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Siege of Orgrimmar Raid Schedule
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
With the release of Patch 5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar, four wings of an expansive new raid will begin to open. The Normal and Heroic raid difficulties, Raid Finder wings, and the new-to-5.4 Flexible mode wings will each be available starting from different dates.

To access the new Raid Finder wings, you’ll need a minimum average Item Level (ilvl) of 496 or higher.

This is our current schedule based on the planned patch release date of September 10. If we determine any changes are needed, we’ll update this article.

September 10 – Patch 5.4 Release
  • Normal
  • Flex Wing 1 “Vale of Eternal Sorrows”

September 17
  • Heroic (Normal Garrosh kill required)
  • Flex Wing 2 “Gates of Retribution”
  • Raid Finder Wing 1 “Vale of Eternal Sorrows”

September 24
  • Raid Finder Wing 2 “Gates of Retribution”

October 1
  • Flex Wing 3 “The Underhold”

October 8
  • Raid Finder Wing 3 “The Underhold”

October 15
  • Flex Wing 4 “Downfall”

October 22
  • Raid Finder Wing 4 “Downfall”
This article was originally published in forum thread: Siege of Orgrimmar Raid Schedule started by chaud View original post
Comments 351 Comments
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by But I Hate You All View Post
    Nope got it from your old sig and there is no reason to be upset that I pointed out you seem pretty Causal your self but hey don't let me interrupt your whining about people whining

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    What Il is the Timeless isle stuff

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    Timeless island mobs all have a chance to drop 496 tokens. You can also earn, or get as rare drops, an item that upgrades those 496 items to 535.

    Since most LFR people from TOT probably have an ilvl of about 520 right now, that is a nice upgrade, and even higher than SoO LFR gear. There are no weapons, and I think only 1 trinket, and also no set bonuses.. but still it is a lot of good upgrades, especially if you are replacing a 502 item from LFR.

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    Quote Originally Posted by But I Hate You All View Post
    Meh as someone said earlier "oh i guess it looks like I will be only re-subbing on the 22th of October". Blizzard already said Gating was added to LFR because Raiders in raiding keep saying they are forced to do lfr.
    Quote where Blizzard said that.

    In fact, they said the exact opposite today ( read blue posts above). They said that LFR and Flex are gated to make them more comparable to how people raid normal. Except for world first guilds, most people take many weeks or months to get to the final boss.
  1. Robert3620's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    The problem has reached an acute stage this time.

    First, LFR allows anyone to "see the content" quickly. If you want to, you'll be able to kill the end boss of the expansion on Oct 22, six weeks after the tier is released.

    Now, DS was like this, but in DS there was still an expectation that people would advance on to higher raid modes. But with MoP, we've had an entire expansion of people being ok with just doing LFR. Do they have any motivation to get back into the guild raiding scene? I sure don't. Heirlooms from Garrosh have zero motivating effect for me.

    Blizzard is just about betting the farm that lots of these people will want to advance to Flex. If they don't, the whole tail end of this expansion will collapse like a house of cards.

    And something else...

    I enter every expansion with a finite supply of give-a-damn. MoP, for some reason, has been burning it unusually rapidly. I have very little care left for what happens in the expansion. The ersatz reward scheme of pretty purple pixels with incrementally larger numbers has lost its allure. The idea of reaching my own personally defined endpoint and saying "done!" is looking more and more attractive.
    Let's not forget the fact that most the social and lower tier guilds flex is aimed at is now gone already. LFR raiders are going to have a real problem finding those guilds to allow them to try to progress into other modes if they even wanted to. Flex should of came out at the start of the expansion. Now it's just going to be too little, too late.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dextar View Post
    Pretty sure you're completely disconnected from raiding with Flex. You aren't just going to be able to show up and raid you're still going to have to follow a schedule with the other people, nothing changes as far as missing weeks. The only nice thing is you can add and remove people but I'll tell you, if you don't have enough healers you will not just be able to run with whomever you want and you'll be stuck with having people sit outside.

    You say you haven't raided since vanilla, it sounds to me like you were left with a terrible experience and a bad raid leader/GM. People have lives, we have people miss but we have the roster to replace them but obviously those with higher attendance get priority but it doesn't mean you're booted from the guild. You can argue scheduling is the issue all you want but flex still comes with many of the issues that you are complaining about. Quit making excuses and trying to justify them.
    If you have a 25M or a 10M raid, then you have people on standby. You have to. So basically every week you are telling someone to be online at an exact time, and then telling them they aren´t coming. I know this is normal everyday stuff for raiders, but it sucks.

    Flex raiding requires 2 tanks and 2 healers until you get up to about 14 total, then you will need 3 healers. The power of the boss scales regressively, meaning the 10th dps is not expected to do as much dps as the 9th., the same is true of boss damage.

