Ion: It's the Myhic guild leaders fault for burnout

[Jngizu]

Guys saying that Ion is right, I don't know how you can not see it.

Imagine a swimming competition. People come, swim certain distances in certain styles, the fastest one in each category wins. OK, good. One year the orgs come forward and say that before you swim, you have to lift weights. Until you do 5,000 kg combined (you do multiple attempts, the lifted weights are added together), you are disallowed to swim (or, fine, if you want to be petty, let's reword that to - each 1,000 kg lifted subtracts 10% from your swim time or gives you additional attempts or whatever).

Do the athletes have reasons to complain?

(There is a bigger, more important, picture as well in that their new content is now 5% new gameplay and 95% rehashed old, and it's not about raiders, it's about everyone, everyone is getting hit.)

And the price for the worst metaphor ever....

That competition is designed for only top athletes. Here, Blizzard has to design a game for both hardcore players and more casual ones. And no matter what they do, hardcore players will always have something to complain about. So, they made the choice to design around the biggest amount of players. How are you not getting that? If they designed for only hardcore players, I bet you would tell casuals complaining to just "deal with it".

[Saroc]

So a bunch of tryhards are whining because they feel they can't keep up with the no-lifers?
Same stuff, different day.

[Deleted]

Guys saying that Ion is right, I don't know how you can not see it.

Imagine a swimming competition. People come, swim certain distances in certain styles, the fastest one in each category wins. OK, good. One year the orgs come forward and say that before you swim, you have to lift weights. Until you do 5,000 kg combined (you do multiple attempts, the lifted weights are added together), you are disallowed to swim (or, fine, if you want to be petty, let's reword that to - each 1,000 kg lifted subtracts 10% from your swim time or gives you additional attempts or whatever).

Do the athletes have reasons to complain?

(There is a bigger, more important, picture as well in that their new content is now 5% new gameplay and 95% rehashed old, and it's not about raiders, it's about everyone, everyone is getting hit.)

This has the be the worst metaphor ever.
Its more like swimmers start going overboard and do some "made up stuff" to get that 0.1% edge over the others, and then everyone that competes adapts and does it and then blizzard gives up and sets time standards for qualifying with everyone doing that in mind(as now everyone is faster and those lax qualifying times mean everyone and their grandma can qualify, so useless).
Now people complain because now they have to do what they have been doing on their own all the time. Why? Well mostly because those that could only qualify by going overboard and doing those things, now cant qualify even while doing it so they get angry and yell.

[Sarevokcz]

My guild has the paradigm that Ion criticizes us on(we ranked this tier as 11th). I am an officer too, so his remarks are on me.

Honestly speaking what he said isn't necessarily false. We decide to commit to the current requirements to be competitive, however Blizzard's own paradigm is what caused this in the first place. Blizzard, as a company, should understand what people are able to push in sake of competitiveness. When did Blizzard's paradigm shift so that the raiding community changed their schedules to the current level? Wrath of the Lich King.
The accessibility that was thrown in WotLK gave forth to the possibility of creating alts at the same level as your main characters. The sudden reduction in raiding barriers made raiding content lose longevity and gearing became much easier. Thus the proliferation of alt raids started (some degree of alt raids where they funneled gear to mains existed in TBC, but they were very rare). Add to this enviroment of accesibility to raiding the limited attempts of Algalon and the end bosses after it, and you have people raiding with 2 alt raids to practice mechanics.
Using theoretical numbers, imagine an average player 2hours/day can gear his character decently in WotLK. A min max player can gear his character extremely well in 3hours/day in wotlk. If a min max player can play 6-9 hours a day, he can gear 2-3 characters extremely well. Those 6-9 hours a day were spent before in one character due to the barriers in place for raiding.
Ultimately, the accesibility is what gave forth the current competitive raiding paradigm, blizzard know it. Blizzard decided to disregard this downside that affects very little of the actual players, and accept it as an loss in face of the other gains accesibility gave.

so what youre basically saying is:

blizzard made it easy to keep alts as geared as mains, so people started having alts and doing alt runs
so blizzard in Legion made it really hard for alts to keep up with their mains, but peopl einstead of ditching all but maybe one alt and getting back to "good old days" instead invest way more crazy hours to keep multiple alts geared and farmed with AP as their mains...

and somehow thats blizzards fault? But it shows how spoiled the competitive raidng scene was the last couple of years

[Trapped]

People have burned themselves out on M+ and AP farming, and Legion, for many, has already turned into "just logging in for raids". Not worth a sub anymore. The game is old, this system is old. You can have the best expansion ever, but its still the same old system. Level up, gear up, raid. Level up, gear up, raid.

[Dangg]

Where the fuck is the stupid "xD mythic nighthold is tuned around Level 54!!!" meme coming from anyway?

Actually in reality the stupid meme is 'you don't need level 54 to doing mythic nighthold after 3/10'-

[Jtbrig7390]

Can you provide a reason why literally everyone who isnt trying to push the bleeding edge should really give a shit? No? Then pull up a chair at the casual table.

