Mythic is too tight, guilds are dying

[TOM_RUS]

Mythic raids should be initially tuned as if they were after all rounds of nerfs/hotfixes we currently get. And then nerfed again few month after raid opening.

[Frozenbro]

Guys, hear me out! im no cutting edge player at all but trust me, to be competitive in mythic you need to grind like your life depends on it! -> this thread

Stop fooling yourselves, truth is, you grind to compensate your lack of skill, sorry not sorry.

[Krille]

I am seeing the same thing as you man. As an example, there were 1676 guilds that killed Heroic Ragnaros before the next tier came out on November 27th, 2011. Compare that to the current raid (the number will be a bit higher because guilds still have a couple weeks before the cut-off date) and the number is sitting at 814.

Either way though this is a horrible way of looking at it because there are sooooo many differences between then and now. Like back then you could do 10 or 25 man heroic. There were a lot more players actually playing the game, etc. I don't think you can accurately compare it this way.

I'm talking about the time when the raids didnt have different difficulties. Not a lot of people cleared Black Temple or Sunwell within its relevancy compared to how many ppl are seeing the raids these days. That was the entire point, there was no LFR, no normal version. So a lot of people just played the game without being able to raid new tiers at all.

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Except it isn't. It's about clearing as quickly as possible, getting the highest world rank you can. Just getting CE is not the relevant goal.

For this thread it is. The whole grind topic is about people just wanting to finish CE, not gain world ranks. Even then, i don't grind at all and still clear the raid around 150 world.

[asil]

Go read through the conversation being had where you quoted me. Don't try to tell me what I'm discussing with someone else just because you want to jump in midway and try to change a narrative. Not to mention you're trying to change your argument after I call you out to "most bosses" from "cutting edge". Nobody cares about "most bosses" if you aren't clearing the tier. Most, if not all, guilds in the top 200 will kill the end tier boss without nerfs.

I don't think you even know what entitlement is at this point, but nobody is claiming that only the top 200 are "entitled" to kill bosses. The reality is, the only people complaining about Mythic being too hard are the players not obtaining Cutting Edge, this is because the quality of player drops significantly past the top 200-400 point, these are based off statistics, not me trying to be mean. Yes there are a few outliers in the top 200 too, but there are far more bad players complaining that they can't kill Za'qul or Azshara than there are good players saying the fight is hard, because frankly none of the fights have been hard in months. There's too many Mythic "Progression" guilds with bad leadership or carrying bad players. Now I don't really care if you want to play with your friends who aren't the best players, more power to you, but you have zero place to be crying because you want free kills because your friends are morons and can't move out of laser beams or because you tolerate being a part of bad leadership who won't recruit better players to the positions of bad players. Wanting nerfs because you or your friends are bad at the game is actual entitlement.

You're literally making the same argument I'm making. Not only that, I killed mythic queen multiple months ago.

I just don't think top 200 is "needs nerfs to kill the bosses" territory.

My only point is invoking neck requirements for some of the best guilds in the world to claim "the grind is too much" is absurd.

[GringoD]

Tuning/difficulty really is not the issue with Mythic, it is more than fine.

[...] Xavius [...] Helya, KJ and Argus were really good fights difficulty wise

[...] I also had no complaints with tuning/difficulty in BFA (can't speak about content after Jaina).

It sounds like your group regularly fights and kills end bosses. Tuning might be fine for you, but your skill range is not what this thread is about.
The guilds on the 1,5k to 3k range, the seedbed for mythic recruitment, are the ones dying off by the thousands. For this skill level, unforgivingly tight encounters happen much earlier into the tier than they used to while power progression doesn't help enough and rewards haven't been this useless... ever.
You gotta empathize. Or disregard and say 'this is fine' while mythic raiding shrinks.

[Celestraza]

It sounds like your group regularly fights and kills end bosses. Tuning might be fine for you, but your skill range is not what this thread is about.
The guilds on the 1,5k to 3k range, the seedbed for mythic recruitment, are the ones dying off by the thousands. For this skill level, unforgivingly tight encounters happen much earlier into the tier than they used to while power progression doesn't help enough and rewards haven't been this useless... ever.
You gotta empathize. Or disregard and say 'this is fine' while mythic raiding shrinks.

