Here are some tips for making your LFR experience more pleasing and less designed to make you tear your hair out. My hubby and I have run LFR every week since it came out, both parts [minus the week the second part wasn’t available] and occasionally on multiple toons on random days. We have yet to leave an LFR raid for “being fail” but we by being us have eliminated several of the most potentially devastating problems [and yes, all of our raids have been completed in a timely manner].
1. If you can lead, DO. Hubby and I have commented to each other more than once that a halfway decent raid leader can probably pull an average group through the first 7 bosses with minimal wipes. There is the small issue of “human errors” and true “bads” [bads here being defined as people intentionally causing problems via malice, not through ignorance].
2. If someone else can lead, don’t be afraid to let them. Don’t need to lead so badly that you can’t let someone else bear the burden. An epeen war of the raid leading variety can be epicly nasty.
3. Give directions. Don’t just tell people “don’t fail”. Yes, I agree that everyone should read up on the fights in advance, but I’d rather give a five second explanation than spend 5-10 minutes wiping and running back.
3a. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Don’t try to get into lengthy boss explanations. In LFR as it stands, healers really don’t need much instruction on most fights. Whisper tanking instructions to the tanks if they don’t know the fights. Keep directions to dps in raid very simple. For example, on Ultraxion “Stack, hit button when Hour of Twilight comes”.
3b. There will always be griefers and people intentionally causing issues or people who refuse to listen. In LFR there is enough leeway on most fights to either heal through the problem [And I have healed in LFR so I know how annoying that is], or to just let them die. Most people don’t care to be dead for most of the fight, so they may learn through repetition.
4. Controlling the tanking seems to lend itself to an easy raid, and I don’t mean being controlling of random tanks. If you can supply your own tanks, who know how to do their job, it will lend itself to a smoother raid [adding a couple of healers in there wouldn’t be amiss either… and some powerhouse dps never hurt – just sayin’]. Tanking the LFR may not be particularly complex, but a bad tank can mean much bigger problems than a poor healer or a low dps.
5. If someone is being obviously problematic, ask in raid for a kick. We got kicks for a couple of AFK people and a blood dps dk in full pvp gear, in blood presence, griefing the raid. [Psychic drain on the whole raid because of a taunt = bad]. You don’t have to be particularly mean about asking either. “Please kick Arthasdklol for being AFK”.
6. There’s really no need to heckle people. If dps is too low, as kindly as possible point out that those below the tank or below a particular threshold need to up their game for future encounters. Many times people in that category will step it up or bow out, without the need of name calling and shaming [I would do that on any alt that fell into that category]. Perhaps they thought they would be fine or would do better than they are… perhaps they are simply out of practice. Who knows? If they won’t and are particularly problematic [ie doing nothing or doing 2k or something], ask for a kick.
7. Do YOUR best. Don’t go in and AFK constantly or only move when a boss fight is going on, or ignore mechanics and raid calls. Nothing is more annoying than a leech. Life does happen and if you need to AFK just say something like “AFK just a moment, I’ll be right back”. You can give a reason or not. They may read it or not but by that notice you’ve done your due diligence in terms of that [barring emergencies – RL does take precedence of course]. Don’t nerdrage over loot, and don’t let yourself be bothered if someone else does. If they’re harrassing you, put them on ignore. In other words, all the common sense stuff.
LFR requires a measure of patience to complete and frankly, probably always will. Keep in mind that this was designed for those who don’t or cannot raid, not for hardcore or even necessarily the casual raider [who can also benefit from it].
For some people this could even be their first experience with raiding, so the mild amount of encounter training will only ease the frustration of the LFR. Imagine if they learn and pay that forward, and so on… it might even feed back into a more pleasant LFR for you down the line.
All this said, if you can’t handle patience – don’t queue, or if you reach your limit, leave. It’s not worth sacrificing your sanity for the 250 valor that can easily be attained in 3 HoT randoms.
You Yank It, You Tank it: Blog of a Tanking Death Knight Lady 