Why are there so many raiding styles?

[tilatequila]

Honestly im so confused im newly back from wotlk and theres all this scenarios, heroics, LFR, flexi raid, challenge modes, and then regular raiding... 10/25 / heroic versions of each

Honestly have i missed anything? im so confused i have no idea where to start these days?? Its all the same stuff too so dont anyone dare tell me its more end game content.

[Deleted]

Essentially because blizzard is too lazy to create different raids for different difficulty levels.

Blizzard used to have passion for the game, when wow had multiple different raids instead of 1-3 raids.

[Blitzdoctor]

People want different challenge levels. People have different skills. Blizzard wants all of these people to be able to go through their content.

[DemoBytom]

Blizzard used to have passion for the game, when wow had multiple different raids instead of 1-3 raids.

Like ToC which you did 4 times per week... riiight?..

[A Chozo]

Different options for different costumers!

More options = more costumers = profit!

Unless there are too many options. Luckliy, there isn't.

[Rafoel]

Welcome back

Dungeons which you were familiar with now have 3 "levels":

normal < heroic < challenge

Normals and heroics work the same that the ones you used to know.
Challenge is completely new type which doesn't offer ANY gear. It was introduced to allow people who like hard dungeons compete with each other by timed runs. Most people don't bother with it cause they offer no actual rewards.


Raids that you were used to now have 4 "levels":

LFR < Flexible < Normal < Heroic

LFR is not "real" raiding, it was introduced only to allow people who can't commit do scheduled raiding to see the content. Don't expect any challenge from it. It's just go-kill_boss-get_loot machine.

Normals and heroics work the same that they used to in wotlk. The only difference is that 25 man versions now drop the same ilvl as 10 man versions.

Flexible is completely new mode, on similar difficulty level as WotLK Naxxramas. (yeah, MoP normal mode is a bit harded than WotLK normal mode). It's main feature is no fixed raid size. You can bring any number of people from 10 to 25 and bosses will scale to the size of your group.
Most people focus on 2 of the raid "levels": either do flexible and aim for normals, or do normals and aim for heroic.


Scenarios on the other hand are completely new feature that is not connected in any way to raids or dungeons. They are basically 3-man dungeons with no fixed group roles (tank/healer etc.). You also complete them by following objectives rather than simply killing stuff.

[Raic]

I'll try and keep it simple

Scenario - role-less, smaller version of a dungeon (3-man); solo-queueable; chance to get 463 ilvl gear and Justice Points
Heroic Scenario - role-less, smaller version of a dungeon (3-man); requires 3 players in a group to queue; requires 496 average ilvl; chance to get 516 ilvl gear once a day; awards Valor Points

Dungeon - traditional tank, healer, 3 dps; solo-queueable; drops gear up to 450 ilvl; awards Justice Points
Heroic Dungeon - traditional tank, healer, 3 dps; solo-queueable; drops gear up to 463 ilvl (476 special rare drops; awards Valor Points (and Justice Points from bosses)

LFR (Looking for Raid) - 25 man raid, 2 tanks, 6 healers, 17 dps; solo-queueable; does not share a lockout with Flex, Normal, or Heroic
- Mogu'shan Vaults (T14): 460 average ilvl required, drops 476 ilvl gear (2 sections to queue for, 3 bosses each)
- Heart of Fear and Terrace of the Endless Spring (T14): 470 average ilvl required, drops 483 ilvl gear (2 sections to queue for HoF, 3 bosses each, 1 for ToES, 4 bosses)
- Throne of Thunder (T15): 480 average ilvl required, drops 502 ilvl gear (4 sections to queue for, 3 bosses each)
- Siege of Orgrimmar (T16): 496 average ilvl required, drops 528 ilvl gear (4 sections to queue for, 4 bosses in first 2 parts, 3 bosses in the last 2 parts)

Flex - accommodates groups between 10 and 25 players, encounters scale based on the number of people in the group; requires a group to queue; only available for Siege of Orgrimmar; split into 4 sections like LFR; drops 540 ilvl gear; does not share a lockout with LFR, Normal, or Heroic

A note on LFR and Flex looting: Bosses don't technically drop loot on their corpses, when the boss dies you either win gear or a loot bag (which usually contains gold). You can run both of these difficulties as many times as you want, but bosses will only drop gear/loot bag once a week for you.

Normal - either 10 or 25 man (both share a lockout), also shares lockout with Heroic; requires a raid group to enter; available for T14, T15, and T16 raids

Heroic - either 10 or 25 man (both share a lockout), also shares lockout with Normal; requires a raid group to enter; available for T14, T15, and T16 raids


Raid Difficulty (hardest to easiest)
Heroic > Normal > Flex > LFR


A simple "map" of instance difficulty based solely on gear drops would technically be

Dungeons/Scenarios (450ish) -> Heroic Dungeon (463) -> Mogu'shan Vaults (MSV) LFR (476) -> Heart of Fear (HoF) and Terrace of Endless Spring (ToES) LFRs (483) -> MSV Normal (489) -> HoF and ToES Normal (496) -> Throne of Thunder (TOT) LFR/MSV Heroic (502) -> HoF and ToES Heroic (509) -> Heroic Scenario Daily (516) -> ToT Normal (522/528) -> Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO) LFR (528) -> ToT Heroic (535/541) -> SoO Flex (540) -> SoO Normal (553/559) -> SoO heroic (566/572)

There are also other ways to obtain gear (Justice Points, Valor Points, Timeless Gear Tokens, Bonus Rolls) if you want to get into that

Hope this helps and if you need anything cleared up, let me know (I probably made some things more complicated)

[Terahertz]

Different options for different costumers!

