There was another great, thought-provoking post by Rohan at Blessing of Kings today, this time discussing the consequences of large group and small group raiding to MMOs, player retention and MMO health.

I love Rohans posts, he always brings up great topics, adds his opinions or experiences, but then leaves it open for people to think about it or discuss without feeling that by dissenting they’re being confrontational. A happy place to have a conversation instead of an argument.

Silly, silly paladin, didn’t anyone ever tell him the internet is for drama?

When Rohan spoke about larger raid teams being more comfortable for some people to find a home, it spurred all kinds of sparks in my skull.

I’ll be honest with you… I probably don’t have any points to make. I just can’t resist taking a stroll down memory lane, which at my age is more like a 5 lane superhighway straight to the past, where I’ve built a summer cottage the size of the Magic Kingdom, there to spend my days.

I’ll pretend I have a point by contrasting my raiding experiences now compared to what I remember of the old, old, OLD days.

For about the last month, I’ve been raiding twice a week with two different 10-person groups.

On Saturdays I am part of a regular 10 person raid team, and on Thursdays I take part, when I can, in the guilds “Alt Night” Dragon Soul runs on a different character. Lately it’s been my Hunter.

Everyone here by now also knows that I’ve had plenty of opportunity to see the shining lights of awesome to be found in 25 person Looking For Raid.

About that, I’d like to be clear about how I feel concerning Looking For Raid. I bitch about individual players and how there always seems to be that 8% asshat quota that has no trouble getting filled for every single run. I’ll admit it.

Overall though, I remain delighted that Looking For Raid exists, and I still run it on someone every week, without exception. Sometimes on two different characters for different experiences, like Healing and ranged DPS. Still haven’t gotten tired of it, but give me five more months of this same stuff and I’ll be singing a different tune. Or caterwauling, as the case may be.

If dealing with asshats and adding them to /ignore is the price I pay for the fun I’ve had in LFR, then so be it. Give me more room in my Ignore List, and get out of my way, there are internet ultimate shadowy dragons to kill, and swaggering to do in the Eye of Eternity.

I’m pretty current on my World of Warcraft raiding. I’ve even done some Hard Modes on my Druid, up through the first four. Ooh, shiny pretty raiding.

But what about the past?

Casting my mind back over the years, I remember with fondness raiding in 40-person teams with Divine Might.

That line right there tells you this is bullshit. If I’ve somehow convinced myself that 40 person raiding was awesome, I must be delusional.

But really!

Divine Might was an absolute KICK ASS guild on Kael’thas when I first started playing the game, back in the days when the only end game raiding there was to look forward to was 40 person groups.

They had two raid teams, and at the time the progression flow in the game went as follows;

Get to level 60.
Run 5 person instances to get geared enough for the 10 person raids.
Run Blackrock Depths 5 billion times to get various people through the Ony attunement that can’t ever figure out what freaking part of the chain they’re on. Ever.
Start obsessing over Fire Resist gear.
Run 10 person raids in Upper and Lower Blackrock Spire to get geared.
Run 10 person raids in Zul’Gurub and lesser AQ to get geared. Work on Zandalari rep.
Finally join 40 person raid teams, start running Onyxia, never get your Tier. Ever. EVER.
Run Molten Core.
Run Molten Core.
Run Molten Core.
YES we still need Fire Resist gear, FFS!
Run Molten Core.
Run Onyxia. Who still needs their crafted Cloak for BWL?
Run Molten Core.
Run Onyxia.
Run Molten Core.
Run Onyxia.Are we done with the damn cloaks yet? OMIGOD.
Blackwing and AQ, here we go!
Naxx? OMIGOD the attunement go go go!
Oops, too late, expansion is here, 10 man and 25 man raiding is born, bah bye 40′s, time for the guild to eat itself over raid spots.

Ooh, that sounds fun, right?

Amazingly enough, it was. It really was.

Times do change, and we grow and adapt to the game. What was fulfilling before may seem simple and even boring now, but back then, there was a spark, an excitement to follow those quests and get attuned and earn a key and get a Drakefire Amulet forged, and everything else associated with it.

