To the people saying flex should share a lockout with normal or LFR...

[Madruga]

People used to look up to the raiders. Others were working through TK while the big guilds were finishing BT. It was all really amazing.

BUT, the playerbase has gotten used to being able to enter new raids at the same time as the hard core raiders and taking that away would be a pretty massive blow. I would argue that even us who would love the tBC system back would in fact loathe it if we really did go back to it though I of course can't speak for everyone.

This is exactly the current situation of raiding.

In the beginning, the bulk of the game was experiencing the world and leveling. Very few people actually had interest in raiding. Some of them didn't even know this existed and would be satisfied with only exploring every corner, creating new characters and, at most, playing dungeons.

But as with every game, WoW also gets old, and then people want to try new things. Interest in raiding began to pick up in TBC, the very one people claim to be "exclusive" and such. People wanted to get to BT, since Illidan is such a loved character. And many of them did! Mostly thanks to nerfs, farming easier bosses for months and getting gear from badges or Magister, but they did.

And coming Wrath, EVERYONE wanted to raid. Trying to raise the bar in Cataclysm again did a massive blow to the playerbase, and Blizzard realized there was no turning back... They had to make content available, or subs would bleed (and money along with it).

And yes, I truly believe we would hate the TBC system if we experienced it nowadays.

[Ryve]

Patience, Flex raiding is just a step, mere test, rest assured that in Xpac 5 you can do norm/heroic with flex-mechanics.

OT: Blizzard has already made a few good changes to not make LFR feel a must for heroic mode raiders(be it you down 5, 10 or full clear in the tier).

The First change was that the Legendary quest line item drop rates were shared across difficulties in ToT, so if you did LFR the first thing on Tuesday/Wednesday morning, you wouldn't get any in the main raid in the evening.

Currently what they planned Flex iLvl to be, was about 535? Top end guilds will ingore it because it's released maybe 2 weeks after patch release(1 week of HC kills are done by top guilds) AND Heroic ToT gear is 543 or 549, that is, with 2/2 upgrades which you should have easily by now on all of your gear.

Dragon Soul was an exception, where people dropped their Heroic gear from Firelands in favor of the overpowered Tank set bonuses that each gave the raid a CD. But I see no set bonuses of this caliber coming.

TL;DR: Top end raiders already have better gear than LFR/Flex will drop.

That sounds awfully hypothetical. Aside from that, it'll mean a 25 man guild will just bench non FOTM DPS and 15 man it. They might be fine with that in flex, but it will be a matter for contention in the world first race, and Blizzard needs the race to keep the game in the international gaming spotlights.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Went from Wrath where 10 and 25 was seperated, people complained that they had to do both to get the most out of their character. Blizzard listned and made 10 and 25 share lockout, now they're going full retard back on their ass having 10/25 share lockout but LFR seperate and bringing in ANOTHER seperate difficulty...
I know I'm not forced to do LFR or Flex, I'm still going to have to do them to get 4 set bonus asap. At the very least they could've made LFR and Flex share loot "ban" or whatever you call it, once you kill a boss you can't recieve loot from it again... this whole deal with trying to please absolutely everyone is getting way out of hand, yes it's a minority that's gonna feel obligated to do everything to ensure they pull their own weight in hardcore raiding but how isn't that a concern?
Either leave LFR and Flex locked for 2 weeks and have it only release 3-4 bosses per week or make LFR/Flex tiers come frome some other crap. Ever since LFR was introduced in DS guild have expected their players to do LFR for tier bonuses, wonder why the game is bleeding subscribers? People get TIRED of going over the same bosses 2-3 times per week. I gave up having a raiding geared alt because of this, it's work enough having to do LFR on my main every patch for several weeks...

[Kaleredar]

Went from Wrath where 10 and 25 was seperated, people complained that they had to do both to get the most out of their character. Blizzard listned and made 10 and 25 share lockout, now they're going full retard back on their ass having 10/25 share lockout but LFR seperate and bringing in ANOTHER seperate difficulty...
I know I'm not forced to do LFR or Flex, I'm still going to have to do them to get 4 set bonus asap. At the very least they could've made LFR and Flex share loot "ban" or whatever you call it, once you kill a boss you can't recieve loot from it again... this whole deal with trying to please absolutely everyone is getting way out of hand, yes it's a minority that's gonna feel obligated to do everything to ensure they pull their own weight in hardcore raiding but how isn't that a concern?
Either leave LFR and Flex locked for 2 weeks and have it only release 3-4 bosses per week or make LFR/Flex tiers come frome some other crap. Ever since LFR was introduced in DS guild have expected their players to do LFR for tier bonuses, wonder why the game is bleeding subscribers? People get TIRED of going over the same bosses 2-3 times per week. I gave up having a raiding geared alt because of this, it's work enough having to do LFR on my main every patch for several weeks...

