m+ tuning doesnt dissapoint

[brynhildrprot]

The change to M+ and even raid loot overall was pretty meaningful and does add a feeling of progression back to the game that was previously only felt in mythic raiding. Doing 25s for end boss Mythic raid ilvl would make it even crazier but adds massive loot balancing issues since you can then get every M+ dungeon loot table+any tier slot at 424 ilvl where as from raid you only have 2 bosses worth of loot tables at that ilvl. No one can really do 25s yet but when they become more realistic when everyone is 420+ ilvl mythic raiders would basically be forced into them for loot optimization.

Ideal situation imo would be just splitting raid in half, early mythic ilvl and then late mythic ilvl. Then have 16s reward early mythic ilvl vault as they currently do, have 22s reward late mythic ilvl vault and have 19s reward halfway between them.

Or the +25 rewards are 421 (+3ilvl in M+)

[Rageonit]

Sucks that pugs are my only option for keys then. Guild pushers have their premades, and never venture outside of that group.

I guess it sucks. You can always do something about it, you're not powerless. People are there, reach out. If you don't care to, do keys that are meant for random groups without coordination (though, like I've said before, pugs already do close to 20s, so it's hardly impossible). Finding people to play with and working on coordination is an effort in itself, those premades you mention had to form too, at some point. I think it's only fair that people who invest more effot into something, can do it better than people who don't, and are rewarded for it.

[Lahis]

I guess it sucks. You can always do something about it, you're not powerless. People are there, reach out. If you don't care to, do keys that are meant for random groups without coordination (though, like I've said before, pugs already do close to 20s, so it's hardly impossible). Finding people to play with and working on coordination is an effort in itself, those premades you mention had to form too, at some point. I think it's only fair that people who invest more effot into something, can do it better than people who don't, and are rewarded for it.

I have never liked M+. I only do it because it must be done for the weekly chest of dissapointment. Pusher pre-made would means spending dozens of hours there each week. I'd like to have time for other things too.

[Rageonit]

I only do it because it must be done for the weekly chest of dissapointment.

Well, if you condemn yourself to something you don't enjoy, I don't think you deserve any better. Realistically, only people who enjoy m+ should have any say about it, because they are the target audience. Just think how ludicrous would it be for Blizzard to design m+ experience on the basis of opinions of people who don't even like it!

And you're wrong about having to spend dozens of hours there. Or do you truly believe you're the only person in the world who'd like to do just a couple of runs per week, but not in a pug...? Lets be clear about it: you just don't care to invest any time into finding a like-minded group of people who'd do it with you the way you want to do it. Your experience will be bad by default, because you do nothing to make it good.

[Raisei]

Something I am definately noticing more and more is the insane amount of disruption on every pack and boss. Some bosses, like the last one in Nokhud barely lets you breath between putting circles under your feet (Phase 2). Same with the guy in Ruby and the "my Magic!" guy in Vault. It is sometimes not even a full second before the next circle is under your feet and you just keep being interrupted in your casts. If you get Thundering and some other disrupting affix (Volcanic, Quaking, Sanguine) on top, you sometimes are just dancing around praying your instant casts are somehow keeping people alive (Healer).

Feels really overdone atm and some of the best ranged dps in my guild have confirmed my feeling.

So the problem isn't that the keys are too difficult in scaling, but that the mechanics prevent people from doing what they have to do to succeed. It's like making a mechanic where the Tank has to stay permanently at range from the boss, but still has to keep aggro for minutes.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not want Patchwork fights. But if a Healer cannot stand still for more then 1-2 seconds then it is beyond the point of a mechanic and just enters the level of "annoyance".
It creates artifical difficulty by preventing people from playing instead of challenging them.

There are still bosses that are overtuned on top, but I think this issue is more annoying.

[Miyagie]

It's like making a mechanic where the Tank has to stay permanently at range from the boss, but still has to keep aggro for minutes.

Did you play the first season in SL as a Tank? Only DHs could push very high keys but as a DK or Pala you were fucked in the first fortifight weeks.
Blizz cant balance the game anymore, i just raid in a fun HC guild and the HC raids gets so fucking hard that its like Mythic progress back in the days.
After the 6th Anduin nerf we all saw that Blizz has no idea what they are doing.

