Mythic Raiding: what does it take?

[Marrilaife]

it's the main reason i longer do any mythic raiding. not interested in scorning or being scorned.

Yep, biggest roadblock to being a mythic raider is that people don't want a challenge, because challenge means sweat & tears, means there's gonna be failure and frustration involved, life isn't always honey, roses and rainbows so they escape to a game to forget about it and create illusion of easy success. After all, in an RPG we're all heroes.

Second roadblock is lack of commitment, tons of people don't raid seriously not because they cannot or rl schedule doesn't allow them, but because they don't want to have a "raiding schedule" in their calendar.

[Jinpachi]

Yep, biggest roadblock to being a mythic raider is that people don't want a challenge, because challenge means sweat & tears, means there's gonna be failure and frustration involved, life isn't always honey, roses and rainbows so they escape to a game to forget about it and create illusion of easy success. After all, in an RPG we're all heroes.

Second roadblock is lack of commitment, tons of people don't raid seriously not because they cannot or rl schedule doesn't allow them, but because they don't want to have a "raiding schedule" in their calendar.

Challenge has nothing to do with it. It's the culture that detracts more people from doing it.

[Addict]

I'd say effort.

effort to learn tactics.
effort to learn class.
effort to show up.
effort to show up when you know you're gonna wipe a few/several/many times.

Usually, the last takes the most effort.

Then, depending on what level of raiding you wanna be doing, just a matter of how much effort overall you're willing commit for it. It doesnt takes a lot of it to clear a raid on mythic if you dont have a set time for it, anything from when it launches to the next teir is totally acceptable depending on your own preference.

Personally im a complete moron with tendancies of standing in all the fire and im still 13/13 mythic.

[Marrilaife]

Challenge has nothing to do with it. It's the culture that detracts more people from doing it.

Oh yes it does. Mythic raiding is more of a challenge of social skills than your keyboard skills. Successful teams overcome their urges to make drama, ragequit, devolve into blaming each other and so on. But often those tensions arise in a situation where challenge and ambition is involved. In mythic raiding people are being criticized because there's something at stake for the whole team. If there was nothing, no struggle, there would be no reason to get annoyed, look for someone at fault etc. But successful guilds need to disarm tensions as much as possible if they want to survive.

No one enjoys being criticized, but there's a difference between learning to handle it both by criticizing one and the criticized one, and simply running away from it, dismissing it as "rudeness" and not even checking if the other person has any point or not. Guild where officers go into frothing rage instead of criticizing constructively won't last long, but neither will one where members dismiss any constructive criticism as personal attack.

Problems that are eating away wow's community are not endemic to mythic raiding. Problems like the cult of ilvl, the worship of "optimal raid setup" or "best race for x class" way beyond the real existing reasons to support them (there are some reasons but they're blown out of proportion in significance by the community), selfishness (totally not caring about how someone's way of acting will impact other people in the group / guild) and so on.

Being criticized for a real mistake that had an impact on the whole team (like wiping the raid and wasting everyone else's time) is not really the worst problem of the community. I'd wager the bigger problem is the attitude that if the group fails on a boss instead of fixing their mistakes they concentrate on "get more ilvl", and that is prevalent for example in pugs. You wiped? "Oh just invite more high ilvls" - that's often the first suggestion dropped in raid chat.

[Deleted]

people don't want a challenge, because challenge means sweat & tears, means there's gonna be failure and frustration involved, life isn't always honey, roses and rainbows so they escape to a game to forget about it

That's not always true because some people lead hard lives and the game is to relax. Others lead very easy real lives and the game is their way to do something challenging. It's not that they are incapable of raiding properly, they may not want to.

[taishar68]

Thanks again for the continued feedback everyone; it has been interesting to see the varying opinions on what comprises a Mythic-capable raider/team.

[Marrilaife]

That's not always true because some people lead hard lives and the game is to relax.

That's exactly what I said, they want to escape hardships, dilemmas, responsibilities of life and play something where they can relax, "space out" and enjoy themselves.

It's not that they are incapable of raiding properly, they may not want to.

I fully agree, most people who don't raid it's because they don't care / don't want to, mythical "skill" or "talent" is not really the most deciding factor. Skill can be trained to an extent, maybe 1 in 1000 players plays at a skill level you cannot train yourself to if you don't have "talent", rest can be done, if a person wishes to. Many don't. It's their choice.

I just don't get why some of them instead of saying "it's my choice, I'm not interested" say "it's because the community is horrible, elitists keep me out of it, raid leaders always nerdrage at people" etc.

Also I'm not sure if your correlation always applies. There are probably people who are competitive both irl and in gaming and people who neither seek challenges irl nor in games.

[Deleted]

Also I'm not sure if your correlation always applies.

It doesn't.

[Baconeggcheese]

Fruit cups, lots of fruit cups.

