Is M+ a healthy or harmful addition to raiding

[Eapoe]

The idea behind M+ is awesome, and it’s great giving people an alternative for end game gear/power progression. That said, it’s poorly implemented. Blizz stated they wanted M+ to be looked at as an alternative to raiding. That’s good. The problem is that due to the scaling of gear per patch/tier increase, many things in m+ will always remain BiS. When you can endlessly spam 1 dungeon to go for that gear, it’s just that much more lucrative. In Legion it also had the benefit of being the fastest and easiest way to gain AP.
I’ve always thought that Blizz should implement a level scaling similar to what they did for PvE gear in PvP instanced content. As an example: 410 ilvl piece from raid would remain 410 in raids, regular/heroic/mythic dungeons, and open world, but would be downgraded to roughly 370 ilvl in PvP and m+. The reverse also holds true, where m+ downgrades in raids and PvP, as well as PvP gear downgrading in raids and m+. Simple change that makes these concepts in the game truly become separate entities that favors the player interested in doing those things.
Some players might be interested in all those aspects. That’s fine. Allow players optional bag purchases that have 50 slots but can only contain armor/weapon pieces so they have extra slots to carry around different gear sets.
Possibly not the best idea, but short of putting up an instance lock to cap how lany m+ you can run or how many loot chances you get, I can’t think of a better fix.

[GreenJesus]

YOU dont have to

YOU choose to

its YOU problem that you have 0 brake and do content you find to be not fun

AAAnnd... benched... lol

[Tojara]

AAAnnd... benched... lol

Nobody benches people in my guild for that. Your only objective in guild is to do a single ten each week, that's it.

What generally ends up happening is the people who do M+ get geared in the first couple weeks, and those who do the bare minimum get all the raid drops anyway. Most guilds bench players based on class needs and player skill anyway.

[kamuimac]

AAAnnd... benched... lol

again - its YOU who are choosing to play with people willing to bench you for not nolifing game.

its still YOU problem not blizzard making this choice for you

[deadman1]

Harmful, it's not an alternative or a supplement, it's a requirement for highend guilds.
Things like balefire branch make M+ bad. It being the be all end all trinket for the entire ~2 year expansion is a really bad thing.

- - - Updated - - -

again - its YOU who are choosing to play with people willing to bench you for not nolifing game.

its still YOU problem not blizzard making this choice for you

And it's YOU choosing to be ignorant to the reality of the game.
Making raid gear worse than M+ has been a constant this xpac and it doesn't seem like it's going to change.

[slickwilly]

Mythic raiding = puke. No point in it really. M+ is harder content.

[Leodric]

Great addition to the game. We are just expected to finish our +10 key for the weekly reward and that's ok in my opinion, since any player who enjoys raiding does it anyways to improve their character.

They should have added it in WoD already and the expansion wouldn't be perceived as crap as it is nowadays.

[xpose]

Those that farm keys get geared faster than those that just do a weekly 10 so you'll end up with a mix of players in the raid that don't need the raid gear so those that do the weekly end up catching up anyway.

- - - Updated - - -

Harmful, it's not an alternative or a supplement, it's a requirement for highend guilds.
Things like balefire branch make M+ bad. It being the be all end all trinket for the entire ~2 year expansion is a really bad thing.

- - - Updated - - -



And it's YOU choosing to be ignorant to the reality of the game.
Making raid gear worse than M+ has been a constant this xpac and it doesn't seem like it's going to change.

Not sure what you mean by "worse". It's obvious some raid gear will be good but you have what 40 bosses over a span of 10 dungeons for a potential loot table compared to 9 bosses in a raid. Of course m+ is going to offer more choice.

[faithbane]

"why should I raid?".

I have already went this path in this expac.. I mean it took a week or 2 of casually farming m+ to get around 400 ilvl with decent itemization in all slots, there are no great tmogs, gamebreaking trinkets, class sets/bonuses that are compelling me to raid so whats the point anymore..

[justandulas]

It’s both.

Pros are it’s a fun way to keep mythic relevant, it also provides a nice avenue for those who want raid quality gear but don’t want to raid.

Con: it’s a copy paste of a diablo 3 system. It also takes away from raiding. If you can run a 5 man and get gear same ilvl as mythic raiding, who’s gonna bother raiding mythic? Combined with wf/tf and one of the biggest impacts of has is to the heroic and mythic raid communities who have never been in worse shape.

Why bother spending 3-4x the time in game to do mythic raids if you can do heroic raids and m+ and stay top geared?

M+ Is both a blessing and a curse but the genie is out of the bottle now and there’s no going back

[Tertullian72]

Its not a choice when M+ offers so much gear so easily that it is a requirement for most high end raid guilds, I think.

You are holding your raid team back, if you dont do m+.

