Patch 4.0.6 - Luck of the Draw buff getting fixed, increased to max 15%
us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2209011
us.battle.netPosted Feb 4, 2011, 5:34 PM UTC
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us.battle.netThe big issue I see with this is that, yes, people will be hitting harder, but will it improve things like their situational awareness?
Many of the dungeons have things that will one-shot you if you're not fast enough, and to be completely honest I don't see this buff magically giving people the power to move out of boulders, shatters, fires, landmines, dust clouds, etc.
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you can't fix stupid
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The icecrown buff did a pretty good job...
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It won't those that are not situational aware, but it will help those with a little bit of lag (either their internet connection or in their head) survive.
Also, the 15% extra damage (versus 0% we are getting now), means we are almost getting an extra half dps (15% * 3 = 45%), excluding the tank damage, which should make the runs a little faster and possible to finish if a dps goes down early.
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That's a good point, maybe they were thinking that if the group killed the boss faster, there would be less of an opportunity for failure because of the shorter fight.
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That is not how math works. 15% increased damage means a 15% increase in the overall damage. You're not multiplying dps, you're adding it. It's a 15% buff, period, and everyone, including the tank and healer, gets it.
DPS and healers also get increased stamina, and dps and tanks also get increased healing. The increased healing does the least for the rest of the group, but your healer doing 15% more is a huge buff, and prot pallies, spriests, and all other classes with minor heals and self-heals also get a buff.
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No, the Math is fine.
Assuming each DPS does 1 dps before the buff, then each dps now does 1.15 dps with the buff.
So, now, all three dps are now doing 1.15 + 1.15 + 1.15 = 3.45 dps, instead of 3dps (compared to before the buff, the group is now doing the dps as if there was an extra half dps, roughly).
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Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. I thought you meant that it would equal out to a 45% increase overall, or nearly one and a half times as much dps as without the buff. My bad.
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We're getting 5% now, not 0%
*edit my bad, didn't actually read the entire post.
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No, in most Cataclysm dungeons the buff isn't working (as posted by GC and my own observations).
In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons
So, right now, you are getting 0%.
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As in the buff isn't appearing? Or its there and just plain not working?
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In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons. This means that the difficulty in almost all normal and Heroic dungeons for those using the Dungeon Finder tool was higher than expected. Still, with that issue corrected in 4.0.6, we feel the bump up to 15% for three or more random players found through the Dungeon Finder is a necessary change.
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...we are almost getting an extra half dps (15% * 3 = 45%)
I didn't think of it that way. If you add in the tank this means DPS will go up by ~50% of what it currently is.
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No the damage will only go up by 15%.
Like this:
3 dps in the raid all doing 10k each.
10k * 1.15 = 11.5k
11.5k * 3 = 34.5k
10k * 3 = 30k
34.5 is 115% of 30
He meant it's like having another dps doing half damage in the group. Easier to think of it as making the tank on par with the DPS.
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Possibly even more. My paladin does about 8k average dps in a random, which is usually about 3/4 of a full dps, so it would be 45/4 or an extra 11.25%. Granted I know you said approximately 50%, and all of these numbers are just assumed. But in my opinion, it would be somewhere between 55% and 60%.
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Agreed. I think it will help decent players transition from normal to heroic 5 man content (specifically extra healing and tank health will give some wiggle room) but it certainly isn't a magic bullet for people that ignore fight mechanics.
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Cue the whiners whining about the whiners.
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I hate those guys! Don't get me started!
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there now even redditors should be able to do heroics
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This might help alleviate the queue times, simply because tanks in a guild might now consider running in PUG groups, for the group buff bonus.
It's also interesting, since now you have a choice when using the LFG tool: either receive the 15% bonus Luck of the Draw buff (PUG by yourself or a friend, assuming you do not hook into a three man or higher group) or get the guild bonus exp (running with 3 to 5 guild members).
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My response to the buff is the same as when they made some of the Wrath gear easier to obtain.
It won't make a big difference.
0 dps is still 0 dps when the hunter/mage/rogue/warrior stood in fire and died 15 seconds into the fight because they can't grasp some game mechanics. Or 3 of the 6 mobs in Stonecore didn't get cc'd because someone was busy doing something else. It's not a judgment, there's just some people that that may not get game mechanics and as a result make dungeons more difficult than they should be.
So at the end of the day it will have no impact on the desire of people in my guild to not pug. We play together because we know the skill levels of the people in our group and can trust them.
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But, It will make enough of a difference for the people it is capable of helping.
The guys you're talking about... they are the dudes that played doom with just a keyboard and wondered why all of us mouse turners were fragging the shit out of them 99 times out of 20.
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[deleted]
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I don't know, ICC became significantly easier to pug once the buff got up to 15%. 15% increased tank health, overall damage, and overall healing is well over the margin of failure for many groups.
It won't make Retard McFaceroll L2P, but it will help the competent players carry him.
