Thoughts on Valor, Gear, Alts and LFR

Fair warning, this is a post filled with lots of bitching and moaning and complaining and me being, well, grumpy.  After all, that is who I am, but remember this, I am grumpy with a smile because it makes me feel good to let off steam. 

When 5.2 came out I once again started to play my alts.  There were a few sitting around doing nothing for a long time such as my mage and rogue who basically hit 90 and did a few things here and there but nothing much else.

The scouts and warbringers coming out and dropping those tokens that can be used for 1000 reputation with different factions and my ability as a hunter to solo them, albeit difficult at times, made it so I was able to spend a little time killing them and collected tokens and baggies, and netting a mount in the process.

After 100s of combined kills between warbringers and scouts I was able to get most of my 90s on my main server to at least revered with every faction and thus opening the door to buy them gear without having to do the reputation grind on them.  This complete removal of having to do dailies with alts was perfect in my opinion.  There should have never been any reputation gate to begin with for alts so skipping it completely with these tokens was fantastic.

The new island also brought something else into the mix that had not existed before.  The rare mobs that drop books for valor, 15 each, made me want to actually play my alts and do dailies on them.  While doing my dailies I could hunt rares as well to further push my valor gain while getting reputation at the same time.  This is the type of thing that gets people out and questing, or at least people like me.

I could get my easy valor by killing rares and instead of standing there waiting for them to respawn I would do the quest hub.  I got questing done, reputation done, and extra valor.  Add to that the chance to get one key a week, collect stones, look for a treasure chest and content that encourages you to group up, and now my alts feel like they can actually play and advance, at least some even if I am not raiding with them, instead of feeling as if I am locked behind a wall unless I do dailies.  That forced designed never clicked with me.

I still believe that the way it should have been handled was that you were forced to get the reputation and open all the gearing options with one character and once that character had opened the shops all your alts would have access to it.  It would have been a lot more alt friendly.  If my healing, enchanting and tailoring alt wanted the AG patterns they could have bought them after my main had gotten to exalted and not have forced me to do it on that character as well.  Perhaps next time around they will use my idea which is, being bias as it is my idea of course, a much better idea.

While I like the valor of the ancients buff because it really gives a nice boost to alts I do not like the forced feeling of it.  I feel as if I want to get the most out of playing my alts I have to max my main first.  This is counter productive in my opinion because it burns out your main.  I can bust my ass capping on my main ASAP so I get it done in 2 or 3 days but then the rest of the week I won't play my main because I feel I am getting shafted.  Why do LFR, dungeons, quests, anything, if I am already capped?  I am not a fan of wasting time and if I am going to do something once capped on my main, unless my main is needed for it, I will do it on an alt now.

If not for the valor of the ancients I would play my main a little each day.  Capping is not hard if you do that.  And I would play my alts when they are needed, or when I feel like it.  I would not ever hear myself saying, I don't want to heal that run for you until I cap my hunter, once I cap my hunter I will get 50% extra on my healer and then I can heal for you.  Let me just cap this first.

That might just be me because of the way I try to get the most out of everything but I am sure there are many that have the same feelings I do.  If it were not for the valor of the ancient I would be like, okay, let me switch and heal for you.  Now it would be completely ineffective time wise for me to do that.

Some decent questions were asked via twitter:

Doesn't it seem like Valor of the Ancients should trigger when you achieve 1000VP on a realm in a week? Not a specific toon?
Debated that, but it makes you e.g. want to do first dungeon with every alt before playing your main. (Source)
Current system makes you want to cap one char before touching another. IMO that's worse.
We've discussed whether Valor of the Ancients was a good idea (its intentions were certainly noble). (Source)

Sadly, the answers were nowhere as decent as the questions themselves and show the detachment of the developers from the game players is greater than it has ever been.

Just look at the response to the first question.  I know you can only use 140 characters on twitter but really that answer left off in the middle of a thought and I would have loved to hear the rest of it.  "but it makes you e.g. want to do first dungeon with every alt before playing your main" and?

Really, and?

Why did your debate come to the conclusion that was a bad thing?  It is a partial thought and really no answer what so ever.  Telling us that we will just do the first dungeon on all our alts so we can max faster just means we are smart.  So why exactly is that a bad thing?  I am not being snarky asking that, I really want to know.  Being this expansion is all about giving us options why not have the option to do that?  So we cap a little faster, big deal.  So what is the whole "but it makes you e.g. want to do first dungeon with every alt before playing your main" thing about?  I'll give him a but, "but that is a good thing".

