LFR thoughts: counterpoint

What I'm seeing is that LFR seems to be suited for a certain type of player, the raid PUG-player. The attitude and expertise of these people is very precise, they are very aggressive and bossy, intolerant of wipes, quick to blame, and those that know the fights are clearly pleased with themselves when they know. In fact, they are exactly the people who made raiding Vault of Archavon in WotLK a painful experience. This person is not someone who can deal with progression raiding; the only challenge they are interested in is outperforming the rest of the raid, and when PUG'd in, usually drop group after more than 1 wipe on a boss. With LFR, Blizzard has given them their own playground, exactly suited to them. It's a face roll for any geared character played by someone who knows how to raid. LFR even has a loot system which is not merit based, giving the raid PUG person a perfect target for their displeasure.

I do agree that 25man raids are suffering, but not from LFR, just from the combined lockouts. We can't just go into a 10man to see the fights, then try it on 25. And 10s are easier by far, even if the odds of useful loot decrease significantly. I'm sure Blizzard is seeing this and will deal with it appropriately in Mists of Pandaria. There are quite a few remedies they could apply without significant recoding.

While the various tiers of TOC and ICC was crazy bullshit, I think MoP raids should go back to how Ulduar was done, specifically Hodir and XT, with 10 and 25 on separate lockouts, and "heroic mode" triggered by demonstrating in the fight via a gear check mechanic that the raid could handle it. Well, "heroic mode" isn't the subject of this post. They do not have to distinguish between 10- and 25-man gear. There's really not going to be any harm in letting people go after a boss twice a week.

But if they really want to avoid some people feeling they have to run both, I'd rather see 10 and 25s be separate raids, like in BC; but that would not work well with guild structure as coded in the game and would be the source of "left out" drama. Maybe 10 and 20, instead of 25.

Not Right

From a Vault of Casino trip earlier this week:

You need to click through and read the chat text and tooltip.

Vault of Casino

Last Saturday I slept in a bit. DraNgNon had been playing WoW, but she woke me up and told me to log Telt on. I did as she logged off and I was promptly invited in to heal a 10man Vault of Archanvon run. Despite my trepidation and the creation of a fail angel just before Toravon died all the bosses were one-shot.



I was not surprised that Telt hadn't previously killed Toravon or even Koralon, but I really thought she'd killed Emalon, and certainly that she had killed Archavon...

Anyway we killed the bosses and finished up just in time for DraNgNon to finish making tasty breakfast for both of us. I win!

Achieve-O-Rama!

Kuanchichi and Viljo went to Old Kingdom with Naleana and Ahngusbeaf and Sunuru. It was the daily heroic so we all wanted some badges. In the usual way of things I like OK. It's got a couple of bosses with fun mechanics. Especially the end boss where you have to kill a copy of all the rest of your group. Unfortunately we ran into bugs on both crazy-cultist-lady and Herald.

Crazy cultist lady had about 10 of her elite minions run up the stairs and start beating us as soon as we pulled her. They aren't supposed to do that. But after a wipe we made sure they didn't do that again, and killed her handily.

Herald Volazj was more of a pain, with a much more difficult to work around bug. When he cast insanity each of us was faced with several copies of our team to defeat. Viljo was prepared to deal with the rest of his team, but not three copies of the rest of his team. So we wiped on him twice. The third time we actually managed to all survive the insanity, and killed Herald in 1:59. Just one second in time to get the speed kill achieve, Volazj's Quick Demise, for everyone in the party. It was epic, but usually I prefer not to have to work around the game's bugs.

After that DraNgNon and I were going to go to bed, but we were tootling around doing a few dailies and crafting stuff and Teltanara got pulled into VOA25. It was a good group, so it all went quite smoothly. Apparently Telt had never done any of VOA25 before. So she got all three kill achieves.

While Telt was in VOA, Rahlenti asked in guild chat if there was a shaman who wanted to be part of a Sarth+3 zerg attempt. Kuanchichi said yes and after several wipes Kuan is now the proud Kuanchichi of the Nightfall, and has the achieves Twilight Duo and Twilight Zone

and, Ulduar 10 redux

I finally had some time last night to play Wow, the first block of time since rejoining Darkfall. Darkfall decided I was there as a friend (not probation) until I re-app'd, so I re-app'd Friday. The guild rule, that they've had forever and still have, is no raiding in non guild raids during guild raid times (whether you are in the guild raids or not). And, no raiding progression 25 mans with other guilds or pugs, period. Makes sense, what if they need you and you are saved? Fail.

