Raiding and M+ are NOT the same content. They need to stop treating it as such.

[Spotnick]

So... how exactly is doing one mythic+ dungeon per week any worst than when we had to do a freaking daily heroic EVERY day for valor points before?

We always had to do side stuff to be optimal in raids, just be happy it's not LFR.

You are aware pvp gives the same rewards as mythic+ right? Just saying, you could complain about that one too giving gear on par with raids.

[Dacien]

You can skip all that content and still raid if you want. You only need to do it if you're pushing world firsts. I did it until I got my 2 BiS legendaries. I've done like 50 M+'s across all of Legion... Still killed Argus in the top 500.

Our guild barely got Cutting Edge on Mythic Kil'Jaeden by a couple days, and if we had all skipped Mythic Plus, we wouldn't have gotten it. World First isn't the goal for a lot of progression raiders, it's Cutting Edge. Rank is cool too, we got top 300 US (I'm assuming you mean US), but what's more important is Cutting Edge. And when you factor in attendance issues, a light raid schedule like we have (8 hours a week) and any number of things, suddenly those extra pieces of gear mean everything.

[God Save The King]

Our guild barely got Cutting Edge on Mythic Kil'Jaeden by a couple days, and if we had all skipped Mythic Plus, we wouldn't have gotten it. World First isn't the goal for a lot of progression raiders, it's Cutting Edge. Rank is cool too, we barely missed out on top 200 US (I'm assuming you mean US), but what's more important is Cutting Edge. And when you factor in attendance issues, a light raid schedule like we have (8 hours a week) and any number of things, suddenly those extra pieces of gear mean everything.

Still not required to raid. And you can't be certain you'd have missed it. Our guild does not have the best record with M+, lots of our raiders skip it because we don't care for it. Still secured Cutting edge on all raids this expansion.

I agree that more guilds are able to secure cutting edge because of M+ however, it inflates the gear available.

[Dacien]

Still not required to raid. And you can't be certain you'd have missed it. Our guild does not have the best record with M+, lots of our raiders skip it because we don't care for it. Still secured Cutting edge on all bosses.

I agree that more guilds are able to secure cutting edge because of M+ however, it inflates the gear available.

You got Cutting Edge on Mythic KJ with lots of your raiders skipping Mythic Plus? How many hours a week do you raid?

Edit: I only ask because I'm impressed. There're always going to be outliers, but for lots of raiders to be skipping Mythic Plus, it's putting the whole raid at a huge disadvantage. And as a team, you would expect everyone to be doing their weekly chores for that extra gear. And if lots of people were not doing it, and Cutting Edge slipped from your grasp, the very first thing leadership would be focusing on is weekly Mythic Plus neglect. Not required, but for the team, expected.

Edit 2: The DPS checks on that fight were critical. The first transition timing, the first and second add nuke, the dark phase adds, the 3rd phase push before being overwhelmed by obelisks... for lots of people to be skipping Mythic Plus and still make those checks is impressive. Which is the complaint, to bring it back around: I want raids tuned around weekly raid gear, not around anything else.

[God Save The King]

You got Cutting Edge on Mythic KJ with lots of your raiders skipping Mythic Plus? How many hours a week do you raid?

12, with an occasional Monday night raid (3-4 hours) if we feel we'll miss the kill.

To be a bit clearer. I completely agree that M+ helps gear raids, and in turn makes raid bosses easier. That's pretty obvious. I disagree that it is "required" or "forced". You are able to skip it and still raid. You might fall short of killing a boss, but you can't be certain that more M+ farming would've made a difference. Gear tends to only be important up to dps checks, and skipping mechanics, or reducing the number of mechanics. Meteors on Ragnaros is probably the more famous example. If you're unable to make those checks and you fail to get a boss, I'll concede that you might've been able to do so if you farmed more M+.

I disagree that we need to remove/neuter M+ simply because some raiders feel forced. If they remove it, then all the guilds that relied on it to clear the tier would instead fail. There's not a great solution.

We had a weekly M+ spreadsheet thing going, tracking things like AP acquisition, highest run, etc. I'm not sure how it worked, but I remember our GM making a bit of a fuss over the lack of M+ and AP acquisition, and we ended up adding that Monday for like 6 weeks during ToS.

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Edit: I only ask because I'm impressed. There's always going to be outliers, but for lots of raiders to be skipping Mythic Plus, it's putting the whole raid at a huge disadvantage. And as a team, you would expect your team to be doing their weekly chores for that extra gear. And if lots of people were not doing it, and Cutting Edge slipped from your grasp, the very first thing leadership would be focusing on is weekly Mythic Plus neglect. Not required, but for the team, expected.

