LFR and raid dungeon linearity, or the lack thereof

I’ve recently been pondering the possible effect of building a raid with an LFR setting in mind on raid dungeon linearity, or the lack thereof.

Tier 15 is completely linear. Normal-mode raiders have to fight through each of the twelve boss encounters of Throne of Thunder in order. BTH’s guild has killed 9 bosses in 10s and 7 bosses in 25s. They started at Durumu tonight, but only because they’d already killed the previous six bosses on Tuesday and Wednesday. LFR allowed me to jump into Throne of Thunder at Durumu on Tuesday night, without having to have already fought through the first six bosses in this raid reset period. I did the last six bosses of Throne of Thunder first, and though I could go into the first two wings of LFR this evening for the chances at loot and collecting more of Wrathion’s thingamabobs, I don’t have to go defeat the first six bosses of Throne of Thunder this week if I decide that I want to do something else instead. In fact, now that I’ve completed Pinnacle of Storms LFR, I can do as many or as few of the wings of Throne of Thunder as I want, in any order that I please.

Tier 14 was only sort-of non-linear. Sure, the bosses were spread over three different instances, but one had to complete Mogu’shan Vaults before proceeding to Heart of Fear and Heart of Fear before going on to Terrace of Endless Spring. Only after one had completed Heart of Fear could one really pick and choose among the three instances. And each instance was linear within itself. The splitting of Mogu’shan Vaults and Heart of Fear into two wings apiece gave the LFR versions a greater degree of non-linearity.

Tier 13, the first raid to have the LFR option, had a little bit of non-linearity: Zon’ozz and Yor’sahj could be done in either order. The rest of it was all linear. The LFR version split the raid in half, offering the option to do just the second half, provided one had done the first half once — which is what I did, given that my normal-mode guild had cleared the first half and I’d gotten all the gear I wanted from it at the time that I decided to stop doing regular raiding and they downsized from 25s to 10s.

It seems to me that the division of raid dungeons into wings for the LFR mode produces an illusion of non-linearity, because the wings can be run in any order after one has completed a first “in order” run-through. A certain degree of true non-linearity is possible within the wings themselves — I think that an LFR wing could accomodate such sprawling non-linearity as the opening plain of Firelands or the Watchers area of Ulduar. It’s easy enough to imagine dividing Ulduar into wings for LFR, based on the breakpoints ordinary raid groups used to use: 1) Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002; 2) Iron Council, Kologarn, Auriaya; 3) Hodir, Thorim, Freya, Mimiron; 4) General Vezax, Yogg-Saron. But what about Karazhan, with all of its optional, skippable bosses — the animal bosses in the servants’ quarters that I never saw because the guild I began my raiding career with was already starting Kara at Attumen when I joined, the Maiden of Virtue, Nightbane, Netherspite, Terestrian Illhoof? Could a raid with such side-spur bosses be made to work in an LFR mode, or does the advent of LFR mean that such diversions in raiding will never come back again?

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the Sackville-Bagginses of raiding

After finally completing the 6K Valor Point step of the Legendary questline a week and a half or so ago, the PvP stage that I had been dreading was delightfully easy. It only took two tries at each battleground to get into a victorious Horde warparty. I went in as a healer and attached myself to whomever had one of the orbs (in Kotmogu) or to whichever DPS was closest (in Silvershard), and though I did sometimes suffer from Healers Have To Die syndrome, it wasn’t too bad. Then BTH and I duoed General Twinbraid. That battle must have taken us at least 30 minutes because I used Bloodlust three times! After we missed an interrupt on the call for adds early in the fight and I died and had to ankh, I did most of the fight at less than half mana. Thank the Earthmother for Telluric Currents! The first ten minutes or so of the fight felt pretty epic, but after that, it got pretty boring.

With these tasks accomplished, I was finally ready to venture into Throne of Thunder LFR. I’ve only felt up to doing one wing in any given evening, and I don’t want to do LFR too late in the raiding week, so I only got the first two wings done last week. This week, I started with the third wing, and last night, I did the fourth and final wing.

I’ve gotten one of Wrathion’s T15 MacGuffins from each wing that I’ve run. I’ve also gotten a bracers upgrade that I am using, a chestpiece upgrade that I’m not using (not ready to break my T14 4-pc set bonus quite yet), and three lovely weapons that might get rotated through my Elemental set — between the Breath of the Black Prince and the Eye of the Black Prince, my Sha-touched weapon will be superior for my Resto set for a long time to come.