Rohan is in my opinion dead right on larger raiding groups back then having room for more people of all skill levels.

In 40 person raiding, there was absolutely some wiggle room to accomodate people who were not completely obsessed with maxing every last aspect of their raiding toolkit.

I’m not saying “room for idiots”, because it wasn’t that, although a truly great raid team could certainly absorb a few people who didn’t try… or know what to do.

No, I mean people who didn’t live, eat and breathe maximizing every little aspect of their game life.

See, I recall the fight mechanics back then as being a bit more… well, unforgiving than they are these days.

Perhaps this is rose-colored welding goggles in gear, but things back then seemed tuned loose for things like pure DPS or health or healing throughput, and tuned tight for movement, situational awareness, and restraint.

For a given value of ‘Don’t move when Flame Wreath is up or you’ll wipe the damn raid”, anyway.

The key seemed to be that as long as everyone stayed alive, you would win. But in order to stay alive, every single player had to manage their location and movement and switch targeting properly, or they’d pretty much die, and maybe suck a horde of adds in on the group on top of it.

Then you’d cheer from the floor for the rest of the run, short thought it may be.

Let’s just take Onyxia as an example.

Three phases to the battle, each a long phase.

To defeat Onyxia felt immensely satisfying, even though it was like 5 packs of trash in one tunnel, then one big dragon fight in a cavern. In a world where we say Trial of the Crusader proved brief trash fights prior to a raging battle agasint one boss in a single room was a stupid idea, Onyxia felt epic.

Have you done Onyxia, old school or modern remix, and payed attention to the mechanics? They’re quite exciting.

There were fears you had to prepare for… you had to locate yourself where you knew that, when you ate the fear, you would not be forced to run so far that you would facepull the Whelps in the caves to either side.

BUT, you couldn’t be so far away from the Whelp caves that you would eat the Dragon’s breath weapon. And you had to watch where you were standing, because the cracks in the ground would erupt in bursts of lava. And the dragon would knock back whoever had aggro for miles and miles. And the dragon couldn’t be taunted, so you had to generate aggro purely through DPS threat generation, so if you pulled off the tank you were a dead bastard, and since the dragon would likely turn to face the offender, the breath weapon would splash all around.

And that’s just in phase 1!

In phase two, the dragon goes airborne, begins raining down fire and destruction upon the area, whelps burst forth from their caves to swarm the groups, madness and chaos descend… screams, shouts, epic Youtube videos and other delights are the end result.

I loved it. I really did.

My point here is, someone might not have known the ‘optimal’ rotation, have the maxed out gear and enchants, used every single tool in their toolbox… but they were not, in any way, ‘carried’.

They just didn’t put out the maximum possible DPS or Heal, but the mechanics had enough wiggle room to allow for that.

You could reasonably run a raid with a few key dedicated genuises organizing and managing everything at the top level of time investment, a bunch of people in the middle making up the majority of your run theorycrafting and looking for that extra 1% of DPS, and quite a few people at the bottom level that were ‘weekend warriors’.

You really lived or died by the competency of your raid leaders, tanks and primary healers, and they got much respect for their dedication and time investment.

Maybe I remember things differently than they were, or maybe the raiding guild I was in was atypical. Too many years gone by to recall.

Where I’m going with this is, I do agree that back then there was more room for players of all experience levels to fill in one raid from the same guild.

Where I see the drawbacks, and why I wouldn’t ever want to go back, are the difficulties I remember so well in trying to find people you knew you could work together with as a team to fill out all 40 positions, and in coordinating schedules so that all 40 people would actually be online, all at the same time, for the same chunk of playtime.

Those are the two bosses I remember destroying more raids than anything else; attendance and scheduling.

Inevitably, with groups that large, we always, always had people logging in at the last minute without food, flasks or buffs, on the other side of the continent needing summons and begging for handouts.

And then, pre-Repair Bot era, needing to hearth and get re-summoned to fix things still broken from the previous week.