Again, I concede that it'd have been easier to do with more M+, assuming we got a good set of upgrades. We have a lot of anti-dungeon people, and our GM, who chewed us out for lack of M+, also had a really bad track record. Which is why we added more hours. We needed to compensate our gear with more time, better execution, and maximizing what our DPS could push.

Edit: As Marrilaife said, a lot of the bosses are less about gear/dps, and more about execution. Gear is useful up to a point. It has diminishing returns though, at a certain point, gear can do no more, and it comes down to playing better. We're successful because our raiders consistently get purple/orange parses (yeah I know parses are not the end all). They can execute and perform very well.

[Marrilaife]

Our guild barely got Cutting Edge on Mythic Kil'Jaeden by a couple days, and if we had all skipped Mythic Plus, we wouldn't have gotten it. World First isn't the goal for a lot of progression raiders, it's Cutting Edge. Rank is cool too, we got top 300 US (I'm assuming you mean US), but what's more important is Cutting Edge. And when you factor in attendance issues, a light raid schedule like we have (8 hours a week) and any number of things, suddenly those extra pieces of gear mean everything.

Tbh except relics most m+ gear could be easily replaced by raid gear if you spent 5 months in the tier, it's more of an advantage early on.

We all know Tomb sucked as a raid and tbh in the end you weren't getting the kill thanks to gear / dps but thanks to sheer persistence and endurance of the people to not ragequit. Killing Avatar / KJ late means the nerfs were in, so the dps check was less of an issue, however both of these bosses were awful for the morale, the amount of soaks and "1 fuckup and wipe" put extreme emphasis on perfecting positioning rather than dps.

1 guy fucks up beam on Avatar? GG, all stacks are desynced now and you're screwed. Someone didn't soak the floor in p2? Or great now you don't have enough space or boss gets extra fire stacks moving over holes. KJ wasn't any better, actually it was far worse, with soaks, knock you off balls, timing on tank dispel, placement of the clones, and the cherry on top finding safe spot in p3. Everything was about precision and perseverance rather than dps check. I know a guild that missed cutting edge because they didn't have a good safe spot picker for p3. If they had, they would have gotten a kill.

If you got cutting edge in tomb, you should be praised, but not for gear farming, but for the fact the team stuck together through the worst tier of raiding ever conceived by Blizzard, as if Mistress with awkward timings and Maiden suicide bomber simulator wasn't enough, we got "I soak, you soak, everyone soak" 2 bosses in a row, where obviously classes with poor defensives and poor mobility suffered because they couldn't soak as efficiently.

[Dacien]

I disagree that we need to remove/neuter M+ simply because some raiders feel forced. If they remove it, then all the guilds that relied on it to clear the tier would instead fail. There's not a great solution.

I guess I'd just like to see raids tuned around raid gear. Having weekly Mythic Plus awarding mythic raid-tier gear means Blizzard has to tune around the fact that after a month or two, a lot of people will be sporting mythic raid-tier gear, and the challenge of the raid tier will need to reflect that.

Edit: As Marrilaife said, a lot of the bosses are less about gear/dps, and more about execution. Gear is useful up to a point. It has diminishing returns though, at a certain point, gear can do no more, and it comes down to playing better. We're successful because our raiders consistently get purple/orange parses (yeah I know parses are not the end all). They can execute and perform very well.

On the other hand, and I pointed this out above in another late edit, DPS checks can be everything in timing, particularly for multi-phase end-of-tier bosses.

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Tbh except relics most m+ gear could be easily replaced by raid gear if you spent 5 months in the tier, it's more of an advantage early on.

We all know Tomb sucked as a raid and tbh in the end you weren't getting the kill thanks to gear / dps but thanks to sheer persistence and endurance of the people to not ragequit. Killing Avatar / KJ late means the nerfs were in, so the dps check was less of an issue, however both of these bosses were awful for the morale, the amount of soaks and "1 fuckup and wipe" put extreme emphasis on perfecting positioning rather than dps.

1 guy fucks up beam on Avatar? GG, all stacks are desynced now and you're screwed. Someone didn't soak the floor in p2? Or great now you don't have enough space or boss gets extra fire stacks moving over holes. KJ wasn't any better, actually it was far worse, with soaks, knock you off balls, timing on tank dispel, placement of the clones, and the cherry on top finding safe spot in p3. Everything was about precision and perseverance rather than dps check. I know a guild that missed cutting edge because they didn't have a good safe spot picker for p3. If they had, they would have gotten a kill.

If you got cutting edge in tomb, you should be praised, but not for gear farming, but for the fact the team stuck together through the worst tier of raiding ever conceived by Blizzard, as if Mistress with awkward timings and Maiden suicide bomber simulator wasn't enough, we got "I soak, you soak, everyone soak" 2 bosses in a row, where obviously classes with poor defensives and poor mobility suffered because they couldn't soak as efficiently.

