World of Warcraft: Current Year

Ryoz

<Donor>
831
181
Proving grounds isn't a requirement for anything atm... just bragging rights. There are various waves that you have to deal with. As a healer I have to heal, dispel (offensive and defensive) and use cooldowns at the appropriate times. It's the combination of mobs that dictate when you need to use larger cooldowns. I didn't have my cape or gem at the start of 5.4 and found the gold healing to be somewhat challenging. It tunes your gear to 463 so it might be adventageous to reforge for it. I never bothered to put some serious hours into endless but it's just about memorizing the waves and not overhealing. I would like it to maybe figure out the wave your having issues with an offer advice. Like for this wave you should try x because there's a lot more dmg or try spending less mana on y wave because dmg is lower. I think that's ultimately the problem people will have if they can't beat it in WoD. They have to figure out themselves what they are doing wrong.
 

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,001
713
I think a smart move would be improving the LFR queue by A. trying to balance people who have normal/heroic/whatever-the-new-hard-mode achievements with people who don't and B. making the gear slightly lower in ilvl than normal mode in the previous raid tier. Instead, give incentives to experienced players by offering more valor or increased drop rate in normal or some other shit like that. Because as it stands right now LFR is a complete shit fest yet still offers complete upgrades to the prior tiers normal (and in some cases heroic) gear.
 

Tantrik

Golden Knight of the Realm
384
115
Proving grounds is actually pretty fun change every now and then. The DPS one is pretty damn hard as melee once you start getting to the endless waves. It's fairly well done too.
 

Titan_Atlas

Deus Vult
<Banned>
7,883
19,909
Cata heroics were great - tough without being unfair. Stonecore without a ranged dps was a bit broken, though. That said, pugging them early on was nearly impossible as DPS. Because you know my well documented luck with pugs.
Well they went faster for the static group Zehn and probably Sutekh had. I remember them having the dungeon mount while alot of us were pugging gear for another couple weeks.
 

Gorehack

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,534
40
Blackfuse Heroic? If so, then Jesus Christ, you are not lying. That fight is a bitch.
Yea it's pretty fucking retarded.

I did proving grounds silver on my prot paladin, and said fuck gold. That shit is harder than any fucking heroic raid boss I've tanked, ever. Having to respec/regem/reforge everything just to do it is stupid. Gimmicky fucking bullshit.
 

bixxby

Molten Core Raider
2,750
47
Nerd points/titles for 30+ waves in endless mode. They can be really frustrating, especially the healing one.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
I don't understand why the bare minimum to really play the game (queuing for dungeons) is going to need the silver medal .... why would it not be the following?

Bronze - Dungeons (Normal and Heroic)
Silver - Looking for Raid
Gold - Looking for Flex

I feel they underutilized a useful tool. By making it a silver medal you essentially negated Bronze since nobod will stop at Bronze and you negated Gold except for the 1% that just want to do it for no reason. I just don't get the design decision.
 

Eidal

Molten Core Raider
2,001
213
Ah, neat. Given how well tuned and awesome Gatekeeper was in TSW I have some hope for it, but they always seem to cave in to casual tears so I don't see them throwing up a roadblock that takes anything approaching passable skill to get through. As long as they normalize gear and tailor it by class they should be able to tune it to be a pretty good measure of competence. The damn thing could even have a paper clip that pops up and tells you things like "I see you aren't using xyz! Your damage output is suffering, you should work on that!" or "see this? that's your health bar! It's going down because you are standing in red stuff on the ground. You should move!"

And if people cry it's unfair, well, it was unfair that I had wait until I was 50 inches tall to ride the big roller coaster too. Your ineptness affects other people's fun. And people don't seem to get the hint when they get vote kicked.

Another thing they should look into is a proper gear score. Because gating by ilevel is a fucking joke. A 550 ring and a 450 weapon does not equal a 500 ilevel. I was doing SoO LFR with a blue quest weapon ffs. Granted, I was putting out 70-80k dps which put me into the top 5, but that's just a reflection of how fucking sad and pathetically low the bar has been set for LFR.

