Mythic is too tight, guilds are dying

[JustForThisThread]

That shows how important a 3rd raid day is, if you want to get CE.
We have very similar pull counts for the bosses (around: 110 Ashvane, 86 Orgo, 70 QC, 154 Zaq; all pre nerf, except for the Orgo ramp time) and are still working on p3, so we'll probably won't get CE this tier. (which is ok)

How many pulls do you have on Azshara that you are still working on p3? Even raiding 2 nights a week, you should be much further ahead, unless you didn't start raiding together until a month or two into the tier?

We raid two nights a week (tues/wed) and got Azshara on October 17. Here's all our pulls from Exorsus (the FK column is the pulls until First Kill).


and accompanying guild logs showing 2 days a week raids. (we don't extend past raid time and don't raid extra days ever)

If you want to raid on a lighter schedule, you need everyone to step up and play better and min/max. That means Benethic gear was not an option. There's no reason not to spend 20 minutes a day doing the pearl quests until you got all your items. Minimal effort for large dps increases. If you're guild didn't push to have everyone having their Benethic gear, or by getting at least one Azerite level a week during progression, then you guys need to take a step back about realistic expectations for getting Cutting Edge. It's fine to put in less time than other groups and not get the same achievements.

- - - Updated - - -

I gave it a chance, despite plenty of guild members saying "what's even the point?". I remember Cabal being harder than Jaina, especially after she had her final wave of nerfs (at that point it was no contest). There was just no time for it, the whole raid lasted 3 months and that's 3 months only assuming you were already done with Jaina. In reality, if you weren't Top200 already, you barely had time to put some serious effort into the place.

Yep, my guild only raids two nights a week. We already had Jaina down, but we prioritized doing 9/9M for gear + Jaina mounts for the next tier then spending 4-5 weeks doing CoS. That meant we did 9/9M on Tuesday raid and only had one day (four hours) to work on Cabal. We got the Mythic Cabal achieve, but with 3 weeks left and not a single pull on Uunat to date, we decided to just one day raid a week for 9/9M and not get CE for CoS. I wish we would have had a little more time, to at least see the fight, but it is what it is I guess.

[Azlo]

The main issue is that in the top 3000 guilds, everyone has their own level of "bis". That means that no, I'm not going to set foot in arena or BG's for Conflict and Strife/Blood of the Enemy. Some people in the guild won't even get 70 neck. Others won't do M+ every week. Others will only play an Arcane mage or a Feral druid or an Unholy DK through progression. Spending 250k+ for a better JC ring? Naw, I'd rather use a 415 from the previous tier.

So, your guild's "bis" basically stagnates in the first few weeks. Azerite can't get better. In this tier, you already had 4 bis pieces from Benthic, and many of us weren't willing to do the grind for the socket. Rings were probably BiS if they had a socket, or if your class is super screwed up, you already had BiS from last tier. For Dazar alor, we extended from Mekka to Jaina for 10 weeks on a single lockout (and this burned out several of our raiders, and made it impossible to recruit). There was literally zero reason to continue killing the rest of the instance after 2-3 kills on each boss.

In the past, this was fine. Progressive nerfs, tuning, a x.x.5 patch that buffs some underperforming specs, a few more weeks of gearing. But now, we got Zaqul down to 3% on our guild's version of near-perfect execution just before the Christmas break. It's not doable for us. Period. It's not like we're going to get a nerf, or a week of gear, or something that will help. It's over. We just didn't have enough shadow priests.

My guild isn't very good, but we always were around world 1300 (and CE) on 2 nights a week. That used to be good enough for cutting edge, but now we have to hope that Ion's guild struggles exactly where we struggle, at the same effort level of the guild in order to get any sort of help. It's burning a lot of us casual raiders out.

TLDR: Ion Hazzokostas is literally the worst game director of all time. Can't believe the man still has a job.

