Flex system - Is this normal now?

Does your guild use the flex system?
Does your guild cut people to get ahead in the dungeon due to the flex system?
Do you find this socially acceptable?

for 1-2 nope
for the 3rd one yes and no
yes if they come out and say it
no if they just starting to do it

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Flex system?

i am thinking cutting the dead weight edit i was wrong
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Flexible_Raid#:~:text=Flexible%20Raid%20(also%20called%20Flex,between%2010%20and%2030%20players.

Do… people not raiding Mythic… actually cut players for exceeding the 20 man line?..

The only three things I ever see the point in doing that for are:
A- Fights like Stix, which have severe performance issues when exceeding 20 man, and get progressively worse as you approach 30. Or,
B- Tuning scales steeper over than 20 man line to a point that you have to cut under the threshold to be considered a “small raid” for mechanics damage and such. Or,
C- You hit a “Personal responsibility” boss and people can’t be responsible.

A is a rarity that very specific fights have issues with, and those seem to be lessening over time, B is far less common than them actually having to tune down scaling for smaller groups instead, and C results in cutting and replacing even if the group size is structured, so flex is sort of only helpful in that you don’t have to replace them. Usually stacking as many people as you can fit is just a net benefit, given A isn’t an issue and you’re not hard carrying others.

It can come up, yes. Sometimes you’ve wiped far too long on a given boss and it’d benefit the whole team to just trim the fat on the first kill so that it’s in those people’s vaults. Then when you’re a bit stronger bring everyone along.

It was quite common with Heroic Gallywix early on, as the fight was such a hard healer check with low gear, and most guilds couldn’t necessarily field the 6-7 healers typically suggested for a 30 man group.

The way they changed normal and heroic raids from 10 or 25 to a flexible number of 10 to 30 when the WoD prepatch dropped .

Based off of the SoO flex raid level that became what we now know as the current normal raid level

No, if it’s better to not play with my friends then I have no business in that stupid game

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I think I’m a bit too tired and just glossed over their second point honestly. A full day without sleep is killer on the brain.

Yeah, it’s probably fine that people get cut at that point. I’ve had to make that call or advise on that call a number of times with a ton of guilds over the years. There’s nothing hostile about it, and if people don’t want to be cut, then they just need to pick their performance up or have alts that can fill those spots that are hard sells, like healers.

I know my guilds literally only had to cut on Ansurek and Jailer because people were failing personal accountability checks. And we pulled them in for AoTC within the month. No one gets left behind permanently, it’s just needed to get people to a level that they can prop everyone up.

It’s sort of why I run a ton of content outside of guild groups myself as well. I want to avoid that choice when possible, and usually I can pull enough damage and do mechanics well enough to prevent that from happening. But, sometimes the tuning just hits like a sledge and you have to work around it. Trimming is one of the last solutions most raid leads ever want to use.

Yeah, ultimately as long as it’s not done with malice and the goal is still to get everyone raiding together and having fun as consistently as possible I don’t mind it.

I’m still glad however that mythic is a fixed number so this discussion never comes up.

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People just end up taking it as a personal attack, but it’s hard to avoid that. But, as you said, it’s all in the hopes of getting everyone to that goal post.

And I agree on the Mythic point. I could see them working at adding an option for or moving towards 10 man groups at some point, but I think the structured group size is needed to prevent some degenerate world first gameplay, and it helps the roster boss when there’s expectations for group size.

I’m so out of it - so a flex raid is a Normal level raid of any number of players between 10 to 30, is that correct? And if so, does it cover all expansion raids, or just recent ones?

Both normal and heroic now scale the bosses damage, hp, and sometimes mechanic requirements to fit the group size from 10 up to 30.

Originally a specific difficulty was made at the end of MoP for this called flex, it was then rolled out to everything except mythic throughout WoD and Legion.

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Ah, thanks for that. Is it a recent thing? Oh, wait a sec, you answered me. I might need more coffee… :blush:

We’re a casual guild that raids heroic so… yes. It’s nice to not have to worry about finding subs or something because someone is busy on raid night.

No. I mean, I personally will say a silent thank you when our underperformers happen to be out for the night for unrelated reasons… but we’re casual enough that we’ve never deliberately benched people.

N/A

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In my experience, it’s the opposite. A lot of groups are fine with 1-2 carries so long as the rest of the people are reasonably competent and the raids have…let’s just say VERY MUCH slack room demanding nowhere near any level of mechanical execution demands or anything more than middling amounts of competency. Raids are, after all, the easiest form of endgame progression.

Now pug life is different. Pugs are heavily incentivized to kick swiftly and come off as a no nonsense 1 strike you’re out type of group lest the actual competent people run off the moment there seems to be difficulty

If you have say 18 people in a raid, and cut 3 the raid is suddenly a lot easier

Social norm can be way out there now adays

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What was considered flex level difficulty became normal level with the Warlords pre patch and the old normal became the heroic level we use now.

However the other part of it was the player flexibility of 10 to 30 players for a raid and with the increase of people in said raid group the so did things like increase in boss health and the amount of mechanics during boss fights. Also the player account flexibility was added to heroic raids.

The “flex” system only applies to normal and heroic raids. Where the minimum is 10 players and the maximum is 30. Also LFR but LFR is designed to always have 25 players at any one time. The expectation is that you still have at least two tanks for bosses. Even for LFR. Although there have been times where an LFR boss can be one tanked, either by overgearing or due to an absence of mechanics.

Dungeons don’t use the flex system so I have no idea why you are asking this.

What?

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