Does raiding need dramatically reviewed?

[Coldkil]

Good points. What we currently have is basically a rushed/lazy version of what we had in Cataclysm. We need more interesting choices, not rehashed regular abilities being sold as "talent". As for professions, they are pretty much dead and this is coming from an Alchemist. Over the years, Blizzard introduced changes for the sake of changing, without givin much thought. Right now, many systems in the game are messy and it needs proper resources allocated to fix them.

Yeah, i swapped to herb/alchemy because free mandatory buffs and easy money generation. If every crafting profession had something like Alchemy in terms of power you'd see how economy would normalize. The whole problem is this - Alchemy makes consumables that are usable by everyone and are mandatory. Other professions don't so what's the point to have them. Flasks should be Alchemy only and other professions should have something equal - so you can either minmax if you really like and swap profession every time something gets reworked or stick with the one you want and not get punished for this.

I don't think it's an extremely heavy work to do - but agree that needs an eye on it and people focused on fixing these systems.

[Sezh]

The only thing that needs to be reviewed imo is the difficulty curve of mythic. They need to bring back the curve they had in BRF or NH, not this situation where you can walk over every boss except the last 1-2 bosses.

[psyquest]

I am bleeding members every month. People that loved this game and more importantly love raids are leaving.

I think we have shifted raid way too much towards individuals responsability to such an extent that one healer not up to par, a dps dead and you are likely going to wipe.

I really dont mind raid difficulty and bosses like ragnaros (2nd version) was just incredible.

But now things feel rather odd.

ilvl and gear is whacky. mythic+ within the first week rendered heroic raiding useless gear wise.

The incentive to raid coupled with punitive design is killing raiding.

Blizzard should rethink raiding. Should rethink gear, ilvl and titanforging.

The numbers of subscribers speak for themselves. Things are not well in wow.

[Coldkil]

Or you can just want all consumables. Why is it a problem for casters to want a magic oil for their weapon (enchantment), melee to want to use a whetstone (blacksmithing) etc. Engineering and Inscription can be used to duplicate utilities? Every tank would always run with a full stack of an engineering magnet consumable that casts Gorefiend's Grasp with a slightly increased CD or a slightly reduced radius.

Also, another problem with Alchemy is that they cover both flasks AND potions. Maybe only flasks should be about throughput and potions should be about utilities and selfhealing instead.

Yeah, that's definitely another good idea, though i like that every profession should bring something powerful only for yourself. Every professions should have a "flask" that covers for performance and restricted to it. Then there could be a bunch of consumables that everyone can use; maybe some overlap to avoid having to bring 7 different things in raid or share cd or whatever (like potions and engineering bombs and inscription scrolls) so you would even have the choice.

I'd avoid dabbing too much in the "give everyone class utilities". Ideally it's a great idea, but that would "kill" the need for those classes. Something on the line of raid buffs being covered by scrolls if needed is good.

[Coldkil]

If every profession has a flask equivalent, they either all have to be identical or we all have to have whatever is best for us based on simulations.
And something SHOULD kill the need for those classes. Bring the player, not the class. Fuck the all Blood DK Mythic+ meta from day one because of a single skill.

Agree on the second part but not on the first. If a baseline buff of X mainstat = Y dps, then the various profession related skills must match that Y value. Doesn't matter if it's an on-use or a proc or a flat buff.

Obviously it will require balance within a margin of error. I can agree that something like an on-use thing may be best on burst situation and a flat buff better on sustained single target damage and overall being always active is much easier to use, but imho it's a tradeoff. Also, changing a profession is not exactly easy as respeccing and while you keep all the recipes learned it's a quite big effort to level all professions on a single character just to hearth/retrain on a fight basis, especially if such "flask" is enchanted on a piece of gear thus requiring you to manage additional items just to cover that.

Doable, high effort/high reward activity that for sure world first guilds will pursue but the great majority of people will just stick with the profession of choice - again, granted the profession traits are reasonably balanced. Perfect equity won't ever be achieved.

(PS i want back my engineer saronite bombs).

