is M+ and Tier Forge killing raid ?

[Axaion]

Oh lord i hope so.

[ClassicPeon]

You could wonder whether raiding as an endgame *should* still be as set in stone, with the amount of resources poured into it, if participation numbers are tanking. (It's becoming increasingly obvious that for many people, raiding isn't really worthwhile purely for the fun of it)

Wow is mostly a game about grinding loot these days. If something is not worth doing for loot - people dont do it. It has nothing to do with how fun raiding is - it has something to do with how much investment is needed compared to the return you are getting.

As an example in Sepulcher my guild simply skipped even trying to do Jailor on Normal because it wasnt worth it. In the end we stopped raiding when we reached him on HC because we all had the gear we needed from m+ and the hazzle just wasnt worth it - i dont think anyone actually needed a single piece of loot from him.

You're making a faulty assumption too: That raiding is the be-all-and-end-all of endgame, and always should be, maybe its popularity has been artificially propped up by the loot quality and tier sets in there, rather than it being such fun to do?

Its the endgame of wow because its the most difficult content you can do in the game. Meassuring "fun" in wow atm is virtually impossible because everything revolves around the loot threadmill. If pvp didnt give loot noone would pvp either.

The endgame of a game isnt determined by it being the most fun content - its determined by it being the last thing you reach - the most difficult to reach content in the game. Thats why its called the end - game. If you want people to experience the end game you have to give them a reason to experience the end game. In wow that has always been gear. The best gear in the game is available in the end game content which is raiding.

How far should Blizz go to prop up raiding, at the expense of other game modes? (It's zero-sum for a bunch of people, they'd play "Candy Crush" if it gave them the best loot)

I think the current amount of work they put in to raids is just fine. It doesnt need more work then its currently getting. With their new increased teamsizes they should be able to work more on these other game modes you are talking about.

As long as the endgame rewards you for reaching the endgame all is good.

- - - Updated - - -

This is true for low-end guilds that take several months to clear mythic raids (or don't clear them at all). If you start killing mythic bosses in the first week of its release, you are almost guaranteed to get relevant loot.

Proper guilds actually clear heroic raids too, several times. Just look at what top guilds do, they spam HC splits instead of m+.

But yeah, you are right if your guild is stuck in HC for 6 weeks in the beginning of new a tier. You are probably gonna have quite a bit of mythic level gear when you enter mythic for the first time.

This is quite possibly the funniest thing i've read.

Does this guy actually have an idea how few guilds start clearing mythic bosses in the first weeks?

[ek0zu]

From my perspective, when i returned to raiding in BFA i was so pumped to do so but because i had no prior (and relevant) experience i ended up on an irl friends & family guild of mine.

The thing is that mythic raiding is so hard logistically speaking (& mechanicall, but this is another story) that it consumes so much joy out of the game. Returning into the game it means that you are broke and because mythic is so punishing, vantus runes, flasks and potions are mandatory. On top of that i had no in-game friends other than those that i ended up with the said guild and i could not join any mythic+ group to get gear. Yeah i tried lfg, it did not work out. Therefore i was stuck w/o good gear, farming mats and gold to be up to date with the consumables, with a below average guild that wanted progress even though all of our roster had grey parses.

To me it felt like Vanilla Naxxramas and i could not see the so called accessibility of modern WoW. Back then i was a WoW junkie and seeing that pveing was so much of a hassle i switched for a very laid back raiding guild where we killed everything up to Sunwell with little to no effort in terms of farming stuff. But still the progress was so slow that it took us countless months of countless wipes. When Sunwell released i had an epiphany and i said to myself wth, why am i raiding? Since i am using strategies that have been already perfected months ago and we are still failing on simple things, at least when we were trying hard during Naxxramas or AQ we were on the edge of the progression.

In any case back then i decided that there was no point on struggling for months to execute a strategy that has already been perfected by others and you are just there stuck with a below mediocrity try-hard guild that raids for months with little to no progress and ofc no hope to kill the last boss and call it quits up until the next tier.

For me the way a top guild operates is optimum, everything is provided to the player and he/she is free from farming stupid stuff to parse orange, they no-life the raid for a couple of weeks and then they gear up alts, sell boosts, enjoy life in general outside of WoW. Imo this is where Blizzard should have stepped in - or i thought they had hence my return- by aleviating all that "optional" external raid buffs, but because all of us are try-hards and we want orange parses they are not so optional.

