Why Does My DPS Suck?

- Add Ons
- Computer

If you have ever listened on a raid, you might have heard the Raid Leader say, “pop your cooldowns!” sounds like fun doesn’t. If you want to get into raiding one of the first things you should do is ask if you can listen in on a raid. You will start to get a sense of what is said during the fight. You might be lost at first, but if you que up the videos of the bosses the raid team is attempting you might get a good visual of what they are facing.

Cooldown management is something a lot of new DPS have trouble with. Healers learn quickly that you have to use mana regen abilities to keep their mana pool going, but some DPS don’t know how much DPS they are leaving on the table by not using their cooldowns correctly.

Cooldowns are abilities that give you a boost but have a reset timer. Think of them as the “nitro” boost you see on some racing games. They come in a lot of different shapes and sizes, but they accomplish the same thing, they give you more DPS.

Your trinkets might have something called a “proc” which means you don’t have to worry about them, but if they are an “on use” trinket, that means that you have to click it to get the boost. The simplest way to start experimenting with this cooldown is just to drag the trinket to your bar and use it on click. Another way is probably to macro it to an ability that you already use. The best way is to know exactly when to use it and be smart about it.

Like your trinkets, most classes have abilities that allows them to do a lot more DPS for a short time. You might have heard the term “burst damage” being used. Some classes have lots of it, meaning they pack a punch when they use all their cooldowns. At one point some classes used to be able to line up several and the fabled “one shot macros” were all the rage on PvP. That does not happen all that much anymore, but you can still pack a lot of DPS in a short period of time.

The fight against Deathwing calls for it a lot. This is where saving your cooldowns for that moment it is needed is critical.

If you have played with a Demo Warlock you have probably noticed that they go on demon form. That is one of their DPS cooldowns. You might have also seen a mage get turned into a human icicle, that is a defensive cooldown. You might be thinking that you don’t care about defensive cooldowns, but they are just as important… a dead DPS does ZERO DPS.

As important as finding out what your cooldowns are, it is when to use them. Every boss is different, and also every raid team lines them up a little different.

There are also cooldowns that affect the whole raid like Heroism/Lust. You have to learn when to use your cooldowns and how they are affected by other cooldowns. If your cooldown gives you more strenght, then it is prime for using during the Heroism/Lust phase; however if you cooldown gives you haste, it might not help that much since Heroism/Lust is already giving you that stat and probably will simply be a wasted cooldown.

So your homework is to investigate what your cooldowns are and make sure that they are available in your arsenal. Play around with them and see how they affect your numbers. Are they things you want to use every time they are up? or are they ones that can be saved for burn down phases? Its all part of the fun of the game.

Happy Hunting.

You can watch more Reloaded videos here.

The question really is, who are truly the raiders?

WoW has an issue with labels. Raider is probably the one that most people want to use for themselves but nobody really understands anymore. Raider is a catch all term for anyone that goes into an instance that requires more than 5 players. However there is a big gap from a person that killed Kelthuzad when Naxx was a 40 man and someone that killed Deathwing in LFR.

Time put into the game aside, there are plenty of BC and Wrath babies out there that are now raiding, there are huge factors that change how you look at those people.

The raider code is kind of an attempt at further defining that, but in reality a raider has been and will be defined by their gear.

If your gear says heroic and your ilvl is maxed out, you are at the top of your game. You might not be a hardcore raider, you might have been carried… but in the end the prestige of that gear is there.

Some of those people are now really troubled by the fact that anyone can now have a 4 set.

That used to separate people that could do progression vs people that could not. Now that 4 set capability is available to not just LFR babies, but normal mode teams.

Before the LFR our raid team had maybe 2/3 people with 4 set per tier if we were lucky. Now we have about 15 toons with 4 sets. That makes a huge difference. Something that was pretty unattainable for us before because of luck (some tokens seemed to never want to drop.) or just lack of progression, is now there.

The agility trinket that would have taken us probably months for our 2 hunters to get, I think they both have now. I remember deathbringers will almost broke up our raid team before. Once piece of gear… and so much drama. Can paladin’s really benefit? Why is that hunter getting it if so already got it… oh no we pug one DPS and he wins the roll for the trinket I waited 4 months for! I do not miss those days.

Now in our normal raid everyone passes on gear if they have the LFR version. I don’t even have to use loot council or points anymore to track gear. We know we can fill the gaps later. Same thing when I pug, I give loot to their toons because I am raiding on an alt with LFR gear… it does not hurt me, it helps other raid teams. (I prefer to pug normal with other guild teams rather than full trade chat pug.)