More options = more costumers = profit!

Unless there are too many options. Luckliy, there isn't.

I can't say I'm noticing the "more costumers" part. If anything masses of people have quit already simply because of how WoW is turning out to be.

[Phuongvi]

If you wanna raid you should better start with Looking for Raid (if you are STARTING )

I doubt you will get a Flex group if you mention you are starting, people don'T want to carry and most of the group requiere 550 ilvl

Regular raiding don't even think about it.


Go run around in Timeless Island instead,
Kill stuff, get some chest, loot some burden , do your weekly celestial, maybe in 4 weeks you should get into flex raiding group if you make some friend of a good guild

Look for a guide on Wohead on how to get some stuff from the Timeless Island

[Breccia]

10 vs 25, in my opinion, "should" not be a difference in style, just number. It is different, because of mechanics, something the Flex-like designs of next expansion is designed to address. That way you'll see fewer fixes, like the recent ones, nerfing things in 10-mode. But it "should" be the same.

Other than that, it's simple: Blizz gives multiple difficulties so more people can play at the level they are capable of and/or enjoy playing. Four difficulties happens to match a lot of other games Easy/Medium/Hard/Hell (unlocked after Hard). If anything, I think they might have been a tad slow getting this far.

[Deleted]

I miss times when there was hard raids, and easy raids. Raiding naxx40 was the hardest raid in vanilla.

[Osmeric]

Essentially because blizzard is too lazy to create different raids for different difficulty levels.

Blizzard used to have passion for the game, when wow had multiple different raids instead of 1-3 raids.

Scurrilous misrepresentation of Blizzard's motives. They aren't making exclusive content for different difficulty levels because that makes no economic sense.

Not doing things that are economically stupid isn't being lazy, it's being smart.

[tilatequila]

Rafoel and raic

Thanks for the big break down that actually helps me out a lot.

[Tomana]

Essentially because blizzard is too lazy to create different raids for different difficulty levels.

It's not about being lazy, it's about not throwing huge amounts money in stuff that will be used by a very small percentage of the playerbase. Spreading the costs on a large playerbase is, on the other hand, perfectly defensible.

[Deleted]

Wow has less subscribers than in tbc, and peaked in wotlk.

Wow was fine and actually in rising succes when raids were not just 1 raid + 3 different difficulty levels.

[Osmeric]

Wow has less subscribers than in tbc, and peaked in wotlk.

Wow was fine and actually in rising succes when raids were not just 1 raid + 3 different difficulty levels.

If anything, the addition of multiple difficulty modes was caused/motivated by the end of growth (and by bad retention, which has been there since day 1), not vice versa.

Are you saying that if they had stuck with a Vanilla/BC model, subs would be higher now? If that's the case, why did the attempt to move back in that direction with Cataclysm flame out almost immediately upon release?

The evidence actually supports a case that they didn't make the game easy enough soon enough, and squandered a huge opportunity to retain millions of non-hardcores who have tried the game but drifted away. They should have thrown the hardcores under the bus long ago, but they weren't brave/smart enough to do that.

[Spoonman]

They basicily implented LFR which was a failure and decided to implent more stuff to do around it rather than erasing it at start.
From there on they just kept adding retarded stuff tbh, trying to fix it.
However, there has been 1 great thing IMO from this. I love the Flex Raiding difficult aswell as the u can be between 10-25 player and still raid shizzle

[Shamanberry]

They basicily implented LFR which was a failure and decided to implent more stuff to do around it rather than erasing it at start.
From there on they just kept adding retarded stuff tbh, trying to fix it.
However, there has been 1 great thing IMO from this. I love the Flex Raiding difficult aswell as the u can be between 10-25 player and still raid shizzle

The fact that you like the tier of content that is most relevant to your interests, even if you're not overly fond of the other ones, actually means the system they designed is a success.

LFR has its place, just like normal and heroic. You're just not the audience for it.

[Ham on Rye]

Honestly im so confused im newly back from wotlk and theres all this scenarios, heroics, LFR, flexi raid, challenge modes, and then regular raiding... 10/25 / heroic versions of each

Honestly have i missed anything? im so confused i have no idea where to start these days?? Its all the same stuff too so dont anyone dare tell me its more end game content.

It's because there's so many people know who don't want to get better, so blizzard has to create easy difficulty levels for them so they don't quit.

[Daetur]

Where to start based on difficulty/progression path and level of rewards:

Heroic 5m dungeons and Normal Scenarios --> Mogu'Shan Vaults LFR --> Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring LFR --> Normal MSV --> Normal HoF and ToES --> Heroic MSV --> Heroic HoF and ToES --> Heroic Scenarios and Throne of Thunder LFR --> Normal ToT --> Siege of Orgrimmar LFR --> Heroic ToT --> SoO Flexible --> SoO Normal --> SoO Heroic

Bolded content is your gearing path. Non-bolded content can be skipped. Italicized content should be ignored, as the difficulty-reward tradeoff is not efficient unless you can get run-through. Going to the Timeless Isle at level 90 can also allow you to bypass everything before Siege of Orgrimmar LFR, in theory. I highly recommend looking up a guide to the Timeless Isle.

I think that's about right, anyone can feel free to correct me.

Challenge Modes give cosmetic rewards and are not part of the normal gearing or progression path, and are actually pretty different from raiding.