Also question: should this "profession trait" be unique (as in you cannot have both BS and ENGI active) so farming professions can be taken freely without penalty or also farming ones should grant a similar perk? To avoid the Tailoring/Enchanting combo that basically has the farming profession baked in baseline (cloths drop, craft items, shard and enchant) and would grant dual perks - everyone should have dual or a single one to balance things out and avoid people forced into 2 crafting professions because farming ones are not good for raid performance.

(PPS i like this kind of discussion. makes me wonder if someone reads this and passes the feedback to Blizzard).

[Vargur]

Yeah, remove the mythic+ system from dungeons, I agree.
Replace 20 man with 25 man raids, remove normal difficulty (which is really just "flex").

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I’m genuinely curious what people think

No, you're NOT curious, you already knew what people think. Unless you're a week old player, and I can bet a billion euro you're not.
You just wanted to vent.

[Argorwal]

My Pennys worth........

I agree that there are too many flat difficulty modes. Activated hard modes with additional rewards for completing them are the way to go. The Ulduar Raid model really was the best in my opinion, and Blizzard have missed a trick by abandoning it. The Mythic "Race" should be a tournament invitational style affair, rather than something that uses a live game system.

I'd say LFR and Normal with appropriate rewards as a base, with additional difficulty and commensurate rewards achieved by activating hard modes by fulfilling pre-encounter conditions, effectively making up the heroic difficulty, and purely optional on a boss to boss basis. Have an achievement for clearing all hard mode bosses.

You really think there are 150+ unique and creative waves to activate hardmodes since we've had over 150 raid bosses since then?

They already duplicated hard mode triggering just within Ulduar itself and with Sarth (leave up adds, accept/reject NPC buffs/debuffs).

It also doesn't lend itself to harder dps checks unless you gimmick it with something like the heart everytime or only add adds. X-T's heart mechanic was fun because it was new and unique. Having something similar for the 20th time just isn't going to feel the same.

TLDR - Ulduar hardmode activation isn't sustainable without feeling super forced and awkward.

[Poshadin]

With the removal of tier sets and M+ dropping better gear, there is no need for mythic raids to even exist anymore.

I play an outlaw Rogue, doesn't raid. Just M+ I think I have one piece of heroic raid gear and it's like bracers or something from the weekly event last week. I grouped with another outlaw rogue in a 13 FH the other day. He was a mythic raider, he was about 4 ilvls ahead of me. But the big difference was his azerite gear, he had the BIS trait in all 3 pieces along with the raid trait. I being limited to M+ can't get that, and I can get one mythic quality azerite piece every 3 weeks or so (2 weeks if I really push it) But it's still a random piece, without super lucky RNG for me to get to where that guy was with azerite traits would take months. And he was a good 3-4k DPS above me the entire time. Mythic raiders will still be the best geared characters out there. Also my best weapon currently drops from Jaina (The Sword/Ring set)

[GreenJesus]

Agree on the second part but not on the first. If a baseline buff of X mainstat = Y dps, then the various profession related skills must match that Y value. Doesn't matter if it's an on-use or a proc or a flat buff.

Obviously it will require balance within a margin of error. I can agree that something like an on-use thing may be best on burst situation and a flat buff better on sustained single target damage and overall being always active is much easier to use, but imho it's a tradeoff. Also, changing a profession is not exactly easy as respeccing and while you keep all the recipes learned it's a quite big effort to level all professions on a single character just to hearth/retrain on a fight basis, especially if such "flask" is enchanted on a piece of gear thus requiring you to manage additional items just to cover that.

Doable, high effort/high reward activity that for sure world first guilds will pursue but the great majority of people will just stick with the profession of choice - again, granted the profession traits are reasonably balanced. Perfect equity won't ever be achieved.

(PS i want back my engineer saronite bombs).

Also question: should this "profession trait" be unique (as in you cannot have both BS and ENGI active) so farming professions can be taken freely without penalty or also farming ones should grant a similar perk? To avoid the Tailoring/Enchanting combo that basically has the farming profession baked in baseline (cloths drop, craft items, shard and enchant) and would grant dual perks - everyone should have dual or a single one to balance things out and avoid people forced into 2 crafting professions because farming ones are not good for raid performance.