So from my point of view this is all unicorn and rainbows, but Raiders of the hardcore flavor are starting to say that “bads” don’t deserve 4 set. The same people that don’t understand that LFR is really not tuned or targeted at them, now feel that others don’t deserve the 4 set.

Is this whole prestige thing really that important to people?

I simply don’t get it, and not because I cannot attain it either… I am sure if I put enough effort into it I could probably be in a guild raiding more competitively, but I like raiding with my friends and our wives.

So I don’t think making it easy to gear right now and 4 set available to everyone is a bad thing for the game or for raiding. How do you feel about it? Seriously… is someone like me not worthy of a 4 set? Should we go back to a place where only a couple of people are able to attain it on a normal mode raiding guild?

Well in reality, I have summoned more people to their death than I should be comfortable with. Only in our game do we get excited about someone getting an achievement that involved walking into a wall of fire to get a “Charred and Crispy” achievement.

Killing Ragnaros with new acquaintances in a new server felt really weird. I was used to only killing stuff with guildies. Sure in WoTLK I did a lot of Naxx, Ulduar and ToC with pugs… but after getting Kingslayers I thought it would always be a guild affair to down a new boss.

So I said to myself, lets make sure we kill Douchewing together… however Mr Frotobaggins had other plans. Elune bless him… he can pug like no other.

I knew he had been close to killing Douchewing before, with 3% wipes that seemed to be hunting him and the pug group that seemed to clean up the place after we were done with our attempts on the ship.

I was about to log off last night, and I recognized the person spamming in tradechat as possibly one of the people Froto was in Dragon Soul with. They needed a Disc Priest… I asked Froto, how are the attempts going… and he said, we need a disc priest. I cursed a little under my breath and told the pug RL that I will be right back on my priest.

3 attempts later and we had the shinny new “Destroyers End” title.

I should be happy right, I killed Douchewing before the OMG NERF! and sure, I am in some level. I know that what Froto and I did will help our future raids quite a bit. We now know what it takes to down that humongous dragon.

We could have never done that in our last server. This server has a lot of great pug raids… it seems like the quality of people is about our speed. No it is not a “everyone is awesome realm” more of a “everyone seems to be a decent person.”

There was excitement in vent after the kill. It was a first kill for everyone in the group. Besides my guild mate, it looked like it was a combination of groups of 2 from some guilds I recognized and some I had never heard of before.

The Douchewing fight is not too bad (madness that is) it just required lots of DPS and very frantic healing during some of the fight.

I was assigned the very daunting task of healing the tank as the last elementium bolt tried to just decimate us. The last burn phase with the adds is just as frantic and we ended up with only 3 people alive when he finally gave us the shinnies… none for me or froto because his /roll skills sucked.

The fight is actually very similar to the LFR, but just a lot more damage.

Most groups in the LFR go Left – Left – Right/Right/Right, but I guess the normal version goes Left/Left – Right – Right/Right. Other than that it seemed to be the same, just requiring tons more numbers… I think everyone was 40K plus on DPS… and I contributed about 10K worth of smite healing.

Without coordinating the healing cooldowns I think it went pretty well. The group seemed somewhat DPS centric with lots of big numbers just killing things quickly rather than tank or healing centric. It made me realize how different each group is. Our tanks do ridiculous damage… that should help this fight a bit when we get to it as a guild… who knows, that might even be tonight.

We have a group of capable players and a friendly atmosphere. Most of us are adults with full- time jobs and we raid with our spouses, so couples are welcome as long as there is flexibility when only one of you is needed. Our goal is to rescue the princess while the content is relevant, but people, real life and relationships mean more than us than loot. While we want you to be able to perform as a raider, it is more important to us that you are a nice person.

We will love some tanks and healers, but all classes are welcome. We like our tanks and healers to love those jobs. It is our experience that when someone is pushed to do something they don’t enjoy, they will not take it as seriously or excel at it. Even if you are just starting out on those roles, we will help you take it to the next level!

Apart from being competent at playing your main spec, we expect the following of all members:

- You keep up with your class changes and see them as a challenge, not a reason to gripe.
- While we encourage alts, you should keep your main raid-ready and make that character your priority.
- Always be willing to look up fights or alternative strats prior to the raid time.
- Always show up repaired, enchanted and gemmed.
- Value people over gear. If you are looking to just gear up to start hardmodes with another guild, this is not the place for you.