This is totally sig worthy.

And imo /EndThread lol.

[Makorus]

Actually in reality the stupid meme is 'you don't need level 54 to doing mythic nighthold after 3/10'-

Yeah maybe if you are shit.

The Paragon Trait is a crutch and not a necessity.

[Trapped]

Can you provide a reason why literally everyone who isnt trying to push the bleeding edge should really give a shit? No? Then pull up a chair at the casual table.

Disagree with this. You don't have to be bleeding edge to give a shit about your character's performance.

[Fleuria]

Where the fuck is the stupid "xD mythic nighthold is tuned around Level 54!!!" meme coming from anyway?

Ion literally confirmed it on twitter as a reply, that they intentionally re-tuned the whole raid before it came out to accommodate for max artifact traits.

They said they would tune ToS no where near max traits which will probably mean it'll be EN/Early ToV difficulty.

[Deleted]

The grind comes when you "feel" you have to do something to improve your character, which has little to do with skill and more to do with dedicating "precious" play time to repeating the same tasks over and over again. Reputation in MoP was an example of this. PvP titles and gear in Vanilla is another example, which saw people quit soon after the grind was over.

There is always a choice to these matter but for the players who are competitive, despite their schedules ranging from 4-60 hours a week the AP system is a backward step and goes against many of the philosophies that were implemented during and after Wrath (bar MoP rep grind) to make characters viable for competitive and progressive gameplay.

If you have only 4 hours of game time a week, but are relatively skilled, the AP system will hold you back,the RNG system for legendary items will weaken you further if you're part of the unlucky ones.

If you are part of an organised guild and your main character's spec (let alone main character) has been nerfed, then you have to do more than just learn or re-learn to play a different spec (since gear is no longer a problem). You NEED AP. Easily fixed if the power of one weapon is transferable to the next.
You could be boosted to ilevel 885 (we can do this in a week thanks to M+ and sharing items), but without the correct number of traits, as a casual Mythic guild that barely raids 2 days a week, you're not viable at this trait level and definitely not at trait level 35, which should be the minimum entry for EVERY dps class if blizzard refuses to implement a shared Power level system between specs. Shout out to fire mages now grinding to go frost for ST and mythic Krosus.

And even if you could afford the time, then there is the RNG element to the legendary system, that absolutely screws you over if you're part of the unlucky players who have 4+ legendary items, but none are BiS. This issue HAS not been addressed in patch 7.1.5 and has been exacerbated due to the ever present class imbalances.

So fury warriors who barely have above 40 traits but have BiS legendary items with the right heroic level gear, set bonuses and trinkets could absolutely make the dps check on mythic Krosus for example. Weak classes such as pre buffed Unholy DK's and Fire mages who do have BiS legendary items at this trait level on single target? No chance. You need to be carried by the stronger single target classes and if your guild doesn't have them, trying to find skilled and like minded people who need TWO extra benchmarks makes it even more difficult. It's no longer, "any ranged class will do as long as he/she can play".

Now hardcore guilds are fully aware of these issues and solve them through dedication and patience. Skill and organisation is also a huge factor, but thanks to two new systems implemented in legion, where one is grind-able and one requires sheer luck, ANY mid-level content (such as Nighthold) will absolutely give virtually one choice for competitive players...either you dedicate your time to making your character stronger for progressive raiding, or quit the scene entirely.

For the absolute casual guilds that enjoy the challenge of Mythic raiding, if your spec is not viable because you can't afford the time, or because it's been nerfed and you need to play a different spec, then time is something we absolutely CANNOT afford, because of our work schedule and RL commitments. We have two fire mages with 4 great legendary items (they've been really lucky) to have that luck absolutely turned on them because of the nerf to fire mages ST damage. One has moved to his druid (he plays ALOT) the other is slowly getting his arcane spec viable, only to be told that maybe that is the wrong choice because Frost is THAT much stronger.

[Ishayu]

I'm guild master of a mythic raiding guild and I just told people point-blank that I'm not going to ask players to spam Mythic because I knew it would burn them out.

Competitive raiding existed and worked fine long before people decided to do splitruns and altruns and whatnot. Competitive raiders need to chill. Just a little bit. Being competitive also means being enduring - ask any sports players their thoughts on that. You can't train 7 days a week 15 hours a day and expect to get a good team.

I think it'll solve itself honestly. These crazy guild leaders will just lose their guilds and those that remain won't be like that.

[Deleted]

Where the fuck is the stupid "xD mythic nighthold is tuned around Level 54!!!" meme coming from anyway?

People don't perform as well as they could, and being elitist turds they rather blame AP, Blizz and Ion instead of actually maximizing their performance.

