Mythic is too tight, guilds are dying

[Relapses]

Oh look, a strawman.

Was it, though? You said want a "difficulty curve that makes sense," and if the 58 pages of this thread haven't shown you anything, it should at least be that "difficulty curve" means very different things to a lot of people who play this game.

[Ishayu]

1) In case you missed my post earlier or didn't read it, " everyone makes mistakes ". Of course me and people in my raid make mistakes, and the whole fucking point is to fix them And kill bosses. Being pretentious? LoL. It is you who bragged about mythic raid leader for 3 years or something, i didn't even raise up my mythic raid experience to begin with
There are no mistakes that can't be fixed btw. Once you have such mentality - you will run into problems pretty fast
2) And it is not nigh-on impossible Amount of guilds that actually killed bosses in EP shows that

I am posting my thoughts as they are. You are taking things too personally, learn to loosen up

P.S. People here defeat hard pixel dragons all the time

I'm not taking things personally. You've read something into that that wasn't there, but whatever. Let's not go further into that cause it's pointless.

I don't think you quite understand what I'm saying. You're trying to imply that it is okay for Mythic to be hilariously, ridiculously hard, even compared to previous mythic tiers, because you have to learn from mistakes. It really felt like you were saying that there is no difficult too hard - you just have to fix more mistakes.

The reason I brought up my experience is because you were talking down to me.

Anyway, at some point it just becomes impossible because you just cannot overcome more mistakes no matter how good you are, and that's the point I'm making. So it needs to be appropriately tuned. We can't just dismiss it all and say "git gud lol".

What we're used to is about 1500 guilds killing the last boss. I think that's appropriate. This time it's a little over half that.

[Huzzaa]

Well.

Our guild basically called it CBA after classic launched.

I didn't leave for it, but a few of the main officer team did, thus we basically stopped, came together for 3 raid nights and just stopped from there on out.

We really weren't failing either, RL was just tired of the clusterfu#k of abilities on every boss and understandably so. The fights are just way bloated. They're cool but bloated. Plus we did have 5 or so deadbeats that did need carrying and that was part of the equation too, probably the more major factor but the CBA part is what came up.

Just CBA.

We're on 7/8M, we we're on Mythic in August or September I don't recall right now. Myeah, RIP Azshara, and RIP WoW for a while for me.


Hearing that only half of the guilds killing the last boss doesn't surprise me.

[kaminaris]

Well.

Our guild basically called it CBA after classic launched.

I didn't leave for it, but a few of the main officer team did, thus we basically stopped, came together for 3 raid nights and just stopped from there on out.

We really weren't failing either, RL was just tired of the clusterfu#k of abilities on every boss and understandably so. The fights are just way bloated. They're cool but bloated. Plus we did have 5 or so deadbeats that did need carrying and that was part of the equation too, probably the more major factor but the CBA part is what came up.

Just CBA.

We're on 7/8M, we we're on Mythic in August or September I don't recall right now. Myeah, RIP Azshara, and RIP WoW for a while for me.


Hearing that only half of the guilds killing the last boss doesn't surprise me.

Oh yeah thats one of problems too. Having clusterfuck bosses such as Za'qul when once done with one group becomes a nightmare with another.
Overlapping abilities if you don't stop dps. Overlapping abilities if you do too little dps. Randomness of a fights, tentacles hitting in not the right moment.

I wonder how long will that new guild last, even if we have quite a good team, there are people who just aren't that good.
And its pretty common in medium tier mythic guilds to have few worse players.

[Truemagic]

People did Karazhan because it eventually became "easy to do content" that awarded badges for superior loot. They didn't stay there simply because it was so amazing that they didn't need anything else. Furthermore, plenty of guilds were stuck, because poaching was rampant. Anytime someone got geared and/or attuned, they'd be stolen by a more progressed guild, putting their former one back at square one.

No one knows which specific changes affected subscriptions. Raiding was never so popular that it decided game's population on its' own. Hell, considering that Cataclysm marked first major dropdown, we could say that people quite liked their "easy to clear content" back in Wrath and despised much harder heroic dungeons in 4.0. But that wouldn't quite fit the narrative, eh?

I mean, Blizzard themselves said that Sunwell was barely seen by people and it marked the change in difficulty of the content. Both it and Naxx were far too exclusive for their own good. By your logic, Classic should have completely annihilated Retail, since it had none of the flaws of later expansions. Somehow, that didn't happen.

??????
I'm not talking about people that just cleared Karazhan real quick for badges, im talking about people stuck in Karazhan wiping every week. Getting stuck in Kara is an L2P issue, you seem like someone who likes to make excuses for just being bad at wow.

Everyone knows why wow is dead, its because it sucks for all the reasons I listed. Wrath still hard just as hard of content as BC. I don't even understand your argument. Most people never even cleared normal ICC, can't imagine how few cleared heroic. Not to mention the challenge modes and achievements for mounts etc.

