Patch 5.4 - Flexible Raid Preview

Originally Posted by Kashii

I assume this is a way to test out a system that can eventually replace the 10/25 man fiasco that now exists. I understand why they dn't want to wholesale replace 10/25 normal/heroic w/o a lot of live "testing" but I hope they consider this is an eventual solution to this painful situation that now exists in raiding.

That's what I was thinking. I can see this being added to normal and heroic modes later, possibly renaming them something like maybe normal (current flexible), valorous (current normal), and heroic mode, and possibly removing the need for LFR all together.

Originally Posted by Nebria

but in reallity it could save them. often you read about the big problem in 25man is to handle the recruting. make sure to have enough people for raiding even if someone can't raid a night. then you have to find randoms or have to split the raid.
with a flex system you could raid with 22 man and have not to abandom somebody.
the big problem is in the heads of the players who think there can be only one true raid size of 25 people. that is the problem.

I agree that the mindset of "25 or bust" is a problem, along with the fact that a realm's activity is dependant on raid progression, specifically in normal and heroic modes. Because flex mode is a lower difficulty it may discourage 10man guilds from accommodating extra people, and keep a 25man guild from maintaining its roster by settling for flex mode on a consistent basis.

Originally Posted by xerus

Worst idea ever.

Here's how to improve it: remove 10 man normal, remove 25man normal, add flex size normal. Done.

Screw 4 ilvl tiers, 3 lockouts and 4 difficulties.

Maybe (probably?) next expansion. It's definitely a bad idea to remove difficulty levels in the middle of an expanion's progression, but flexibile difficulty based on how many players want to participate is definitely a great concept.

It means that guilds can progress with their players regardless of recruitment issues. It would also conceivably mean that they can raid multiple days without having to worry about their full group being able to participate the whole time.


Not that I really care -- I'm fine with LFR. Raiding has never appealed to me that much, and LFR is good enough for basic gearing and getting to see content.

Why do we need another gateway to normal raids..? Heroic dungeons were enough for entry level gear, and LFR can fill the ilvl gap for people catching up in later patches.

Now they can remove the LFR and this will be a new start in the right direction..form pugs in your server, socialize, be good player or at least try to be good player and do the content in a lower difficulty but not in a retarded difficulty...

I actually really like this and it seems like a pretty good compromise on what people have been talking about. I know at first the idea of a difficulty between lfr and normal didn't appeal to me but now it is kind of in part to the relaxed atmosphere this seems to carry along with the possibility to make some new friends in the process with this feature.

While I would like the possibility of having fewer than 10 people in the raid since a lot of raids got called off for this reason but I feel like blizz is going for a more social aspect with this.

Sooo they combined the lockouts of 10 and 25 because they didn't want people to feel the need to have to do both. Seems like we're just going back to that and calling it a different thing. I agree with xerus. Fuck 10 man. Fuck 25 man. Do flexible sizes and be done with it. It's a cool idea, but I think in it's currently form, it is being implemented poorly.

There may be some bosses quite hard to scale and decide at which point you cut "X adds" or "X mechanics". It comes handy for our guild, as we are usually having problems to fill 25 (between 21-25) and sometimes we disband and try to do two 10-man having to balance each raid and going nowhere as you can't put all good people in the same raid.

Interesting - maybe now the pugs will be alive again and i caon do run with alts and such. Too bad this happening only on the last patch of the expansion - i just hope it will be available also for old raids, just in case.

I find the "good, now they can remove LFR" comments funny. LFR is for people who like to play solo, like the convenience of a queuing system, or are on a dead realm with nobody to play with. The flex difficulty is for casual group play.

Anyways, I'm excited about it, I hate having a group bench people out of necessity.

Jesus, Let it Share ID with normal (and therefore heroic).

what a shitty announcement, blizzard is bad and should feel bad

It might sound interesting on paper, but it doesn't really solve problem, unless it is only 1st step of more changes.