I love that Rohan has given me an excuse to take a trip down memory lane, but all things taken into consideration, while I do miss the epic feel of 40 person raids, I don’t miss the scheduling conflicts, being 15 people short and trying to PUG the rest into MC, and all the rest.

If the argument is that larger raid groups make for more player inclusion in the MMO, and a healthier, more active MMO in the long run, I think Looking For Raid makes for the perfect filler between tight small group raid progression and 5 person instance heroics.

If you really want to relax and pew pew without responsibilities… LFR gives us a home to do it in!

Much time has passed since it was released, but I still like the concept of Looking For Raid. I keep running it on varying characters, and overall I have a good time.

The only thing I haven’t enjoyed is the long wait time as DPS, at least on characters that don’t have a farming profession.

Even as a tank, the wait time can go ten minutes sometimes. Maybe the average is three minutes, but I have seen as high as ten. It happens.

Each time I queue, I’d see the Healers with their estimated 3 second wait time and /envy them.

I’d think to myself, ‘I gotta get me some of that.”

Well, I did.

I leveled my poor, long-suffering Priest to 85, ran instances choosing Spirit gear for all upgrades, and built a complete set of spirit healy gear (with just a couple 377 PvP items, like shoulders), and figured I was all set for LFR.

Before I ran LFR Dragon Soul as a Priest healer, I asked around on Twitter for feedback on what spec I should choose, Holy or Disc. Then I specced Holy, actually reforged so I had a chance, and ran a few Heroics to tweak my Vuh’do and learn timing sequences and synergy and this whole ‘Chakra’ thing.

I did pretty well, and yes I am saying so myself.

At least, I did pretty well for Heroics. Kept all the things alive, no wipes, that sort of stuff. Thank Elune we’re able to drastically overgear content now, because obviously I had NO skill or experience in mana management. My goal was to keep the stuffs alive, and I did so, using tools that I know overhealed for a higher mana cost than I needed to use to get the job done, but it was a start. A REAL healer would know what heal to use to get the job done while conserving mana.

The hardest lesson I had to learn as a former Druid Tree healer was NOT to cast spells. I’m used to HoTting things up right before the damage starts. I am used to casting while the bars are all green, doing the preemptive healing thing.

As a Priest, there are a few preemptive heals like Renew and Prayerof Mending and the HoT from Holy spec Mastery, but most are reactive. You have to wait for a bar to start dropping before you react to it and cast some heals. Or see what target the boss is attacking so you know who is gonna be taking the hit. Or know what AoE is about to hit the group and lay down the Holy Word – Sanctuary (also known as pretty sparklies).

It’s a bit of an adjustment, my instincts are to cast, not stand still waiting for the bars to drop. I found myself wishing the tank would take more damage. Maybe that Mage could go stand in the fire for a minute? Please? No? Fine. I’ll just stand here and Renew the tank. Again.

For those not aware, the guild I’m in has three seperate ten person raid teams, named ‘Team Wanda”, “Team Snuffleupagus” and “Team Teddybear.” I’m not in any of them, I’m a persistent floater. :)

My next intended step as a healer was to venture into LFR, after a little Mage leveling.

My plans did not survive contact with my friends, for the call went forth from TheRedDeath, Team Snuffleupagus’ Raid Leader.

/guild channel “We need a ranged DPS and healer for Dragon Soul.”

Cassie immediately tells me I should offer to DPS on my Hunter, to which I replied, “My Hunter is my second favorite character to play, I love playing my Hunter just after my Druid. But my Hunter is my worst geared DPS character. So, no. Red needs better than a crap hunter. He’s used to Cross, and Cross rocks.”

So I remain silent, and Red finds a willing ranged DPS quickly (This really noob Mage, omg he was so lemon fresh he squeaked, named Ursimage or something like that. Noob.), but still needs a healer. I don’t know how the subject comes up, but when asked I say that I can’t heal because I actually LIKE Red, and I wouldn’t want to subject his team to my brand new undergeared ignorant healing.

The answer I got was somewhere along the lines of, “C’mon, how bad could it really be.”

Really? You’re going to go there. oooh, that’s just asking for it, man.

So into the Dragon Soul rode the ten raiders, and hell rode with them.

Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t hell. It wasn’t even purgatory. It wasn’t surf and sand and 12 ounce steaks on the grill with a tropical drink with an itty bitty umbrella in it, but it wasn’t bad at all. 

See, Team Snuffleupagus are very good raiders. In fact, almost everyone in Band of Misfits are very good raiders. When someone can’t make a raid night, they never seem to lack for volunteers. They kinda do this a lot, and do it well.

So I joined them with the trash on Morchok, and for the next five bosses we had a lot of fun. The pace was fast and smooth, everyone did what they were supposed to, bosses and trash died, and much joking was had by all. Everyone stayed focused on the goal and hustled without rushing, if you get my meaning. 

By the time Ultraxion died (OMG I two healed on Ultraxion with Silarkias!) I was kinda liking this whole Holy Priest Chakra Healing thing.

All that hullabaloo about Chakra healing, and changing optimization on the fly between single target and AoE healing, plus Holy Word changing states is all pretty awesome once you get into it.

Yes, I know I’m the last idiot left in the game to try Chakra healing out. Sue me, Bears don’t give a Chakra. 

I love playing classes new to me in a game I’ve been playing forever. The whiff of new car smell on a model I know and love, what could be better? Now with Priests being enjoyed, that leaves Warlocks and Monks as the last two unexplored countries to look forward to.

Not only did the raiding with Snuffleupagus go great, but I walked away with 2 pieces of Tier gear. Turns out, their team didn’t have any Paladins, Priests or Warlocks in the group that night, so anything that could dr9op for Tier was destined for me.

Please don’t hurt me.

So, a great night, right? This healing thing, pretty fun. And short queue times! Rock on!

So, let’s try out LFR, how bad could it be?

The horror. The horror.

Dudes. Seriously. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE FIRE.

What is wrong with you people?

I now know why the healing queue time is so short.

Tanking and DPS are straitforward roles, their enemies are the NPCs.

For the healers, the PLAYERS are the enemy. 

How smooth or challenging a run the healer has is based directly on whether or not the other players pay attention, stand in the healing circles, run out of the fire, move to proper range, close in when appropriate, etc.

If the other players just stand there and don’t give a shit if they’re taking damage, the crowd is thick enough that it’s hard to tell why they’re health is plummeting. All a healer can see is a bar dropping, and take frantic steps not to lose them. If time allows, then a combat log can be scanned to see wtf was going on, but by then it may be too late.

A tank grabs what a tank grabs. DPS kills this, DPS kills that. The worst skill-type behavior I’m used to noticing is how lost people STILL get if nobody holds their hand and calls out colors of oozes.

But I never could have imagined the impact lazy DPS and tanks have on a healer in LFR.

I’m not saying the groups wiped, I’m just saying people doing stupid shit like killing EVERY DAMN TENTACLE on the Spine of Deathwing and spawning every possible add SUCKS.

And then, omigod and then, on the last plate for Spine, NOT HAVING ENOUGH DPS TO KILL THE TENDON, so we have to do the last plate all over again? Really? I’ve never even seen that happen before, not killing the tendon, just wtf. 

I walked away in disbelief.

Sure, there are 25 players in LFR versus 10 in the normal raid I went on, and yes the AoE spells I used have upper limits on effectiveness based on number of people needin’ the healin’.

I don’t care. It really is true. It’s more annoying to heal LFR than normal because it really is that damn annoying to heal through stupid, and there are oh so many stupids to have to heal!

Or worse yet, heal through “I don’t give a shit”.

It doesn’t have to be that damn hard.

Hey, ranged DPS, when it all goes to black and the tentacles flail, CLOSE IN TO THE CENTER WHERE THE GLOWY SPARKLES ARE.

I feel so bad for healers that see the joy other pe0ple boast about in LFR, and then zone in to deal with that crap on a daily basis.

I don’t want to accentuate the negative, but I’ve been thinking on how LFR could be modified or tweaked to make it a little better for healers, and I’ve got nothing.

