Looking for Raid has been through a fair few iterations over WoW’s history: from Vanilla’s “guilds only” approach, through the global Looking for Group channel (aka Looking For Spam), through several different iterations of a manual raid listing system in TBC and WoTLK (one of which no-one ever used), and now finally to an automated matchmaking system like the Looking for Dungeon tool. With Patch 4.3 bringing this new Raid Finder to global use, there are a lot of questions out there about how it will work – how will loot rules work? How will the kick system work? Will it drop tier gear pieces, what iLevel will the drops be, will it share lockouts with regular raids, how hard will the raids be?
Well, here in one mammoth post are all your answers. They’re currently taken from the Public Test Realm LFR (Looking for Raid) experience, but we’ll update as soon as the patch goes live with more information.
Latest update: 1st of December 2011
- Raid Finder difficulty
- Raid Finder required iLevel
- How LFR loot works
- Item iLevels, tier pieces, and other loot issues
- What raids can we join with Looking for Raid?
- Lockouts, rogue legendary dagger and miscellaneous info
Looking for Raid / Raid Finder difficulty
The Looking for Raid tool will not run at normal raid difficulties. Instead, it will send players to a custom difficulty level below Normal. It will only run 25-man raids.
We’ve now had some time to see the latest versions of Dragon Soul on the Public Test Realm, and it’s fairly clear just how much easier the LFR difficulty will be. LFR difficulty currently differs from Normal difficulty in two ways:
- Most boss and add health and damage is reduced by about 25%.
- Some abilities are removed from some bosses – Icicle and Ice Tomb from Hagara, for example.
If that summary looks familiar to you, it’s probably because the nerf to difficulty between Normal and LFR appears to almost exactly mirror the difficulty change between pre-nerf Firelands and post-nerf Firelands. Indeed, it’s fairly clear at this point that either LFR is designed to remove the need to nerf the content, or that the content nerfs were a dry-run for LFR to see how lower-level raid groups fared.
Notably, whilst the LFR difficulty often means that less people need to successfully understand the mechanics for a fight, it doesn’t remove the need for the “dance” entirely – players will still need to move, target-swap, attack adds, at least roughly understand phases and so on.
A lot of people are currently arguing that this difficulty setting is still too high for LFR, and it’s entirely possible that further nerfs will be forthcoming if it turns out that players on Live can’t reliably complete the content.
Looking for Raid minimum iLevel
The minimum iLevel required to enter LFR is 372 – up from 365 on the PTR. This iLevel is moderately easily achievable in Patch 4.3 with Justice Point gear and drops from the new 5-man dungeons, and obviously anyone with a significant amount of Firelands gear will already be above it.
Again, there is some argument on the PTR forums at the moment that this iLevel requirement is too low. I don’t think Blizzard are likely to raise it, however – an iLevel requirement of 378, for example, or even 370, would gate the Looking for Raid tool away from a lot of more casual players.
How the Raid Finder loot rules work
Looking for Raid uses the same need-before-greed system as the Dungeon Finder, with one additional twist. All items that drop on LFR difficulty are flagged in the system as being appropriate for either tank, healer, DPS, or a combination of all three (a ring appropriate for both DPS casters and healers, for example).
- Gear flagged as tank gear in Dragon Soul will be: Strength plate and trinkets with tank stats, and leather and trinkets with Agility on them (if you’re a bear tank).
- Gear flagged as healer gear in Dragon Soul will be caster gear without Hit and trinkets that trigger on a heal or beneficial spell.
- Gear flagged as DPS gear in Dragon Soul will be “mostly everything else that doesn’t have a tank stat on it”, according to Blizzard, plus gear with Spirit if you’re a DPS class that uses that, and trinkets that trigger on damaging spells or melee hits.
If you roll on an item which is appropriate for your currently-chosen role, you get +100 to your roll, essentially meaning you will automatically win it over a non-role-appropriate player. So, if a tank sword drops, and both a Rogue and the current Warrior Tank roll Need on it, the tank will automatically get it.
This is a slightly confusing system – the simplest way to understand it seems to be to just assume that someone who rolls Need on a role-appropriate item will get it unless there’s another person in the same role also Needing on it.
