Mythic is too tight, guilds are dying

[Adlian]

Im tired of how bad the corruption system is. At one point you get all the gear you want from the bosses and then you have to pray for curruption proc and the corruption you want. This is dumb, give us a vendor that sells them for echoes of nyalotha

[Gaidax]

Yeah, that "character progression" used to be gear. You could get gear from raiding, or from pvp, or recently from many other sources that are quite compelling alternatives for an average player, but why do we need extra progression systems tacked on top of gear like ap, cloak upgrades, essences, corruption, etc.

Also was it really so bad to let players achieve "BIS" and enjoy it for a couple of months until another patch dethrones it?

I mean - "ap, cloak upgrades, essences, corruption" is pretty much = gear.

Why we need it? Because Borelords of Snorenor happened.

It's really a simple reason - people need to have reasonable progression available in-game at all play levels. On top of that Legion showed that people do like more interesting and special items that are not just stat sticks that you can acquire by working towards them. So the combination of it leads to Artifact, Azerite, Essences and Corruption.

For all the whining here, I don't think there are many complaints about Artifact Weapons here, but there was plenty of whine about Legiondaries. The "problem" with Azerite, Essences and Corruptions is acquisition, not the systems themselves.

Artifact was basically given to you step 1 of Legion, there was no RNG or anything, you just had it. Legiondaries, on the other hand were basically RNG-fest and their inherent balance issues did not help at all. Problem is that BFA went with Legiondaries acquisition system and it pisses many people off. If you think about it, Azerite and Corruptions themselves are not bad of a thing at all - it's like custom Artifact for Azerite or cool fun items for Corruptions. The issue is that it's not on the rails thing like Artifact, where you knew exactly what you are getting and there was no choice or chance there.

Essences on the other hand are ok really, there was no RNG there, you could work towards one and get it 100% - their only issue was alts.

So all in all what I am trying to say is that - people DO dig these systems and people absolutely like going out there in the world and by doing stuff getting closer to the next level/goal/power increase.

The chief problem is acquisition and if Blizzard makes acquisition path similar to how it is with Artifact for their stuff in Shadowlands - people really won't have an issue with it and only will be too happy to do their weekly chores on a way to that inevitable upgrade they know they will get in a specific set time and point.

They also need to double down on what they did in 8.2 and 8.3 with AP, where its impact was reduced a lot. 8.2 gave a hard cap and you got most of the power long before it anyway and with 8.3 the whole AP phase ended almost in a matter of several weeks and while uncapped, there is really little point in grinding it now.

If the whatever inevitable hamster wheel they will make in Shlands will be like what we got in 8.2/8.3 with AP, it will be golden. And yes, we will have this system again, it will just be disguised a bit under the guise of that legendary item we craft and soulbinds/covenant stuff.

[GringoD]

Just popping in on topic to say that I'm really happy with the difficulty curve this tier.
We're on mythic Ra-den this time, but still have more than 2k guilds ahead of us. It seems more stable than it was during Eternal Palace.

The biggest drop off is for Shad'har, but he feels like a much easier hurdle to manage than Ashvane and Oppulence were.
I think it also helps that there are a lot more bosses in this one.

Let's hope that Blizz continues this balancing performance in Shadowlands.

[Marrilaife]

Just popping in on topic to say that I'm really happy with the difficulty curve this tier.
We're on mythic Ra-den this time, but still have more than 2k guilds ahead of us. It seems more stable than it was during Eternal Palace.

The biggest drop off is for Shad'har, but he feels like a much easier hurdle to manage than Ashvane and Oppulence were.
I think it also helps that there are a lot more bosses in this one.

Let's hope that Blizz continues this balancing performance in Shadowlands.

Yes, imo longer raid tiers and more bosses and more frequent nerfs are better design than "3k guilds are stuck on Krosus" (real thread from back in the days). Nyalotha also has alternative pathing which is much better than everyone banging their heads against Ashvane. For example guilds that didn't have dps / hps for early Shadhar could go Xanesh which has very tame dps / hps requirements and is all about learning the dance.

