The pros and cons of extending raid lockouts
by Matthew Rossi 
Apr 20th 2011 at 8:00PM
For the most part, it's been pretty great, but one aspect of it is that with two hours a night, three nights a week, it can be a challenge to get through the farm content fast enough to get to the new bosses, especially once most of an instance is farm content. Even when you know all the fights and can burn through them, five bosses can take a lot of time to get knocked out in order to get face time on a new boss.
One of the innovations of Wrath of the Lich King was extending raid lockouts. What this allows you to do is to skip the bosses you already have on farm by, in effect, picking up where your last raid left off. Cleared everything but Nef last week and needing to work on the new encounter? Now you can just start up with everything you killed last week still dead. What could be the problem, you ask?
Well, for starters, if you have a DPS warrior who hasn't gotten his DPS shoulders yet, telling him that he's not going to get a shot at the ones off of Halfus this week because your raid is skipping ahead to Cho'gall can be a hard sell, even if you happen to be that DPS warrior and you know your raid leader's mind and why he's trying to get the progression kills. The upside of extending the lockouts is skipping over content you've already farmed, but if you haven't gotten the drops off of that farm content yet, you're costing a sure chance at valors and loot for wiping on new content that will take time to learn.
Some people also simply disagree with the notion of extending lockouts because they feel that if you can't clear up to and kill that boss without it, you don't deserve to kill it. I find this kind of silly. The amount of time you have to raid for whatever reason doesn't mean your players can't master the content, and if you're having to spend one-sixth of your time just clearing up to it before you even get to see it, how much face time are you actually going to get? But it's certainly an opinion a lot of people hold.
Extending the lockout is one of the most useful tools for a raid leader wanting to direct his or her raid at specific content. But it isn't always popular for a variety of reasons (fewer chances at gear, fewer valor points, an increased chance of an entire raid period spent wiping, purist reasons) that you have to keep in mind to balance out raiders wants and needs.
What's your position on lockouts?
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Devin Apr 20th 2011 8:11PM
I think that the blow is significantly softened when choosing to lock out your raid by the fact that we now have 3 raids as opposed to one monolithic dungeon. Our raid is up to 9/12 but we haven't even gotten attempts in on any of the end bosses because we're not blowing through all the "farm content" and will wipe here and there. The nice thing is though, we can now lock out BoT but not lose out on all the potential gear/valor points from BWD/Conclave bosses.
mark Apr 20th 2011 8:31PM
this bit is brilliant
my guild locked BoT for a bit on cho'gall (now down)
now cho is fine were farming the whole 4 (with some heroic halfus soon)
and locking neffy sometimes
Oteo Apr 20th 2011 8:14PM
"Some people also simply disagree with the notion of extending lockouts because they feel that if you can't clear up to and kill that boss without it, you don't deserve to kill it."
Idiots--er, sorry, people--will think of any excuse they can to feel superior to others. This is a fact of life.
lesicor.caerlon Apr 20th 2011 8:37PM
My question is this:
I'm honestly curious if the guilds that strive for realm firsts using this feature?
Personally, I would assume so since the whole goal is to bet the final boss first. Basically, by using this, all these guilds would have to do is down a boss once and move on without perfecting a strategy.
Question is then: Does this subtract from that prestige or is it just commonly accepted that this is done?
lesicor.caerlon Apr 20th 2011 8:37PM
*WTB edit button for numerous types -,-
fhatfreddy Apr 20th 2011 8:47PM
I don't think it subtracts for the prestige. If you're shooting for realm firsts, it likely means your groups aren't able to rely on being uber-geared from being able to farm the first couple bosses for several weeks. Your group is running in mostly heroic dungeon and rep gear, meaning their having to rely on strategy and skill.
Cephas Apr 20th 2011 8:54PM
I'm guessing that most guilds that are seriously dedicated to getting realm firsts raid for more than enough hours per week to make extending lockouts unnecessary. They're also pretty good at what they do, so I suspect that once they get a boss down the first time they don't have much trouble getting it down the second and third times. Plus extending lockouts would cause them to gear up more slowly, which might actually cause them to take longer to down bosses.
Saeadame Apr 20th 2011 9:20PM
@Cephas - the people on the cutting edge of progression don't need the gear, though. That's why they get their World First (or Realm First, I guess) kills and then go on a break until the next tier comes along: they don't need this tier's gear to down the next tier either. And while I agree that they would be raiding enough to down quite a few bosses per week, it also takes them more than 2 weeks to get World First/Realm First kills (one week for reg bosses, one week for heroic bosses).
Trilynne Apr 20th 2011 10:05PM
Depends on the situation. I think most of the time, getting more gear from farm bosses will ultimately aid your learning of the end boss fights. However, after a certain point, you just need that extra night in close succession to get that boss down. Case in point: my guild just got 12/12 last night after extending our BWD lockout. We knew after our last raid last week we just needed a bit more time to down him, so we extended, and it paid off last night! :)
Finnicks Apr 20th 2011 10:14PM
My opinion on extending lockouts is that it is both a dictatorial and democratic decision.