As much as I agonized over “what am I going to do about raiding in Mists?!” in the waning months of Cataclysm, I have not regretted my decision to not do regular, guild-based, normal-mode raiding in the current expansion. I’ve been grateful that LFR allows me to get a taste of the current raid environments, encounters, and atmospheres, but I haven’t really missed normal-mode raiding.

Until last night, when I did Pinnacle of Storms in LFR.

Defeating Lei Shen only took two attempts. Afterward, the group just dispersed, and seeing Lei Shen lying there, abandoned, made me feel sad, somehow. I found myself missing the whoops and cheers of triumph and the jostling around as the group arranged itself for a kill shot that would inevitably have followed a hard-fought, hard-won normal-mode guild first kill of a boss. The Twin Consorts and Lei Shen fights were crazy and fun — and yes, even somewhat difficult — on LFR-mode… but they didn’t feel epic like my memories of normal-mode penultimate and final boss fights. I found myself missing that normal-mode challenge, the need to wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe to be able to master the mechanics and the proper timing of raid cooldowns. I already knew that LFR is the “poor relations” of raiding, and I have accepted that — but somehow these two encounters really drove that home for me.

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a raid group of me, myself, and I

As I was admiring Vidyala’s epic portrait of all of Kumineko’s characters assembled as a raid group fighting Ultraxion, I began to wonder — could I make a raid group out of my (Horde) characters?

My Tauren characters on Bloodhoof make a 10s raid group quite neatly. I have two main-spec tanks (Protection Paladin, Protection Warrior), three main-spec healers (Restoration Shaman #1, Mistweaver Monk, Discipline/Holy Priest), two ranged DPS (Balance Druid, Beastmaster/Survival Hunter), and three melee DPS (Frost Death Knight #1, Arms/Fury Warrior, Kitty Druid).

Scaling up to a 25s group, using the LFR composition of two tanks, six healers, and seventeen DPS, doesn’t work quite so well. I only have one other main-spec healer (Restoration Shaman #2), so Protection Paladin and Balance Druid would have to switch to their Holy and Restoration off-specs. Doing this, however, would leave me short a tank. Frost Death Knight #1 has a Blood off-spec, and Kitty Druid has a Bear off-spec, but I don’t intend to actually use those specs in group content. Still, I could switch one of them. I have three more melee DPS: Subtlety/Combat Rogue, Frost Death Knight #2, Retribution Paladin. I have nine more ranged DPS: Shadow Priest, Marksmanship Hunter, Destruction/Affliction Warlock, Arcane Mage #1, Arcane Mage #2, Frost Mage #1, Frost Mage #2, Fire Mage #1, Fire Mage #2. But that would still leave me with two spots to fill. So I’d have to PUG in BTH’s Bear Druid — which solves my tank problem — and BTH’s Windwalker Monk — which makes the melee/ranged distribution a little more even.

… I am so totally going to use raid composition as a “real world” example of a limiting reagent problem in my general chemistry lecture tomorrow:

There are two standard raid sizes in World of Warcraft. A 10s group requires 2 tanks, 3 healers, and 5 damage-dealers. A 25s group requires 2 tanks, 6 healers, and 17 damage-dealers. You log in one night and see that of the people in your guild who have logged on tonight, including yourself, there are 3 tanks, 6 healers, and 13 damage-dealers. You cannot make a 25s group because you don’t have enough total people. But can you make two 10s groups? You’d need 10 damage-dealers, and you have 13, so you have more than enough of those. You’d need 6 healers, and you have 6, so you have exactly enough of those. You’d need 4 tanks, and you only have 3, so no, you cannot make two 10s groups. You can only make one 10s group. The tanks are the “limiting reagent”.

heh heh heh

… or then again, maybe not. Now that I’ve finished writing up my lesson plan for tomorrow’s lecture, I see that I very likely won’t have time for that much of a diversion from real chemistry, and I will probably end up editing that analogy out of my discussion.

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Transmogrification Survivor round 3: NPC JD

Because I am only playing for the fun, not the prize, I thought it best that I drop out of Transmogrification Survivor after the second round. Upon seeing that I’d made it through the RNG, I did a die roll of my own to choose someone to swap places with. By fortunate happenstance, it came up as the person who’d chosen the same character I did — and done a bang-up job with the costume! — Rhuanious.

