Mythic is too tight, guilds are dying

[Accendor]

The ICC buff was good
stacking buff that made life a bit easier for those of us who arent as good or dont have the time and it could be turned off for those 'we are too leet to use the buff' idiots

Would enjoy seeing this used a bit more often

The icc system literally was the worst system ever. I will reneger to this day how we spend 6 weeks on putricide, had multiple <5% tries. First 5% nerf kicked in, next raid we oneshotted him. There was no joy in Teamspeak after the kill. We actualy felt like something was stolen from us.
Could not justify to disable the buff either, because that would just be stupid. In the end the raidgroup disbanded and over half of the players quit the game.
Never again.

Just tune the damn bosses how they are intented and not for the top 50 guilds right frol the start and give us a meaningful and consistent gear progression system. I had something like 70% BiS gear before I even entered EP, of course I dont feel a increase in power.

[Doffen]

You asketh for help, blizzard gaveth.

[Loveliest]

I've been helping a friend with their guild's Mythic (since now it's crossrealm) and since working on Orgozoa I realized one thing. The boss isn't overly tuned but the lack of progress is due to the challenge of getting 20 regular people:
1. They manage to get 20 people, but it's never the same in the same roles
2. People go on alts to fulfill different roles depending on this and some are not geared properly because of having to split gear over several chars
3. They have to waste time still farming heroic, to get some gear for these alts and some potential replacements
4. They actually don't work on the progression all that much, people still need gear because of the reasons above so they don't extend; some weeks they can't get past Ashavane
5. DPS isn't all that high because of this; it could be if everyone was geared properly and had level 70 neck, but they're not (for the above reasons)
6. Some people are just there for the numbers, they don't work at all for their gear. Yesterday there was some carry new guildy with 350 and 370 weapons. You can get great gear from M+. Even from world quests. But 19 people and an undergeared rogue is better than having just 19 people.
7. Seeing the boss every two weeks or so makes it that you can't really practice.

I know that 20 number sounds good on paper. But in this day an age, people aren't that dedicated anymore. You either have to have raids that are extremely easy so you can make do with just about anyone (Classic-style) or just lower the number of people required for Mythic.
Or just accept that that's as far as the guild can go and not expect to get past the 3 initial easy bosses (maybe just 1-2 more).

[Polarthief]

Nah. It's fine that it's hard. The attrition is the problem. Used to be that we got a bit more breathing room as the tier went on. Now we stagnate on the spot and run against the wall every week until we have the picture perfect try, because nothing else will ever make the cut.

This, and it's what killed my guild, plus too many kept being late/bailing/flat out of quit due to Classic. The constant grind of M+ weekly, keeping up with AP, essences, etc definitely didn't help either.

I'm personally more than capable of doing fights, but it's next to impossible to find a guild that doesn't have some sort of problem unless you're at the way top, and kills never felt satisfying to me (besides end-of-tier bosses like G'huun and Jaina) because they only happened when the stars aligned and all the problem people, at the same time, didn't fuck up/didn't get targeted by mechanics. I was *actively pissed* when we killed Orgozoa and my co-officers called me crazy (and look who is crazy now for not listening ).

TBH I'm shocked we even have 100 alliance guilds who have killed Azshara for Hall of Fame at this point Mythic raiding is tanking hardcore and I'm sure Blizzard's aware, but choosing to do nothing but continuing the problem, including not allowing cross-faction play in SL and keeping the awful method for essences (some of those take a MONTH of just literally waiting due to time-gates!).

PS: Do *not* get me started on the parse monkeys who fail at every mechanic then grunt like apes because they got a high parse on a kill they didn't get targeted by anything (and some people even stroke their ego over it). I hope players like these rot in hell because they're an absolute scourge on raiding communities. It is not hard at all to get a blue~purple parse and do mechanics correctly.

[GringoD]

The icc system literally was the worst system ever. I will reneger to this day how we spend 6 weeks on putricide, had multiple <5% tries. First 5% nerf kicked in, next raid we oneshotted him. There was no joy in Teamspeak after the kill. We actualy felt like something was stolen from us.
Could not justify to disable the buff either, because that would just be stupid. In the end the raidgroup disbanded and over half of the players quit the game.
Never again.

Just tune the damn bosses how they are intented and not for the top 50 guilds right frol the start and give us a meaningful and consistent gear progression system. I had something like 70% BiS gear before I even entered EP, of course I dont feel a increase in power.

