Should raiding be easier across all difficulties?

[Otimus]

Whatever it'd take to make normal queueable would be about all I'd ask for. Putting it on the level of MoP LFR and increasing it ever so slightly probably would do that. That and making mythic 0 dungeons queueable would be neat. Probably enough to get me to consider resubbing if the expansion stories also seemed good.

[Goatfish]

I think on a purely numbers basis the raids are probably fine. I have more of an issue with mechanics scaling with flex difficulty and visibility.

The flex difficulty thing is obvious, and SoFO was a great example of this with fights like Anduin becoming way harder or requiring a certain comp for a 10 man group than a 15 for instance. Or Jailer having mechanics that target 1/3 of your raid instead of 1/4, 1/5th, 1/6th. Some of the number tuning could use some work in flex raids as well, like the healing soaks on Anduin and Jailer being far more difficult the less players you have. On the other side, fights like Sylvanas greatly benefit from less people doing better.

As far as visibility, I think WoW just needs to go the FF14 route and add a clear visualization lines around abilities AVR style. No more of this "the actual ability hits just slightly bigger than the swirl but you can't really tell because it's a blue circle on a blue floor or it's hidden under the clutter/water/rugs/hill". This has been an ongoing problem, and this M+ season has shown it's been a problem for a long time. Try seeing where the spinning spear in Grimrail is going when you have pets, Brons, and spell effects completely blocking the model of the last boss making it impossible to see what direction she's pointed, especially as a ranged. When abilities can be clearly seen, then it's really no problem making them more dangerous. Getting 1-shot by things you can't even see to dodge is definitely the worst.

edit: I completely forgot on mechanics. Things like the Confounding Ancient Cypher should have been to upgrade your loot to the next raid difficulty, not to upgrade loot the the current difficulty. Big mistake that only served to waste peoples time by upgrading dinar items that should have been based off difficulty done instead of baseline normal. What could have been a good tool to help normal and heroic raiders compete with the ilvl dominance of M+ instead does effectively nothing. GG

[Greyvax]

Whatever it'd take to make normal queueable would be about all I'd ask for. Putting it on the level of MoP LFR and increasing it ever so slightly probably would do that. That and making mythic 0 dungeons queueable would be neat. Probably enough to get me to consider resubbing if the expansion stories also seemed good.

Queueable normal would be a massive disaster.

[LordVargK]

Raiding should be more forgiving for larger group sizes. ATM you can wipe an entire encounter if just one member of the raidteam fails. That should only happen (if at all) on mythic difficulty.

It's stilly that you can take 2 good members of our raidteam, pair them up with 2 mediums and a slacker and still time a +15 key, whereas we struggle to clear heroic before the nerfs.

[Jotaux]

Given how popular classic and TBC have been, I could see them making retail a lot easier.

[Caprias]

Mythic should be more accessible, not easier (except sepulcher, fuck sepulcher and whoever thought this was "ok" tuning)

Lockout system is trash and cross server is too late making it hard to find replacements and giving the incentive to have a big bank (how lovely to "stand ready" in a videogame like you're a firefighter or something... lol)

Raid prep. should also be as low as possible, I'm there to pull and fight bosses after all.

[Aedruid]

Raids should be ball-bustingly challenging at every difficulty level so that only the truly worthy deserve to wear purples and enjoy the game. Everyone else should just quit the game because they're all bad and should be ashamed of themselves.

I agree with this statement, but with how purples are given out as charity nowadays, either raids need to drop WAY better loot than everything else, or everyone will just do M+ and get equal quality loot with way less effort. Sorry, but doing a +15 for a weekly reward is not nearly as difficult as clearing a Mythic boss that drops an item for the same slot. Not even close.

[Caprias]

What I did not understand to this day was the increase in difficulty for heroic though, WoD-Legion-BfA Heroic was decently easy with usually a few hundred to a thousand endboss-kills week one and shadowlands just screwed that over to 1/10 of that.... why? I don't get it.

[Otimus]

Queueable normal would be a massive disaster.

The last time I did normal, which was WoD, it was only like a small notch above MoP LFR. If that has remained, I don't see why it couldn't be done, if it's that much more difficult, then it probably shouldn't be, imo.

[munkeyinorbit]

No. Difficulties should be a significate increase in difficulty. If anything it was way to easy. Both lfr (shouldn't even be considering a raid) and normal are baby mode, heroic is not even remotely difficult. Mythic is the only difficult mode.

If anything both normal and herouc should be made harder to be brought closer to mythic so the jump isnt so high.

- - - Updated - - -



Both normal and heroic are already super easy and basically the same difficulty. If anything, normal can stay the same and heroic needs a 50% increase in difficulty to bring it closer to mythic.

You forget who the target audience of these difficulties are. There is already content for the good players. Currently the raids are too hard for the heroic and normal targets considering the rewards. We don't need to have less content for the masses.

[Hotmail]

Not really. Raiding is already organically made easier by the gearing process, I feel like everything is in a good spot right now.