Classic did annihilate retail for about a month lol. Then people realized they're being timegated by a trash company on 15 year old recycled content and got bored. Also classic and BC/WRath aren't even comparable. Classic was basically the beta of WOW with a ton of broken shit and features missing. WOTLK was around the time they truly perfected the formula and they somehow managed to deviate so far from it now that the game feels like shit.

[Popastique]

I'm not taking things personally. You've read something into that that wasn't there, but whatever. Let's not go further into that cause it's pointless.

I don't think you quite understand what I'm saying. You're trying to imply that it is okay for Mythic to be hilariously, ridiculously hard, even compared to previous mythic tiers, because you have to learn from mistakes. It really felt like you were saying that there is no difficult too hard - you just have to fix more mistakes.

The reason I brought up my experience is because you were talking down to me.

Anyway, at some point it just becomes impossible because you just cannot overcome more mistakes no matter how good you are, and that's the point I'm making. So it needs to be appropriately tuned. We can't just dismiss it all and say "git gud lol".

What we're used to is about 1500 guilds killing the last boss. I think that's appropriate. This time it's a little over half that.

Well, EP did not do that much of a difficulty jump from BOD, i am not including Crucible because it had 1 major design flaw. When we reach the point when the encounter becomes impossible - then we can have that talk, yes. But so far - each encounter was perfectly reasonable and tuned. Like Ashvane, not dying to aoe explosions and puddles on the ground is common sense in my book. These sorts of mistakes can be fixed.

I don't think difficutly right now has anything to do with amount of guilds killing bosses. Farming essences/ap/m+ however has, but that is not the topic at hand.

[potis]

We really weren't failing either, RL was just tired of the clusterfu#k of abilities on every boss and understandably so. The fights are just way bloated. They're cool but bloated. Plus we did have 5 or so deadbeats that did need carrying and that was part of the equation too, probably the more major factor but the CBA part is what came up.

Just CBA.

That has always been the equation, but things were simpler mechanically so they were hidden by forcing/time (raiding more often = faster progression, duh) etc.

Now that some bosses/situations require actual reactions and reflexes or generally decisions "outside the plan", its where the not so great players cant handle.

Combine lack of reactions with lack of grinding also the way BFA/Legion was designed and voila..CBA.

[GringoD]

Was it, though? You said want a "difficulty curve that makes sense," and if the 58 pages of this thread haven't shown you anything, it should at least be that "difficulty curve" means very different things to a lot of people who play this game.

Sure it was. The guy drew a carricature. I've said in the thread before, in over a decade of leading the same raid, this is the first time I actually feel strong enough about this topic, with all the guilds dying around us, to complain about a curve. Yet he acts like I'm demanding perfection for every single time when things were fine for ages.

What this thread has taught me is that some people don't like grinding, others agree that stuff is too hard too fast while again others simply sneer that the plebs should git gud. Not much about curves. Although I think I have yet to see someone who actually thinks that EP has a genuinely good curve. In fact, I just replied to people who apparently think this amalgam of difficulty plateaus is to be expected because of how hard balancing is.

[Krille]

Sure it was. The guy drew a carricature. In over a decade of leading the same raid, this is the first time I actually feel strongly enough about this topic, with all the guilds dying around us, to complain about a curve. That info is in the first post of the thread. Yet he acts like I'm demanding perfection every single time.

What this thread has taught me is that some people don't like grinding, others agree that stuff is too hard too fast while again others simply sneer that the plebs should git gud. Not much about curves. Although I think I have yet to see someone who actually thinks that EP has a genuinely good curve. In fact, I just answered to people who apparently think this amalgam of difficulty plateaus is expectable and acceptable.

You can agree with the curve being "bad" without wanting changes to the difficulty. I'm all for nerfs after the opening weeks, as long as i get to play the encounters as they were supposed to i dont care how others do it.

[GringoD]

You can agree with the curve being "bad" without wanting changes to the difficulty. I'm all for nerfs after the opening weeks, as long as i get to play the encounters as they were supposed to i dont care how others do it.

Hard agree. I, too, am all for you guys having a romp of a time scaling a wall, as long as the bumps are smoothed out by the time guilds like ours attempt the climb.

[Nite92]

Reading the thread title.... I feel an urge to type: 'Super easy, barely an inconvenience'.

[Osmeric]

Reading the thread title.... I feel an urge to type: 'Super easy, barely an inconvenience'.

I'm glad you resisted that temptation, because that would have been stupidly contrary to the evidence of what's happening to those guilds.