[GringoD]

The fact that you've yet killed it is not a reason for it to be nerfed, it's perfectly doable 832 guilds have killed it so far. It's okay to not be able to clear mythic, it's supposed to be hard.

You're totally right. This post isn't about clearing the raid though. I've barely ever cleared a tier in over a decade and you only see me complain now. It's about the bosses beginning with the 4th suddenly becoming a bigger wall then they used to, to the point where 1,5k+ guilds exhaust themselves into disbanding.

Since you didn't talk about PA system, I guess you're among the ones that like it?

I personally like PA, but it's not a hill I'd die on. It's just refreshingly low maintenance after having to manage all loot for over a decade.

The difficulty was never the problem, at least not in my circle of friends. The only thing that made people quit was that you could never be "done" with your character.

Since I guess you're among those who would clear tiers regularly, you have a different perspective. Guilds like mine are never finished progressing, so it's really not a big deal to never be 'done' with our characters. We never used to be able to anyway, since we're always short about 2 bosses each tier.

[Loveliest]

The difficulty was never the problem, at least not in my circle of friends. The only thing that made people quit was that you could never be "done" with your character.

Your average guild used to raid the whole tier, there was never a "done" thing. This concept is only a thing for people who heard this form someone saying it in relation to titanforging and just repeated it until it made sense to them, without actually making sense.
Most people, you'd be surprised, actually don't want to be done in a couple weeks and take a break. That's only your high end guilds who basically do this like a job. The rest are just sheep repeating shit because it was hammered into their heads. Like people doing heroic only and complaining they can't stand the grind anymore and that they can't be done (as if they ever would, even without the grind or TF).

[quite an expert in wow]

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

You might be right, but seeing how little people actually complete mythic, it is probably better to decrease difficulty over time. Why else waste all design effort into mythic bosses that only a handful of people will see?

My main concern is with the little amount of mythic players, guilds are indeed dying and my own guild suffers from people that leave as well. There isn't much reason for a player to actually devote their time into mythic raiding. I'm in a guild that has seen all mythic bosses this tier, so it's not like we can't kill anything or something.

The very bad benthic system is also keeping people away from killing stuff I feel. I hope we never have to see that kind of stuff again.

[AgilityTank]

When I look to current raiding, what I see is the inevitable end of raiding. Blizzard needs to adapt or raiding dies because the dollars soon make no sense.

People have been claiming raiding will die for like 13 years.

[Krille]

You might be right, but seeing how little people actually complete mythic, it is probably better to decrease difficulty over time. Why else waste all design effort into mythic bosses that only a handful of people will see?

My main concern is with the little amount of mythic players, guilds are indeed dying and my own guild suffers from people that leave as well. There isn't much reason for a player to actually devote their time into mythic raiding. I'm in a guild that has seen all mythic bosses this tier, so it's not like we can't kill anything or something.

The very bad benthic system is also keeping people away from killing stuff I feel. I hope we never have to see that kind of stuff again.

What design effort? Sometimes it sounds like people assume there wouldnt be any raids without the mythic difficulty. The added layer of mythic isnt a BIG design issue and you probably wouldnt get ANYTHING else if they would stop with mythic difficulty.

[Moonsorrow]

It is really funny to see all these CE raiders in the ivory tower... As stated several times the low tier Mythic guilds don't ask for CE but the chance of constant progress over a tier with the people they have and not a massive content blocker after boss 3 or 4 as it has been in all of BfA.

The problem is even more dramatic if you look at heroic only raids. On this tier it is basically impossible to recruit or maintain a stable roster over a tier, with M+ provinding better and easier gear.
With the new item scaling in M+ up to 15 Mythic guilds will definitelty fell the impact. But sure keep pretending that everything is fine and the plebs are just to bad to clear Mythic, which is not wrong but not the core of the problem.

The problem is that people don't like to bang their head against a head just so that when the stars align they may kill it, paired with the reward scheme of M+ and a seasonal gear reset is a motivation killer for many low-mid tier mythic raider and guild on that tier have a very restricted recruitment pool so they stop raiding completely after a certain point.