First and foremost, the Raid Leader must feel that it may be the time to start extending lockouts. My personal "it's time to start extending" point is when all of the following are true:
1) Everyone in the group has at least 75% of their gear at the instance's item level (for Tier 11, this would be 359). That 75% -must- include weapons. My current raid is sitting at about 50% on average.
2) Every boss except the one we are currently learning is on complete farm status. We don't wipe on them and have no trouble -at all- -ever-. My current raid, although 9/12, still has enough trouble with Ascendant Council, Atramedes, and Chimaeron that they aren't really "on farm" yet.
Secondly, a strong majority (2/3, in my opinion) of the raid need to then agree that it is time to start extending the lockout.
KPB Apr 21st 2011 11:51AM
I generally agree with those thoughts but I'd also tweak them some.
1) I don't know that it needs to be specifically 75% at that current tier. Instead I'd say that the majority of the raid has most of the drops they'd need from the bosses on farm and gear from badges. Depending on your class make up and the specific drops that are available, it is theoretically possible to not even be able to hit the 75% point with out progressing further or doing different content.
2) I'd soften that slightly. No matter how farm the bosses are there is always the chance for bad luck to happen leading to a random wipe. As long as you a regularly killing them with out problems that is enough IMO.
3) I'd add that you are able to get too the boss but don't have enough time to work on him to progress. Locking out to learn how to kill the boss is great if you can then use that knowledge to farm him. If you'd need to lock out to get to him at all then it's not really very helpful to lock out to kill him since you wouldn't be able to kill him again with out locking out again.
Hillazon Apr 20th 2011 10:20PM
Back in wrath, my guild had a 10s group locked on ICC that was going after the LK quickly as possible. Once we hit the last few bosses, we just kept extending the lock. Got realm #4 when the buff was at 10%. Not too shabby, considering we were a "casual" raiding guild that only spent around 3-6 hours a week on it!
The 25s was what we kept doing over and over from scratch to get gear. We were planning to lock it at some point to stick w/the LK, but by then we were all burned out.
Of course now this strategy won't work thanks to the fun-killing 10/25 raid lockout merger.
LynMars Apr 20th 2011 11:03PM
It was great at the end of the expansion when people were trying to get down those last troublesome bosses before Cata hit. People had a lot of what they wanted already.
I agree that if people have the majority of their gear, you're sharding all the drops, and the content is mindlessly easy at this point, then extend that lock to get more time to work on the bosses. There are 2 other raid instances to hit up if you manage to down that boss finally and have time left and really want to do something else.
So only keep one raid on extended lockout, would be my suggestion.
Brian! Apr 20th 2011 11:07PM
I think you should be able to lock yourself to two instances. That way your raid group can have the extended progression AND you have a free lockout to expend with another raid group or you might have "off night" raiding where you pool up whomever is available (including backups) to take things down that are on farm status.
The single lockout effectively limits the playability of WoW. Once you start raiding, the only reason is to log in during raiding nights. Of course, you are less penalized if you play multiple characters who all raid. I still like to see a slightly more flexible raid system that still prevents excessive farming.
fallemwarrior Apr 20th 2011 11:21PM
Hard Cell?
wutsconflag Apr 21st 2011 12:02PM
I caught that, too. I believe he meant "hard sell". ;)
Jeff (Not that one ^ ) Apr 20th 2011 11:43PM
I would be exceptionally displeased if my raid team chose to extend a lock in BWD instead of starting fresh. I still don't have the int chest for my Holy pally, the ONE time it dropped I lost the roll, or the spirit ring from Omnotron.
Also, when I was healing on my Shaman, the stupid chest dropped. :( I did get the shard from it though. :-/
GhostWhoWalks Apr 21st 2011 12:15AM
I like the new lockout system because it offers you a choice: you can let the lockout expire so your raid can farm loot for a bit, but if they're sick of the early fights and want to push towards the end, you can extend the lockout and have plenty of chances to progress.
othragon Apr 21st 2011 12:51AM
I believe that despite your raiding schedule, one week seems time enough to get through farm content and get to the pregression bosses. It's not a matter of deserving it or not, i just think the tradeoff isn't good enough.
You're skipping not only the chance to perfect your strategies on bosses (and this would specially apply for Halfus and his weekly random drakes) but also on a large part of those bosses' loot table. If they drop two pieces, that's still only about 20% of the loot table and most of your raiding team will be deprived from gear from that particular boss for not just one week, but two.
I think it can be useful in certain situations, but as rule of thumb, our raiding team does not extend locks at all.
slunggo Apr 21st 2011 2:12AM
We have a similar 6 hour schedule. Lately we've been extending so we can access our progression bosses. However if after 1.5-2 hours on the 2nd night we have not downed the progression boss, we cancel the extension and finish with some nice easy farm kills. Hopefully that explanation makes sense.
That way we are guaranteed some phat loot withing the constraints of our limited time without sacrificing the farming option.