These kinds of posts make me think the real question to ask is "is raiding a healthy or harmful addition to WoW". How many interesting things can never be added to the game because the raiders will complain about being "forced" to do them in order to keep up with the team?

[Denso]

Wouldn't mind if they made M+ a completely separate branch. Right now the scaling stop at 10 actually makes it a bit unexciting (should go up to 15 at least, wouldn't mind seeing 20 either, giving mythic-quality gear upon completion) as you're almost forced to raid mythic to be able to progress your character's gear, particularily if you want access to decent max level azerite pieces the first few months.

I'd make separate itemization for m+ and raids to make gear obtained in x less efficient in y and vice versa (with PvP being a third "branch"). I know exactly how to implement this but unfortunately I don't work at Blizzard (:

[Firedemon]

Harmful, it's not an alternative or a supplement, it's a requirement for highend guilds.
Things like balefire branch make M+ bad. It being the be all end all trinket for the entire ~2 year expansion is a really bad thing.

Shocker, high end guilds having high expectations.
Should everything else be removed from the game and leave only raids?
Should the ability to create alts be removed if high end guilds require you to do split runs or have at least 2-3 characters?
Should consumables be removed as they're required?

M+ is easily the best "new" thing added to the game in a very long time. Sure it does need some more polishing but it's by no means harmful. God forbid any other type of player progression outside of raiding.

Like others have said it's a you/your group problem. The game isn't setting that requirement for you. You are.

[HitPoint]

I love M+, it adds so much more group content for you to do outside of Raiding and without requiring a strenuous amount of time. I just wish there was challenge mode style rewards for it (end of season Tmog, weapons, maybe even mounts). Also the amount of dungeons is rather limited I wish there was a better variety and the levels didn't only increase Affixes/hp/dmg like boss specific mechanics that increase every 5 lvl's.

[Kisuke42]

I always liked running 5-man dungeons in earlier expansions when the highest was heroic. Sadly they quickly became obsolete (beyond a single daily).

Enter M+, man that was amazing. Running dungeons higher and higher over and over again felt very entertaining. Plus the improved gear kept me hooked up.

Pro:
Nice challenge and loot.

Con:
Kinda cancels out all previous content and current content outside Mythic raiding.
Sure, I can get gear from alot of sources but I can just spam M+ for couple weeks then jump straight to Mythic raiding.

[GrimReaper673]

I don't see it as a bad thing. Granted, I'm not a mythic raider, but it seems like mythic + is a way for them to further push their content since it allows you to gear after the raiding is done for the week. Maybe the gear from mythic + allows you to get past the roadblock you're currently experiencing in the raid.

At the end of the day though, removing mythic + would be far more detrimental to the game and the playerbase than removing mythic raids would be. Mythic raiders just don't make up enough of the population to really move the needle, and mythic + invitationals are a more compelling idea for esport anyway, which Blizzard seems to be all about.

[Jaigar]

M+ is a good option for content for PvE oriented players. I think its been one of the best things added into the game in a long time. However, the reward system directly competing with raiding isn't good. It completely overshadows heroic raiding and gear often titanforges up to Mythic raiding level.

They shouldn't have tied M+ rewards so heavily to gear, or they should have a separate progression system just for it. Guild Wars 2 has had a fractals system for years. Fractals choose 3 random mini-dungeons and you complete all 3 to get the reward at the end. However, they have a mechanic called agony that does increasing damage the higher you go, but you can get agony resistance through item drops and they have no impact on the rest of the game.

[Aurora]

Except it is an alternate gearing path because there are plenty of high geared players that do well in M+ both don't do mythic raid progression at the highest level. It accomplished exactly what it set out to do, which was replace 10 man raiding. So yea... it does work. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't work.

From that perspective sure but not the other way. It feels mandatory to raiders given limited loot lockouts, what it accomplishes is making raiding feel optional to those who just want to run dungeons which isn't a great scenario either since it reduces the role of guilds and people playing or interacting with others outside of their immediate friend circle.
This is meant to be an MMO or at least used to be with a wide social focus, rather than a console game where you group up with a few friends and that's it.

[AngryTenko]

M+ is fun. Raiding is fun. Hard content is fun, and it's nice to have more of it.

What is not fun is having to grind the same dungeon over and over for a trinket that never drops.

[khalltusk]

M+ is a great addition to the game.

I think the issue is the delaying of raid content. When raid content is delayed so much (like on launch and after patch release). Players often go into M+ and spam them as much as possible to be as highly geared as possible. Then people wonder why the upgrades in the raid are not really worth it when they do finally drop.

Back in say TBC, you had a hard time getting any sort of upgrade outside of raiding for PVE. You basically had to rely on those raid item drops.

For me I find M+ great, I can see how some people feel like that are forced to do it though.