Discussion: What exactly do against splitraiding?

[Banard]

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.

Nothing. It so small of a portion it has no impact. Waste of time to even think about it. If any of blizzard employee are thinking about this...its lost resources that can be put into something more important.

This % of people will always game the system. Unless they are cheating or breaking the ToS than ignore it.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

If you don't like doing it then don't do it, but you don't get to complain how hardcore being hardcore is, sorry.

If there was a slamdunk way to prevent it I would back it, but I imagine most ways effect the regular player in some way and there is no need for that.

[Deleted]

It definitely does impact the way mythic raids are tuned and the subsequent nerfing of them that needs to be done after they are cleared.

Checking wowprogress for ilvl of kills, Method were ilvl 933.74 when they killed KJ mythic. There is no way they would have managed to get to that ilvl without massive amounts of split clears. In fact if you check the ilvls of other guilds that have killed him you need to get to the 6th kill by Memento before the raid ilvl is above Method's first kill ilvl and that's 2 weeks after Method's kill. Even now the latest guild first kills of KJ are coming in with raid ilvls of 934-937 and we're 10 weeks since the first kill.

War/titanforging has meant the world first race isn't being done with a low ilvl anymore, in fact they are killing the bosses with an ilvl most normal mythic guilds won't achieve for many weeks. This is important to tuning since the bosses are tuned for world first race guilds to kill in a week or two, but that means major boss nerfs are needed for middle tier mythic guilds to ever have a chance of clearing the raid since they can't really ever over gear the content relative to what the top guilds gear was when they killed it. This is why major power boosts are being handed out in the 7.2/7.3 patches to give people a boost that previously gear progression provided.

Having said that, even with this in mind mythic raids overall participation is low so any form of difficulty/account lock on loot that impacts a much larger percentage of the player base is a bad idea. The main culprit is titanforging. I believe Method had 3 resets worth of heroic split gear, given the enormous amount of loot rolls at heroic base ilvl that's worth quite a lot of mythic boss kills. Split raids have been thing for a long time, but this expansion they are magnitudes more lucrative than previously.

[melodramocracy]

Nothing needs to be done about it. It impacts an incredibly small % of the raiding population that willingly invest time in it. Any 'solution' is bound to be overly heavy handed, and impact even your average raider somehow.

[Marrilaife]

Mythic split raiding has a big penalty - you can't field a "combined best team" in the same week for a progress boss, as you can't combine mythic lockouts from different teams. Therefore if anyone does a mythic split, they're slowing themselves down or forcing that week's progress with half alt team.

So obviously majority of splits are done in heroic.

Why?

Because heroic clears reward way too much high quality gear, usually several pieces per clear that are equal or above mythic base drops.

What to do with it?

Limit titanforging across the board or up the base ilvl drops from mythic in comparison to heroic so reaching high enough titanforge from heroic to beat a mythic item happens way more rarely, making splits way less beneficial.

That would be way less punishing than forced personal loot, forced account lockouts, forced lockouts across all difficulties and whatnot. It wouldn't kill splits (tiers are still a thing), but would make them less of an edge / necessity without royally screwing over the rest of the people who just wanna play alts, help a friend in normal and so forth.

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

It's some German shenanigan, every alt even max level is called twink in their community, just disregard it and replace "twink" with "alt", the point he made is clear despite terminology differences.

[Synthium]

Literally everything you, me or them can come up with will fuck up the casual and semihardcore players by making them unable to eventually do alt runs and gear them. I think it should just be left the way it is, and unless you're competing for a world rank just don't do it. I know some semi-hardcore guilds are still doing it to try and cheese the server ranks early, but those guilds, as decently geared as they become in the first 2 weeks, still reach the same wall that all of us are. Those being, on ToS example: Sisters (first 2 weeks of ToS) , Mistress (3 full resets for our guild and many more on my server), Avatar (still didn't kill him).

So it's like Taliesin (the wow youtuber guy) said:
"Imagine going for a marathon with no intention of actually finishing it, just sprinting very far ahead in the very beginning before collapsing of fatigue and others catch up to you. In your own mind, you're your own winner."

[Avalrand]

I think that Mythic raid shoud just open before Heroic like this:
Week 1: Mythic raid is opened. It's designed to be cleared in previous tier's gear by top guilds in two weeks. Other guilds will kill few first bosses and hit the wall.
Week 3: Heroic and Normal are opened. Top guilds have finished progressing and do not need to do splitruns therefore. Heroic gear helps other Mythic guilds to continue progression. Non-Mythic guild begin their progression on suitable difficulty.

That way nobody is punished.

[Frolk]

A N Y solution will fuck over more people than people who accually do splitruns.

DONT do anything is the best thing to do.

