What's up with T15?

[Bellanka]

What is the current fastest way to 496 ilvl for a guild that was, say, at 8/16 on patch day? Let's say they're in the late 480's (I have no idea how realistic that is, btw).
Week 1 - Trash runs for the Shado-pan neck, T14 LFR, dailies for Sunreaver/Silverwing belt, 5.0 & 5.1 Valor rewards. - Valor is here the bottleneck. You'll probably have the opportunity to buy 2 pieces, the neck and something else, possibly the Sunreaver belt.
Week 2 - add LFR 1st wing, and thus the ring and wrists from the Shado-pan (if you had stocked up on valor), the Revered rewards from the Sunreaver/Silverwing thingie
Week 3 - LFR 2nd wing, no more from the Shado-pan, the Exalted pieces from the Sunreaver/Silverwing

That's what I was talking about: Relatively speaking, it is harder to "catch-up" than at any point since Ulduar. And from what I'm hearing, this could be the root of the problem - if you're lagging behind in T14, that lag will carry over much longer than in Tier 9/10/12/13, where it would disappear nearly overnight.

Do you even have to do a trash run for the Shado-Pan neck? I seem to recall just walking up to the vendor with a "Hey, 'sup?" and purchasing it. Isn't it available at Neutral?

Also, I thought Sunreaver items were purchased with gold, not valor?

Maybe I'm wrong on the Sunreaver one. I don't do dailies unless I absolutely have to, or I'm in need of lesser charms.

EDIT: Just checked on my phone. Belts are bought with gold. Cloaks and Rings are 900-some valor, which can be ignored since you can buy the 522 ones instead for slightly more valor.

[Sagara]

D'oh. It's the Week 2 of the Assault that needs trash run.
And only the belt cost gold. I'll update accordingly.

Anyway, the point stands - it's way harder than what we've had the last 2 x-packs.
EDIT: I'm currently not taking position btw. Just stating differences between then and now, to try and pinpoint what has changed that made this discussion happen.
Also, the cloak is *revered* Shado-pan. if our progression in ToT is any indication, LFR'ers will have to wait for week 3 or 4 at least to get their hands on it. Considering my entire point is about waiting much longer to catch up, I'd say it qualifies. Also, we have two rings

[Bellanka]

D'oh. It's the Week 2 of the Assault that needs trash run.
And only the belt cost gold. I'll update accordingly.

Anyway, the point stands - it's way harder than what we've had the last 2 x-packs.

I updated my post as well - both those items aren't really worth it when you're actively pursuing the Shado Pan rep, you get FAR more ilevel return per valor for the newer items, which you should have unlocked by the time you're ready to buy them.

As well, LFR gear is 502 ilevel and has a chance to be Thunderforged - the old rep items, which I still maintain are FAR easier* to unlock now, are still 489, half the price, and can fill in any weak spots if you're overcapped on valor waiting to unlock Shado-Pan.

I mean, by your example my Prot Warrior (Bellanca on Alterac Mountains, if you want to peek at her armory, although I think I logged out in Fury gear) fits your definition of casual. This was a character I played to help my fiancee's guild on a more populated server, and they were 8/16 normal, I did no dailies, and my Prot ilevel after ~6 raids and a bunch of LFR is about 486ish?

Also ... I'm traveling outside the realm of average/normal and thinking outside the box here ... but when I log my Warrior on every Tuesday the first thing I do is go to the IoT and kill rares for the epic key. When I get into the instance I spend my time opening up every chest, so I can cap my Greater Coins, then I use them in LFR (And this past week PUGs/OpenRaid CrossRealm Raids) for gear. The extra roll for each boss is nice.



*Honestly, who WOULDN'T want a triceratops mount from the Warbringers? Those things are awesome! And in three hours of flying around killing WarScouts and Warbringers in a group of 5 I was able to get August Celetials to Exalted on my main and Revered on my 85 Enchanting/TailoringBot Shaman, as well as Klaxxi, Shado Pan, and Golden Lotus to Exalted on my Warrior. This is with 5 people greeding on insignias. Each one was 2200 rep because of guild perks and Revered bonus.