    Yeah, you are still going to want your tanks to show up every week, and 2 of your healers.. but after that, there isn´t much stress on people who miss.
  1. But I Hate You All's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    Timeless island mobs all have a chance to drop 496 tokens. You can also earn, or get as rare drops, an item that upgrades those 496 items to 535.

    Since most LFR people from TOT probably have an ilvl of about 520 right now, that is a nice upgrade, and even higher than SoO LFR gear. There are no weapons, and I think only 1 trinket, and also no set bonuses.. but still it is a lot of good upgrades, especially if you are replacing a 502 item from LFR.

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    Quote where Blizzard said that.

    In fact, they said the exact opposite today ( read blue posts above). They said that LFR and Flex are gated to make them more comparable to how people raid normal. Except for world first guilds, most people take many weeks or months to get to the final boss.
    Sure


    Originally Posted by Taepsilum
    Hello my fellow non-murloc creatures of Azeroth,

    Please allow me to chip in with a few updated bits of information about LFR, I hope that you view this as an improvement and a step in the right direction over the current version of LFR. We do hear you and your feedback is seriously taken into consideration each time we decide to apply any change to the game.

    We know that competitive players seem to dislike the idea of having to go through LFR to get some upgrades and that some will always go there as long as there is any chance at all of getting the slightest competitive advantage from it.

    Of course we would prefer that LFR wasn’t part of the progression path for guilds that are raiding normal/heroic content, and so we have made some additional adjustments for the next iteration of LFR, for example:

    - Currently we have two separate item levels in LFR, items from the last 2 encounters have a level of 390, while the rest have 384, this made the LFR gear from Deathwing a bit too attractive for just about everyone, including hardcore raiders, so we’ve decided that this needed to be changed for MoP.

    Our initial intention was that this difference would work as a special reward for beating such difficult encounters but that didn’t really translate in LFR since those encounters don’t have a difficulty that is relevant enough for this reward to be warranted.

    Basically our intention for MoP is that if we decide to give a slight bump and increase the loot table ilvl of end bosses, that same bump won’t be applied to LFR but only to normal/heroic modes.

    - While the LFR gear from a new tier will continue to be slightly better than the normal difficulty items from the previous tier, we’ll structure the power level of future tiers’ LFR loot so that it doesn’t replace Heroic gear from the previous raid, and we’re continuing to discuss other solutions internally to limit the pressure for competitive raiders to run LFR.

    - We’ve also made a slight change on how Terrace of Endless Spring and Heart of Fear are going to roll out. These two raids will still be split into three separate queues for LFR, but we no longer plan to release them all on the same day, instead, we’ll unlock one queue each week. We hope that by the time all of the bosses are available in LFR, organized raiders will have had two full weeks to work on normal difficulty and one week for Heroic difficulty.

    While I don’t expect this to completely stop raiding guilds from feeling some need to go into LFR, I hope that it will provide less incentive, they shouldn’t feel obligated to continue running LFR for a long time on top of their normal/heroic progression, I’d say if LFR remains somewhat interesting for 2-3 weeks to some players that want one or two specific items from there, that’s not such a big issue.
    and from TOT
    Originally Posted by Draztal

    You can't really put them into separate buckets and ignore each other. It's not your LFR, neither is their Normal of Heroic raid.

    LFR can be a source of loot for raiders that aren't at the bleeding edge of progression. So, in fact, it does become a place for upgrades the moment it is available unless you're already decked out in HoF/ToES Heroic epics, which means you'll have an "easier" time on Normal Throne of Thunder, particularly on the earlier bosses.

    The reasoning of the developers here is that most normal raiders won't see Lei Shen for some time, and if they've been stomping him for weeks on LFR first, then their guild experience on Normal is significantly diminished.

    They're also releasing the first two wings faster than the last two to make sure those of you waiting for LFR have something to enjoy sooner rather than later.
  1. mmocf94708a214's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by SinR View Post
    Why do they keep doing this?


    Let's gate Normal and Heroic modes.
    Why do they keep doing what? If you cant put in the effort to do normal-modes Im sure you can wait a few weeks.

