• the new 5% buff for each wipe is interesting. I joined the Council attempts at +15% so knew they’re already suffering. When we killed it we were at +30%. I was around 3rd on Dps for most of the fights, sometimes getting to 1st. The buff is not stopping people from leaving, and is not stopping situational awareness, or lazy players.
• the new buff system will help reasonable players carry bad ones, which is why I fully support it as a concept. The max value of 50% might not be enough if the player base cannot learn about staying out of sand-traps, but it is a help.
• We will have four of these raids by end of April to do each week. I do not have the time or inclination to repeat that repeat wipe experience 4x a week in addition to dailies and trying to get a raid spot. I find wiping like that totally frustrating. It is not progression when nobody stays to learn, or refuses to learn how to do the fight properly.
• Oh – and my Mogu coin and luck remain consistent with the previous tiers, meaning NOTHING DROPPED for me BUT A SCRUB DPS GOT A TWO HANDED WEAPON at item level 502. I wanted to throw my laptop at that point, or go out and buy a cat so I could kick it.

To be fair a single boss kill in not enough to say that the sky is falling, and in fact I like everything I’ve seen in Throne of Thunder. The trash, the bosses I’ve seen, and the physical construction is very good so far. I am pleased to say I will return there, and even keep trying to offload my lucky-mogu-coins for something other than gold.

As there will be 4x LFRs to do each week for Thunder Throne – why not let the players queue up for a selection of them at a time. i.e. At the start of the week we are not really going to care which we complete, and if that makes queues quicker then everyone wins.

What we will have soon is 4 separate long queues as Dps to sit through, which is potentially a 35-45 minute wait for each, plus the other activity. It is starting to look a lot like World of Waitcraft from this side – I know that is an unfair debasement of the game as present, and I also know from previous experience what a debacle the LFR runs will be soon.

When are the bosses going live in LFR? (source):

• March 12  – LFR Wing 1 “Last Stand of the Zandalari”
• March 19 – LFR Wing 2 “Forgotten Depths”
• April 2 – LFR Wing 3 “Halls of Flesh-Shaping”
• April 16 – LFR Wing 4 “Pinnacle of Storms”

That is enough for now, Happy Killing

Related articles

• LFR – Letting people die to succeed (gaspodethedog.typepad.com)
• Tales of woe: In a LFR PUG the conversation can go downhill fast (realityafk.wordpress.com)