The new raid lockout system is a pain.

[Gogetaex]

Let's face it. Blizzard thinks that this is practically the end of Wrath of the Lich King, if you didn't get everything you want by now, sucks to be you. It's over, and you've had ample time to kill everything that you want to kill.
However, they don't take into account that not everyone is satisfied with that, and yes, I know it's impossible to please everyone. But in all honesty, who are they pleasing by implementing the new raid system now? Not me, certainly. I was working on H LK 10m for the longest time with a group of incredibly good friends of mine, whereas my 25m isn't "GREAT" but still relatively fun, and we're 7/12 H ICC 25. They're my guild, I go with them above having fun working on H LK in 10m. I miss it : \. I really do.

[Torako]

Ok everyone here that is bitching about heroic 25 mans for Cata you are forgetting one very important thing from Blizzcon and that is they want you to be able to finish a raid zone in ONE night. So stop bitching about not possibly getting enough people for the 2nd night 'cause Blizzard's new design is there will be no 2nd night. Multiple nights will be when you are learning fights - so do the learning on normal mode.

[llDemonll]

the point is so you can't ez-mode through some bosses and switch to 10-man and ezmode through those and then switch back, etc., etc

normal, do it all you want, if you're doing heroic then dont cry about it and learn the new fights. the new system is there for a reason, not to just piss everyone off

[davesurfer]

I think Blizzard did it so cutting edge guilds can't switch between 10 man HC and 25 man HC for different bosses while progressing since inevitably some 10 man bosses are gonna be easier than their 25 man counterparts and vice versa.

Yeah I am guessing you are right on target!! People will figure out which is easier on which mode. This will impact the race to be near the top.

I agree so much. Yay for having to have multiple max levels to raid with my guild and then with casual old time friends. People will raid just as much they are just making it so you have to level more characters to do so..

Yeah I see this as an issue too, so I will end up having a 25 man "Main" and a 10 man "Main." We have a 10 man that has been the set group and set times/days since Naxx. We are still running now doing stupid stuff/achieves we never did before. We might even raid while leveling. 4 or 5 of them have conflicts with our 25 man raid schedule, so they do 25 mans unless we need a filler when someone leaves and they have logged on late in the night.

So I will be doing 10 mans with this group as they are always reliable. That means I need another tank for 25 man. I have many tanks at 80, so that is not an issue, but I see defining a true main might cause drama. hmmm

[Malleus]

Ok everyone here that is bitching about heroic 25 mans for Cata you are forgetting one very important thing from Blizzcon and that is they want you to be able to finish a raid zone in ONE night. So stop bitching about not possibly getting enough people for the 2nd night 'cause Blizzard's new design is there will be no 2nd night. Multiple nights will be when you are learning fights - so do the learning on normal mode.

OK, Sparky - tell us exactly how you plan to learn a fight like Putricide or LK heroic in normal mode.

[Blitzkrieg Says]

I like the new system. With my 10 man guild we do heroic ICC, and I don't have to do ICC25 just to stay competitive with my gear. When cataclysm ships it will work out even better.

And there's no difference if you're doing 25 man. You aren't forced to raid ICC10 just to keep up your gear level with everyone else.

I'll admit the current system is a little out of whack because it wasn't designed for this raid environment. But all I see in this thread is "WAHHHH CHANGE I DON'T LIKE IT!". Wait for Cataclysm, I think it will work beautifully there. If you don't want to wait, go find a nother game for a month.

[Tripping]

If your guilds wernt terrible, you could just do it all on 25 heroic? it isnt hard

[BadCarma]

I think Blizzard did it so cutting edge guilds can't switch between 10 man HC and 25 man HC for different bosses while progressing since inevitably some 10 man bosses are gonna be easier than their 25 man counterparts and vice versa.

spot on imo

[reprive]

OKAY, does anyone else agree with me that if you already killed a boss you should be able to re-run it as many times as you want just get no loot, exp and other stuff

[Gilgemesh]

They will drop the same loot and be "near" the same difficulty. The reason behind this change in the flexible lockout system is simple.... The best guilds would bust a group down from 25h to 10h and take their 10 very best geared people to kill that boss, then swap back to 25h for the next boss. They would be sidestepping guild progression by dropping the lowest geared players for mechanics they weren't ready for. It appears blizzard wants guilds to do runs together and not toss out their bottom 15 every time they hit a hard spot.

[wizdro]

OKAY, does anyone else agree with me that if you already killed a boss you should be able to re-run it as many times as you want just get no loot, exp and other stuff

That would be exceedingly useful, but would be far too self-aware of the genre, and would quickly become as ubiquitous as that old Gearscore addon used to be for judging and preparing new raiders. Overall, a bad idea.

Maybe one alternative would be shortening the raid-lockouts for old tiers, particularly old expansions.

