Yesterday, Blizzard released patch 5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar for World of Warcraft, and it included the new “flex” raid option. I was excited for it even before I got to try it out, but many were weary of it. Some thought it was just another tier of gear and that players would still not learn the mechanics because they would just get carried through. Well, this is not like raid finder. I tried the new flex raid system with my raid last night and it is probably my favorite thing that WoW ever added.
Raid your way
First, let me start by saying that the flex raid was not a walk in the park. It is not as hard as normal mode, but it does require everyone to do their part and know the fight. We started with around 15 people and clicked start raid. It queues you up just like the raid finder, but it does not match you with other players. You can go with any number of people between 10 and 25. The best part is that you can add players even after it starts and the raid scales with the number of people. While on the first boss, Immerseus, we added four more guild mates and the health of the boss went up.
You can take any number of roles, though I suspect you need to have a minimum number of tanks and healers if you expect to down any bosses. We had two tanks, five healers, and the rest as DPS. The actual fight was challenging and much harder than LFR will be, I expect. We went in not knowing the fight and just winged it.
Now, we are not a “hardcore” raiding guild, but we do complete all content on normal 10-man mode. I have to say, raiding the flex mode felt like a 10 man. We were able to relax and have fun because it was just us and not other people that might ruin the experience for us, like in LFR. We wiped a bunch of times before we got the hang of it and downed the boss on our last attempt for the night.
We are coming for you, Garrosh.
Bright future in raiding
This is the perfect type of raiding for those in-between casual and hardcore, or just groups that have more than ten and not enough for 25. It isn’t too challenging that we cannot take members with lower skill or gear, but not too easy that people do not have to pull their own weight.
Our guild still does their normal raiding, but as someone who just got back into playing and is not on a group, I love this feature. We planned on doing this three days a week, so I may do more articles in the future, perhaps with screenshots and/or video.
What do you think of the new Flex raid? Discuss in the comments.
