Is the current speed of progression normal for raids?

[Jotaux]

I really don't understand what you're trying to say. Pretty much all expansions has had content for different kind of players. Maybe WoD had a bit less of it than Legion, but I don't see how that in any way makes Legion a non-hardcore expansion.

The idea of calling an expansion hardcore or not hardcore is kinda silly.

I never called any expansion hardcore or not hardcore, that was just you being silly. I am saying WoD catered to what hardcore players wanted and we got a shit show. I am thoroughly enjoying mythic raiding at the moment and staying at about the same pace as in previous expansions but I did not have to grind out absurd amounts of AP to do so. I have the option to when I want which will probably be this saturday. Its a far more casual experience.

[Beace]

I am saying WoD catered to what hardcore players wanted and we got a shit show.

Please give a couple of examples.

[Jotaux]

Please give a couple of examples.

-No longer having 10 and 25 man raids at the highest level and just sticking with 20m
-LFR no longer sharing loot with regular raids
-Majority of design time and resources spent on raids (WoD had fantastic raids but not much else)
-Very little choice in how to gear up your character, essentially a raid or die attitude towards it

Tell me how is your own experience with mythic raiding going this expansion?

[xpose]

1

But I play casually, the top guilds do heroic split clears, ran god knows how many mythic+ dungeons and the majority have at least 1 legendary and have farmed artifact power immensely to have 3 golden traits before Mythic opened. And when they lifted the 850 limit I'm sure quite a few of them got lucky with titanforged etc.

But the average ilvl of the #1 guild was below 870, no doubt that higher gear level played a role but not to the extent you are thinking they just all rolled into the raid at 880 gear and smashed it. They were still undergeared

[Deleted]

Guilds have a level of gear which is much higher in comparison to the content than ever before. it's not the raids that are easier, it's the players being more powerful.

[Jotaux]

But the average ilvl of the #1 guild was below 870, no doubt that higher gear level played a role but not to the extent you are thinking they just all rolled into the raid at 880 gear and smashed it. They were still undergeared

It really depends on the level of their artifacts. Don't underestimate how valuable traits and increased stamina are.

[Beace]

-No longer having 10 and 25 man raids at the highest level and just sticking with 20m
-LFR no longer sharing loot with regular raids
-Majority of design time and resources spent on raids (WoD had fantastic raids but not much else)
-Very little choice in how to gear up your character, essentially a raid or die attitude towards it

Tell me how is your own experience with mythic raiding going this expansion?

1) I don't see how this catered to the hardcores. They didn't ask for it. That said, far as I know most people are very happy with this change.

2) Fair point.

3) Unless you can give me a blue source on that, that's just you guessing. Personally I find it hard to believe. I mean the last tier lasted 15 months. Obviously they were spending those 15 months on something else than WoD raids.

4) If you're comparing WoD with MoP, I disagree. They both had various ways of gearing up, though of course raiding was most effective for both expansions (as it always has). Obviously Legion wins out in this area though, with world quests and mythic 5-mans. But your comparison wasn't WoD with Legion.

[Otimus]

I never called any expansion hardcore or not hardcore, that was just you being silly. I am saying WoD catered to what hardcore players wanted and we got a shit show. I am thoroughly enjoying mythic raiding at the moment and staying at about the same pace as in previous expansions but I did not have to grind out absurd amounts of AP to do so. I have the option to when I want which will probably be this saturday. Its a far more casual experience.

It's not that WoD catered to the hardcore, so much as WoD catered to raiders and or LFR haters. Could also swing the way of thinking that it was just Blizzard being too lazy to actually add any other meaningful content except raids.

But even if you were a raider, there still was very little content to do raid wise, compared to other expansions.

Blizzard's biggest mistake (other than a lack of content), was making it so getting ready to get out and do whatever you wanted was too easy. Which in turn meant almost all content except the top was meaningless. Was that way with both PVE and PVP.

Now everything has a whole lot more grinding in it (Which, for the most part, is a good thing, as it requires you to be actively doing things)

[Cheze]

But the average ilvl of the #1 guild was below 870, no doubt that higher gear level played a role but not to the extent you are thinking they just all rolled into the raid at 880 gear and smashed it. They were still undergeared

they weren't though; they were appropriately geared, which is much better relatively speaking than you could get in previous expansions. In WoD (for example) you'd need to farm the raids for at least a couple weeks (assuming aggressive split runs) to get the ilvl equivalent of heroic gear, whereas now you can get it quickly from M+/titanforging/etc if you're willing to spend a ton of time farming.

