OK this is worth its own topic before I derail my own thread about how normal raids are an unreasonable barrier for the necklace ( you can find it here ), which I stand by for one very specific reason.
I will concede that, SoO and ToT time sinks aside, most raids on normal are just “LFR with fewer people,” I will give you that and yes, it’s reasonble to just knock them out, but I spent an hour this morning learning that the true, absolute barrier for getting the neck slot unlocked is in fact the need to “bond with a bunch of strangers” to get past dark animus which, in comparison to how every “main thoroughfare achievement” in remix works, is utterly unreasonable.
LFR dark animus is a zerg, as it should be. Normal needs to be like this too if it’s going to gate the necklace slot.
That hour I spent this morning in a group that was very patient with me, ended up dissolving at the end of that hour and many wipes, not to mention a revolving door. I joined the group (whose lockout was indeed at Animus) because I have up to Ji Kun normal completed, and have heard that Dark Animus IS in itself the barrier to the necklace. I unfortuantely learned “don’t join a group at animus, because they probably are there because they can’t beat animus,” and that’s… that’s ridiculous.
If it wasn’t a deep boss, it wouldn’t be so unreasonable to resort to “join fresh groups and hope they have rolfstomp level gear for trivializing animus,” but that IS the game to get this raid done with a PUG now, and that’s just ridiculous. You don’t know if you’ll be successful for almost an hour into the raid.
Make the necklace available on LFR or nerf Dark Animus. No way an entire gear slot should be on this high a shelf, as I’ve stated elsewhere, but that shelf is not consistent across normal remix raiding. Normal remix raiding is indeed “LFR with fewer people,” with the exception of animus. Animus is ridiculous, and deep in arguably the longest raid. It needs to change.