Healer LFG

Pike said:
Feb 11, 2008, 08, Feb

My own view of the new “easier” attunements was that it wasn’t so much that Blizzard is trying to make things easier, so much as they’re saying “The expansion is coming out soon, hurry everybody and see the Burning Crusade content before it becomes obsolete!” The byproduct of this is that things get sorta easier. So I guess I don’t really have a problem with it, the constant things like “adding sparkles to quest items and quest markers on the minimap” did sort of bug me because it seemed like they were making things easier… but as time has gone on it hasn’t bothered me quite so much =P

I do agree with you on a lot of points though; to paraphrase John F. Kennedy: “We choose to play video games not because they are easy but because they are hard!”

(I should add that I don’t expect to really ever see any content past Karazhan, BC-wise anyway, partially because I’m late to the boat and partially because I’m lacking the time to put into a lot of gaming. So perhaps my opinions are not as poignant as a raider’s would be =P)

Bellwether said:
Feb 12, 2008, 09, Feb

I’m what you would call a “casual” raider, and even I dislike this. I don’t like the idea that someone could farm Kara for a few months and then enter trade channel going “LF24M BT” having the gear to back them up. It seems…lackluster.

One of my friends said it could be they are trying to prevent another Naxx, aka a place with a ton of work gone into it that “no one” ever sees. Sure, my realm has people going into Naxx now when they’re decked out in BC raid gear and it’s still a challenge, but it just makes you think, perhaps Blizzard doesn’t want to dumb down, they want to smooth the path.

Be that as it may, I’m still…uncomfortable with the idea. I’ve gotten to 1405 +healing through badges and Kara, and I know I can get a little farther. After that I’m aware I need to do 25-mans and ZA, and my guild just isn’t ready for it. I can take this, I understand it. I’m a little tired of Karazhan, but I’m taking a week off raiding so it’s not the same-old.

The thought that I could get to 2k +healing by farming Kara for a few months…irks me. Do not want. What’s the point of all this nice gear, of putting time and effort into it, if you’re doing it to skip content, not be ready for content?

Nasirah said:
Feb 12, 2008, 23, Feb

The thing is, even given the gear, I seriously doubt that players are going to have the skill required to take on those high level raids if they don’t go through SSC/TK first. I don’t think it will be possible to farm Kara week after week for badges, gear up in the T6 equivalents, and jump straight to BT. If they think they can, they’re going to get put in their place pretty quickly. I’ve never stepped foot into any 25-mans, so I really don’t know what it takes. But I’m guessing it takes a lot more than just gear.

yunk said:
Feb 18, 2008, 11, Feb

I don’t see the different ways of getting gear as competition, I see it as options. When TBC first came out and I read about heroics I thought “yay finally something for people who don’t enjoy raiding to do besides roll alts”. (I went to MC but didn’t really like it all that much.)

But the heroics never delivered. The gear was crappy, no one would go to heroics. Now, still no one will go to heroics, I can never get a group for heroics. And the number one reason why people give me is they are “too hard”. Yes, all the people I go to SSC with (that’s where our progression raid is right now on our 3rd boss) and most others who are beyond us that I know think raiding is easier.

And of course “too hard” doesn’t mean too hard, what they mean is too hard for the rewards. So unless the rewards are increased, they’ll continue to be unplayed. So, part of the reason to give better gear for pvp and heroics is to provide incentive for people to do those activities. I really enjoy small group content more, but unless there are better incentives so that I can find 4 other people, I don’t get to do it. Ironically, I can easily get into 25 man content (as a holy priest).

However I see the point about incentives, most people will do things the easiest way possible. That’s always a problem: how do you balance giving incentives to raid vs to perform other activities (small group, pvp) without killing one or the other?

Maybe the answer is having the gear for raids, small group, and pvp be very different and tuned for those activities. Arena gear does that a little for us healers, since there’s not much useful for pve healing (I bought the necklace and ring that’s about it).

Maybe if the heroic gear could be tuned different than the raid gear. Since heroics require different specs and tactics (for instance I need more threat reduction for them than I do raiding).

Valenna said:
Feb 20, 2008, 14, Feb

@Brelaine: “In no way do I wish to insult or be condescending towards more casual players or raiding guilds.” That sounds disingenuous. In fact, the derogatory way the hardcore talk about casuals shows their opinion of them. You are saying that those players don’t deserve the same rewards a more hardcore guild achieved through their hard work. For those hardcore — and you admitted it yourself about Gruul’s Lair — the achievement of beating that encounter before it was “nerfed” is very important. Yet, the hardcore often are not only satisified with the achievement of being first. They want everyone to have to spend the same amount of effort as they did. They choose to see other players getting the loot more easily than they do as a trivializing of their achievements. Objectively, it doesn’t change anything about the challenge they overcame to obtain their loot. This is the same as in RL when an early adopter purchases a new technology for a premium price and then is discouraged when the price on the technology drops becoming readily accessible to the average consumer. It doesn’t change that the early adopter had it first, enjoyed it for longer and paid good money for the product.

Blizzard has continually done a lot for the hardcore minority: Mount Hyjal, Black Temple, and now with 2.4, the Sunwell.

And I wouldn’t worry about the motivation of your guild. For the hardcore, getting the gear before someone else and getting it the hard way IS the motivation, regardless if someone else gets it later for less effort. Besides, why does the hardcore player care if they nerf these instances? They should be bored with them by now and looking for them to be easier to take their alts through.

Many hardcore guilds will have beat the game a long time ago. What motivates them to keep playing? They have already beat the difficult challenges, yet they still continue to play.

I think it’s a brilliant move on the part of Blizzard to allow players to experience content that they might have otherwise never experienced. Now, if they can only change the old pre-BC raids into 5-man heroic instances then it can come full circle and bring even some of the old content back into the new.

@Pike: “We choose to play video games not because they are easy but because they are hard!” I can’t agree with this. Every person plays video games for different reasons. Usually the bottom line is “fun”. That is defined differently for different people. Some people enjoy the challenge, they like the hard part. But that doesn’t explain why games like Sims 2 is a best-seller or Diablo 2, etc. Neither game was hard, but instead they had a fun factor that appealed to different types of players. That’s what Blizzard is trying to do and WHY they are so successful. They are giving players different ways to experience the game, even places once only accessible to hardcore guilds.

@Yunk: I love the idea of the gear being more focused for the activities from which you earned them, like PvP gear. However, I still like the idea of alternate ways of obtaining loot and rewards.

Caelum said:
Feb 28, 2008, 14, Feb

I must say the discussion is interesting. While I have been in both hard-core guilds and casual I can not say that I enjoy the nerfing of instances overly much. Basically PvE content is similar to PvP content, you want to archive something and show that of to the other players. The whole PvP ranking systems is there for just that sake and at least in vanilla WoW PvE gear truly meant you had archived something. In my current guild we are struggling hard to actually get ppl to come and play in SSC suddenly. We as a casual guild have more problems motivating ppl to try out new content than I ever had as a raid leader in AQ/Naxx (what seems like a long time ago). Why try new content and spend your valuable time there when you can just as well farm Kara with a few friends and have a laugh and still get cool gear to make the minimal farming you need to sustain alt/raiding done?

I must say, if Blizzards prime concern was for everyone to see everything then they are failing however hard they are trying. A better approach in that case would be to create different types of servers. Like we have PvP, Normal and RP servers of today, create and maintain servers for the hard-core players and keep the level at an appropriately hard level. PvP suffers from the same problem with the current welfare epics handed out as the arena seasons go by. So, to solve the problem without stepping on to many toes, let players select how hard they want the game to be and make that selection count for something.