[Fangshi]

Lots of things have a bearing on a M+ groups success. Skill level, but in my opinion that only starts to show up in the higher keys. Item level of course and to a degree skill can negate some of the effects of a lower ilvl. Groups that don’t have realistic expectations. However the single most important fact in a M+ is dungeon knowledge, that gets you further than anything else. I’m not sure how a scalable system can be overturned that much.

[BrokenRavens]

Well, if you condemn yourself to something you don't enjoy, I don't think you deserve any better. Realistically, only people who enjoy m+ should have any say about it, because they are the target audience. Just think how ludicrous would it be for Blizzard to design m+ experience on the basis of opinions of people who don't even like it!

Wow! Just, um, wow...

"Well, if you condemn yourself to something you don't enjoy, I don't think you deserve any better. Realistically, only people who enjoy [DC Movies] should have any say about it, because they are the target audience. Just think how ludicrous would it be for [Warner Brothers] to design [a DC Movie] experience on the basis of opinions of people who don't even like (them)!"

"Well, if you condemn yourself to something you don't enjoy, I don't think you deserve any better. Realistically, only people who enjoy [Ford Vehicles] should have any say about it, because they are the target audience. Just think how ludicrous would it be for [Ford] to design [their driving] experience on the basis of opinions of people who don't even like it!"

Etc.

That is really a great way to lose and alienate customers.

This is my advice for the casual players here.

Look Blizzard is not going to change, ok? They will continue to shower high end raider types with gifts because they are the loudest. The moment they give casual players any type of progression path that suits those players, they will be accused of "giving away epics", or "epics lose their meaning", or something stupid like that.

WoW is a bit like high school where the cool kids are catered to and everyone else has to watch from the sidelines.

Drop WoW, and join another mmo. There are plenty out there that don't make you feel bad about playing casually. That offer reward paths that while may take longer, but will still get you on an equivalent(ish) power level in the end. That don't treat you as a second class citizen because your key hits per minute are not like they used to be.

There are so many great mmo's out there that don't have this toxic "you don't deserve better loot" mentality that is so persuasive in WoW and it's community. Literally ANY other major mmo will treat you better (I think, I don't know them all, but at least the major ones are better).

Just walk away (and if you have some friends, encourage them to go as well), I did, and seeing threads like this makes me so happy I changed to a better game. Many people in my guilds are Wow "refugees" and they are much happier with a game that actually treats them with some respect.

[Gorsameth]

If WoW only ever catered to the high end raiders we would all still be playing WoD.

[Biomega]

Look Blizzard is not going to change, ok? They will continue to shower high end raider types with gifts because they are the loudest.

Well, that's one way of putting it, but it's likely more complicated than that. Part of that is purchasing behavior - people who are "hardcore" are also more likely to apply their discernment and analysis to their purchasing decisions, i.e. they are more likely to actually quit over things they don't like. Whereas "casual" players are also more likely to be forgiving when it comes to their purchase, and accept things they don't like more readily without withholding their purchase.

So while yes, hardcore raiding does indeed serve as an advertising platform for the game to a certain extent, it's not just about that; it's also about people who keep complaining about things they don't like BUT THEN KEEP PAYING ANYWAY. That sends clear messages to the company: 1. that while those people's complaints may well be legitimate, they are not a high priority because they don't actually lose them a lot of money; 2. that those people will complain about a lot of things but ultimately keep paying anyway, so perhaps those complaints aren't legit complaints after all; 3. that the people who complain and DO quit need to be a higher priority, and their complaints need to be taken more seriously because it directly affects profit.

There's real value in complaining, even about minor things; accurate customer feedback is an integral part of improving products. However, not all customers are valued equally, and not all feedback is valued equally - if you want your voice to be heard and your feedback to matter, properly apportion its importance to your actual purchasing decision. If you complain for 10 years but never stop your sub... then why SHOULD they listen to you, economically speaking?

[Osmeric]

If WoW only ever catered to the high end raiders we would all still be playing WoD.

How could this statement ever be mistaken for true? It's absurd on its face. It would require that non-high end raiders would play the game because it didn't cater to them.