Hmmm.

I don't think difficulty of the raids are the cause for these guilds dieing. With no nerfs content has easily been doable. However content quickly gets nerfed either directly or with better gear making it more than doable even for the 1k-3k range. And of not with the current gear then the next tier gear for sure. I think it is more than fine for poorly performing guilds to clear the boss with the next tier gear.

I think it has more to do with the requirements these guilds set up that are in no way a reflection on the progress these guilds have. On my realm the rank 60 guilds has the same requirement as the top 10 rank guilds. They are burning up their casual players.

I mean the amount of guilds on my realm that raid 4-5 times a night and unable to get CE is astonishing really.

That and perhaps the amount of bosses where one player can wipe the whole raid I guess. When you have 10 mediocre players that all have a high risk of failing a crucial mechanic then you will get stuck.

[GringoD]

It used to be ok for people like me, who are avarage players and not cutting edge, to NOT clear all of the bosses on the hardest difficulty in previous expansion, and still feel that the game is fair and fun. If you want to be among the best then you work hard. If you just want to have fun then manage your expectations and try not to compare yourself to the top 10 in logs. It won't do you much good.

The tempering of expectations is something I have preached to my raiders for a long time. I feel you. But it's not about getting stuck on boss 7 out of 8 anymore. It's about boss number 4 already feeling like an insurmountable wall.
Guilds like yours and mine yeet the first three bosses, only to burn themselves out on the unnerfed versions of Ashvane and Oppulence. Then on Orgozoa. Then on Court. By the time we arrive at boss 7, people have more than half a thousand wipes under their belt and maybe 4 new items to show for it.
Blizz has forgotten how to properly boil the frog.

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Hmmm.

I don't think difficulty of the raids are the cause for these guilds dieing. With no nerfs content has easily been doable. However content quickly gets nerfed either directly or with better gear making it more than doable even for the 1k-3k range. And of not with the current gear then the next tier gear for sure. I think it is more than fine for poorly performing guilds to clear the boss with the next tier gear.

As a raidlead that usually hovered around 3k~ and is now at 1,9k~: Let me assure you that difficulty is the culprit. That and Classic.
Maybe you didn't think Oppulence was really that difficult last tier, but that fight alone killed multiple guilds in our range I knew. I lost three players to that encounter, because it just felt that awful to get stomped for hundreds of wipes by boss number 4.

Nobody feels good about clearing BoD with EP gear. My raiders wouldn't even want to do it, if it weren't for the mount, cause it's not current tier. It's a joke.

[burek]

There is no question a lot of factors are at play. I just keep going back to WoD though, where the amount of guilds clearing the raids was still 2 to 3x as high as in BFA even though the expansion was certainly a low point in WoW. Can we not see that something is fundamentally busted in the raid scene simply based off that fact?

M Blackhand was killed by 500 guilds while it was current tier. That's lower than any end boss in Legion/BfA. Where the hell are you getting '3x as high as BfA' number?

And quite a lot of those 500 guilds died right there in WoD. It had nothing to do with the grind or mythic being too difficult or whatever.

[Gaidax]

If your guild is 1.9k - 3k range, it’s on you.

By the time you even get to said bosses which are supposedly an issue you have them nerfed to oblivion and your gear way higher than these bosses were done with.

You have everything you need to get it down - you have videos that explain everything in detail, you have WA packs and you have guides as well. At this point it’s simply plain case of skill issue for your raid. If your guys are clueless and can’t deal with frikkin’ Ashvane or Orgozoa months in then it’s not Mythic difficulty or “grind” issue.

You are just lying to yourselves there.

1.9k means you are at Zaqul now, at this point this boss can be simply DPSed down through last phase and is nowhere near the realms dance it was months ago. You are now having everything unlocked and as 6/8 you have almost all the gear you will ever get from this and you still can’t do it? You don’t even need to do realm dance last phase which drops complexity like a ton... I mean, come on, how much easier you need this be?

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Hmmm.

I don't think difficulty of the raids are the cause for these guilds dieing. With no nerfs content has easily been doable. However content quickly gets nerfed either directly or with better gear making it more than doable even for the 1k-3k range. And of not with the current gear then the next tier gear for sure. I think it is more than fine for poorly performing guilds to clear the boss with the next tier gear.