[halabar]

*Honestly, who WOULDN'T want a triceratops mount from the Warbringers? Those things are awesome! And in three hours of flying around killing WarScouts and Warbringers in a group of 5 I was able to get August Celetials to Exalted on my main and Revered on my 85 Enchanting/TailoringBot Shaman, as well as Klaxxi, Shado Pan, and Golden Lotus to Exalted on my Warrior. This is with 5 people greeding on insignias. Each one was 2200 rep because of guild perks and Revered bonus.

I'm starting to see enough of those mounts that I'm either gonna keep pushing for the ShadowPan cat, or go back for Arch and get my bug mount somehow..

[Bellanka]

EDIT: I'm currently not taking position btw. Just stating differences between then and now, to try and pinpoint what has changed that made this discussion happen.
Also, the cloak is *revered* Shado-pan. if our progression in ToT is any indication, LFR'ers will have to wait for week 3 or 4 at least to get their hands on it. Considering my entire point is about waiting much longer to catch up, I'd say it qualifies. Also, we have two rings

No, that's fine, we're having a discussion, no flaring tempers or people screaming OMG IT'S MY WAY WHY ARE YOU SO STUPIT? (which is why I love this forum so much.)

I still think that reputation is far, FAR easier than you give it credit for with the new changes. Rep from Dungeons/Scenarios, the farm, and those beautiful, wonderful insignias that make me not have to do dailies on my alts.

And while we do have two rings, the point is to get a higher level in a shorter amount of time, so why spend 936vp on a 496 ring, when you can get a 522 for 1250? That's 26 ilevels in a single slot, at a cost of 314 additional valor. You can still get the Sunreaver one, but the Shado Pan one is a much better buy earlier on for the ilevel boost.

[Bellanka]

*Honestly, who WOULDN'T want a triceratops mount from the Warbringers? Those things are awesome! And in three hours of flying around killing WarScouts and Warbringers in a group of 5 I was able to get August Celetials to Exalted on my main and Revered on my 85 Enchanting/TailoringBot Shaman, as well as Klaxxi, Shado Pan, and Golden Lotus to Exalted on my Warrior. This is with 5 people greeding on insignias. Each one was 2200 rep because of guild perks and Revered bonus.

I'm starting to see enough of those mounts that I'm either gonna keep pushing for the ShadowPan cat, or go back for Arch and get my bug mount somehow..

They're Vanity Mounts of the "Oooh, look at this!" for 15 minutes variety. We got 2 in 3 hours. As well as 5 eggs on Isle of the Giants another time, but those raptors are so meh none of us want to go back.

(Well, except to feed T-Pain, the T-Rex on a Boat full of Dinomancers, as we give him sacrifice before raids for good luck.)

[Sagara]

So we both agree there are solutions. Thing is, in a perfect world, you can have at the end of week 1:
* Full set of 483 T14 gear
* One 522 piece
* A handful (5 or so) 496 pieces

Week 2:
* 3 522 pieces
* 7-ish 496 pieces
* 1 to 2 502 LFR pieces
* rest (4 or so) 483

So, basically, two weeks to reach 490-495 Ilvl. As opposed to 2 DAYS for T9/10/12/13.
As they say in french, CQFD.

[halabar]

*Honestly, who WOULDN'T want a triceratops mount from the Warbringers? Those things are awesome! And in three hours of flying around killing WarScouts and Warbringers in a group of 5 I was able to get August Celetials to Exalted on my main and Revered on my 85 Enchanting/TailoringBot Shaman, as well as Klaxxi, Shado Pan, and Golden Lotus to Exalted on my Warrior. This is with 5 people greeding on insignias. Each one was 2200 rep because of guild perks and Revered bonus.

I'm starting to see enough of those mounts that I'm either gonna keep pushing for the ShadowPan cat, or go back for Arch and get my bug mount somehow..

They're Vanity Mounts of the "Oooh, look at this!" for 15 minutes variety. We got 2 in 3 hours. As well as 5 eggs on Isle of the Giants another time, but those raptors are so meh none of us want to go back.

(Well, except to feed T-Pain, the T-Rex on a Boat full of Dinomancers, as we give him sacrifice before raids for good luck.)

Lucky... I've been hearing of 100+ kills with no mounts dropping from the Warbringers.

[Flex]

so you started doing heroics, then moved on to karazhan, from there to gruul, to maggy, and then SSC, TK then hyjal and BT.

That is the wrong order for TBC progression.

