Last night a new raid system was announced, the Flexible Raid. You can click the link for the full post, but here are the main points:
- New difficulty level - harder than LFR, easier than Normal
- New ilevel of loot to match - higher than LFR, lower than Normal
- Separate Lockout - Can run LFR, Normal AND Flexible version and get loot from all three
- Delayed Release - Like LFR, opens later than Normal and in wings.
- LFR style loot - Per person random loot, nothing drops directly from the bosses
- Flexible raid size - the BIG one, anywhere from 10-25 people in the raid, difficulty will adjust
An interesting new raiding development! This is just the preview, it's not even on the PTR yet so many things can change. Here's my take on it for now anyway.
The difficulty is currently slated to be easier than "Normal." So probably something like Dragon Soul or post 20% nerf Firelands. In other words, EASY. In my opinion, that's not very appealing. Sure, Dragon Soul was fun the first week or two when we blasted through everything, but after that it was quite the drag. (Of course, that may just be Dragon Soul itself...) I don't find the idea of blazing through "Flexible" mode in a couple weeks only to THEN move on to Normal very fun. The delayed release schedule could mitigate that, I suppose.
It's yet another source of loot, which gets tiring when you feel like you need to run LFR and Flex and Normal in a week. Ugh. I've learned to just let it go, but it itches at me anyway. Back in Wrath, before I came to Game Theory, I was running SIX raids a week. Three 10-man, three 25-man. It was fun at first, but pretty rapidly became a chore, yet I felt I had to do it to keep everything in the guild running smooth. Not worth it. I have no intention of running three raids a week, every week. If I have extra time and it'd be fun, sure.
The LFR style loot system is pretty meh. I think it does work great for a group of 25 total strangers, but "normal" loot is better for a guild. The ability to trade loot around is very valuable, as is DEing for mats!
The only thing that is SUPER nice is the "Flex" element. Being able to take all of our raiders every night would be fantastic! My initial reaction is that it wouldn't be worth it. Especially if we blaze through it in a couple weeks. We'd be right back to "just 10" in order to keep raiding something harder and interesting. I do think we'd mow through it fast. It's essentially LFR without the random people concept, which means we'd just crush it.
I would LOVE to see the Flexible aspect extended to Normal mode. That would be awesome for us! As for this current suggested implementation? I don't think it's for us. We'd be done way too fast and either bored or back to the exact set-up we have now. Of course, we'll see how things play out over the PTR and evaluate, but what do you think? Interesting? Annoying? Frustrating? Superb?
I'm wary of the separate lockout and the feeling of must run for gear too. MoP already has too many treadmills, I'm not looking forward to another.
If it has enough fight mechanics from normal modes we could use it as training wheels mode to get a quick preview of the fights. Flex numbers might complicate learning though, the difference between 10 people and 12 people for certain things (Iron Quon stacking, Ji'Kun nests, even stuff like dealing with adds at Horridon) can be pretty large. LFR is useless for learning all but the most obvious of mechanics.
I wouldn't expect us to include Flex raids as a major part of our raiding schedule. Informal groups on off nights would be a great way to spend some time in group content and to fill in some gearing gaps.
I don't like it because of what both Muta and Skarn both talked about .....the feeling of HAVE to do it to better gear your character to help the guild progress that much faster in Normal modes. If it is better then LFR gear then why run LFR? People are going to "Have" to run Flex raids to get that upgrade over the lower LFR ilevel gear. Not worth it in my opinion and I think this is a total waste of time/resources especially since tis higher then LFR but doing LFR style loot on top of? So much more they could be putting their energy towards not ANOTHER lockout that no matter what they say people are going to "have" to run this to faster progress their characters. I am one of those people that want to upgrade my character as best as possible in the most efficient way and meaning I have to interpret that as get higher ilevel gear to help my character help my Normal raids....I know that isn't the attitude the want per say but that is the attitude of the majority NOW and like Skarn said why they went away from SEPARATE lockouts after ICC because you DID have to do both otherwise you were left behind.
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!
I don't think our guild is really the target for this content at the current time. (Back at the end of Wrath, this probably would have been great for us.) I could see us running it for fun on some night when we don't have anything better to do. It might be a good opportunity to get some of our non-raiding friends and family members into a group with us just for fun every now and then.
This will be amazing for a lot of more casual guilds and I don't begrudge them this content at all. Then again, I've never felt that I had to run everything to stay on top of the loot game anyway.
I'm mostly intrigued because it sounds like you'll be able to work on the raiding meta-achievements in flex raids.
Correct me if I'm wrong but we can even bring friends from another realm with us. Would love to pull a couple of buds from Sargeris over, since they don't raid really.
Loaffy lvl 100 Warrior
Aristodemus lvl 100 Pally
Mushak lvl 100 Monk
Ímpatient lvl 100 Druid
Tells lvl 90 Priest
Tellos lvl 90 Shammy
Vonnegut lvl 90 Warlock
Bãcksurgeon lvl 91 Rogue
Merrelleyla lvl 94Hunter
I'm tired of lvling alts!