Patch 5.4 - Flexible Raid Preview

[Ferrouswheel]

Ok ive seen enough of these " gotta do this every week to??? gtfo".

IF YOU RAID NORMAL ++, then there is no need to look at this feature (perhaps for alts). just pretend it NEVER EVER CAME, it does not affect you. it will not bite you. it will not try to make you smoke. it wont sell drugs to you. NADA. NOTHING!

just look the other way! please!

Good "change" from the info we gotten so far, hope this is a test for normals to next expansion

Getting sick of seeing these idiotic arguments. If you actually raided you'd know that MANY times a wipe will happen where the boss is below 1% health. If a couple of raiders had lfr or flexi gear instead of a 463 blue on that's a kill. I have killed three bosses this expansion myself. The whole raid died, I (the tank) was the only one alive, boss kills me, purgatory kicks in so I'm alive for 3 more seconds and the boss dies. Then I died. One time it was on Garalon. Our first kill. So we all run back and the corpse is sitting there with loot on it, but we can't loot it cause the wall is still up. We had to make a ticket and get a GM to hand out the loot. THREE TIMES that has happened where I killed a boss under purgatory. When wipes come down to things like that you best believe raiders will run all the stuff they can to squeeze out every little bit. So knock of the ignorant arguments, if you don't know anything about raiding gtfo.

[Martymark]

It's nice that they are adding a "Beer League"...but I feel like the resources could have been put somewhere else.

[Dewragg]

wow i'm actually kinda surprised at the negative coments here.. i mean how many times can you remember when you first started raiding and were so excited waiting for everyone else to log in and form a raid BUT to be told "sorry 12 people online only 10 spots available" .. this will solve the "i'm sick of sitting out with nothing to do because there aren't enough other people on to form another group" or how about gearing up alts if your a dual boxer? now you can have your toons get geared up at the same time, and of course some guilds can now "sell" free rides for gear or achievements.. the possibilities are limited by you, and the 25 max players cap

[F-Minus]

wow i'm actually kinda surprised at the negative coments here.. i mean how many times can you remember when you first started raiding and were so excited waiting for everyone else to log in and form a raid BUT to be told "sorry 12 people online only 10 spots available" .. this will solve the "i'm sick of sitting out with nothing to do because there aren't enough other people on to form another group" or how about gearing up alts if your a dual boxer? now you can have your toons get geared up at the same time, and of course some guilds can now "sell" free rides for gear or achievements.. the possibilities are limited by you, and the 25 max players cap

It wont solve that, cause 10 man guild are still going to raid 10 man for the loot, just like 25 man guilds will raid 25 for loot. No serious guild (with the intention to kill bosses on normal and heroic) will go for this Flex raid option just because they have too many or too few players. They will deliberately go and do it for upgrade gear when a tier is released but not otherwise.

I'm not in a hardcore guild, but we still manage to do normal and heroics, each tier and for not a single member of our guild this flex raid is appealing, we raid 3 times a week for 4 hours each raid. As said not hardcore, we are just having fun in a challenge and flex raid don't seem like a challenge.

But i'm not against it, i'm sure there are people and guilds who will love this, just not your standard guilds of which 90% exist in wow.

[relaxok]

As someone who doesn't play anymore but still follows developments.. I'm really confused about how this whole thing came about.

It seems like what they should really be doing is turning Normal into Flex-Raid, with the same gear level and difficulty.

BUT.. How did Normal become too hard for an organized/dedicated guild? That seems like a tuning mistake to me. That kind of thing used to be called Heroic. Is Heroic now way harder than it was before too and they also made Normal harder? Or is the quality of the average raider much lower, ability-wise than it used to be?

[threads]

If it has the failbag loot system I doubt I'll even bother.

[RareMouse]

So. Let me get this strait.
WotLK --> Cata transition - we are putting 10 and 25 man on same cooldown so people don't have to do same raids twice per week for more loot.
5.4. We adding additional 3rd raid cooldown so people have to do the same raid three times per week for more loot. And let me guess, new mode drops tier pieces too?
Honestly, i think that this feature is the most illogical thing ever mentioned by blizzard.
Oh yeah and just to clarify, i'm saying this from hardcore raider point of view.
It may be good for game overall(more stuff to do, duh), it will defenetly be good for casual guilds with flowing roster, but honestly, they should've just left 10 mans on separate CD in cata.
Just my opinion folks. Hardcore raider in retirment.

[Olumdril]

wow i'm actually kinda surprised at the negative coments here.. i mean how many times can you remember when you first started raiding and were so excited waiting for everyone else to log in and form a raid BUT to be told "sorry 12 people online only 10 spots available" .. this will solve the "i'm sick of sitting out with nothing to do because there aren't enough other people on to form another group"

It won't. Normal guilds will want normal progress and gear for faster progression, especially if they want to do heroics after. These 10 people will still go without you and the 2 will have to sit out or find another team to join.

[thewallofsleep]

I'm extremely psyched for this. A friend and I were just talking yesterday about how missed the days when 10 man and 25 man didn't share the same lock out. Now we'll have even more to do!

[froglet]

This definitely sounds like it's GC's Unannounced Feature.

But the complex situation with 3 different lockouts, 3 different raid sizes, 4 different difficulty levels, and 4+ different ilevels is a little much. I doubt it'll last more than T16.

