Posts with tag lfr

If, like me, you heard about the upcoming changes to the Raid Finder's loot system and were a little confused, then this post by Zarhym clarifying what exactly will be changing is a useful read. Basically, rather than rolling against people in the raid (as is the current system), you roll and the chance that you will or won't get loot will have nothing to do with other players at all.

Zarhym -- The new LFR roll system

First, other players will not affect your loot in any way. Another player winning will not cause you to lose. Another player winning a mace will not mean that she took your mace. If there are many rogues in the raid, your chance of winning a rogue item is not diminished. We may decide that each player has an X% chance to get loot, or we may decide that X number of players get loot, and then randomly determine who those lucky players are.

Second, the item you win will be "useful" in the sense that it's potentially usable by your current spec. This does not mean that warriors will get leather because warriors can equip leather (at a huge stat loss). It also does not mean that the game will always give you an item you want or an upgrade for the items you have. It just looks and says "You are a Holy priest, so here is a random item chosen from the Holy priest-appropriate items that this boss can drop."

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You'll still have a chance to not get the item you want and have to come back again, but at least this will curb that hideous sinking sensation of seeing Gurthalak drop and knowing yet again that someone else is going to get it instead of you, leading to hostility. Zarhym then goes on to explain the bonus roll system, which is a roll you can effectively trade in for a guarantee of some kind of reward, be it extra gold or a random drop from the boss. At present, this is all only for the Raid Finder, with a possibility of seeing the systems in dungeons if it works out.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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When the Raid Finder was first introduced, I had high hopes for its impact on the game. While the main reason behind the implementation of this system was arguably to get as many players experiencing raid content as possible, at the time, I was more interested in the impact it would have on the progression races between all of the top guilds in the world. I have always had a great deal of admiration for players in these types of guilds and have watched intently during each new tier as they all vied for world firsts. I believed the Raid Finder could benefit this type of competition by preventing heroic encounters from being nerfed while the content was still current. Surely, I thought, if so many people are able to experience raiding like never before through this new tool, Blizzard would have no pressing reason to make heroic encounters any easier.

Well, it seems I was wrong, for in the very next tier of content Blizzard released, we saw progressive nerfs to these difficult fights. Personally, I prefer to keep these encounters the way they are, at least until a new tier is released. Something just feels wrong to see the hardest fights available made easier through a series of hotfixes. Even with respect to my own guild's progression, having sweeping nerfs hit Firelands just as my guild was putting in some really good attempts on Ragnaros felt like Blizzard moved the finish line, taking what would have been a very gratifying kill and turning it into an accidental one-shot that contained none of the catharsis we had felt during previous boss kills.

What do you think? With the Raid Finder now a reality and a new expansion looming on the horizon, do you think the difficulty of heroic raid encounters should be static, like those from tier 11, or should they be more flexible?

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Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I think Blizzard should scrap the dance studio concept forever and ever ... if it meant we could all get personalized theme music for PvP.

WoWie Zowie asked:

As I understand it, Tyrande Whisperwind is a Priest. Yet I see her wielding a bow and having a pet "Dori'thur" the owl. Is this because she is hiding something? Or did Blizz just decide that she needs some form of offense without being "shadow"?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

I will be frank: Every death knight should have a solid goal to defeat Deathwing this expansion. It's not for the experience, it's not the glory, it's not even for the achievements. No, it's for one thing: It's for the tentacle sword. This baby is everything that one can aspire for in a WoW weapon. It's a sword. It can be transmogrified into our signature runeblade. It has an awesome creepy pet proc. What's not to love?

Of course, to get to the sword, you'll first have to take down four bosses, hope the sword drops, and then hope you win the roll against who knows how many other plate DPSers in the raid -- but hey, you have to start somewhere, right? Let's dive into the Fall of Deathwing.

To be frank, the most annoying part of the fight with Ultraxion, the first boss, is his trash. Dragons will fly in slowly from the skies above and must be pulled down where you can DPS and/or tank them. If you can get past that, Ultraxion himself should be a breeze.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today is another one of those days where I have no clever intro to put here. I guess I didn't talk about stupid things from the '90s on Twitter enough last night. I need to rectify that.

Let's see, how about ... Samurai Pizza Cats? Yeah. That'll do.

Stargazer asked:

There's a rumor going around the LFR groups that people with lower quality gear get "favored" in the roll system so they get mgeared faster. Can you confirm or deny this? Also, does Blizzard have to tell us about every single change they make in the game? What if they want to tweak something like a drop rate. Thanks.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Once you've finished the new patch 4.3 dungeons and gained a bit of loot from them, you may ask yourself: What's next? One of the most obvious answers is the Raid Finder tool. You'll get better loot and faster valor point gain, as well as some starting experience in the raid game if you ever get the desire or chance to join an organized raiding group.