The second question had a better answer because in a way they admitted their fault saying that it was, as in past tense, was, a good idea.  Sure, it was.  If it were done the way the first question asked if it could be done it would be a better idea.

I think it is about time they just ditch the entire valor of the ancients idea as another failed idea.  As he said, it was a good idea as its intentions were noble, but it did not work, and just do what I said to begin with, increase the base valor to start off with.

All dailies 10 per.  All dungeons 80 (+ bonus for some) all the time.  All scenarios 40 (+ bonus for some) at all times.  No need for valor of the ancients if the valor system was not offering something so horribly low to begin with.  The only reason they needed to add the valor of the ancients was because there was no decent way to gain valor in a time efficient way.  Instead of adding that, they just should have addressed the problem by increasing valor gain.  Wouldn't that have been the more logically way to do it?  Wouldn't it have been a simple way to do it?  Why would blizzard ever do anything logical and simple when you can add unneeded complexity to it like some buff?

I also think it is about time, being there are 5 raids and soon to be more, for the random raid finder.  Queue up for a random raid and if you get the raid as a random, you get loot from each boss even if you had already looted it before.  You can only get loot from a raid once if you queue directly for it, but if you get it as a random you get loot each time.  Also, like I mentioned no depreciation like with dungeons either.  90 per, no matter what.  Heck, I believe the LFR should give 250 per for the current tier and 150 per for past tiers but I am willing to let them slide with 90 even if that is not even close to the reward we should get for subjecting ourselves to the worst addition ever to the game, the LFR.

Another twitter question really got my attention, mostly after my hour plus wait times for the LFR.

Are there any discussions about how to improve wait times on Raid Finder? Depends on other variables, but seems like 1 hr/Que.
It's often caused by lack of healers and tanks and our suspicion is those players are more likely to queue with friends. (Source)

Again ladies and gentlemen we have an answer that shows the complete detachment from the player base by the developers because they have no clue what they are talking about.

There is no lack of tanks in the LFR.  Do you know the reason I queue as a DPS on my tanks?  Because the queue time for a DPS in extremely low compared to my queue time as a tank.  The problem is healers and healers only.

Yes, people, tanks and healers more so, prefer to queue with guild for obvious reasons.  We did two guild runs last week of the new ToT raid.  One with 1 healer and two tanks in it along with about a dozen damage dealers on day one and we blew through it like it should be done in the LFR.  No problems, no wipes, no worries.  The other run with three guild healers and five dps was no problem as well.

See, we had a healer in the mix, three in one case.  The time we only had one we had both tanks in the mix.  So tanks being able to communicate lessened the work on the one healer, and the three healers could easily compensate for two tanks having some minor issues.

Any run where we did not have healers and/or tanks in, were wipe city.  I had one that I mentioned in my random thoughts that in about 4 hours only downed once boss.  I tried another with three other guild damage dealers and despite us all doing excellent DPS and moving from the bad and following mechanics, we could not get past the first boss and gave up after 4 tries.

It all comes down to healers.  No healers queue for the LFR because healing it is awful.  It should not be hard but it is.  Healing normals are easier than healing the LFR.  Damage dealers that do not know mechanics and stand in everything and drop damage on everyone else.  Tanks that do not know what the hell active mitigation is or taunt switching is.  No one dispelling, interrupting, stunning or doing anything an even remotely organized group would do.

No matter what, you name it, everything in the LFR when done wrong screams "the healers will fix it".  Dropping the bad where it should not be, no worries, the healers will fix it.  Not using your defensive cooldowns, no worries, the healers will fix it.

All crap like that is why there are no healers.  All crap like that is why we have to wait for them because no one wants to heal them because this is supposed to be a quick, fun and easy source of loot and for the tanks and damage dealers it can be but for the healers it can not be because they actually have to work their asses off unless they get lucky enough to get a group that can actually follow mechanics, play their classes and get out of the bad.  And yes, even in the LFR if you do not follow mechanics it hurts and puts all the pressure on the healers.

If they want to fix the LFR queue time issues they have the answer right there.  Healers.  Make the healers want to heal it.  No, do not give them some stupid baggie that has a chance to give a pet.   Lower the damage done to the players in there.  Tanks can get by doing sub par in the LFR playing badly or being slightly under geared.  Same for the damage dealers.