I think it has more to do with the requirements these guilds set up that are in no way a reflection on the progress these guilds have. On my realm the rank 60 guilds has the same requirement as the top 10 rank guilds. They are burning up their casual players.

I mean the amount of guilds on my realm that raid 4-5 times a night and unable to get CE is astonishing really.

That and perhaps the amount of bosses where one player can wipe the whole raid I guess. When you have 10 mediocre players that all have a high risk of failing a crucial mechanic then you will get stuck.

Truer words have not been said in this thread.

I am amazed by all these weakass guilds who mirror requirements of bleeding edge guilds, then proceed to raid 4, heck even 3 times a week and have nothing to show for it. It’s instant steer clear for any half-decent recruit, hence these guilds die and it’s how it should be really, because such a guild has nothing to offer to any sort of decent recruit.

[burek]

Close. The tier ended when 6.2 (HFC) came out on the 23rd of june. 900 guilds had Blackhand down at that point. That'll be about on par with Azshara when 8.3 hits.
You can't just look at Blackhand though. Compare the next two hardest, Maidens (3752) and Furnace (3344) to Court (1965) and Za'qul (1462) and you'll see that the difficulty has tightened drastically before the last challange. And I'd say that BRF was one of the harder raids a few years ago.

On 23rd of June Wowhead has 710 guilds with Blackhand, 1203 with Furnace and 1855 with Maidens kills. The numbers are pretty much lower than now.

[Kaesebrezen]

Again, as I already said, two exceptions to a long stated rule of tiers lasting 7+ months. End tiers lasting almost a year each. The only other shortened exception is T9 ToC/ToGC. Every other tier lasted a minimum of 24 weeks(6 months) and most of them lasted at least 25-28 weeks.

Since at least MoP, mid tier raids lasted between 2 to 2.5 weeks per boss in the instance. The "longest" mid tier raid by weeks in that timeframe was Throne of Thunder with 12 bosses lasting 27 weeks. Eternal Palace has 8 bosses, and is going to last 28 weeks. Now add in the quality, and you should be able to say that Eternal Palace is way paste it's expiration date (which going by average was last week of november/first week of december)

So people don't have to look it up - and to say your "minimum of 24 weeks" is blatantly wrong:

MoP: First Tier - 21 weeks and 16 bosses (vault+heart+terrace), Throne - 27 weeks and 12 bosses, SoO - 61 weeks and 14 bosses.
WoD: Highmaul - 8 weeks and 7 bosses, Foundry - 20 weeks and 10 bosses, Citadel - 62 weeks and 13 bosses
Legion: Nightmare - 17 weeks and 7 bosses, Nighthold - 21 weeks and 10 bosses, Tomb - 23 weeks and 9 bosses, Anotus - 37 weeks and 11 bosses.
BfA: Uldir - 21 weeks and 8 bosses, Dazar'alor - 25 weeks and 11 bosses, ...

[GringoD]

You are just lying to yourselves there.

We know that some of our people are driving on average. That's always been the case, that's not the point. The game used to have a place for our skill level. We used to be able to progress through mythic without burning out, but that's no longer the case.
No dude, you just don't get it. You're just too far with your head in the clouds to realize. Things have tightened up and even with thousands of guilds dying, all you can think to do is yell 'git gud' from the mountains.

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On 23rd of June Wowhead has 710 guilds with Blackhand, 1203 with Furnace and 1855 with Maidens kills. The numbers are pretty much lower than now.

Yeah, I was totally wrong, looked at the numbers for 23rd June of 2016...

[Krille]

We know that some of our people are driving on average. That's always been the case, that's not the point. The game used to have a place for our skill level. We used to be able to progress through mythic without burning out, but that's no longer the case.
No dude, you just don't get it. You're just too far with your head in the clouds to realize. Things have tightened up and even with thousands of guilds dying, all you can think to do is yell 'git gud' from the mountains.

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Yeah, I was totally wrong, looked at the numbers for 23rd June of 2016...

About your earlier point, that the lower end guilds are necessary for mythic recruitment. I can count the amount of raiders we have recruited from sub 1k ranks on one hand. We did actually recruit one of our best players and now officer from a heroic raiding guild, because he applied to us and it was clear that he had a decent understanding of the game.