Still, the idea of heading into a raid (even a simple one) can be a little daunting, so today I'd like to help allay your fears by giving you a quick look at the first of the Raid Finder scenarios, the Siege of Wyrmrest.

Before we get into the boss strategies, though, there are a few things you should get down.

• Make sure your gear's good enough. If you can, get it gemmed (with strength gems) and enchanted. While you can head into Raid Finder as low as ilevel 372, don't be afraid to pick up an extra piece of gear or two from the heroic dungeons. A good weapon upgrade, for example, will do wonders for your DPS.
• If you can afford them, consider grabbing some consumables. A Flask of Steelskin and some Lavascale Minestrone for tanks or a Flask of Titanic Strength and some Beer-Basted Crocolisk for DPS will put your performance at the next level, and for a good group, you'll only need one flask to face the whole dungeon. Morchok's easy enough that sometimes I save the flask until we engage the second boss, just to make sure it stretches.
• Follow your raid leader. A raid is only as good as its raid leader and its members' abilities to follow their raid leaders' instructions, even in Raid Finder. Use these boss strategies, but defer to your raid leader where you can. They don't always know what they're doing, but in Raid Finder, sometimes that doesn't matter; either way, the more everyone works together, the easier things become.
• Don't Panic and don't get uptight. This is a pickup group, so things will go wrong and people will randomly drop between groups. Just stay loose, have fun, and be prepared to wait a bit for replacements in between each boss. Griping just makes it less fun for everyone.

I have a theory that either our various caps for justice and valor points are too low, or the amount we get per activity is too high. I'll relate my thinking. I have several level 85 characters I'm running through the Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder tools. Clearing both halves of the Raid Finder Dragon Soul gets me 500 valor; I then run four random heroics, and I'm capped. This means that playing my main any further that week is effectively a waste of time. (I usually cap my valors out before I even raid for a week, which makes raiding just about the gear, but I'm OK with that.)

My problem is, I like my main. I'd play him more if there was anything to do. As it is, I tend to cap out on justice points rather than run on one of my alts, and even then, they usually cap on valors as well. (At least two of them do.) I even sometimes cap on honor, and with the new conquest point gains for Random BGs, I could cap on conquest if I really set my mind to it. And while I understand why we have both weekly and total caps on points, it often feels like I'm being penalized for liking the game and wanting to play it.

The Raid Finder is here to stay. It's rolled out to astonishing success, getting more people to see the encounters of the major raid of the Cataclysm expansion than we've seen since the days that Karazhan convinced Blizzard that 10-man raiding was an option worth exploring. With Blizzard explicitly intending to move forward with the Raid Finder so that every future raid will have a RF difficulty option, a few things are likely to develop.

When we consider the Raid Finder as a tool, we have to consider it both as a tool for the players (us) and as a tool for the designers, a means for them to deal with a persistent and somewhat untenable issue with the raiding game -- a ton of work goes into raid design, and statistically speaking, almost no one ever sees it. People who got to see Kel'Thuzad at level 60, Illidan or Kil'Jaeden at 70, or even Arthas at level 80 are in the minority. Thanks to the Raid Finder, Deathwing may be the most accessible big bad any expansion's ever had. Looking forward, a few broad strokes may be discerned about the Raid Finder and where it will drive the game.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

The first half of the Dragon Soul raid consists of knocking out a few of Deathwing's commanders that are attacking Wyrmrest Temple. After toppling the first four bosses of Dragon Soul, we finally see Deathwing face-to-face at the peak of the temple. He's still too busy to attack us himself, instead sending a couple of his additional underlings our way.

Our first challenge will be overcoming Ultraxion, Deathwing's favorite twilight dragon. He's an easy target for rogues and is just about as simple for us as Warlord Zon'ozz. After that, we board an airship to face Warmaster Blackhorn and his Twilight infantry. Finally, we confront Deathwing in two separate encounters, each with its own challenges.

We fight Ultraxion from the roof of Wyrmrest Temple, as he's too massive to fit inside. He'll spend most of the encounter cleaving the entire raid, which makes Feint an amazing tool here. Use it on cooldown for the entire fight. Unfortunately for rogues, we're not able to get behind Ultraxion, due to his positioning over the ledge of the temple roof. While Ultraxion has a buff that prevents him from parrying our frontal attacks, we're not able to use any positional attacks like Backstab or Ambush.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

The introduction of the Raid Finder is one of the biggest features in patch 4.3, and so far it has been everything that we could ask for and more. The queues have been quick, the bosses are tuned just right for the demographic, and the rewards are potent enough to keep the system running. Anyone with decent gear can queue up for a raid, gaining valuable experience and gear. I think the new system is perfect for allowing new raiders to get their feet wet, preparing them for what lies ahead.