Even though I’m no longer competing, I still want to play along and test my mettle with the prompts for the last two rounds. And the prompt for the third round was a doozy indeed!

But now we move on to round three, which is all about me baby!!!

What? I’m not kidding.

…Pretend you’re part of the Blizzard development team [and] design an NPC of me. Any race you want, however you see fit. All I’m going to ask is you include a brief description of the character so that I know what you were aiming to achieve.

Jay Dee/Kenada, Amateur Raid Recruiter

Amberplate Headguard, Valorous Aegis Spaulders, Ango’rosh Breastplate & Legguards, Studded Girdle of Virtue, Spiritualist’s Gauntlets, Golden Cenarion Greaves, Cloak of War, Ironforge Smasher (Alliance-only)/Spirit-Clad Mace, Northern Barrier/King’s Bulwark (Horde-only)

In a yet-to-be-determined patch (or expansion), Blizzard finally gets around to retrofitting the pre-Dragon Soul raids with an LFR mode that uses a gear ilevel normalization algorithm similar to that currently used for Challenge Mode Dungeons to allow leveling characters to play through those earlier raids “at level” as part of the leveling process. For example, the Burning Crusade raids would be available for levels 70-75, and the Wrath of the Lich King raids would be available for levels 80-83. (Characters of sufficiently high level relative to those raids will continue to be able to solo or small-group the normal and heroic modes.) To help new players become aware of this feature, when a leveling character dings 60 and becomes eligible to enter Molten Core, they will receive an Auto-Accept quest to go to Stormwind/Orgrimmar to meet with Jay Dee/Kenada. Jay Dee/Kenada, who will be found near the Valor & Justice Point vendors, will then give the character a “tell me a story” style quest to listen to them explain how leveling LFR works. Upon completing this quest, the character will choose from a selection of stylish Bind-on-Account +5% XP belts, and the leveling LFR option will appear in the character’s queueing menu. The XP bonus on the belts would be effective from level 60 to the level cap of the immediately previous expansion, and higher level characters would be able to purchase the belts from Jay Dee/Kenada for an appropriate sum of Justice Points.

I was pretty pleased with this concept, but the “Build an Amateur” outfits submitted by the real contestants totally blow mine away!

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Kate wins it all

Our Monks having dinged 80 the last time BTH and I played with them, I decided to bring my Monk, Katewatha, to this weekend’s LBR excursion to Wyrmrest Temple. I used her Mistweaver spec because BTH and I hadn’t run any dungeons since early Outland, and I was feeling like I needed to remember how it worked. I don’t know how much I really contributed, but I did have fun!

I surveyed the loot that Sartharion dropped and rolled Greed on the staff and the goodie bag and Need on the Dragon Hide Bag and the Twilight Drake.

I was so surprised when a flurry of “You Won!” boxes popped up on my screen that I forgot to cap it, but here they all are in my bags:

BTH was cooking and called me to dinner just as we were zoning in to the Ruby Sanctum. I tried to get back as quickly as I could, but Halion was already dead by the time I made it. I was sad that I’d missed the fight because it was kind of a fun fight (it just wasn’t quite fun enough to be worth slogging through all the trash to get to it, back in the day) but oh well.

Then JD suggested a turn on the Alliance side to get Repgrind her Twilight Drake, so I quickly logged over to Kinevra, leaving Kate sitting in the atrium of the Wyrmrest Temple basement.

My Tauren being my most-played characters, their server is my richest, and Kate had purchased Artisan Riding as soon as she reached level 70 — so there was, fortunately, no hindrance to her learning the mount.

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goodbye, Tier 14 — hello, Dominance Offensive

Three and a half months ago, Kamalia met with Wrathion for the first time.

(My screenshots of this event are datestamped 1 October.)

Last week, I finished collecting Sigils of Power and Wisdom. This week, I obtained the Sha of Fear’s dark heart.

I already had the appropriate sha-touched weapon for my specialization, and now I have the gem to go with it. I have four pieces of Tier 14 for my Resto set. My overall ilevel is 482 — sufficient to get into LFR for the first wing of the Palace of the Thunder King. I am, therefore, DONE with LFR for this tier. (Well, with Kamalia, at least. Kregga’s been making noises about wanting that gorgeous starry sword from Elegon.)