[Relapses]

I agree with this statement, but with how purples are given out as charity nowadays, either raids need to drop WAY better loot than everything else, or everyone will just do M+ and get equal quality loot with way less effort. Sorry, but doing a +15 for a weekly reward is not nearly as difficult as clearing a Mythic boss that drops an item for the same slot. Not even close.

Dude you quoted was being sarcastic. He wants players who log in to do dailies to get the best gear in the game.

I agree with you to an extent but I think there are ways to address power creep from M+ from overflowing into raiding which don't involve dramatically nerfing gear from M+. Ion mentioned it in the recent interview with Max... they're likely going to make gear from each respective form of content more powerful specifically for that type of content.

[Ahraa]

Yes and no.

Normal mode should be removed in my opinion. You should have easily accessible lfr/story mode, a genuine raiding mode that can be pugged or completed with mild-moderate coordination, and then mythic mode that requires substantial coordination/skill to complete.

[neocount]

Yes and no.

Normal mode should be removed in my opinion. You should have easily accessible lfr/story mode, a genuine raiding mode that can be pugged or completed with mild-moderate coordination, and then mythic mode that requires substantial coordination/skill to complete.

I like this. I agree.

[munkeyinorbit]

Queueable normal would be a massive disaster.

That's because it's too difficult. It's supposed to be pug and friends and family friendly. It replaced flex mode in MoP. The gear it drops is terrible. Why can't it be changed to actually reflect the intended audience?

- - - Updated - - -

Not really. Raiding is already organically made easier by the gearing process, I feel like everything is in a good spot right now.

It's made easier by running mythic plus which drops gear that is a lot easier to get then normal raid. The solution would be either

Lower the gear you get from mythic plus by 13 ilvl across the board

Or

Lower the difficulty of raiding to equal mythic plus difficulty.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes and no.

Normal mode should be removed in my opinion. You should have easily accessible lfr/story mode, a genuine raiding mode that can be pugged or completed with mild-moderate coordination, and then mythic mode that requires substantial coordination/skill to complete.

That would be ok as the LFR mode would move up 13 ilvls to fill the gap between LFR and heroic and be about as easy as the equivalent mythic plus for the same gear.

[Relapses]

It's made easier by running mythic plus which drops gear that is a lot easier to get then normal raid. The solution would be either

Lower the gear you get from mythic plus by 13 ilvl across the board

Or

Lower the difficulty of raiding to equal mythic plus difficulty.

Do neither and just make raiding gear better for raiding and M+ gear better for M+. Nobody gets nerfed and the players who are the best at what they do get rewarded commensurately.

[OokOok]

Do you raid mythic? Yes? then it's challenging enough. If you answered No, then I don't know why you want anything made easier as LFR/Normal/heroic is as casual as you can get in the MMO scene. A pug of 20 random people can clear Heroic within the first month of release. How much more easier do you want unless you want to be able to clear it on the first day, if that's why you want then you'll just be crying content is too easy.

Regardless i'm a strong believer in the way FFXIV does things. You have Normal which is face roll easy for getting your foot inthe door, you have savage which is hard until you get more gear over the next 3-4 weeks and then it becomes easy and becomes all about just doing mechanics to win, and then they release ultimates which is content so hard only 1% can do it and they will NEVER nerf it regardless how much people like you cry about it if you can't do it get better.

[Aresk]

I think Heroic DPS requirements are a bit high. Most Heroic raiders I know are well above the actual raid drop ilevel because they run M+, and it feels like the raid tuning reflects that. Scalability for the flex difficulties could also be better; ten-person raids seem generally harder than twenty-person raids since each individual makes up so much more of the %. Lastly, I think that there should not be too many one-shot raid-wipe mechanics on Heroic on down. I think Heroic damage dealt to raid is fine and the rest of the complexity is acceptable.

Mythic I think is too easy for the first few bosses. My raid struggles on Heroic DPS for later bosses but can do the first few Mythic bosses without issue by that point (so long as we can get enough people to show up). I can't speak to the rest of the Mythic bosses.

Normal feels fine to me.

LFR is hit or miss depending on which mechanics they keep; randomly targeted LFR mechanics can be rough, but voluntary LFR mechanics tend to be really easy since someone who knows the fight will do them.

[Swnem]

I think it should be like this season is being. Everyone can progress on the gear and the 3 first mythic bosses are very accessible even if you can't get 20 people together. It's been quite enjoyable. Also, the raids became more rewarding like this (cause it doesn't take as long to actually get a kill like before), unlike what we've had in the rest of shadowlands that made Mythic+ and the vault by far the easier path for gearing. Now, the raid is actually useful again. In good part cause of the dinars and upgrade items as well.

[Mysterymask]

Do neither and just make raiding gear better for raiding and M+ gear better for M+. Nobody gets nerfed and the players who are the best at what they do get rewarded commensurately.

How would you even do that? Like set bonuses for raids that get better when there's more people and dungeon sets that reduce detection radius?