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The latest patch 5.4 newsThe 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 2 of 2)
Cambro Apr 21st 2011 2:19AM
My guild is currently suffering from a lot of scheduling conflicts, so we're getting about 3-4 bosses per week (cleared 5, almost 6). I appreciate the raid lockout feature and we'll use it at some point, but for now it makes more sense for us to reset each week and continue to gear up and collect valor points. We used raid lockouts a lot at the end of Wrath while working on Sindragosa and Lich King, and it was a huge help.
theRaptor Apr 21st 2011 3:26AM
In my experience long term raiders raid for boss kills and camaraderie, not gear and so have no problem with extending. People who bitch and moan about extending because they NEEEEEEED one piece of gear don't last long in my experience. They either throw a tantrum over gear and get a gkick or quit when stuck on progression bosses for weeks.
Revnah Apr 21st 2011 3:44AM
I think it's situational but like others have said, having the option is nice. If you've worked on something all week and you feel you just need one more night for the last boss, it can be a blessing being able to extend the lock.
Having said that, we haven't done it yet this expansion. We have a similar number of hours but instead of three short raids a week we have two long ones, 4 hours each. It leaves enough evenings free to have a life, or level alts and earn money for repairs, but gives enough time to down all the bosses we choose to.
fedorhajdu Apr 21st 2011 4:42AM
Sorry I'm steeling the top comment but as I come in late I think this point needs to be seen and discussed.
The problem with current lock-out system is that it's bugged as hell with heroic content. Blizzard knows about it but it's still stupid.
In case you don't raid heroic content you're probably not aware of it but here is how it works:
You have a raid with 10 men in it and you kill a heroic boss (say Magmaw) and you move on to say Chimearon. But Chimaeron requires 3 tanks (we usually do it with 2 tanks and one dps-tank but just for the sake of argument). Now one of the DPSers log on his tank and come with us to kill him.
The bug comes in where the main of that player can NO LONGER JOIN THE RAID even tho he has less kills than the others in the raid. He is locked out to a DIFFERENT instance - with less kills but still different.
It's not just about heroic kills even if the group killed Chimaeron on normal he couldn't join the raid if it's switched back to heroic (say Atramedes requires only one tank we must rely on off-specs instead of brining in "real" dps).
So how do you guys deal with that and how to fit that into extended lockout system when we can't correctly deal with a normal lockout?
fedorhajdu Apr 21st 2011 4:43AM
Hehe, looks like I didn't steal the first comment (damn you comment system!) but even better. Hope still enough people see this - or maybe this could be a topic for another post?
Docatron Apr 21st 2011 5:15AM
Raid lockouts are designed for big instances. The only instance I would consider extending at the moment would be BWD. The main concern is not the loss of loot per se, but rather the loss of Valor Points. On top of that there is the natural progression in the instance to think of. For instance if you are having problems with mechanics or gear requirement on certain bosses before Nefarion, is it really a good idea to extend the raid where you bare managed to down that next to last boss?
The only reason I would use this feature would be if for whatever reason the time spent raiding each week is not enough to cover the content that you wish to cover. If you spend more than 8 hours raiding a week it should not be necessary.
joshua.l.miles Apr 21st 2011 1:28PM
Its not just for giant instances, there are people and guilds who don't have the time to dedicate more than a few hours a week to raiding and there is no reason that just because a guild is comprised of people with full time jobs, families, and different time schedules should never get to see the full endgame content just because they can only get everyone together to raid for a couple of hours 1 or 2 nights a week.
Docatron Apr 21st 2011 4:58PM
We agree - as I said, this function is really only for people with very little time each week as the current content stands.
Spellotape Apr 21st 2011 5:43AM
It can suck if you are the person who has been waiting for a drop for so long and the decision is made to extend the lockout, but if you do manage to kill that end boss then you will not only get a chance next week at the same drop but extra loot from the new boss you can now kill thanks to all of that time you spent on them the week before. Why anyone would choose their needs over the 9/24 others who help them get the items is beyond me.
Nina Katarina Apr 21st 2011 7:44AM
On the other hand, if you've got numerous upgradable slots and so do the other folks in the raid, it's annoying to listen to the folks who've been lucky with drops and auction house BoEs agitate to extend lockout because the final boss has their only upgrade left.