4 difficulties/modes is a bit too much, there should be only 2 tbh, 1st - LFR, barely organized raiding, 2nd - organized raiding, which would follow preCata normals' scheme (easy start, tricky final boss/optional bosses) and add some more interesting activities (like more meaningful profession system) which wouldn't revolve around raiding (not pet battles, as they are meaningless as have no impact on character's development).

It basically puts normal mode in void place. Those who struggle with meeting raiding requirements for it, they won't have time for it with flex mode, those who don't struggle with normal reqs, but struggle with heroics, they don't actually bother much with normal, unless to get some gear, like normal raiders do with LFR/scenarios.

Oooooh, kewl new feature.

Now all they need is a way to find people without lurking in cities and spamming trade chat.

Originally Posted by FCJKSD3093

What happened to the "cutting edge" or "elite" system? Weren't they supposed to be new levels of difficulty for those not challenged enough by heroics?.

Aka not one guild in the world ?

Finely a feature worth waiting for.

This is a missing gal between serious raiding and casual stupidness i kinda be waiting for.

I got no serious time to join a raid group, got enough time to play wow but raid finder is to dull, plus been waiting to raid crossrealm with friends that are due time gone to different servers.

Ofcrouse i would been happy if they just allow normal raiding to be crossreal with lates content instead of everything but latest content.

Also in the past i had issues to many want to raid to do 10 to view want to raid for 25 this is the gap fixer.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It'll likely be free loot for any semi-organized group (and it'll have to be leniently tuned to make sure that any group size can do it) and I'm not sure how they expect healing to work. They'll likely just make it require 2 tanks all the time, but how will healers scale? Will you need a specific amount of healers based on your overall raid size, or will damage somehow be scaled to the amount of healers that you have?

The other potential concern is under-performing DPS. In LFR and even normal raids, a bad DPS is better than no DPS, but in this mode, kicking out an underperforming DPS will scale down the boss's health, and perhaps even damage. It'll either be so easy that it doesn't matter who is underperforming, or there'll be more motivation than ever before to just boot people out.

Anyway, this isn't something I've really been pining for. Maybe scaling sizes for regular raids, sure, but as an extra difficulty which is also easier? Not what I wanted, and probably not something I'll be using too often.

Perhaps they originally intended to apply this sort of scaling to normal/heroic raiding, but then decided to scale it back and make its own difficulty. It would explain why they hyped it up but then played it down.

Originally Posted by papajohn4

Now they can remove the LFR and this will be a new start in the right direction..form pugs in your server, socialize, be good player or at least try to be good player and do the content in a lower difficulty but not in a retarded difficulty...

There's always going to be a divide between those who can and cannot invest time to see content; the dungeon/raid finder exists for the latter. Even if the queue system is removed, you'll still have trouble finding raiders with the time and energy to participate because of realms with poor populations or communities, brought on by cross-realm access. And as more content is added, people will invest their time into different things, further shrinking the PuG pool. With flex mode being accessible via Real ID, it seems we're nearing the end of small-town server communities and the beginning of "globalized" gaming....or metropolized, there goes the neighborhood basically.

Originally Posted by Roujeaux

That's what I was thinking. I can see this being added to normal and heroic modes later, possibly renaming them something like maybe normal (current flexible), valorous (current normal), and heroic mode, and possibly removing the need for LFR all together.

Nothing removes the need for LFR. LFR exists because you can queue for it.

---------- Post added 2013-06-07 at 06:11 AM ----------

Originally Posted by FCJKSD3093

There's always going to be a divide between those who can and cannot invest time to see content; the dungeon/raid finder exists for the latter. Even if the queue system is removed, you'll still have trouble finding raiders with the time and energy to participate because of realms with poor populations or communities, brought on by cross-realm access. And as more content is added, people will invest their time into different things, further shrinking the PuG pool. With flex mode being accessible via Real ID, it seems we're nearing the end of small-town server communities and the beginning of "globalized" gaming....or metropolized, there goes the neighborhood basically.

Good riddance. Never liked those neighbourhoods.

didnt they share 10 man and 25 man cause ppl had too much bosses and raids to do, now we got 3 different lockouts, so now we got even more to do.