"Hey, dude, we need someone to fill in our Flex mode run, wanna come along?"

"Sorry, I did LFR earlier this week"

"oh, sorry dude. You shouldn't do it next week just in case we might need to fill another spot."


Gettin' it?

If LFR and Flex shared the same LOOT QUALITY, then by all means, put them on the same lockout.

But they don't. Meaning that someone can erstwhile screw themselves over out of BETTER loot by running LFR.

[Aquamonkey]

"Hey, dude, we need someone to fill in our Flex mode run, wanna come along?"

"Sorry, I did LFR earlier this week"

"oh, sorry dude. You shouldn't do it next week just in case we might need to fill another spot."


Gettin' it?

If LFR and Flex shared the same LOOT QUALITY, then by all means, put them on the same lockout.

But they don't. Meaning that someone can erstwhile screw themselves over out of BETTER loot by running LFR.

Well, just to pick nits... Even if they were on the same lockout, they'd only be locked to loot. Flex and LFR are not boss-locked. You can run them as many times in a week as you want.

[Deleted]

Patience, Flex raiding is just a step, mere test, rest assured that in Xpac 5 you can do norm/heroic with flex-mechanics.

OT: Blizzard has already made a few good changes to not make LFR feel a must for heroic mode raiders(be it you down 5, 10 or full clear in the tier).

The First change was that the Legendary quest line item drop rates were shared across difficulties in ToT, so if you did LFR the first thing on Tuesday/Wednesday morning, you wouldn't get any in the main raid in the evening.

Currently what they planned Flex iLvl to be, was about 535? Top end guilds will ingore it because it's released maybe 2 weeks after patch release(1 week of HC kills are done by top guilds) AND Heroic ToT gear is 543 or 549, that is, with 2/2 upgrades which you should have easily by now on all of your gear.

Dragon Soul was an exception, where people dropped their Heroic gear from Firelands in favor of the overpowered Tank set bonuses that each gave the raid a CD. But I see no set bonuses of this caliber coming.

TL;DR: Top end raiders already have better gear than LFR/Flex will drop.

Flex is intended for people who cannot handle normal but want a premade group experience. Flex raiding will only work in its current form because any minor difficulty changes due to the number of people won't have an effect on the people running it, they won't be minmaxing numbers to put everything in their favor, They will take the content and consume it, likely only taking a few wipes to down it.

Put flex raiding in a heroic environment and that all changes, every variable will be analyzed and theorycrafted to create the easiest possible solution, this leads to consistently dropping and adding people in and out of the group solely for the purpose of making it as easy as possible.

If all bosses require 11-17 people in order to be done "effectively" and only one boss requires 19, Do you really want to get benched every week for only one kill?

And no, Datamined trinkets have proved to be extremely valuable. Treckie, Paladin Tank for Method is quoted(paraphrasing from memory) on the legendary Podcast as saying that they will be forced to farm flex for the trinkets if the world first race lasts until its release, and main characters could be benched in the favor of alts if one drops and it proves to be as valuable as people have theorycrafted

[Anonymitylol]

I bet you're the same type of person who complained that dailies felt required for you, yet here you are telling people who raid that it's optional to do multiple raids.

[GrieverXIII]

It should def share lockout with LFR since its basically aimed at the same playerbase, just like normal and heroic share the same lockout.

[artem123]

It should def share lockout with LFR since its basically aimed at the same playerbase, just like normal and heroic share the same lockout.

More or less this. Seriously
Heroic is that extra step for normal raiders.
Flex would be a extra step up for LFR raiders, but ones that cant put as much time to do normals.

[Trubo]

My only complaint with Flex is that it uses the loot model of LFR rather than normal/heroic but I see how trying to get loot drops to scale with the amount of people would be a headache/abused heavily.

[Deleted]

If LFR and Flex shared the same LOOT QUALITY, then by all means, put them on the same lockout.

But they don't. Meaning that someone can erstwhile screw themselves over out of BETTER loot by running LFR.

Yeah. Just look at normal and heroic. They share lockout but they give you the exact same loot.

Wait... what?

I think if Blizzard were releasing WoW today, there would be no 10/25 split and every raid would be Flexi, so you'd just have LFR (25... or maybe flexi even), NM (flexi) and HM (flexi). But they have to accomodate the existing playerbase so it's a bit messy.

Yeah... no.

I see so many people saying that they wish normal and heroic would turn into flexible modes instead without even realising the effects of it.

