Mythic Raiding in SL = all other content not relevant?

[GreenJesus]

Enough of the required dailies, islands, and other bullshit. Also, mythic+ rewards getting nerfed has been a long time coming. Thank god they finally had the courage to do it. A mode that is infinitely farmable and has a much larger loot pool to be able to find the right stat combination you need shouldn't be stronger than raiding which is stuck on a weekly lockout and requires more players to put together.

Do mythic+ because it's enjoyable to you to push your IO score or something, not because you feel compelled to run it infinitely for power. The fact you felt compelled to farm it for character power shows why Blizzard was right to nerf it.

The game was better when character power had a weekly cap. Honor cap, conquest cap, valor cap, weekly raid lockouts, heroic dungeon lockout etc. You are finished with your character's lockouts? Great. Play a different character. Ever since legion I barely ever played an alt because I felt like my main could still progress and it was a waste of time to play an alt when I could be progressing my main.

[iperson]

honest question, please let's discuss this without hate.

from what i have heard and seen on the beta only renown (~1h/week) and Torghast (also ~1h per week) offer Character progression.

In addition to that we just learned that m+ gear will be before heroic raid gear.

this means that if you raid mythic, your are done with all your weekly stuff in 2-3h (depending if you choose to do 1 m+ for the cache).

ofc you could also do more m+ for more item selection, but this is very, very inefficient. still posdible tho.

i understand many people like this, because they are free to do other things ingame now. my personal problem here is, that I am actually only really interested in things that offer Character progression and those are now heavily timegated.

do i miss something? is there really nothing to do at max level besides the things I listed? would be a shame if this becomes a raidlogging expansion.

You kind of made the point for blizzard. If you don't enjoy spamming M+ then you have no character power incentives that make you feel obligated to do it. If you do enjoy spamming M+ your incentive is that it's enjoyable...

[TEHPALLYTANK]

No, can you not read? I am asking for a compromise other than making non-raiders face a 6 month treadmill to gear up every patch cycle. No, of course heroic and mythic raiders will not be clearing entire raids in week 1 of release, but they will be clearing several bosses each week and getting immediate rewards in terms of items received. On the other side, those who don't raid will realistically get 1 piece of loot per week from their chest, which they have to wait until the reset to actually obtain. Raiders will have access to both. Don't you think that's just a little too punishing for the non-raiders? I am suggesting a compromise of current rate of gear drops at reduced ilvls, which doesn't invalidate either game mode.

Also, regarding duplicates, it will not feel great to ever get them and, when you only really have a choice of 1 option in your chest if you don't raid (because your extra choices in your chest if you solely run M+ will all be lower ilvl than your highest key cleared, unless you clear about 15 keys per week), you are running into an increased chance of getting dupes... especially since, if you don't raid, there are no other sources of gear upgrades in the week.

It won't be a 6-month treadmill, 3 items@226 per week=18 items in 6 weeks. Even if you take duplicates into account, that still puts it anywhere from 6-9 weeks unless you happen to just have shit RNG, in which case it might be as many as 10-16 weeks (with 16 weeks being an fairly extreme outlier).

If you aren't willing to put in the time and effort to get more than 1 item out of your weekly chest, that is on you for choosing to not do the content. You only need one +14 key per week to get a 226 item, 4@+14 for the second item. If you aren't willing to run 10/4 M+14 a week you probably don't enjoy the content, or you enjoy the content but you aren't good enough to clear 10/4 M+14 keys per week. If it is the latter then you're basically just complaining that your not getting as many rewards as people who are better at playing the game than you are.

Realistically, the only people not getting more than 1 piece of loot per week aren't spending much time and effort towards getting any gear.

Edit: Fuck me, I had a major misunderstanding of how the weekly cache functioned. I thought you could get 3 up to items out of it per week. I have since learned it is only 1 item per week, regardless of which type of content you do. The unlocks are to expand the item pool and determine the ilvl of the items offered. I left the final sentence alone before my edit out of the strikethrough because it remains true. That being said, I expect them to tune M+ around the loot ilvl rewarded by M+ dungeons.

Mythic raiding will benefit slightly from the weekly cache, it'll be the only source of Mythic raid ilvl gear for players that exclusively play M+.

[Lolites]

Nope you didn't. +6/+10 is irrelevant. The minimum cap on gear that actually does something is +15 because of math.
+15 is equal to 0.7-1.5% dps increase. And since, you know, one percent is barely noticable and way below the range of actual RNG it barely works.

TF should be like in BfA (severly nerfed chance vs legion) but capped at +15. Anything below and that system just doesn't work.

well thank god i have you to tell me what I LIKE... did i say it incresed my dps by a crapload? no, i said i liked it... you might not know this but its possible to like something thats not massively beneficial to you...

