So the big announcement is out, flexible raids that scale on difficulty based on the number of people in your group s that it is always somewhere in between normal mode raids and lfr. Sounds good but I'm actually not so sure I like it.

I have been saying in /g that I wanted 10 man pre-made lfr so I could run lfr with a full guild group and in a way this is that but if we have 12 people we don't need to kick 2 guildies out and that part is therefore awesome as it is what I wanted and more. However, it doesn't replace my lfr lockout it adds to it.

Like it or not raiders will now feel the need to run 3 versions of the same raid for that chance of loot upgrades especially as the ilevel will sit between normal and lfr modes this is especially likely early in the tier. This all sounds very familiar. This sadly sounds all too familiar and reminds me too much of Trial of the Grand Crusader. I ran that place 4 times per week on at least 2 toons for the duration in the hope of small upgrades pushing me and my guild through the next boss and that lead to a lot of folks burning out. It is bad. It is this very reason Blizzard removed the gear gap and lockout difference between 10 and 25 man raids. 

The strange thing is the addition of an extra level of loot (is this why there is an 20 ilevel gap between ToT lfr and ToT normal? Was this meant to be in for 5.3?) as this only adds to the stat inflation. Another potentially bad side effect of this is that as normal mode raiders get gear drops from the flex-raid and normal raids they will eventually have no reason to go into lfr for loot and this could mean that the only people that end up in lfr are those needing to gear up which as the raid tier gets older, fewer and fewer players that currently provide the boost to the lower geared/skilled players will be there and that could lead to some people not in guilds and scared of trade pugs to simply quit the game as they experience queue times that actually extend beyond their normal gaming session and cannot get in let alone complete the raid which too may become an issue. It also removes a vital step in the catch up mechanics of the game.

My final negative thought on this is that I really wanted this "unannounced killer feature" to be a top notch content boost, this isn't extra content at all it is just another version of the same content. For raiders, it is like watching your favourite TV show with the colour changed to black and white. I'm not going to bury this feature before it is live and am hoping that it will open doors to more content. There is still the hope that my desire for this feature to be either enabling old raids to be brought upto date by the scaling technology and/or enabling all previous dungeons for challenge modes as that would have been truly awesome.But the I guess this may not be the killer feature of the patch.

Of course there is a lot of really positive possibilities. The first is that it won't be given a tool to form the group as the group must be premade which is good for guilds and server communities. The extra difficulty will help people bridge the gap in difficulty of lfr and normal which newer players often find it difficult to cross and that will ultimately lead to better raiders. For raid teams that cannot clear the raids on normal mode it will enable them to finish the latter half of the raid instance on flex-raid which will give extra drops that may just provide the extra power boost to get the boss down on normal mode next time. The real beauty though is that it could lead to a pair of 10 man guilds combining forces to raid and that ultimately could see a revival of 25 man raid guilds.

What are your thoughts on the new flexible raids? Is this even the big feature of 5.4? Will they be the next killer feature or the next voice chat? 

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WARNING: RANTY POST

Finally I have had enough of this Random Loot crap that we're getting with both bonus rolls and the RNG loot system on world bosses and Raid Finder.

A bit of background, I've been killing Sha and Nalak almost all expansion so far I have a combined 26 kills and as I'm a raider I've used my bonus roll hoping for a piece of Tier Loot. That makes a total of 52  chances of loot. So far I have won 2 times once from the drop and another from the bonus roll. Both wins were on the same glorious day that I purchased my 522 legs from the Shado Pan Assault and what did I win? 2x tier legs. These were both downgrades and I have therefore never equipped the 1 pair of pants I didn't disenchant.

I have had better luck in normal raids with my bonus roll but thus far in the expansion I had not actually owned 2 pieces of tier loot that were worth equipping because the non tier loot I have had drop in normal raids has been better even allowing for the 2 set bonus until I got a Raid Finder tier 15 helm to upgrade the 489 rep item I had to go with my tier 15 gloves that I won last week. /cheer

Now this week the bonus roll has screwed me over, on our Megaera kill I decided to use one of my Mogu Runes of Fate as I was hoping for the Inscribed Bag of Hydra Spawn while accepting that this was a 1 in 3 chance I could at least have won the got unlucky and won the Gleaming-Eye Shoulders and used them for my shadow off-spec. The 3rd option is a set of bracers that come with a random enchant, the Frostborn Wristwraps, which while they do not have a spirit option they do come with crit and mastery which are still beneficial for a disc priest so not a total loss.

So when I won loot I was overjoyed, then a little sad when I won the bracers, then angry when I realised that I had won hit items. No fear I'll raise a ticket and get them swapped, not for the trinket I wanted but at least a healer compatible set of bracers. The reply to my ticket is shown below:



That simply is NOT good enough. I'll be appealing against this not because I expect it to be overturned but to make Blizzard aware that I am not pleased with the system overall.

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Our first raid will be Mogu'shan Vaults

Blizzard have announced that the raid content in Mists of Pandaria will be drip fed to us in the first couple of weeks of the new expansion. The schedule was a shock to many and sees the return of "gated" content and to be honest I was shocked to see that it will be impossible to raid in week 1 and that it will be a full month before Raid Finder opens. I can understand why this has been done and also some of the frustration by the raiding community. I have mixed feelings on the schedule but overall I'm not unhappy with it.

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I know it's hardly news and that no-one really cares but I just needed to vent off somewhere about the loot system in LFR and how idiots can still abuse it.

Today's idiot (see above) is Speck from Ravencrest, despite having the 403 version of the agi staff from Deathwing he still felt the urge to roll need on the LFR one and of course the gods of LFR loot favoured his roll over mine (on my hunter alt ofc) and everyone else that needed it and had done the same thing with the boots which robbed a rogue of them too. Well let's hope he spends the gold wisely.

UPDATE: I went back in this morning and  got lucky without having to cheat. 

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