FLex worse than LFR? That awkward moment when....

[Gilian]

I actually found out that gold proving ground requirement is much better than it seems to represent, people know what they are doing!

I was thinking of using this also maybe next week when me and my friends got some time for a flex raid. But it is new so I don't think many have done it.

I cleared gold as dps and also tried some endless mode. If you can clear gold I think you will also be able to raid properly in flex raids and even normal. It simply shows you got a brain and know how to use it. This will be a much better requirement than some ilvl requirement which doesn't prove anything other than that you are able to get carried in some farm group on timeless isle or simply got lucky.

[Deleted]

The awkward moment when... Flex requires some effort and teamwork.

You chose to get grouped with these people. Want to faceroll loot with 545 iLvL friends, go for it. Go with random people you take a gamble, they might be below average, they might blow you out of the water and teach you a thing or two.

Linking a short video on a bossfight and asking people to watch it, takes 5 minutes. This doesn't fix people being inadequately gemmed/reforged, or inproper rotations, but it's allready less time spend than if you would wipe once.

What is the advised iLvL for Flex? 516?

[Deleted]

I've done flex raid once, I did it with my guild even with people that didn't have so much raiding experience, it went great and we had a lot of fun.

[Raelbo]

What is the advised iLvL for Flex? 516?

Sounds about right. I am going to insist that all my guildies make an effort to reach 520 in the next 10 days. It's a goal rather than an absolute, and I expect quite a few won't make it to that level (a bit of luck on the world boss can make a big difference) but at least if we fall a little short, I expect we'll still be ok overall.

We'll most likely need to pick up a few pugs most weeks (and hopefully be able to recruit a few if we do ok), and I will be asking for ilevel 520 there to give us a decent shot.

Not that having that gear is any guarantee of anything, but it's a good starting point.

[Nivena]

It gets frustrating if you find a group via oqueue and get stucked on Norushen...tried 3 times in a row with different flex groups, none of them were capable of executing simple mechanics.

[Ninotchka]

I joined a trade chat pug for flex last night, since when my guild went to do it I had missed the first boss. We had destroyed it on normal so I figured that even a trade chat pug should be able to get it down.

I should have known better when I realized that I was the third tank, and I had as many hit points as the other two tanks combined. And when I asked about vent and they all said they didn't have access to one. And when we killed trash and I came in second on dps, even with the Vengeance nerf...

It is indeed possible to fail on Flex even on the first boss if you're dramatically undergeared and/or untalented. How in the world does a warlock only do 30k these days?

Maybe someday they'll gear up and succeed on this fight. I hope so. In the meantime, I'm going to be a bit more selective about trade chat pugs. Although it was nice to get into a trade chat pug again. They were nice kids, mostly, just way out of their league.

[Ayacos]

Well, for me, LFR must gone and we get only Flex Mode now. I did Flex with Guilmates and friends. It was a good experience, we can teach ppl how mechanics works, even that its almost none, but we can teach them. We have a good time with them, and finally with a little of time of course, we can Group a team to raid 25man on normal/Heroic, without inflicting our main progression till the Raid Team is ready to 25man.

[Radome]

Man, I guess I just had a really good experience in Flex compared to most. I had a blast with a complete pug.

Some background. I healed a little bit in 5.0 normals before real life issues forced me out of WoW until July. Since then, I have been trying to get into a pug of 5.0/5.2 raids, but they all want experience, so I was really looking forward to 5.4 flex's.

I saw someone in Trade Chat looking for all, and replied that I'd love to heal for him. We went in 2 tanks, 2 heals, 6 dps, with no two players from the same guild, and no one from a high progression guild. One shotted Immersius. Wiped twice on fallen protectors, but got better each time. Wiped once on Norushen before killing him. Then came Sha. We wiped three times on him, and in the process lost a tank. So, we went to trade chat to get a tank, and grabbed two more dps, for a 2/8/2 total. Killed him the next go.

Sure, we had one player who had seen the fights on normal, and explained (sort of) in /i most of what we should do on the encounters, but no one else had even set foot in there before. And it was loads of fun. Protectors/Norushen's healing requirement had me mana dry by the end of the fight (everyone was sitting between 500 and 530 ilvl, myself being only about 520) and Sha's tactics took a bit to understand, but really, for a complete pug, I thought we did fairly good.

So yeah, that's my perspective of flex. Love it so far, and I'm hopeful that by showing what I can do in flex, it will eventually get me an invite to an actual normal or better raiding group.

[Cebel]

Every Flex run I seen wants you to have IL 520 min + exp with fights

no... no it doesnt.

[Jessicka]

Is the OP complaining that Flex is too hard?

[Deleted]

Well in our guild we found it the perfect setting for an alt raid, and currently we use it to gear up some mains. It's really easy with ToT normal/HC gear and probably will still be in ToT LFR gear

[vareck]

Well in our guild we found it the perfect setting for an alt raid, and currently we use it to gear up some mains. It's really easy with ToT normal/HC gear and probably will still be in ToT LFR gear

The only problem I could see with ToT LFR gear is tight enrage timers like Norushen, but that can be fixed with some strategy adjustment or by removing dps that can't pull their weight.

[CrusaderNerò87]

Sure, if you join LFR, Flex, Normal or a heroic raid there is always a chance that you will meet bad players. Maybe not so much in HC mode, but for sure in the others..