In my opinion, LFR is tuned just fine the way it is. If anything, it’s tuned so loose that players can stand in the bad shit and get away with it because the healers can keep up.

Maybe we need harsher penalties for bad behavior.

I’ve noticed that when something is an insta-kill, like running into an ice wall on Hagara, why holy crap, people don’t run into the ice wall on purpose anymore. But if it just causes lots of damage for the healer to heal through, hey, that’s not my concern, right? Let the healer deal with it, that’s their job.

Maybe LFR simply needs more things to be insta-gibs. Maybe if DPS don’t kill at least one ooze out of three, everyone simply dies. Or if you stand in the black blood of the earth on Morchok, one tick and then dead, next time move your ass.

I dunno. Clearly, the current system is working, but at what cost? Are people encouraged to learn the mechanics? Do people who honestly want to know what to do see the results of their actions and learn from it?

I knew healing was intense this expansion, and I hoped it would be fun to try, and it is. But hoochie mama, I had no idea LFR was just THAT irritating.

It turns out, you CAN heal stupid, but I don’t want to.

I wonder, is there an addon that marks players that stand in the bad on my Vuh’do bars, so I can see to stop healing them?

You know, I use Vuh’do, I’ve got whack-a-mole going. If someone were to stand in the bad a few times, I’d love an addon that just recognised that, and colored their entire bar something obnoxious like nuclear red so I know not to ever click on that bar to heal it for the rest of the run. Just let him die and die and die until he leaves in disgust.

Tanks excluded, of course.

I’d so love that. Just notify me that they’re acting stupid, even if I can’t see them doing it in the crush of the crowd, so I can save my mana for someone who cares.

We could call the addon “Heal Nazi“, and when it goes off it whispers the affected player, “No heals for YOU!”

Or maybe that’s a bad idea.

I’ve noticed something unusual, and I’ve sat on it for a while, but I think it’s time to act.

There is a saying; “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times it’s enemy action.”

Well, we’re up to five now. By the Auric scale, we’re definitely at enemy action.

It’s no secret I enjoy playing alts. I’m one of those folks that may have one or two characters I flat out love, those being my Feral Druid and BM Hunter, but I play lots of alts.

With the advance of Looking For Raid, there has been an added venue for play. Ding level 85, gear for new Heroics, run until decked and then hit LFR for polish.

At this point in time, I’ve got five characters at level 85, and all of them are pretty damn solid in LFR gear; Druid, Hunter, Warrior, Paladin, Rogue.

My Priest is at 83, and my Death Knight Bear and Cub character is 81, so those are next in line. Don’t ask if I’m going to train my 9 year old son to play in LFR if you don’t think you’d like the answer. Just pray his DPS isn’t THAT much better than yours. :)

Still, five characters I have geared up 100% through LFR Dragon Soul random groups rather than traditional raiding.

Here is what I’ve noticed and reported on before.

During the initial LFR rollout, you had a period of uncertainty. People were not yet fully accustomed to the idea that they could roll Need on anything they wanted with little to no concequences. So, there was a fairly reasonable chance for at least the first month of winning something as other players that had already won an item would pass.

After that began the period where some groups would begin running together and rolling on everything so they could pass it to a friend in their group that wanted it (enhancing chances), and also the Monty Haul scenario where people would roll on absolutely everything, to acquire trade goods so they could make a deal later for what they really wanted.

That seemed to be the period we were in now. Some folks bring decked out characters chasing that one item, others bring new alts looking for everything, and it often seems that every roll finds you competing against every single player, and nobody passes unless they have no chance of winning due to spec or class.

It can feel like if you did not get the actual highest roll out of 25 people, then you’ve got no chance. Greed and avarice have won. Blizzard has even unveiled new LFR loot rules for MoP that make it clear they are acting as though there is nothing to be done short of a scorched earth doctrine on the existing system.

My experiences over the last month to five weeks are leading me to believe we are seeing a silent counterstrike acting against the “need on everything” culture, working from the shadows.

