Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2013 4:22:06 GMT
As patch 5.4 looms on the horizon, we have several new features to look forward to with one being a brand spanking new raid difficulty called Flexible Raiding. If you are unware of what Flex Raiding is then I will detour you to this article.
To give a brief rundown on flex raiding, it is a new difficulty of raiding that allows a premade group to raid with any number of people ranging from 10 to 25. The difficulty of the raid itself (read moreorless as the boss's healthpool) will scale with the number of players in the raid. So, basically think the rares on the Isle of Thunder or the commaders in the Northern Barrens. This means that if we have, say, 12 people on raid night who want to raid, we can take all 12 people and still do our raid. The raids will be tuned to be somewhere between raid finder difficulty and normal mode, and this means that while mechanics will be more forgiving than in normal mode, they cannot be ignored as they so often are in raid finder. The encounters will still require a degree of coordination and so will be treated as a normal mode encounter. Gear from these flex raids will have an item level between raid finder and normal mode and will be rewarded the same way as in raid finder. Lastly, flex raids will have an independent lockout each week so as not to interfere with raid finder or normal mode runs (a total of 3 lockouts each week).
And now as I'm sure you are thinking to yourself "Gee this all sounds great, Warlin, but how does it affect me and what we are already doing?", I will share my plans for the future of our guild raiding. I in no way intend to replace our 10 man raid team with flex raiding. My overall goal is to use flex raids to push our raid team into higher tiers of normal mode content through an easier difficulty and higher item level gear. My understanding is that flex raiding will only be available for Siege of Orgrimmar just as raid finder was only available for Dragon Soul. As I do not know how close it will be tuned to either normal mode or raid finder, I cannot say that we will faceroll it and receive cash and prizes. More than likely, my plan is to begin raiding SoO flex for gear starting shortly after the release of 5.4. Balancing between flex and 10 man normals will depend largely on how well we can progress through SoO on flex. If we do manage to down bosses somewhat handily then obviously we may focus more on the flex raiding as that will offer the best possible gear for us. However, once we seem to be sufficiently geared we will return to tier 14, clear it, and then wash our hands of it. We will then begin to progess Throne of Thunder on 10 man normal while continuing to gear through flex SoO. If this raid tier is anything like Dragon Soul (meaning the final raid tier for the expansion lasting way too long) we will have plenty of time to work on it.
I have thought of a few ways to balance out flex vs normal mode raiding and would appreciate any input:
1. We could simply dedicate one of our current raid nights to flex. So we could raid normal on Friday night and then raid flex on Saturday night. Issues for this would be less time for progression mainly.
2. We could create a new night dedicated solely to flex raiding. This option I would rather not do as our weekly guild schedule is pretty busy already.
3. We could alternate weeks of flex raiding and then weeks normal raiding.
4. We could do the one night of each and then extend the lockouts for another week. This would mean that we would have two nights for progression on each mode but spread over two weeks time. This seems like it might be the best option and could just be done a need by need basis, meaning if we clear a raid on normal we obviously don't need the extension.
Nothing is set in stone and I will flesh out more details as all of this gets closer to going live. Please leave any thoughts or comments on how you would like to see this play out. Any feedback is helpful, and the more I receive, the better your raid experience can be.
To give a brief rundown on flex raiding, it is a new difficulty of raiding that allows a premade group to raid with any number of people ranging from 10 to 25. The difficulty of the raid itself (read moreorless as the boss's healthpool) will scale with the number of players in the raid. So, basically think the rares on the Isle of Thunder or the commaders in the Northern Barrens. This means that if we have, say, 12 people on raid night who want to raid, we can take all 12 people and still do our raid. The raids will be tuned to be somewhere between raid finder difficulty and normal mode, and this means that while mechanics will be more forgiving than in normal mode, they cannot be ignored as they so often are in raid finder. The encounters will still require a degree of coordination and so will be treated as a normal mode encounter. Gear from these flex raids will have an item level between raid finder and normal mode and will be rewarded the same way as in raid finder. Lastly, flex raids will have an independent lockout each week so as not to interfere with raid finder or normal mode runs (a total of 3 lockouts each week).
And now as I'm sure you are thinking to yourself "Gee this all sounds great, Warlin, but how does it affect me and what we are already doing?", I will share my plans for the future of our guild raiding. I in no way intend to replace our 10 man raid team with flex raiding. My overall goal is to use flex raids to push our raid team into higher tiers of normal mode content through an easier difficulty and higher item level gear. My understanding is that flex raiding will only be available for Siege of Orgrimmar just as raid finder was only available for Dragon Soul. As I do not know how close it will be tuned to either normal mode or raid finder, I cannot say that we will faceroll it and receive cash and prizes. More than likely, my plan is to begin raiding SoO flex for gear starting shortly after the release of 5.4. Balancing between flex and 10 man normals will depend largely on how well we can progress through SoO on flex. If we do manage to down bosses somewhat handily then obviously we may focus more on the flex raiding as that will offer the best possible gear for us. However, once we seem to be sufficiently geared we will return to tier 14, clear it, and then wash our hands of it. We will then begin to progess Throne of Thunder on 10 man normal while continuing to gear through flex SoO. If this raid tier is anything like Dragon Soul (meaning the final raid tier for the expansion lasting way too long) we will have plenty of time to work on it.
I have thought of a few ways to balance out flex vs normal mode raiding and would appreciate any input:
1. We could simply dedicate one of our current raid nights to flex. So we could raid normal on Friday night and then raid flex on Saturday night. Issues for this would be less time for progression mainly.
2. We could create a new night dedicated solely to flex raiding. This option I would rather not do as our weekly guild schedule is pretty busy already.
3. We could alternate weeks of flex raiding and then weeks normal raiding.
4. We could do the one night of each and then extend the lockouts for another week. This would mean that we would have two nights for progression on each mode but spread over two weeks time. This seems like it might be the best option and could just be done a need by need basis, meaning if we clear a raid on normal we obviously don't need the extension.
Nothing is set in stone and I will flesh out more details as all of this gets closer to going live. Please leave any thoughts or comments on how you would like to see this play out. Any feedback is helpful, and the more I receive, the better your raid experience can be.