I can understand that in a guild > world 200 on Horde this is hard to see, but the raiding scene is bigger than that...

[JustForThisThread]

It is really funny to see all these CE raiders in the ivory tower... As stated several times the low tier Mythic guilds don't ask for CE but the chance of constant progress over a tier with the people they have and not a massive content blocker after boss 3 or 4 as it has been in all of BfA.

Really? Because as stated several times by the "lower tier Mythic raiders" posting in this thread, they all seem to say they don't do benethic gear, they don't play extra to grind out their next levels (granted they all should be max by now), they don't do profession min/maxing (JC/LW for BiS pieces), yet, they say they should be able to kill the bosses.

The problem is that people don't like to bang their head against a head just so that when the stars align they may kill it, paired with the reward scheme of M+ and a seasonal gear reset is a motivation killer for many low-mid tier mythic raider and guild on that tier have a very restricted recruitment pool so they stop raiding completely after a certain point.

i would say the problem is EITHER bad leadership in their guild or overall bad raiding in their guild (ie, mechanics, dps, healers). I'd love for these 3/8M, 4/8M, 6/8M, hardstuck guildies (that people in this thread claim to be in) to link their logs so we can really see what the issue with their raid is. Logs will 100% expose people for either being undergeared, not having benethic 5+ months into a tier, not having JC ring or LW pieces despite it only costing 10-20k (realm dependent) for each reroll, people doing suboptimal dps or heals, or just they don't understand the fight and are doing something counterintuitive to the core mechanics of the fight.

So, can some of these people complaining the bosses are too hard link their guilds logs so we can show you were you are messing up, so we can help you get Cutting Edge? Because all this thread has become is people bitching they can't get a free CE achieve without putting in time outside raid, or without playing their class to a mediocre standard or cannot be bothered with following a scripted fight for 7 minutes without getting distracted.

[Frozenbro]

It is really funny to see all these CE raiders in the ivory tower... As stated several times the low tier Mythic guilds don't ask for CE but the chance of constant progress over a tier with the people they have and not a massive content blocker after boss 3 or 4 as it has been in all of BfA.

The issue lies in that they dont adapt, they get worse and/or they dont improve, but hey lets just blame it on the tier being hard, thats the easy mediocre way.

- - - Updated - - -

So, can some of these people complaining the bosses are too hard link their guilds logs so we can show you were you are messing up, so we can help you get Cutting Edge? Because all this thread has become is people bitching they can't get a free CE achieve without putting in time outside raid, or without playing their class to a mediocre standard or cannot be bothered with following a scripted fight for 7 minutes without getting distracted.

I can answer that for you, theres a scripted answer for that, its "my logs are fine but the grind is too much i just want to raid log", trust me they will answer you this, its like a broken tape.

[Celestraza]

Seems to me there is slightly less grinding involved in Eternal Palace than the previous BFA tiers where me and many others got burnt out. Especially starting Uldir was a massive AP, rep, islands, warfronts, M+ and WQ grind. Though some friends told me the grind was terrible for Eternal Palace as well.

I remember grinding hours and hours of AP to remain competitive (not having azerite traits active felt terrible). Considering 65 neck unlocks a 2nd minor essence, I'd guess it was expected to grind that asap during progress. Not sure how bad this grind was during progression but I got to 60 without grinding it like I had to previously. Maybe because the tier is at the end...

The Benthic gear seems like a good catchup system but should have included all slots. The grind for this gear isnt so bad, just a few dailies for some manapearls. I managed to get full benthic with 200 pearls to spend in one week. I don't understand the hate towards this system and it aint grindy at all.

Mechagon rep and essence grinding is pure shit though. And as mentioned I also feel the loot from raids in general is too insignificant. There is no point to normal/heroic raids with M+ around. Imho M+ should not reward better loot than heroic raids and normal mode should be removed entirely (what purpose does it have? There is almost no groups for this.mode). Or they need to make loot from raids a lot more attractive or worthwile.