There were definitely DPS checks in Tomb, but you're not wrong, there was heavy emphasis on pass/fail mechanics. But to your first point, jewelry was a big one. I had a ring from Mythic Plus for a long time in Antorus, and yeah, relics. I'm a class that rocks 2pc/4pc, but for classes that don't they probably have even more Mythic Plus gear hanging from their neck and chafing around their waist.

[Drusin]

Exactly. Find a good guild and none of this is an issue.

If you're a raider, you have a whole guild of friends to choose from.

You guys would think that but in my experience people logon to raid and logoff, some don't even leave the instance they just logoff inside lol These aren't large scale 500+ member guilds though these are "we don't recruit for the bench" sized guilds.

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I feel like I should define "forced" as I understand it.

Forced is whatever the best option is, what you want to do is irrelevant.

I'm already hearing "forced pvp" in regards to BFA, why? The perks, flag yourself for better shit = forced pvp. You don't HAVE TO of course but if you want that shit you'll do it.

I'm not saying I want it to be changed, I am quite accustomed to hating my life, I'm just acknowledging that it exists.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I could care less about the rewards. If I find M+ funner than I will do it more often. If I enjoy raiding more I will do it more often. Odds are I will end up doing both to the level I want to and not really care if so and so is getting something for where they do it at. If I were to sit around and cry about in the end I feel I could have done something much more productive.

[Deleted]

Couldn't the same be said about M+? "Farm those raids if you want to be competitive".

Double standards ftw.

m+ people are special snowflakes - need different treatment.

[lappee]

Ehh I suppose. But M+ was implemented after raids, and their reward structure is clearly dependent on what rewards are from raiding. Blizzard has been clear that the best rewards will consistently come from Mythic Raiding.

I really wouldn't call it double standards.

M+ is newer sure but the rewards from M+ have been really good. With the removal of tier sets there are only trinkets and Azerite armor in raids that are different from M+ loot (and we don't know yet if either ones are better than M+ ones).
The big difference is that M+ is farmable and since M+ drops Heroic raiding quality loot we'd also need to have Heroic raids to be farmable 24/7 for them to be the same, or M+ having loot lockout per dungeon per week.

[NatePsy]

I mean we could just go the route of WoD again and make it so that it's "raid or die" but have we forgotten how badly the expansion did because of the lack of stuff to do outside of raiding? I'm not sure making it less and less rewarding to do is the smart idea because it runs the risk of making another "raid or die" expansion with little choice for other content.

Some of us like doing M+ as alternative gearing methods, don't be a killjoy just because you don't enjoy it. You're the very reason WoD flopped hard.

[Marrilaife]

There were definitely DPS checks in Tomb, but you're not wrong, there was heavy emphasis on pass/fail mechanics.

Early tomb was not only "1 fail you die" mechanics, but harsh dps checks. However several waves of nerfs lessened them a lot, while the "don't you dare fail" mechanics still menaced casual mythic guilds. They did remove some daggers and 1 soak from avatar, and several soaks from KJ by the end, but still you had fair amount of the raid engaged in soaking.

If you were Method, the dps checks you faced early on were tuned to impossibility, then slowly dialed to the level manageable by a world top guild, but not by ordinary players. But the last few months in Tomb cut a lot of dps requirements to the point 3 tanking KJ became standard and you'd have 2 ruptures maybe 3 on avatar instead of 4.

And bosses like Mistress or Avatar you had to adjust your dps every time they nerfed stuff, because dpsing adds on Mistress or maiden on Avatar too quickly would actually screw you more instead of helping.

Somewhere mid Legion voices from youtubers would rise "why does gear not help us kill stuff quicker", because the whole emphasis shifted into intricate dance.

[lappee]

Some of us like doing M+ as alternative gearing methods, don't be a killjoy just because you don't enjoy it. You're the very reason WoD flopped hard.

Having alternative gearing method is fine, the problem is that M+ is infinite looting method. In Legion this is shadowed by the fact that Heroic loot is 5 lvl's higher than base M+ loot, requiring you to get Warforged items for it to be equivalent. According to the Q&A thats no longer the case in BfA and instead Heroic ilvl is the base of M+ ilvl meaning it would be roughly the same as infinitely running Heroic raids for loot.
It would be more ok if WF/TF was actually noticeably rare than it is today, but as far as I've been playing on beta it really isn't.

I just fear that M+ will become the de-facto gearing method for everyone but the world first raiders (who'd use it if they weren't in the raid instance 24/7, and still might do it if gear check bosses occur).

It is as bad for the game as the opposite, thus double standards.