    Kids these days
  1. Tython's Avatar
    I always hated this stupid gated system.
  1. Nzx's Avatar
    I'm sorry, and I've defended Blizzard for a lot of dumb shit in the past, but this just takes the cake. What an absolutely disgusting way to wring more money from subscribers. An entire month and ten days before someone can finish an LFR run? And they have the gall to use the excuse that they don't want heroic raiders to feel like they have to do LFR for gear.. Bit of a newsflash Blizzard heroic raiders are the people who will give you $30 to get 1% more DPS. This is so stupid I don't even know where to begin with it. Fuck Blizzard.
  1. mmocbd24f84edd's Avatar
    Perhaps Blizzard should open all LFR wings at once, but merge the raid-lockout of lfr with the normal/heroic ones, so that normal/heroic raiders would effectively be removed from lfr groups. As a result the lfr crowd could have its full content revealed on day 1 of the patch, but would face a form of progression nonetheless.
  1. Revak's Avatar
    I mainly run LFR now and it doesn't bother me one bit that they extend it out. As a matter of fact, the slower I get to it the better. Inevitably this xpack is going to be like Cata with nothing to do for a very long time after the final raid is released and before the next expansion, so I'm in no hurry.
  1. Resentful's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wyand1337 View Post
    Perhaps Blizzard should open all LFR wings at once, but merge the raid-lockout of lfr with the normal/heroic ones, so that normal/heroic raiders would effectively be removed from lfr groups. As a result the lfr crowd could have its full content revealed on day 1 of the patch, but would face a form of progression nonetheless.
    That's too logical! Anything logical usually doesn't make it through :P
  1. Dextar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    If you have a 25M or a 10M raid, then you have people on standby. You have to. So basically every week you are telling someone to be online at an exact time, and then telling them they aren´t coming. I know this is normal everyday stuff for raiders, but it sucks.

    Flex raiding requires 2 tanks and 2 healers until you get up to about 14 total, then you will need 3 healers. The power of the boss scales regressively, meaning the 10th dps is not expected to do as much dps as the 9th., the same is true of boss damage.

    Yeah, you are still going to want your tanks to show up every week, and 2 of your healers.. but after that, there isn´t much stress on people who miss.
    Most guilds have a bench, almost all raiders understand this bench and why it's required but most don't complain especially in good guilds that rotate people in and out. We use a spreadsheet to determine what people need gear off of what bosses and swap them out. I have sat out many raids in my time of raiding but it's all about time management, you use the time that you're sitting out to do other tasks instead of just sitting there going, "OMG I AM SOOO BORRRREEEEDDD". There are guilds who do NOT have a bench but those are the guilds you described as having problems with, if you miss a raid or multiple raids you get replaced, that's to be expected. Don't join a guild like that. YOU are joining the guild, YOU can look around and FIND a guild that fits your playstyle and schedule, find something with a bench that is more casual. The guild I was in prior to joining my current guild was extremely casual and players were replaced based on performance and attendance, if you play really well but you never show up? Don't expect to get in, Play alright and show up most of the time? You'll get in. In any case you should expect to sit for people with higher attendance, they are just more dependable but you're not entitled to a spot. You want that spot you need to show up, plain and simple. It's just like anything else in life, can't expect to half ass it at your job and get the same pay and perks as the guy who shows up 20 minutes early and works thirty minutes late each day.

    To start the group you will still have to gather at a scheduled time, it's not just something where people can show up whenever they want (maybe after the first ten, yes but you still need the original ten) you can't just show up whenever and a group magically appears. I will tell you from my experience of killing multiple bosses in flex on the PTR, it does not work like you're describing. It got harder, quite a bit harder to the point that we had to drop lower dps players because the high dps weren't able to carry them.




    This thread overall makes me sad, instant gratification and so many people who feel entitled to the LFR raids. You aren't forced to wait, you can kill garrosh the first week you just need to raid normal. A little effort won't kill you.
  1. zrankfappa's Avatar
    lol ... that is a lot of pages of whining about getting gear that will be replaced two hours into next expansion ...

    your gearing to level folks ... ease up.
  1. Tython's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Djouga View Post
    LFR people please. You're not even supposed to play this game as you are not necessary. Refrain from complaining.
    Most retarded comment I've read in a long time...
  1. Shudder's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by enchanted View Post
    Oh great... Looks like another month before I resub. Would be a pain for me to enter normals with no experience of previous MoP raids (except LFR) and on a dead realm. Well done blizz and not opening LFR the first week. But again, got no exp in MoP raids since I've quit back in oct after I dinged 90 and came back just 2 months ago.
    I wish there was a website that had videos of the fights you could watch. I'm surprised nobody has come up with a site like that, they'd be rich! Oh well, watching a video is super hard anyways so I doubt it would work out.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Quilm View Post
    Went into Lfr yesterday on a alt for the first time in 2 months still the whole raid wiping on easy mechs, gonna be funny with flex coming out and normal/heroic players are doing flex on mains and alts not carrying Lfr groups, save ur tears for that not the release sched
    This right here. You guys are going to get dehydrated if you're crying over a release schedule. You'll need that hydration for the pain you're in for when the wings are finally open.
  1. TS26's Avatar
    more than 1 month to kill garrosh in lfr? Meh, luckily I got FFXIV
  1. Durandro's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azrile View Post
    If you have a 25M or a 10M raid, then you have people on standby. You have to. So basically every week you are telling someone to be online at an exact time, and then telling them they aren´t coming. I know this is normal everyday stuff for raiders, but it sucks.
    You know what also sucks?