My prediction/suggestion/hope is that Blizzard will eventually drop a difficulty level and remove both 10s and 25s in favor of 15s. In T17 and beyond (i.e. next expansion), raid levels and lockouts would be structured like this:

* LFR. Same 25-man derpfest as now.
* Flexible raid size (10-25 or maybe even up to 40 depending on the raid). Difficulty level on par with Normals now.
* Fixed-size raid. Probably 15... Blizz has stated in the past that 15 would be an ideal size. This raid size can run Normals, just locked to 15 players. This raid size is also the only one that can switch fights to Heroic. Having a fixed raid size for the highest level will allow Blizzard to better tune fights.

Phasing out 10s and 25s in favor of 15s is best done at the start of a new expansion as it has a significant impact on guilds.

[Somebody]

I don't want to be THAT GUY here, but wouldn't it be smart of them to scale down raids, even if it was just the 5.0 raids to fit 5 players? I know there are some technical limitations, fights won't work without two tanks, but the gear wouldn't even need to change. Tuning the bosses to handle 5 people would take less development than tuning future raids to scale between 10 and 25 people especially when it comes down to comp makeup. On the bonus side, they would also be winning over the people that have been wanting a new 5 mans since 5.1

[Thraenduil]

I see this as a great recruiting tool for top guilds. And also as a long awaited "Proving grounds"- like thing for new players.

One more thing. People rooting for 25-only HM raids don't like losing to Paragon. Flex raiding on heroic will make world 1st race fair to all guilds.

[Woobels]

I see this as a great recruiting tool for top guilds. And also as a long awaited "Proving grounds"- like thing for new players.

One more thing. People rooting for 25-only HM raids don't like losing to Paragon. Flex raiding on heroic will make world 1st race fair to all guilds.

There's no heroic flex raiding.

[Azrile]

I wonder what good this feature will do to people like me who can't even find 10 people for a raid. Unless it scales also with less than 10 people...
Another useless feature that will take a lot of the developer´s effort and won't really offer anything. I mean, can u imagine all the effort it'll take to balance the raid and make the new items? And that is gonna keep taking precious development time in the future too.

Instead of putting all this effort on something really useful and cool like for example total elimination of empty/imbalanced realms that will bring the words massive and multiplayer back to this sad excuse of mmo they go and spend time on so ething like that...

I'm totally unimpressed

But it will be like doing a world boss kinda. Say you have 6 core friends who want to raid together. You can just us /2 to add 4 other people and do a raid that probably will be about as difficult as LFR. The fact that the raid will be broken up into wings will make it even easier. You will grab those people, kill 3 bosses, and then later, or maybe the next day decide to invite them back to do another wing. the fact that loot is done like LFR means you won´t have to be overly worried if you have 4 hunters and can basically invite anyone as long as you have your 2 tanks and 2-3 healers. This system is EXACTLY perfect for your situation.. because suppose in 3-4 weeks you have done this a few times.. you now have probably a dozen names of peoplle who you have raided with when you want to start normal modes.

And that is how Blizzard is trying to save 25M raids. imagine another month.. you have picked up 4 good raiders and are doing 10M normal modes.. maybe on your off-nights, you will still want to do Flex... guess what.. you can use /2 and add more people.. and maybe end up with 16-20 people doing your flex.. and maybe at some point you will reach 25 people.. and then you can start doing 25Mans.

[Thunderpants]

Cool, Blizzard just keep making this game better and better.

[Ruck]

The idea sounds ok, but i bet the execution will be awful. Sounds like just another crappy feature for people to drag their feet on till the next expansion.

[Teucer]

This looks great. I see a number of people wondering why they are doing loot like LFR. My guess is a number of reasons:

1. Varying number of people means that the number of drops would have to vary as well, should a group of 14 get less than a group of 15?
2. No loot competition. You have 20 people and 10 dps are mages/warlocks, meaning easier to get a raid comp thats not competing for gear.
3. You're in a 10m normal/heroic guild. Decide on the weekend that you want to run a Flex raid and invite more people from the guild, if the gear dropped in Flex like it does in normal, people would probably prioritize members of the raid team over the extra people from the guild, which I dont think is Blizz's intention with this. They want to be inclusive.

[Nearmyth]

If anything, they should just make it so that 10 man is the same old normal difficulty, and just scales up with more people. Not a lower difficuly/ilvl altogether that scales up.

But what an absolutely great and necessary addition to the game, this is amazing.

[SodiumChloride]

It's a brilliant idea with 1 minor modification - share the "lock-out" with LFR. Would prevent people feeling the need to run 3 full raids each week (normal/heroic, Flex and LFR) to fill obvious gaps in their gear. Seriously hope they do this or it'll lead to burnout / people quitting because their weapon never drops / etc. Really, there should be NO NEED to do LFR with this feature.

Or you can learn self control and stop screw other players over by demanding Blizzard "nanny" you.

LFR will still remain the main way for raiding for causals. They can raid anytime and don't have to sit in trade to try to form a 25 man raid group. Flex would be great if they chance upon a group forming and decide to join.

If there should be a shared lockout, it should be with normal. This way people like you can stop whining about "burn out".

[Fuqup]

Item level of loot is between Raid Finder and Normal and loot is awarded with the Raid Finder style loot system.

Lmao nvm no longer interested