Mythic is too tight, guilds are dying

[Marrilaife]

Raids used to be tuned for previous ilvl, or tier, gear. So initial progress was "Hard" and with every bosskill almost every item was an upgrade and even lesser guilds found it easier to naturally progress. Now though with titanforging, altraids to boost mains etc, raids are tuned with the same ilvl of the gear already dropping in mind, so the natural progression of simply reclearing and gearing isn't as clearly defined anymore. Which then leads to unforgiving mechanics, as otherwise it would be simply too easy for everyone at the start of the release, as you won't get significantly better with the new gear. Multiple difficulties suck anyway.

You forgot to mention "and with everyone spamming m+", if you tune the raids as they were in the past, for "entry" gear, you create Emerald Nightmare that people considered "too easy" because they outgeared it very fast with m+ spam. You can't tune mythic around people progressing through heroic first, because the hardcore playerbase will have the same ilvl as full heroic raid set on end of week 2 when m+ stops being capped at normal raid ilvl.

And you can't do anything about it without fucking up m+ system, any attempt to put lockouts or limited loot per week onto it is gonna be met with endless rage. You have to count that by week 3 of Nyalotha everyone who cares about progression is gonna run in 460-465 ilvl gear.

[bullseyed]

100% this. I'd rather organically get stronger than the devs turning down difficulty for me.
They really shot themselves in the foot with benthic and kinda killed the mythic reward system with M+. Then they tuned the bosses around people entering the raid with op gear and barely any power progression left.

They didn't tune the raid around people entering it with socketed benthic. They didn't know socketed benthic would be better than mythic raid gear.

The raid was supposed to be HARDER than it ended up being due to the benthic surprise.

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It's funny how everyone is trying to respond to this by pushing their own issue on it.
> it's because of titanforging, worst thing ever!
> it's because of the essences, worst system ever!
> it's because of the grind for the world quests!

The biggest issue is getting dedicated reliable people - the people who can actually show up every raid. They don't even need to farm, just do an M+ per week and maybe some emmisaries once in a while. Also, to have at least the people who can provide buffs - a mage, a warr, a priest and maybe a lock for healthstones - it seems even getting that is an issue.
Cause we're not talking here about world first, we're talking about the guilds still struggling after all this time. And these guild still need gear even from the first few bosses.

Agreed. The guilds who got AOTC week 1 but couldn't get past M Ashvane without nerfs. That's the core of the mythic raiding community. Those guilds should be the ones getting CE this week, but many of them are still on Orgo or QC because the curve got messed up badly.

[Krille]

It's not the same effort, but basically what you're saying is if you have no qualms to tread over hundreds of players, discard them like dirty socks, and mercilessly cull whoever was good 1 year ago but doesn't cut it for the "new" standards, then you can achieve top 100? Who would have thought.

I know it works both ways, players have no loyalty towards guilds and guilds have no loyalty towards players. That's what WOW's endgame has became, players like the thread author who is upset they can "no longer invite their old friend ret pala" belong to the age of dinosaurs who put community first.

I've seen similar cases first hand, having a player who was a raider since tomb of sargeras be discarded because he couldn't do Merkatorque 4 raids later. It's depressing when you think you can always get the boot even though you didn't suddenly start playing worse or putting less effort, and everyone has their weak spots. It's also different when you have a core of 10-15 players and all of them feel "dragged down" by some new recruit, or someone suddenly started slacking and falling in performance / preparation in comparison to their past efforts, and it's different when "the core" is 3 people, and they decided they need to move the guild 800+ ranks forward.

Your guild, your rules, but I fail to see what's so proud in treating fellow players as stepping stones.

Don't worry, we gave warnings. Some people didnt last long because they werent team players at all and didnt respond well to being benched. We've been very generous, often recruiting below our rankings (because we know there are good players in worse guilds).

Also, good recruiters don't care much about logs. It's a much bigger picture. A player might be full orange, but getting it late in the tier/wiping his guild several times because of greed.

[bullseyed]

And that’s what heroic should be - tough gear checks that are somewhat light on raid wiping mechanics.

This. The DPS check on M Ashvane for 2 tank / 2 shield break strat should have been the type of thing heroic raid did.

LFR = the keyboard is for turning and spells are clicked, yes? = win
Normal = can you do some of the mechanics and below average/above terrible DPS/HPS = win
Heroic = can you do some of the mechanics and above average DPS/HPS = win
Mythic = can you do all of the mechanics and above average DPS/HPS = win

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If you do that, all the m+ monkeys are gonna cry they're "forced to raid" to get the best gear, and the game "is again raid or die".

Oh well. Diablo 3 ----> that way

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Well it's basically the same as if the 3 of you left a rank 1000 guild and joined a rank 100 guild.