[Drefan]

Your average guild used to raid the whole tier, there was never a "done" thing. This concept is only a thing for people who heard this form someone saying it in relation to titanforging and just repeated it until it made sense to them, without actually making sense.
Most people, you'd be surprised, actually don't want to be done in a couple weeks and take a break. That's only your high end guilds who basically do this like a job. The rest are just sheep repeating shit because it was hammered into their heads. Like people doing heroic only and complaining they can't stand the grind anymore and that they can't be done (as if they ever would, even without the grind or TF).

This might be a you thing. There are a lot of people like me that liked that we could get full bis, especially full bis from current raid tier and skip the extra curricular activities unless we wanted to do them. These days you're chasing upgrades everywhere since there is an extremely small chance of item X dropping and being titanforged or having that extra socket, more or less forcing you to spend countless hours chasing after them since it's also part of the grind for your expansion item...

When you say "done in a couple of weeks" do you mean progression or fully bis geared? Getting full bis gear would take a while regardless of how fast you cleared the tier. And I do get that not everyone wants to be done with a raid in a week or two, but that's what some of us like to do. We invest time in the start so that we can raid log after progression, at least that is how it used to be. Doing that these days has become a lot harder.

The difference is what you have to do to stay competitive these days, you've seen the way method prepares for a tier right? It's madness. I'm not saying every guild should do that but you can get an understanding as to why "top" guilds might be dropping off.

And if we're speaking about the 1-3k ranked Mythic guilds that are running into a wall in each tier while it is a shame and yeah perhaps something like we saw in ICC could be a way to go, where you get X% stronger after 2 months after the first kill or something, or is perhaps one reason it's harder for "you guys" because you've trouble funneling loot where it needs to go?

What if class X, or your good player who is crucial for that fight is having problems getting upgrades.
This is where PA is making it awkward for you to gear those people that need to step up on certain fights. Yeah sure, you can see gear as only a reward and that it's good that its randomly spread among your members but most mythic guilds see loot as a tool to kill bosses and you want to make every drop as effective as possible.

[Kralljin]

The difference is what you have to do to stay competitive these days, you've seen the way method prepares for a tier right? It's madness. I'm not saying every guild should do that but you can get an understanding as to why "top" guilds might be dropping off.

I wouldn't use Method as guideline.

The issue rather is, it's always the same stupid shit.
In previous expansions, you had to drop a shit ton of time during the release of an expansion to get your character(s) ready for raiding, get gear, farm rep,etc..
All that shit you had to do to get settled into the expansion.

Then it was raidlogging.
At least for those who were only truly interested in raiding.
I never raidlogged unless i dropped a ton of time into another game, previously i spent most of my time in WoW farming collectibles, but i was totally fine that people didn't have to drop tons of hours to keep their character up to date for raiding.

Now a patch drops and you have to engage in all sorts of new systems.

First off, you need to grind M+ for all the new gear, that the full release is tied with Mythic makes it even harder because you kinda have to take the day off so you can get all your gear before your raid starts in the Afternoon / evening.

Second, the Patch system.
Take 8.2, first you need to get through multiple quests in order to get going in the zone (on all character obviously) then you need to get your HoA stuff, then you need to do Nazjatar every day for Manapearls to get Benthic, etc..

Then there's AP Grind, so you need to WQ's and Islands, like during 8.0, 8.1, and so forth.
The problem isn't grinding AP, the problem is grinding AP every damn patch.

Now 8.3 comes out.
First you gotta research how all stuff works because all that knowledge about Benthic gear is now entirely worthless as we're getting a new system each patch.
So you gotta go to WoWhead, read up on it and probably jump onto the PTR to test yourself to get a grasp how it works.

