Raiding needs to be less hardcore

[Battlebeard]

There were 9/9HC pugs on the release week, clearing it with average raid ilvl below 390. Some pug groups clear 7/9M and 8/9M these days.

I don't wanna be rude, but I call utter BS for the sake of arguing.

We are talking PUGS now, not orgranized non guild groups. We talk NEW people EVERY raid without voice communication. We are talking groups you find in the premade finder at any time without any preparation ahead.

But even with organized pugs, I doubt any of them clear that many mythic bosses today.

[Drusin]

Perhaps the mods here could help you out by banning your mmo-c account, so you don't "feel" so "forced" to do stuff anymore.

1. I have more than 1
2. What does that have to do with wow?

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1) No one's forcing anyone. No one has a gun to anyone's head. He can literally refuse and/or leave any time he wants.

Don't need a gun to someones head. You want "stuff"? Need money for it right? Then you're forced to work. Same with gaming, want [game stuff]? Then you're forced to do whatever it takes to get it.

2) It does matter what the guild thinks, because if a leader says something and 19 people refuse, good luck. Even top 100 guilds often only need 1 alt if that, many of the top 300s don't bother with any of that nonsense except for some alt raid fun and they certainly aren't going to be forcing people to get max neck on 1+ character.

I think you misread what I wrote

It doesn't matter what you think, it's what matters to the raid/guild lead

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and then he is free to change guild or make his own.

Yep

if it forces you its already beyond the point of addiction because force isnt fun anymore.

You're forced from day 1

nobody forces you to raid anything.

Want gear from a raid? You're forced to raid then.



Doing something you don't want to do, even to reach a goal is force.

[ID811717]

We are talking PUGS now, not orgranized non guild groups. We talk NEW people EVERY raid without voice communication. We are talking groups you find in the premade finder at any time without any preparation ahead.

This is exactly what these pugs are. Except they all obviously require you to join discord for voice comms and follow raid leader's calls. And they require that you have watched boss guides ahead, or you risk getting booted out for failing on trivial mechanics.

You can open LFG on week 1 of any HC raid, and you would see full pugs at many different progress levels. On Sun/Mon/Tue of the first BoD week, you could see at least 2-3 pugs at 8/9HC up throughout most of the day. They required 8/9HC experience to join (often forced to take 6/9HC players because of limited choice), and you better be ready to wipe an entire day before seeing a kill, not leave after 2 wipes.

There are many players who pug a full HC clear in the 1st lockout of every tier. This is a massive time investment because it sometimes takes an entire day to kill a difficult boss (there are easy tiers: full Antorus clear in week 1 only took 1-2 evenings), and even the most dedicated players sometimes need to leave, so you keep replacing people and relearning some mechanics. But for the good pug players it's worth the effort to always stay ahead of the curve. If you pugged a raid in week 1 in gear below ilvl 390, you will never have problems finding a full clear pug starting from week 2.

You're much better off joining a guild, but whatever floats your boat. The advantage of the HC pug route is that it requires 0 commitment from you outside of a single progress week.

Here is one example of a full pug group who killed Jaina HC on Sunday of the first week with average raid ilvl 387. The raid leader of this group (Oomdam) pugs curve on week 1 of every raid tier. If you check their roster for the first pull of the day and the last (22nd) pull of the day, only 7 of the initial 13 DPS players stayed till the kill. The rest had to go or were replaced. And here is their first Jaina HC pull on Sun morning right after they killed Stormwall HC. Only 4 people from the first Jaina HC pull were on Jaina HC kill 8 hours later. I hope it puts to rest any suspicions that it's a well-organized group of friends rather than a full pug.

But even with organized pugs, I doubt any of them clear that many mythic bosses today.

There are many pugs like that. Here is one example. You can check how different their rosters were for first Mekka and Stormwall mythic kills.
There are two ways to go with such pugs. You can be a mythic raider with god experience, and play the revolving door game by joining random mythic pugs on random alts on weeks when you are bored. Or you can just be a skilled player and convince the pug leader that you're worth a shot. You join such pug at the beginning of a tier, and come back every single week to progress the next mythic bosses together.

Non-weekly (one-off) 6/9M mythic raid pugs for alts of mythic raiders are very common these days as well.

[psyquest]

That's a fine alternative.

1x character
1x mythic 10+ ( 30min x week )
1x Attendance ( Y hours per X days per week ), so maybe from 3/4 to 9/12 hours per week.

The problems could just be that Rushing Azerite when the new season starts ( or if you plan to just increase it by doing raids and weekly m+, it could be slower than intended ) could need you more time, or eventually, if you don't plan to bend to azerite farm, put yourself in a bad spot for your raid ( in terms of performances ). Eventually you could/should help with catch up by doing wf daily quests ( or at least part of em ).

