Is hardcore raiding scene declining? Let's find out

[Jastall]

ToV is much harder than EN, it's a filler raid after a filler raid, its rewards are uninspiring for the difficulty even after the buff, and for Nighthold preparation guilds are likely better off farming M EN and 2/3 ToV rather than crack their teeth on a very hard boss that only offers loot 5 ilvls higher than the previous two bosses.

I doubt it's a real decline, just a lack of interest in that particular raid/boss.

[Deleted]

Any official statement about NH being tuned about full artifacts? Pretty sure it rather is tuned at around 40 traits or even 34/35, as the 20-point-trait is more like a bonus for excess AP.

Why would it be tuned around casuals if latter bosses will only be seen by guilds that have people with 54 traits? At least until nerfs.

[ls-]

TBF, if you're running M+ regularly and do some raiding, getting 54 traits @25AK isn't a biggie.

Anyone who raids competitively has 54 traits at least on their mains atm.

As for hardcore raiding scene being in decline. It's been in decline since forever, even before WoW came out, hardcore raiding scene in EQ had already started declining. It's in a state of nearly permanent decline, that's kinda normal, it gets some fresh blood from time to time, but majority of players aren't about that life.

As for hardcore competitive gaming in general. People who have time to play games competitively, and have necessary skills prefer doing so in games that have competitive scene w/ official tournaments and stuff for obvious reasons.

[lehadnk]

Some guilds out of your list just transferred to another realms. Some are disbanded, yes.
Also, I know some of 'commercial' guilds (including ones from top100) which decided to give up on ToV to do more EN runs since it's much more efficient way to make money, and also they doesn't consider ToV as a part of raid tier anyways.

So yeah, nothing is happening with a hardcore scene afaik.

[primalmatter]

Biggest problem with the "hardcore" raiding scene is the time it takes to return to the game from breaks now a days.

The time gates from research and artifact knowledge kept me out of raiding mythic for a little over a month when I returned to raiding.

The barrier to entry has never been higher with Legion and I can't say I am a fan of that.

[cFortyfive]

TBF, if you're running M+ regularly and do some raiding, getting 54 traits @25AK isn't a biggie.
Anyone who raids competitively has 54 traits at least on their mains atm.

Don't think it's necessary to state much more than simply this being bs. It's not even true in the top 10.

[Consanesco]

Why would it be tuned around casuals if latter bosses will only be seen by guilds that have people with 54 traits? At least until nerfs.

Get a life, dude. There will be plenty enough time for Nighthold, nobody (with the rare exception of some 24h/7d-m+ freaks) actually has (and needs) 54 traits.

[Cracked]

Get a life, dude. There will be plenty enough time for Nighthold, nobody (with the rare exception of some 24h/7d-m+ freaks) actually has (and needs) 54 traits.

Well, exactly. Since there will be enough time, everyone wishing to progress it can comfortably get to 54 first?

[Dangg]

The method used is missleasing because you didn't consider how a) hard b) useless ToV is in comparison to EN.

[Cynep]

People attacking the OP about the NH tuned for 54 traits need to stop foaming and think about the undisputed fact that we have 19 (nineteen) days until NH M opens on EU servers. Yes, today players with 54 traits are in the minority - I opened top 5 guilds on my server and they have 3-7 people with 54 - but in 19 days of playing at AK 25, if you won't have 54 traits you're not hardcore sorry. And this thread has "hardcore" in the title. This isn't about tuning of Normal or LFR. Mythic will be tuned for 54 traits.

[ls-]

Don't think it's necessary to state much more than simply this being bs. It's not even true in the top 10.

K, should have said that many of those in top guilds had 50-54 traits on their mains atm, but it doesn't change the fact that by the time NH is released in 10-11 days pretty much everybody (mb excl. tanks) will have 54 traits on mains, not sure about mirrors, but surely not on alts for splits

P.S. Obv I'm talking about first 10-15 guilds on WoWProgress, anything else is irrelevant, others do not compete for WF, so whatever.