It helps to be honest, and to ask yourself whether that offhand upgrade is really the only thing keeping you back. And to remember that it'll all be obsolete when Firelands hits.
Spellotape Apr 22nd 2011 9:29AM
@ Nina
I guess my point is that unless you plan on quitting raiding the week after you extend a lockout, you'll still be able to try for that item again - regardless of how things work out, it might never drop and the raid might end up in a cycle of only doing farm bosses and never having enough time to get good attempts on the end wing boss when people are feeling refreshed on a new raid day etc.
That said, I've never been in a raid where people wanted to kill an end wing boss solely for an upgrade ... people should just want to kill that boss, anyway.
Leorad Apr 21st 2011 9:11AM
My guild raids for the challenge, not the gear. Since we are "casuals" without a lot of time to raid, lockouts are a huge help.
Lemons Apr 21st 2011 12:06PM
I feel it's just a tool, and like all tools it's all in how it's used. At the end of wrath when my guild was working pretty hard on trying to down the LIch King I liked raid lockout extension. It meant we could go in, and go right onto the Lich King fresh without the fatigure of wading through all the other bosses first, and to be fair most of our raid was pretty damn geared at that point so there was really no reason not to.
The best thing about it is that if you decided that you're not making progress you can also reset the lockout and clean up the other bosses after you've done attempts on the hard boss. This is a huge boon imo. You're fresh for the hard boss, and after you've been worn dowm by multiple attempts you get to sleep through the earlier bosses and you get that feeling of satisfaction that comes with seeing a raid boss die (even if it is one you've been farming for months).
Aruhgulah Apr 21st 2011 12:15PM
Er, lockouts are voluntary, right? The lockouts aren't forced.
So whoever joins in on a raid in progress is doing so voluntarily. The lock-out-continued raids I've been in, it's been an agreement on the whole raid to "continue this later".
So if it's voluntary and agreed upon by the whole raid, then there's no issue.
Meiji Apr 21st 2011 12:28PM
One other thing about extended lockouts..you can spend some time working on the progression boss and if not successful, reset the lockout.
I'm in a semi-casual raiding guild with a fairly short schedule and we've had the same issue - extend lockouts so we have some time to work on a boss or reset for gear. This week, we cleared BoT on our first night and had BWD on extended lockout from last week to work on Nefarion. We spent a couple of hours last night working on the fight and then because we didn't kill any bosses in BWD this week, we could reset the lockout so we could get our farm encounter drops.
Goradan Apr 21st 2011 2:01PM
We do 6 hours a week and the last week of the month is a 9 hour week just to push progression.
If we're on the ball, we can manage 9/12 and a few pulls on Cho'gall but we pushed a lockout this week and killed him. Next week is devoted to Al'Akir and then a week or two of tier shoulders before we hit up Nefarian.
I think extensions are great options to have as long as they're discussed with the raid and everyone is in agreement.
Eirik Apr 21st 2011 3:51PM
"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."
Hee-hee! I wonder if this was prompted by anything specific... :)
andrewr3005 Apr 24th 2011 1:43AM
i dont think extending a lockout does any one any good i think of it like this.
if your struggling to down bosses you have already previously downed, then your unlikely to down a new boss which people are still learning.
a previous guild i was in exteded the lockout on BoT for 4 weeks to down chogall even though they were struggling to down magmaw and omnotron in those same weeks, bosses they had farmed for months.
basically if you cant down the easier bosses with your team you are not going to down the harder ones. if you reset your lockout, go through and down everything, then not only have you got more geared up players , you are also ready to tackle the new more difficult boss.
Matthew Rossi Apr 24th 2011 1:46AM
Again, it's not a question of struggling on earlier bosses. It's a question of TIME. We raid SIX HOURS A WEEK. That's two hours a night, three nights a week, and in that time there are raid breaks, travel time, and occasional issues like disconnects. It takes about 20 minutes per boss for us, with all of that factored in. That means that the five bosses before Nefarian in BWD take us an hour and forty minutes. That's a lot of time when you raid two hours in a night, and it costs us time on new bosses.
It's nothing to do with struggling on easier bosses.