Notably, the LFR rules have NO protection against members of a guild, or simply friends, all rolling on a single item for one of their group. Some items will be less vulnerable to that (Paladin healing gear), as usual loot rules apply, but if you’re hoping for an item of cloth or leather DPS gear, for example, guilds all rolling on a single piece will be an ongoing problem of the system.
Looking for Raid / Raid Finder loot, iLevels and tier pieces
All Looking for Raid loot will be iLevel 384. That’s slightly better than dungeon loot, Justice Point items and Normal Firelands drops, which are iLevel 378, but nowhere near as good as the iLevel 397 loot that Dragon Soul Normal and Valor Points will give.
The exceptions are loot from the last two – well, one, depending on how you think about it – bosses, Spine of Deathwing and Madness of Deathwing. Loot drops from them will be iLevel 390 – but the equivalent loot drops from Dragon Soul Normal will be iLevel 403.
LFR will drop tier tokens, which will reward tier pieces named the same as the Normal or Heroic tier pieces, but with lower iLevels and stats. However, importantly, LFR gear will still offer the same set bonuses, and you can mix LFR, Normal and Heroic tier gear to achieve the two and four-piece set bonuses.
Given the Tier 13 set bonuses are by and large very powerful, this will mean that even hardcore raiders will likely want to do LFR every week until they have their set bonuses.
What raids can we join with the new Raid Finder?
Currently, the only LFR-enabled raid will be Dragon Soul. When Mists of Pandaria arrives, all its raids will also be availble on the Raid Finder, but that might well be some time away .
Various people have enthused about being able to do old raids with LFR, but that functionality’s not on the cards yet.
Raid Finder / LFR lockouts, kicks, raid leaders, and other info
- Looking for Raid does not have a lockout – however, if you’ve killed a boss on LFR during a raiding week, you’ll automatically pass on loot from that boss on future Raid Finder attempts ONLY.
- Vote kicks work the same way as they do in Looking for Dungeon at present. If you think that’s very limiting and might make it hard to get rid of idiots – judging from PTR reports, you’re not wrong. This might well change.
- LFR will have a single person designated as “Raid Leader” – however, their only powers will be, according to Blizzard, “the ability to mark targets and use /raid warning”. The Raid Leader will, as far as we know, be chosen at random from everyone who volunteered to raid lead.
- Raid Finder and the Rogue Legendary in 4.3, Fangs of the Father: Rogues will NOT be able to do any of the stages of the legendary dagger quest on Looking for Raid difficulty – Hagara won’t have the ring to pickpocket, and Shadowy Gems will probably not spawn.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
“Indeed, it’s fairly clear at this point that either LFR is designed to remove the need to nerf the content, or that the content nerfs were a dry-run for LFR to see how lower-level raid groups fared.”
No, that’s not even remotely clear. Firelands was overtuned, in particular on 25, and a much smaller percentage of guilds were making progress. Even months after the nerfs, go look at how many guilds have downed H Rag vs downing Sinestra. (On 25 man, ~100 for H Rag vs >150 for Sinestra when the patch dropped)
If I’m locked-out can I still get Valorpoints or Justice Points even though I pass the loot?
@zippac – The Raid Finder only actually gives you Valor Points for completing the raid, and you can only get that award once per raid per week – so, once for Siege of Wyrmrest Temple and once for Fall of Deathwing. So, technically – sorta
@Hugh Hancock – Seems I’m about to find out (doing 1st boss atm)
confirmed. You get nothing from bosses at all when you’re locked.
if you run lfr and then run normal ds with your guild do you pass on gear?
@Poochie – No you don’t, I’m relieved to say! They’re on seperate locks.
I don’t understand the drops that can be exchanged for gear. sometimes it allows you to do the exchange with the valor point vendor, and sometimes not.
Does one need to say, get 3 drops for the shoulders of corrupted protector to tier up, and finally get the lvl 404 shoulders, starting with the lower two?
Right now the only 2 raids I can get into using LFR are Temple of Wyrmrest and Fall of Deathwing. Is that because of My ilvl? I figured they would have put BWL,BWD,BOT all the lower raids on the list.
@DixieSpecial Thats because those are the only 2 raids that they are using the raid finder for
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