You find out that LFR is actually x10 better than queing Flex with players from your own server.
You find out that LFR is actually x10 better than queing Flex with players from your own server.
It is still amazing to me how horrible most WoW players are in a raid setting. Or PVP setting. Basically anything but questing and even then you get crackheads asking what to do for a quest when it is written in the text.
I can join my friends anywhere thankfully now if you do this shit in PUG's? There going to fail pretty hard and die to the stupidest shit out there.
These are not encouraging words. Am planning on running a flex with my friends from an old guild. They said we could pug what we were missing.
Something tells me Monday night is going to be a long one.
I can do it with friends at least, but struggled with even the first boss with a complete pug. Have yet to see a pug successfully get past the second boss, kinda depressing - Honestly, if LFR never existed I daresay players would be a bit more skilled, they've just gotten lazy over time.
Currently, flex is just another mode for heroic raiders to farm to get their trinkets and tier. However, Flex mode should improve in the next few weeks due to the population gaining better gear from LFR and nerfed ToT. I think the whole notion of "bring who you want" to flex is destroyed by the fact that bringing more than 10 actually hurts your raid more, unless you're bringing boosters to annihilate content.
I have actually been part of 3 different groups involving flex:
Main guild raiders - destroyed flex (obviously)
Guild casuals / alts- destroyed flex (obviously)
Pug - People could barely grasp the second boss and even then only did 60-100k dps. Norushen is rocket science, and I think will be slightly nerfed in flex and normal.
The entire idea from what I could see is flex is balanced around bringing an average group like on a rating scale of 5/10. So for example, if I had one healer who was a 7/10 another 5/10 and another 3/10, we would be pretty well off because that averages to 5/10. But the problem arises when you bring a 4th healer and they're 3/10 too. Why would I bring them? They're bringing down the group average. So I mean there's really no point in bringing an 11th person, unless they're an absolute core part or they increase the group's average skill level. And even then, the average pug in WoW is not 5/10.
There needs to be some sort of encouragement (not a buff, or extra items) to bring extra people and by that I would suggest not scaling linearly for each player, but rather logarithmically so in essence it is actually mechanically and damagingly easier with 25, but the added coordination with 25 will make up for that difficulty.
Last edited by Libertarian; 2013-09-16 at 12:35 AM.
ppl that do flex are mostly ppl that have been doing LFRs for the last year+ and misread somewhere that flex is as easy as lfr. both flex and normal are pretty undertuned, but for ppl with only LFR experience they can seem nigh impossible. so it may be flex, but you might wanna get ppl that have ACTUAL raiding experience, at least on normal.
I think flex is easier than LFR due to having to deal with randoms.
This isn't anything particularly new. Flex is pretty much a PuG and you can get bad players in both LFR and a PuG.
Flex really does deliver that good ole 10-man normal pug experience from WOTLK, I like it. Yes, you do get complete idoits, like you always do. But you can filter them out, or even help them do better, your choice. Its not like LFR where you can't fail so people can do as terrible as they want and no one cares. You CAN fail in Flex. Not with heroic raiders you can't, but a trade chat pug or a friends and family group will have trouble and have to work through it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H3-N9zoI5c Amazing video of 60+ devilsaurs raiding Undercity!
My God, what a horrible creation. People seeing what they want? Thank God they tried to shy away from that. I know it pisses me off when I'm in an heroic raid, yet in the back of my head all I can think is 'some casual player is playing a heroic dungeon and not wiping.' -Vodkarn
I did flex with my guild, 17 people and it was an absolute blast. Loved it.
I believe one of the reasons they have flex is to introduce a stepping stone between LFR and normal. Think about it, lots of people don't run anything other than LFR because they can't run normal. This is to a number of reasons, one being the HUGE jump in difficulty than what they are used to. Its very hard to even get into a group that's doing normal if you don't already have experience in normal. So unless you are in a guild on a raid schedule, you are stuck with LFR, where there is no reason to try and be better at the game. On most servers there aren't even non-scheduled raids ever, no pugs ever happen its only guild raids (this issue to be further solved by larger realms due to CRs). Now with Flex, those people that only run LFR have a chance to get into a bit of a harder difficulty for better gear. When actually trying matters, on average people will improve. Of course there will still be people that completely suck and refuse to try to get better, but they will end up getting booted from groups so many times they will give up and go back to LFR.
With those that stuck with Flex and improved accordingly, now normal doesn't seem like that big of a jump. Normal pugs are just around the corner after flex has been active for a bit.
Essentially, Flex is designed to fix the influx of horrible players by seperating those who are willing to get better and those who don't care by giving them a reason to improve thats a bit more achievable than normal difficulty guild raids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H3-N9zoI5c Amazing video of 60+ devilsaurs raiding Undercity!
My God, what a horrible creation. People seeing what they want? Thank God they tried to shy away from that. I know it pisses me off when I'm in an heroic raid, yet in the back of my head all I can think is 'some casual player is playing a heroic dungeon and not wiping.' -Vodkarn
Every Flex run I seen wants you to have IL 520 min + exp with fights
10/13H last tier for reference.
I too enjoyed flex a lot. My guild is already 10/14 normal (obviously not as far as a lot of people in here, I'm looking at all you guys over in Divinity stealing all our realm firsts), so being able to go back and run the first four on alts with friends and having a few mains already saved to normal help carry (by alts I mean seriously alts, fresh 90's with some timeless isle gear thrown at them), as well as some pugs that wanted to tag along as long as they had some raiding experience, was a blast. Immerseus and Protectors one-shot with 25 people, about half guildies, then we dropped some people for Norushen after wiping twice to some of the PuGs not understanding the DPS trial and all going in at the same time. Nobody was mad about it though, everyone seemed generally happy to see the bosses and get a few pulls under the belts. Dropped to 17, mostly guildies, one-shot Norushen and Sha after that.
If you're running with a full PuG you're not going to one-shot every boss, thats just the nature of the beast, but from my experience people were more than happy to listen and adjust after a wipe, even if their DPS was atrocious anyway. I would rate it about 10x better than LFR, since you can actually control who is in your group. People can be removed for repeatedly AFKing or failing to listen, and you can bring in friends. Someone needs to go? No problem, we can run with 16. It's not a challenge for people who have any normal or heroic experience with current content, but it is in no way the faceroll that LFR is (I mean excluding us people at 540+). Mechanics are actually a thing, which is cool.