[Mamercus]

In EP the only boss with real mechanic bloat is Azshara. The LOS arcane debuff was really just too much. It did not bother me much as melee but it's just one more thing on top of all the other things. The red laser beams on the floor don't really do anything but are just "there." I was hit once by them on all of progression purely because it intersected with the ground glyph so that the graphic was mostly obscured. It didn't even kill me (thanks Cheat Death) but otherwise it's just another pointless bloat mechanic.

Some fights are just so abstracted with the zillions of mechanics with bad graphics that it isn't cool anymore. For example that LOS mechanic I mentioned earlier has no graphic whatsoever. The graphic is just the obnoxious weak aura you have to make to track it properly, including her cast bar so you can appropriately dance in and out of it. That same fight has bright arcane balls you have to soak and during the decree phase a bright purple circle you have to stay inside as well. Graphically it is just ugly and non-intuitive - you have to memorize everything ahead of time.

Also, why is "Stand Alone" represented by a thin circle of of translucent juice around you? How is that intuitive? Does it look cool? No.

Queen's Court is another ugly fight that looks like a mod for WoW instead of a real Blizzard encounter. You fight two trash mobs in an arena with many of the mechanics just existing as debuffs on your bar that, again, you have to track through a weakaura. There are banners in the corner that you can look at but no one would do that because they are, also, abstract and non-obvious.

By comparison a fight like Zaqul is actually pretty cool and generally pretty intuitive apart from the 3 realms part. The difference between the normal realm and the Fear Realm is pretty subtle visually and mechanically -- it probably could have been removed with little impact to the fight, with just the ticking dot going away once you reach certain breakpoints, which is sort of how it works on normal/heroic.

Fights with big, obvious graphics that are buttressed by a good theme are just better and more memorable. Gul'dan in Legion on mythic handles this quite well except for in the secret phase which is again, something that you will never figure out without studying the mechanics ahead of time at least for the mages -- for the other people it's pretty intuitive even in that phase.

[Nite92]

I'm glad you resisted that temptation, because that would have been stupidly contrary to the evidence of what's happening to those guilds.

It was a Joke dude.

[asil]

Well, EP did not do that much of a difficulty jump from BOD, i am not including Crucible because it had 1 major design flaw. When we reach the point when the encounter becomes impossible - then we can have that talk, yes. But so far - each encounter was perfectly reasonable and tuned. Like Ashvane, not dying to aoe explosions and puddles on the ground is common sense in my book. These sorts of mistakes can be fixed.

I don't think difficutly right now has anything to do with amount of guilds killing bosses. Farming essences/ap/m+ however has, but that is not the topic at hand.

The DPS requirement on ashvane was just too high early on for where the fight was in the instance. My guild wiped more on ashvane than orgo, queen's court, and za'qul.

The only boss we wiped more on was Azshara herself. And we're top 200. We were wiping at 1% on that boss forever. And our dps isn't even that bad - to put it into perspective, we skip the 2nd arcane debuffs in p2 queen 4 healing the fight and not using lust.

You ended up with a ton of guilds that could easily down the first 3 but then hit an iron wall on ashvane. I'd guess ashvane alone likely killed most lower end guilds.

Blizzard just shouldn't put hard dps checks 4 bosses deep in a raid.

[kaminaris]

The DPS requirement on ashvane was just too high early on for where the fight was in the instance. My guild wiped more on ashvane than orgo, queen's court, and za'qul.

The only boss we wiped more on was Azshara herself. And we're top 200. We were wiping at 1% on that boss forever. And our dps isn't even that bad - to put it into perspective, we skip the 2nd arcane debuffs in p2 queen 4 healing the fight and not using lust.

You ended up with a ton of guilds that could easily down the first 3 but then hit an iron wall on ashvane. I'd guess ashvane alone likely killed most lower end guilds.

Blizzard just shouldn't put hard dps checks 4 bosses deep in a raid.

Ashvane wasn't really all that hard, like, maybe for people who tried her first week. But we downed it in 105 pulls, never actually managed to do it with 3 phases strategy. Our first kill was with 2 phases.

Gorgonzola was pain in the ass as well as court because w had numerous wipes each time we get to it.
Zaqul is gigantic pain in the butt.

[KaPe]

"Wasn't all that hard (...) 105 pulls". Yeah, what? And if you 2 phased her, it was probably after she was already nerfed, so...

[exochaft]

They should cut it out with the silly intro phases on final bosses. Argus Mythic was pretty cool in that you just skipped a silly phase in Mythic and it tacked on a hard one at the end. If Azshara did that instead of having the sleeping pill of a phase of P1 it would have been a much more enjoyable fight. P2 Azshara is also like taking a klonopin. Ghuun had a silly pointless P1, Jaina did, and Azshara did also.

I thought the difficulty curve in Palace was fine apart from the huge gulf of the last 2 bosses. The stop DPS stuff for Zaqul also made it more boring and that also suffers from the pointless intro phase problem. Pointless intro phases are fine for lower difficulties but when you are wiping many times on bosses it really makes WoW unpleasant to play.