[Verissaugh]

I'm not sure im getting this.. Are people whining because harder m+ is too hard and not enough insanely casual friendly? If you dont enjoy m+ or just dont want to actually perform, just dont do high end m+. If you are still expecting to get the best gear without performing, then you can either start training/focus better or buy boosts like some ppl sadly do.

People expecting to get free stuff without performing or doing anything is the worst kind of focus blizzard could go, just look at Diablo Immortal.
If you want to do +20 keys, train yourself, youll get there sooner or later. But if you give up before even doing +15s, then its a you issue and not WoW.
But I can say some dungeons are abit too overtuned, but its mostly based off insane aoe dmg or just purely some mechanics if one person fks up can destroy a key (RLP). and some dungeons abit undertuned (SBG).
Im not the greatest player, not even close. Im more a casual than anything atm, I feel the challenge in doing even +15 keys atm but thats the fun part of it. If you dont like it, play another MMO.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

I could start with that its not a warrior? He's almost 10 ilvls higher and he's getting boosted with 406 people. So all off the above? But you already knew it wasn't good enough so why link it?
You're not gonna find anyone tanking 15s at 350 ilvl, certainly not last reset which was the first post started lol...
And if you're gonna take it even further, there's not a single group doing it at 360 as an average...
You know this, i know this, everyone knows this...
What are you even trying to argue??

as a 2700 io player atm a ican guarantee you taht you can time a SBG with a full 350 grp on a +15 even +18 (if Hero skilled) but noe one is this bad (like you) and has this gear progress even on alts

[sponge5307]

That's probably a knowledge issue. Because I did 15s on a 375 tank. At some point pugs just need to play mechanics properly, and can't just rely on gear to steamroll it.

- - - Updated - - -



That seems to be buggy. The blues show too low ilvl. When you click his char his 270 head is now shown as 343, and he jumps to 372 ilvl.

372 with blaster dps and good heal is definitely enough for +15s. I did this myself without being an outstanding player (not only sbg).

I think some dungeons are overtune while others are pretty easy. Could be tuning issue. Could be the class too. Been farming The Azure Vault for the weapons and so far I notice guardian druid tends to have the most stable tanks. Port warrior is a hit or miss some are great some are bad but brewmaster is the worse(well they are the worse tanks this season). According to some healers they are taking a crap load of damage. Also I am seeing a lot of resto druid doing really well at least in keeping everyone alive (maybe coz of the AoE damage and restro druid HoT's are just really powerful). Haven't seen much disc priest or evoker healer though.

[jeezusisacasual]

I'm not sure im getting this.. Are people whining because harder m+ is too hard and not enough insanely casual friendly? If you dont enjoy m+ or just dont want to actually perform, just dont do high end m+. If you are still expecting to get the best gear without performing, then you can either start training/focus better or buy boosts like some ppl sadly do.

People expecting to get free stuff without performing or doing anything is the worst kind of focus blizzard could go, just look at Diablo Immortal.
If you want to do +20 keys, train yourself, youll get there sooner or later. But if you give up before even doing +15s, then its a you issue and not WoW.
But I can say some dungeons are abit too overtuned, but its mostly based off insane aoe dmg or just purely some mechanics if one person fks up can destroy a key (RLP). and some dungeons abit undertuned (SBG).
Im not the greatest player, not even close. Im more a casual than anything atm, I feel the challenge in doing even +15 keys atm but thats the fun part of it. If you dont like it, play another MMO.

I will only speak for myself and i am only here for a good time not a long time and quit once i get KSM and clear the raid one time since i do not enjoy recycling content i treat this game like i would any other game beat it and move on and while i enjoy a challenge i expect it to be consistent and i can name numerous instances this expansion that difference in key difficulty is absurd compared to Shadowlands and BFA. Sure i dont chase gear or even recall memorable items because that is not why i play wow, i dont care to show or stand out either but i expect the challenge to stay consistent.

Playing a WW / Brewmaster i am at 1944 Rating at an ilvl of 393 without my 2pc which should be a moot point as the catalyst should unlock the absolute moment the race to world first is done since if you have to bribe players to do the content then was it good enough to begin with? Why balance higher keys around tier sets and the like if they wont even be in the hands of the masses until its beyond pointless. If the majority of the players also had access to these items they would more then likely view the challenge spike to be easier since i am assuming the healing 4pcs trivalize the copying of Cata's dungeon spike.

