RaidFinder
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Trouble filling those last few raid slots? Try the raid browser
It's frustrating to lose time when you need to fill those last few raid spots, yet the Raid Finder isn't coming up with the players you need. Or maybe you're the one who's seeking a raid group, but nothing seems to be shaking loose that night. In a recent Breakfast Topic on in-game help tools, WoW Insider reader PaulLloyd offered up a strikingly simple suggestion that gives both types of seekers one more avenue of hope: the old-school Raid browser. The wha...? PaulLloyd's not referring to the Raid Finder tab in the contemporary Dungeon Finder feature. This relic of olden raiding days, folks, is the previous system found tucked inside the Social tab. Writes PaulLloyd: This is the "find a raid" system that pre-dates LFR. You would list your interest in a certain raid, and when a raid group is looking for a certain role to be filled, they would look them up on this list. It would've saved me cancelling many raids if people would use it. Sadly, it is hidden away, forcing RLs to use trade chat for missing slots, which relies on people sitting around a city and watching trade chat, which means a huge number of people missing the message. For those wondering "what the hell is the raid browser?" Open the social tab (default 'O'). Select 'Raid' tab. Click 'Other Raids' Button. If you're announcing your availability to a raid, use the 'Choose Raid' tab. If you're looking for people, use the 'Browse' tab. While nobody's advocating using this older system as a replacement for the Raid Finder, it makes a fine adjunct tool that could come through if enough players and raid leaders give it a try. PaulLloyd observes that the system is fairly useless on his realm because players simply don't use it, but other players seem hopeful that it could offer a helpful backup method of finding raiders and raids. What do you think? Seems worth a try!
Are our Cataclysm attitudes ruining Mists?
Back in Cataclysm, the world was a very different place. While the journey from 80 to 85 was certainly a little tiresome, with the obligatory travel through Deepholm bringing many a draenei to their oddly-shaped knees, once that achievement flashed across your screen you were home and dry. Gearing a character for raiding was a predictable and straightforward task. Get a few bits and jump into the latest 5-mans, which were very easy and certainly achievable with PvP gear, as long as you were one of the classes that didn't do too badly from it. Preferably not a plate tank, then! If you were adamant that cheaty PvP-based gearing wasn't for you, you could just run a few of the normals and earlier heroics, such as the Zul'roics or even the ones before, to get yourself geared to an acceptable level for the 4.3 heroics. What's more, your main could send your alts decent, current gear with their inevitable glut of valor points, and your justice points bought you the previous tier's gear. Why the Cataclysm retrospective? As a reminder of how easy it was, in Cataclysm's twilight hours, to level and gear alts to a raid-ready level, or, for that matter, to a competitive PvP level. Quite apart from the ease, it was really the only thing left to do, after months upon months of Dragon Soul.
QueueSpy, an addon to solve those LFR queue pop blues
UPDATE: Bashiok has clarified to us that this addon was running off of inaccurate information and did not work properly. More importanly, the popup's lack of progress information was intentional. More info here. We've been getting reports that some people are not able to see how many bosses have been cleared when their Looking For Raid queue finally pops. There have been some posts popping up on the official forums, but there has not been an official blue post yet as to whether this is indeed a bug, or an intended change with the recent 5.1 patch. At this time, we believe that it is a bug as we've also been receiving reports that some players are able to see how many bosses are already killed on their queue pops. With that in mind, some players have put their noses to the grindstone and written an addon to help you find out how many of those bosses are defeated if you find yourself with the queue pop bug. It's a quick fix, and it works quite well as a solution to a potentially annoying bug. The addon outputs the boss total to your chat window instead of putting it back into your queue screen, which is actually a really nice work around. The addon is lightweight, and until we hear official word whether or not this is a bug or a feature, this seems to be the way to go. If you find yourself in burning need to know exactly how many bosses are waiting for you in your LFR queue, then you can download this addon over at Curse or WoWInterface. It's quick and easy to install, and requires zero configuration. A special thanks to Stoppableforce for whipping up this addon quickly for everyone to use. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
A solution to the LFR "problem"
Our very own Olivia Grace recently sat down with Gamebreaker.tv to discuss player complaints about the obligation that many raiders out there feel to run LFR each week, a topic that has been hotly debated in, among other places, this thread on the official forums with the ghastly Zarhym naturally representing Blizzard. In the video, Olivia raises a good point that many people may not immediately realize – the game isn't forcing you to run LFR every week, it is the social pressures of being in a competitive raiding guild, the very nature of which makes it basically mandatory to seek every advantage you can to edge out your competition. And while many players cite a myriad of issues with LFR, few offer any real, workable solutions. I have seen a couple non-workable solutions, however, so let's briefly discuss them.
Should Blizzard leave heroic encounter difficulty alone?
When the Raid Finder was first introduced, I had high hopes for its impact on the game. While the main reason behind the implementation of this system was arguably to get as many players experiencing raid content as possible, at the time, I was more interested in the impact it would have on the progression races between all of the top guilds in the world. I have always had a great deal of admiration for players in these types of guilds and have watched intently during each new tier as they all vied for world firsts. I believed the Raid Finder could benefit this type of competition by preventing heroic encounters from being nerfed while the content was still current. Surely, I thought, if so many people are able to experience raiding like never before through this new tool, Blizzard would have no pressing reason to make heroic encounters any easier. Well, it seems I was wrong, for in the very next tier of content Blizzard released, we saw progressive nerfs to these difficult fights. Personally, I prefer to keep these encounters the way they are, at least until a new tier is released. Something just feels wrong to see the hardest fights available made easier through a series of hotfixes. Even with respect to my own guild's progression, having sweeping nerfs hit Firelands just as my guild was putting in some really good attempts on Ragnaros felt like Blizzard moved the finish line, taking what would have been a very gratifying kill and turning it into an accidental one-shot that contained none of the catharsis we had felt during previous boss kills. What do you think? With the Raid Finder now a reality and a new expansion looming on the horizon, do you think the difficulty of heroic raid encounters should be static, like those from tier 11, or should they be more flexible?
Lichborne: Fall of Deathwing Raid Finder tips for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. I will be frank: Every death knight should have a solid goal to defeat Deathwing this expansion. It's not for the experience, it's not the glory, it's not even for the achievements. No, it's for one thing: It's for the tentacle sword. This baby is everything that one can aspire for in a WoW weapon. It's a sword. It can be transmogrified into our signature runeblade. It has an awesome creepy pet proc. What's not to love? Of course, to get to the sword, you'll first have to take down four bosses, hope the sword drops, and then hope you win the roll against who knows how many other plate DPSers in the raid -- but hey, you have to start somewhere, right? Let's dive into the Fall of Deathwing. To be frank, the most annoying part of the fight with Ultraxion, the first boss, is his trash. Dragons will fly in slowly from the skies above and must be pulled down where you can DPS and/or tank them. If you can get past that, Ultraxion himself should be a breeze.