What we provide

- Level 25 guild with repairs for all our members.
- Consumables for raids including flasks and feasts.
- Enchants and gems at no cost to our guild members with materials
(sometimes provided if available.) We already have 2/3 of the epic gem
patterns.
- A relaxed raiding atmosphere where we help each other and you will be treated like an adult.
- Frotobaggins always looking to raid every single minute he is online. If you love to raid any type of content he will go with you!

A little about us

is a casual guild in Whisperwind-US (PvE, CST). We recently opened our doors in Whisperwind, but the guild is level 25 and some of us have played together for over 3 years. We like to do old content and help each other get achievements. We like to see content and take raiding seriously, but don’t want to be server first or care if our gear is heroic. We see gear as a tool, not as a goal. Most of us are adults and our median age is 30, but we have people from their mid 20s to 50s in our ranks. We are starting Dragon Soul, but will still like to go to Firelands and complete achievements and hard-modes,
we are looking forward to completing a couple of legendaries for our warlock and mage.

We are a no-drama clique and we want you to become a part of it. We value the social aspect of WoW and like to have a sense of community. We are looking for long-term members who will stick around and continue to
make our guild great to be a part of. We know each other outside the game, and had a chance to meet each other at Blizzcon.

The values our guild adheres to are simple:

Respect “To each other, our server and the WoW community”
Integrity “we do what we say, and do what is right”
Openness “Zero drama and gossip, you have an issue discuss it and move on”
Teamwork “We kill bosses together, but also wipe together”

If you like what you have read here and are thinking of applying or you have further questions, contact Logtar in game (alts: Hollogos – Gatoso). Add me to your real ID (logtar at gmail dot com)

This topic can turn into a monster, but lets look at it from the starting DPS point of view.

The first thing you need to do is to know why your DPS sucks. While a friend linking you (or that Pug that topped the charts) the meter for the last fight will give you some idea, it will not give you the real picture. Enter recount.

Recount is an addon that can provide a lot of information. Before the tooltips on the character sheet were updated to display a little more information about what the numbers meant, recount was the place I would look to see if I was missing with my abilities.

So step one is to download an addon that tells you where you stand DPS wise.

I think the following numbers will stay true until the end of Cata. These are the numbers you should be hitting to be on par with that content.

7K-9K – Dungeons – Greens and blues
10-12K – Herioc – Entry level – All blues
13-15K – Troll Heroics – T11 – Mostly Purples
16-18K – Firelands – HoT Heroics – T12 – iLvL 360+
19-22K – LFR – 1st half of Normal DS – iLvL 372+
23-28K – Normal DS – iLvL 380+
30-35K – Heroic DS – iLvL 390+

I am sure some people will think that those numbers are in the low side. I have seen people hit ridiculous numbers on greens and blues, and vice-versa, seen purpled out people not do more than 12K. I think the above are realistic numbers to look at.

Keep in mind that those are not dummy – static numbers, but sustained DPS. What that means is the DPS that you can sustain during a fight including moving and repositioning. A mage can hit 30K in the beginning of a fight blowing all his cooldowns, that does not mean that they are a 30K mage. A good way to look at meters is to look at Damage Done and see where your DPS stacks compared to other classes. So look at the numbers and compare them with the chart above but not as a high water mark, more of as an average.

If your numbers don’t seem to hit the above or even be close to it, there are also addons that can help you out.

One of the biggest problems with DPSers that are starting out is that they don’t know about uptime of dots and debuffs. Most classes have a debuff they need to keep up, some have several. Finding an addon that will display it for you will give you a constant reminder while in combat of keeping that debuff up. For a warrior for example, their shouts and rend are very necessary for the DPS to stay up. Druids with their Fairy Fire, DKs Diseases, etc. I use Power Auras for displaying what I need to keep up, and the cool think about it is that you can import auras from people that already built them. There are other addons like Tell Me When that might be a little easier to set up for a beginner. The WoW UI will display them for you, and it is now a little more configurable as well.

Keeping track of your Dots and Debuffs (as well as buffs) will affect your DPS greatly. Just keeping battle shout up is about 2K DPS for a warrior.

When starting out with addons a little way to cheat is to download an addon pack. The downside to going this route is that there might be too much going on, or it might be too different than the regular WoW UI. You also have to keep in mind that your computer has to be able to handle the added workload that more addons will put on it. I say to start out with just keep it simple and work with a couple of addons at a time.

All of this is not required to play the game, but if you want to raid and don’t use the tools you will certainly be at a disadvantage. While Blizzard has gone a lot further down the path of making things more configurable, addons are still a part of the raiding game.