Five times now, on different characters, the following has taken place;

I run, I do my best. I don’t have the worst gear in the group overall, I certainly don’t have the lowest DPS. There are one or two specific items I would like. During the run, as loot drops I pass on it, until finally one boss drops a piece of loot I have specifically wanted. Everyone rolls, I lose the roll with my number somewhere in the middle of the range. We move on to another boss.

Shortly thereafter, without warning a trade window is opened, and the piece of loot is placed there. No conversation, nothing. I accept, and whisper back my thanks and appreciation. The person then says something along the lines of, “No problem, I didn’t need it and you looked like the person who could use it the most.”

This has happened to me now five times, different people and different items for different alts.

Is it a sweeping trend? Maybe not. Have you seen it yourself? Probably depends on how many alts you’re gearing through LFR compared to actual raiding with a raid team and getting real loot.

But again. Once, sure. Twice, huh. Three times or more? I take note.

I like the idea of a silent revolt against greedy needy players. People who are nice people, and at the same time aren’t all confrontational yelling at other people in raid chat about taking things they already have one of and all that stuff.

People who may have just decided that if others will need for selfish reasons, they can need for charitable reasons. 

Yes, it does put another player in the position of winning an item and then having the power to decide who, in their opinion, ‘deserves’ the item most. That could be a hot little topic for debate, right? How do you decide who ‘deserves’ the loot?

Overall though, I think it’s a delightful idea, one that is worthy to discuss.

We talk about other people rolling need on stuff they don’t have a use for. How interesting that there are folks out there that have looked at the situation and decided for themselves to take a stand, but do it in a decidedly non-confrontational way.

It would take more work, but I have to admit, it’s making me reconsider my ‘pass on all unless I actually need it’ policy.

I might just start playing Secret Santa myself.

What do you think?

Last night, at the tail end of one long day, a few members of Team Wanda, Band Of Misfits most progressive raiding team, were chatting in vent.

They had just completed the server first Glory of the Cataclysm Raider earlier, so I thought I’d pop in and say hi and grats in person.

I found them in discussion on whether or not it was possible to four-man the Conclave of Wind.

They apparently do mount runs. A lot.

I was about to head out and go to bed when Shadowson asked me, “You think you’d join us as a tank to five man it?”

Ummm… you know what? It’s been a very long day.

“Sure.”

Let the record show that on this evening, four stalwart, skilled adventurers, brave and true, and one misfit bear boldly entered into the Throne of the Four Winds.

• Shadowson the Shadow Priest
• Kissinger the Mage
• Pumpken the Resto Shaman
• Randomski the Prot Paladin
• Bigbearbutt the bacon butted

Yes, it is in fact possible to down the Conclave of Wind with five players. We did it on our second attempt.

We won’t speak of my incredible fail on the first attempt, ‘mkay?

Shadowson healed as Shadow DPS while I tanked on Anshal, Randomski tanked Nezir with Pumpken healing, and Kissinger… well, Kissinger blew up Rohash.

There was much hopping back and forth by Pumpken, Shadowson and Kissinger all trying to do the work of a full raid.

In the end, I felt the thrill of victory over a challenge I didn’t even expect to have put in front of me, a challenge we didn’t even know would be possible or not.

I think that is why it tasted all the sweeter.

Al”Akir, what to say about Al’Akir…

I went as Kitty, and I found out that it is possible to be thrown off the ledge by a tornado, get back up and be dropped in the NEXT tornado, and then again for a third time.

At least my kitty looks cute floating in midair.

Good thing, because I sure as hell spent a lot of time doing it.

Oh, and Al’Akir?

Easier than Conclave of Wind, and just as dead.

What a surprisingly good way to end an otherwise crappy day.

If you happen to be one of the folks that is feeling bored with Looking For Raid, and wondering what in the world there is left to do in the game…

May I humbly suggest you get three of your closest friends and see how much fun clearing older raids might be?

Sure, ICC and Ulduar spring to mind as tasty little targets, but why not see what other kinds of crazyness you can get up to?

The World of Warcraft is your oyster, after all. This is as overpowered as you’re ever going to feel before Mists of Pandaria sweeps away all before it.

Let your mind run riot, man.  What do you have to lose?

