Bullettime

So who here has done LFR since 5.4 launched and the addition of flex raid? Anyone? Anyone?

Has anyone else noticed the massive drop in overall quality of players and play? I'm not talking about the two guys who AFK or rage or whatever that you normally get in LFR. I'm talking about 75% of the DPS auto attacking and AFKing, blatant ignoring of any and all mechanics, and to top it off and overall toxic environment to play in.

LFR is in a really bad spot at the moment. With the addition of flex mode raiding, it seems like many of the "decent but casual" players are no longer playing and have moved onto flex raiding. Raiders who used to queue and largely carry LFR runs are no longer queuing, instead of opting to do flex with their guilds and friends.

Flavor and variety is wonderful and flex mode raiding is a wonderful addition to the game. It just raises the question of what Blizzard will be doing with LFR moving forward? LFR was always fairly flawed but it worked, largely because of it being a primary progression tool for raider alts and casual players. But now that there's an alternative progression path, LFR is pretty much controlled now by the openly bad, the toxic, and the "420yoloswag" people.

I've had complaints about LFR in the past but I don't think LFR needs to be THIS bad of an experience. Taking my toons through and getting vote kicked for tryharding despite never saying a word in the raid. Hitting enrage timers on Jin'rokh the Breaker while 17/25 people start spam raging and screaming at each other for doing 20k DPS. The other 8 people? Well 6 of them were AFK the whole run to begin with and had the Disc Priest on follow.

So is there any plans moving forward for LFR or is flex the nail in the coffin?

TLDR: LFR was surviving and thriving on the queuing from decent casuals and actual raider alts to ensure success and carry others. Removing them from the pool leaves LFR as a poor experience.

Keep discussion here and let's not act like a bunch of damn children and get more threads locked. Throwing a temper tantrum makes you look like a fool.

KEEP IT CONSTRUCTIVE!!!!!!!! One and only warning.

Previous thread reached its post cap so created this to try to keep stuff consolidated.

Blue posts courtesy of Lore.

They probably have nothing concrete to report for the time being and don't want to start listing ideas they are considering for fear of people seeing it as changes they will do. Afterwards you get the angry posts for changes that did and did not make the list.

All we can really do is keep posting feedback and hope for the best.

This is pretty much the case, but just to hopefully ease your minds a bit, we do intend on compensating Hunters for the change to Readiness and its impact on overall DPS (particularly in PvE).

We've mentioned this a few times recently, but it's important to remember how the PTR process works. For the first several weeks, we're focused primarily on changes to mechanics: adjusting how spells work in general. This can be a lengthy process, and in most cases it honestly just doesn't make sense for us to worry about DPS balance if we're not yet sure that the mechanics changes are even going to stick.

What we'd rather do is get all the groundwork done -- the basic changes -- so that we have a complete idea of how everybody's spells are going to work before we start tweaking how much damage those spells do, or how much healing, and so on. Once that's done, we'll do what we call a "numbers pass" and make sure everyone's still able to do their jobs effectively.

If you (and this goes for any class) feel you're not doing enough damage, or you're not survivable enough, or your healing output isn't cutting it, etc., then sure, let us know! That's valuable feedback, and it's definitely not falling on deaf ears. We just aren't at the point where we're implementing changes based on that feedback just yet :)

Appreciate your comment Lore.

But can you at least make it known to the devs about the state of Arcane Shot vs signatures in 5.4?

The gap between them is pretty minuscule after the change, especially in the case of Beast Mastery. We're seeing identical results by not using Kill Command, the spec's core rotational ability, entirely.

Has already been brought to them, actually :) We don't have anything to report yet (for the reasons I mentioned before) but it's something they're aware of and would like to fix.

For those who haven't seen

-Readiness now finishes the cooldowns on Rapid Fire, Feign Death, Deterrence, Disengage, and Camouflage when activated (was all Hunter abilities with a base cooldown of less than 5 minutes).

This is a wonderful change for PvP. It's a nerf but also frees Hunters from having to be balanced around everything being doubled up, especially the CC breaker on Bestial Wrath.

My concern here is that it's still a nerf to PvE performance. Beast Mastery for example does a Readiness triggered double Bestial Wrath on the pull while our RPPM trinkets are still in effect to give us a large up front starting point. With the change, that won't happen anymore, resulting in a direct loss, while also losing the double Bestial Wrath every 5 minutes after for another gain. This is an effective loss of two Bestial Wraths on the average fight, a noticable loss.

It also reduces us two Glaive Tosses, two a Murder of Crows (if you still use it,) and two Dire Beast/Fervors over the fight which still add up to a net loss. The loss of two extra Dire Beasts for example is a 30 second loss of uptime on the effect for BM which is pretty big.

Will Hunters receive compensation for this change? Hunters are already not doing so hot when it comes to PvE performance, pulling in middle pack damage AT BEST in our best spec and being pretty much the low men on the totem pole in the other two specs. An extra nerf without compensation is crippling, especially when the nerfs hit Beast Mastery harder than Survival and Marks when Beast is our best hope at putting out decent PvE numbers currently.

Since the other thread is about to be post capped, what are the odds of the class restrictions being removed on tier pieces with the change to VP not being able to buy tier gear in 4.3?

With having to pray for an RNG raid drop, we're back in the boat of BC and early Wrath where you could go an entire tier without ever getting your bonuses completed. I agree with making the tier gear strictly from bosses, but this change concerns me, especially for 10m raiding, who are already at a massive RNG disadvantage.

So as stated above, what are the odds that we see the class restriction concept removed and just made general chest/legs/etc tokens drop?

This change to tier acquisition could either be the best thing or worst thing for 10m raiding based on that answer and design choice.