Discussion: What exactly do against splitraiding?

[Deleted]

First of all we have to get some things cleared up a bit:

1.) What is splitraiding?
You split your raid into half (or even third) mainchars and fill up with twinks from your raidgroup. This way you farm the heroic content several times during the first weeks of progress, giving all the loot only to the mainchars. All twinks only serve as additional chances for itemupgrades.


2.) Who performs splitraiding?
I don't have specific numbers. Mythic World 1st guilds are definitly doing this and several other guilds that want to perform in a competitve atmosphere. Its certainly a small amount of players compared to the overall playerbase. If I have to make a subjective guess: <1% of the playerbase is acutally doing mythic content at all and maybe 1% of those players have performed in splitraids.


3.) Why splitraiding?
Obviously gear still has a great impact on progression and especially the current content is pretty merciless if your'e looking at DPS/HPS numbers you have to deliver (Fallen Avatar/Mistress being one of the hardest DMG-Checks in a long time). But to answer the question: The advantage you get from split-raiding in comparison to other progressguilds who are not doing this is definitly noticable during the first weeks of progression. Having everyone in your raid with all needed setbonuses and trinkets BEFORE the actual mythic race starts is a huge deal.


4.) Why bother?
- The performing players don't like to equip and master several charackters to stay competitive. It's a huge amount of time you have to invest and the current AP/Legendary-System is definitly not helping on this matter.

- It can influence balancing and raidadjustments. Guilds are defeating Bosses with gear they shouldn't acutally have to this point. Theres no point in denying that there are/were Bosses that simply require your raid to have certain kind of gear or artifactlevel (everything after: Guarm/Helya, Krosus/Star Augur, Avatar). Some may call those Bosses "contentblocker" or "guildbreaker" but they definitly exist.
Splitraiding guilds are falsing numbers about how fast certain bosses have to die and set unrealistic expectations to non-competitve-Mythic-guilds. Blizzard is having a hard time to calculate how hard the current content acutally is!. Which playerbase should they choose to perform the right and fair adjustments to their raidcontent if their numbers are influenced this way?

- fixing this problem might shift the competitve raiding scene away from "a huge amount of time you have to invest in" and highlights more the impressive amount of classknowledge and high-quality groupmanagment behind those guilds. Maybe it even makes mythic far more accessible for the broader playerbase and who the hell is against additional content? ;-)

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Blizzard statet that they understand those issues but havent come up with a satisfying solution yet.

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So here we stand with the next AddOn already in "discussion-range", still not having a practical solution. I see 2 very sensitive variables in this context:

1.) Punishing the players account by performing the same content several times in the same loot-lockout.

I have thought about this over and over but this absolutly makes no sense. Players will find a way around it even if they have to make an additional wow-account for each one of their twinks. Mythic Raiders earn enough gold with sellruns to finance several accounts easily.

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2.) The big amount of "sudden"-upgrades you get as soon as the new content starts has to change.
I want to illustrate this with following picture:
[Upgradeprogression over Time](http://i.imgur.com/FYssd6r.png)

The green line illustrates simplified the upgradeprogression for the broad audience as soon as the new Patch hits. The blue line illustrates simplified the upgradeprogression for a splitraiding guild.

Ofcourse better guilds should also have a higher ratio yada yada but the goal seems to be clear: The blue line should more match the green line.

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My personal solution:

**Upgradeable items.** What?!

MoP already had this implemented as some kind of "catch-up Mechanic" and "longterm motivation to do the weekly chores". But in MoP this made the already good items even better. Now we just want to get our good items "slowly".

I mean following:

1.) You end your current content with a ~ilvl of 900

2.) New Raidtier begins but instead of getting an instantly high 30 ilvl boost on every itemslot, the new gear only has an ilvl of 910 with 4 additional +5 ilvl steps to upgrade (all concrete numbers ofcourse have to be empirical adjusted over time).