My thanks to Shadowson and Team Wanda, for the unlooked-for opportunity to have a little fun.

Last night felt like a very, very long night.

I raided for what felt like hours.

Hold on, it really was hours. It really only felt like minutes. The time just sped away on the wings of angels.

Evil little raiding angels with black wings taking delight in the death of online baddies, but angels nonetheless.

After my last post about the LFR difficulty issues, I had some thoughts on how someone who wasn’t a raider could try to take advantage of the fluctuating skill situation.

My thinking was pure speculation, but it went kinda like this;

If I was a raider, then I would know my scheduled raids were coming up. I’d want to be as powerful as I could for the raid. Therefore, I’d want to get my mains into the LFR as soon as I could after a reset, so that I could get my first shot at any ‘free’ upgrades, and get them all gemmed and enchanted and reforged (and transmogrified) before raid time, whenever that may be. 

Some guilds do raid on Tuesday night right after the reset. Those folks might have changed to using the LFR Tuesday night, or they might not.

Why change to an LFR Tuesday? If they raided Dragon Soul normal before the LFR, they might send a good upgrade to a person that proceeded to get a comparable item (at a slightly lower level) the very next night, a wasted opportunity to benefit the team as a whole.

If tank A just got a 384 tier shoulder, do you give a tier shoulder from normal mode to the same tank the very next night, or do you spread it to the other tank instead who is still wearing 378s?

The way I figure it, however the guilds are raiding, the majority of leading-edge progression gamers would probably try to get in on the LFR Tuesday night after the reset to get their ‘free’ upgrades, maybe Wednesday, and be as powerful as possible going into their ‘real’ raiding for the week.

Now, more pure speculation, those same raiding guilds would probably end up queueing as groups instead of piecemeal, since they don’t like idiots any more than casual players do, and bringing your own tank/healers has always been a time-honored method of reducing the chances of failure. Or annoyance that affects performance, anyway. I’m not saying an entire raid team would queue as one, just that the likelihood seems high to me that folks that raid together and know each other well would probably be able to find five buddies online at a given moment to queue with.

Plus, it’s more fun to scoff at other players when you’ve got a group of like-minded friends to hear your snarkiness. I know that’s how I roll.

That was my thinking.

How to put it into action?

If I, as a non-raider, wanted my best chance at playing with serious, talented people in LFR instead of idiots and offensive asshats that spend more time typing hate than targeting adds, then I would want to queue up Tuesday night.

A theory is just a theory until it gets tested. Accordingly, I went into LFR last night to see what it would be like.

I ran the Dragon Soul LFR three times last night, back to back. I played on my Warrior for the first wing, and then on my Hunter for the first and second wings.

Every group went smooth. Every group had complete success. Through the entire night, there was only one wipe.

The first run of the evening had myself, Cassie and two fellow guildies. The rest of the group was composed of non-guilded random people.

There was a little confusion on colors, the whole “green ooze does not aoe in LFR, you don’t have to prioritize it” thing that keeps throwing people used to studying normal mode. Our one wipe came from haste. In the future, mister strange tank, please try not to pull the boss while you rush across the big open space to get to the next trash pull. Shortcuts are fine, shortcuts THROUGH the big boss-circle-area on the floor, not so much. ‘kay?

Even with that, it was a far cry from the runs of just the night before, where everyone had a chip on their shoulder and felt the need to belittle everyone else rather than, oh, you know, do their own part. Unless typing a lot of bullshit equates to skill. /sarcasm.

There were two more runs for me that night, and on each run more members of our guild’s raid teams joined in. Or drove it forward, as the case may be.

I felt some of the raiders out a little, and got some comments along the lines of, “I want to knock the LFR out now so I have any loot before we raid.”

Anecdotal evidence, granted, but clearly there are some raiders right in my own guild that were certainly thinking, “Get in, get it done, get gone.”

Those last two runs?