It's the same as paying for a carry, because they had to find 17 people to carry them to the boss kill.

[Krille]

It's the same as paying for a carry, because they had to find 17 people to carry them to the boss kill.

Yes sure, you can carry 3 players in top 150. Also this is just bait.

[Eternal2u]

Mythic was always meant to be the Hardest Content, perhaps you just aren't up to it anymore?

I Disagree. We all want a challenging raid tier. Fucking look forward to it. but every week you clear to the last boss you were progressing on should make that boss just a few percentages easier due to upgrades etc.

Now there has always been some mechanic heavy fights that if you fuck them up you wipe, but the level of difficulty they have gone to to keep the mythic race increasingly difficult every tier has gotten out of hand.

I dont envy blizz on this because if they make it too easy they have to backlash because of that, but if you make it too hard you have people just quiting.

With all the theorycrafting and min-maxing that jobs even harder and honestly i dont have a good solution other than gradual nerfs.

My favorite raid that did this was icecrown with the increasing stacking buff to the raid as the weeks progressed. Wish they would do something like this but on a smaller scale, maybe a 1% buff every month the content is out to the raid or something

Personally got burnt out after getting to jaina mythic in BoD and quit until classic came out now im planning on staying there until at the very least shadowlands, if not after my guild clears naxx

[Yunaqt]

Can you imagine being this ignorant?

Most players either are in LFR/Normal or clear AOTC in the first two weeks and fail to get CE. There is a massive gap between heroic and mythic where the largest non-bad part of the playerbase lives. Once those players quit, WoW will end.

lol sure it would. Would love to see some data on the semi-mythic raiders that are going to quit because they can't get CE.

If they're clearing the heroic raid in 2 weeks no reason they can't get CE. This guild didn't kill Heroic Azshara until week 3 https://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us...of+Frostmourne
They seemed to clear it just fine with still more time to go, with another round of nerfs incoming for those still progging essentially neutering the difficult area of the encounter further.

There's also just nothing wrong with just not getting CE, I have a friends guild as a anecdotal example that play that way, raid 2 days and a casual approach usually clear 80% of the instance atm their goal is getting Queen's Court before 8.3

So players can choose what ever level suits them; Be it LFR or aiming for CE with a goal of improving as a guild and achieving it in the future.

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I Disagree. We all want a challenging raid tier. Fucking look forward to it. but every week you clear to the last boss you were progressing on should make that boss just a few percentages easier due to upgrades etc.

Idk farming feels a lot easier and kill times going up.
Look at Sivara, that was 5 healed on prog now it's 2 - 3 healed, Ashvane 1 - 2 healed and using the burn strat to remove an extra phase.

Basically all fights drop a healer or 2, for Za'qul dropping a tank as well and shaving ~3 minutes off the fight for the burn strat which are all possible now due to current gear and neck levels.

[Kokolums]

AOTC is puggable, while CE is a solid 4/7 days per week commitment for months outside of buying a boost.

Thats a really wide range of playtime

Both AOTC and CE can be bought with money.

[Osmeric]

CE isnt and shouldnt be guaranteed because you raid mythic.

That's not what he was saying, at all.

[Queen of Hamsters]

It's not that the content is too tightly tuned.
It's the designs around shit needed just to raid Mythic, that's killing people's motivations. Yes, even mine. Between Azerite, Essences, 3rd party min-maxing (an upgrade is never just an upgrade anymore!) and the costs of consumables, I'm spending all my time playing just prepping for Mythic raids 3 times/week. I used to be an omnivore because I had fun being that type of player. Now? Can't level an alt because even this far into the tier, I could be doing something that benefits my time spent raiding. And as a bonus, the design of my class has been in the toilet the entire expansion.

And my guild isn't in any shape or form amongst the elitists, we've been together since MoP and put the person first. I can only imagine what it must be like in the really elitist, no-fucks-given-for-people-type guilds...

Guilds die every expansion, new ones form. Hopefully they'll reverse the crap they've pulled in BfA with Shadowlands and let people have more control of what they do in the game when they want to do it.

[Kokolums]

It's not that the content is too tightly tuned.
It's the designs around shit needed just to raid Mythic, that's killing people's motivations.

Well yeah. They ripped out all the interesting social interaction in the raiding scene and replaced it with massive boring in-game systems like essence bullshit, AP grinds, and m+ grinding that puts everyone to sleep.

[GringoD]

They didn't tune the raid around people entering it with socketed benthic. They didn't know socketed benthic would be better than mythic raid gear.

The raid was supposed to be HARDER than it ended up being due to the benthic surprise.

Granted, although I'd wager that they did tune it around people spamming M+, which is not far off. The benthic served more to completely ruin the reward structure and power progression through loot. The only things that mattered in the raid were trinkets and azerite armor. I honestly got 4 upgrades from the first 3 bosses and was BIS for progression (outside of forging/gem proccs). Feels bad.