Point is, we send as many players down to sub 200 guilds as we recruit. The end of delusional low tier mythic guilds is not an issue. Lower your requirements, raid less or bench/replace the bad players to improve. Otherwise nobody will want to play in your guild. Imagine having to grind more than the top and get nowhere near killing end bosses.

[Krille]

Mythic kills guilds that think they are the kind of mythic player.
There are LFR, Normal, Heroic and then Mythic for the unenployed/skilled/hardcore/nolife gamers.

Blizzard should give a red warning sign in all screen for those entering a mythic raid.

Something like "if you have a job, a life, a dog, family, girlfriend, this dificulty isnt for you."

Fixed.

I have a girlfriend, fulltime job and play football (soccer) while raiding 3 days a week for world 150 rank. Try again!

[Celestraza]

As a raidlead that usually hovered around 3k~ and is now at 1,9k~: Let me assure you that difficulty is the culprit. That and Classic.
Maybe you didn't think Oppulence was really that difficult last tier, but that fight alone killed multiple guilds in our range I knew. I lost three players to that encounter, because it just felt that awful to get stomped for hundreds of wipes by boss number 4.

There only were 9 bosses in there.

I only remember Oppulance as a medium risk phase 1 (gauntlet). Then going in to a very easy p2 which nearly was a free kill.

I don't recall this fight being a wall for progress at all unless people were handling the gauntlet very badly. Sure there is a bit bigger dropoff in progress there (-7,7%) but it would easily then be in the other fights after. The gauntlet is the only part of the fight I can see that could pose a problem. You could get unlucky with bad overlaps of abilities in the gauntlet though this could be countered with good play and the use of the immunity window. Tank position also helps a lot in the gauntlet.

The bosses after were not particularly easier than Opulance. Especially Rastakhan and Tinkerer were harder in my opinion. The others like Conclave/Blockade were imho roughly on par (just different) with Opu.

[burek]

We know that some of our people are driving on average. That's always been the case, that's not the point. The game used to have a place for our skill level. We used to be able to progress through mythic without burning out, but that's no longer the case.
No dude, you just don't get it. You're just too far with your head in the clouds to realize. Things have tightened up and even with thousands of guilds dying, all you can think to do is yell 'git gud' from the mountains.

I don't think that is anything new, that's just a normal state of things. With how organized raiding is set up - it is not sustainable long term. If you are in an 'average' mythic guild, progression never stops. Some manage to kill the last boss just in time, most don't. The only time you might get some breathing room is between expansions. That means you need to commit several evenings of your every week for two years at a time, and manage adequate attendance/performance. That is a huge commitment, and not something a lot of people are willing or capable of for longer periods of time.

Raiding needs fresh blood, constant stream of new players, but that is simply not happening for WoW. At least what they could have done is to lift the stupid same server/faction requirements to help with recruitment but they chose not to give a fuck. Ion's comment about dead servers during blizzcon q&a was especially idiotic. 'We'll check what we can do first thing monday'. What the fuck are you doing all these years, did you actually need someone from the crowd to point out that most of your servers are dead?

[GringoD]

Point is, we send as many players down to sub 200 guilds as we recruit. The end of delusional low tier mythic guilds is not an issue. Lower your requirements, raid less or bench/replace the bad players to improve. Otherwise nobody will want to play in your guild. Imagine having to grind more than the top and get nowhere near killing end bosses.

I'd call that short-sightedness on your part, looking one step up and one step down. You're going to feel the effects up the ladder eventually when the base dries up.

There's a guy in this thread that boasts about replacing 90% of his guild because they held him back. You probably think he's a cool guy, right? Someone who wants go hard and nothing else matters. That's the way to go. Yet there are so many guilds out there not telling their members to fuck off, even though they'll never be able to get that final internet achievement. It's a mystery how they survive at all, isn't it?
I should fit an /s here somewhere

[Krille]

I'd call that short-sightedness on your part, looking one step up and one step down. You're going to feel the effects up the ladder eventually when the base dries up.