[OrcsRLame]

ToV is much harder than EN, it's a filler raid after a filler raid, its rewards are uninspiring for the difficulty even after the buff, and for Nighthold preparation guilds are likely better off farming M EN and 2/3 ToV rather than crack their teeth on a very hard boss that only offers loot 5 ilvls higher than the previous two bosses.

I doubt it's a real decline, just a lack of interest in that particular raid/boss.

For a guild like mine, there is fuck all chance of killing Helya before NH. We could extend the lockout and ram our balls into her fists all day and that brick wall will not break in such a short amount of time.

If you didn't have Helya close to dead before Christmas then you would have virtually no chance of killing her before NH. She's such a massive step up from Guarm that Guarm may as well be a normal boss.

It'd be a different story if NH was coming out late February or early March, but as is it's just not happening for most guilds.

[Ebalina]

For a guild like mine, there is fuck all chance of killing Helya before NH. We could extend the lockout and ram our balls into her fists all day and that brick wall will not break in such a short amount of time.

If you didn't have Helya close to dead before Christmas then you would have virtually no chance of killing her before NH. She's such a massive step up from Guarm that Guarm may as well be a normal boss.

It'd be a different story if NH was coming out late February or early March, but as is it's just not happening for most guilds.

Which is a pity.
Releasing content during major holiday period is a no go.
I want to do helya but due to x-mas break for my guild that lasted 2 weeks in which we raided only 1 day a week.
We have 5 raiding days left for her since we clear all the other bosses in 1 night.

I want to do helya because she seems like a very interesting fight and something that i can say i've done a hard boss when she dies.

[cFortyfive]

We have 5 raiding days left for her since we clear all the other bosses in 1 night.

Five days only helya should be sufficient after the nerf - it's certainly no longer a 300 pulls encounter.

[Teaklog]

Do this every raid, for 5 more raids, and then you (may) have enough data to find out.

You're trying to make a long term conclusion from an extremely short term trend easily explainable through other means...

[Notdev]

Just like the general population of WoW, the hardcore raid scene *always* declines as you go through an xpac. More guilds fall apart than form up. People get burnt out faster if they are high end raiding. When leaders get burnt out, the guild usually falls apart. Most people probably seek other guilds, but a few always decide its not worth it and stick around as a casual or quit outright.

It'll probably be worse this expansion because people who quit won't be able to come back so easily the following tier. With hard work they can come back.

[Deztru]

Hardcore raiding has been in decline since fixed 10/25 was changed to only 20

Every single "casual" guild that did 10man for fun (yes, raided hardcore for fun, because they could) have died out, going for Mythic was too big of a chore (not just recruiting 20, but keeping it intact) and Normal/Heroic is a joke

[Xequecal]

People attacking the OP about the NH tuned for 54 traits need to stop foaming and think about the undisputed fact that we have 19 (nineteen) days until NH M opens on EU servers. Yes, today players with 54 traits are in the minority - I opened top 5 guilds on my server and they have 3-7 people with 54 - but in 19 days of playing at AK 25, if you won't have 54 traits you're not hardcore sorry. And this thread has "hardcore" in the title. This isn't about tuning of Normal or LFR. Mythic will be tuned for 54 traits.

No, it won't. This is absurd. Mythic is only tuned around 54 traits in the sense that it's tuned around 54 traits for people trying to get world-first kills. Yes, if you're trying to kill Gul'dan in the first or second week in mostly Emerald Nightmare gear, then you're going to need 54 traits to put out enough dps/healing.

For most guilds that clear Mythic, however, standard procedure is to use the gear you get from killing the easier bosses earlier in the zone in order to meet the DPS/healing checks of the later ones. For this, one does not need 54 traits.

[Joeydivision82]

How does it matter for a top-100 guild?



Nighthold is going to be tuned around having 54 traits. How do you get them without playing?

Care to share a link where you got that information from?

[cFortyfive]

For most guilds that clear Mythic, however, standard procedure is to use the gear you get from killing the easier bosses earlier in the zone in order to meet the DPS/healing checks of the later ones. For this, one does not need 54 traits.

How many guilds did you see clear tov without 35 traits ?