    10 people sign up. One has a work related emergency. Two of them decide not to even bother showing up, and give no explaination.

    On Wednesday, when we're planning multiple heroic kills/attempts.

    So 7 people don't get to raid because a few people don't have the manners to even show up, and pugging is completely out of the question. Swell!

    THAT is why guilds have active benches.
  1. But I Hate You All's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wyand1337 View Post
    Perhaps Blizzard should open all LFR wings at once, but merge the raid-lockout of lfr with the normal/heroic ones, so that normal/heroic raiders would effectively be removed from lfr groups. As a result the lfr crowd could have its full content revealed on day 1 of the patch, but would face a form of progression nonetheless.

    they said

    Originally Posted by Draztal

    You can't really put them into separate buckets and ignore each other. It's not your LFR, neither is their Normal of Heroic raid.
    about that
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Durandro View Post
    You know what also sucks?

    10 people sign up. One has a work related emergency. Two of them decide not to even bother showing up, and give no explaination.

    On Wednesday, when we're planning multiple heroic kills/attempts.

    So 7 people don't get to raid because a few people don't have the manners to even show up, and pugging is completely out of the question. Swell!

    THAT is why guilds have active benches.
    Exactly my point. With a 10 man or 25 man raid, it is a double edged sword. I am not saying it is terrible, I am just saying there are issues in both directions. If you invite 10, then you run the risk of not raiding, if you invite 11, then you often have to sit a person. Flex removes that because you can always just bring your ´bench´ people. I know some people don´t agree with me, but sitting people is an uncomfortable situation, and Flex removes that.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Revak View Post
    I mainly run LFR now and it doesn't bother me one bit that they extend it out. As a matter of fact, the slower I get to it the better. Inevitably this xpack is going to be like Cata with nothing to do for a very long time after the final raid is released and before the next expansion, so I'm in no hurry.
    agreed, this is the exact same schedule thy used for ToT... and tell me, how many LFR people right not are thinking ´wow, I am so angry I missed those first 7 weeks of killing Lie Shen´

    Does nobody realize how incredibly boring and stupid it will be to kill Garrosh 4 hours after 5.4 launches?
  1. Joegrizly's Avatar
    man i want you to read some of these comments and ask yourself why this game is dying..

    Sciff - Today
    Quite a long waiting period for the Non-raiders (including me) to get their first Garrosh kill. FYI Pugging normal on our realm isn't easy
    krethos - Today
    4-6 weeks until I kill Garrosh.



    Sadpanda.
    LOLOLOLOL WTF
  1. Count Zero's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Durandro View Post
    You know what also sucks?

    10 people sign up. One has a work related emergency. Two of them decide not to even bother showing up, and give no explaination.

    On Wednesday, when we're planning multiple heroic kills/attempts.

    So 7 people don't get to raid because a few people don't have the manners to even show up, and pugging is completely out of the question. Swell!

    THAT is why guilds have active benches.
    This (too many people on vs too few people on) is absolutely killing me, as the GM of a semi-casual/semi-hardcore guild. We can't run the risk of having too few people on and not being able to raid, so we need to have a bench, but when everyone's on it means people are sitting out. People get tired of sitting out (even though we rotate the bench as best we can, and if at all possible on a boss-by-boss [based on loot needs] basis).

    It's frustrating ... people want their spot guaranteed 100% if they're on, but also want to be able to miss for whatever reason (however valid) without losing their spot. You can't have it both ways.

    Flex is going to help a lot with getting increased raid time for folks who might be more likely to get benched (although we try to rotate as best we can, we also need to serve the needs of the guild ... we can't sit more healers/tanks for than we need to raid, we can't bring all melee dps, and if your performance is holding us back you're likely not getting in on progression until you can pull your weight on farm fights, etc, etc) ... hopefully it'll help with recruitment and retention, but it's obviously not going to solve all the problems ... won't touch the problem of what to do when we're running normals/heroics (although, ideally, the idea is that with more raid time and another way to gear up, it'll help solidify the roster rather than a "established raiders get more gear/practice so the recruits never get a chance to improve" situation).

    I dunno ... it's caused a ton of burnout for me and I've never taken a real break from the game since becoming an officer, because there's never been a good time for me to do so. But now I've taken on a lot more irl responsibility and I just don't know how much more of this I can do. Our officer team is pretty thin as it is, and we're all busy with real life responsibilities ... so I don't know what's going to happen to us.

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