Mythic raiding is already soooooo hard but at the same time it is soooooo fun, but people don't have all the time in the world to do all the necessary side quests to finish the main quest of defeating the main boss of a Raid Dungeon. I am certain that there are so many people like me that at some point have tried to return to the raiding scene, quickly realizing the so called accesibility does not exist and we ended up being World Quest elite slayers.

All the things i have said about PvE, the same apply for PvP as well.

Back on topic because i am sure my mumbling is tiring for anyhone who reached the bottom, any other form of progression like Mythic+, or aything that might come afterwards, does not hurt the raiding scene, on the contrary it helps it.

[alturic]

Mythic raiding is already soooooo hard but at the same time it is soooooo fun, but people don't have all the time in the world to do all the necessary side quests to finish the main quest of defeating the main boss of a Raid Dungeon. I am certain that there are so many people like me that at some point have tried to return to the raiding scene, quickly realizing the so called accesibility does not exist and we ended up being World Quest elite slayers.

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but that literally means you don't have the skill to be doing Mythic, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

There are different difficulties for different players for a reason.

[Vasilisa]

It this expansion's autumn, it's totally normal phenomenon that people got somewhat bored at this point.

[ek0zu]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but that literally means you don't have the skill to be doing Mythic, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

There are different difficulties for different players for a reason.

Yeah i agree with you, if i ever return again in the raiding scene, i would look for a nice guild that goes up to heroic and they don't fall apart afterwards.

[Ethas]

Ofc its not popular if you get same item level for lower effort big brain

This.

“Let’s make raid loot irrelevant”.
“Oh look, nobody play raids. Guess people just don’t like raids.”

[Tech614]

This.

“Let’s make raid loot irrelevant”.
“Oh look, nobody play raids. Guess people just don’t like raids.”

M+ assuming 15+...

Drops 288 that can be upgraded to 298 with valor
Gives you 1 304 per week guaranteed

Mythic raiding

Drops 304 from 8 bosses and 311 from 2 bosses
Gives you 1 304 or 311 per week guaranteed

This is not even going into the fact dungeon trinkets are mostly trash this season and most specs need raid trinkets anyways. Only absolutely clueless people think raid loot is irrelevant.

[Omaski]

I didn't read all the comments, so IDK if someone already mentioned this. But, I'll be the devil's advocate for a sec...from experience, imagine trying to get into any form of end-game content but because you can't reliably raid due to real life. You'll walk right into that catch-22 that Blizz was trying to avoid where you can only get gear thru one avenue

How is a good-great player with a strict work schedule supposed to gear?

[Pyromanyac]

IMO M+ is the better content. Its entry bar is low, doesn't matter which class/spec you play and in the worst case you just push your own key. It's fun, even when pugged, worst case is someone leaves then you have wasted like 15 minutes, on the other hand how much time is wasted on raid trash/wipes/gathering mats/gold/consumables/waiting for people/etc.?

Raiding should be 100% changed to not take so much time and have an updated concept.

[slime]

Well they figured out how to get me back into a normal raid ... slime cat mount.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

my question would be "why?". people can spam m+ dungeons until their eyes bleed and always have a chance for loot. whats wrong with raids being the same?

The second and third order effects for player behavior would be unbelievable degenerate. I'm always glad that Blizzard takes an attitude of being a little more controlling and protecting players from themselves, seeing how bad it is in games when devs do not.

[Enter Name Here]

The second and third order effects for player behavior would be unbelievable degenerate. I'm always glad that Blizzard takes an attitude of being a little more controlling and protecting players from themselves, seeing how bad it is in games when devs do not.

two questions: what would those effects be and why don't they appear in m+ where spamming for loot is possible?

[Ashana Darkmoon]

two questions: what would those effects be and why don't they appear in m+ where spamming for loot is possible?

Because m+ doesn't require a guild and scheduled playtime. Though it naturally does create rifts between people in guilds who are willing to grind for gear and those who don't (and builds resentment, as probably anyone in a non top-tier guild can speak to)

With raids you'd end up with #2 and extra bad incentives to want to schedule more raids or farm more vs progression (creating resentment and pressures in guild between progers and farmers), not to mention incentivizing chain resetting to farm the first couple bosses over and over and over, showering the game in even more loot at a much better ratio than even the best m+.