The prep needed this tier was also uniquely terrible with the benthic and essence grind. Completely un-enjoyable trash busywork. Being a janitor scrubbing toilets would be more exciting than doing another pearl daily because at least then the work is engaging, challenging, and different every day while also paying you real US dollars. It's also more dignified than being a slave for an imaginary helpless crybaby race of gilblins.

I suppose the P1's did have some purpose, but I'd propose something akin to what was done in the ToES 25H for the last boss. After you beat P1, you got a haste buff in P2... but if you wiped, you kept the P2 haste buff permanently, making your work through P1 MUCH easier and less arduous getting to that last phase you're wiping on. In general, what's very draining are fights where you're wiping on the last phase(s) of an encounter, but it takes you 5-10 minutes to get there. Part of what exhausted me when doing hardcore progression raiding was a combination of long fights plus increasing pulls required to kill a boss. While we're calling it different things, I think the issue at its core is the same.

One thing that drives me nuts, as alluded to in your post, are very non-intuitive windows of time that can make or break your fight. Two bosses need to die w/i 10 seconds? Sure, that's obvious. Timers of debuffs/casts that require Weakauras or change pull-to-pull due to spell queuing to hit that specific window of either full DPS or full stop DPS? No, that's not necessary.

For example, I lost count of how many times we wiped on Orgo because the boss would transition during a his cast of debuffs going into P2, it'd clear the debuffs then reapply it to the entire raid... which is a wipe at that point. They simply could have the boss just stop all casts when he hits 40% to prevent that issue, make the bolts disappear mid-air if he transitions while they're flying towards people... instead, you either have to push or hold DPS arbitrarily because of a mechanic's travel time.

Za'qul has similar features, where the boss fight overlaps change depending upon a small window between abilities that is not obvious. Spell queuing can mess up CDs, as well, which adds to the difficulty of a fight. I had a similar issue with Jaina in the previous tier, to where Blizz eventually removed spell queuing entirely in the prepatch. I understand that they want to introduce RNG to the fights, but mythic raiding is almost entirely about learning through repetition to get better. Everyone learns at different rates, but once your entire group gets comfortable a kill is imminent. Adding spell queuing increases that learning time exponentially depending upon how many variations there are, and while it may take the quick learners not much time... the slow learners are just going to struggle hard. I even saw it in my progression, where I'd just zone out for most of M Za'qul/Jaina and never get hit by mechanics while others still struggled because the timing kept changing despite adjusting MUCH faster on other fights with static spell queuing. This kind of dove-tails into the increasing number of attempts required for mythic bosses and unnecessary phase existence/repetition.

Don't get me started on Benthic gear, as I eventually gave up on getting gloves after spending an obscene amount of pearls.

At this point in my WoW "career," I don't care if Blizz adds something like a ramping buff/debuff a la ICC to make content easier as the tier goes on. It allows you to keep things difficult enough for your World First race while allowing a broader spectrum of guilds to complete the content and potentially expand the player base who wants to mythic raid. Many people have reached the point where they don't think it's worth it to mythic raid, even if they are former mythic or 25H raiders. We've traded a progressive buff to raids with multiple hotfixes staggered across the raid tier that usually end up too little, too late for many guilds. Simply put, we've traded a known quantity with an unknown one from the player's perspective, and it's the difference between a guild hitting a wall that will knowingly get easier eventually versus hoping it gets nerfed later else the wall becomes impassible. And if you wanna be hardcore? Just turn off the buff/debuff like you used to be able to and be hardcore, more power to you.

[Ishayu]

Well, EP did not do that much of a difficulty jump from BOD, i am not including Crucible because it had 1 major design flaw. When we reach the point when the encounter becomes impossible - then we can have that talk, yes. But so far - each encounter was perfectly reasonable and tuned. Like Ashvane, not dying to aoe explosions and puddles on the ground is common sense in my book. These sorts of mistakes can be fixed.

I don't think difficutly right now has anything to do with amount of guilds killing bosses. Farming essences/ap/m+ however has, but that is not the topic at hand.

You just have a different perception of what's hard. You say it wasn't that much harder but the statistics just straight up don't agree with you.

Unless you are gonna argue to me that half the mythic raiders quit (which, ironically, would be the proposition the OP made) you have to accept that it was quite a bit harder.

[Popastique]

You just have a different perception of what's hard. You say it wasn't that much harder but the statistics just straight up don't agree with you.

Unless you are gonna argue to me that half the mythic raiders quit (which, ironically, would be the proposition the OP made) you have to accept that it was quite a bit harder.

Statistics at hand do not include other factors which play a major role here ( grinding activites and others ). Therefore you can't put the blame on the difficulty being the culprit.