Patch 5.4 - Flexible Raid Preview

[Tehterokkar]

Would people actually bother to DAMN READ THE POST before screaming "Omfg Will it share lockout!?"

It says it bright and clear:

This new difficulty also has a separate Raid lockout from Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.

[gibborim]

Very odd. At least they're admitting that Normal is too hard for normal people, but I don't know if this is the right solution.

No, they admitted that normal is too hard for bads that think they are average.

[OneSent]

Just how thin do they plan on spreading the raiding community?

Another "convenience" feature that will cause more harm than good. 25-man guilds are already on the brink of extinction and for those that can barely fill them will just use this instead.

When will it stop? Will we eventually see another difficulty between Normal and Heroic? Will there be Heroic Flexible mode raids with Heroic Flexible Challenge Mode Thunderforged items with 2x item upgrade? Honestly, it's getting silly.

[Deleted]

looks interesting, and fun to show new players/guildies tactics and gear them up at the same time.

I dont see any problem with this

[Ygami01]

GG. more grinding >.<

[Rorschachs]

I think it's a decent idea. I can't tell you how many raids in Wrath we had to cancel because of lack of people. Eventually we had to downsize to 10-man only, and eventually we had to merge with a larger guild. My question is whether or not they'll allow it to scale below 10 players, either in the future or upon release. I'd personally love to see flex work down to 5-man level or even allow solo content (but scale the items down to way below LFR - perhaps by as much as 20 points), but I imagine they won't allow that.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/101...eview-6_6_2013

It won't share a lockout and that's the best part about it imo.

[l337g0g0]

Is this flexible as in as your raiding in the same night if like multiple people drop will the difficulty adjusted as you raid or you have to wait till the next day and form again and then it adjusts?

[Polygons]

IMO keep this and get rid of LFR

[Viradiance]

Needs to share a lockout with raid finder, I'd gouge my eyes out with a melon baller if I was obligated to do both retard modes just for the gear for a shot at normal.

Disappointed it doesn't support group sizes smaller than 10. Adding more lukewarm bodies isn't always hard, and speaking as someone who's already finished CMs, I want something I can do with the 4 people I like and not a ton of garbage pugs I keep on btag through stockholm syndrome.

[Kashii]

I assume this is a way to test out a system that can eventually replace the 10/25 man fiasco that now exists. I understand why they dn't want to wholesale replace 10/25 normal/heroic w/o a lot of live "testing" but I hope they consider this is an eventual solution to this painful situation that now exists in raiding.

[SodiumChloride]

You pretend that this isn't a legitimate concern. It is a legitimate concern.

Don't really see how other people getting content to do and getting gear "concerns" you.

Don't like it, don't do it. Please don't say it's to gear up for normal/heroic. Do those in normal/heroic gear from the previous tiers. Man up and stop trying to cheese the challenge. The challenge is why you are doing normal/heroic no?

[Elise the Seeker]

I hope this isnt the new feature they were going on and on about.

It is the new feature. Not blizzards fault you imagined something greater. Ghostcrawler said people over-thought it.

[artem123]

Make it share with LFR and ill be the happiest player there is.
having the chance at extra LFR type loot without having to deal with LFR? that would overjoy so many players

[Volendrung]

Well... I guess Ghostcrawler was right when he said he didn't know why everyone was going to get hyped... and was worried that it would be a letdown. This is getting a bit out of hand, no?

LFR -> "Flex" -> Normal -> Normal Thunderforged -> Heroic -> Heroic Thunderforged -> ???

What's next? When can we expect the difficulty that is slightly more heroic than normal but not as hard as heroic? We have to cater to the semi-pros after all.

[F-Minus]

i don't understand this at all. Yeah guys lets take away wotlk style raiding where 10 man was rewarding lower ilvl loot by a fraction and was a little easier for people to play with their friends in in favour of sharing lockouts for 10 and 25. Then lets chuck in raid finder and make it compulsory to gear so that anyone who wants to raid has to do it to get anywhere in the first place. And now lets make ANOTHER mode of the same encounter when all we have done is whinge about how we can't balance 10 and 25 man to be equal in difficulty yet we now can miraculously with any number between 10 and 25...

Seriously.. what the hell??

What is there not to understand?

There are guilds who raid 10 as hardcore as there are 25 guilds. Just because people don't want to commit to 25 doesn't mean the loot should be worse. A lot of players in top 10 man guilds are just as skilled if not more as top 25 man guilds, so why punish them? Blizzard realized that, and also noted that there's a lot more interest for smaller groups (10 men) as for (25 men) thus the gear was equalized and so were the raid difficulties too - before that 10 men raids were a lot easier compared to 25.

Personally, I don't want to raid 25s, but I still want a challenge and be adequately rewarded for completing that challenge, lower ilvl just feels like a punch in the face for doing the equivalently hard content as my fellow 25 raiders. I had my fair share of 25s, and I don't like it, you always miss people here there, guild repairs suck the bank dry in like couple of raids, you don't have much close contact with most members since there's just to many etc.

But back then, when you wanted a challenge your only option was to find 24 other people and raid 25s, which a lot of people didn't like and started doing 10s even for worse loot, but most became vocal about 10s being too easy and the loot being crap - so Blizzard listened and did what they did.

25/10 Normal/Heroic are fine as they are now, this new Flex mode is more than welcome for people who don't feel the need for a challenge and are under time constrains, not for people who want a challenge still but don't want to raid 25. It's fine, there's a bit messy with how many raid modes there is and how many levels of loot there is, but we'll get used to it like we did for every feature up until now.

[Lorelai1548]

All I see here is more grinding.

[looorg]

I just hope they apply this to our standard normal/heroic raids so we can flext them to; that way nobody will have to sit out -- or can sit out if they all of a sudden have some irl emergency etc. Naturally there might be a sweetspot of how many people you bring.

So while I'm not overly interested in this now; it being between lfr and normal mode I guess and hope that eventually it will apply to all raidmodes.

[Saybel]

This is the best thing... ever.

[Nero Duskwind]

This is interesting. If this works out well then I hope they drop 10 and 25 man, leaving Normal flex raids and Heroic Flex raids, and LFR.

I think that's the intended goal now and this preliminary tryout will buy them time to figure out how to scale mechanics and loot tables to match the logistical variables for when they do decide to implement it towards Normal and Heroic.

[tangers58]

yay! Now we get to do the exact same thing 3 times a week to keep up on gear! And raids get to be even further dumbed down