One of the things that made WoW ultra-popular was that even if you had an older computer you could still play. The graphics engine was very forgiving and let you turn the settings way down without taxing older hardware.

I know a lot of people complain about the shitty graphics that WoW has, old models, etc. The reality is that it being behind on the graphics allowed for a lot of people to play the game. You did not need a gaming machine to run WoW… that is until Cata came out.

One of the many things that hurt our guild quite a bit when Cata hit was that a lot of people were playing on older computers. I have been a gamer for a long time, so even though my computer was not the latest, I had the ram and video card that WoW could run fine if I played with the settings turned down a bit.

If you have never seen WoW run on a high end machine, you probably are playing a different game than most. The spell effects and water effects are not on par with other games that have amazing graphics, but they are not all that horrible either. That said, it will also affect your DPS or your healing if your machine is a little older. Not to mention that you probably stand in a lot more fires.

While the easy answer is, go get a better computer if you want to play end game. There are ways to fix the issue.

The first one is to make sure you maximize your memory both physical and virtual. Do a search for your operating system and how to increase your virtual memory. The more the computer can keep in memory, the better WoW will run for you.

Second is to make sure your computer is up to date or at least optimized when it comes to drivers for your graphics card. You can search for your graphics card model and world of warcraft and get informed on what the best set of drivers is. You will be surprised at how specific sometimes things get. You might find a post about your card that says, hey WoW works best with this set of drivers. (sometimes it is not the latest drivers available.)

Third is to make sure you are using the correct Direct X. While WoW supports that latest and greatest your computer might work better with the older version.

Fourth is to play with your graphic setting inside of WoW. There are a couple ways to approach this. If you want the best graphics possible with your set up, you can turn everything up and start turning things down gradually. Make sure you read the tooltips of each one of the settings. The one I recommend is to turn everything down and then slowly turn things up.

Fifth and last is do you run a lot of addons? Some addons can really bring WoW to a crawl, specially in raids. I stopped using Recount and switched to Skada for tracking numbers… but I used to advocate turning all addons off during raids. I think if your computer is older, there is really no reason for you to run a damage meter during a raid. You can have someone else whisper you the numbers if you are really that curious.

The first step towards better DPS is to play in the best version of WoW you can. You might be trying to ride a bike with flat tires… no wonder you cannot get up the hill.

That is how a warrior ends up wearing spirit gear.

The LFR has tried to curve that a little making things a little more specific to classes. Basically if your class can wear it, you can roll for it. On top of that you now get a nifty little bonus for the job you are performing, tanking, healing or DPS.

I think this removes something out of the game in the name of convenience. That is basically how I first learned about what stats were good for me. Those rules are now second nature to me, but from time to time I encounter people that don’t know why an agility ring is not good for a plate tank even though it has dodge.

Gear and stats are intricate parts of the endgame, but they do affect play way before that. It is also why people now enter the dungeons or LFR with resilience gear. They look at the iLvL and some quite don’t understand why people look down upon them. I remember the term “welfare epics” used to describe PvP gear being used in a raid environment. Now we can all go to the AH and inflate our iLvL to circumvent the system. Most players new to end game don’t understand how much difference the sacrifice of dropping one stat for resilience really hurts.

So it is a numbers game!

Yeap, all over WoW we deal with numbers. DPS check, iLvl check, its all about the numbers! ROAR!

Warriors have it rough. While everyone jokes that everything is a hunter weapon, a warrior can equip pretty much anything in the game. It makes it very annoying to page through gear vendors and not have stuff shaded red because technically you can wear it.

But how do we as a community continue to pass down the knowledge to people that might have never visited MrRobot or Elitist Jerks?

We teach them when to need or greed depending on their spec. We teach them why a Greed is considered an OS roll. We pass down the knowledge that we either read, but in many cases was passed down to us.

The Need Roll – Main Spec

You roll need whenever an item drops that you can use on your main spec. To continue with the warrior team, if you are a protection warrior, you want Strength, Mastery, Dodge or Parry. For the most part if a plate piece has haste or crit in it will be a DPS piece. Hit and Expertise are different from tier to tier, but without a primary stat from the first list, it is probably not best for a tank. So if you have a slot in your gear where you are wearing a piece of gear of lower iLvL, you will roll need on that piece.