100% this. I'd rather organically get stronger than the devs turning down difficulty for me.
They really shot themselves in the foot with benthic and kinda killed the mythic reward system with M+. Then they tuned the bosses around people entering the raid with op gear and barely any power progression left.

[Lumineus]

Well .... if I were the one designing the mythic only 10% people in game would ever be able to complete mythic.

Grats on designing Normal mode? Like, way to prove the OP's point, I guess.

For reference, Cutting Edge completion is sitting around seven tenths of one percent.

[Skavee]

I'm all for having hard content. I however feel that the issue is the gap between a top 5 and top 2000 guild. If you take the entire player base, top 2000 would be what, 2% ?

I'd carefully say that content only able to be done by 2% of the player base means that content is hard.

Yet if the difficulty would be adjusted towards that 2% the top 5 guilds would have no incentive, race to world 1st good bye.

I feel nerfs should come in more rapidly, just as first 10 guilds clear mythic. And % adjustments happen each other week

[Loveliest]

It's funny how everyone is trying to respond to this by pushing their own issue on it.
> it's because of titanforging, worst thing ever!
> it's because of the essences, worst system ever!
> it's because of the grind for the world quests!

The biggest issue is getting dedicated reliable people - the people who can actually show up every raid. They don't even need to farm, just do an M+ per week and maybe some emmisaries once in a while. Also, to have at least the people who can provide buffs - a mage, a warr, a priest and maybe a lock for healthstones - it seems even getting that is an issue.
Cause we're not talking here about world first, we're talking about the guilds still struggling after all this time. And these guild still need gear even from the first few bosses.

[D3cadent]

since m+ overtook mythic raiding as the hardest content in the game....

loooooooooooooooooooooooool

[Loveliest]

Could not justify to disable the buff either, because that would just be stupid. In the end the raidgroup disbanded and over half of the players quit the game.

ICC was that one raid everyone pugged left and right. Everyone had the legendary, everyone had the trinket from the 4th boss. Wrath was extremely popular too. In ICC we could also have gear from 25m used in 10m progression and no one but the big guilds complained about it. Everyone else seemed fine overgearing the shit out of it.

Maybe you're right but it seems VERY unlikely that a raid group would disband and players would quit because of a buff that made things easier.
I think the guildies just got fed up wiping 6 weeks on putricide - they probably didn't want to get stuck on the next boss. In this day and age, if you wipe for 3 weeks on a boss in a progression group (and not "friends and family"), it's automatically a raid / guild disband. 6 weeks, can you imagine, hitting a wall like that in a raid like ICC? I'm amazed they even stuck for that long.

[Jowany]

You're 100% right regardless of what the "git gud" circle jerkers say. 700 guilds have killed Azshara worldwide, that's a pathetic number for a game with supposedly millions of players. We're almost back to Naxx 40 clear numbers which at the time Blizz said they would never want to repeat. Well it took a while but we're basically back full circle. The combination of a terrible expansion, punishing raid design and out of raid grind requirements have basically put mythic raiding on its deathbed. It will be telling what Blizz does going forward in Shadowlands. If they even want to continue to support raiding or make a switch to smaller group focused content (obviously M+ is already a huge step towards that).

You cant compare naxx 40 and 4 difficulty raid.. if you want, you have to count every azshara kill on every difficulty. So now its around 26k (!!!) guilds with 8/8 (little bit less, because big number killed it normal and HC, so we can say 15k + guilds killed 8/8, counting 20 players in guild you have 300k players, but its bigger number in reality). You cant count mythic as only difficulty, you have to count every difficulty kill (maybe except LFR). If your guild cant beat that difficulty, you can lower it anytime.

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Agreed.

The person who was on earlier about "grinds" and such hit the nail on the head for me. I only want to raid log because I only want to dedicate maybe 8 hrs a week to wow. I only have time for so much games now-a-days and that means I want to only eat the steak when I do play. I spent plenty of time to earn my right IMO. Over 500 days of /played across my 12 year period. I had the skill required and I was fine hitting brick walls with my ham-fisted guild members who had difficulty with mechanics, but I was NOT fine with lagging behind on parses because my neck wasn't 65... or I didn't use benthic gear... or I don't have rank 3 of some broken essence because I can't stomach needing to do mechagon 5 weeks in a row (though I could just do 5 back to back no problem).

