World of Warcraft: How Blizzard Needs to Improve Siege of Orgrimmar LFR Immediately

This one is written especially for the Blizzard developers and needs to happen ASAP, especially before Diablo 3 comes out. So currently, Siege of Orgrimmar LFR still has MAJOR issues. It’s far too long at this current stage and too frustrating. What is most striking though is that only part 1 seems to have a reasonable queue compared to the rest of the instances. Parts 2-4 have an average wait time for 1 hour. That is ridiculous for anyone to endure and a complete waste of time. Also, this demonstrates a failure by Blizzard to address issues with Parts 2-4 despite numerous nerfs. As a result, I am going to propose the following to make it doable:

Part 2

• The Galakras fight requires the same feature like Spoils where it requires 5 people to activate the encounter. In addition, at least two waves of mobs need to be eliminated.
• Iron Juggernaut – Currently, okay.
• Trash leading to the Dark Shamans need roughly 90% to be eliminated. Mainly, they serve no purpose in LFR outside of wasting time. The only one that should be kept at the very minimum is the Treasure Guy who MCs people (because it’s the only cool mob where you can kill your fellow annoying players). Also, eliminate the mechanic which requires a tank swap so the two shamans can be split.
• Eliminate the two blind master trash leading to Garrosh. Again, these two serve no purpose outside of annoying people to death and wasting time. Get rid of the big mob that people end up resetting. I mean, if people aren’t even bothering to handle them correctly, why bother wasting more time? Also, defensive stance needs about 10 seconds shaved off at least.

Part 3

• Eliminate 50% more of the trash leading to Malkorok. Probably around 2 groups need to be removed with the Skullcleavers. Malkorok can stay as is.
• Reduce the number of mechanics prior to Spoils by one as well as their movement speed. Spoils can remain the same but I would suggest implementing something where only the tank can open the boxes.
• Thok can remain the same….even though I hate that encounter to death.

Part 4

• Players should arrive right before the area with Siegecrafter. I seriously do not understand why they need to face more useless trash that they faced from Part 3. There is absolutely no point. That trash adds nothing to the area. At least the trash just before Siegecrafter is semi-applicable with the laser beam girl and the bombs.
• Klaxxi and the trash are fine. The static order aspect is a great thing.
• Trash leading to Garrosh needs to be massively reduced. There should only be 1 harbinger per group or simply have two of those groups rather than the three. These groups take far too long to kill and are a main source of grief. I would even go as far as to say that one group should be the maximum. Also, remove two groups of those elementals.
• For Garrosh, the mobs helping Garrosh need their health further reduced by 20%, especially the Shaman. There should not be more than two MC’d people at any given time. Allowing the MC’d player to MC others is fine but three is too much. For Empowered Desecrate, either have a maximum number of spawns from pools or remove the healing mechanic so groups can easily AoE them down. Garrosh’s health should be reduced by 20%. Currently, Garrosh on LFR takes roughly 12-15 minutes. I want to reduce the fight to 8-10 minutes max.

My overall goal in proposing these nerfs is to ensure that LFRs can go by faster. I hypothesize that the lengthy queue rate is a result of the perception that it’s a waste of time. The true time of the current LFR for any of the last three parts is between 2-3 hours. 45 minutes to one hour for queue time, about another hour for dealing with the encounters (even with a decent group) and at least another hour budgeted in for wipes and waiting on additional tanks. These numbers realistically are on the 4-5 hours mostly due to the waiting aspect that probably is invisible to the developers. Honestly, each part should not take more than 30 minutes maximum a piece, with a 10-15 minute maximum budgeted queue time. Note: I am ONLY proposing these fixes to LFR, not to any other version.

Ultimately, the philosophy is to “get in and get out”, which was similar to Cataclysm’s patch 4.3 instances, which I believed worked out well. Surely, they were redundant but the end game content in Cataclysm was pretty limited compared to Mist of Pandaria. So a reduction in time consumption at the LFR level will not kill the game. I mean, Throne of Thunder LFR in its current incarnation is at a very good spot and should be the model for which Siege of Orgrimmar needs to be adjusted immediately as well. Alternatively, Blizzard could increase the drop rates at the LFR level so that one does not have to continuously farm these instances anymore if further nerfs are not considered. I suggest both for the time being just to keep people satisfied as we wait for Warlords of Draenor.

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