There are others which should be obvious, but in any case it is also irrelevant because it will literally never happen lol, weekly lockouts are a staple of the genre and a good business model for a sub-based game (same reason weekly vault with the best loot isn't going anywhere, slows players down). Blizzard has 0 incentive to change this.

Edit: Keep in mine you cant spam m+ for heroic raid gear. With a normal valor cap, it is worse loot (-3 ilvls) and you only get 1 mythic piece a week. This would not be true with raids

[facefist]

Does this guy actually have an idea how few guilds start clearing mythic bosses in the first weeks?

I don't know what this has to do with what I said, but yes I do. Most guilds and players suck, doesn't mean mythic loot is irrelevant for better players. You don't have to take it personally even though your guild is one of those, it's only a game after all.

I didn't read all the comments, so IDK if someone already mentioned this. But, I'll be the devil's advocate for a sec...from experience, imagine trying to get into any form of end-game content but because you can't reliably raid due to real life. You'll walk right into that catch-22 that Blizz was trying to avoid where you can only get gear thru one avenue

How is a good-great player with a strict work schedule supposed to gear?

This is why M+ is great, they just should up the requirements that you need to complete +20 or smth like that. You'll gear up slower than other great players who raid, but you can still end up in same level of gear in like 3-4 months.

[Coldkil]

my question would be "why?". people can spam m+ dungeons until their eyes bleed and always have a chance for loot. whats wrong with raids being the same?

Mostly because raida will always be more time consuming, even if it was a boss rush type of instance. I'm totally not against just free lockouts but i am afraid the burnout would be huge. This should be a nice middle ground between not getting anything due to bad rng and "having" to spam farm the raid from day 1.

[Mardux]

M+ is trivial content compared to raids. You can spam it all day, every day. It rewards you with mythic ilvl loot for failing to time a key.

It is literally participation trophy content. It is only popular due to it showering you with loot for little effort. If loot from M+ was balanced properly then it wouldn't be nearly as "popular".

M+ drops 304-311 gear now? What do I need to do to get my 18s-20s to stop dropping 288 gear?

[Celement]

I've not noticed an effect on the mythic raid scene but usually there are a lot less loot driven players there then people outside of it assume.

Sadly there are as many meter whores wiping raids as they assume though...

[Coldkil]

M+ assuming 15+...

Drops 288 that can be upgraded to 298 with valor
Gives you 1 304 per week guaranteed

Mythic raiding

Drops 304 from 8 bosses and 311 from 2 bosses
Gives you 1 304 or 311 per week guaranteed

This is not even going into the fact dungeon trinkets are mostly trash this season and most specs need raid trinkets anyways. Only absolutely clueless people think raid loot is irrelevant.

That's where your reasoning falls flat. You're comparing 15s with Mythic raids - which are on two completely different levels of difficulty, effort and commitment required, and so on. Just the fact people do this shows how they're fine with the easy gear M+ provides.

15s are at best comparable with hc raiding. And their loot makes it just useless for the most part. They're spammable and you don't even need to actually time them to get loot. It's the same as entering a raid and after a few wipes the boss despawns and leaves a chest with loot. With the cache you can get a full set of mythic ilvl tier set with the forge.

The. 311 ilvl gear only comes from last three bosses of mythic raids, something very few people actually reach. And as for trinkets, it's the exception as we went 3 seasons farming m+ for them; Blizzard has specifically buffed all of them so people actually went into fated raids to test them.

M+ are making all raids irrelevant because they're just a superior way to gear up your character. Most players look at the top playerbase as if that was an actual indicator of how the game is doing. Raids in general have an heavy logistics component that isn't rewarded at all.

As i said in another post: HC needs to be put at the sams level of 15s (not the opposite) and mythic gear should be higher ilvl not obtainable anywhere else but as PvP gear should have a lower ilvl (capped at 15s/HC) when you're not in the raid.

[Tech614]

That's where your reasoning falls flat. You're comparing 15s with Mythic raids

Actually I'm not, I'm showing they don't reward the same so the fact they are different difficulty levels is irrelevant. Point flew way over your head. No need for the rest of the post.