- - - Updated - - -

I never called any expansion hardcore or not hardcore, that was just you being silly. I am saying WoD catered to what hardcore players wanted and we got a shit show. I am thoroughly enjoying mythic raiding at the moment and staying at about the same pace as in previous expansions but I did not have to grind out absurd amounts of AP to do so. I have the option to when I want which will probably be this saturday. Its a far more casual experience.

it's always a laugh when people talk about what 'hardcore players' want, as though it's really that different from what anybody else wants. They want good raids sure, but don't particularly care about any of the shit people lampooned WoD for. They don't care whether LFR has tier bonuses or not, for example; it's just irrelevant.

[Jotaux]

1) I don't see how this catered to the hardcores. They didn't ask for it. That said, far as I know most people are very happy with this change.

2) Fair point.

3) Unless you can give me a blue source on that, that's just you guessing. Personally I find it hard to believe. I mean the last tier lasted 15 months. Obviously they were spending those 15 months on something else than WoD raids.

4) If you're comparing WoD with MoP, I disagree. They both had various ways of gearing up, though of course raiding was most effective for both expansions (as it always has). Obviously Legion wins out in this area though, with world quests and mythic 5-mans. But your comparison wasn't WoD with Legion.

1) Hardcore raiders and people following world firsts were crying like crazy over which difficulty was more difficult and why they give the same gear(admittedly this is more the people that care about world first). Crying over the tuning difference is what lead to merging the difficulties.

3) What other content was there other than raids?

4) Outside of raids what gear was there that even came close? They even abandoned the apexis crystal currency after the first tier. They just continued the trend from mop where they eliminated any chance to get gear outside of raid through the removal of valor.

[Sencha]

Remember that Legion heroic difficulty was the normal difficulty in MoP.

Legion normal difficulty should be removed (as well as LFR btw).

[Beace]

1) Hardcore raiders and people following world firsts were crying like crazy over which difficulty was more difficult and why they give the same gear(admittedly this is more the people that care about world first). Crying over the tuning difference is what lead to merging the difficulties.

3) What other content was there other than raids?

4) Outside of raids what gear was there that even came close? They even abandoned the apexis crystal currency after the first tier. They just continued the trend from mop where they eliminated any chance to get gear outside of raid through the removal of valor.

1) Point stands. People are overall happy with the change. WoD isn't considered a bad expansion because of 20-man raids. If you argue that Blizzard catered to hardcore raiders to bring about this change, then it brought something positive.

3) I don't pretend to know where they spent their development time. Legion? Back then they still had the goal of releasing expansions faster. There's no denying that there was a huge gap of content at the end, but we saw that in MoP as well. No reason to believe they had all their developers working on WoD raids.

4) I don't really see your point. This is how WoW has always been. There's been crafting. There's been justice/valor points. Garrison missions, apex crystals, world bosses, garrison invasions, reputation vendors. All different methods that's been used to gear up characters outside of raids. But very rarely has these provided rewards equal to raiding. WoD was no different from MoP here, nor different from previous expansions.

[BiggestNoob]

For Legion, yes it is. I doubt if any raid in this expansion will last more than 1 week due to the M+, legendary, and Artifact systems. The spread of power is too large within 1 tier to make content both challenging for world first and accessible to 200+ guilds.

I wouldn't mind if the content was tuned expecting BiS legendaries, maxed weapons, full BiS M+ gear, set bonuses, and BiS trinkets, with a raid ilvl that's basically at what drops in the raid. At that point the top 5 guilds would take several weeks to clear, but there would be a huge amount of QQ over the difficulty below that because most guilds wouldn't be able to attain that level of preparation until the content is obsolete or heavily nerfed, and I doubt Blizzard is going to do that. Realistically I expect every raid in this expansion to be undertuned for the top guilds. This means there isn't really a race so much anymore, since it's decided by who has prepared the most efficiently, and not necessarily who is the best at doing the content undergeared.