[Evolixe]

Yea my guild has been having similar issues. We have problems with random raid members getting saved to a different 25 heroic instance than the rest of the raid when switching between heroic and normal.
So we do Marrowgar on heroic and then switch to normal for deathwhisper. When we switch back to heroic for lootship it wont let us. Saying that 3-4 people are saved to a different heroic instance, when those people have been in the raid the entire time.

I don't think the system is working as intended. Atleast, I hope it isn't.

It got even more awkward with a raid i did with some friends just 3 days ago..:

So we 1shotted the first 4 bosses on heroic. Wiped on some thrash before festergut because of a bad pull (ye lol). Some people rezzed alive at the graveyard.. not letting them in because "You are not a kingslayer so no heroic 4 u" (i didnt accually have this problem myself but they said something similar to that )

So we changed it to normal to allow people to get inside. Damn.. thrash respawned.. oh well clearing it again. Arrived at the boss we wanted to set it to heroic again.. "You are already locked to a different heroic instance". WTF? We didnt even kill a boss on normal, what the *** is the problem? But no.. we had to do the rest of the stuff on normal if we wanted to get it cleared at all..

GG for a semi-working lockout system that is seriousely flawed. Those heroic restrictions are weird and pointless anyway.

[runefire32]

I did read the post and understand their reasoning behind it, but it still poses a problem. Preventing guilds from raiding content that's both challenging and rewarding in terms of gear simply because they happen to lack sign-ups for a continutation of a 25-man heroic raid is what this system was supposed to prevent... But it's honestly doing the opposite. Instead of allowing us more flexible raiding it actually prevents us from raiding challenging things.

It was not specifically designed to prevent a group doing 25 heroics from not having enough people to continue 25 man heroics and not being able to continue. It -was- designed so that people doing 25 mans who didn't get enough people could still finish the raid in one fashion or another. Never once did they state that you'd be able to go from 25 heroics down to 10 man heroics. Just that you'd be able to split the raid if you didn't get enough people back.

Granted I don't like the system because of the whole heroic locks working different, so picking someone up because they didn't show up is a pain, but thats the way it is so I deal.

The thing is I at least realize what the intent was and the intent is accomplished with it. If you don't have enough people to continue at your current size, you can still finish the raid. It might not be at the same level you were doing, but you can still get your full clear done, try the optionals, get the points and such.

Is it a disappointment you can't downgrade down to 10 man heroics from 25 man heroics? Only a little. If you can't get the 25 people to consistently show up maybe you shouldn't be doing them on 25 man in the first place. As blizzard has stated, they want you to do heroics with the same group period end of story.

If you want to do 25 man heroics, get a solid 25 man crew together who shows up, and a few alternates, learn how to schedule 25 people, and rock out. Otherwise, go do 10 mans. Why? Because if you know you aren't going to complete the thing in one night, you probably know you're going to continue. If you know you're going to continue, you can talk to people and schedule the continuations before hand to see if you'll be able to do it. If people aren't going to be around, and you want to continue to do heroic only, you know right up front where you stand.

Part of the whole reason you can't do this is so you don't do the 25 man heroic, then drop to 10, stack one group to power through and so on and so forth. Its there to be flexible enough to let you actually finish even if you don't have enough people. And it is flexible to do that. No its not flexible enough to let you swap to heroic and there are reasons for that that I've stated and others have. But it guarantees you that you can finish clearing the raid.

[Frolk]

"oh noes, no more free heroic loot" , either go 10man or 25man, ITS NOT ment to be easy to get "heroic" loot.

[jearle]

The system is tough right now with it still being WOTLK. I think in Cata it will be flexible and very useful to a majority of players.

I currently run a casual raiding guild on my server and our attendance numbers range from 18 people on to 35 people online. In a situation like mine the flexible raid lockout works out really well.

Scheduled raid on Wed - filled with 25 go in and kill 2/7 bosses
Scheduled raid on Thursday - 18 people show up pick a useful 10 and work on bosses 3 thru 7
Next time we get 25 on we can work on where we left off in any of the raids.

Heroic 25 to 10 man switching kinda stinks but I can see the potential exploitation.

[Simon_Moon]

The Top guilds will use every opportunity to race for world first whatever. Incredible complicated raid coms, they have them. Special Professions needed, they level them, limited attempts, they form alt runs as good as the main. So I see this is neccesary.

But I have a question: This week we started our heroic 10 man group with a new warrior, who had to be replaced on deathwhisper due to horrible connection problems. We replaced him and cleared 10/12. We put him in our Alt run because everyone was fine with skipping marrowgar. After some some tries we managed to get everyone into the same instance but when they reached gunship they realized they could not change the diffculty back to heroic. No one else in the group was saved to icc before the raid.

Is this working as intended???

I read the finish a dungeon in one night stuff, but there is always burning cats, failing computers, angry girlfriends whatsoever. So if I am doing heroic BWD on Tuesday getting 5/6 and one person from the group is going on vacation the next day. The other nine people are forced to do normal, no matter who they bring as replacement?