I think the problem is people have too high an expectation for their guild. I have raided hardcore top 10 EU and it requires a lot. Now our only goal is cleaning the mythic before a new raid comes in. We actually dont give a shit if we are 10th or 20th of the server. Just this goal is enough as a focus.

Do you need all traits etc to do it? Nope. it helps but most bosses with do in our time do not require that. It mostly require competent gameplay and good strategy. I find that when we arrive towards the harder bosses, people in the raid have the required amount of azerite anyway...

[Marrilaife]

I would only say for them to stop making end bosses take 300+ pulls

Too bad they're balancing bosses around method and their twitch.tv viewership. Can't have bosses killed in 1 day because the viewership will be over too soon. If you aren't at any close level to those guilds, have fun banging your head against the wall. Prime example Crucible, even after all the nerfs. Atm my server has close to 20 guilds that killed Jaina. How many guilds cleared Crucible mythic? Zero. How many killed first boss? One. After 5 weeks of attempts and forsaking Jaina reclear so basically losing out all the mounts. And second boss is 2-3 times harder than the first.

[crono14]

Less hardcore? Raiding takes no time at all nowadays. If you are trying to push for ranking in top region and world and complaining, then maybe you need to cut back on doing that. You can raid 9 hours a week or even less and still clear content when it is relevant. I would probably analyze what you want out of raiding and adjust your schedule accordingly. There is almost no point gear wise in raiding mythic anymore due to TF/WF system and how easily gear is obtainable these days.

[Otimus]

There just needs to be more important, valuable, and fun group activities in the game besides raiding and mythic+ that are worth doing more than once. That's all. Unless you really love super easy mindless stuff, or I guess leveling a pile of alts or PVP, the game really doesn't have much worth else to captivate people. That's been WoW's problem for ages, though. They're unwilling to make any other part matter, be rewarding or fun, except the very end.

Scenarios could have been this. But they abandoned the original concepts entirely instead of really working out the kinks. Which eventually lead to.... whatever it is they've decided island expeditions are. (Which I guess were good in theory, but massively undercooked and underdeveloped. They also barely feel worth doing.)

[Khallid]

Last two expansions the insane farming required for artifact power grinding is outrageous AND consumable farming in top of that.
I'm fine with gearing 2 raid ready alts if there would be no AP.

You could try just having one character. AP grind is a non-issue without alts. There's plenty of guilds that don't do alts.

Sure, you won't be on the top ranked anymore, but if you're complaining about it being too hardcore, then dropping to a less hardcore environment is the obvious answer.

[prwraith]

It's not really hardcore. You just can't bring 19 chimpanzees with you and hope to win.

For say mythic jaina you can really only afford 1 chimp. Then again getting the other 19 apes to not fuck up for even a single one of the 400+ pulls would be fantastic.

[Battlebeard]

This is exactly what these pugs are. Except they all obviously require you to join discord for voice comms and follow raid leader's calls. And they require that you have watched boss guides ahead, or you risk getting booted out for failing on trivial mechanics.

You can open LFG on week 1 of any HC raid, and you would see full pugs at many different progress levels. On Sun/Mon/Tue of the first BoD week, you could see at least 2-3 pugs at 8/9HC up throughout most of the day. They required 8/9HC experience to join (often forced to take 6/9HC players because of limited choice), and you better be ready to wipe an entire day before seeing a kill, not leave after 2 wipes.

There are many players who pug a full HC clear in the 1st lockout of every tier. This is a massive time investment because it sometimes takes an entire day to kill a difficult boss (there are easy tiers: full Antorus clear in week 1 only took 1-2 evenings), and even the most dedicated players sometimes need to leave, so you keep replacing people and relearning some mechanics. But for the good pug players it's worth the effort to always stay ahead of the curve. If you pugged a raid in week 1 in gear below ilvl 390, you will never have problems finding a full clear pug starting from week 2.

You're much better off joining a guild, but whatever floats your boat. The advantage of the HC pug route is that it requires 0 commitment from you outside of a single progress week.

Here is one example of a full pug group who killed Jaina HC on Sunday of the first week with average raid ilvl 387. The raid leader of this group (Oomdam) pugs curve on week 1 of every raid tier. If you check their roster for the first pull of the day and the last (22nd) pull of the day, only 7 of the initial 13 DPS players stayed till the kill. The rest had to go or were replaced. And here is their first Jaina HC pull on Sun morning right after they killed Stormwall HC. Only 4 people from the first Jaina HC pull were on Jaina HC kill 8 hours later. I hope it puts to rest any suspicions that it's a well-organized group of friends rather than a full pug.