The nice thing to do in my opinion with tier pieces, is to only roll need if you don’t have them for your main spec. However we all know that most see their tier token and roll need. I think this is just being too greedy. Which brings us to our next roll

The Greed Roll – Off Spec

You roll greed on any piece of gear that you CAN use, but is not part of your primary spec. (Or spec that you are participating on the raid with) So our friendly warrior tank can then roll greed (or roll during an OS – Off Spec call out) on any plate item that has haste, crit on it. Some raid leaders are even nice enough to announce what the piece they are about to link is for (Tanking Plate – DPS Plate, etc).

What a warrior will never need is intellect or spirit. Whenever you see that pop up, you can either pass or click disenchant.

The important lesson here is that when you need on everything when that dice lights up you are truly cheating yourself on one of the coolest aspects of the game. You don’t get to click shift to compare the stats of the two pieces of gear to see what kind of difference it will make. I have always found that part of the fun playing WoW.

Stats are an important part of the game, and it is the reason why so many people get up and arms when someone does not enchant or gem their gear. Those +30 +40 to stats really make a huge difference. Being hit capped and stuff like that… but that boys and girls is a story for another day.

I’m in a small friend guild. We don’t always end up with the best raid composition. We don’t always have the same healer from one night to the next. Sometimes our tanks get stuck at work. We raid with 2 awesome hunters, in 10 man.

We are all competent players and individually could join a progression guild and do well. But we like playing together, because we know each other. We know the jokes, we push each other, we die, get frustrated one night to one shot the same boss the next night. We are currently 5/8 with some solid attempts at the ship… we just always seem to run out of time. We are casual raiders, we know it, we don’t pretend to be anything else. Individually I think some have already cleared DS with pugs. I have cleared up to Madness on an alt.

/rant

I read Kurn and listen to her podcast. I enjoy the banter and enjoy reading from the perspective of her and many other progression raiders I listen to. I am however quite disappointing, because what I have seen kill many WoW communities is what I am reading on her post.

My toons grew up in a PvP server that had population issues ever since I started playing. I never experienced the life of a larger server other than making a toon to talk to a friend there before real id, or to pass the time if our server was down for whatever reason.

When I first started to raid lead and lead a guild I started to bump into “progression raiders.” I quickly saw that they enjoyed trolling others establishing superiority via their achievements in game. That really does not mean much to an adult. Then the groups in this small server introduced me to the systematic dismantling of other groups. A raiding guild would move in, or progress and they would do what they could to poach players, not to help them but to slow the other guild down. I saw what a competitive environment can do, and how it hurt the overall community. I am hoping that this was an outlier of the community, and not the norm with progression raids.

I looked up to people like Kurn, progression raiders that seemed to just want to play the game at a higher level. Willing to share tips and help the overall community. I admire their dedication to their guild and the game. I even went as far as to be ok the calls of foul play when T12 was nerfed. I felt I was part of her community, the WoW community… I guess I was fooling myself.

Cataclysm arrived and with the T11 content nerfs, my faith in Blizzard was shaken. When the Firelands nerfs arrived, I was furious and my trust in Blizzard eroded. And now, with the announcement of Dragon Soul nerfs, despite the fact that Looking for Raid exists *for* those people who will not make the efforts needed to raid seriously, I have to admit that my faith in Blizzard is shattered. My trust in the developers of World of Warcraft is gone. I am obviously not the type of player they want playing their game. And that’s what’s so very shocking to me. I am a good player. I am a community asset. I am a guild leader, a raid leader, a healing lead. I write a blog dedicated to the game that has had hundreds of thousands of visitors and pageviews since December 31st, 2009 (and more before then, but I don’t have any data before 12/31/09). I co-host and produce a podcast dedicated to the game.

Read the whole post, it is a great way to get perspective. A perspective I don’t agree with because it uses word like incompetence, laziness, and “this game is no longer for me“.

Before I continue with my thoughts on the subject, lets be clear about something. Blizzard is a company that makes a game. They are there to MAKE MONEY because it is what businesses do in a capitalist system. They are above and beyond one of the places that is the most sensitive to their customers and keep millions of them happy.

This is not the first time I see these kind of diatribe about the game. The moment a person starts to feel above others, to me it is the moment that they show they feel insecure. I don’t know Kurn personally and that statement is not directed at her personally. It is directed to all of the progression raiders that have yet to kill Madness on Heroic, that never Killed Ragnaros Heroic per nerf.

There is no reason to take a crap on top of the community because the allotted time to accomplish what others do in hours, days, weeks, you ran out of time to do. If you can be that awesome, then why aren’t you done already.

I’m tired of the people in the community acting like if the game is not for the top raider, the game is garbage.