3.) With killing Bosses in just 1 difficulty (like curent artifactpower) you will earn a specific currency to upgrade 1 or maybe 2 items per week to their full potential (again numbers have to be adjusted)

Over time your charackter will be as strong as in the current system, but the huge upgrade "jump" at the beginning gets flattend out. Splitraiding is still practically doable, but its not very lucrative to do.


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I would love to her your personal opinions!

#MakeRaidingGreatAgain!

[VyersReaver]

Simple solution: disable Master Loot options (force Personal loot) for raids with 20% people who did the boss on the account once (personal loot locks tier pieces, which are the crux of split raiding). Or lock the loot entirely to a person when he gets that with same conditions.

Will solve another problem to an extent: gear runs.

[Deleted]

Simple solution: disable Master Loot options (force Personal loot) for raids with 20% people who did the boss on the account once (personal loot locks tier pieces, which are the crux of split raiding). Or lock the loot entirely to a person when he gets that with same conditions.

Will solve another problem to an extent: gear runs.

Should we just end the thread here? that was a great way to solve it.

[Shamadin]

I think there is either something very important I'm missing or I don't understand the complaint in general.

Let's say all raids are balanced around the idea of a minimum ilevel per-difficulty. For this I'll make up an example; LFR - ilevel 50, Normal ilevel 60, Heroic ilevel 75, Mythic ilevel 90. This is the minimum expected item level to be able to participate in a non-carry clear of content. So basically the better your gear the easier this content gets, but all difficulty levels are tuned around their minimum required item level.

Now the more important part is that you are obviously doing new raid content for gear upgrades. That means each difficulty level has to help you prepare for the next. So a Heroic raid in the above example should drop gear around ilevel 85-100 which would get you prepared for Mythic content. Obviously the more chances you have at gear the faster you can get to that minimum expected item level. This is where I *THINK* this complaint lies. In the speed in which people get to that minimum ilevel.

Now my perspective as a heroic raider is: Why does it matter if other people get gear faster than you? Especially if you're not raiding against them. In what way does a "Top 10 in the world Mythic guild" getting gear faster than your "try your best to clear mythic by the end of the tier guild" (examples, not assuming) effect you and your guild?

Again, I think I understand why this could be a problem; if Mythics were based on something other than item level and player skill like every other difficulty. But fundamentally I don't think that's the case, so I don't see a problem with split raids.

So what I guess I'm asking is: What is the problem with split raids? The speed in which other people can get gear? That there might be a tuning issue based on how fast people get gear? That skill isn't important enough in the more difficult raid?

TL;DR - I don't get why other people raiding more/faster has any impact on anyone not in that guild. Help me understand?

[xcess]

It only affects the top guilds so who cares

[Deleted]

It only affects the top guilds so who cares

If blizz starts to design bosses for the top 100 guilds in mythic difficulty than it will effect everyone. But right now is doesn't seem to matter.

[Doomislav]

I don't see any problem with the practice. It means that the players have to invest additional time into the game, which is what a game developer wants. And anybody can do it if the choose, so it doesn't create an advantage over other players (that want to invest this much time and effort).

[Raelbo]

My opinion: don't bother trying to fix a player problem by changing the way the game works. It won't achieve the desired results.

The game has several limits in order to try and keep people from feeling compelled to devote too much time/effort to the game, which is fine, but there will always be those who will go overboard and will want to spend even more time/effort to get ahead. If a player/guild wants to spend a ridiculous amount of effort to go above and beyond what is expected then they will find a way. Which is why split raiding exists. It is simply a manifestation of those players drive to spend more time in the game in order to get ahead of their competition.

I don't see any effective way of stopping this, nor do I even see the point.

Crying that it's unfair on other guilds is asinine. The people who put in the most effort should have the advantage. If you are not prepared to put in as much effort, then you shouldn't expect to be as competitive. It's that simple.