[Advent]

Well yeah. They ripped out all the interesting social interaction in the raiding scene and replaced it with massive boring in-game systems like essence bullshit, AP grinds, and m+ grinding that puts everyone to sleep.

What social interaction did they remove, exactly?

[david0925]

of course classic is killing your guilds its a better game, its more fun, it requires less commitment and every class matters so you can play what you want to play

It's not really that every class matters. The class discrepancy is even bigger in classic than in retail. However, you can't be nitpicky about classes since loot is more limited, and you need to fill a 40 man raid, so you have a much bigger opportunity cost to stack raids because people will compete directly with loot. The initial grind to get pre-raid BIS is just as bad if not worse than ap grind, but becomes nonexistent afterwards. And this is directly related to tuning. While it wasn't obvious 15 years ago when players are not experienced, you can notice that the tuning in vanilla is extremely forgiving as far as "dps/healing" checks go barring a few exceptions (and yes, I'm well aware of the mathematical memes on bosses such as C'thun), and this is actually something worth bringing up (and already brought up): there are so many throughput checks in the game right now that basically dictates whether you can trivialize a fight or not by beating a timer that the weaker guilds that cannot beat it run into a wall. This isn't a classic thread so I'm not going touch the controversy beyond this, but while I think some people still overrate classic, there are quite a few takeaways from the vanilla-WoD era that were lost in Legion and BFA, despite Legion being one of my favorite expansions, and one of them is letting people raid log after initial grind each patch.

This is the issue with current raid model and I think most have been said already: the unappealing necessary maintenance with AP, uninteresting gear from raids that makes m+ more appealing since you can spam it, and just in general playerbase getting even older and moving onto other games or other things in life.

I played a lot of WoW when I am active since Vanilla and I quit after getting CE in Argus just because I want to move on to other games/things in life, but I still follow the raid/lore and most of them are still fun to me if I were still playing. On the other hand, essence grinding and Benthic seems very unappealing to me and I can understand if that is the breaking point for a lot of people, because they don't like that pressure being imposed on them even if their guilds don't have explicit rules for them: most of you that raid should know that as well as I do that when you have a bad night, what do people shit talk about the most other than people failing basic mechanics? Yes, that person who didn't "grind as hard as others"

[kranur]

One thing they could do is after both halls of fame are filled, the debuff that was present in some raids is added to reduce hp and dmg by say 2% and increasing by 2% every week or every other week, up to 10%

[Galathir]

It started in BoD and continued this tier. My guild has just stopped progress after achieving the Court kill. It's just too exhausting.

In my experience it started way before BoD. Mythic raids are just dying left and right.

[Lorianus]

The upper end of the raiding population got annihilated with the switch to 20 in WoD and ever since guilds were dying left and right because its too much work and exhaustion to field a 20-25 player roster that also is skillwise on the same page for stable raiding outside of the world 1-1000 spectrum, not even talking about setup problems if insert random classes/specs are clearly subpar.

I really want to know the number of guilds that died and players that quit because over night blizzard killed their 10man friend teams.

This is all just a culmination of the raiding changes from MoP -> WoD.

[Ange]

What social interaction did they remove, exactly?

Maybe @Kokulums misses the good old times of 1-week progression each content and the flame-wars after it from raiding guilds to pass the time since there was nothing else to do.

1. get tier-sets/FINAL-BiS gear in 1-2 weeks each content
2. clear the mythic content in the following week
3. blame blizzard for another no-content patch

good old times with "lots of social interactions" from non-subbed raiders.

[Verdugo]

Maybe @Kokulums misses the good old times of 1-week progression each content and the flame-wars after it from raiding guilds to pass the time since there was nothing else to do.

1. get tier-sets/FINAL-BiS gear in 1-2 weeks each content
2. clear the mythic content in the following week
3. blame blizzard for another no-content patch

good old times with "lots of social interactions" from non-subbed raiders.

As opposed to current iteration where people cant even be arsed to get to point one.

[KaPe]

What social interaction did they remove, exactly?

I'm curious about this as well. I mean, I suppose there was some social interaction while grinding elite bugs for AQ atunement back in vanilla (for a single guild on server), but other than that? You can still do dungeons with your friends, you can do alt raids with your friends, do pvp with your friends... no one is stopping you. World Quests are generally done solo, but that was always the case. World Bosses are puggable, so that *might* be one of those things, but back in Vanilla/TBC days you didn't get to do them at all, thanks to long respawn timers.

It's always the same with these types of discussion, mentioning some mythical golden times which are long gone, but conveniently forgetting about the details - or not realizing that you can do the same stuff today. Do they honestly think that people constantly did Sunwell dailies with their guild and there was so much *Social Interaction*?