World of Warcraft: Current Year

Thoughts on Flex raids? Official forums seem surprisingly pleased with them. Flex + oQueue addon = awesome ?

Flex raids are a relaxing departure from LFRs in my opinion.

Flex raid is what LFR should have been and you can also do your meta achievements there without sacrificing heroic progression.

I wonder if Flex raids are going to seriously damage LFR, to be honest. Not that I care, but it definitely makes it so that there's even less of a reason now for raiders to do LFR and basically carry the non-raiders through it.

There have been some hilariously bad moments on Dark Shaman and Nazgrim I'm hearing.

Nazgrim on LFR is Q_Q. "Don't attack him in D stance! STOP ATTACK WTF!!!" "OMG, KILL THE DARK SHAMANS! DONT FOCUS ON BOSS EVEN THOUGH HE IS 1%, KILL THE @#$@#$@# HEALERS!!!". In LFR, I think we literally wiped 4+ times in a row when the boss was almost dead because everyone went "GOGO BURN BOSS" when he was low and ignored the healers which promptly healed him for 10s of millions of HP.

Flex raids fill the void that was left when 10s and 25s started being tuned to be the same difficulty and drop the same gear starting with Cataclysm. An easier version of a raid, but still requires an organized group and coordination. Flex raids retain all boss mechanics, they are just tuned slightly easier, as opposed to LFR which outright removes or changes mechanics. Also allows people to still raid with friends or other guild members, even if they're locked into a guild raid group.

I do think they intended for LFR to fill this void, but it fell short for many obvious and beaten to death reasons. LFR still has a purpose and a target audience and is a positive thing for the game to have, but where LFR has fallen short Flex has filled the hole perfectly IMO.

Bizazedo_sl said:

There have been some hilariously bad moments on Dark Shaman and Nazgrim I'm hearing.

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Sure having less "raiders" in LFR now is a valid concern (There is even a topic on the Blizzard Forums with Blue responses on this exact subject), but its not like bad experiences on LFR bosses is anything new. No different than what happened with Galaron in tier 14 LFR, or Durumu and Lei Shen in tier 15 LFR. Blizzard has the statistics and they have their target goals for boss success rates. They'll make adjustments as needed, but also wait and see how groups respond over time. When ToT LFR first was released I saw 5 stacks of determination on Durumu more than half the time (clearing on 3 chars weekly) for the first 1 1/2 - 2 months. Near the end of ToT I considered it a bad raid if I got to 3 stacks. And its not like they have to worry about integrity of the bosses in LFR like they do for heroic, they make changes as they see fit to keep the wipe numbers below where they want them to be.

So people saying druid tanks are uncommon and flex raids actually work has me wanting to pay to play again. Fuckin...vidja game dyslexia.

I just resubbed after playing for 7 free days and I think the game is in the best state it has been in since near the end of Wrath. I'm pretty impressed.

i like flex alot because I've never been in a guild that could complete heroic in a timely fashion, my former guild of four years had the talent on the top end but our bottom roster was always pretty bad. mind you everyone in the guild was fun to be around it just always came to a point where we couldnt go go any further until we could overgear the harder encounters. now that Im in a casual flex guild it allows me to participate in structured environment at a more relaxed pace and carrying people isn't so bad. i think in the long term it would help players like me not burnout so fast.

I'm trying out my free 7 days back, and to echo a previous comment, I think the game is in a pretty good state atm. I especially like that tanks can gear with DPS stats now (my blood DK is going mastery and haste primarily). Haven't gotten into the new stuff or raiding yet, but the Timeless Isle and flex raids sound pretty nice.

Bah, I'm a sucker for rerolled praise. *resubs*

I did my seven day trial and there was a lot of content, but it wasn't really anything that sucked me in. Nothing bad, just a snoozer for me personally. Timeless Isle was amusing, but not enough to stick around.

I just feel like playing a bear tank and subbing in as resto when needed. I'm in one of those...dr00d moods.

Bear tanks are fine this tier. Last tier they were fine except for 25H (and even then were often fine in the offtank role; for instance they were fine for tanking Bats on HTortos, even if a monk kiter was infinitely preferable).

They've done a good job of tank design this expansion. Even when some tanks have been obviously superior (Monks and Paladins for most of the Expac), the difference between them and the other tanks hasn't actually bottlenecked anything, and only tends to really show in 25H (survivability) and 10H (DPS, since tank DPS is a good chunk of raid DPS, and certain tanks blow others out of the water). That's specifically where Druid had troubles last tier, as many of the fights had primary mechanics that gave precisely 0 shits about Druid's "MASTER OF ARMOR!"/Burst Evasion schtick.

The only real issue I've had playing each of the tanks was that Warrior felt really lackluster this expansion pack. Like, its effectiveness was fine, it just felt silly pushing 3-6 more buttons than the other tanks to get the same effects. Needless added complexity/finger strain. And having to actually gear for defensive stats unlike Paladin/Monk/Druid was a sad feeling with how Defensive Stat Ratings scale this expansion.

Wtf...Blizzard did another 5% dmg stealth nerf to Brewmasters. Assholes ;( I sincerely hope they aren't just looking at AOE numbers.

And god, Flex is 100x easier than LFR, if only because people know wtf they are doing.

I really enjoy the combat in this game. It feels like everyone has an interesting rotation now. Been going Boomkin for leveling since that's what I had my gear in and I dig what they've done with the rotation. I especially love the way treants work now.

After playing FFXIV and then coming back to this I can really see the difference in the combat. Not only is this less EQ2-ish but it's abilities just feel more interesting and flow better with that smaller GCD. The character models are definitely due for that update however.

yeah they havent made SoO retard proof yet progression there is waiting on enough determination for the boss to fall over curse you titan runestones!