Method was ~712 after splits in M HFC and cleared Archimonde with no rings at 719 the next week. Assuming half of the raid finished tier and got trinkets on additional splits, their total growth would've been like 10-12%. 860 vs 868 going from 880->900 weapons and legendaries with good trinkets is something like 30-40% being conservative. I don't know how something can be tightly tuned and not be trivialized with 30% more DPS, or be hard for max DPS without being outright impossible without it, short of content nerfs or a parallel legendary system (the ring did this in HFC for 90% of guilds that cleared it).

[Jotaux]

1) Point stands. People are overall happy with the change. WoD isn't considered a bad expansion because of 20-man raids. If you argue that Blizzard catered to hardcore raiders to bring about this change, then it brought something positive.

3) I don't pretend to know where they spent their development time. Legion? Back then they still had the goal of releasing expansions faster. There's no denying that there was a huge gap of content at the end, but we saw that in MoP as well. No reason to believe they had all their developers working on WoD raids.

4) I don't really see your point. This is how WoW has always been. There's been crafting. There's been justice/valor points. Garrison missions, apex crystals, world bosses, garrison invasions, reputation vendors. All different methods that's been used to gear up characters outside of raids. But very rarely has these provided rewards equal to raiding. WoD was no different from MoP here, nor different from previous expansions.

1) No your point doesn't stand. It's still a change made to cater to hardcore raiders. Do you have data to back up your statement that overall people are happy with it? Or is it just less people are complaining?

2) Look at the results in WoD, what was there other than raids?

3) No it hasn't. Valor gear has always matched current raid gear in the past. They just abandoned it in MoP and then completely abandoned Apexis gear to the point where it just cost gold.

Tell me how is your own experience with mythic raiding going this expansion?

[Beace]

1) No your point doesn't stand. It's still a change made to cater to hardcore raiders. Do you have data to back up your statement that overall people are happy with it? Or is it just less people are complaining?

2) Look at the results in WoD, what was there other than raids?

3) No it hasn't. Valor gear has always matched current raid gear in the past. They just abandoned it in MoP and then completely abandoned Apexis gear to the point where it just cost gold.

Tell me how is your own experience with mythic raiding going this expansion?

1) Your whole argument started off with "Blizzard catering to hardcores is what made WoD a bad expansion". I haven't seen a single person say a bad thing about 20-man mythic raids in a long time. Have you? The WoW community isn't exactly known for being calm and quiet when they don't like something.

2) Again, you're just making baseless assumptions. I've already said there was a long time with no new content in WoD, and that we've seen the same several times in the past.

3) Valor gear tended to match the easiest mode of raiding, for a very select few slots. As an example, you might have been able to get a good neck, ring, relic and trinket with valor points, for the other slots you had to find other sources. This is pretty comparable to today's crafting. You have never been able to gear up a character with valor points, comparable to raiding. You might also have forgotten that early on you actually had to raid to earn valor points.

Why do you keep asking for my experience in mythic raids this expansion? Is it relevant to this discussion?

[Cheze]

It has never seemed like there were that many 'hardcore' 10 man raiders who didn't just transition to 20 man mythic guilds. I'm sure the problem was acute for many small 10m guilds trying to stay together, but for the playerbase as a whole it seems to have worked out. If you're just running heroic with F&F types things probably got even easier for you, since now you can support a few 'sometimes' raiders and bring them in when they show up.

[ydraw]

Have you somehow missed the previous 18 tiers? We haven't had a tier cleared this fast and easy in many years.

No, this is in no way normal. It's not just Mythic either. There's a record number of guilds that have fully cleared Heroic already (I dunno if it's actually a record, but it's extremely high).

It's never been quite this easy to gear up before raids opened. Being able to spam mythic+ dungeons has made it possible for a lot of guilds who weren't hardcore enough to run split raids to nevertheless overgear content before it's even released.

[Otimus]

I wonder how things would have been different had they released EN earlier, like on the 6th or something.

[bigcheese12]

So clearing normal and heroic in 3 weeks slow?

[Dawnrage]

It's not that the raid is easy, though EN is probably on the easier side of raids released in a long time.

It's just that with the system they have created that appeals to the casual players and newcomers, it has simply escalated gearing at the very top end of the spectrum. I guess Blizzard decided that they can't beat split raids and all that shit top guilds will do, so they simply just added even more ways for them to gear up, just so that the people at the bottom don't have to suffer for it.

I think they made the right choice for the game, even if it isn't a very good one for the "world first" race.