(PPS i like this kind of discussion. makes me wonder if someone reads this and passes the feedback to Blizzard).

Or how about like FF14 the only thing limiting you from having all professions is time leveling them. It's time for the 2 profession limit to disappear.

[Coldkil]

Gathering professions used to have buffs and it should definitely be possible for them to have consumables that are unique to them. Just have a BoP consumable have a chance to drop while gathering.

I still think though it is better to have all professions create useful consumables. What you propose essentially means we would each have to create our own consumables and thus kills part of the expected function of professions; to facilitate trading.

Maybe my wording was bad but that's not what i had in mind - alchemy has 2 mandatory items: flasks and potions. The first are "long term" consumables and are basically "here's your more stuff" flat out. The second are actually consumables as i intend and they're basically something situational and requires proper use depending on situation.

My idea was to separate the two things:
- the "flask" should be a BoP item and peculiar for each profession; nets you a passive buff that may have a small edge on particular situations but are basically equivalent. Every profession can craft his own "flask" and the choice should be based on whatever you like more or what profession combo you find more suited (including "BUT SIMULATIONCRAFT TELLS ME THAT THIS DOES 2.7 MORE DPS").
- the "potion" is the tradable part that every profession has so market can still thrive; ideally every player wants some of everything because they're highly situational and can make a difference. Some of them need to overlap or be mutually exclusive to avoid a "you need everything or you're out" situation (example, if you use an alchemy potion you cannot use the magnet that does the aoe grab - bad example but you get the idea).

With these two things made distinct you'll have the best of both worlds.

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Or how about like FF14 the only thing limiting you from having all professions is time leveling them. It's time for the 2 profession limit to disappear.

But then you'll end with people just leveling up everything and raid leaders requiring people to have everything maxed and people complaining about "being forced leveling all the professions". I'd like that too but i don't think it would work in WoW given the structure the game has.

[Gaidax]

Or how about like FF14 the only thing limiting you from having all professions is time leveling them. It's time for the 2 profession limit to disappear.

Why? So you can complain how everyone is a carbon copy of everyone else?

[Sarethion]

I think a hybrid system could work.

Each profession would have 2 tiers - regular and mastery.

1) Regular profession:
- There's no limit to how many of them a character can have.
- Fairly quick to level up.
- Offer access to all essential stuff, like the raid potions.

The goal of this would be to allow everyone to easily craft whatever they need for their day-to-day gameplay. With a fast leveling speed and recipe unlock, you'd be able to max out all of your regular professions pretty fast and thus be fully self-reliant on all fronts that really matter. And since these professions would be available to everyone and easily obtainable, the market prices of the actual goods should be heavily reduced for people who don't really want to invest any time with professions due to an increase in supply.

2) Mastery profession:
- You can only pick one gathering and one crafting profession that you will master.
- Require a decent amount of time to level up and then a completion of a questline to get the mastery itself.
- You can change your mastery at any time, but it completely erases all your progress - i.e. if you wish to return to a previous mastery, you will have to level it up and do the questline again.

Mastery professions grant you:
- Higher tier of regular profession items - same power, cheaper to craft.
- Fun utility things that are in no way mandatory for any content that you can trade with other people.
- A couple of high utility items that can only be used by your character.

---

Let's take Alchemy as an example - item names and values are random, unless specified otherwise, all items are tradeable.

Regular Alchemist can craft:
- Potion of Divine Vigor - increases Stamina by 200 for 1 hour
- Potion of Giant Strength - increases Strength by 150 for 1 hour (and equivalents for other Agility and Intellect)
- Potion of Swifttness - increases movement speed by 20% for 30 seconds
- Potion of Mending - restores 20000 hit points instantly and 10000 over 5 seconds.

Master Alchemist can craft:
- All the potions that a regular Alchemist can craft, but 20-40-60% cheaper, depending on the recipe tier.
- Potion of Sharpened Senses - grants immunity to daze effects for 1 hour, bound on account
- Potion of Rapid Mind - increases experience gain by 10% for 1 hour, bound on account
- Potion of Invisibility - makes the player invisible to non-elite enemies for 5 seconds.
- Potion of Water Breathing - grants the ability to breath under water for 10 minutes.