So raiding on this level is not for you anymore or you cant want get CE anymore. Mythic should be (and I think is) designed around dedicated players, who can spend their time on grind, preparation etc. To be honest, grind for neck 70 and needed essences rank 3 wasn't so big. I am working guys and I am sitting on neck 70 almost 2 months now. If you want just raid log, you will end up with 5/8 maybe 6/8 or just with curve. You cant expect big reward for small efford.

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I will never understand why people are against content being designed for the top 5%. No sarcasm. No joke. There is plenty of content for the rest of the player base. Why can't there be content specifically for the high end players? Leave the system alone. Its fine as is.

Amen.. You can raid tier on normal or HC if you want raid that tier.. if you want play mythic you have to be good enough and your guildmates too, or look for better guild if you want beat mythic and you are good enough for it. Up to 1000 guilds with CE is fine.

[TaurenNinja]

Mythic raiding is supposed to be hard/exhausting and preparation/grind-intensive, so it's natural that not many guilds will be able to clear it within its patch lifecycle (i.e. reach the Cutting Edge achievement). It doesn't make sense at all to look at popularity in a mode that is designed only for the most dedicated players/guilds.
So no, it's not a problem that Mythic raiding is "unpopular". That is necessary, otherwise it wouldn't be hardcore. If you want more popular raiding, do Heroic and below.

What seems to be the problem here, rather, is the following (and only the following):
- General decline in subscription numbers (loss of interest in the game due to game age/life changes/boredom) combined with quite a few players trying out Classic => guilds struggling to keep a healthy roster
- Fewer decent players starting out in high-end raiding, because the game is less popular and especially young players probably won't even start with WoW these days. Older players step out from high-end raiding due to less time in life for gaming => guilds struggling to keep a healthy roster
- Lack of meaningful rewards in high-end raiding. This problem has always been a part of the game, it has recently gotten bigger though because these days you can get really good items also from much less time-consuming 5-man-activities and there's no class set gear anymore so gear-wise the only reason to visit a raid is to get some very specific pieces, for a lot of other gear you don't have to visit the raid anymore). And for the very high-end guilds, the problem is that there's no money prizes or similar stuff involved. The PvE race to world first is purely a community thing with no real tournament behind it, although maybe there should be, considering that it takes a lot of time, dedication and skill. M+ generally stole the show here a bit, since it's much more viewer friendly (easier to understand what's going on without needing to have several book pages of patch-specific boss and class knowledge stored inside your head) and there ARE actually tournaments for M+ compared to M raiding.

[Todesbote]

loooooooooooooooooooooooool

depending on the definition of hard he is right. you can reach a point in m+ where it becomes impossible because it scales way past the point where it is mathematically possible to beat it. this is not the case with mythic raiding. however i agree that this does not apply to 99% of the player base and so it could be argued that mythic raiding is harder than m+ for the majority of players (mechanics, time spent, organization in a guild).

[Nitros14]

Mythic raiding is supposed to be hard/exhausting and preparation/grind-intensive.

Nonsense. From at least WOTLK through WOD it wasn't grind intensive in the least. You showed up to raid with some easily purchased consumables. All your gear came through raiding itself and there were no levels or essences or titanforges to grind. You didn't have to farm the same 5-mans the entire expansion weekly. Even in BC it was far less grind intensive than now.

I mostly raid logged in BC. I had to spend maybe one night farming demons for shadow resist gear for Shahraz. You even got your flasks through token drops in the instances.

I actually miss Warlords of Draenor because it was the last expansion you could just raid without all this extra bullshit.

I suspect there's others like me looking at the tanking participation numbers for raids. From Hellfire Citadel in WoD to Eternal Palace in BFA you've lost half the raiding playerbase looking at wowprogress numbers.

[Gorsameth]

For me it was entirely a combination between what Skroe talked about (excellent post sir, pleasure to read) and the constant grind.

I used to go hard for a few weeks when a new expansion/patch came out and then turned to mostly raid logging and I enjoyed other games on the side. I played WoW to raid, and some work had to be done outside of raids but it was pretty limited. Not anymore since Legion.

And the change in raid design really kicked in for me in Tomb of Sargeras, fights became more punishing, progress became more and more of a slog and after Uldir I threw in the towel and quit. Thought about coming back for the last tier after Shadowlands announcement but seeing the wall of AP and Essence grind infront of me I said fuck it and didn't bother.
Maybe i'll try again when Shadowlands actually releases. Maybe I wont, would be the first expansion I missed in WoW.