[Accendor]

You kind of made the point for blizzard. If you don't enjoy spamming M+ then you have no character power incentives that make you feel obligated to do it. If you do enjoy spamming M+ your incentive is that it's enjoyable...

Once again: No, that is a false conclusion.

A specific kind of content can be way more enjoyable, when you get rewarded for it. The reward is a part of the experience.

[arr0gance]

With the broader selection of gear from the M+ weekly box, it'll actually be faster to gear a toon in SL w/ max ilvl Mythic-quality gear than it is relative to BfA (because you have a higher chance of getting a duplicate piece in BfA). The biggest change with the introduction of this new system is that players who grind exclusively M+ will be significantly further behind raiders for the first few lockouts. This will likely mean that most M+ key pushers, especially early on, will feel compelled to raid (even if it isn't content they enjoy).

Personally, I don't know why Blizzard thinks that gearing from a fucking weekly box is a good idea, but that looks to be the meta for at least the first season. Time will tell how it pans out throughout the expansion.

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there's a reason game is dead, there's a reason classic has more players. Try again.

I have had to take breaks from old WoW because I didn't have time to dedicate to raids, doesn't mean ill force my trash ideology for an mmorpg of raids not being the best for gearing.

Wasn't even planning on coming back to shadowlands but after seeing some of these changes it's tempting. Quit the game if you don't like it.

Your entire ass-backwards argument is based on unknowable information. Try again.

[Dylamoo]

I don't get when people say back to raiding or die. Since when was this different? The game or rather all video games have always rewarded the best from the most difficult content. It's literally people trying to push for a narrative change. But it's not gamers that are pushing for the change, it's a new type of gamer definitely not in the majority. As far as I know most people enjoy video games for the fun challenges they provide or in MMORPG cases they enjoy progressing their character. Raiding in general is fun not for the loot but when people mostly think back on it it was the experience they had overcoming challenges, sometimes they were personal, but most of the time they were because they overcame challenges with friends they met along the way. A lot of people don't realize this until years pass. But I find more and more that those people who played games for loot actually enjoyed overcoming challenges with friends and the relationships built along the way. Even asmongold who notoriously puts himself up as a loot focused player says that his most fun moments were with the people he shared those moments with.

[Gorsameth]

I don't get when people say back to raiding or die. Since when was this different? The game or rather all video games have always rewarded the best from the most difficult content. It's literally people trying to push for a narrative change. But it's not gamers that are pushing for the change, it's a new type of gamer definitely not in the majority. As far as I know most people enjoy video games for the fun challenges they provide or in MMORPG cases they enjoy progressing their character. Raiding in general is fun not for the loot but when people mostly think back on it it was the experience they had overcoming challenges, sometimes they were personal, but most of the time they were because they overcame challenges with friends they met along the way. A lot of people don't realize this until years pass. But I find more and more that those people who played games for loot actually enjoyed overcoming challenges with friends and the relationships built along the way. Even asmongold who notoriously puts himself up as a loot focused player says that his most fun moments were with the people he shared those moments with.

I suspect most of the people talking about the return of 'raid or die' are people who joined during BfA/Legion and don't actually know that 'Raid or die' comes from a time when there was literally not any content outside of raids. These days with WQ's and M+ that is far from the case.

[Delever]

Did they not nerf the amount of items dropped to 1 item per dungeon as well? Combined with a lower ilvl makes overgearing the raid pretty much impossible, which in todays world is the only way to clear heroic with a pug that doesn't involve a lot of facepalming on my side.

The change to the weekly cache is definitely great, but it will now also mean I have to do 10 dungeons to gey 3 choices, and those dungeons will give a total of 10 pieces of loot distributed to most likely 45 unique players? (assuming 100% new pugs + me) Now that smells like a lot of disappointments!

Less gear dropped but now without titanforging once you get the gear it is what it is.

[Whiskeyjac]

Convincing argument for "less is more".

Sometimes less is more... Having ten thousand spells for every class would appeal to some people but at the end of the day the average player would only use maybe 10 of the "best".

I don't really understand what appeal there is to having dozens of choices or dozens of paths when moving towards a unified end goal. I think one of wow's major problems is that its playerbase is envious of others to the extremes. It isn't enough to excel at your chosen content... instead everything that doesn't offer the most powerful reward is looked at by scorn even by those who proclaim they have no desire to do the harder content.

You can't have your cake and eat it to.