There's a guy in this thread that boasts about replacing 90% of his guild because they held him back. You probably think he's a cool guy, right? Someone who wants go hard and nothing else matters. That's the way to go. Yet there are so many guilds out there not telling their members to fuck off, even though they'll never be able to get that final internet achievement. It's a mystery how they survive at all, isn't it?
I should fit an /s here somewhere

We most likely will, but thats because the game is bad, not because mythic raiding requires more of each player.

And that was me, and it might sound harsh. Raiding 3 days a week only to watch the same people fail over and over is awful. We demoted several people, but only 2-3 actually took offense, because you can do it in a nice way or be a dick about it.

Our guild has 0 tolerance for toxicity and honestly many people got kicked/demoted because they were big egos and we emphasize a "work for the collective" culture. Also including benched players in our kill pics, letting every member come up with ideas for strats and taking them seriously, having 50% raider ranks in loot councils. But replacing dead weight is inevitable for a guild to survive, otherwise people will eventually leave for another guild.

We gave them several warnings, improve or we have to do something. If you just want to raid with the same old people that constantly fail, be my guest. But dont complain when those people keep failing and you eventually make a thread like this one. Blaming the difficulty for your inability to improve your guild.

[GringoD]

There only were 9 bosses in there.

I only remember Oppulance as a medium risk phase 1 (gauntlet). Then going in to a very easy p2 which nearly was a free kill.

I don't recall this fight being a wall for progress at all unless people were handling the gauntlet very badly. Sure there is a bit bigger dropoff in progress there (-7,7%) but it would easily then be in the other fights after. The gauntlet is the only part of the fight I can see that could pose a problem. You could get unlucky with bad overlaps of abilities in the gauntlet though this could be countered with good play and the use of the immunity window. Tank position also helps a lot in the gauntlet.

The bosses after were not particularly easier than Opulance. Especially Rastakhan and Tinkerer were harder in my opinion. The others like Conclave/Blockade were imho roughly on par (just different) with Opu.

Yeah, the gauntlet was the hard part. Lower skill guilds have a tough time with mechanics that check every single player with fast damage in rapid succession. Everyone is going to fail once a night, the weak players twice. Makes up 20 odd wipes a night. You maybe see P2 once or twice, not enough to practice. Stretch over 5 nights, get a hundred wipes, lose a main tank in between and you basically have our experience on that thing up to the kill.
I imagine lotsa guilds had a similar experience. At the time we were progressing for the kill, the fall-off from the boss before was huge. There were like 5k guilds done with jadefire and 3k with Oppulence, 2,6k with Conclave. Probably not hard for your guys, but a smooth curve looks different.

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But dont complain when those people keep failing and you eventually make a thread like this one. Blaming the difficulty for your inability to improve your guild.

Ah sorry, didn't remember you being that guy. You do you, I've got no qualms with that.

I'll complain until hell and high water though until we get our smooth mythic progression back. You can keep your hard earned CE, I just don't want to go from 'babies first tornado evasion' to 'nobody dies, peak damage, picture perfect or out'.

[Krille]

Ah sorry, didn't remember you being that guy. You do you, I've got no qualms with that.

I'll complain until hell and high water though until we get our smooth mythic progression back. You can keep your hard earned CE, I just don't want to go from 'babies first tornado evasion' to 'nobody dies, peak damage, picture perfect or out'.

It hasnt been hard earned since EN (when we were sub 1k ranked). I dont think you need "picture perfect performance" unless you're Method. Impossible to completely eliminate mistakes, we made a fair bunch of silly ones this tier. Enough for a compilation video. But has mythic raiding ever been smooth in terms of difficulty? The last few years, Blizzard has made a point out of putting a "block" after the first bosses. Ilgynoth in EN, Krosus/Spellblade in Nighthold, sisters of the moon/mistress in ToS, tbf Antorus didnt really have one, maybe Kingaroth. It was the same in WoD.

Its nothing new, and they're called "guild killers" for a reason. Thousands of guilds (according to wowprog) drop off at these bosses.

If you, as a GM, dont care at all for improving your guild i have 0 sympathy for its inevitable demise. There are ways to improve beyond just replacing, smart assignments of tricky mechanics, holding your worse players hand throughout the fight, stay in touch with the latest strats, keep giving points of improvement to bad performing players etc. You cant solve bad play with neck lvls in mythic.