Originally Posted by
Seriss
The problem is that many people don't understand the difference between
A. a boss is easy
and
B. I'm outgearing a boss by 20 ilvls
and then they start to whine that things are too easy.
The difficulty of a new raid is ridiculously dependent on how well your guild did during the previous content (exception being the first raiding tier of an expansion, and that was, as we all have seen, filled with cockblocks and gating mechanisms for the average non-hardcore WoW player).
If you killed enough heroic bosses in the outdated raid, the gear alone makes it easier when you venture into the shiny new raid. And if a guild barely managed to clear previous content, they're bound to have problems in the current raid tier. Most WoW players aren't Paragon who clear raids while undergeared, making up for the lack of gear with an abundance of skill and ideal line-ups.
I think, sooner than later, normal mode will just be what you switch to when you don't want to try a boss on heroic yet. Many normal mode guilds will downgrade to flex for convenience and being able to not have to bench someone. Because when a guild isn't striving for Ahead of the Curve and such, that's the most fun thing to do. No stressing about line-ups, no stressing about benching anyone. Just fun with just enough challenge for it to feel rewarding. And no stressing about with a normal mode that feels like you're trying a heroic boss, just because you don't have ilvl 515 but only 490 (see Horridon when ToT was new).
As an afterthought... Would it be a realistic scenario for a flex-raid bunch of people to say after a few weeks "we got some gear now, ilvls are decent, let's try normal mode and get Ahead of the Curve?" Flex could be an awesome catch-up mechanism too so that people could get into normals with way less frustration!