Flex raiding - widening the gap between the good and the average players

I was talking to Stubborn and talking about raiding in the new patch.  I mentioned that we were on a DPS wall with Norushen and that's partly a gear thing, but you see that with new raid content.

He proceeded to tell me about a "secret raid" where only certain people were invited to a raid and not others and they attempted to get a kill in.  At first, I thought it sounded a bit selfish, but if it wasn't a raid night then it was probably ok - and if it was Flex raid, then it's probably also ok as you can still do the same raid with your guild - doing it once doesn't lock you out from doing it again, but you just can't get any loot.

Which is what brings me to talk about flex raiding.  I still stand by the fact that flex is awesome because we can play with everyone as well as learn new fights in an environment that is easier than standard progression 10 man but with all the achievement benefits, and we can also use flex to gear up our casual base to be subs for our main raids.

However, it may mean that your own raiders may go do flex raiding with someone else.  For us, we are not that progressive or excellent - we still haven't done the 2nd wing of flex, nor killed anything in there yet - but we do it at our pace.  I think it's great that you can take people for flex from realID, but does that mean that all your best players will get taken away to go play somewhere else leaving the alts behind to play in your own guild runs?

Flex has also created a semi social divide amongst raiders - not from my guild, but for Stubborn - where you can clearly delineate who is good and who is not, and then the better players think they're too good for the less than outstanding players and go do Flex with someone else.  The best players from different raid teams may decided to go form their own Flex group and clear the content, leaving behind those that weren't deeemed to be as good, which can be detrimental to the morale of a smaller, less hard core raiding guild.  So the good players go on to get better by getting the better gear by clearing more in Flex, creating a greater divide between the good and average player.

So where Flex seemed to be the saviour for the smaller raid team with difficulties forming a 10, two 10s or a 25 man, I could see that there is the potential for there to be even further fracturing of a raid team with the better players leaving to go play with people more their skill and gear level.

Am I worried about that with my own guild?  Not really.  Last Sunday, our top two DPS, Aza and Souglyy didn't come to flex but had done it earlier in the week with their friends in other guilds who had cleared further in flex than we had.  Neither came to guild flex raid scheduled on Sunday, but also neither was online either, so it doesn't surprise me that they wanted to get their flex run in if they had other plans.  Luxy had also done flex with other friends but she still came to flex with us.  Fortunately we have enough of a casual base to get our raid to still run, and with BTag friends coming in to help as well it buffs us up even more.

But for those guilds out there who have not got such a solid guild community, flex may herald the doom of their raiding, or lead to further strain to an already strained raid team.  So what is the solution?

For those who flex raid with those other than their guild, helping out with your own guild's flex team with geared alts would be a good contribution.  Not only would your alts get gear, but you can help boost numbers too.  Just don't take your overwhelmingly undergeared toon to be carried and drag the team down even more!  For those who are worried about getting left behind and the better geared raid members aren't showing up for guild flex because they're going somewhere else - PuGs are an option, or even better, bringing in other friends to help with your numbers.  Surely other people have alts that are partially geared, especially with all this free epics being thrown around on the Timeless Isle.  Or, you too can go find some friends to flex with as well!  However, if you want your guild to survive then you need to make sure you still play as a guild, so turn up to your scheduled flex and main raids still!