I completely misunderstood Flex raiding

#1 - Sept. 12, 2013, 11:32 a.m.

I was under the impression that flex raiding was for friends who want to raid but sometimes can't field a full group of people so they can go with a lower number.

How did that turn into: queue for an LFR style raid and progress as far as you can, but if you don't make it to the end, you'll have to do the whole thing over again next time you form up?

What kind of design is this? What was the mindset to make Flex like this instead of like a normal raid zone? I was so pumped about flex, but this....I dunno, it feels very second class.

I would have preferred to be able to go with 13-14 friends and learn a boss or two in a night and then come back later in the week and learn a few more bosses. If people can't dedicate their time to a full raiding schedule, why would you make their ability for progression hinge on having to rekill bosses over and over?

edit:

I admit I was wrong.

The system is OKAY.

You are able to start a group and than enter the zone and THEN add new players in. It's a bit of a hassle but overall, it does work. I was also able to add people from other servers into the group. We had a guy from Magtheridon in our group from Stormrage. It's buggy, but it works. We started on Norushen with a 7 man raid to get it going, and then added in the people we needed to add in who hadn't done a boss before.

Crithto

Community Manager

#132 - Sept. 12, 2013, 6:15 p.m.

There has been some confusion about a couple aspects of Flexible mode raiding which we’re hoping to clarify for you here:

-If all members of a Flexible mode raid have killed specific bosses within a wing, when they queue up again the next day, they will begin where they left off.

Example: All 14 players in the raid on day one have defeated Immerseus, but only 12 continued on to take down the Fallen Protectors. If that same group of 14 were to re-queue for the same wing the following day, they would begin at the Protectors with Immerseus remaining defeated. If they returned with the original 12 that downed the first two bosses, they’d carry on to Norushen.
-While Flexible mode will never scale in difficultly below 10 players, you can still queue up and begin clearing the instance with as few as 7 players in the raid.

Example: You have 9 guild members and friends who are online and ready to rock Flexible mode, but the other 5 members of the raid are running a bit behind. You can still form a raid group and queue for Flexible Siege of Orgrimmar, and then head inside to begin taking down trash as you wait for the others to log in.

Crithto

Community Manager

#314 - Sept. 13, 2013, 7:04 p.m.

Once again, this community has come together in a constructive manner to share feedback and suggestions, and we thank you for that. Let's kick this update off with the most recent change:

After careful consideration of the feedback you've shared, and after weighing pros and cons of the Flex mode system that came with Patch 5.4, we've decided to change how raid progress is saved. At patch launch, entering Flex mode SoO was based upon who had progressed the least. For example, a raid of 11 players entered SoO and downed 3 bosses on Tuesday night. Wednesday night, all 11 come back together to continue but decide to bring along 4 new people. If the raid had queued together, they'd have had to start the raid over from the beginning because those 4 new players weren't flagged as having downed the first 3 bosses. Our original intent was to err on the side of making sure no one in the raid would miss out on a boss that they still needed to kill.

A hotfix applied this morning, however, takes a more traditional approach to raid lockouts by basing boss progression on the group leader's status. In other words, if the raid leader faced 3 bosses on Tuesday and decides to continue where he or she left off tonight, anyone who joins the Flex raid--even those who have never set foot into SoO--will begin the instance at the same point where the raid leader finished on Tuesday. This system is more straightforward and understandable for much of the WoW raiding community, therefore Flexible raids will no longer be based upon the least progressed member.

Thanks, but there seem to be some folks that haven't seen it work like this if cross-realm players are involved. Is this a bug / user error?

This was addressed in this morning's hotfixes.

09/12/2013 11:21 AMPosted by Chaoscannon
Question, does flex reward loot like lfr does, ie random number roller, or is their actual gear to be handed out?

09/12/2013 11:25 AMPosted by Seraphion
Is there any reason why we need to queue in the first place?

These two questions go hand-in-hand: Using Raid Finder-style loot ensures that adding new players to a Flexible raid will never impact any individual member’s chances of receiving loot. And using Raid Finder-style loot also means using Raid Finder-style queuing.

Crithto

Community Manager

#357 - Sept. 13, 2013, 9:12 p.m.

09/13/2013 12:18 PMPosted by Dreyfuss
Will players who are skipped ahead this way still be eligible for loot from bosses they skipped if they join another flex raid with those bosses up, like LFR, or will it be like normal/heroic where you have to accept the raid leader's progression and match their lockout status to raid together?

Yes. If you joined "Flex Raid Group A" to help down the fourth boss after they had already killed the first three, you could then join "Flex Raid Group B" to down the first three bosses later and be eligible for loot. Of course, if you continued on to the fourth boss for a second time, you would not be eligible for loot.

It should be noted that no matter what, you'll always receive Valor Points for every boss you kill in Flex Siege of Orgrimmar regardless of how many times you've killed them that week. Also, if you have the Warforged Seals, you can continue to use them for bonus rolls each time a boss is defeated.