[dcc626]

I suspect most of the people talking about the return of 'raid or die' are people who joined during BfA/Legion and don't actually know that 'Raid or die' comes from a time when there was literally not any content outside of raids. These days with WQ's and M+ that is far from the case.

also, people have to make up their minds. when they add things that are "necessary", people complain. when they remove rewards from something people complain "why should i bother with it, it doesnt give you anything".

it cant be both. good thing torghast gives legendary mats, or nobody would bother with it.

[Whiskeyjac]

also, people have to make up their minds. when they add things that are "necessary", people complain. when they remove rewards from something people complain "why should i bother with it, it doesnt give you anything".

it cant be both. good thing torghast gives legendary mats, or nobody would bother with it.

Isn't that the same argument?
Raiders and casual players don't want rewards that off substantial power or power only available from that location to come from grindy boring content.
Poorly skilled players and hardcores want rewards to come from grindy and dull content so they have access to them. All of wow's drama can mostly be boiled down as a tug of war between those groups with dozens of sub factions.

[iperson]

Once again: No, that is a false conclusion.

A specific kind of content can be way more enjoyable, when you get rewarded for it. The reward is a part of the experience.

There is still a reward. If you enjoy M+ then it should be enough. If you were spamming M+ for gear, then now you don't have to. Gear inflation in BFA was out of control and blizz obviously thought so as well. It's a good change.

[lycrates]

Enough of the required dailies, islands, and other bullshit. Also, mythic+ rewards getting nerfed has been a long time coming. Thank god they finally had the courage to do it. A mode that is infinitely farmable and has a much larger loot pool to be able to find the right stat combination you need shouldn't be stronger than raiding which is stuck on a weekly lockout and requires more players to put together.

Do mythic+ because it's enjoyable to you to push your IO score or something, not because you feel compelled to run it infinitely for power. The fact you felt compelled to farm it for character power shows why Blizzard was right to nerf it.

The game was better when character power had a weekly cap. Honor cap, conquest cap, valor cap, weekly raid lockouts, heroic dungeon lockout etc. You are finished with your character's lockouts? Great. Play a different character. Ever since legion I barely ever played an alt because I felt like my main could still progress and it was a waste of time to play an alt when I could be progressing my main.

To me, thats ^ the comment that makes the most sense in this thread.

I do think though that Mythic+ should give gear equal to Raiding through the Great Vault weekly chest.

[Mystikal]

It won't be a 6-month treadmill, 3 items@226 per week=18 items in 6 weeks. Even if you take duplicates into account, that still puts it anywhere from 6-9 weeks unless you happen to just have shit RNG, in which case it might be as many as 10-16 weeks (with 16 weeks being an fairly extreme outlier).

That will only be the case if you're clearing about 13 keys each week and doing so from week 1 (not going to happen for the vast majority), because of the way the extra choices calculate their item level based on keys cleared. Your first choice is always your highest key cleared (yay!), but after that, it's your 4th highest run and then your 10th highest run. No-one in the first few weeks will be jumping straight up to a +15, because everyone will have to start out with their base keys from M0. In order to be able to start straight at +15 the following week, you must have cleared a +16 in week 1 - again, not going to happen for anyone except the very, very best. So, realistically, to get 3 choices of 226 items the following week, you are looking at 7-8 runs to climb to a +15 key, and then a further 9 clears of +15 to make all the choices 226 ilvl. This is not a very likely scenario for most players.

Even if you decide you're only going to go for 2 choices in your chest, there are the keys that you must successfully clear to raise your key level to +15, and you must then clear a further 3 +15 keys to get the 2nd choice to 226 ilvl. That is still a huge time investment.

Now, since somebody like myself won't have any heroic raiding gear to help me, I will be trying to do all of the above with WQ rewards, essentially, since my odds of getting any loot from the M+ clears themselves are now very small. Yes, I might pick up an item or two from the clears, but it won't be many. Meanwhile, my guildies will be getting loot regularly from their clears of the heroic raid - content I am capable of doing, but not at the same time every week. It has never taken them more than 3 resets to start comfortably clearing heroic, so let's set that as the benchmark. After 3 weeks, they are starting to get more and more gear from heroic raids, which in turn gives them a higher ilvl and more power, and increases their chances of clearing to a higher key and starting from an increased key level next reset. In addition, it hardly matters if they get nothing from the actual clear of the key itself, because they're already in higher level gear. Win-win, for them.

I, on the other hand, have no means of getting the gear required other than running M+ again, and again, and again, and AGAIN... all in the vain hope that I might actually get a drop. Once I have reached the point at which I can comfortably clear +15 keys, that is when my gearing actually STARTS.