Karazhan->Heroics->Mag/Grull->SSC/TK->Hyjal/BT and toss in various heroics you had to do to unlock Tier 5 and 6 raids.

Raiders bitched and moaned that heroics were rewarding better loot than their precious raids so Blizzard caved and made Karazhan loot same item level as heroic blues but epics so they'd be slightly better.

I believe they are trying to change the entire direction of their game away from what it has been for about an expansion and a half (including one where large numbers of players apparently started).

Cataclysm was an entire expansion based around the Trial of the Crusader gearing model.

[Bellanka]

So we both agree there are solutions. Thing is, in a perfect world, you can have at the end of week 1:
* Full set of 483 T14 gear
* One 522 piece
* A handful (5 or so) 496 pieces

Week 2:
* 3 522 pieces
* 7-ish 496 pieces
* 1 to 2 502 LFR pieces
* rest (4 or so) 483

So, basically, two weeks to reach 490-495 Ilvl. As opposed to 2 DAYS for T9/10/12/13.
As they say in french, CQFD.

This actually goes back to the ilevel not meaning as much as people think it does. I could take my 486ish Warrior into Normals and while I wouldn't be able to do the things my Paladin does (single tanking several bosses, because of class constraints anf not ilevel) I have no doubts whatsoever that I could pull my weight and clear normal modes in my current gear. Our healers don't really OOM unless we do something wrong and they're spam healing to make up for it. For the most part, our DPS keeps up, but we do have 2-3 people who could go a long way to improve their DPS. As well, our Trial Shadow Priest came to us at 481 ilevel two weeks ago, and has been more than pulling his weight. Moreso than some people who outgear him by almost 30 levels.

People are putting too much emphasis on ilevel and not enough on improving overall. Yeah, gear is harder to come by, but it's not impossible to come by. You can still get the gear, you just won't power through it in a day and then sit there bored because you're gear capped, then do the same on 4 alts and then get stressed out because suddenly you have ... nothing to do, and you're bored, and the game sucks.

Spreading out content so it doesn't all fall into place in a day is a GOOD thing. People are used to getting everything right away, like in your examples, but then what? So you're not killing four bosses the first day. Okay, what was your progress like last tier, when you had all that gear readily available? How did you overcome the roadblocks you hit there? Did you outgear it? If so, how much time was put into trying to work out the kinks in strat/performance? Because the problem may be more the approach than the availability of upgrades.

And because this is not said nearly enough, while World of Warcraft itself is a game for some, and a hobby to others, raiding traverses into a TEAM hobby area. This is a SOCIAL game, and as such it comes with responsibilities when you choose to be social with a group or team of raiders. I won't call it an esport, that's silly; but team means something - if you have a good crew of people who you like and work well together, are you helping each other out, or are you saying "Hey so and so, step it up" and leaving it at that? And maybe that's why my mediocre team of ne'er-do-wells and goofballs excels ... we help each other out, we talk things out, we openly discuss things like performance and areas of improvement. Because of the atmosphere of friendship and bonding (and our trips to Vegas) there's a lot of camaraderie and people WANT to put in the effort. They take pride in their team. Even those of us like me who would rather go play in the park with my dog, or spend time with my fiancee and our friends out at dinner or on someone's living room floor watching bad movies on Netflix and drinking booze rather than do optional content can do well and progress. (And I'm the Raid Leader!)

Far, far too many people are looking to ilevel or nerfs to fix their problems with the content, and I don't see nearly as many people using the Raiding forums for advice as there were in previous tiers.

I don't consider myself an elite or elitist player. I don't think I ever will. I do consider myself a savvy player, though. I manage my time efficiently (I see people sitting in Shrine or Org complaining about being bored ... okay, go do something!), I put in the work I need to do to improve in areas I notice I'm deficient (which is why my workday downtime is spent here), and I see any problems that I or my team come up against as a challenge and think through it or ask advice about it. I'm also very, very, "unbearably oh god why are you even bothering" bad at Math, so theorycrafting beyond the basics is out of reach for me.