Normal and heroic raids will never be in a flexible mode. It would just not work. Just imagine all the balance nightmares. Flex works when the content is easier, but if you have to tune hard content, like heroics, that simply would not work for a flexible lockout, it is hard enough to tune boss fights for 10/25 people. Imagine tuning boss fights for 10, 13, 16, 18, 21, 24 and 25 people etc. Blizzard would have to tune the bosses for 15 different raid sizes instead of 2. Simply never going to happen.

The only environment flex can exist in is an environment where the raid is so easy that when you tune it you dont really have to care on how you tune it.
As long as it is easy on 13 and easy on 18 players it is fine.

[mistahwilshire]

TBC was and still is the best raiding model WoW has ever had.

Yea, so rewarding for the developers to spend so much time making stuff that practically no one ever saw. That's a great business model.

[Tehterokkar]

And no, Datamined trinkets have proved to be extremely valuable. Treckie, Paladin Tank for Method is quoted(paraphrasing from memory) on the legendary Podcast as saying that they will be forced to farm flex for the trinkets if the world first race lasts until its release, and main characters could be benched in the favor of alts if one drops and it proves to be as valuable as people have theorycrafted

That's why they are DATAMINED, the trinkets will have 6 different bases: LFR, Flex, Normal, Normal-TF, Heroic, Heroic-TF. It might be that the trinkets that were datamined were not even close to what Blizzard wants, 84% increased Haste, Mastery and Crit damage for 20 seconds? Hello!?

I assume it's not like 20% Mastery + 84%(totaling 104%), and is 20%*1.84 = 36.8. Checking my Hunter(best geared, most 2ndary stats, same principle applies):
+22.8% Haste
+13.5% Mastery

Crit damage is a bit different, but at 31.58% Crit with just Flask(from last raid still on), my crits(crit chance goes to 50% with current procs) doing 84% more damage... yeah right..

Calm your goddamn tits until the FINAL numbers are released, Hunters already shat their pants when the tier bonuses were first released, 2pc was truly worthless and it got adjusted to being mediocre.

[Aquamonkey]

Yea, so rewarding for the developers to spend so much time making stuff that practically no one ever saw. That's a great business model.

Why do you care about what's rewarding for the developer vanity?

[Kaleredar]

Well, just to pick nits... Even if they were on the same lockout, they'd only be locked to loot. Flex and LFR are not boss-locked. You can run them as many times in a week as you want.

Well, think... are most people going to run flex that week for nothing but the life experience, then?

Yeah. Just look at normal and heroic. They share lockout but they give you the exact same loot.

Wait... what?

Normal and heroic =/= LFR and flex.

[Mormolyce]

Well, just to pick nits... Even if they were on the same lockout, they'd only be locked to loot. Flex and LFR are not boss-locked. You can run them as many times in a week as you want.

True but that would be even weirder, you'd avoid LFR like the plague until you'd done Flex for the week or feel like you'd screwed yourself.

[Kaleredar]

True but that would be even weirder, you'd avoid LFR like the plague until you'd done Flex for the week or feel like you'd screwed yourself.

It'd be an underhanded way to slow down people's progress through LFR, that's for sure... just need to make them so paranoid about gimping themselves they'd hardly ever run it.

[lawow74]

It should def share lockout with LFR since its basically aimed at the same playerbase, just like normal and heroic share the same lockout.

Nah, the server hamsters need their steady diet of special snowflake tears from 'real' raiders 'forced' to do LFR. Now get back to carrying people, slave! *whipcrack* ;D

[Heladys]

Time to just straight-up remove lockouts, and watch the hardcores run until they die. We can even put bets on it.

[Mormolyce]

Went from Wrath where 10 and 25 was seperated, people complained that they had to do both to get the most out of their character. Blizzard listned and made 10 and 25 share lockout, now they're going full retard back on their ass having 10/25 share lockout but LFR seperate and bringing in ANOTHER seperate difficulty...

Yes but your chosen flavour of raid will drop the highest ilvl gear for you - back in Wrath if you were a 10m guild you had to pug to get the better 25m gear (ie, do two runs per week). Whereas a 25m guild got the best gear in their normal run for the week and doing 10m was purely optional - if you didn't have many slots where the 10m loot was useful you'd probably skip it.

Now every raider is in the old 25m position - you do 10 or 25 with your main guild, and then if you feel like it you can do Flex or LFR for some off-pieces, or to help friends, or whatever. Optional.

The idea of Flex is to facilitate pugging - ie for people who don't raid NM or HM on any difficulty right now, and miss the old pug runs from previous expansions (which still happen but less these days). For those guys they will likely get their best gear from Flexi, but should they get offered a NM run, they can still do it and get better gear. And if they want, they can do LFR in their spare time for some weaker gear for certain slots.

And of course there are some people who don't want the hassle of joining a raiding guild OR a pug, and for them LFR is their raid style of choice.