Now it's about Horrific visions, to enter those you need corrupted mementos, where do you get them?
Dailies obviously, more daily shit to do on every character that you want to keep ready for raiding.

This is the problem, a lot of "hardcore" people previously just dropped a massive amount of time into the game at the start of an expansion, then it got less over time.
Now every patch is like a small expansion and you have to do new daily shit and the same recurring shit you've been doing ~6 months ago.


Compare it to Classic.
I dropped a lot of time into Classic when it came out, got my character to 60, grinded gear, got consumables, now all i have to do is log in each week and that's it.
The only thing i have to do on the long run is having enough consumables, but due to the fact that i can buy them for gold, there are a variety of options to get them.
I can farm them myself (as many as i can within a timeframe), i can do something else to farm gold or just play the AH with minimal effort and live off the profit from there.
So fucking simple in comparison to retail.

[asil]

I wouldn't use Method as guideline.

The issue rather is, it's always the same stupid shit.
In previous expansions, you had to drop a shit ton of time during the release of an expansion to get your character(s) ready for raiding, get gear, farm rep,etc..
All that shit you had to do to get settled into the expansion.

Then it was raidlogging.
At least for those who were only truly interested in raiding.
I never raidlogged unless i dropped a ton of time into another game, previously i spent most of my time in WoW farming collectibles, but i was totally fine that people didn't have to drop tons of hours to keep their character up to date for raiding.

Now a patch drops and you have to engage in all sorts of new systems.

First off, you need to grind M+ for all the new gear, that the full release is tied with Mythic makes it even harder because you kinda have to take the day off so you can get all your gear before your raid starts in the Afternoon / evening.

Second, the Patch system.
Take 8.2, first you need to get through multiple quests in order to get going in the zone (on all character obviously) then you need to get your HoA stuff, then you need to do Nazjatar every day for Manapearls to get Benthic, etc..

Then there's AP Grind, so you need to WQ's and Islands, like during 8.0, 8.1, and so forth.
The problem isn't grinding AP, the problem is grinding AP every damn patch.

Now 8.3 comes out.
First you gotta research how all stuff works because all that knowledge about Benthic gear is now entirely worthless as we're getting a new system each patch.
So you gotta go to WoWhead, read up on it and probably jump onto the PTR to test yourself to get a grasp how it works.

Now it's about Horrific visions, to enter those you need corrupted mementos, where do you get them?
Dailies obviously, more daily shit to do on every character that you want to keep ready for raiding.

This is the problem, a lot of "hardcore" people previously just dropped a massive amount of time into the game at the start of an expansion, then it got less over time.
Now every patch is like a small expansion and you have to do new daily shit and the same recurring shit you've been doing ~6 months ago.


Compare it to Classic.
I dropped a lot of time into Classic when it came out, got my character to 60, grinded gear, got consumables, now all i have to do is log in each week and that's it.
The only thing i have to do on the long run is having enough consumables, but due to the fact that i can buy them for gold, there are a variety of options to get them.
I can farm them myself (as many as i can within a timeframe), i can do something else to farm gold or just play the AH with minimal effort and live off the profit from there.
So fucking simple in comparison to retail.

I really don't know what game you guys are playing. I've been raid logging since like the 5th week of every tier this xpac lol. I don't even grind, I casually do a few quests during the first few weeks.

I've been 70 in my neck for months. I've not been grinding at all. The only "grind" that even exists in the game is benthic gear and idk if I'd even call that a grind.

[KaPe]

You sound like some of the people I know. "I never grinded but I have 70 neck already". Except they never missed an emissary, did pretty much every WQ, lots of Island Expeditions, every PvP chest/events and so on. One could check the wowprogress neck level list and they'd be one of the top players on the realm. You absolutely do not get to such place without grinding - and yet they'd never admit it, because they didn't mind doing that stuff. And then they'd do it on multiple alts.

Just because someone doesn't consider it a grind, doesn't mean the others share this opinion. Getting AP in any respectable amount of time involves doing a shit ton of repetitive activities for weeks, every time a patch hits. Plenty of people would call it a grind.