While it is true that no class in the game should be doing less than 60K at a 480 item level you can have 3/4 of the damage dealers doing less than that and still down bosses.  Not to mention, those people doing that 30K are not only making it harder on the other damage dealers having to pick up their slack but they are the ones that are taking the extra damage and causes others in the group to take extra damage and are making the fight much longer than it should be which puts the pressure directly on who, the healers. 

The fix for the LFR queue problem is to lower all damage by 50%, maybe even more.  So bad healers doing poorly can still handle it, just like bad tanks doing poorly can still handle it and bad damage dealers doing poorly can still handle it.

You can down every boss in the LFR with two bad tanks, you can down every boss in the LFR with 17 bad damage dealers, but you can not down even one single boss with 6 bad healers.  And if you have all bad tanks and all bad DPS you might still fail unless you have 6 good healers.  Why put all the pressure on one part of the team?  That is why healers do not queue for it and that is why I only run my healers with the guild runs.

There is a reason that my guild runs have no problems and it is not that we are great or anything because we are not.  But we bring our own healers and while not world beaters they are at least playing at the level that makes it easy and the large selection of other members means we know we have people that know how to avoid the avoidable making it even easier on the healers.  Thus an easy run.

They are designing the LFRs as if they will be run by people that are raiders at a lower skill level.  They need to stop designing the LFR with that thought in mind.  The majority of people that run it are not lesser skilled raiders looking to learn or raiders that do not have time to run with the regular team, they are non-raiders.  Just because it is looking for raid does not mean the majority of people that run them are raiders.

Long story short, too late, let even bad healers be able to faceroll it the way bad tanks and bad damage dealers can and you will see a lot more healers signing up and the queue time will become that much faster.

Want to give healers even more incentive?  Let healers be allowed to get loot drops every time they run it, this would entice them to run it multiple times to get loot or valor or whatever.  Please, no stupid baggie bonus, that is just not incentive enough for most.

Well, that was a long side rant I did not expect to last as long as it did so now time to rant about something different, a question I have that was not asked and therefore not answered.  I really need to get on twitter to bug my good buddy GC myself.

Why do we still not have a 10 man LFR?  Seriously.  I would love to be able to make a few guild groups just to run through it and maybe grab one or two people here and there and not need to deal with these horrible groups sometimes.

I think I answered my own question however.  Those two mostly guild groups I did ToT with this week that were super fast, easy and fun, as it should be, had many people that were not part of my group.  Thanks to us, they had a good run.  If there was a 10 man, we would have never run those two and those people would now be left to fend for themselves and most likely end up having an experience like I had where I wasted 4 hours and only downed one boss.

There is no 10 man because blizzard needs people that know how to play in the LFR to carry the people that do not know how to play.

I say, who cares, give me 10 man, and design the 25 man LFR for the people it was meant for.  People that do not know how to play.  Make it so easy anyone can beat it and please do not say it already is.  While it already is for a group that knows what they are doing, it isn't when you get one that doesn't as my 4 hour one boss nightmare proves.

After that run I don't think looking for raid is the appropriate term for it any more, it should be called looking for nightmares.

Then there is the loot issue and why I said I refuse to ever heal a LFR without guild.  Why should I go through that hell when I have to deal with bad groups of bad players with bad attitudes and bad personalities and still not win anything week after week after week.

I should be rewarded loot just for putting up with their bullshit.  I swear I should be given heroic mode gear just for putting up with some of the stuff I've had to witness in the looking for nightmares I have had over the last couple of years.

I even had one run this weekend were we wiped on the first boss of the second half of HoF six times.  Six times.  Do you believe that?  How is that even possible?

Tanks blamed healers, healers blamed DPS, DPS blamed tanks.  We had a shaman healer that refused to heal because he was top DPS.  We had a DK that was tanking even if he queued as a DPS and the sad part is he was a better tank than the two tanks we had.  Everyone was insulting everyone else.  Had someone complain about the mobs not being marked correctly and instead of following the marks anyway, he followed the way he believed it was supposed to be.  Everyone else had no clue what a skull meant and they all just attacked whatever they wanted.

In the end I won no loot, no loot on the bonus roll and all I had was one hell of a repair bill for something that should be as faceroll as a heroic dungeon is by now.  I should have been given at least one piece of heroic gear just for staying as long as I did and helping these degenerates.

