Raid CD reset - 2x a week on TW/KR realms

[Shoju]

It wont push you to 4 nights. It wont force you to 4 nights. You will push it, because you think you have to so that you can stay competitive. There is a difference.

Our guild, while being completely and totally "casual" by your definition is the #6 horde side guild on the server. Sure, that's not "huge" or anything, but considering the way we raid, I would say that's pretty good.

[Kihra]

Well Lore's comment seems odd to me:

If this change goes in, raiding guilds will be forced to choose between falling behind in progression or spending twice as much time raiding.

Is that really true? I mean if you are still progressing competitively, aren't you already raiding at full capacity?

What Lore is saying makes total sense. My guild raids three nights a week for only 10.5 hours. We are one of the top three night guilds in the world. Right now we manage to be competitive in progression rankings, e.g., US #36 for Firelands 25H. Our steadily improving progression from T10 to T11 etc. led to us getting progressively better recruits, and we have continued to rise in rankings as a result of having strong applicants that are attracted to our raiding schedule.

If this change ends up applying to Dragon Soul, though, it might be very harmful to our guild's style of raiding. Progression guilds with a huge amount of time to raid (16+ hours) will end up doing double farms, and they'll basically be collecting twice as much gear per week when compared with us (who would not have time to do two clears of farm content). That kind of gear gap will give those guilds a big edge on the last boss fight (the one that will matter).

I sincerely hope they don't apply this change to current content, as it would potentially be disastrous for guilds like mine. We'd basically be feeling the pressure to extend to at least 4 nights in order to keep up, since we know that if we don't keep up, we risk losing out on great applicants as well as potentially losing existing members to other guilds that raid more.

[Shoju]

That gear gap is about the same as it is to 10m VS 25m.

[Fridmarr]

Well Lore's comment seems odd to me:

If this change goes in, raiding guilds will be forced to choose between falling behind in progression or spending twice as much time raiding.

Is that really true? I mean if you are still progressing competitively, aren't you already raiding at full capacity?

What Lore is saying makes total sense. My guild raids three nights a week for only 10.5 hours. We are one of the top three night guilds in the world. Right now we manage to be competitive in progression rankings, e.g., US #36 for Firelands 25H. Our steadily improving progression from T10 to T11 etc. led to us getting progressively better recruits, and we have continued to rise in rankings as a result of having strong applicants that are attracted to our raiding schedule.

If this change ends up applying to Dragon Soul, though, it might be very harmful to our guild's style of raiding. Progression guilds with a huge amount of time to raid (16+ hours) will end up doing double farms, and they'll basically be collecting twice as much gear per week when compared with us (who would not have time to do two clears of farm content). That kind of gear gap will give those guilds a big edge on the last boss fight (the one that will matter).

I sincerely hope they don't apply this change to current content, as it would potentially be disastrous for guilds like mine. We'd basically be feeling the pressure to extend to at least 4 nights in order to keep up, since we know that if we don't keep up, we risk losing out on great applicants as well as potentially losing existing members to other guilds that raid more.

But that doesn't make any sense to me. Basically you are saying that you won't be able to compete with a guild that has more free time than you, because they aren't hampered by some artificial governor. So what? Time investment is one of the biggest differences between guilds as it is now. It's just that now you are on the opposite side of the artificial threshold.

I understand that this could have negative effects for you and your guild's ability to compete for world firsts, but my goodness that's an incredibly narrow perspective.

[Kihra]

I understand that this could have negative effects for you and your guild's ability to compete for world firsts, but my goodness that's an incredibly narrow perspective.

It has negative effects for most Heroic progressing guilds in the US top 100 I would say. Basically it creates a huge pressure to raid more, and if you don't, you risk falling behind or losing people to the guilds that do. I don't think it's a narrow perspective to be concerned for the health of your guild.

Let me turn it around and ask, "Who really benefits from applying this change to progression content?" I think the answer is "Pretty much nobody."

I love the change for Firelands. I just think it would be very harmful to apply it to the current raiding content at the start of the tier, as it would put tremendous pressure on those of us pushing Heroic content early on to raid far more than we already do. I would think that pressure would apply to 3-night and 4-night guilds. That doesn't seem like a positive thing to me.

[Torias]

Just got home from a long day of classes and only now found out about this, but, I seem to be the only person interpreting it as "You can now do old content twice per week". It never even entered my head that this might apply to T13 or any actual progression content, going forwards. :/

[Kihra]

Just got home from a long day of classes and only now found out about this, but, I seem to be the only person interpreting it as "You can now do old content twice per week". It never even entered my head that this might apply to T13 or any actual progression content, going forwards. :/

I honestly don't think it will apply to current content. I think it's something they're going to do only for old content to give you something more to do once you're clearing the place in 1 night. They clearly (since they nerfed it already) consider Firelands to be old content already.

[KysenMurrin]

The announcement said "current raid content" (meaning the stuff that's in game right now on the realms it's active), but didn't clarify if it'd continue into 4.3 raids, so we don't know which is the case.