Edit: correct ilvl's

[NatePsy]

Having alternative gearing method is fine, the problem is that M+ is infinite looting method. In Legion this is shadowed by the fact that Heroic loot is 15 ilvl's higher than base M+ loot, requiring you to get Titanforged items for it to be equivalent. According to the Q&A thats no longer the case in BfA and instead Heroic ilvl is the base of M+ ilvl meaning it would be roughly the same as infinitely running Heroic raids for loot.
It would be more ok if WF/TF was actually noticeably rare than it is today, but as far as I've been playing on beta it really isn't.

I just fear that M+ will become the de-facto gearing method for everyone but the world first raiders (who'd use it if they weren't in the raid instance 24/7, and still might do it if gear check bosses occur).

It is as bad for the game as the opposite, thus double standards.

I mean there has to be a bit of give and take with M+ unfortunately, on one hand you can't infinitely farm Mythic raid level gear as it's only handed out once per week in the chest and even then the stats may not be favourable and thus not a very great upgrade if at all while on the other hand it needs to give something to make it actually worthwhile to do because if it didn't give much of anything it will quickly suffer from dungeons pre-legion where they became irrelevant quickly. It's a hard thing to try and come up with a solution and I don't envy the developers because no matter what they do, one crowd is going to be unhappy regardless.

Another thing to note is that Mythic+ won't offer the most worthwhile azerite armour, they said this on the Q&A that raids will be your go-to for the most viable and strong azerite pieces, so that alone already gives it a decent leg up over M+ (I.e, how tier was) I think both modes are supposed to complement eachother but not replace the other outright and that's okay.

[lappee]

I mean there has to be a bit of give and take with M+ unfortunately, on one hand you can't infinitely farm Mythic raid level gear as it's only handed out once per week in the chest and even then the stats may not be favourable and thus not a very great upgrade if at all while on the other hand it needs to give something to make it actually worthwhile to do because if it didn't give much of anything it will quickly suffer from dungeons pre-legion where they became irrelevant quickly. It's a hard thing to try and come up with a solution and I don't envy the developers because no matter what they do, one crowd is going to be unhappy regardless.

Another thing to note is that Mythic+ won't offer the most worthwhile azerite armour, they said this on the Q&A that raids will be your go-to for the most viable and strong azerite pieces, so that alone already gives it a decent leg up over M+ (I.e, how tier was) I think both modes are supposed to complement eachother but not replace the other outright and that's okay.

You can't farm Mythic raids either and the stats on that gear might not be favourable. Its RNG no matter how you put it.

Legion M+ is doing well with the current reward structure, removal of tier sets buffs M+ viability alone so there just isn't any need to buff the ilvl's. If they were to remove the possibility of farming infinite gear by introducing lockouts then it would be fine.

M+ will have it own set of Azerite armour, they have different set of traits than raid gear. Whichever set you prefer in M+ or specific raid encounters is class/spec/fight specific. Moonkins have Azerite traits that are available from M+ that buffs AoE dps by 5-10%, something that is very useful for M+ but rarely picked in raids.

[nocturnus]

Man you got that right. How dare they force those M+ people to waste time in raids.

I still never understood the 'forced' issue either but that is a whole 'nother issue.

Well, you couldn't perform well enough in upper m+ without your full tier set, which is only obtainable in raids. See where I'm going?

This is one of the reasons that the removal of tier is amazing.

[Blysto]

They just confirmed in the Q&A that Raiding and Mythic+ gear rewards will work the same as it did in Legion.

"Mythic 10 will yield the best possible loot once everything is unlocked, Heroic Uldir items from runs, Mythic Uldir from the weekly chest. This model worked well in Legion, so no reason to change it."

I personally hated this model. I do not enjoy Mythic+ content for a number of reasons, yet I feel like I am forced to do it as a Raider. This was my primary concern with BfA, as it was the thing I hated the most in Legion. I essentially had to faceroll content that I didn't enjoy, or I wouldn't be up to par with those who did.

The relaxed progression-based nature of Raiding is VERY different to the rushed time-attack content that is Mythic+. I find it absurd that these very different features and gameplay aspects share the same type of reward pool. I'm honestly amazed that they thought this "worked well in Legion", because I for one thought it was incredibly annoying.

And you ofcourse knows it better then the developers of the game. Why can't there be multiple ways to good rewards?

[nocturnus]

And you ofcourse knows it better then the developers of the game. Why can't there be multiple ways to good rewards?

Because he can't be a special snow flake if there are.

[nlc]

Gear progression through M+ should be way harder than it is now. Having heroic level gear is more than enough to smash a +15 and get a guaranteed piece of mythic raid gear every week. Whereas you can easily spend 12+ hours in mythic progress and not see any loot at all that week. I would suggest, in Legion terms, that the ilvl of gear in the weekly chest should be reduced to 945 for a +15 then increased depending on your best completed key with 960 gear being awarded around +22ish.