Why Mythic shouldn't be a thing

[Myta]

Click-baity title, but hear me out.

Mythic should have never been made in the first place. Over time like with the devaluating of epics and legendaries, raid difficulty settings have become bloated and lost meaning. So when Heroic was no longer 'Heroic' in comes Mythic to add a new super hard difficulty. Now difficulties have become overbloated and Normal is now LFR 2.0 rather than a fully legitimate difficulty.

The clearest and most intuitive solution to the problem of the difficulty bloat is to simply have Normal and Heroic again. But simply use a scalable difficulty that we've had in the past with raids like Ulduar. I would even go farther and say that Raid Keystones should be a thing, a way to make a Raid tier relevant through the whole expansion even as new content is released. It also means that suddenly the world first race is less important as the relevancy of the first clear of Mythic0 falls away and is replaced with inter guild competition over longer, healthier time frames. it's more important for guilds to go for higher numbers of difficulty and also go back to older raids to go for gear and even tier pieces that are more relevant. This also means the concept of "Tuned for 54 traits" suddenly goes away as well as the base difficulty is rather reasonable and can scale into mathematically impossible, allowing guilds to find their comfort zone for their current gear levels.

Overall this system is healthier than what we have now, which is incredibly polarizing, all or nothing, and at times utterly guild breaking.

[Shaqur]

Mythic is aimed at hardcore raiders, its not necessary, you can still get your ilvl 925 gear from doing Heroic. There is nothing to whine about, really, as mythic just ensures minimum ilvl you will get, and having mythic as option, it just means more content to clear, why remove that?

[Nitros14]

Mythic raids and heroic raids before them are tuned very precisely and meticulously.

What you're proposing is to make raid tuning a total mess and to devalue beating encounters further.

There's satisfaction in having a specific bar and beating it, you're proposing to make the game much less fun and satisfying.

[DakonBlackblade]

So your solution to too many difficultys is to add more difficultys via keystones ? Thatd never work, its blatantly evident on 5 mens mythic + that some mechanics simply break once you increase the boss HP or damage too much (like Hyrjas lightning 1 shotting ppl), with raids where the balance is much more precise you'd have some new mechanic doing something completly umplaned for every new level of +.

[Deleted]

Click-baity title, but here me out.

Mythic should have never been made in the first place. Over time like with the devaluating of epics and legendaries, raid difficulty settings have become bloated and lost meaning. So when Heroic was no longer 'Heroic' in comes Mythic to add a new super hard difficulty. Now difficulties have become overbloated and Normal is now LFR 2.0 rather than a fully legitimate difficulty.

The clearest and most intuitive solution to the problem of the difficulty bloat is to simply have Normal and Heroic again. But simply use a scalable difficulty that we've had in the past with raids like Ulduar. I would even go farther and say that Raid Keystones should be a thing, a way to make a Raid tier relevant through the whole expansion even as new content is released. It also means that suddenly the world first race is less important as the relevancy of the first clear of Mythic0 falls away and is replaced with inter guild competition over longer, healthier time frames. it's more important for guilds to go for higher numbers of difficulty and also go back to older raids to go for gear and even tier pieces that are more relevant. This also means the concept of "Tuned for 54 traits" suddenly goes away as well as the base difficulty is rather reasonable and can scale into mathematically impossible, allowing guilds to find their comfort zone for their current gear levels.

Overall this system is healthier than what we have now, which is incredibly polarizing, all or nothing, and at times utterly guild breaking.

"So when Heroic was no longer 'Heroic' in comes Mythic to add a new super hard difficulty." That's not what happened at all...


Only having normal and heroic again would mean deleting LFR and the current normal mode, renaming Heroic to Normal and Mythic to Heroic.

The world first race has never been important to anyone but the people participating and won't go away regardless for as long as they find it fun to compete.

The mythic difficulty has been around since Ulduar, and it's great even for non-mythic raiders to progress through while waiting for the next raid tier to release.

I do wish they would just have renamed flex to something else, like casual or something, but I suppose they were concerned with offending people, even though casual is a difficulty setting in StarCraft 2.

[Myta]

So your solution to too many difficultys is to add more difficultys via keystones ? Thatd never work, its blatantly evident on 5 mens mythic + that some mechanics simply break once you increase the boss HP or damage too much (like Hyrjas lightning 1 shotting ppl), with raids where the balance is much more precise you'd have some new mechanic doing something completly umplaned for every new level of +.

So you'd prefer the current system where the raids are tuned around having a specific artifact level and it's no longer "bring the player not the class" but "Bring the AP level, not the player"

[Garybear]

I actually completely agree with OP. Sounds like a good idea imo since it lets the world first guilds stay competing even until the next raid tier. Maybe cut off the rewards around heroic difficulty level and just let the mythic raiders go ham with their achievement lust. They would probs even stay subbed instead of cancelling so that they can always be better than everyone else.