I am more than capable of actually doing the content, but skill will only take you so far. At some point, you need the actual raw stats that gear gives you in order to push out the required dps / healing / mitigation that higher keys require. Heroic & mythic raiders, after a few resets, will come in with a massive power advantage and will be clearing those +15s earlier, and also not have to worry about doing more than the actual number of runs required, as the gear that drops from the completed runs will be of little to no use to them. Anyone not fortunate enough to be able to raid will have to spam M+ endlessly to increase their ilvl, and the drop rates have been neutered.

The whole thing is set up so that the gearing up process for raiders is vastly shortened, and vastly increased for M+ runners.

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Enough of the required dailies, islands, and other bullshit. Also, mythic+ rewards getting nerfed has been a long time coming. Thank god they finally had the courage to do it. A mode that is infinitely farmable and has a much larger loot pool to be able to find the right stat combination you need shouldn't be stronger than raiding which is stuck on a weekly lockout and requires more players to put together.

Do mythic+ because it's enjoyable to you to push your IO score or something, not because you feel compelled to run it infinitely for power. The fact you felt compelled to farm it for character power shows why Blizzard was right to nerf it.

In your scenario above, for someone like me, who cannot raid with my guild every week, my "off weeks" will be done in 5 minutes. Log on, do my Torghast legendary materials run, then ensure I log on 3 times during the 7 day week to keep up with my Callings, then log off. None of what I have done has increased my character's power nor has it given me any gear. Sounds thrilling.

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The biggest change with the introduction of this new system is that players who grind exclusively M+ will be significantly further behind raiders for the first few lockouts. This will likely mean that most M+ key pushers, especially early on, will feel compelled to raid (even if it isn't content they enjoy).

They won't though, on both counts. The raiders will be getting gear with far more regularity than the M+ runners since the M+ clears themselves virtually do not reward gear (except for 1 lucky individual), and if they weren't running raids before, giving them a gear drought isn't going to suddenly make them start. It's far more likely that they'll just quit entirely and unsub - not good for Blizzard.

[Th3Scourge]

At the highest level - yes. I think it's a good change. I like that loot scarcity will be back in the game. Items will feel more rewarding

Having spammable content like M+ just dish out items like crazy is bad for the health of the game. I love M+ but it breaks the reward loop

[arr0gance]

They won't though, on both counts. The raiders will be getting gear with far more regularity than the M+ runners since the M+ clears themselves virtually do not reward gear (except for 1 lucky individual), and if they weren't running raids before, giving them a gear drought isn't going to suddenly make them start. It's far more likely that they'll just quit entirely and unsub - not good for Blizzard.

With the new system rewarding Mythic raid quality loot in the weekly box it definitely stands to reason that they intend people who play M+ exclusively to gear up almost entirely from the weekly box. They don't want you running M+ ad infinitum to gear your toon like you could in Legion/BfA. It's a bit of a change in design philosophy and I don't necessarily agree with it but this idea that loot will somehow be more scarce for M+ players is a bit of a myth since you'll likely be completely decked in about 2 months. Raiding will still generally be a bit faster, especially at the beginning, but this is the new meta Blizzard wants to try out and we're powerless to stop them.

[Pawpurr]

It seems so, yes. Back to raid or die.

Good - The rest of the theme park is made for the non hardcores. People need to stop attacking the few areas the hardcores have left.

Sorry M+ people, Repetitive dungeon grinds aren't hardcore, they never were.

[Mystikal]

With the new system rewarding Mythic raid quality loot in the weekly box it definitely stands to reason that they intend people who play M+ exclusively to gear up almost entirely from the weekly box. They don't want you running M+ ad infinitum to gear your toon like you could in Legion/BfA. It's a bit of a change in design philosophy and I don't necessarily agree with it but this idea that loot will somehow be more scarce for M+ players is a bit of a myth since you'll likely be completely decked in about 2 months. Raiding will still generally be a bit faster, especially at the beginning, but this is the new meta Blizzard wants to try out and we're powerless to stop them.

I ask this genuinely, but can you explain how you have come to that conclusion? Because, in my mind, it seems to be based off the assumption that anyone running M+ exclusively is going to jump in week 1 and be clearing multiple +15s from the get-go. This isn't very likely. Your "decked out in 2 months" assumption seems to be based on getting two 226 pieces in your chest every week with no duplicates, but you don't seem to be taking into account the journey to actually get there. If you're raiding, you have an extra avenue of superior items, and that's fine with me. What isn't fine, is that you could realistically go weeks at a time getting nothing from M+ clears. Until you do, you're not pushing higher than your levelling / WQ items will allow you to do. There are no other means of overcoming that in SL, except raiding. The tables have turned too far the other way.

[Ofmanv]

Ion and co see WoW solely as an oversized lobby for instanced boss fights rather than an MMO.

People who want raids to be the one and only be-all-end-all of the game can go play classic and let the rest of the players enjoy a game that's grown over 16 years.