That's why I appreciate community so much. Not just the community we have in my guild and on my team, but the community we have on these forums. We have such a broad spectrum of player types here, we share information, we shoot the shit, we laugh, we joke, we share our miseries (and have stickied threads for doing so). But do people realize and appreciate that? These forums exist to strengthen the community, it's a place to vent, to ask questions and find answers, from all degrees of the game - and while the venting is fine, there are solutions to be had here for those problems as well. Yeah, opinions will clash, but if a guild is having problems with a boss they can post in the Raiding Forums and typically receive responses on tips, tricks, and ways to improve. I think we have one of the best communities for that. More people just need to learn to use it.

[Bellanka]

They're Vanity Mounts of the "Oooh, look at this!" for 15 minutes variety. We got 2 in 3 hours. As well as 5 eggs on Isle of the Giants another time, but those raptors are so meh none of us want to go back.

(Well, except to feed T-Pain, the T-Rex on a Boat full of Dinomancers, as we give him sacrifice before raids for good luck.)

Lucky... I've been hearing of 100+ kills with no mounts dropping from the Warbringers.

I consider it fair compensation for the amount of Alliance we had to kill (and their very crude whispers from level 1 alts) to get those Warbringers and Scouts. 4/5 to 1 imbalance in their favor on our PVP server, and they're like freakin' roaches. I'd say we spent just as much time killing the Allies as we spent killing MoBs.

Also, have YOU tried offering Sacrifice to T-Pain on the Isle of Giants? He has been a very kind and benevolent seafaring carnosaur for us thus far.

EDIT: I'm going to make T-Pain a thing.

[halabar]

Also, have YOU tried offering Sacrifice to T-Pain on the Isle of Giants? He has been a very kind and benevolent seafaring carnosaur for us thus far.

That Trex himself? he's dropping the eggs? or other mount?

Killed the Wargod on that boat several times for the usual bags and commodations, but haven't seen any other loot from there.

[Bellanka]

Also, have YOU tried offering Sacrifice to T-Pain on the Isle of Giants? He has been a very kind and benevolent seafaring carnosaur for us thus far.

That Trex himself? he's dropping the eggs? or other mount?

Killed the Wargod on that boat several times for the usual bags and commodations, but haven't seen any other loot from there.

Sacrifices to T-Pain the T-Rex should be done thusly:

1) Swim to his boat with a group.
2) Pull T-Pain and all the Dinomancers.
3) Kill all Dinomancers, leaving T-Pain alive.
4) Swim away to leash T-Pain, leaving him free and alive, no longer oppressed by the "T-rany" of a boat full of jackhole Dinomancers.
5) Soak up all that sweet, sweet karma knowing you have done a great justice on this day.

[halabar]

Sacrifices to T-Pain the T-Rex should be done thusly:

1) Swim to his boat with a group.
2) Pull T-Pain and all the Dinomancers.
3) Kill all Dinomancers, leaving T-Pain alive.
4) Swim away to leash T-Pain, leaving him free and alive, no longer oppressed by the "T-rany" of a boat full of jackhole Dinomancers.
5) Soak up all that sweet, sweet karma knowing you have done a great justice on this day.

Considering the respawn rate of those dinomancers.. I imagine those could be farmed by a proper tank.

[Bellanka]

Sacrifices to T-Pain the T-Rex should be done thusly:

1) Swim to his boat with a group.
2) Pull T-Pain and all the Dinomancers.
3) Kill all Dinomancers, leaving T-Pain alive.
4) Swim away to leash T-Pain, leaving him free and alive, no longer oppressed by the "T-rany" of a boat full of jackhole Dinomancers.
5) Soak up all that sweet, sweet karma knowing you have done a great justice on this day.

Considering the respawn rate of those dinomancers.. I imagine those could be farmed by a proper tank.

Very likely. Their abundance is what makes them suitable sacrifices to our seafaring carnivorous lord.

[Sagara]

This actually goes back to the ilevel not meaning as much as people think it does. I could take my 486ish Warrior into Normals and while I wouldn't be able to do the things my Paladin does (single tanking several bosses, because of class constraints anf not ilevel) I have no doubts whatsoever that I could pull my weight and clear normal modes in my current gear. Our healers don't really OOM unless we do something wrong and they're spam healing to make up for it. For the most part, our DPS keeps up, but we do have 2-3 people who could go a long way to improve their DPS. As well, our Trial Shadow Priest came to us at 481 ilevel two weeks ago, and has been more than pulling his weight. Moreso than some people who outgear him by almost 30 levels.