Corruption works as a self-nerfing mechanism for this tier, just wish it wasn't so frustrating to deal with, wiping because X player got hit by grand delusion is bad, telling players "<39 corruption or bench" is also bad, and then there are the people who feel they got short end of the stick this tier (especially among dps) because they don't have bis corruptions etc.

[Chromell]

Im tired of how bad the corruption system is. At one point you get all the gear you want from the bosses and then you have to pray for curruption proc and the corruption you want. This is dumb, give us a vendor that sells them for echoes of nyalotha

They could, at least, have a vendor with 3 tokens to add a random corruption to an item, a token for each of the three tiers. Sure, it's another grind since you can rinse and repeat the process, but the current system is just ?????

[ClassicPeon]

I think this has more to do with the fact that blizzard is basicly done with bfa and Nyalotha was pretty half assed.

They want to move on. They know they fucked up with bfa, they are working as hard as they can on shadowlands to not make it suck like bfa.

That however means tuning is kinda fucked amongst other things.

For example i cant remember a raid this easy on hc difficulty. Bite the apple, get whatever you can out of bfa, and rejoice when shadowlands hits(hopefully)

- - - Updated - - -

I wish mythic were more accessible. I know it's open now cause hall of fame or whatever, but it takes way too long for that to happen and the non-flex lockout is really limiting.

I think there are a lot of people (like me) who would do mythic a lot more if you could pug it. Not expecting a full clear or anything, but heroic is very easy (except N'Zoth if your group is weaker).

I'm glad its not that accessable.

Wow needs incentive to build social structures like guilds. This is a good incentive for that.

[Eapoe]

Yes, imo longer raid tiers and more bosses and more frequent nerfs are better design than "3k guilds are stuck on Krosus" (real thread from back in the days). Nyalotha also has alternative pathing which is much better than everyone banging their heads against Ashvane. For example guilds that didn't have dps / hps for early Shadhar could go Xanesh which has very tame dps / hps requirements and is all about learning the dance.

Corruption works as a self-nerfing mechanism for this tier, just wish it wasn't so frustrating to deal with, wiping because X player got hit by grand delusion is bad, telling players "<39 corruption or bench" is also bad, and then there are the people who feel they got short end of the stick this tier (especially among dps) because they don't have bis corruptions etc.

Or you could be like my main, where I keep getting Severe (BiS corruption for BM Hunter) but it’s on gear that has no Crit and my % goes down at this point.

[Marrilaife]

Or you could be like my main, where I keep getting Severe (BiS corruption for BM Hunter) but it’s on gear that has no Crit and my % goes down at this point.

Dw I have a lock in my guild who cries all the time that he gets expedient on non haste pieces. I don't play a dps but I can imagine it's frustrating when a dps checks top logs to wonder "what can I improve" and most obvious answer is "they have better / more corruption", top logs are nearly always unsafe numbers of corruption for average guild, so if a person tries to replicate it, it's most likely they die instead of rank.

[Gaidax]

Dw I have a lock in my guild who cries all the time that he gets expedient on non haste pieces. I don't play a dps but I can imagine it's frustrating when a dps checks top logs to wonder "what can I improve" and most obvious answer is "they have better / more corruption", top logs are nearly always unsafe numbers of corruption for average guild, so if a person tries to replicate it, it's most likely they die instead of rank.

As a Warlock - you can tell that scrub to chill.

We get all the haste we need from raid, in between pretty well optimized Azerite there and Vita trinket - we already have metric shitton of haste, which is the reason why expedient is so good - you will have insane amount of free haste thrown at you anyway. That tiny bit of haste on top of it from various items hardly matters at that point and our DPS is fully dependent on RNG anyway - his parses will all purely depend on whether Vision of Perfection procs at the right time or not (assuming his gameplay is right otherwise).

It's no joke to say that I'm in the raid to just press buttons, because whether I do a 99 parse or 80 parse completely depends on VoP RNG - skill will get you to 80, but from there it's just pure fucking RNG.

[Niwes]

Mythic progress is just to tight. I'm happy that the cutting edge can have a difficult race, but us guilds floating around top 2000 are bursting at the seams.
It started in BoD and continued this tier. My guild has just stopped progress after achieving the Court kill. It's just too exhausting.