There are many pugs like that. Here is one example. You can check how different their rosters were for first Mekka and Stormwall mythic kills.
There are two ways to go with such pugs. You can be a mythic raider with god experience, and play the revolving door game by joining random mythic pugs on random alts on weeks when you are bored. Or you can just be a skilled player and convince the pug leader that you're worth a shot. You join such pug at the beginning of a tier, and come back every single week to progress the next mythic bosses together.

Non-weekly (one-off) 6/9M mythic raid pugs for alts of mythic raiders are very common these days as well.

I do believe you about that Oomdam guy, and these groups might exist, but they are nearly impossible to get invited to.

But more importantly, go ingame right now, open premade finder and see the groups there. I didn't see a single one who had killed more than 6 bosses. And regardless, try joining any pug in the finder, even the ones that say "9/9M leader, checking rio score" etc, the elitistic ones. I have never killed more than 4 bosses with ANY pug. And I tried in what, 50 different groups since BoD release. Nothing. Never. Nada.

And I speak with alot of people ingame and on discord servers etc and they all conclude with this: "don't pug". I'd say at least 90% of all groups don't get more than 4-5 bosses, and the ones who clear all 9 is less than 1%.

"So join the 1% groups!" you might say, well, I have 412 equipped and a few HC clears from friend/guildrun (guild only do HC on saturdays now so can't join them anymore). This is decent experience and should be enough for more clears. But what chance do I have against people with up to 420ilvl with 9/9M, cause those are the only ones who get invited to the pro pugs today.

[glowpipe]

With this you mean mythic raiding needs to be less hardcore i assume ? Cause raiding in wow has never been more accessible then it is now

[potis]

With this you mean mythic raiding needs to be less hardcore i assume ? Cause raiding in wow has never been more accessible then it is now

He means he wants to go back to raid logging days, where nothing was needed to be farmed apart from gear.

You played a bit more the first 2 weeks, played a bit more averagely a month and then raid logged for the next 5 months.

Legion and BFA dont allow that and i have seen many guilds fail because people kept trying to raid log, and demand progression at the same time while they take 30% more damage than a raid that farmed their neck levels and got the defensive traits unlocked.

This was especially true early in Uldir for BFA, and Nighthold for Legion.

Nighthold was tuned with the mind people would have at least unlocked their 35 traits to get the 10% HP and damage.

I know at least 2 guilds,averagely 50 people that quit over the fact they had to log on to grind AP, and they quit back in Legion.

I do miss those days sometimes but in reality its also irrelevant complaining, you just do emissaries for 1 hour every 3 days only focusing the AP ones and you will be ahead just fine.

[Spotnick]

Like it or not, that artifact grind is probably the biggest mythic raider killer of all time.

It literally destroyed guilds, because some people wanted to raid log and other push their artifact to the max, that is a known fact.. some raiding guilds suddenly had issues with people with a lot more free time grinding like crazy and leaving people behind who had limited time to play the game, but who were perfectly fine before.

I know I stopped mythic raiding because I was stick of being behind in artifact power and I couldn't honestly justify doing stuff that I don't enjoy (world quests and even worst now..Island Expeditions) just to keep up with some people in the guild with way too much free time. It's a game, I do it to have fun, so I went to push mythic+ instead with friends who don't raid anymore for pretty much the same reason and we don't care about AP and have our fun.

Meanwhile my other friends are trying some gimmick with paragon boxes to maximize their AP and all bunch of nonsense like that..

Seriously, I would have preferred to go back to the consumable grinding days of Vanilla than the damned AP... at least you can decided to go nuts and stack then and take a break.. this AP non sense has no limit.. so for some people with OCD they just keep farming.

[Usernameforforums]

Look, it’s simple math here. A top 50 guild is going to put in more hours and set aside work regardless if the content is more or less hardcore.

The only way I can see it becoming less hardcore with top 50 utilizing less time is the removal of mythic and heroic staying the same in terms of difficulty. This will never happen but if it does it will be the final nail in the coffin.

I can only recommend joining a lesser core guild with guys with your mindset

[prwraith]

He means he wants to go back to raid logging days, where nothing was needed to be farmed apart from gear.
.

We're kind of IN raid logging days.

If you're not extending you get plenty of azerite clearing mythic. And plenty of gear. Plus someone in the guild can bring feasts and flasks for everyone.

Short of pots you don't need to do much other than not be braindead.

[potis]

We're kind of IN raid logging days.