People are putting too much emphasis on ilevel and not enough on improving overall. Yeah, gear is harder to come by, but it's not impossible to come by. You can still get the gear, you just won't power through it in a day and then sit there bored because you're gear capped, then do the same on 4 alts and then get stressed out because suddenly you have ... nothing to do, and you're bored, and the game sucks.

Spreading out content so it doesn't all fall into place in a day is a GOOD thing. People are used to getting everything right away, like in your examples, but then what? So you're not killing four bosses the first day. Okay, what was your progress like last tier, when you had all that gear readily available? How did you overcome the roadblocks you hit there? Did you outgear it? If so, how much time was put into trying to work out the kinks in strat/performance? Because the problem may be more the approach than the availability of upgrades.

And because this is not said nearly enough, while World of Warcraft itself is a game for some, and a hobby to others, raiding traverses into a TEAM hobby area. This is a SOCIAL game, and as such it comes with responsibilities when you choose to be social with a group or team of raiders. I won't call it an esport, that's silly; but team means something - if you have a good crew of people who you like and work well together, are you helping each other out, or are you saying "Hey so and so, step it up" and leaving it at that? And maybe that's why my mediocre team of ne'er-do-wells and goofballs excels ... we help each other out, we talk things out, we openly discuss things like performance and areas of improvement. Because of the atmosphere of friendship and bonding (and our trips to Vegas) there's a lot of camaraderie and people WANT to put in the effort. They take pride in their team. Even those of us like me who would rather go play in the park with my dog, or spend time with my fiancee and our friends out at dinner or on someone's living room floor watching bad movies on Netflix and drinking booze rather than do optional content can do well and progress. (And I'm the Raid Leader!)

Far, far too many people are looking to ilevel or nerfs to fix their problems with the content, and I don't see nearly as many people using the Raiding forums for advice as there were in previous tiers.

I don't consider myself an elite or elitist player. I don't think I ever will. I do consider myself a savvy player, though. I manage my time efficiently (I see people sitting in Shrine or Org complaining about being bored ... okay, go do something!), I put in the work I need to do to improve in areas I notice I'm deficient (which is why my workday downtime is spent here), and I see any problems that I or my team come up against as a challenge and think through it or ask advice about it. I'm also very, very, "unbearably oh god why are you even bothering" bad at Math, so theorycrafting beyond the basics is out of reach for me.

That's why I appreciate community so much. Not just the community we have in my guild and on my team, but the community we have on these forums. We have such a broad spectrum of player types here, we share information, we shoot the shit, we laugh, we joke, we share our miseries (and have stickied threads for doing so). But do people realize and appreciate that? These forums exist to strengthen the community, it's a place to vent, to ask questions and find answers, from all degrees of the game - and while the venting is fine, there are solutions to be had here for those problems as well. Yeah, opinions will clash, but if a guild is having problems with a boss they can post in the Raiding Forums and typically receive responses on tips, tricks, and ways to improve. I think we have one of the best communities for that. More people just need to learn to use it.

I think you pretty muchd the point I was trying to make. Here we go:

It is my belief that the current highest problem that our fellow maintankadin have does not truly lie in boss difficulty, and that it is merely an "effect" of a deeper "cause".

I'll be honest, a good part of that reason is that I'm at 6/12N right now, without considering myself top notch material, while also not holding my guild back. So, to me, it means the problem does not lie in the bosses. Also when I consider that Klaud and Nooska both utterly pwned my own progression in the previous tiers.

So, then, what is so different between myself and those people? The most reasonable answer I've found yet is gear - I'm above 500 right now, and predict to touch 510 in a couple of weeks, while both my friends are stuck much lower. And that is what led me to compare gearing catchup between patches, prompting me to note that catchup is much more slower than previous tier.

A good way to confirm my suspicion is to prompt those very same player to consider wether they'd feel this tier would be "more fair" with a stronger catchup mechanism.

Which situation is better? That's an open question I will not broach for now, because in the end, it'll be all about tastes. I'm not interested in tastes - just in finding causes, in comparing and contrasting situations.

[Hawkslayer]

so you started doing heroics, then moved on to karazhan, from there to gruul, to maggy, and then SSC, TK then hyjal and BT.

That is the wrong order for TBC progression.