WOW is in the BEST state a game can be. There is so much to do it is unreal!

Stop acting like the game has to be tailored to just YOU or it is garbage and you won’t play anymore.

If you are truly a part of the community and want to report and serve that community, think of the WHOLE community and not just your very small percentage of hardcore raiders that need 4 months to clear an instance on heroic instead of 1 or 2. The nerfs affect you only because now you cannot compare yourself with those that did it before you… the reality is that you could not do that to begin with.

I am not a top 100 player, probably not even top 1000 either. But every night I log on and kill a boss with friends I have FUN! if the game is not fun for you, by all means, quite playing.

There are so many people in the community doing creative things to have fun with the game, that it pains me to read that the people that do what I like to do in raiding, don’t even consider me a part of the community.

If you hate pandas, do it! If you want to quit playing the game, see ya! But stop acting like the game is not for you, simply because the game is not JUST for you.

If your group has about 10 competent players, the whole experience is a breeze and easily completed from top to bottom in less than 90 minutes.

The Dragon Soul gear is itemized above the current dungeons but bellow the normal version of the raid. Firelands normal was 378 and so are the new dungeons, LFR is 384.

As an added bonus for raiders to do the instance besides valor capping if you are not yet clearing dragon soul (500 valor points from running which is half of your weekly cap) is that the raid also drops gear tokens that mix and match with the normal and heroic versions of the gear, so it is very manageable to actually achieve your 4 set bonus. Something that was previously challenging for casual raiders or infuriating for guilds that had a lot of people on the same token.

First lets talk about the bad.

Because it is a place where you can complete your set (or quickly valor cap.) raiders of all experience and dbag level come to play. You easily get into BG type of discussions about “FAIL vs e-PEEN” and “Carebear vs Troll.” Reason being that even though there is a “Go Go Go!” mentality, there also is a little bit of down time (unless someone ninja pulls… actually more Leroy pulls… which reminds me that I should find an addon that spams who the heck pulled.) when in between bosses you lose and add players. I’ve had a couple of awesome runs (probably because they were filled with guildies) but in most cases you lose between 3-5 after every boss. There is a great discussion going on in Manalicious about how this is eroding the community aspect of the game.

I however find the LFR a complete success.

I think the community creation part is up to you with your guild and other guilds you have a relationship with. I don’t remember BC or even Wrath as fondly as some others do. Sure it was nice to be known as a good tank or healer to group with people, but at least in my server there was tons of raider poaching between guilds… or casual guilds used as farms for the more serious raiders. The whole server community thing for me did not exist. Now the new more populated where we reside does feel a little more like a community (still now, in the days of LFG and LFR) and we have been able to mingle and have fun running things with other guilds.

The LFR to me fills a huge gap for the people that want to experience the thrill of killing the dragon, but don’t really care to itemize themselves and work towards being part of a raid team. While you would think that would erode a guild like ours that has mostly casual players, it does quite the opposite. It gives the opportunity for people to gear more alts quickly. It also satisfies the needs of our members that want to still raid, but not on a schedule. They can be part of a community, fill gaps when needed and not feel any presure. That in the past was a pipe dream. Every time you lost a raider it was a setback. Now, there is no excuse for people not to be geared and valor capped when you can do it in one night a week.

I also don’t think that raiders see how much the truly benefit from it. They will still be able to do their normal and heroic modes, and if that unlucky shamman does not get his should drop week after week, or you have a token heavy group full of priest/pallies/warlocks, they can just go to the LFR and complete sets. I know in the past, whenever there was a gear check fight in an instance that required gearing it meant weeks and weeks of pain. Now with just 3 weeks of raiding we made it past the first gear check (Ultraxion). We have about 60% with 2 piece sets and even a couple of 4 sets. Heck we might even be able to not just kill Deathwing on normal but actually do some heroic modes while they are still relevant.

The LFR is doing a lot for a guild like ours. I know a lot of people in the raiding community maybe see us as not being deserving of the loot we are getting because of how easy the LFR is. Sure, our 4 sets might be 3 LFR pieces at first, but it will allow us to play the game at the speed we want without having to hit the reset button every time one of our raiders gets a different work schedule or wants to take an extended break.

If you want to enjoy your LFR experience, que with your friends, set up an LFR night, reach out to your server community and create groups for it. Don’t fall pray of the negative view of the world and enjoy the game for how awesome it is right now. You are in control of the communities you build and play with. So if you decide to just que on your own and end up in the ultimate dbag group, just do your best… besides, its always over before too long.