[Allenseiei]

so what youre basically saying is:

blizzard made it easy to keep alts as geared as mains, so people started having alts and doing alt runs
so blizzard in Legion made it really hard for alts to keep up with their mains, but peopl einstead of ditching all but maybe one alt and getting back to "good old days" instead invest way more crazy hours to keep multiple alts geared and farmed with AP as their mains...

and somehow thats blizzards fault? But it shows how spoiled the competitive raidng scene was the last couple of years

Spoiled? Really? You mean how we don't have any rewards that can't be adquired by others in later patches or expansions except a stupid achievement no one cares about?

Did I ever talk about the good all days? No. Blizzard accesibility paradigm is what lead to this scenario. Was it blizzard's fault? Not completely, but they do hold some responsbility as well as us.
The competitive scene has already drilled in their skulls the dynamic of raiding, since it has been like this for more than 8 years. What Ion said about "maybe it's not sustainable" is something we will have to face if it continues like this, and blizzard is trying to change the paradigm, since they already said "split raiding is not something they want". Do we as competitive players want split raids? I dont think any of us enjoy split raiding. The competitive community is always the most affected by changes in WoW. Currently it was still doable, and you mostly adapt to your competition. Maybe next expansion, if this new paradigm stands firm, we will not have as many alt raids. Legion in fact was specially bad because of legendaries, most of us don't have what most people call "alts", we have multiple characters of the same class and our main is decided on the legendaries we got.

[Deleted]

Oh the never ending debate. Even after all these years people can't seem to mentally comprehend, that you can't please everyone.
If you tailor a game for people who play 1 hour (or less) a day, people with more gametime will "complete" it in a week or so and then rage that they wasted money on it.
If you tailor a game for people who play 12+ hours a day, casuals will be barely able to scratch it's surface, and rage that they wasted money on it.
If you tailor a game for normal people - the ones who are dedicated enough to invest more than 1, but can't afford 6 or more hours a day -, both nolifers and welfare players will rage. Pick your poison, really.

There are fine lines between welfare players, casuals, hardcore people and nolifers.

And honestly, people on the ends of the spectrum should seriously stfu. Yes, if you play 12 (or more) hours a day, you'll "beat the game" friggin fast because it's not made for you. Also, people crying about it's impossible to reach 54... wtf? I have a life, and even my gaming time is split between multiple games (alas I'm very far from playing WoW all day, even on weekends), yet my mainspec weapon is nearly 47, with both offspecs at 35... And I had my WoW sitting frozen for nearly 3 weeks so real life stuff. So yeah, if you put a little effort in it, instead of demanding things and crying on forums, you might be achieving something yet.

[Deleted]

Wow look at this. First thing in ages that i agree with something with Blizzard. MMORPG is suppose to be a neverending adventure not a competition. We the players creates the competition but the game itself is an adventure.

Having a neverending, or very hard, ap cap is amazing. One player choose to only play one characther he becomes the most powerful mage on the server. On the other hand, the other mage, choose to level an alt instead at the cost not being as strong as the other guy. This is exactly how it should be. You cant be the best soccer player at the same time being the best baseball player.

[Deleted]

People don't perform as well as they could, and being elitist turds they rather blame AP, Blizz and Ion instead of actually maximizing their performance.

The more you spam this shit without posting logs of your top tier performance without having max traits on any boss kill past trilliax, the more you look like an idiot.

[Sarevokcz]

You don't understand how raiding works. The power characters gain from the paragon trait is MASSIVE. Stamina, dps, healing, everything is huge. And it's huge for every fight. Even on spellblade, the enrage is not a joke if you 5-heal it so have fun beating it without 54 on most of the raid. We are about to start botanist soon, but even there, less dps = more abilities to deal with. You admit yourself that you don't have the dps for krosus and you don't get how the AP system makes that fight dumb?

Gameplay improvement will obviously help guilds kill stuff but that's not the major factor. Char power is. And gating char power behind a bunch of MoS runs is plain stupid.

the difference between 50 and 54 traits is less than 2% dmg and like 60k HP. Vantus rune will provide greater benefit than that. people managing their movement and defensive CDs better will be far more benefical.

somehow i dont see how couple of people having few traits less is breaking your progression...

[bubbadubba]

Except it's true. It's their own choice to have 5 alts and do split raids.

If you are trying to compete in the race... then you have to do split raids and have 5 alts.

[rda]

And the price for the worst metaphor ever....

That competition is designed for only top athletes. Here, Blizzard has to design a game for both hardcore players and more casual ones. And no matter what they do, hardcore players will always have something to complain about. So, they made the choice to design around the biggest amount of players. How are you not getting that? If they designed for only hardcore players, I bet you would tell casuals complaining to just "deal with it".

OK, I agree with what you are saying here.

But I don't think it is so much as Blizzard choosing between making things for a few raiders vs making them for everyone else. I think it only appears like that choice, while in reality no choice of that kind is being made. It's just Blizzard trying to have content on the cheap and instituting another endless grind because that's all they are able to do now. It so happens that raiders (and PVPers) are hit the first, and casuals aren't feeling like they have been hit yet - but they will feel it too, just from another angle (when they see that Blizzard are doing tiny amounts of new content and are spending 95% of their efforts on prolonging existing grinds).