Karazhan->Heroics->Mag/Grull->SSC/TK->Hyjal/BT and toss in various heroics you had to do to unlock Tier 5 and 6 raids.

I believe you are mistaken here. I'm pretty sure several of the heroics were a requirement of the Karazhan attument. I specifically remember spending many hours in Black Morass and others getting people in my raid group attuned simply so we could get the key to Kara.

[Lieris]

so you started doing heroics, then moved on to karazhan, from there to gruul, to maggy, and then SSC, TK then hyjal and BT.

That is the wrong order for TBC progression.

Karazhan->Heroics->Mag/Grull->SSC/TK->Hyjal/BT and toss in various heroics you had to do to unlock Tier 5 and 6 raids.

I believe you are mistaken here. I'm pretty sure several of the heroics were a requirement of the Karazhan attument. I specifically remember spending many hours in Black Morass and others getting people in my raid group attuned simply so we could get the key to Kara.

No, you could do those on normal and given that you needed to be revered with a dungeon faction to buy the heroic key I don't think anybody did the Karazhan attunement on heroic.

[Chunes]

so you started doing heroics, then moved on to karazhan, from there to gruul, to maggy, and then SSC, TK then hyjal and BT.

That is the wrong order for TBC progression.

Karazhan->Heroics->Mag/Grull->SSC/TK->Hyjal/BT and toss in various heroics you had to do to unlock Tier 5 and 6 raids.

I believe you are mistaken here. I'm pretty sure several of the heroics were a requirement of the Karazhan attument. I specifically remember spending many hours in Black Morass and others getting people in my raid group attuned simply so we could get the key to Kara.

Yeah, you had to go into a few of them for the atunement, but iirc it didn't have to be on heroic difficulty.

I think a lot of guilds elected to skip magtheridon entirely in the progression chain for time purposes once they had their initial kill because the early bosses in SSC were a better expenditure of time regarding loot, prior to the mag nerf.

It's a little hazy since it was some time ago, but I remember doing kara in garbo blues pretty soon after hitting 70 (Crystalforged Swort + Crest of the Sha'tar ) skipping mag entirely to focus on grull, gathering a NR set for the first boss of SSC, farming him and lootpinata-below for a bit, then slowly progressing through the remainder of SSC/TK sans final bosses. Doing heroics all the while to upgrade slots that were not craftable or were tier slots being out-bid by those motherfucking cocksucking warlocks who just happened to have a full set of fucking crafted gear that they could ride all the way to T5 and thus never had to fucking spend DKP ON FUCKING ANYTHING.

About that time the badge gear made its appearance and greatly aided progression to the point that we abandoned Vashj/Kael and jumped into BT/Hyjal since they'd removed the attunements for them by that time.

We did eventually spend some time learning and killing vashj, but for a semi-casual band of raiders we could never muster the gumption to kill KT. We did get archi/illidan though and the first boss of sunwell before the next expansion dropped.


tl;dr - baddie casual mid-late expansion progression path:

KZ - Heroics - Gruul - Heroics - 2 bosses in SSC - Heroics - Badgers of Justice Gear - First few bosses in BT/Hyjal - Mag/Vashj - Archi/Illi - Ultimate Grand Challenge Boss Kaelthas


*edit*

Oh yeah, we did a shit ton of ZA bear runs somewhere in there too. Some decent loot was gained there as well, namely this bad boy: http://www.wowhead.com/item=33326

[Flex]

I believe you are mistaken here. I'm pretty sure several of the heroics were a requirement of the Karazhan attument. I specifically remember spending many hours in Black Morass and others getting people in my raid group attuned simply so we could get the key to Kara.

No, you could do those on normal and given that you needed to be revered with a dungeon faction to buy the heroic key I don't think anybody did the Karazhan attunement on heroic.

Correct. Karazhan was regular mode 5 mans.
Heroics and Magtheridon were required for TK attunement, not to mention that you had to do a quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley to get the quests to do the heroics to do the raid that will allow you to do the raid you really want to do.
SSC was Karazhan and Grull's lair.