[Tehterokkar]

So you'd prefer the current system where the raids are tuned around having a specific artifact level and it's no longer "bring the player not the class" but "Bring the AP level, not the player"

You are free to do heroic/first 7 bosses of Mythic with your friends and bring whoever you want.

Mythic is not meant to be pugged nor is it meant to be done by super casual players who don't put effort into progressing their characters.

Besides, if you had only spent 1 hour/day doing WQs every day(not even that on some days), you'd easily be 50 at least by now in your primary spec.

[Eis]

If the hardest of the hard still exists, why do you care that there are lower levels for the more casual groups? They put a ton of work into the raids, why should they not be seen by a maximum number of people? The gap between LFR and "normal" (now heroic) was too wide, which is why flex (now normal) came into being. I think it's a perfect, steady curve to allow a good amount of the population to do whatever they want at whatever level they and their friends are at.

You seem to be focusing on the raid difficulty settings as an issue instead of what you actually think is the issue: artifacts and tuning. That's an entirely different discussion than what you have framed here. The higher end is not cheapened by existence of the lower end.

Raid keystones are an awful idea. High end raiders typically enjoy pushing the content hard and then having 1 day raid weeks until the next content. A keystone system would ruin that.

[Myta]

You are free to do heroic/first 7 bosses of Mythic with your friends and bring whoever you want.

Mythic is not meant to be pugged nor is it meant to be done by super casual players who don't put effort into progressing their characters.

Besides, if you had only spent 1 hour/day doing WQs every day(not even that on some days), you'd easily be 50 at least by now in your primary spec.

Somehow you erroneously and almost intentionally twisted my argument into implying I was saying Mythic's difficulty should be nerfed. Please re-read my post then amend your reply.

[Deleted]

If anything LFR should be removed, not mythic.

[Eis]

I actually completely agree with OP. Sounds like a good idea imo since it lets the world first guilds stay competing even until the next raid tier.

That is how you get a shitload of burnt out raiders. It's not sustainable. The community would eventually stop caring about the newest "best thing" they did, and they would get tired of always being in "progression" mode. The current world first race is fine in that regard. Artifacts and tuning are a separate discussion.

[melodramocracy]

If anything, the existence of normal AND heroic are probably what the game could afford to merge w/o too much trouble.

[Myta]

That is how you get a shitload of burnt out raiders. It's not sustainable. The community would eventually stop caring about the newest "best thing" they did, and they would get tired of always being in "progression" mode. The current world first race is fine in that regard. Artifacts and tuning are a separate discussion.

What we have currently is creating an unsustainable mess of burnt out players by forcing people to no-life the game to 45+ traits to even mathematically be able to beat the boss. It's not about skill, the effect of paragon traits are too profound that the best fire mage in the world is garbage if he's only at Paragon 5 vs a lower skilled fire mage at 45. That is not how the system should work, it is not healthy. You cannot create a system that forces players into playing non-stop just to keep from sinking, to never take days off, to never go on a break between tiers, etc.

Mythic raiding with today's AP system is not healthy, and players who were clearing the hardest content in the game before now can't purely due to a pointless and arbitrary numbers gating. One that is killing progression raiding guilds every day now. It is a pain that is felt at all levels of raiding, as anyone who takes a break from Legion is almost irreparably behind now.

[Eis]

What we have currently is creating an unsustainable mess of burnt out players by forcing people to no-life the game to 45+ traits to even mathematically be able to beat the boss. It's not about skill, the effect of paragon traits are too profound that the best fire mage in the world is garbage if he's only at Paragon 5 vs a lower skilled fire mage at 45. That is not how the system should work, it is not healthy. You cannot create a system that forces players into playing non-stop just to keep from sinking, to never take days off, to never go on a break between tiers, etc.

Mythic raiding with today's AP system is not healthy, and players who were clearing the hardest content in the game before now can't purely due to a pointless and arbitrary numbers gating. One that is killing progression raiding guilds every day now. It is a pain that is felt at all levels of raiding, as anyone who takes a break from Legion is almost irreparably behind now.

I think you're greatly exaggerating the "grind" required here. My dk alt, who has shifted to being my main, hit 110 on December 22nd. She started at AK20 because of my main, and I'm pretty casual and barely do any M+ on her. In fact, most weeks all I really do for AP is my emissary and nothing else. She's currently at 43 traits in her main weapon, and 35 in her offspec. I am really casual. If you are behind on your artifact, you either aren't cut out to be a hardcore raider, or you're blaming gear instead of blaming your skill.

Again, your issue seems to be artifacts and the grind attached to them. What does this have to do with the difficulties below mythic? They have nothing to do with this.

[rhorle]

So difficulties have become bloated and lost meaning and your solution is to add more difficulties in the form of raid keystones? Okay.