So, I got Kuanchichi into a VoA 10 run; I tried to get Viljo but we were miscommunicating so Clara had to cool Viljo's heels in Wintergrasp while that happened. I don't think it was more than 20 minutes. After, we got pulled into an Ulduar 10 run that was mostly alts or mains that aren't able to make the regular raid times.

Oddly enough 5 of the 10 people, I am very used to raiding with. One of them, Kaviaa, had been offline for months and was only just restarting playing again. Which is not quite beside the point of this post.

Darkfall has always made their own strategies. In Siege of Ulduar, (the first 4 bosses), there isn't a lot of variety, and so was pretty straight forward. Once we got past there though, I ended up asking for more and more explanations. Iron Council was not so bad. Kologarn was a wipe fest; I think Darkfall would benefit from adapting Deterrence's strategy there honestly. I mean really. Kologarn is the easiest boss in there, and we had a wipefest forcing Kuan to be heals before we succeeded. Auriya was not so bad, but I was adjusting what I was doing on the fly as they pull her in a different place and kited and kited her up the Shattered Walkway. Hodir, they corner him near the cache to force the NPCs into a small area, both for toasty fire goodness and to make it easier to break them out of the Flash Freezes. By this time Kuan had swapped to heals but even 3 heals can't make up for undergeared alts, people unfamiliar with the fight and/or fight strategy, and a distinct lack of Frost Resist gear. So we called it at that point; I think we'd been in there maybe 3 hours.

Kuan picked up [Pendant of the Piercing Glare] off Kologarn, which means I now get to rework his hitcap and hitcap-minus-1% sets, which I will be doing this afternoon at some point. But I guess this serves as reassurance that Kuan is not terribly undergeared as all the other shaman loot got DE'd or nabbed by a paladin alt for his heal set. And, much as I hate to play for loot, I will be doing Uld 10 weekly now, as I've decided Kuan really needs a different shield.

Last but not least - Drognin came into our Ulduar 10 raid partway through. Drognin is his alt now, so he's one of the toons missing Frost Resist, tsk tsk; but anyhow, so much for worrying about our guild re-apps, with Kuan 2nd overall damage for the run even though he was healing on 2 bosses, and Viljo being regular awesome, we will be put back into promotable guild member ranks again.

25 Man Raiding

Last night Kuan and Viljo logged in, after a horrendous queue. The queue wouldn't have been quite so terrible if I hadn't kept disconnecting about 75% of the way through it. Three times! Augh!

Anyway once Viljo was finally on he got a whisper from our friend Xstal, who is the alt of Jataka, the healer from the first ever heroic we finished. Anyway Xstal wanted to know if we wanted to come to 25man Vault of Archavon. I said sure, and it turned out to be a complete pug. But that was fine, because we still managed to one-shot the boss.

The loot that dropped was quite nice. Including the Valorous Frostfire Leggings! Another mage won the roll for them, but then the loot master messed up and passed them to Viljo anyway. So, much as it pains me, I have these lovely legs in the bank waiting for the GMs to deal with my ticket to move them to that other mage. Ah well it would be more annoying to look at them and know they should have gone to someone else.

Anyway after we did that we moved on to 25man Obsidian Sanctum. That went quite well actually, though neither of us got any loot, we did get nice badges from both instances.

It seems that both of the heroic (25 man) versions were easier than their 10 man counterparts. The bosses have more hp on 25man, and they do more damage, but all the raid buffs really help.

Merry Christmas!

Kuanchichi is now doing his 3+ weeks' probationary period in <Thwarted Destiny>, a small guild that raids Hawaii-time, which means it's good for my schedule.

The guild leader, Kelrain, invited me in and said let's see how you fit. Then I got pulled into Heroic Nexus, then 10-man Obsidian Sanctuary (including Viljo as a pug), then Archavon (including Viljo as a pug). The Obsidian fight was funny. The tank explained the first drake fight... and didn't realize his mike was off. Big wipe. It was pretty easy once that was cleared up. Viljo won loots in both 10-mans: [Circle of Arcane Streams] and [Hateful Gladiator's Silk Raiment].

I note there was another Ele Shaman in these groups. (He got the T7 gloves of Sartharion.) Kuan was about 140-160 dps behind him in the meters. I'm still adjusting to cast sequence and Kuan remains undergeared, so I don't feel too bad.

At the end of it, we have Christmas, and Kuan has 11 [Emblem of Heroism] and some nice achievements, and Viljo has two pieces of lvl 80 epic loot...

...I was dumb and took no screenshots. Anyhow, Merry Christmas.