[gallamann]

Blizzard states they don't like it, but there is a world of difference between that and actually taking action. To be blunt, if Blizzard cared to shut this down, they would have.

They already have the means in place, go kill front 7 on Heroic in ToS, then go kill them on normal... notice how none of those 7 bosses on normal didn't drop you an AP token? Also ever notice that 2nd time around you kill the same boss on same difficulty you are not loot eligible?

[Temp name]

You should obviously use trinkets and set bonuses from the previous tier until you find pieces that are stronger in the current tier. Using items that are worse just because they are new doesn't really make sense.

For the most part trinkets and tier pieces in newer raids are always better than the ones from earlier raids, including if they're an ilvl drop

[Brenno]

Remove War/Titanforging and set the ilvl gap between heroic and mythic to like 40 ilvls. TADA hc loot nearly worthless after first week.

[Vaerys]

Even if you force personal loot to "stop" split runs, you will have top raiders playing multiple characters and rolling with the ones that get lucky.

This issue is without a solution. It exists in the minds of the ultracompetitive. Extreme competitiveness drives extreme play style.

[dmerriam005]

2 raid difficulties lfr and normal. Keep lfr the way it is ( having to que for it). This does affect everyone because blizzard has to tune the fights around this or else the streamers will complain that the content is too easy. Ever wonder why blizzard nerfs bosses throughout the tier....

[Atherions]

Substantially increase the rewards from mythic raids compared to heroic. Heroic is piss easy and mythic is pretty hard so its only natural that mythic raiding should give way better stuff considering how much more effort you put into mythic raiding. That way the gear advantage from heroic splitraiding would be minimal. Forcing personal loot on guilds is antisocial behavior, and doesn't belong anywhere in an MMO.

[judgementofantonidas]

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.

________________________

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!

what is wrong with you? if they want to take the time to improve their ability to move forward at better than a snails pace then let them.

[Jastall]

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.

Same. I don't see any way of stopping that which wouldn't penalize far more players than necessary.

It's not like it matters. Only a small number of guilds even do hardcore split running, and it's for, what, 2-3 weeks at most? If they don't like it, no one is forcing them to do it. I don't care if they lose a few ranks on WoWprogress by not split running, the game should absolutely not be designed around a race that is not supported by Blizzard and that most of the playerbase barely even knows about.

Anyone who's not on the frontpage of WoWprogress and still split runs is also tryharding and their complaints can be summarily ignored.

[Khallid]

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.

Splitraiding is a player workaround to raid lockout and loot sorting systems. So it can only be removed by changing how raid lockouts and looting systems work. If no-share personal loot was the only option, split raiding would go away, but you would piss off all raiders, including the top mythic guilds. Removing lockouts would not change how much these people raid at all.

So the argument to be had is if split raiding is a bad thing to begin with or not. Split raiding only really matters for guilds in the world first race. They will do anything in their power to win the race, so having a whole form of raiding (split raiding) just for them is actually ok. Now, the game shouldn't be designed to cater only to them, because that would exclude too many, but currently they nerf bosses after the world first race is over, so that works mostly fine as well.

Split raiding forces players to play too much to keep alts geared if they want to be part of the race, but nobody else is being forced to split raid. Split raiding is not a requirement to be a Cutting Edge mythic guild.

[Deleted]

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

Not going to happen, blizzard is N E V E R going to make it so that Mythic is shared with the generic face-roll modes normal and heroic. The only thing they could do is make it so that normal and heroic raids are personal loot and disable trading any gear pieces, though that will also affect casual players.

It's like they said, they do not think split raids are a problem (they did mention they don't like it), guilds specifically mention that they require alts for that purpose, and if you don't like it, you can always apply to another guild. Then they also said that anything they'll do to prevent split raids, will also hurt the other players that don't do it.

TLDR ; there's no solution without affecting the casual players, and blizzard is not going to upset them just to disallow something that only 5% of the guilds use.

[Echocho]

Not going to happen, blizzard is N E V E R going to make it so that Mythic is shared with the generic face-roll modes normal and heroic. The only thing they could do is make it so that normal and heroic raids are personal loot and disable trading any gear pieces.

Or just make sure heroic will never offer upgrades over mythic, removing the need for mythic guilds to ever go there. I think this is relevant for every difficulty actually. It doesn't make any sense to go down a difficulty level at the start of every new tier and blow through it in 1 day, you should continue where you left off. Heroic guilds start progressing heroic, mythic guilds start progressing mythic.

[RohanV]

The only real way to fix split-raids is to cap the number of new epics a character can equip each week. I.e. Max of 3 upgrades each week. You'd have to introduce a new category of soulbinding (not-tradeable + not-equipable).

But I doubt anyone really wants to do that.