If you're not extending you get plenty of azerite clearing mythic. And plenty of gear. Plus someone in the guild can bring feasts and flasks for everyone.

Short of pots you don't need to do much other than not be braindead.

Not at the start of each major patch whenever they do something like this.

Any semi-decent player will farm their neck up to whatever its needed for the next tier.

In Legion it was to unlock the 10%/10% for Nighthold, then it was the secondary wheel that had OP traits later in the game, etc.

At the start of BFA it was exactly the same, there were many guilds facing the problem of a few people had unlocked all their traits with the defensive included and they would take up to 30% less damage during some big AoE, where someone else would die, because they didnt have Resounding Protection x2 for 25k more shield, and a Gemhide for 10% reduction from AoE after the first hit through the avoidance it provides or many similar things per class.

I have seen it with other guilds, saw it in my own casual friends guild, as example a 75 energy, Tantrum from HC Grong early on aka 4 months ago+, would take the 2-3 players that had unlocked level 38 neck (Therefor the defensive traits) to 20-30%, while it would kill off the combination of lesser geared players + no defensive traits.

That is huge for any guild and not minimal at all.

Obviously it doesnt require insane farming, as i said before, 1h every 3 days and you should be up to par, but thats with combination of actually doing your islands, and generally weekly things and not slacking.

These are things, raid loggers dont wanna do.

Raid loggers wanna gear up for a few weeks by doing whatever is necessary and then raid log, pay some chinese for gold or do some herbing/alchemy main and voila.

And they had that from Vanilla to Legion, and then Blizzard told them "Yeah, you have to grind this thing to be able to keep up".

It all comes down to how you view the game,i have no reason to farm AP, i do it because i dont enjoy my character being considered in the "cesspool".

Just because i gave up "serious raiding" in the top 100 scene at early Cata, doesnt mean my mentality as a player has change, i will do the maximum in the minimal time required to keep my character competitive without exceeding my limits.

[SinR]

Less Hardcore than LFR???

is this even possible?

[exochaft]

With this you mean mythic raiding needs to be less hardcore i assume ? Cause raiding in wow has never been more accessible then it is now

The most inaccessible raiding content is mythic content... and it's mostly because it's server-only and raidID lockouts. I'd be happier if mythic was treated like heroic/normal raiding, where you could pug immediately and not get screwed if you enter an in-progress mythic raid only to get locked out from doing the raid all week (at one point, Blizz even allowed you to enter an in-progress raid and not get saved if you didn't kill a boss... but that was too nice I guess?).

The biggest hurdle for mythic raiding or building a mythic raiding guild is having a competent and reliable roster. With how the server system is, the chance of being a successful full-clear mythic raid becomes exponentially harder if you are not on the very few high/full population servers. Even when the system goes cross realm, you can't even help friends out who are trying to mythic raid because of raidID lockouts instead of loot lockouts, requiring multiple alts to even help friends out. It also sucks for trialing, as you can basically only trial one guild a week max, and if you are currently in a mythic raiding guild trying to trial a different one, you have to screw over your current guild to even trial. It's basically a hot mess from this standpoint.

Every time this gets brought up, all I see Blizz reps say is "Server identity!", but I think we're at the point where that doesn't matter in WoW anymore to where it's more of a hassle than a quality of life thing. Blizz could keep their Hall of Fame and even make the guild achievements guild-only while allowing cross-realm mythic immediately and changing the mythic raid lockout system, thus artificially keeping the "server identity" while simultaneously allowing mythic raiding to be more accessible to more people. Heck, the tech even exists still to make that happen, but Blizz has been super stubborn about this.

However, whenever I see the cost of how much it is to server/faction transfer, I increasingly think that's a prime motivator in keeping the status quo of mythic raiding.

[Asrialol]

You only "need" to grind AP if you're pushing for world firsts. If not, then it's not necessary.

[La]

You only "need" to grind AP if you're pushing for world firsts. If not, then it's not necessary.

Yeah, but look at the OPs signature. "Multi gladiator. former top 20 raider, currently in top 50 guild"

Apparently he seems to think that the majority of the game, or even the majority of mythic raiders, have the same restrictions that he has to deal with. The amount of CE guilds that don't have anything but bare basic Azerite neck requirements far outweigh the ones that do. And even the ones that do will probably just, at most, prioritize Azerite armors to those who have the levels. Do IE every week, you'll literally be where you need to be for the traits.

So hey OP, why don't you just find a guild that doesn't make everything seem too easy, or places restrictions on you so you feel forced to play the game the way a group of people dictates to you? No one is interested in making raiding balanced around you. You're literally a hardcore raider complaining about raiding being hardcore, and then giving ways to make it harder lol