[Jinpachi]

Oh yes it does. Mythic raiding is more of a challenge of social skills than your keyboard skills. Successful teams overcome their urges to make drama, ragequit, devolve into blaming each other and so on. But often those tensions arise in a situation where challenge and ambition is involved. In mythic raiding people are being criticized because there's something at stake for the whole team. If there was nothing, no struggle, there would be no reason to get annoyed, look for someone at fault etc. But successful guilds need to disarm tensions as much as possible if they want to survive.

No one enjoys being criticized, but there's a difference between learning to handle it both by criticizing one and the criticized one, and simply running away from it, dismissing it as "rudeness" and not even checking if the other person has any point or not. Guild where officers go into frothing rage instead of criticizing constructively won't last long, but neither will one where members dismiss any constructive criticism as personal attack.

Problems that are eating away wow's community are not endemic to mythic raiding. Problems like the cult of ilvl, the worship of "optimal raid setup" or "best race for x class" way beyond the real existing reasons to support them (there are some reasons but they're blown out of proportion in significance by the community), selfishness (totally not caring about how someone's way of acting will impact other people in the group / guild) and so on.

Being criticized for a real mistake that had an impact on the whole team (like wiping the raid and wasting everyone else's time) is not really the worst problem of the community. I'd wager the bigger problem is the attitude that if the group fails on a boss instead of fixing their mistakes they concentrate on "get more ilvl", and that is prevalent for example in pugs. You wiped? "Oh just invite more high ilvls" - that's often the first suggestion dropped in raid chat.

Everything you just mentioned is a result of learning the mechanics, and deferring to the leadership hierarchy. When guilds have clear cut leadership, with clear-cut rules, the problems you talk about are lessened. At that level, there's no room for opinions. It takes discipline, sure, but the game itself isnt difficult.

[Marrilaife]

Everything you just mentioned is a result of learning the mechanics, and deferring to the leadership hierarchy. When guilds have clear cut leadership, with clear-cut rules, the problems you talk about are lessened. At that level, there's no room for opinions. It takes discipline, sure, but the game itself isnt difficult.

Yes, the game isn't "difficult" except at the very hardcore, cutting edge, world top progression level. The "difficulty" for many people stems from the fact they find it hard to persevere through many wipes and learning curve (impatience), or from too much ego while teamwork often requires sacrifices. People who can't sacrifice their personal dps to do an important tactical task within an encounter, people who cannot stand being on the bench, people who make drama, whine about loot, all these problems stem from the same source - when people don't care about the success of the group as a whole but only about what they at that moment want.

Yes I believe a group of disciplined raiders will go further than a group of more skilled ones, but undisciplined, because the second one will sooner or later be torn apart by internal tensions.

Raiding is an exercise in cooperation, and from raid leaders / guild officers also in human resource management. Fail at that, and the group will fail or at least be majorly hindered.

Judging by how many medium to high ranked guilds on my server disbanded or stopped raiding I would say keeping people to work together is a more challenging task than actually pressing the buttons correctly during a boss fight.

Many people pointed it in this thread - being a decent raider doesn't take as much as being a good guild as a whole takes. Joining a guild and going with the flow until you obtain your mythic achievement takes way less than creating a guild from scratch that will finally down bosses on mythic and not fall apart midway.

[Jinpachi]

Yes, the game isn't "difficult" except at the very hardcore, cutting edge, world top progression level. The "difficulty" for many people stems from the fact they find it hard to persevere through many wipes and learning curve (impatience), or from too much ego while teamwork often requires sacrifices. People who can't sacrifice their personal dps to do an important tactical task within an encounter, people who cannot stand being on the bench, people who make drama, whine about loot, all these problems stem from the same source - when people don't care about the success of the group as a whole but only about what they at that moment want.

Yes I believe a group of disciplined raiders will go further than a group of more skilled ones, but undisciplined, because the second one will sooner or later be torn apart by internal tensions.

Raiding is an exercise in cooperation, and from raid leaders / guild officers also in human resource management. Fail at that, and the group will fail or at least be majorly hindered.

Judging by how many medium to high ranked guilds on my server disbanded or stopped raiding I would say keeping people to work together is a more challenging task than actually pressing the buttons correctly during a boss fight.

Many people pointed it in this thread - being a decent raider doesn't take as much as being a good guild as a whole takes. Joining a guild and going with the flow until you obtain your mythic achievement takes way less than creating a guild from scratch that will finally down bosses on mythic and not fall apart midway.

I completely agree. I've seen weekly Pug groups with more discipline and teamwork than long established guilds. An exercise in cooperation. Well said!

[mauserr]

For me the hardest part was actually getting to log in on time all day every day. Feeling sleepy? Nope, gotta raid. Not really feeling like raiding today? Nope, gotta raid. At one point it feels like a job. Raiding in the best guild on my server felt great, shit, raiding in the best guild in my country felt absolutely fucking great. Being that special snowflake who was done with progress so fast felt good, but god damn, the commitment. 25 hours/week was harsh.