Ultimately the best game design approach to this is to make a system where more effort can give you infinite potential for more power, but on a diminishing scale as the level of effort increases. Much like the AP and TF/WF systems already do. Doubling your effort will get you ahead by a fixed amount of time, but the guys putting in half the effort will only ever be a few weeks behind on progression. It's up to players to decide how much effort they want to put into based on how competitive the want to be. The effort required to beat the content should not be ridiculous if you're prepared to take a little longer to get there.

[Sengiratolom]

Twink= overgeared low lvl alt, by definition those can't even enter high level raids

Back to the topic, split raids will happen as long as there was enough time to gear alts up between content releases. The more hardcore guilds will end up with more geared characters= will be able to split up more to speed up main gearing, leading to better progress in week 2, which in turn speeds up alt gearing in the weeks after that.

With lockouts being based on what bosses are killed, rather then a raid ID in general, people (try to) kill as many bosses as possible with mixed raids (alts and mains), to re-kill them with the inversed group to maximize gearing. It is very unlikely that the raid ID base will ever return, thus split raids will continue to happen.

[Deleted]

Im really just repeating myself:
Changing any kind of account-lock-out won't affect anything. Mythic guilds are earning enough gold with sellruns to pay multiple accounts. Maybe it will affect it a little ... Method ran 7 Splitruns during their first heroic lockout, that's quite a lot of money. But its easily affordable to pay 3-4 accounts with your monthly gold income as competitve raider.

=> There has to be a change within the gamemechanic

Why bother how fast player get their gear?

I reapeat myself again: Splitrunners dont like it. Blizzard doesnt like it.
=> Every affected party doesn't like it
=> Think about solutions that only affect those groups
=> My solution only affects those groups
=> value

Shouldn't the competitve scene be more about the quality of time and not the quantity of time you invest in?

[siren]

How I, you or anyone else raids is of no ones business but those involved. Stop making an issue out of something that is not an issue.

[ONCHEhap]

No one likes splitraiding (personally what made me quit competitive raiding),yet I don't really see a way to fix it except making gear irrelevant,and I can't see it really working well

[Blackmist]

How about do nothing? The same few guilds are hitting the world firsts every time, and spoiler: outside their elite club, it's got little to do with loot.

[Deleted]

How I, you or anyone else raids is of no ones business but those involved. Stop making an issue out of something that is not an issue.

I am involved. And many other players are involved who wants to participate in the competitve mythic scene but cant afford to spend pure quantity of time on multiple charackters only to equip one of those.

Stop denying problems you dont want to be true.

[Dezminion]

Easy;
Just ignore it, it only effects the top 20 guilds (tops)
If you are pushing your awesome world rank 1987 and your leader forces you to do split runs, then you are doing it really wrong.

[Archmage Alodi]

Do nothing about it. Split-raiding affects like 0.1 percent of players .

[Dracullus]

Why bother. Crazy people will always find a way anyway. Even if you somehow put some gear limit on account, they will just buy second account.

Some time ago I watched "Legion review" from Fatboss channel (it was recorded shortly after launch). Not only they leveled 4-5 chars on launch, but also one of them recommended multiboxing to level all 5 at once. I was like "what they actual fuck?".

It's another world, people. Blizzard make right call to not address this, ekhm, "issue".

[Inukashi]

Splitruns never affected me and I raided Mythic as Top 4 Guild on my Server till I lost interest in WoW. Why be bothered by a Problem that doesn't affect me and most likely everyone in this thread? Does anyone here lose money when another person finishes the content faster?

Did the 'If there is no problem for me, I just get triggered by random things' mentality reach WoW now?

[xalenthas]

Normal, Heroic and Mythic bosses share same loot lockout. Split raids just ended after first week for Mythic guilds.

[Aflakk47]

It's the players issue for doing it. If they have a problem running a new raid 7 times first week, they should suffer the burnout and agony of doing such. No one is forcing them to run and rerun the same instance. They choose to for that edge and prestige of being a World First guild. Blizzard shouldn't have to do anything in this case.