[Frozenbro]

This might be a you thing. There are a lot of people like me that liked that we could get full bis, especially full bis from current raid tier and skip the extra curricular activities unless we wanted to do them. These days you're chasing upgrades everywhere since there is an extremely small chance of item X dropping and being titanforged or having that extra socket, more or less forcing you to spend countless hours chasing after them since it's also part of the grind for your expansion item...

This is definitely a you thing, the obsession with having a bis list, just go to classic already, i got my CE months ago and havent grinded gear in ages, ofc i dont have my bis, but you see me crying? nope cause i understand that gear is just a means to an end, if i was like you people would ask me "why are you still grinding gear? you already got your CE" and i would be like you "CAUSE I DONT HAVE MY BIS BRUH I NEED EVERYTHING TITANFORGED THE GRIND IS TOO MUCH KILL ME", see how stupid that sounds? thats all of you, oh wait, i forgot that people feel the need to grind to compensate their lack of skill then use this as scapegoat in these threads.

[Kaibhan]

This is definitely a you thing, the obsession with having a bis list, just go to classic already, i got my CE months ago and havent grinded gear in ages, ofc i dont have my bis, but you see me crying? nope cause i understand that gear is just a means to an end, if i was like you people would ask me "why are you still grinding gear? you already got your CE" and i would be like you "CAUSE I DONT HAVE MY BIS BRUH I NEED EVERYTHING TITANFORGED THE GRIND IS TOO MUCH KILL ME", see how stupid that sounds? thats all of you, oh wait, i forgot that people feel the need to grind to compensate their lack of skill then use this as scapegoat in these threads.

I don't bother with the grind but I would think it's pretty obvious that a BIS list is more about having a goal and being able to obtain it BIS lists are a very common mmo goal and one that was taken away.

[Gorsameth]

I don't bother with the grind but I would think it's pretty obvious that a BIS list is more about having a goal and being able to obtain it BIS lists are a very common mmo goal and one that was taken away.

Exactly, its not about having the best of the best possible shit but having a clear goal where you can say your character is 'done' (until the next raid comes out).
Now I still did that, put together my BiS list from raid drops, ignoring titanforging, and set out to collect that but the feeling simply isn't the same.

[Kralljin]

I really don't know what game you guys are playing. I've been raid logging since like the 5th week of every tier this xpac lol.

Considering you have to do this every tier, it's just annoying, period.
And that also depends on your what sort of raid you're in, if you intend to clear early, having a higher Neck is obviously a lot more difficult.

Because this is the point, you need to do the same old shit each patch and something new on top of that.

The only "grind" that even exists in the game is benthic gear and idk if I'd even call that a grind.

Considering you there were like ~4 pieces of Benthic you had to upgrade to 425, which costs around 200 Manapearls each, i'd say that is a grind.

Ignoring the lottery you had to jump through in the first place to get the right pieces.

I've been 70 in my neck for months. I've not been grinding at all.

That is such a non argument, because 70 doesn't even offer a power boost, 65 is the last relevant level.
And that length of that grind entirely depends on when you intend to reach it, if you have no issues in waiting months for the bonus, it's super easy.
If you want it earlier however, you had to grind it out.

I also didn't grind any AP on my alt and he got 70 in freaking December, so yeah, bit "behind" schedule.

[Popastique]

That is such a non argument, because 70 doesn't even offer a power boost, 67 is the last relevant level.
And that length of that grind entirely depends on when you intend to reach it, if you have no issues in waiting months for the bonus, it's super easy.
If you want it earlier however, you had to grind it out.

I also didn't grind any AP on my alt and he got 70 in freaking December, so yeah, bit "behind" schedule.

Fixed that for you. I really don't get why people are complaining, you want fast mythic progress - you farm like crazy to stay relevant. If you don't like it - progress at your own pace, simple as that.