My question is simple - once you’re in the instance you can pretty much do most LFR bosses with 3 / 4 healers.
Waiting in the queue for the mystical 5th healer to join at 4 / 5, however is a real ball-ache.
Is there anyway LFR can be made a little less prescriptive - so we can enter the instance with 4 or even 3 healers?
I imagine we’ll get a load of responses saying “oh its normally tanks we’re waiting on”, but that hasn’t been my experience lately. It’s pretty much always healers.
Let the group try to do it with 3 or 4 healers, at the worst wiping on a boss is more fun than sitting in a queue.
The funny part is that LFR scales to the amount of players in the instance, there’s absolutely no reason for it to be so strict as to when it starts when it scales to amount of players.
The really stupid thing is that, when the raid entry ready check pops at 2/2 5/5 18/18, if a couple of people then drop out (including healers and tanks), it will often still let you enter.
Why is it making people wait for the magic 25 people to appear in the queue to pop the ready check in the first place?
Now the situation with tanks is a little more complex, there are bosses that can be solo tanked but most of these require a reasonably well geared tank to do that so I can understand LFR making people wait for 2 tanks because it can’t really know what gear a particular tank is going to equip and how experienced they are with higher tiers in the queue.
The situation with healers and dps is much more straightforward though. To be fair it’s rare I’ve been waiting on DPS so really the issue is healers - maybe say after we’ve been in a queue for 30 mins it could lower the threshold so we can go with 4 or even 3 healers?
The worst thing is with the inflexible system at the moment you can easily end up waiting over an hour (even 2 hours) because the healer uptake is so low that other healers that are already queued leave before the 4th / 5th healer appears.
5 healers in LFR can be useful if they’re low on ilvl and the DPS make a lot of mistakes. This season LFR compositions often vary greatly. Obviously some newbies join, but because of the way fated loot system works high-level players are motivated join as well. If a high-level healer joins, and the DPS also know what (not) to do, then the other 4 healers will probably not have much to do.
I don’t think it’s feasible to make the LFR queueing system figure out accurately whether a composition will only require 4 rather than 5 healers (with the maximum number DPS players). But allowing for smaller groups (with fewer DPS and healers) is definitely something that would help reduce queue times.
I’d very much appreciate the LFR tool to compose smaller groups in general. There’s indeed no point in having to wait 60 mins for a 25 raid to be built when 50 percent of members (including healers) will be flooring most time of the boss fights anyways…
Reading this thread makes me think that raiding would be absolutely impossible without the LFR, because people can’t be even bothered to do it with it. As much as it pains me to say it, Brack was actually right.
i dont think so … where u will find tanks? if u cant even find for 25 ppl and if are tank still even on 25 players u are getting very fast invite to lfr
It would be, but it would also mean that it takes more tanks out of the available pool of players.
Sending off two groups means you need double the amount of tanks you normally need to get 25-28 players rolling. While it solves the issue from the healer side, it in exchange will only create a tank shortage.
So as I said at the start this wasn’t meant to be a moan about lack of healers, rather it was about how the queue works. A system that’s been around for over 10 years now with very little change.
I get that tanks are also in very short supply, hell that’s why I rolled one. The fact is player count in general is down so you have to expect some waiting. I’m just wondering if they can make the system a bit more flexible for everyone so we don’t have to wait 90 minutes each time.
The “roll a tank, get fast queues” notion is a myth now by the way. What actually happens is that the queue will pop quickly but almost always you get chucked in at the last boss. Then when you re-queue to do the other 2 you have to wait 2 hours for the system to build a full 25 man raid. I believe it’s a similar experience for healers too. Not trying to say anyone is getting it worse, just that the system overall could do with an overhaul.
25 man LFR is a relic of the old times where 25 was the go-to raid difficulty which they wanted to mimic in the LFR experience. It’s dated. LFR should either be shifted to a smaller group format, or given an alternative of a story mode with NPCs instead of other players.
I’ve also watched dps players do nothing other than stand there and do damage making shriekwing hilarious nearly every time yet still being about 17th on damage.
You are right easily doable with 3 healers providing people at least attempt the mechanics. The last lfr I did was maybe two weeks ago for the dinar and it remained the proverbial show it always has been.
i imagine that would potentially cause more problems with lack on instances…
as people skip queues by editing the requirements…
making in the long run queues even longer even with ‘full teams’
would also probably start people making premades and switching out classes to fill gaps… to farm the instances…
further increasing queue times…
there is upsides and downsides to everything…
everygood thing can be exploited and ruined
EDIT: you need to think… people in this game though they can seem friendly at first glance… are only interested in themselves and their characters progression … and will abuse everything in their personal power without breaking rules in order to achieve that.
someone seems to good to be true… they probably are…