Even as a pure DPS class, the Raid Finder queues haven't been too bad for rogues. Between my own experience and the word on the street (not Greg), queue times are between 15 and 30 minutes, and groups are mostly competent. To a class that's historically had problems finding a spot in a raid group, the Raid Finder looks like our new best friend. The only bummer is that we can't start or progress in our legendary quest line in the Raid Finder. In order to maximize our random group's chance for success, we need to be prepared to do our best.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. He is also scientifically proven more beautiful than boomkin blogger Tyler Caraway.

There's a lot of great content stuffed into the recent patch 4.3, but let's face it -- we're always going to be drawn to the content that has the best gear available. We can't help it. It's programmed in our shadow priest DNA. So while patch 4.3 has some sweet new 5-man instances with it, the real lure seems to be the new Raid Finder tool. What was once reserved for the hardest-core of players is now accessible by just about anyone with an hour and a half to spare. We can all, with the help of 24 complete strangers, defeat Deathwing. (Yes, that's a good thing.)

Before you try queueing up for the Raid Finder, though, you need to know some basics. A new level 85 player will still need to navigate the gear ladder. More importantly, though, all players need to know what the hell they're doing during the fights. Let's talk strategy, shadow priest style.

To use the Raid Finder tool to attempt the new-for-patch 4.3 Dragon Soul content, you're going to need a minimum average item level of 372. Like previous ilevel gates, you don't actually need to be equipped past an item level of 372; you merely need to have that gear in your bags or bank. This is good to know (considering how, for example, the i359 Darkmoon Card: Volcano remains a better trinket than the i365 Moonwell Chalice or i378 Rune of Zeth).

Earlier in the day, raiding group Paragon apologized for exploiting a bug in the Raid Finder tool that allowed their raiders to obtain loot from a boss more than once in a lockout period. Blizzard has followed up with a statement of its own, explaining that people who exploited the bug in a similar manner will be receiving temporary suspensions.

Raid Finder Loot Exploit Suspensions

Shortly after patch 4.3 was released, we became aware that some players were abusing an exploit to obtain loot from the same Raid Finder bosses multiple times in a single raid lockout period (one week). The Raid Finder loot mechanic is of course intended to only allow a person to roll on boss loot drops once per raid lockout period. The raid lockout mechanic has been a mainstay of the World of Warcraft rules since Onyxia and Molten Core, ensuring that no one can obtain loot from a boss more than once per lockout. Due to the nature of the exploit and the clear intent of those who abused it, they've been issued notices and given temporary suspensions from the game. We're also working to remove all Raid Finder items from those who used the exploit.

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It's good to see Blizzard taking action on this. Certainly there will be some who will believe this to be too mild a punishment. But given the number of people who abused the exploit (Paragon was far from the only guild doing this) and a need to hand out punishment evenly and consistently, a temporary suspension appears to be the right solution.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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High-end raiding guild Paragon issued an apology today for exploiting a bug in the Raid Finder that allowed its raiders to accumulate a large quantity of tier 13 gear. The statement reads, in part:

We acknowledge that using this unintended behavior, which was quite clearly a bug, to our gain, was wrong. The fact that others were using it as well is no justification for doing it ourselves. We apologize for doing it, and accept whatever consequences follow.

Paragon had come up with a plan to run the Raid Finder multiple times, once for each raider. While executing the plan, they noticed and exploited a bug that allowed the raid the ability to loot passed gear -- a violation of Blizzard's rules. The exploit has since been hotfixed.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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A stern but necessary warning from Bashiok today:

Dragon Soul loot exploit

If you are getting loot off of a boss twice then it is an exploit. This has always been the case in World of Warcraft, and we expect players to know better.

We're in the process of implementing a hotfix to fix the exploit, and are deciding what steps we'll be taking for the gear that was already obtained.

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We're not going to post about what people are doing (we never have and never will post exactly how the serious exploits are done), but there is a clear and intentional way people are getting a lot of loot out of the Dragon Soul raid using the Raid Finder.

This method they're using gets around the "one shot at loot per week" rule, and it's something that Blizzard clearly from the get-go didn't want to happen. Bashiok is absolutely right as well -- it's well known amongst WoW's experienced playerbase that such exploits are never to be done.

There are reports that some people who've exploited the system are getting the exploited gear stripped from them in the EU; however there is no official announcement yet as to what's happening.

Once that's announced, we'll let you know.

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The Raid Finder is now live and active. This tool is probably the single greatest boon to casual and solo players added to WoW since ... well, I'd have to struggle to think of something more exciting. If you can't commit to a raid night or more than one raid night in a single week, the Raid Finder means you can still participate in the raiding game. Sure, your item level may be a few steps behind players involved in traditional 10-man and 25-man raiding. But now with the glorious Raid Finder, you can actually take part in the story.

Of course, for newer players, using the Raid Finder can be intimidating, especially if you've never spent any time in PUG raids before now. Grouping up at random with 24 other players is intimidating. You can't just ignore that; jumping into a raid group that has expectations and demands about you can be a scary thing.

With that in mind, here's a handful of tips to make sure your Raid Finder experience goes as smoothly as possible.