But why are you putting yourself into a situation like that? You can do LFR to see content cause you will progress there one way or another(cause of buff). Flex is for friends and a tool to make friends and create bonds with others. Normal/Hc is for guilds.

Want good players around you? Join a good guild or get to know people that are skilled, add them to friends list and raid with them

Take control of the situation yourself. Theres alot of bad players out there, but there are good ones to

Personally, had alot of fun in SoO in Flex mode ^^

[Divinedoom]

I have liked flex so far. Guilds can clear it easily. Unorganized pugs with skilled players will clear it easily, organized pugs with not so skilled players can clear it easily. Gives me a nice chance to play with guildies i used to raid with now that I'm not actively raiding myself anymore.

It's only when you get a group thats both unskilled and unorganized that you're going to have a bad time. (aka a random pug without voice com and unenchanted/ungemmed people that pull 60k dps)

Zerged through it without having to pay attention to tactics in a fully hc geared group where most people have top 100 exp. Wiped horribly on Immerseus in a random pug where only one dps managed above 100k and others were 60k or lower. And cleared quite eassily with a wipe or 2 on pride in a random pug of 17-18 people, this was due to havinng a few skilled and geared people who could carry the rest without too much issue.

Seems like it's working as intended tbh

[Ronduwil]

That's still not very dramatic. It was a factually accurate statement of Flex Raid. It's Flex Raid, not LFR 2.0 or Flex LFR and the people going into Flex Raid with that expectation of ignoring mechanics and throwing bodies at it need to quit while they're ahead.

But people aren't stupid. Everyone knew it was Flex raid and not LFR going in. When you "remind" them you're being insulting. From the very beginning the group made no secret of the fact that they were winging it and that no voice chat was being used. I don't blame anyone for not participating in a run like that; I wouldn't want to do it myself. Just because someone joins a group that wants more of a challenge than they prefer (i.e. puzzling fights out for themselves and trusting everyone to do their part without guidance) doesn't mean they have the right to be insulting about it. If they don't like it they can always /leave the group. Better yet, they shouldn't have joined the group to begin with.

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Mind, I wrangled those suckers up and oiled them into a boss fighting MACHINE... but yeah they weren't doing that great at first... still the content was easy enough and they got it after a couple wipes.

This is a perfect illustration of the difference between ignorance and stupidity. Very few players have the patience to stick it out in a pug and help a bunch of strangers improve. There was no incentive to do this in LFR, and this is why Flex is good for the raiding community. Some players aren't "bad;" they're just inexperienced. Kudos to you, Madgod!

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I guarantee that the baddies will be running around in PvP and/or ungemmed and unenchanted gear.

I agree that ungemmed/unenchanted gear is the best indicator of a player's dedication to raiding. I don't know why there's such an obsession with ilevel. Show me a player in ungemmed/unenchanted tier gear and I'll know exactly who got carried and/or extremely lucky on world bosses.

[Azrile]

You find out that LFR is actually x10 better than queing Flex with players from your own server.

Flex is real raiding, it requires a certain amount of coordination and most importantly.. DPS cannot ignore 95% of mechanisms. LFR is like heroic dungeons... the tank must know what he is doing, and everyone else is along for the ride.

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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.

Not at all. If you get to 8 or so players that are friends and on vent. it will be fine.

[Grubjuice]

the real problem with LFR is that it's 25-man, if it were 10-man it would feel a little less anonymous

[Azrile]

Guys, you do recall that Blizzard outright said that Flex Raid was not designed with the INTENT of PuGs, but for those organized groups struggling in Normal to be able to have something harder and more organized than LFR, but not as big a jump from LFR to Normal.

PUGs will fail hard mostly, for the next while, until they get caught up in LFR gear and MAYBE learn some mechanics.

I wouldn't PUG a Flex run. I'd fill it with friends and guildies. Cause that was more the intent.

Exactly.

And this is the reason people are demanding higher ilvl to do pugs. If you are at the minimum gear for Flex ( about 500), than that means you will have to be highly coordinated and work as a team, and have everyone accountable for failing mechanisms. That does NOT happen in a pug, so you need to require a higher ilvl to offset the lack of coordination.

I had a full pug last night. I required ilvl 520 or TOT heroic boss kills. Without any real coordination, just people knowing mechanisms.. we 1-shotted every boss and I had 4 minutes left on my first flask. With the same lack of coordination and ilvl 500, we would have wiped on probably the last 3 bosses multiple times.

you have two choices.. you do it at low gear levels in a guild group.... or you do it in a pug with ilvl 520... they reason they are failing hard now is because most of those pugs have a ton of 496 people in them. You are not going to kill the last 3 bosses with that ilvl unless you have great coordination.

[pallyopness]

10 man raiding guild....took 24 casuals/raiders/never been to a raid folk ever (3 never even raided lfr) into flex (all guild).....cleared in about 1 hour 45 mins....Use what flex was intended for and no issue...we had 4 people pushing 50-75k dps....Flex requires someone leading who knows what to do...that is all.

[melodramocracy]

Flex currently suffers from a) people running it that aren't yet adapted to the increased difficulty over LFR, b) people never having seen these fights, and c) gear. Wait till SoO LFR is out about a month or 2, and you'll see flex being steamrolled on a regular basis in pugs.

You saw the same overall issue in Cata heroics. Folks got pummeled until they L2P and gear up a bit, which took about a month. Then it was basically a non issue. This too, is a whole lot of worry over nothing.