[Nyoken]

Don't be shit at the game first of all. Mistakes aren't allowed in mythic. Need to be able to keep track of 15 things at the same time, sometimes more. You make a single mistake you might just wipe the entire raid. Need to know your class inside out, you got 2 rings to choose from?? And one of em is 2.5% better in the numerical values, that's the one you're going with. Need to optimize optimize optimize. Need patience, and loads of it, even if you got 500 wipes at a boss you gonna have to keep going until it's dead.

To take a good example of a roadblock that most guilds might have had a problem with back in Cataclysm. Back then it was called Heroic raiding, and you could be up to 25 people in the raid. But for spine 25 HC, you pretty much needed like 10 mages to be able to beat the dps requirements, so yea... one of many examples. : p

[Mlz]

If you get everyone to run in for the imps spawn they are close enough that you dont need a grip.

Ye, w/e, when I was busy wiping on it, there were ~8 public logs available with no DK-s (and I can't remember any of them being a first kill) - it could have been possible with perfect execution, obv, but noone in their right mind tried it if they had a dk available - which is kind of my point that certain classes make certain mechanics faceroll without the requirement to be able to play them well. (It was pre-valor patch, altho it shouldn't matter much)

[Deleted]

I haven't raided anything but LFR and sporadic normal since Cata, and only casually normal in WotLK. I was a hardcore raider in vanilla and TBC however, and after years of time constraints I think I could be going back to raiding in Legion.
So my question is: how does the dedication and time required for that early era of raiding compare to current Mythic raiding?

[Granyala]

So my question is: how does the dedication and time required for that early era of raiding compare to current Mythic raiding?

It's roughly the same as raiding Sunwell in TBC if you want to push for M clears in a timely fashion.

Only thing that falls flat is the mat farming process (flask/food etc), since that has been streamlined almost into nonexistence.

@Topic: Raiding Mythic takes a moderate amount of skill (willingness to improve is more important than raw skill imo, because I never found raiding to be hard on an individual skill basis), the ability to focus and dedicate 100% CPU time to WoW for the duration of the raid. On top of that, you need to be willing to play on a schedule and read up on encounters and classes outside of the raiding time.

Depending on your guild, the most important ingredient is patience though.
You will spend 80%+ of your raiding time wiping and waiting for other raid members to finally "get it", unless you are lucky enough to end up in a guild with awesome people.

To clarify on the last paragraph: It's not arrogance or anything. First and foremost raids are a coordinated choreography. You have 20 sources for errors in your raid and unless you overgear the encounter, recovering from more than 2 errors gets difficult. Often even ONE mistake wipes the entire raid due to mechanic design.
Each and every one of us makes mistakes, so it's a logical conclusion that you will spend most of your time wiping to the mistakes of the other 19 people. This can be VERY frustrating once you pass the 150-200 wipes mark. Esp if "dumb" or "obvious" mistakes happen.

[Marrilaife]

So my question is: how does the dedication and time required for that early era of raiding compare to current Mythic raiding?

At least you don't need to farm resist gear anymore...

Also most guilds have 3-4 raid days on progression except the topmost hardcore ones. If your aim isn't world ranks or server first 4 raids per week tops 3-4 hours per raid is the commitment you're looking at, you'll also need a few more hours around to do your daily chores, in legion those seem to be farming artifact power, progressing your order hall campaign and the usual - consumables or gold for them (nowadays gold is way easier to get than in vanilla so most people farm that instead and just buy enchants, flasks, pots etc.)

[Drusyn]

For example, if you had a group of raiders dedicated to the concept of beating mythic, even if it took a few months, is it feasible, or is it something where if, there is no reasonable success in a few weeks that it likely wouldn't happen?

There's no such thing. It will happen eventually but everyone has a different point when something clicks.

[Unir]

It's roughly the same as raiding Sunwell in TBC if you want to push for M clears in a timely fashion.

Only thing that falls flat is the mat farming process (flask/food etc), since that has been streamlined almost into nonexistence.

@Topic: Raiding Mythic takes a moderate amount of skill (willingness to improve is more important than raw skill imo, because I never found raiding to be hard on an individual skill basis), the ability to focus and dedicate 100% CPU time to WoW for the duration of the raid. On top of that, you need to be willing to play on a schedule and read up on encounters and classes outside of the raiding time.

Depending on your guild, the most important ingredient is patience though.
You will spend 80%+ of your raiding time wiping and waiting for other raid members to finally "get it", unless you are lucky enough to end up in a guild with awesome people.

To clarify on the last paragraph: It's not arrogance or anything. First and foremost raids are a coordinated choreography. You have 20 sources for errors in your raid and unless you overgear the encounter, recovering from more than 2 errors gets difficult. Often even ONE mistake wipes the entire raid due to mechanic design.
Each and every one of us makes mistakes, so it's a logical conclusion that you will spend most of your time wiping to the mistakes of the other 19 people. This can be VERY frustrating once you pass the 150-200 wipes mark. Esp if "dumb" or "obvious" mistakes happen.

This. I think successful raiding takes mainly two things: a) patience and a willingness to wipe, and b) willingness and the ability to improve performance.

Mythic Gorefiend tested the first very well. Mythic Zakuun, Xhul, and Archimonde tested the second.