[BrokenRavens]

I'm not sure im getting this.. Are people whining because harder m+ is too hard and not enough insanely casual friendly? If you dont enjoy m+ or just dont want to actually perform, just dont do high end m+. If you are still expecting to get the best gear without performing, then you can either start training/focus better or buy boosts like some ppl sadly do.

People expecting to get free stuff without performing or doing anything is the worst kind of focus blizzard could go, just look at Diablo Immortal.
If you want to do +20 keys, train yourself, youll get there sooner or later. But if you give up before even doing +15s, then its a you issue and not WoW.
But I can say some dungeons are abit too overtuned, but its mostly based off insane aoe dmg or just purely some mechanics if one person fks up can destroy a key (RLP). and some dungeons abit undertuned (SBG).
Im not the greatest player, not even close. Im more a casual than anything atm, I feel the challenge in doing even +15 keys atm but thats the fun part of it. If you dont like it, play another MMO.

Let’s do a thought experiment for a second.

Let’s pretend the world of Harry Potter is real and someone casts a spell on all these underperforming casuals who “don’t deserve gear” and gave them all the skills of a mythic raider. Ok?

So everyone is now doing the hardest difficulty in the game and everyone is getting great loot.

Would blizzard and the community be ok with this or would there be a demand of an even “harder than mythic” setting be introduced?

Let me just tell you the answer, there would be even harder content introduced and your every day “mythic” raider would be considered a casual. They would be called casual even though they would have the skills of what is currently the “.1%”.

What you consider skill is arbitrary based on a division of players that blizzard has designed as their stratification model. Blizzard wants a “carrot” vs starvation approach to their rewards. And just because you are getting fed today does mean a magic wand will leave you starving tomorrow.

WoW endgame is built on the artificial stratification of its players.

[sponge5307]

Something I am definately noticing more and more is the insane amount of disruption on every pack and boss. Some bosses, like the last one in Nokhud barely lets you breath between putting circles under your feet (Phase 2). Same with the guy in Ruby and the "my Magic!" guy in Vault. It is sometimes not even a full second before the next circle is under your feet and you just keep being interrupted in your casts. If you get Thundering and some other disrupting affix (Volcanic, Quaking, Sanguine) on top, you sometimes are just dancing around praying your instant casts are somehow keeping people alive (Healer).

Feels really overdone atm and some of the best ranged dps in my guild have confirmed my feeling.

So the problem isn't that the keys are too difficult in scaling, but that the mechanics prevent people from doing what they have to do to succeed. It's like making a mechanic where the Tank has to stay permanently at range from the boss, but still has to keep aggro for minutes.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not want Patchwork fights. But if a Healer cannot stand still for more then 1-2 seconds then it is beyond the point of a mechanic and just enters the level of "annoyance".
It creates artifical difficulty by preventing people from playing instead of challenging them.

There are still bosses that are overtuned on top, but I think this issue is more annoying.

LOL melee isn't much better. Too much AoE damages needs to be avoided even for trash. Some tanks just love to pull mobs just at the edge of the AoE puddle of fire so they aren't getting affect but doesn't leave room for any melee (unless we want to get eaten alive by frontal cone and have to take some long way to avoid the damage and start dpsing).Or then a tank decide to double pull and there are AoE everywhere and you can hardly avoid them while dpsing.

[Tyris Flare]

That is really a great way to lose and alienate customers.

This is a more visual way to look at this.

So there is the Median Player (aka, the average overall player) and the Median Endgame Player. The MEP is basically a person who participates in endgame to some extent via keys or normal + raiding or whatever, which means it is automatically higher because we are excluding people who only level and grind reps etc.

To me, if I were designing an endgame product, it would be around the MEP, my average user who actually consumes the content, while still providing something challenging for the elite via bragging rights (but no tangible rewards). This is actually how m+ has been for a long time, especially s3-4 of Shadowlands where 15s (the highest tangible reward) were quite achievable by virtually anyone who tried. Dragonflight has completely reversed this so far, moving up the scale considerably.