The first one was the first wing again, smooth and clean. About ten guildies, plus random scattered people. At one point, Baddmojo the guild figurehead and raiding Rogue from Team Wanda broke over 52k DPS. Intentionally. Yes, that is a five and a two, followed by ‘k’, and it doesn’t stand for karat. Yes, I do feel that any character breaking 52,000 DPS on a single boss fight is overpowered and ridiculous. What frightens me is the idea that once raiders really get cooking in Dragon Soul Heroic, 52k might seem… quaint.

The second wing raid was more interesting. We were now in Azuremyst evening prime time for gaming, and we queued with about twelve guildies all together for it, including one tank and three healers.

The raid group we got was forged of just three guild groups.

Seriously. There were three guilds represented in the raid, almost no solo players.

The run was so smooth it went even easier than the first wing.

It became clear early on that the entire raid was formed of experienced raiders knocking the LFR out early.

It was my first time completing the entire second wing from start to finish as one raid. I have seen the middle two encounters a few times, but that was always as a replacement for people bailing in a failing group.

The tone of the discussion in vent was mostly amazement and disbelief that nobody did x stupid, or died to y from not moving out of the fire, or targeted the wrong mob, or ran the wrong way, or whatever.

It was one night, and maybe it was a fluke. But I have to compare the runs last night with the ones scattered over the last week and weekend, and there is no comparison in quality.

Last night just was… nicer, and far FAR more professional.

Not serious, just… no stupid bullshit.

In closing, I would like to leave you with a story that Yalani shared in guild chat the other night, a story about Yalani’s Priest and LFR. The name of Yalani’s Priest has been concealed to ensure the story will continue to have a happy, repeatable, ending.

Turns out, Yalani was in the LFR, doing the first wing.

There was this asshat in the raid, I’m sure that comes as a complete surprise to you, who kept typing elitist smack during the run. You know the kind of thing only too well, I’m sure. Constant criticism and offensive bullshit heaped on others. 

The raid progresses through the bosses until they are on the last boss of the wing, Hagara the Stormbinder.

For those of you that haven’t done the encounter yet, at one point Hagara will stand in the middle of the vast circular platform and channel the Frozen Tempest. Hagara hides in a Watery Bubble, four pylons form at equidistant staitionary intervals along the outskirts of the platform, and four equidistant lines form that transform into Waves of Ice that travel in a clockwise direction around the platform.

If you get hit by an Ice Wave, you take a shitload of damage and, generally, you die. 

Ice Waves are considered extremely easy to avoid. Before the waves form Hagara shoots red beams out to clearly show where they’re gonna be. At that point, you’ve got lots of warning to move your ass to a point in between any two lines.

No, really. When the Ice Waves form and begin moving, you can easily stay right in the middle of two waves, running around the rim of the platform. If you have some form of run speed enchant on your boots, it’s extremely easy. Just run around, destroying pylons as you come across them, and when the last pylon falls the Ice Waves vanish.

It is SO easy for someone prepared for the fight to avoid the Ice Waves that whenever someone new to the run dies by being hit by one, the asshats in the raid WILL mock them and call them stupid, noobs, morons, and all that other stuff. It’s one of those things people like to use to show disgust, as if they were born already knowing to avoid the Ice Waves, and as if it wasn’t the responsiblity of the experienced to make sure the raid is prepared for the encounter and questions are answered before pulling.

So, back to the story.

The raid is fighting Hagara, the Ice Waves form, and the raid starts running around the circle.

Yalani hangs back near an Ice Wave and Life Grips the asshat to her.

Asshat gets hit by Ice Wave and instantly dies.

Said death by Ice Wave is noticed by all, but not why. Immediately, all the OTHER elitists that like to mock people (but not nearly to the extent this one asshat did) just tear him a new one for being a stupid noob dying to the Ice Wave.

Asshat descends into frothy-mouthed nerdrage.

I like to actually picture the asshat seated at his (or her) computer (in his or her mom’s basement, of course), literally frothing in rage.

Well done. Well done indeed.

This is officially my favorite thing of the expansion.  Not the patch, the expansion.

Thank you, Yalani. Thank you OH so much for that. May you continue to bring swift internet justice to asshats on Hagara, and cause them to tread oh-so-lightly in the presence of any Priest they encounter from that point forward.