World first guilds will still compete for world first raid+ of the highest level. You won't see healthier competition among those top .1% guilds. We shouldn't be designing the game around those top .1% guilds anyways.

[Myta]

I think you're greatly exaggerating the "grind" required here. My dk alt, who has shifted to being my main, hit 110 on December 22nd. She started at AK20 because of my main, and I'm pretty casual and barely do any M+ on her. In fact, most weeks all I really do for AP is my emissary and nothing else. She's currently at 43 traits in her main weapon, and 35 in her offspec. I am really casual. If you are behind on your artifact, you either aren't cut out to be a hardcore raider, or you're blaming gear instead of blaming your skill.

Again, your issue seems to be artifacts and the grind attached to them. What does this have to do with the difficulties below mythic? They have nothing to do with this.

So you started 5 AK behind and you had 2 weeks to catch up to 25 before Paragon traits were even implemented, which meant that your DK started grinding Paragon traits basically at the same time everyone else was.

This does not disprove my argument that balancing content around everyone having 45 traits is currently destroying guilds, because those who weren't ready to jump on the paragon traits boat when it came out have missed it already, and now must wait for 7.2 for the system to be fixed. Blizzard even admitted the system was broken which is why they're removing it.

My point does stand that what we have now is a dysfunctional and overall unhealthy system, and maybe 7.2 will save AP. But it still won't save the fact that Blizzard is designing difficulty on a tier based on 3-4 guilds in the world, and that has a knockdown effect on every guild below it to even have a chance to compete. All world first races so far this expac have been complete shit shows because of how wildly unstable the system currently is.

[Garybear]

Really they should just make mythic raiding puggable... maybe cut 1-3 mechanics per fight.

[Deleted]

But simply use a scalable difficulty that we've had in the past with raids like Ulduar. I would even go farther and say that Raid Keystones should be a thing, a way to make a Raid tier relevant through the whole expansion even as new content is released. It also means that suddenly the world first race is less important as the relevancy of the first clear of Mythic0 falls away and is replaced with inter guild competition over longer, healthier time frames. it's more important for guilds to go for higher numbers of difficulty and also go back to older raids to go for gear and even tier pieces that are more relevant. This also means the concept of "Tuned for 54 traits" suddenly goes away as well as the base difficulty is rather reasonable and can scale into mathematically impossible, allowing guilds to find their comfort zone for their current gear levels.

Overall this system is healthier than what we have now, which is incredibly polarizing, all or nothing, and at times utterly guild breaking.

Personally I believe this system is more awful and guild breaking than the current one.

While Ulduar was praised for how it had scaling difficulty and interesting activation mechanics, it really wasn't the case - many of the hard modes were only really starting after an easy to do condition happened. The "hard mode" encounter was just one. Freya might be closest to scaling, but even Freya had a massive difference on 25 between 2 trees up and 3.
Raid Keystones fail because they don't change the encounter at all, for example Mythic Botanist is much more different than Heroic, Augur's Grand Trine is a mythic only mechanic, Elisande's orbs do a return and Gul'dan is completely different. This makes mythic raiding interesting, increasing dmg and health by 10% per keystone would be outright retarded.

[Eis]

So you started 5 AK behind and you had 2 weeks to catch up to 25 before Paragon traits were even implemented, which meant that your DK started grinding Paragon traits basically at the same time everyone else was.

This does not disprove my argument that balancing content around everyone having 45 traits is currently destroying guilds, because those who weren't ready to jump on the paragon traits boat when it came out have missed it already, and now must wait for 7.2 for the system to be fixed. Blizzard even admitted the system was broken which is why they're removing it.

My point does stand that what we have now is a dysfunctional and overall unhealthy system, and maybe 7.2 will save AP. But it still won't save the fact that Blizzard is designing difficulty on a tier based on 3-4 guilds in the world, and that has a knockdown effect on every guild below it to even have a chance to compete. All world first races so far this expac have been complete shit shows because of how wildly unstable the system currently is.

..none of this has anything to do with difficulties below mythic. Also, Blizzard does NOT balance around the very top guilds. If they did, they would most likely not get it down so quickly, but Blizzard has to balance for everyone, so the really good and dedicated people get it down faster.

I also don't see how my case does anything but disprove your argument. It's not hard to get 45 traits. I am super lazy, super casual, and nearly there. That was my point. Are you talking about people coming back from not playing for years? Well, yeah, there's a curve to get them back into raiding. Yeah, they're going to be behind the people who have been here the entire time. I really don't know what case you could be talking about where someone is trying to get into mythic raiding, and also does not have the ability to easily grind AP.

I just don't get why you're trying so hard to connect this to raid difficulties below mythic. The people who make use of those lower difficulties do not care about this problem, and the people who are in mythic should be easily accessing 45+ traits. Yes, the endless grind is pretty shitty. I think we all agree there.