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I think the difference between ICC content and Cata content is failure means death.
In ICC failure meant stressing your healer out.
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You're right, no one ever wiped on any boss fight in ICC.
Ok, that's not fair. You're entirely right that there are other factors involved, but the difference between ICC with the 15% buff and ICC without was significant.
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I certainly won't be queuing more frequently than I do now. I avoid PUGs like the plague. Part of it is that I know my friends in my guild will be more tolerant of mistakes I might make. I mean, they already trust me to tank their raids, they're not going to boot me because I had a brain fart on Corborus.
And I just don't like dealing with morons. I'm happier when I don't have to worry about everyone. When I do guild runs, I can trust that these people either know what's going on, or are on vent talking about how to do it right.
15% health and damage aren't going to make me like grouping with random strangers any more than I already do.
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It's funny that they mention that it wasn't even working for some dungeons. Going from 0% to a 15% boost is gonna be huge!
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... so if I start a group with four of my guildies and queue us for a random, does this mean, since none of us are random players, we get no buff?
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But that's tempered by the fact you're grouping with people who presumably understand 4.5k dps and no use of CC probably isn't appropriate for Stonecore.
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Correct. This is also true now, and has always been true for the entire history of the dungeon finder.
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[deleted]
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The way I understand it you will still get that 5% buff for having the 1 random. The random person should get the 15% buff for having 3+ randoms(aka your guild group).
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There would be no randoms in a group with admiraljohn and four of his guildies, so none of them would get the buff.
I'm not sure about a 4 guild, one PuG situation. My understanding originally would be that this would lead to a 5% buff for the entire group, but after reading your comment, I realized that it's not actually made clear whether or not different people would have different buffs.
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Ah I read the first comment wrong.
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4 guild, one PuG
immature laugh
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This honestly seems like an excellent solution. I (and others) have been afraid of the new heroics being nerfed too hard, and while a few unwarranted nerfs are in store, a few good ones are there and this is a welcome change. I usually run in guild groups, but when I end up pugging instead, this will make it so I have a bit less carrying to do.
tl;dr: Alleviates difficulty problems without changing fight mechanics drastically or nerfing for normal groups.
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After reading all of the comments about this change on the MMOChamp forums I'm amazed at all the negative posts from people that DON'T PUG and feel so offended by this... I'm in a guild that consists of my 4 IRL friends that don't have specific play times, so I found myself PUGing alot and I't was a huge pain in the ass. Sure they got done, but usually with alot of wipes. To me that's not fun. I loved trying to down new bosses in WOTLK and hell TBC, wiping, fixing strategy, trying again. That is the difference between 5 mans and raids to me and If this LoTD buff affected raids I could see where this outrage was coming from. I personally welcome this change.
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Exact same boat here, guild and all. I welcome the chance to finally run a heroic without wanting to jam my head through my monitor.
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i think it's awesome that this is getting buffed, but it's still not gonna make up for people ignoring the mechanics of fights (i.e. getting hit by the boulder on the last boss in stonecore) which is what i've found to be the biggest problem in PUGs
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I won't yet pass judgement on this change, but I will state that I enjoyed PUGing in Wrath and don't in Cata. This change may help me enjoy PUGing a bit more.
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I have the same experiences as you. I don't care if they are really going to make something harder, that doesn't make it more fun... so I don't do it, if it isn't fun. 3 hour random dungeons are not fun. I hope this change fixes things like that and makes the game fun again for me.
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I enjoyed wraith heroic PUGs and hated wraith raid PUGs. Easysauce heroics means anyone can have the gear to get into a raid, short of achieve requirements which still don't mean much there's no way to make sure a pug isn't awful and there's always enough to make it just awful. In cata full heroic gear with available epics means you're good and I can take you on a pug. They NEED a difficult 5 man content that is required to do raids to keep these idiots who are bad from trying to get into raid. I feel for the casuals who are skilled and just want a quick good heroic, but I'm sick of the awful players who want in my raid.
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It's incredible how smoothly heroics go when you have good DPS. I healed H:Deadmines the other day with 3 people doing 15-20k DPS and I barely broke a sweat. Fastest and easiest heroic ever.
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Really looking forward to this for my alts.
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This buff won't apply to me (I stopped running regular heroics weeks ago), but it's a pretty clever way to appease the masses, imo. Kudos to Blizzard for an elegant solution. This will definitely be nice for my undergeared alts.
With that said, holy crap, Aestu is a whiny cunt, eh? He seems to embody all the bad kind of elitism.
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Sweet, I will have almost 200k health now.
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You know what sucks? This change comes at the point in progression where I don't need to do more than one heroic a week to get valor capped.
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welcome to WotLK...
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I just spotted this buff for the first time the other day. Kinda nice. Personally, I'm really enjoying Cata Heroic PUGs as is, but then again this is really my first time doing dungeons since Vanilla. A little challenge is enjoyable and it's fun to work with different personality types (for the most part).
