I know majority of players dont raid but I dont see why the people who do raid are now being punished. To me the game just seems to be moving away from raiding. I will try not to make this too drawn out but theres a few points Id like to hit on.
First of all why cant Blizzard accept that theres different levels of skill and commitment people are willing to put into raids. Not everyone is going to be in a cutting edge guild with complete mastery of their class. During Vanilla and TBC there were raids designed around that. I didnt raid much during Vanilla so I will just discuss TBC. The lesser geared people started out doing Gruul/Mags/Kara, then moved into SSC/TK, then into Hyjal,BT, and finally Sunwell. Also you had ZA as well. But the great thing is none of those raids were ever made obsolete by heroics like raids are today. People raided Kara until the day Wrath went live for example.
What was so wrong with progression raiding? I know the main thing was having to get new recruits attuned as well as people guild hopping to guilds doing higher tiers but if they did away with attunements but still had gear progression would people be for that? I mean theres always going to be drops that no one needs so gearing recruits shouldnt take that long when they can pick up they stuff that would otherwise get DE'd.
But today it just feels like Blizzard is almost trying to get rid of raiding altogether. They have combined 10/25 man lockouts which has basically killed 25 man raiding. Even during Wrath most raids I did were 25 mans. I hardly ever did 10 mans unless it was for gearing a new alt in order to do 25 mans. Also during each patch they make the previous raids 100% useless. You can argue "Well they are still there nothing is preventing you from doing them" Actually there is something preventing you its called no one bothers when easy mode 5 mans offer better gear. Why raid BoT or BWD for 359s when in 20 mins you can finish a HoT and get 378s?
Also JPs/VPs should not be rewarded for completing 5 mans. JPs should drop from lower tier raids and VPs should drop from higher tier raids. So you farm lower raids until you are geared to start the higher ones. Which brings me to another point. Why do we even need multiple difficulties of the same raid? Does Blizzard think that that means theres more content or something? 3 difficulties of Dragon Soul is not 3 raids just to let you know. Just have lower tiers act as normal modes and be the entry level raids and as people get geared they move into higher tier raids which are harder. I dont see why we need 3 difficulties for each raid (Hard, Normal, and lolz free loot).
Also if you dont raid you shouldnt care about anything that I proposed because it doesnt relate to your playstyle. Like I said raiders are only a small % of the total WoW population so I dont see how people who dont raid would get mad over some small changes that make raiding better and more fun. Also if you dont raid why do you fell the need to be walking around in raid quality gear? During Cata people who never raided should still be in 346 heroic gear as we speak and not 378s and with 397 VP gear. Someone who spent a lot of time clearing Firelands should not see some scrub walking around in the same level of gear because he can do HoTs. Why do you need gear that you wont ever use?
TLR: New raiding system sucks. We have no actual gear progression anymore. We dont need multiple difficulties of the same raid we just need easy raids that progress into harder raids as we get geared for them. We need 10 and 25 man guilds again with 10 man raids dropping lower quality loot and 25 mans dropping better loot. No one enjoys doing the same raid for 6-8 months with no other alternatives why cant we have 2-3 raids per tier?