The looking for nightmares needs fixing, lots of it, and it only starts with making the healers life easier.  I think blizzard is attempting to make the LFR into a real raiding experience and that is noble, sure, but it is wrong and it will not work.  Not with random groups and not with people that refuse to communicate anything other then insults.  LFR needs to be what it was intended for, a super easy way to see content and collect some loot.  As it is now, it is neither super easy nor a decent way to get loot.

Again, 10 man please.  I know there are good reasons for there being no 10 man version but screw it.  Either fix 25 man or give us 10 man.  There really are no other options.  Making it harder and hoping the unwashed masses can figure out how to actually play is not working.

Someone asked me in a post last week why I thought that blizzard not making new five mans meant that those people would be put into the last raid and I said it only made sense.  Well, now GC confirmed what I said, sort of.

Hey Greg, why no new 5 mans until next expansion?
4.3 had 3 good 5-player dungeons, but the raid received its share of criticism. There is a connection. Always love to do more. (Source)

See, there is a connection.  They spent so much time making such fantastic five mans, and they were fantastic, the best part of cataclysm if you ask me, that DS suffered because of it.  There is a connection, those are his own words, and that is the connection.  If they spent more time working on the raid instead of those dungeons perhaps the first raid to ever have a raid finder version would have been a more worthy raid to have it.

DS was not horrible so to speak, it was just horrible when you looked at the five mans and saw how great they were with their new zones and new scenes and then we get a raid that went on for so long in basically all recycled areas from last expansion.  Last expansion.  What a huge insult to the player base.  The laid back lack of design would have been fine for an extra raid, a fill in raid, one of the initial three raids, but not for the end raid we would play the longest of every raid in the expansion.  Making the five mans were the reason for DS being that badly done, make no doubt about that.

Hopefully the last raid this expansion will be really epic on the level it deserves to be thanks to the fact that they will not be wasting the creative resources on making more dungeons.  An elf can dream right?

MMO champion mentioned that the estimated drop rate of loot in the old LFRs is now roughly 32%.  There sampling to find this is rather small but seems to fit what I recall reading somewhere once before that the old rate was 15% and the new was doubled to 30%.  So I will believe that number to be fairly accurate.

So who out there is working on something like a 70% loot table right now because my 4% loot would like to get its fair share.  I really hate the luck system.  30% sounds nice but with bad luck 15% or 30% means absolutely nothing.  When I am only getting loot 4% of the time it feels like the content is not even worth doing when I have to do it with random people that make it very unpleasant for me.

I wonder if I can report these people for something?  People that are rude and insulting to everyone in the group.  Can they be reported?  Would blizzard do anything about them?  They just add insult to injury.  I have to wait forever to get into a raid then I have to listen to them and still get no loot.

WTB single player ways to get more loot.  Seriously, they really need to add a way to get loot that does not require group content and does not require luck.

My poor rogue is in more than half 489 or better gear, a couple of 463, 476 and 483 aside.  Not so bad for an alt I play about once or twice a month at most.  But I have had no luck with weapons. I am still carrying around two 450 weapons.  I will most likely still be carrying around two 450 weapons forever.  Lady Luck likes to spit on my poor little rogue it seems and he never did anything to lady luck to deserve such treatment.

You know the worst part of it?  Even if I bust my ass and work for it, I will never be able to buy weapons for him with valor or justice.  Yeah, we need more ways to buy gear outside of the luck system.  Seriously.  It gets to the point of, why even try.  Run a dungeon that drops daggers but they never drop.  Kill LFR bosses and use coins, but never get weapons, please oh please would the makers of this game save those of us without luck and give us more gearing options.

I can go into a zone on better geared characters and pull three or four mobs at a time and not even break a sweat.  I can watch TV and down them at the same time but put more than two mobs on my poor rogue in the new island and he is toast.  Just that little added DPS from some decent weapons would mean the world to me.  So even if I am not raiding, I can still use them.  Some people say if you are not raiding you do not need gear, tell my rogue that when three mogu are beating his ass and vanish is on cooldown.  He can really use those daggers even if he is not raiding.  Not asking for free loot, I will earn them.  Just let me buy them because I am never going to luck into them at the rate I am going this expansion.

Well, I've ranted about this, that and the other long enough for today.  I will give your eyes a break, at least anyone that was capable of reading this all.

Have a great day.