Now I guess it’s time to go see what the Dominance Offensive is all about.

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in which Repgrind is AWESOME

LBR this weekend being Horde-side Sunwell, I took Kaelinda. After burninating our way through Sunwell, we went and roflstomped Kael’thas in Tempest Keep, too. Kay was the only cloth-wearer in the group, so she collected a pile of sweet items that I now need to work on putting together into Transmogrification kits.

But clothes weren’t the only thing that dropped.
Kael’thas dropped the Ashes of A’lar.
Everyone needed… and Kaelinda won!

A comedy of errors then ensued.

Kaelinda couldn’t learn the mount because she hadn’t yet purchased Artisan Riding. She couldn’t immediately afford Artisan Riding, either, even if I’d pooled all the money from all my characters on her server, due to my not caring much about the gold-making sub-game. After some discussion, the lovely Repgrind suggested that her Alliance Paladin, Kerick, who is on the same home server as Kaelinda, could buy something from her via the Gadgetzan AH. So that was decided upon… but we’d forgotten that then we’d have to wait an hour for the transaction to go through.

While we were waiting, Vanicus and Kerisa went to Gruul’s Lair. There, goodies dropped for both of us — Kerisa got her T4 shoulders and Vanicus got the Hammer of the Naaru. Now, Kerisa just needs those pretty blue T11 shoulders… and then she’ll have to come up with Transmogrification kits to go with her collection of Favorite Druid Tier shoulders.

Finally, enough time had passed that Kaelinda could collect Kerick’s kind donation from the mailbox.

Thank you so very, very much, Repgrind! <3

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fancy meeting you here…

At last, Kamalia was ready to dive into LFR. I’d crafted the Lifekeeper’s Robe & Gloves, gotten all of her gear gemmed, enchanted, and reforged for Spirit and Mastery, and even remembered to download and install the newest version of DBM.

I had to do both halves of Mogu’shan Vaults twice because the first group I got into for each half had already downed the first boss of that half. I felt like a total spaz the first time. The second time was a little better, but I still don’t feel like I really know what I’m doing in there. I’ve been mostly happy with my decision to not do regular raiding this expansion so far… but LFR doesn’t hold a candle to “real” normal-mode raiding. It’s more like a supersized Heroic 5-man. I burned charms of good fortune on every boss and got gold every time. I thought I’d gotten just gold in all my loot bags, too, until I was clearing out my bags after I was finished with LFR for the night and discovered, to my surprise, that I’d gotten the Shoulders of Empyreal Focus.

Anyhow, so I zoned in to my second run of the back half of Mogu’shan Vaults and a few seconds later “Raziel-Lightninghoof is now the leader of your group!” popped up on the screen. I blinked, looked at it again… and this is what ensued in raid chat:

Everyone else in the group probably thought we were all crazy.

I’d taken Mumble off my machine a couple months ago when I was trying to figure out why it was crashing so often, so I couldn’t join my old guildies in voice chat until after the LFR was over. It was delightful to talk with them again, and I do miss them. It made me want to start leveling mini-Kam… until they began talking about PvP in Halfhill and a polyboxer who’d been griefing the entrance to The Lazy Turnip a few days ago. Then I was glad yet again that Kamalia is not on a PvP server anymore. Although I would like to spend more time hanging out with ES folks, I think mini-Kam will probably level from 85 to 90 mostly through LFD, and she may not spend much time out in Pandaria itself until later in the expansion when there aren’t quite so many people around all the time.

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Coming Soon: Stuff my Characters Wear

This weekend has been pretty exciting.

I went to put something in Void Storage, not having looked in my Void Storage since I transferred most of my characters from Lightninghoof to Bloodhoof nearly a month ago, and was horrified to find that it was empty! Completely empty, on all the characters who had it! I put in a ticket, and after a false start when I got a boilerplate response about loot being misassigned during a raid, GM Jeydolen chatted with me. Jeydolen assured me that all the stuff was still there, and suggested that a UI error might be why I couldn’t see it. After performing the UI reset that Jeydolen suggested, I still couldn’t see my stuff. The Void Storage dude was giving me the tutorial box, without asking for money to (re)open Void Storage, so I clicked through it and voila, my stuff appeared! Then I felt a little silly — perhaps I had just needed to click through the tutorial boxes again to begin with, and I didn’t really need to have done the UI reset. I was still very appreciative of Jeydolen’s prompt, gracious, and helpful response to my second ticket. Thank you, GM Jeydolen!