These are just some examples, but you should get the idea - with the regular profession being quite fast to level up, you can easily gain access to all the essential stuff, so while you will need more materials to craft them, you should be able to be for the most part self-sufficient, whether by crafting these things yourself or buying them on the auction house - with everyone being able to craft these items, especially master alchemists who would be able to do it very cost-efficiently. they should not be very expensive.

So... All the essential stuff is available for everyone - why would anyone want to invest time into being a master alchemist?
- You can craft all the essential stuff much cheaper - it will save you the time or money needed to craft things for yourself or the Auction House.
- You get a couple of pretty strong utility crafts that your characters can use.
- You get some lower utility items that you can sell on the Auction House or use yourself.

To summarize, you have an easy access to all the essential stuff via a quickly leveled regular profession, while maintaining the fantasy of being able to specialize in something and get unique perks for investing time an effort into the mastery profession.

[temple1906]

You really think there are 150+ unique and creative waves to activate hardmodes since we've had over 150 raid bosses since then?

They already duplicated hard mode triggering just within Ulduar itself and with Sarth (leave up adds, accept/reject NPC buffs/debuffs).

It also doesn't lend itself to harder dps checks unless you gimmick it with something like the heart everytime or only add adds. X-T's heart mechanic was fun because it was new and unique. Having something similar for the 20th time just isn't going to feel the same.

TLDR - Ulduar hardmode activation isn't sustainable without feeling super forced and awkward.

I think this is kind of a cop out. You could very much take what are the raid achievments currently and turn them into hard mode activators. You can definitely make it so the players have to do out of the box stuff to activate the hard mode.

[Argorwal]

I think this is kind of a cop out. You could very much take what are the raid achievments currently and turn them into hard mode activators. You can definitely make it so the players have to do out of the box stuff to activate the hard mode.

Do you think it would be "fun" if the only way to fight challenging bossed was to jump through an arbitrary hoop every pull? Fun after boss 50? or pull 400?

[Pua]

I missed this reply but since it's still getting bumped: I interpreted you as replying to the first part of my post, not the latter half where I stated my opinion. And even then, all I really said was that I hope Blizzard decides to look at raid hierarchies in 9.0. But hey, if you want to interpret that as elitist simply because I don't agree with your genius notion that Mythic raiding "iz bads cuz nobodies dozeses it," knock yourself out. :^)

"I said nothing".

"Oops, he noticed that I did say something".

"I'll make up an accusation, because I've no actual argument".

I've never once said that Mythic raiding was bad because nobody does it, and your inability to understand what I am saying is identifying you quite nicely.

Well done, sir.

[Trend]

The numbers of subscribers speak for themselves. Things are not well in wow.

#1. You don't have the numbers. You have your own anecdotal experience or maybe you'll appeal to the fake leak that's been completely debunked. But unless you work for Blizzard in a mid to senior management role, you don't have the actual sub numbers.

#2. You are confusing correlation and causation even if the numbers are down. Numbers could be going down regardless of how the raids are handled for reasons unrelated. One such reason is that it's a 15 year old game that cannot possibly stay fresh forever. The reverse was true when sub numbers were going up. Increased subs were never proof they were doing everything right with raids.

[Relapses]

"I said nothing".

"Oops, he noticed that I did say something".

"I'll make up an accusation, because I've no actual argument".

I've never once said that Mythic raiding was bad because nobody does it, and your inability to understand what I am saying is identifying you quite nicely.

Well done, sir.

Christ dude, I never even directly replied to you in the first place. Can you please accept there's a possibility there exist people whose opinions differ from your own? No? Okay. Then it's not worth wasting my time or yours even responding to this so I'll let you smugly claim whatever manufactured victory you're apparently hoping to achieve here.

Peace.

[Coldkil]

Ah so e.g. Alchemy would have flasks and pots, blacksmithing would have BoP belt buckles and whetstones?

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If the professions do not have a "selfish" bonus and leveling professions is costly and time consuming, people will just expect you to buy things, not to craft them yourself.

Spot on on both points. That would make both all profession useful and not disrupt trading (hell, maybe it will be even better as all resources and crafts will have a purpose).