Dungeon Finder's Luck of the Draw Buff Increased up to 15% in 4.0.6

posted 2011/02/04 at 4:02 PM by Miyari

Luck of the Draw

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.)

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Comment by mystictoast My entire point is the problem in the beginning of Cata was just the sheer number of insta-kill abilities with bosses. It would be different if you walked into heroics and could see yourself failing at enrage sometimes etc.Comment by bigheaded a nerf is a nerf.

captha: viarn silverware? Comment by lonewarrior Took only approx. 2 months for Blizz to cave in.
I don't blame the bad players...I blame the good players who que in with the bad.
I've seen many of the same people who were posting pre-cata about the poor quality of raiding ability of the WoW community now complaining about the bad que/pugs as if they were blindsided by it.
It's like passing sign after sign saying the bridge is out up ahead and then taking a 30ft drop into the river wondering what happened to the bridge.
I see the same people who said the game should be more then end game contents...level to 85 within days/weeks and rush headlong into ques...thirsting for end game contents. bleh.
Blizz made an honest attempt to try to fix it...they revamped a broken leveling game and tried to entice players to go back down and enjoy the entire contents again. Seems like no one took the bait. Day after day we have people complaining about the ques/pug runs...these complainers are worse then players who repeatedly stand in fire.
I've been in the trenches leveling several classes and it's been a joy. Better yet, I've run into new players whose newbish questions are a refreshing change from the smart mouth numnuts at the top.
Just the other day I had a long conversation..with a level 15 explaining some ins and outs of the game. This person kept apologizing for asking one question after another, but I said "don't worry, I'll help if I can". After we were done that person was so grateful. Who knows...maybe a WoW friend in the making.
For all you pinheads at the top not in a privileged raiding guild all I can ask is "what are you doing up there?" Why don't you let the bads que and spit venom at each other until the point where the majority of them have left the game. My God, is a few months away from raiding really going to screw up your life?
Otherwise settle on the fact that bad has been rewarded again.
I was afraid of this...now I have to take a long look into whether I want to continue...really the only reason left to keep playing are the good friends I've made. Friggin shame. Comment by soccergenius Everybody sniping Pezz absolutely fails at reading comprehension. He never said anywhere those are HIS perceptions, it's his opinion on the entire LFD situation and the community's perception overall. I think he's spot on.

As someone who occasionally heals in LFD by myself, I welcome this change. And when I run my daily in a guild group (which I normally do), this doesn't affect me one bit. Getting 3 people in my LFD daily at 11:00pm local time, who have no business in a heroic (sub 6k dps/ sub 10k tps) is frustrating. Comment by bmtphoenix This is stupid. The difficulty curve going from heroics to raids is already immense...this will just make it worse. And, like others have said, what's the point? You'll still die to insta-kill stuff. All this will accomplish is making it easier for correctly geared people to carry incorrectly geared people leading to more entitled idiots in raids simply because they have gear.

Screw it, nerf the @#$% out of raids already if you're going to do crap like this. That's what the majority of the non-idiots are stuck on right now. Comment by soccergenius This is stupid. The difficulty curve going from heroics to raids is already immense...this will just make it worse. And, like others have said, what's the point? You'll still die to insta-kill stuff. All this will accomplish is making it easier for correctly geared people to carry incorrectly geared people leading to more entitled idiots in raids simply because they have gear.

Screw it, nerf the @#$% out of raids already if you're going to do crap like this. That's what the majority of the non-idiots are stuck on right now.Comment by Umega 15% doesn't seem a lot, I'm probably still gonna avoid heroics. Comment by lonewarrior 15% doesn't seem a lot, I'm probably still gonna avoid heroics.Comment by pezz Everybody sniping Pezz absolutely fails at reading comprehension. He never said anywhere those are HIS perceptions, it's his opinion on the entire LFD situation and the community's perception overall. I think he's spot on.nerfnerfedComment by Azrile My entire point is the problem in the beginning of Cata was just the sheer number of insta-kill abilities with bosses. It would be different if you walked into heroics and could see yourself failing at enrage sometimes etc.Comment by Agronok /sigh so much QQ, if you want hard mode try HC's with a non-random Group? the Buff adds 5% per random player found using the LFD tool SO if you want Hard mode just don't use that tool (Or get 4 people then use it to find one more, still get your points and the buff is only 5% instead of 10/15%) Comment by imjc Is blizzard killing their game?

Where are all the people against the cata difficulty? It seems a majority of people are actually for the diffuclty, yet blizzard cant stop nerfing. Where are the "whiners"?

One almost has to believe Blizzard is going against their customers on purpose. Comment by Pwntiff I like the difficulty, but there are some encounters that are just a little too hard without the ideal composition, which is something that Blizzard said they didn't want.

Examples: When we were first starting heroics, our group (at the time Prot Warrior, Rouge, Fury Warrior, Balance Druid, and random healer) couldn't down Springvale without kiting him away so the adds aren't part of the fight.

Also, did Beauty with a Rogue, a Lock, a Mage, a Prot Pally, and a Holy Priest. Was only possible after maintaining CC on two pups, killing the third pup, renewing at least twice during through the fight and popping (and procing) both Guardian Spirit and Ardent Defender twice each. Maybe we were doing something wrong, but that's still our roughest fight and the fear is only thing that screws us up. Comment by domplol this buff will help low lvls its not about endgame hc

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