Then I went to this weekend’s Laid Back Raid with Kerisa. Karazhan and Gruul’s Lair were on the ticket, and I hoped to get the T4 shoulder token. I didn’t, but after Kara and Gruul, part of the group continued on to Magtheridon and from thence, at my suggestion, to Tempest Keep, where Kerisa scored the T5 shoulder token. Many thanks to the estimable Coolidge for heading up that part of the evening!

Kerisa earned the T9 and T10 shoulders as my raiding main in late Wrath, and she still has them in her bank. After the debut of Transmogrification, she farmed Molten Core for weeks on end until she got the T1 shoulders. In ES guild fun runs (prior to the server transfer) and previous LBRs, she has picked up the T3/7, T6, and T8 shoulders. Now she just needs to get the T4 and T11-Normal shoulders to complete her collection of Favorite Druid Shoulders! (and then I’ll have to start working on outfits to go with them all )

One of my greatest regrets about Cataclysm is that I didn’t manage to get the T11 Druid shoulders when they were current content. I wanted them from the moment I first saw them, but I left Kerisa untouched for months to ensure that Kamalia would be my raiding main. By the time I finally got Kerisa ready for raiding, there wasn’t enough time left in T11 for her to get a pair of those gorgeous blue feathered T11 Druid shoulders before T12 arrived. Well, actually, she did see the T11 shoulder token drop once… and she passed on it, because she felt like the Resto Druid raid leader of ES’s alt run deserved it more. (Sometimes, in my more selfish moments, I wish I’d gone ahead and rolled on it normally.)

Finally, ever since I started writing this blog, I’ve intended to eventually do a series on “Stuff my Characters Wear”. Over the last few days, I’ve begun working on it. I’ve been going through all the alts for whom I have long-term goals and attempting to put together for each one of them a coherent, attractive ensemble that I’d be happy to see her wearing for a long time. It’s a lot easier for the higher level characters! On my lower-level characters, the outfits I’ve been making are frequently only partially Transmogrified, but the idea is to make something that would also be an attractive full Transmogrification Template Kit for a high-level character. Some of my characters will need to gain a level or few of XP before I can get them into an outfit that I like. For the time being, I am focusing only on Transmogrification-friendly outfits. After the initial set of posts is done — but not immediately — I also plan to expand the series to include “wrong” or mixed gear-type pure RP outfits.

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a fortunate midsummer

When she went to Shattrath at level 60, mini-Kam was severely disappointed that Old Man Barlo wouldn’t give her any fishing quests, even though her fishing skill was already well into Grand Master (Wrath) levels. By the time she reached level 70 and he would, Marcia Chase would also give her fishing quests. So she kept her hearth in Thunder Bluff until she could go to Dalaran, because the Kalimdor/EK and Dalaran fishing bags have the chance to award the Jeweled Fishing Pole, whereas the Shattrath ones do not. Because she had not gotten her fishing pole yet, she kept her hearth in Dalaran after she reached level 80. Presently, I realized that whereas the Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and Undercity fishing dailies are mutually exclusive, the Old World, Shattrath, and Dalaran fishing dailies are not. So I started doing both the Dalaran and Orgrimmar fishing dailies.

On Monday, mini-Kam dinged 84 from doing the tour of the Midsummer bonfires, and she also got that Jeweled Fishing Pole from her Dalaran fishing bag.

wait, what’s that she’s wearing?

… oh, no — oh no no mini-Kam, no! /facepalm

Then on Tuesday, Kamalia finally won the Timepiece of the Bronze Flight in her LFR run.

And today, mini-Kam became my fifth 85.

Sooo… now what? Well, faffing, most likely. I probably won’t bother with gearing Kamaliya up for LFR; she’ll want to be raid-ready in Mists, but she doesn’t need to be now. Instead of spending the money to gem, enchant, reforge, and Transmogrify multiple items as she moves up through the ilevels, I think I’d rather spend some time herbing and lay in a decent supply of cash to afford such things later. Besides which, Kam2.0 wants to farm Scholomance for the Sawbones Shirt and Bloodmail Legguards, and there’s Outland dungeons to be run for other Transmogrification set items.

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