Patch 5.4 - Flexible Raid Preview
Patch 5.4 will add a a new raid difficulty:

  • Bring anywhere from 10 to 25 people to your raid and the difficulty will automatically scale.
  • Works with battletags, so you can bring friends from other realms.
  • Item level of loot is between Raid Finder and Normal and loot is awarded with the Raid Finder style loot system.
  • Separate lockout from Raid Finder and Normal, allowing you to do all three difficulties.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Raids in World of Warcraft have a long history of not just challenging players, but changing and evolving as the years and expansions go by. As with everything in the game, we’re always thinking about what more we can bring to raiding to improve the experience for an even wider range of players. While Normal and Heroic Raids are a great fit for many, we feel there’s another gap worth filling—and to that end, we’re currently working on the development of a new type of Raid for the next major content update: Flexible Raiding.

One Size Does Not Fit All
While it’s impossible to fit every player into a neat, tidy archetype, we recognize that we could be providing a better experience to one broad category of raider: social groups comprised predominantly of friends and family, and smaller guilds that do their best to include as many members in their Raid outings possible.

During the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the 10-player Normal difficulty served these groups of players pretty well, but the unification of 10-player and 25-player into a single difficulty effectively eliminated that niche. While Raid Finder mode is extremely accessible, it doesn’t provide smaller groups with a tight-knit social experience while progressing through the content. In Patch 5.4, we’re planning to introduce a new mode of raiding that allows us to deliver the sort of experience that we think these players are looking for.

/Flex
To fill this void, we’re in the process of developing a new Flexible Raid system, which includes a new difficulty that sits between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty, while still allowing friends, family, or pick-up groups to play together. This difficulty will be available for premade groups of 10–25 players, including any number in between. That means whether you have 11, 14, or 23 friends available for a Raid, they’ll all be able to participate.

The Flexible Raid system is designed so that the challenge level will scale depending on how many players you have in the Raid. So if you switch between 14 players one week and 22 the next, the difficulty will adjust automatically. Keep in mind that unlike Raid Finder, no matchmaking is available, so you’ll need to make sure you invite people to attend—but if some can’t make it, it’s not the end of the world (or the Raid). You’ll also still be able to invite Real ID or Battle.net friends cross-realm. Who you choose to bring and what Item Level gear they’ll need to join your merry band is up to you, too—there’s no Item Level requirement for this Raid difficulty.

Dressed to Kill
A new Raid difficulty also means a new Item Level. Flexible mode will award loot with an Item Level that falls between Raid Finder and Normal quality, and will use the Raid Finder’s “per person” loot system, specialization choices, and bonus rolls, so you won’t need to worry about bringing the “wrong” person and having them win that piece of gear you’ve long been waiting for.

You Have the Keys
We plan to unlock the Flexible Raid difficulty in wings, similar to Raid Finder, but on an accelerated timetable. This new difficulty also has a separate Raid lockout from Raid Finder and Normal difficulty, allowing you to take part in all three if you so desire. You’ll also be able to complete portions of your “Glory of the Orgrimmar Raider” raid meta- achievement in Flexible mode as well as in Normal or Heroic to earn cosmetic rewards such as an epic mount. This will allow Raid groups the opportunity to switch off nights between raids to complete achievements. Finally, taking part in Flexible, Normal, or Heroic difficulty will provide access to additional rewards that won’t be available in Raid Finder.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks
As with any in-development feature, we’re continuing to refine how the Flexible Raid system will work, and we look forward to hearing your constructive feedback from your experiences on the Public Test Realm when the new system goes live.
This article was originally published in forum thread: A Raid for All Seasons: Flexible Raid Preview started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 807 Comments
  1. Lil's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Moradim View Post
    the ilvl of gear is worse than normal or heroic.

    seems like a complete and utter waste of time.
    As long as you can get upgrades there in some slots, people will feel forced to do it. The majority of players probably will do LfR, flex and the first bosses of normal mode until they have normal gear in every slot.

    I wonder why this doesn't share a lockout with LfR since doing the same raid 3x per week (perhaps even on multiple chars) might burn you out fast.
  1. mmoc5a41dedfba's Avatar
    So.. Is my sub going to support these useless features? Time to quit again :\ .. Everytime I resub dreaming new features I see only PetBattles Changes and PvE useless Features (LFR, Scenarios and now Flexible), PvP is crap and it is worse from patch to patch.. 1.3 Milion of subs lost recently, think about it Blizz and change your Devs
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    but if this "Flexible" raid becomes the mandatory gear requirement before normal’s
    15% loot chance.... I seriously doubt that it'll be required. Maybe for some wannabe hardcores but not for normal raiding.
  1. mmoca169b55bb1's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Atrea View Post
    Yeah, this sounds really cool, but I think having fewer than 10 (say, a minimum of 6 or 7?) would be a good addition to this.

    Sometimes having only 8 or 9 people to raid is the reason some raid groups fall apart.
    Well, given that the difficulty is easier than normal, I wouldn't be surprised that you could probably do most of it with 8-9 people. Of course, it wouldn't scale down to be any easier, but probably wouldn't need to.

