What will you run?

[daishan]

A few weeks back I had a hunter yelling that we needed to wipe on durumu because the idiot tank (me) had pulled before a 2nd tank had been found...
Needless to say that hunter died on maze phase with half the raid

[Worldie]

Well tecnically if you arent good geared or a paladin or have a pocked pala who HoPs you, you can't solotank Durumu

[Thels]

But if you do, then the 2nd tank is mere backup. Same for Iron Qon.

The annoying thing is that since the first bosses of those 2 wings are so easily one-tanked by a paladin, several paladins insist on solo-tanking the entire instance. Most of the time they're specced into Clemency, just to chain BoP/Salve on you, so they can insist on tanking themselves. And then on Lei Shen they go tank the boss in the overcharged platform, because that's how it's done on HC.

[Ruldar]

Yeah, changed my vote. Ran a Flex SoO earlier today that I found via Openraid, worked quite well.

[econ21]

I may have to look at Openraid, as I am starting to doubt whether I can do Flex as well as normal modes with my guild.

I should have expected it, but Flex feels closer to a normal guild raid than to LFR - both in terms of time to run and organisational requirements. Given restrictions on my raiding times, I may not be able to join my guild when/if it does Flex and it's not clear on my server there will be Flex pug runs in weekends when I have available.

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

[Flex]

The good thing with Flex is if your guild runs flex from 7 to 10 server and you can only log in at 8 server you can do that!

We have a few people that can only do that, so it works out nicely.

[Thels]

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

It's been pretty clear that that combination simply doesn't work out. It's why dungeons have become a lot easier. It's just not going to be pretty when challenging content is combined with random match-making.

[Sabindeus]

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

It's been pretty clear that that combination simply doesn't work out. It's why dungeons have become a lot easier. It's just not going to be pretty when challenging content is combined with random match-making.

I'd love to see a PvE rating, similar to MMR or the kind of ranking used in competitive online games, based on your success and time to success instead of win ratio.

[econ21]

I wish Blizzard could find a way to keep the convenience of LFD/LFR and challenging content.

It's been pretty clear that that combination simply doesn't work out. It's why dungeons have become a lot easier. It's just not going to be pretty when challenging content is combined with random match-making.

I think that's one of those Blizzard received wisdoms that I find really ... unimaginative. (I want to use a less kind adjective, but it would be aimed at Blizzard, not you, Thels.) Another example being that tanks should not be viable in PvP, which I think has been debated without agreement here.

Take heroic scenarios - why can't there be a queuing tool for them? Why is asking trade chat for a group going to be any more reliable than a queuing tool? They are not that complex or require social interaction (I never speak on mine, except for a "hi") - you just need to be geared and competent. Geared is easy to require; competence - well a gold proving ground would do, I suspect. I'm dismayed they got rid of the gear requirement - those things are going to be horrid with someone in 450 gear and I don't want to armory people for a 10 min quickie.

5 mans - again, I don't see why they can't work. Take the Zuls. They were fun and challenging. Just set an ilevel, require people have cleared a normal version that is gentler and have a gold on a proving ground. Sorted. No, instead we have to have mindless zerg 5 mans. Or do some weird unrewarding speed run for the "challenge". Yuck.

Ditto LFR. It can have mechanics, even Blizzard recognises this. Elegon, Durumu, Lei Shen etc. They are fine: without some challenges, LFR would just be boring and Blizzard might as well give you a moss chest with your loot chance after you queued for 1 hour. Just maybe give a bit more thought to how to educate people. Perhaps DBM type warnings to identify mechanics? I'm fairly into WoW and do usually research unfamiliar fights but even I am reluctant to read those long journal entries. There's something about logging into WoW that is unconducive to reading thousands of words of text. I have a vague memory of WoW starting to give educational raid warnings - I think I got told I failed a mechanic for some reason but can't recall the specifics.

[halabar]

Having now run SoO LFR2, with a guild group.. omg. No way going to do that for alts with pug groups.

[Jabari]

Having now run SoO LFR2, with a guild group.. omg. No way going to do that for alts with pug groups.

Heh, I actually got through the first two fights last night with only one wipe each. Only "coordination" was a few of us for the tower group on Galakras.

Dark Shaman on the other hand... We wiped like 3 times on the trash (and lots of other random deaths too). Booted one tank (completely ungemmed/un-enchanted), and the tank that replaced him was ... interesting. He first asked for a third tank - evidently thought that you could "cheese" the encounter by keeping two tanks and a healer inside the war-room with Haroom, and have everyone else with Kardis outside.

(No idea if this works or not - first I'd heard of it.)

Someone then ninja-pulled the boss, and we had our usual wipe. Were doing ok actually until the Huge Red Circle of Doom ate like 6 people at once. Then the new crazy tank just left, and it was really late so the 4 of us in our guild left too.

[Flex]

Take heroic scenarios - why can't there be a queuing tool for them?

Pretty sure part of the reason is they don't want every group activity in the game built around a random queue button in the UI.

[halabar]

Having now run SoO LFR2, with a guild group.. omg. No way going to do that for alts with pug groups.

Heh, I actually got through the first two fights last night with only one wipe each. Only "coordination" was a few of us for the tower group on Galakras.

Dark Shaman on the other hand... We wiped like 3 times on the trash (and lots of other random deaths too). Booted one tank (completely ungemmed/un-enchanted), and the tank that replaced him was ... interesting. He first asked for a third tank - evidently thought that you could "cheese" the encounter by keeping two tanks and a healer inside the war-room with Haroom, and have everyone else with Kardis outside.

(No idea if this works or not - first I'd heard of it.)

Someone then ninja-pulled the boss, and we had our usual wipe. Were doing ok actually until the Huge Red Circle of Doom ate like 6 people at once. Then the new crazy tank just left, and it was really late so the 4 of us in our guild left too.

A somewhat simpler strat with 3 tanks is 2 tanks and melee up the hill with one shaman, and ranged down below with the other one that does all the ranged crap. Getting an LFR group to listen to that might be a challenge...

[econ21]

What's SoO2 like on Flex? It seemed so scarey on LFR (tanking Dark Shamans in particular), I was not brave enough to try it on Flex last week.

[Winkle]

I can only think Flex is easier by the simple nature that if you form an organised group as lteast you know everyone's at least attempting to do the same thing.

[Flex]

For those of you running Flex how much does your group size fluctuate during a single raid? We've gone from starting with 12, going up to 16 and ending at 15.

[Teranoid]

We've actually gone the past 2 weeks with a full 25 but we generally don't have anyone leave or let anyone join after we queue since it's a joint raid between various guilds.

[Ruldar]

I run entirely pick-up Flex, and I generally I see them shrink if they change size at all.