[Fridmarr]

By definition, looking out for you and your guild is narrow when we are talking about whether or not it's good for the game. Further reducing it down to the notion of it only affecting progression competition is even more so. I guess my point is more along the lines of tough cookies. Do you really think if the current lockout was 2 weeks you'd still be 36th? Maybe you guys have more skill than guilds above you, but they are ahead because they have lots more time. Maybe there's a lot of guilds below you that can only raid like 6 hours a week that would be much more competitive with a 2 week lockout. Availability is a major factor as it is now, it's just guilds other than yours that are "negatively" affected by it.

Who benefits? Nearly everyone benefits from an extra capability that they only need to take when it's beneficial for them to do so. Also, quite obviously, the people who have the extra free time to play more, who now can find guilds that match their availability and actually take advantage of it.

[Kihra]

By definition, looking out for you and your guild is narrow when we are talking about whether or not it's good for the game.

I think features that create pressure to double your playtime aren't good for the game. I think Blizzard recognizes this, since it's one of the reasons they implemented shared lockouts in the first place (e.g., they didn't like people feeling like they had to clear both 10s and 25s of the same instance twice per week).

This is obviously just my opinion, so we'll see what they do.

I am pretty certain that they only intend this change to apply "post-progression" as a way to help people gear up and have more to do late in a tier.

[Fridmarr]

By definition, looking out for you and your guild is narrow when we are talking about whether or not it's good for the game.

I think features that create pressure to double your playtime aren't good for the game. I think Blizzard recognizes this, since it's one of the reasons they implemented shared lockouts in the first place (e.g., they didn't like people feeling like they had to clear both 10s and 25s of the same instance twice per week).

This is obviously just my opinion, so we'll see what they do.

I am pretty certain that they only intend this change to apply "post-progression" as a way to help people gear up and have more to do late in a tier.

I agree that burnout can be problematic, and blizzard should be cognizant of that, but understand that proportionately there are very few people who will feel pressure to increase their raid time. On the flip side, this gives another fairly powerful option for nearly every guild to have better control over their progression and enjoyment. It's quite a bit different than the separate 10/25 lockout which created a new progression path.

EDIT: I still don't get the "double" your play time concept. If you have that much available time now, and competition is that important to you, why are you not raiding for four days with bosses still on the table? Surely there are 4-7 day per week raiding guilds that any member of your guild who has that level of availability could join right now, if that level competition was more important?

[Zobel]

As currently announced, the twice-weekly lockouts only apply to pre-4.3 raids. Firelands may still be progression-level raiding right now, but it won't be for long.

If twice-weekly raiding only applies to older content, it shouldn't affect progression raiding (i.e. Dragon Soul), except to the extent it allows for gearing up alts a little faster.

[baleogthefierce]

If you think about this from the perspective of casual players it makes a lot of sense.

If you are only able to clear the first few encounters in a raid in a PuG, you are then forced to wait for the lockout to reset before you can raid again. If the lockout resets more frequently, you have more chances to raid the first few bosses of a tier with the limited time that you have.

It will also be nice for people who are still going back to farm up that one elusive item after a tier is over.

[Worldie]

Am I the only one convinced it's only a way to allow asian players to catch up, and that it will never be moved to US / EU?

[Treck]

I cant see this change going live on current content tbh.
It does make sense to make old content reset faster, that means gearing up faster if you wish to spend the time on it.
Really old content should prolly also reset, like stuff you do every wednesday after servers come up, but cant do again cuz your locked.
All this while keeping current content kept at one week reset.
Sure, firelands is "quick", we clear it in less than one and a half hour, slower guilds kill it in a few hours, even those who recently just killed rag prolly does 6/7 within 2-3 hours then spend the reset of their time on rag himself.
This is all, AFTER progress is made.
We still do 4 raids in 2days to catch up on legendarys and alt gear, if the instance would reset twice a week, we would be raiding 4days a week aka 8raids a week.
ToC was a failure since you did the same instance 4times each week, we dont want that again with fresh content.
Having a 2resets/week wont change the progression in a positive way for guilds starting to make progress, cuz they spend twice as much time on farming, and once they reach the boss they need to progress on, they have a day or 2 before it all resets again.

You could always say "well just extend the raid lockout if you dont wanna kill the other bosses" and while that is true, why would you skip taking loot that would help you out?
Your going to spend twice the ammount of time on farming combared to now, and your going to spend less than half of your current progress hours a week with that system.

I can only see this as annoying tbh.
Remake "old" content (aka not latest tier) to have a 2resets/week, works fine no harm done, farm that shit up if you would like, LFR should prolly also reset twice a week IMO.
I understand pugs maybe doing 2-3 bosses per raid before they fall (sure very successful pugs could maybe do more) and they might want content to reset faster so they can do a few more raids a week rather than just dont log in for a few days, but then thats kinda what LFR is made for tbh.

2resets per week could only work if all content they put out is fairly small each time, like 5-7 bosses per content could potentially work.
So much pain would come with such a reset system if say 10 bosses would ever be released again.
It might be their strategy to release small contentpatches like they have said but hasnt followed very good yet.

Personally, i do like raiding, its fun to play together as a team and whenever i can raid, i always want to raid.
Thats not to say i like beeing tied down to raiding x days a week (during farm)