This is a huge problem. It's also a huge problem in raiding, but we're talking about m+ here specifically. Unfortunately, the developers who thought Thundering was a good affix are designing the game rather than the developers who did the s4 affix, probably the best seasonal they have ever done

[Biomega]

This is a huge problem. It's also a huge problem in raiding, but we're talking about m+ here specifically. Unfortunately, the developers who thought Thundering was a good affix are designing the game rather than the developers who did the s4 affix, probably the best seasonal they have ever done

I think it's important to distinguish here between design missteps and design mistakes. What I mean by that is that a misstep is something that didn't quite turn out as intended because of issues with tuning, bugs, unforeseen interactions, etc.; whereas a mistake is something that worked as intended, but the intent turned out to be one that should be revised.

This happens in both raiding and M+ (and all other content, too) but it's easy to conflate the two or get confused which is which. For example, the design of mythic Raszageth seems to very intentionally be one favoring the inclusion of Evokers, as several mechanics greatly play to its particular toolkit. You can argue about whether or not that's a good thing or not - but this would be a design mistake, not a misstep; they intended for this to work this way, and it may turn out that intent is detrimental to enjoyment but it's not just coincidence or happenstance it's directed, intentional design. Whereas the extra health on adds on that fight, say, that required it to be nerfed by 50% was a design MISSTEP - they intended these adds to have a lot of HP and require tight damage and coordination to beat, but they got the tuning wrong in ways that overshot by as much as ~50% which is NOT what they intended.

You can extend this even further by blurring the lines between mistakes and missteps. Is Thundering a mistake or a misstep? That depends on how you look at it. It works as intended, i.e. there's no technical bugs; so it should be a design mistake, not a misstep. But does it fail at its intended JOB of providing an interesting, engaging M+ affix because of a problematic design philosophy, or is it because they didn't quite put enough work and time into it to make sure it does that job? You could argue that their INTENT was sound here, and they simply didn't give it the design resources needed to properly manifest that intent. But that would arguably put it more on the misstep side of things than the mistake side of things, because they didn't INTEND to design a boring, borderline irrelevant, extremely fiddly min/max affix; it just happened to turn out that way. But you could well argue the other way, too.

It's more clear-cut when you look at dungeon performance and class balance. Their INTENT is as described in the other posts above: to segment M+ in ways that allows different demographics different levels of access and rewards. That this is hindered by some dungeons being disproportionately more difficult and some classes/specs being disproportionately more (or less) useful in M+ doesn't change that intent, it only affects its implementation. In other words, their segmentation of M+ in ways that allows casuals some access but doesn't just give them everything for free is a sound idea, but there's still problems with some dungeons being out of whack and class balance being off - which absolutely requires fixing (and is likely to receive it as we go on) but doesn't invalidate the underlying idea of casuals not just getting to PUG +20 keys or whatever with little to no effort. Those are separate issues.

[Tyris Flare]

And what's interesting is that for a while, m+ was the place where people who didn't have time to raid could still feel good about progressing to a high level. In DF they've made it so that BOTH m+ and raiding are catering to the high end, and neither is really catering to the middle.

Right, it's actually an incredible double-down that makes no business sense whatsoever. Raider.io is already tracking a massive decrease in keys being run despite the fact that everyone is loot starved.

As someone who has worked in politics a fair amount, this feels a lot like the idea that sometimes politicians need to speak to real people sometimes, not the caricatures in the news or the tiny sample of rich people they work with on a daily basis. Someone in the Blizzard design offices needs to be asking the question "yeah but is this fun for the average endgame player?" every time something is proposed.

Like @Rageonit has good individual advice for overcoming an issue (take the initiative and solve your own problems etc) but this is a poor solution for a group, which is who the designers of any product should actually be targeting. The reality is that most MEP content is completed in pugs, either a full pug or 2-3 pugs along with the MEP and their friends. Every affix, every dungeon, every mechanic should be designed with this in mind. "Can this be done easily without voice?" etc are vital questions that just don't seem to get answered.

Again, this wouldn't take content away from anyone. The entire point of an endless difficulty system is perpetual bragging rights. Jdotb and other streamers aren't going to run out of content because MEPs can do keys easier. They will just do 30s instead of 25s.