We're not alone in this apparently. It feels like the 1500 to 3000 range of guilds is crumbling away. Either that or classic killed a thousand raids, because my guild suddenly jumped a thousand spots from last tier to this one. In my 12 years of raidleading, I've never experienced something like this.

From Ashvane onwards the bosses are just unforgivingingly tight. Lose more players than your rez count and you can reset. It used to be that you can yeet a boss with one or two dead, but I can't even justify letting our elderly ret paladin play on progress night. There's a lot of newfound resentment and frustration among my raiders towards the players that are performing *just* average numbers or fail more than once on any given mechanic.

Unlike older tiers, there's basically no power gain. Since titanforging got nerfed hard and AP caps at 70, it feels like we're stagnating while running against a wall. Normally I could say 'We're a little bit more powerful next week, lets try again', but that's not happening. Every week clearing Orgozoa is just as hard and tight as the first time.

We don't want to be gifted an Azshara kill, we just don't want to feel like we're grinding to dust on a wall. Throw us a bone Blizz, will ya?
I really hope that Ny'alotha's corruption re-introduces a rolling power gain to help with progress blockers, because we're burning out over here.

i am not sure if encounter design is the real problem. or if the overwhelming tasks of having and keeping a 25man roaster including the modern „systems“ (m+, corruption, azerite...) and reward systems design is the root of all evil. what you describe is ofc happening AT the encounters while raiding. but imo this is possibly only a RESULT of the „real“ problems of todays wow mythic raiding.

lets dream and imagine a bit here:

lets say we live in a parallel universe. in this universe we have only gear that drops on raid bosses and dungeons. lets further say there is no m+, no azerite and no corruption and no essences. no m+ farm. nothing. lets also say a magical person called „The Great Cagliostro“ magically manages your complete raid roaster (inviting ppl, regulate raid drama, etc) and via some magic all raid members are smart, rational, always be nice, have and invest enough time and are always heavily commited to the game and inspired as in lets say 2005 in the first molten core raid or whatever.

in this setup, do you think the problems would be same ?

[Saltysquidoon]

It's no joke to say that I'm in the raid to just press buttons, because whether I do a 99 parse or 80 parse completely depends on VoP RNG - skill will get you to 80, but from there it's just pure fucking RNG.

11/10 game design, would lock 20% of skill expression behind rng again.

[naeblis495]

Good . If they can't clear mythic but are stubborn enough to keep banging their head in that brick wall to the point of "dying" then they deserve it .

Go back to heroic ya dummies and accept that mythic race,or even mythic raiding in general, is only for a select few with the will ,skill and backbone to push through it. And you're clearly not one of them .No shame in it really .

[Gaidax]

11/10 game design, would lock 20% of skill expression behind rng again.

It's just a case of that 13% VoP buff that made it overtake MoLD + encounters generally favoring VoP.

8.2 was pretty perfect, IMO. You owned your shit there with MoLD. 8.3 took it a tad too far.

[Drusin]

Also was it really so bad to let players achieve "BIS" and enjoy it for a couple of months until another patch dethrones it?

No, and creating a system (titanforging) around "I got bis so I have nothing to do" is dumb. If all they care about is getting gear let them suffer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ there's more to the game than just gear. Either find something else you enjoy or just wait till the next tier comes.

[Bigbazz]

Good . If they can't clear mythic but are stubborn enough to keep banging their head in that brick wall to the point of "dying" then they deserve it .

Go back to heroic ya dummies and accept that mythic race,or even mythic raiding in general, is only for a select few with the will ,skill and backbone to push through it. And you're clearly not one of them .No shame in it really .

What's the value of that in the game though? In WOTLK they already figured this out, progressively nerf the raid over time. In ICC they needed the 5% buff to kill Arthas world first, by the time it had the full 30% or whatever it was the Heroic 25m (aka Mythic) was doable by average everyday guilds like the OP. There is little/no value in having bosses remain impossible for the vast majority of players.

Over the years mythic raiding has been moving towards balance based on professional level play/organisation, which is fun for the world first race but ultimately pointless beyond that. The hardest content in the game doesn't need to be that hard for the game to be good, Emerald Nightmare difficulty was probably close to ideal with only 2 difficult fights and the ability to overgear it with time. If you can't overgear it while it's active they should go with a system like in ICC or Dragon Soul which serves the same purpose.