[Darielle]

I think too much emphasis is put on everyone in a raid needing to pull their weight.
Yes, of course, you need to commit, and thats something that I think we can all agree on - but when a developer (team) chooses where to set the bar, do you really feel that the bar should be set so only guilds where everyone moves above the current average can be allowed to down bosses?
(Using average as the average of "output" in both damage/healing and moving out of the fire of the raiding population - raiding population being those that raid in an organized group regularly)

The bar isn't really set so that only guilds where "everyone moves above the current average" can be allowed to down bosses.
Certainly not so after the hotfixes that went into play in the early T15 fight.

If you think this is true, that you somehow have to perform at an unreasonable level to get past, say, Horridon, I'd love for you to demonstrate why you believe this.

Basically, what I'm saying is, that what was good design in 2006/7 isn't good design in 2012/3, unless you are making a product aimed at the same age group in both cases - and if so, then its still not good design here, because, yes, the younger population feels more entitled, due to the general way the world has gone.

They're very specifically not trying to repeat the same experience that was 2006/7. They've decided after a couple of experiences that the method of simply invalidating entire tiers is not all that great for the game, but they are going much beyond that.
This time around there are:
- No Attunements
- A very simple source of easily obtainable Valor gear that allows you to get 522's for almost every slot over time, even if you only do LFR.
- A very heavily nerfed previous tier.
- Improved drop rates in old content.
- "Experiencing" the raid even if you don't raid. If you're a raider that wants to, you can practice mechanics, even though most of the raid doesn't care and will fail them becuase LFR doesn't matter. The one good thing even though they deliberately undertune everything in LFR is that at the least you can SEE things and what happens with them. What the Ice Wall looks like, how it moves, how to fly on Ji'kun, etc. That as a concept is far advanced from the "guides" that a lot of people used in BC. Even Videos are a lot further along for the many, many guilds that can and do use them.

My point is, that a lot of the rhethoric I'm seeing in the arguments, is based on the elite few skilled, and then the masses, where the masses should just have to "get better" - or in other words become part of the elite few, if they want to not get aggravted by not downing bosses - because, lets face it, the reason raiders expect to down bosses, is due to the game teaching them that that is what should happen - which results in less patience for working on bosses and a greater mobility in moving up to a guild that already downed a boss (that can carry you iow, for a lot of those moving on).

Uh. A lot of the "masses" are adequately skilled to get to midway through T15 and most likely end T15 with Lei Shen dead. These masses shouldn't be trying to become part of this "elite few", and most likely aren't good enough to even if they try. But that's not required to kill Normal mode content.

Now if you're trying to say that it's harder for Blizzard to dole out actual meaningful content after having first gone around throwing people gimmes, that's somewhat true. Some people are no doubt frustrated. But if they don't have the patience to work on bosses with friends, I seriously have to question what they're trying to get out of raiding?

It doesn't REALLY take much skill to figure out that Venom PRiests should be interrupted and to do so. It doesn't require perfection to cut out the majority of the raid damage in that part; letting a couple of casts go through is fine, and is what Blizzard expects to happen. SO if you're implying the bar is set very high, it doesn't make sense (to me). How far down should the bar be set, because as it is, the bar is very close to "zerg this", with only one or two major mechanics on every Normal mode fight that matter at any time?

[Newsom]

This thread is stupid.

1. No, you're not meant to be able to go from LFR T14 -> Normal T15 and breeze through the encounters. The intended paths are either Normal T14 -> Normal T15 or LFR T15 -> Normal T15.
2. So you're only raiding normal modes and you're having trouble clearing the new normal modes first week. Why is that so horrible? Don't you want the content to last for a bit? Isn't progression fun?
3. No, the gear checks are not very extreme. The first 5 or so fights are really "win at mechanics, collect loot", assuming you are somehwere in the item level 490 ballpark (or even lower if you really know what you're doing.) The later fights are tuned more strictly because Blizzard expects you to actually gear up via killing the first few bosses a few times, plus valor and trash drops.

If you didn't clear T14 and don't want to deal with the time/RNG of LFR, then go back and do some T14 raids. You can get massive amounts of coins, the content is nerfed and droprates are increased.

If all you want is gear for no effort, then do LFR. Normal mode is supposed to require some effort and some gear (last tier's normal modes will do just fine).

[Nikachelle]

Two thumbs up for Newsom.

[Klaudandus]

I dont think anyone said about going from LFR 14 to Normal 15.

[Newsom]

Seemed like Sagara did a page back, but maybe I misread. There's so much complaining here it's hard to keep up.