[LuminaL]

They can always not do mythic, your view has made a lot of idiots think they are much better than they are. And now you have to live with it. This will change give it time.

Just give them nothing, if they whine say the obvious.

"git gud"

WoW didn't die in naxx it'll be fine

"git gud" wont happen because we already saw what happens when the difficulty goes over the players limits.
do you honestly not remember how Cata raiding wiped all the PUGS and half the guilds because of how hard raids were? soon you wont be able to find enough player for any Mythic or M+ stuff it it goes like this.

[Caprias]

This is and always has been a raid encounter and mechanic design problem.

Usually you should always be able to outgear an encounter, this should never mean that you are able to simply ignore core mechanics, but at least sooth the lethality of them and be able to do more mistakes without wiping. (simply: gear should make you stronger and let you survive more stuff, more news at 11)

If however a mechanic is a instakill/wipe mechanic (especially if there are 3+ of them) there simply is no outgearing it and i think this design has increased a lot in the last years, at least the amount of it.

[Firebeast]

It's fine... also what grinding?

We're clearing Mythic raids for many years at strict 2 raids a week 3 hours each schedule. Outside of that we're free for all, we just require members to complete one m+10 per week and even that we dropped nowadays, because it's largely pointless now.

We don't have any AP or shit like that requirements and at this point it's easy as pie anyway. So pray tell what grind is there? Food is cheap as fuck, gems and enchants are cheap as fuck and flasks are provided by guild. What do you need to grind there for god's sake?

Git gud.

And always the infamous git gud. You absolutely make no damn sense at all. Everything is a grind. You will have to grind new things when 8.3 drops. Seriously how stupid are you??????

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Perhaps one of the huge problems is the gear you get from M+, people feel there isn't that need to raid for the best gear anymore. That's why people don't show up. Getting raid kills used to mean something before M+, no so much anymore

[boz0]

Mythic raiding is supposed to be hard/exhausting and preparation/grind-intensive, so it's natural that not many guilds will be able to clear it within its patch lifecycle (i.e. reach the Cutting Edge achievement). It doesn't make sense at all to look at popularity in a mode that is designed only for the most dedicated players/guilds.

Hard and for dedicated players, certainly. But why the heck should it be exhausting or grind-intensive? It's a game, not an Ultra Marathon.

Disclaimer : I'm playing in a very average, casual guild that usually clears HC, doesn't have enough raiders for Mythic (and wouldn't get past 2nd or 3rd boss if we had anyway), and that's fine with me, I don't feel like I'm missing out on Mythic.

[Koloss]

There are many factors to it.

I've been an officer and kind of a leader in a mythic raiding guild in Legion and start of BFA, currently not active.

One thing is that top 2000 guilds have more stable population in regards to staying subscribed. Of course it happens in the better guilds too, but less dedicated people get tired more easily and more likely to not do a tier until the end and just return in next tier with new energies. So many lower level guilds have to merge. Like general WoW population also halves in like 2 months after expac release.

Other thing is more obvious, it's hard to get the silver medals all the time. I mean our guild usually reached the last boss of a tier, pulled some on the last one, but didn't have enough time for it. So from tier to tier from year to year we worked but never got a CE, always been like 1-2 weeks far from it, which can be quite frustrating and realising it can lead to burnouts. Ofc this only happened to our guild, maybe yours could get dem CEs, i dunno.

The fact that this happens comes from the nature of these kind of guilds most of the time i think. Guilds that don't beat the tier in time but are very close to it usually are not bad. Which doesn't mean that players there are worse than in top guilds, but more likely there is a strong core of let's say 10-15 people and there are the other people. Realizing this can lead to the better players getting to a guild having more balanced people (in skill i mean) where CE is possible. Or if they are too attached to the guild they simple unsub for a time (mainly if the player wants to stay in non-english speaking guild).

What effects these things in a bad way if the raid has a mid-boss which is almost as hard as the last ones, so people get really tired until they reach the last ones (Mistress in TOS was like this for us, i don't know but as i heard Ashvane is like that now?).

Some people pointed out that staying competitve for such long time can also be hard. It's kinda a factor too, though i think people sometimes take it way harder than they should in a non-top guild. I mean i've never farmed AP but i always could stay competitve by just doing the raids and doing weekly M+s. Maybe BFA is more grindy, i don't know it, but sometimes it's just in people's minds, which is the result of inifinite progression systems and repeatable gear acquiring.