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THIS Game is so ESAY! (and now it's getting even easier) :p
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In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons. This means that the difficulty in almost all normal and Heroic dungeons for those using the Dungeon Finder tool was higher than expected.
HAHAHAHA Nice save, Blizzard. Months of blue posts saying things like "Heroics are hard because we want them to be fun and challenging!" "New cataclysm design philosophy resolves around difficulty of dungeons and teamwork!" "If you think its too hard you are dumb because it so FUN! SO FUN!" And now we finally get a poorly worded damage control post revealing that the blues really had no idea what they were talking about this whole time.
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I suspect they were waiting for more statistics to roll in about success and completion rates, and subtly encouraging people to keep trying, and not just sit back, waiting for the dungeons to get nerfed.
Now they've had more time to review their internal statistics, and they're still saying heroics are fine, but conceding that the difficulty is severely increased when you play with a group of unorganised randoms, rather than your guild.
It's still a l2play issue. :P
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You're absolutely right, but my issue is the dishonest way that they worded this post. If they knew about this bug in the past, why didn't they mention it instead of just saying "dungeons are fine" repeatedly? Unless they just found out about it, which is still pretty lame thing to notice this late in the game when we've been fretting about rough dungeons for months now. :/
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They probably figured it'd be better to save the admission for when they were ready to roll out their fix, too.
Either way, though, they'd have to deal with lots of complaints. I can only imagine the crap they have to put up with.
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But dungeons are fine. I fail to see the problem with that statement. The pug tool is being reworked a bit, but dungeons are fine. TBH, I don't consider myself particular elite at the game and there are no bosses in the game that I have a real problem with.
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I'm inclined to agree with you, I've never had a problem with them when I was in guild groups, only in PUGs. But PUGing them is pretty broken. Too many noobs. There comes a point where nooms can only L2play if they have the proper gear to match the difficulty of the heroic dungeons their in. This fixes things for puging, and I'm pretty content with it. There may have been another way for blizz to do this, but whatever- I'm no game designer.
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For those at work, copypasta:
In case you aren't already aware, Luck of the Draw is the name of the buff you get for grouping with random people using Dungeon Finder. It currently provides a 5% buff to damage, healing, and health if you have at least one random player in your group. With patch 4.0.6, we are increasing this buff to 5% damage, healing, and health per random player, up to a maximum of 15%.
In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons. This means that the difficulty in almost all normal and Heroic dungeons for those using the Dungeon Finder tool was higher than expected. Still, with that issue corrected in 4.0.6, we feel the bump up to 15% for three or more random players found through the Dungeon Finder is a necessary change.
The intent of Luck of the Draw is to help make up for the lack of coordination, communication, and familiarity that pick up groups suffer relative to organized groups of guild members and friends. Cataclysm dungeons, especially on Heroic mode, are quite challenging and ask for more group organization than the Wrath of the Lich King dungeons did. Therefore, Luck of the Draw became relatively weaker in Cataclysm. I'm painting the picture with unfairly large brush strokes here, but in general, Heroic dungeons are of appropriate difficulty for organized groups, but just brutal on Dungeon Finder groups. Players wonder, and rightly so, why Dungeon Finder supports Cataclysm Heroic dungeons at all when the chance of success is so low.
We think buffing Luck of the Draw is a good way to go about correcting the difficulty differences because it makes things slightly easier on PUGs without depriving the organized groups of a fun challenge. We also think the bonus is modest enough that it won't encourage organized groups to split up and just PUG instead - - the success rate for PUGs relative to organized groups is just that far behind. We still think you'll have more fun and a greater chance of success running dungeons with friends, but when that isn’t possible, we hope this change will make Dungeon Finder a more pleasant experience. Also remember that patch 4.0.6 is adjusting the difficulty of some bosses that are particularly unforgiving, such as Ozruk in Heroic Stonecore, though to be fair, we are buffing some underperforming encounters as well. In addition, we are offering larger Justice Point rewards for players who just prefer the faster pace and greater success rate of normal dungeons, and by the time 4.1 comes out everyone will have access to more powerful gear, making the older content even easier. But then there'll be new challenges to face!
We'd like to thank everyone who has provided us with feedback. We do listen, even if we don't immediately deploy every design change suggested by the player community. Our intent is to make the game fun for a wide variety of players, which can be quite a challenge when you have a community this large and this varied. We hope you continue to enjoy the game, and look forward to sharing more changes (and a few surprises) in the months ahead.
-Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and was attacked by a coati as a child. (True story.)
"In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons." I laughed but I already knew this was an issue.
Do we know for which dungeons it was working properly? I'd noticed that my DPS could vary a lot from dungeon to dungeon but always chalked it up to minor gear changes or buffs from varied group comps.
Don't compare boss to boss and fight to fight. Different fight mechanics can make different fights have huge variation in DPS and Total Damage.
Thank you from a guy at work!