If you give people a bone they will continue to progress slowly and maybe they will succeed and feel great about it, successful game design. if you make it so they are stuck in Heroic without a chance they will just unsub.

[Marrilaife]

mythic raiding in general, is only for a select few with the will ,skill and backbone to push through it.

Spoken like a true heroic raider who keeps talking of mythic as of some legendary Shangri-La only the most enlightened can ascend to. Omegalul.

Nope, mythic is for anyone who completed heroic and feels it's a tad bit too easy for them. If you can beat heroic in the first month of the patch that lasts 5-6 months, mythic should be for you.

Also most players who have curve don't raid mythic not because of lack of skill but because they cba with the commitment. Especially in the world where you can get 80-90% of the reward for much less fuss and effort.

[La]

It certainly a combination of both bad tuning and a lack of real incentive or purpose beyond enjoying Mythic raiding since heroic isn't challenging enough for where the majority of Mythic raids and their members are in terms of how they progress. Most are just average, but the raids are not.

Reality is it's too much time and effort to run a Mythic 20 man raid, and recruitment and retaining players that are good is an absolute nightmare if you're not constantly and consistently progressing at a steady rate, not getting blocked by badly tuned raid bosses. You know what the saddest part is? The amount of people that will sit there and tell you Mythic raiding is perfectly fine, and that getting gear a mere 15 ilvls higher than a much easier managed heroic raid or even far easier M+ is all the incentive you need. That 15 ilvls justifies the amount of shit you have to deal with to run a mythic raiding guild. The removal of tier sets, set bonuses, meaningful gear progression. Shit, the fact they'll go back and tune old dungeons to relevant ilvl but they won't do a quick numbers pass to make a past raid tiers gear a bit more relevant and open up more gear options sucks, too.

[naeblis495]

Spoken like a true heroic raider who keeps talking of mythic as of some legendary Shangri-La only the most enlightened can ascend to. Omegalul.

Nope, mythic is for anyone who completed heroic and feels it's a tad bit too easy for them. If you can beat heroic in the first month of the patch that lasts 5-6 months, mythic should be for you.

Also most players who have curve don't raid mythic not because of lack of skill but because they cba with the commitment. Especially in the world where you can get 80-90% of the reward for much less fuss and effort.

And yet , those "heroic raiders" are "dying" because they can't clear mythic . They try their hardest but fail miserably and continue to try and fail until they are disgusted with the game . Like a moron that bash it's head on a brick wall until he pass out .

[Gaidax]

And yet , those "heroic raiders" are "dying" because they can't clear mythic . They try their hardest but fail miserably and continue to try and fail until they are disgusted with the game . Like a moron that bash it's head on a brick wall until he pass out .

I mean, it's really a fact that Mythic raiding is not some sort of insane no-life errand. My guild is a good example of how you can clear Mythic raids for many years with literally minimal playtime.

I'd wager our raiders spend less time in WoW than many of these Heroic guilds with 4/12 Mythic progress or some such, ironically because we don't need to do anything else nowadays, simply because Mythic gear is head and shoulders above everything else.

There are corruptions, but in-between BoEs, raid drops and weekly M+15 chest and weekly 5+4 masks run - there is little else you can do to top that. And said weekly M+15 + 2 masks runs per week and currency for them take about ~2 hours total a week, give or take.

[naeblis495]

I mean, it's really a fact that Mythic raiding is not some sort of insane no-life errand. My guild is a good example of how you can clear Mythic raids for many years with literally minimal playtime.

I'd wager our raiders spend less time in WoW than many of these Heroic guilds with 4/12 Mythic progress or some such, ironically because we don't need to do anything else nowadays, simply because Mythic gear is head and shoulders above everything else.

There are corruptions, but in-between BoEs, raid drops and weekly M+15 chest and weekly 5+4 masks run - there is little else you can do to top that. And said weekly M+15 + 2 masks runs per week and currency for them take about ~2 hours total a week, give or take.

Overall , it's still a very small part of the player base that actually clear mythic . Even less if we're talking pre nerfs mythic .