Is there any good reason for this to still be around? It drops lower ilvl gear than the previous tier of Mythic/M+ and is so undertuned that I really have no idea what purpose it serves. Right now, it seems like Normal is far too easy (and the rewards are pointless when spammable M+ content drops higher ilvl gear) and not sufficiently different in terms of difficulty from Heroic to really make any sense. Meanwhile, the gap between Heroic raids (which are also undertuned, although admittedly less so) and Mythic is massive, and for Mythic you either have to recruit more bodies or leave others on the bench, depending on the size of your Heroic raid group.
If you want accessible raiding and to see the story, there is LFR. If you want a moderate challenge in an organized setting, there is Heroic. If you want to poopsock and leave people on the bench, there is Mythic. So for whom is Normal raid difficulty designed?
Normal is there to serve, ideally, as the first steps into raiding, as heroic can get overwhelming at times especially if you’re new and learning. It’s the relatively stress free version of organized raiding.
Normal is for the friends & family guilds. People who don’t want to deal with randoms in LFR but aren’t good enough/don’t want to be serious enough to do Heroic. Just like Flex before it, it’s aimed at essentially people who want to raid as a guild but don’t want to be too serious about it.
Honestly I think we need to go back to Normal and Heroic again but as they currently stand. Mythic is the outlier as so few people do it and LFR is… well, LFR.
I mean, sure, but then why not have a difficulty for people who aren’t good enough for Mythic but want to challenge themselves beyond Heroic? This sort of logic would support infinite raid difficulties.
I don’t think it serves the purpose of being the “default” difficulty, nor do I think that has ever been an accurate description of “normal raiding” since Blizz first started introducing raid difficulties. Normal is missing mechanics and has what few mechanics it keeps in neutered, although somewhat less so than LFR. It is definitely not the “default” setting, it is easy mode but called something else.
I think normal does have a place for “casual” raiding guilds, something they can cut their teeth on, get some sense of progression and ideally build up the courage to take a stab at heroic.
I guess my real point is that I just don’t understand the tuning of the two “flex” raid difficulties. They really aren’t all that different, and certainly nowhere near as different from each other as Heroic is from Mythic.
The fact it’s called “Normal” means it SHOULD be the default difficulty.
Why would they call it that if it was anything else?
If it isn’t?
As I said before, things are starting to become more than a little messed up.
They’re warped and twisted, such that the wording doesn’t make sense anymore.
Normal was actually Flex back in 5.4 but the idea of Flexible raiding became popular for non-Heroic (new mythic) raids, so they kept it and then added the flexibility to the old Normal raiding.
IMHO LFR should be [special olympic easy] as it was in previous xpacs unlike now where you can bring a group of disabled kids using a mouthpiece to play the game and actually wipe to the bosses, and then just make Normal be flexible and then have Heroic raiding. Having four different tiers of raiding in terms of difficulty is kinda dumb. So basically like Mists but just merge Normal/Heroic to one difficulty. Also hate how Heroic actually adds a few mechanics randomly to fights unlike on Normal, just confusing.