    Having it scale down to 6-7 wouldn't really make sense; most (but not all) boss mechanics require 2 tanks which would leave 4-5 spaces for healers and DPS; in order to make that viable the bosses health pools would have to be cut a fair bit. The alternative would be making it solotankable, which would be changing the raid entirely and therefore negating the point Flexiraid is all about.
  1. Cybran's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gordon View Post
    Your reasons are the reasons of a mind not capable of understanding that there is more for some people than winning at all costs (i. e. at the expense of playing with other douches instead of friends etc.) in a video game.
    Why bother playing if you want to be mediocre?
  1. sebastiansd's Avatar
    Yo dawg, I heard you liked additional tiers of raiding, so we put additional raiding into your additional raiding so you can raid even more. I'm hoping we get another tier of raiding between flexible, LFR, and Normal next.
  1. Gruffertus's Avatar
    This should also be useful for guilds wishing to test out new recruits, I'd think.
  1. nekobaka's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lil View Post
    As long as you can get upgrades there in some slots, people will feel forced to do it. The majority of players probably will do LfR, flex and the first bosses of normal mode until they have normal gear in every slot.

    I wonder why this doesn't share a lockout with LfR since doing the same raid 3x per week (perhaps even on multiple chars) might burn you out fast.
    Same reason why LFR doesnt share lockout with normal, it would reduce the pool of players doing LFR in particular experienced players that Blizzard relies on to help keep LFR running smooth and successful. Blizzard did the same thing back in Cata when 10 man players and those who couldnt full clear a 25 man had to do heroics to get cap.
  1. mmoc101213c0c0's Avatar
    "You’ll also be able to complete portions of your “Glory of the Orgrimmar Raider” raid meta- achievement in Flexible mode as well as in Normal or Heroic to earn cosmetic rewards such as an epic mount." Is this our long awaited fairy mount??
  1. mmocb1848b600a's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cybran View Post
    Why bother playing if you want to be mediocre?
    Fun? I know, a concept you don't understand either: Having fun while being mediocre.
  1. CrusaderNerò87's Avatar
    Waste of time and resources. Now lets sit back and wait for threads "Should there be another difficulty between flexible raid and normal mode?"

    This is gonna fire back at blizzard.
  1. GrieverXIII's Avatar
    /sigh, definitively not what i had hoped for. Lets split the community even more. Would had been a great replacement for LFR tough but one can only dream.
  1. Trinora's Avatar
    My guess it they will remove 10man all together in some future patch.
  1. Berri's Avatar
    Cool addition.
  1. mmoca812163483's Avatar
    So I assume that's the big unannounced feature? Not that bad actually. But I hoped they'd change the Normal (and maybe even Heroic, if it worked well for Normal) raids to work like that, not introduce yet another difficulty.
    For me it's still too late, guild problems and just the repetition of the game has nearly completely killed my interest in the game. I log in just to do the pet battle dailies because that's still a little fun, always cool pets to level to ... have them at max level ... yeah. And maybe do one Normal raid a week (stopped Heroic progression).
    My interest in WoW is close to dead and this won't change that. I'm pretty much only waiting for 5.4 to hit so I can do the Garrosh raid, just for story purposes. Once I defeated Garrosh, even if I have to do it just in LFR, I'll probably unsub.
  1. Elyara's Avatar
    Imba Go blizz <3
  1. Nelle's Avatar
    Make it SHARE loot with LFR, else people will gear up way too fast and your content will be too old too fast once again.
  1. Faladrath's Avatar
    Good way to catch more ppl into the raid scene and please the ppl who is under the assumption "normal is too hard for normal ppl" causel doesnt have to = bad at the game, but that's another story.

    Ppl complaining about it using the LFR system for loot is as per usual not keeping up or have a clue, bad roll protection = you will get more loot on average then you ever would from normal loot rules.

    It will have little to no effect on HC raiders, maybe more for normal raiders, depends if it's a guild that doesn't clear it on normal at all or if it's 3-4/X Hc in the end kind of guild<- pure speculation.
  1. mmocb1848b600a's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Trinora View Post
    My guess it they will remove 10man all together in some future patch.
    More like "they're going to remove 10m/25m normal and replace it with flexi normal". Makes much more sense, think about it.
  1. Hiddi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Clonan View Post
    This is a separate difficulty with lower item level. Unless your guild is really casual and looking for a lower difficulty - are you sure they would go for lesser gear just so that they can invite those extra people?

    I rather see this as a PuG thing, or for 25 man guilds that lacks raiders now and then and opts to raid for lesser gear instead of cancelling.

    It won't be used by 10 man guilds other than the ones that aren't doing well in normals, or where the leaders are "too nice".
    I come from a hardcore raiding background, I joined some RL friends in a super casual guild after a break due to a car accident. This guild has some serious derps in it. There's one group of us that can and do progress, but we rarely get together because the officers try to give everyone a chance to raid. So if I have to take a few item level drops to consistantly raid, then yes, I'm all for it.

    This way my progression group can raid on a different night than "guild raid nights", and we can still have "guild raids". Even though we're all in the same guild. The real raiders and the people there just because they're 90 and have some god given right to raid without knowing their class have to be mixed currently because the GM wants to be "fair".

    I say again. This is good. We can satisfy the derps. And I can finally get some serious progression done instead of the stars aligning and all the real raiders finally getting grouped together for one night every few weeks with the way our guilds current "raid system" works.

    It's late and I just took my meds I hope that makes sense.

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