A real gearscore, combined with a proving grounds that is comprehensive enough to actually teach people how to play better could vastly improve the quality of pugs. They could then tune content appropriately, without having to worry so much about the idiots and the under-geared. But I'm sure they'll give in to the casual majority of shit-awful gamers and not take it nearly far enough. Because the MMORPG crowd for the most part is made up of people who flat out suck at playing video games.
But Kreugen, I play these games to relax!!!

/sarcasm
 

ubiquitrips

Golden Knight of the Realm
616
82
I was able to hop in my first Flex raid last night. Did Vale with 14 people. Flex is so much better than LFR. We one shot everything (barely on sha, just two tanks left at the end) and the over all experience felt more 'in control'. I enjoyed the pace more as well. Only having to worry about 15 people was a much better experience for me anyway. It may let me gear a little differently as well as the fights were much less of a pull on my mana vs a 25 man.

Also, am I reading some of the Flex stuff correctly? I did a full clear of Vale, am I able to hop in a fresh Flex 1 group tonight and clear bosses / get loot again? Was reading how progression in a zone is tied to the raid leader and not the person any more. That would be nice as I feel like getting full flex gear is about as far as I can take this char.
 

Devnull_sl

shitlord
94
0
I don't understand why the bare minimum to really play the game (queuing for dungeons) is going to need the silver medal .... why would it not be the following?

Bronze - Dungeons (Normal and Heroic)
Silver - Looking for Raid
Gold - Looking for Flex

I feel they underutilized a useful tool. By making it a silver medal you essentially negated Bronze since nobod will stop at Bronze and you negated Gold except for the 1% that just want to do it for no reason. I just don't get the design decision.
You need to be successful at heroics/lfr to get the ilvl to get into normal raids, so that's it's own form of gating, ya? Bronze is essentially the fail state for it and makes you feel like you at least got a medal instead of just saying YOU FAIL. Carrot on a stick design.

Bronze - good job! try harder!
Silver - Heroic and LFR unlocked
Gold - Epeen and cosmetic reward
 

Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<WoW Guild Officer>
7,879
507
I was able to hop in my first Flex raid last night. Did Vale with 14 people. Flex is so much better than LFR. We one shot everything (barely on sha, just two tanks left at the end) and the over all experience felt more 'in control'. I enjoyed the pace more as well. Only having to worry about 15 people was a much better experience for me anyway. It may let me gear a little differently as well as the fights were much less of a pull on my mana vs a 25 man.

Also, am I reading some of the Flex stuff correctly? I did a full clear of Vale, am I able to hop in a fresh Flex 1 group tonight and clear bosses / get loot again? Was reading how progression in a zone is tied to the raid leader and not the person any more. That would be nice as I feel like getting full flex gear is about as far as I can take this char.
No, you only are 'eligible' for loot from a boss once. So if you did Vale (Flex 1, right?) and cleared it, you won't get loot from it the second time.
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,709
3,211
Started my Hunter last night, and I'm just machine-gunning mobs dead with my Heirloom bow, and a few other heirlooms for armor. This 'ish is crazy!

Even with Dash, pet barely gets to mobs sometimes before they are dead. This is awesome! and a bonus already been mentioned, when I start moving, it doesn't cancel my shots. Whoa!
 

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,424
37,545
Thats why I said, once you level with a hunter, you will never want to level with anything again, so save it for last.

Also last time I did it was in Panda land and I only ran dungeons from 1-90 and I was consistently the best DPS by a mile until like 87 or 88 when things began to switch. Its like no one else was even trying, but neither was I. I was just running through my rotations. The only ones that gave me a run for my money DPS wise in instances were Panda monks, either tanks or dps.
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,709
3,211
Thats why I said, once you level with a hunter, you will never want to level with anything again, so save it for last.

Also last time I did it was in Panda land and I only ran dungeons from 1-90 and I was consistently the best DPS by a mile until like 87 or 88 when things began to switch. Its like no one else was even trying, but neither was I. I was just running through my rotations. The only ones that gave me a run for my money DPS wise in instances were Panda monks, either tanks or dps.
Nice. I'm going to go into dungeons, and leave growl on and watch the tank cry!! Payback for all the Huntards I've grouped with in the past...