Mythic is too tight, guilds are dying

[GringoD]

Mythic progress is just to tight. I'm happy that the cutting edge can have a difficult race, but us guilds floating around top 2000 are bursting at the seams.
It started in BoD and continued this tier. My guild has just stopped progress after achieving the Court kill. It's just too exhausting.

We're not alone in this apparently. It feels like the 1500 to 3000 range of guilds is crumbling away. Either that or classic killed a thousand raids, because my guild suddenly jumped a thousand spots from last tier to this one. In my 12 years of raidleading, I've never experienced something like this.

From Ashvane onwards the bosses are just unforgivingingly tight. Lose more players than your rez count and you can reset. It used to be that you can yeet a boss with one or two dead, but I can't even justify letting our elderly ret paladin play on progress night. There's a lot of newfound resentment and frustration among my raiders towards the players that are performing *just* average numbers or fail more than once on any given mechanic.

Unlike older tiers, there's basically no power gain. Since titanforging got nerfed hard and AP caps at 70, it feels like we're stagnating while running against a wall. Normally I could say 'We're a little bit more powerful next week, lets try again', but that's not happening. Every week clearing Orgozoa is just as hard and tight as the first time.

We don't want to be gifted an Azshara kill, we just don't want to feel like we're grinding to dust on a wall. Throw us a bone Blizz, will ya?
I really hope that Ny'alotha's corruption re-introduces a rolling power gain to help with progress blockers, because we're burning out over here.

[ydraw]

Classic has had a huge effect. Essences are going to make it worse because a lot of people aren't going to come back in 8.3 if that grind is still there.

[GhostlyBG]

I hear ya. Our progress was surely delayed by the launch of Classic (we basically did not have any raids for a month or so around its release). Then we got back to raiding but we were already a bit behind, so now we're stuck at about 30-ish % on M Azshara and I don't think we will be able to get her down in time. It seems there won't be any additional nerfs to the fight before 8.3 either.

[Aphrel]

I somewhat agree. Especially the last boss of any given teir feels insurmountably overtuned until the first nerfs comes in a month or so after the worldfirst kills.

On the flipside. I feel like the first 3 bosses of any given raid teir is undertuned in mythic.

Ideally i think mythic difficulty across the teir should be more even. Now we have the first 3 bosses feeling like heroic bosses, the midteir bosses feeling like they should do, and the last boss feeling like a kick in the groin...

[Nitros14]

Classic wouldn't have hurt guilds so bad if they hadn't massively amped up the retail grind to 11 and then doubled down on it. The grind never ends!

[Super Kami Dende]

Mythic was always meant to be the Hardest Content, perhaps you just aren't up to it anymore?

[exsanguinate]

On the flipside. I feel like the first 3 bosses of any given raid teir is undertuned in mythic.

they should somehow make a balance between all raid bosses, with a slight increase of difficulty from boss to boss. I don't mind the first three bosses being a little bit harder in mythic. how it's working now is just the first three bosses are almost kinda freeloot and the 4th is a wall the 5th is then kinda easy again but with one shot mechanics and then it gets riddic.

[Djanco]

The curve is not bad.

The grind to compete is absurd.

this. the shit required to stay competitive combined with the release of classic is what's happening. it isn't mythic itself

[GringoD]

Mythic was always meant to be the Hardest Content, perhaps you just aren't up to it anymore?

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.

[Morg]

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.

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

[BrintoSFJ]

I don't think the point of highest difficulty of a game should be "everybody must be able to complete it", it never was the case for any games, only the most skillful and dedicated people would be able to complete the highest difficulty of a game. Since mythic is the highest difficulty raid, it should be hard enough so that only a very few can complete it after a lot of practice.

[klaps_05]

Since m+ overtook mythic raiding as the hardest content in the game, raiding is just a mandatory chore to compete in pve rankings (r.io).

Comparing # of Shivara Mythic kills to number of people running +15 and higher, there are about 3-4 times more ppl doing the latter. Given that blizzard wants to throw all the cool toys in mythic raids (which is fine as mythic raiding can be enjoyable), it would make sense to just tune the content lower so there isnt much discrepancy between players who raid and those who do only m+.

Important to keep in mind with next tier is that there is no longer TF - raids so far were always tuned with Titanforging and high average guild ilevels in mind. Hopefully with that gone the raid will be tuned better as there will be little variance in gear levels outside of corruption bonuses.

[Tiwack]

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

Indeed, It eases off the insane patience required to learn as you watch yourself and fellow raiders fail over and over til everybody miraculously threads the needle.

[Moonoxx]

Since m+ overtook mythic raiding as the hardest content in the game, raiding is just a mandatory chore to compete in pve rankings (r.io).

Comparing # of Shivara Mythic kills to number of people running +15 and higher, there are about 3-4 times more ppl doing the latter. Given that blizzard wants to throw all the cool toys in mythic raids (which is fine as mythic raiding can be enjoyable), it would make sense to just tune the content lower so there isnt much discrepancy between players who raid and those who do only m+.

Important to keep in mind with next tier is that there is no longer TF - raids so far were always tuned with Titanforging and high average guild ilevels in mind. Hopefully with that gone the raid will be tuned better as there will be little variance in gear levels outside of corruption bonuses.

I don't think that's neccesarily a good metric as to how difficult the content is. My guild is 8/8M and none of the raiders bother doing keys outside of weekly cache, because it's comparatively boring/useless for us. Same as my mates guild, and I have friends that have completed +20 in time but can't get M Azshara, or clear up to it without multiple nights/wipes.

Basically uou're not factoring in the fact that the people who enjoy raiding, don't enjoy M+ and so don't do it.

[Todesbote]

Classic wouldn't have hurt guilds so bad if they hadn't massively amped up the retail grind to 11 and then doubled down on it. The grind never ends!

What are you talking about? My main has had a level 70 neck for months. Farming the essences you need on one character can be done within 2-3 weeks if you put in the time or over a period of a couple months with minimum effort. If the grind would truly never end I wouldn't even have had the time to play classic.
The grind never ends? This is clearly not the case unless you are playing multiple chars on retail and/or can only play a few hours per week.

[Vynx]

What I feel in BfA is that the requirements to join a mythic raiding guild went up. I have raided heroic/mythic since WotLK, but not in BfA, and I can't seem to join any decent mythic guild atm (at least 7/8M).
And replying to OP, I don't feel like there's much grind. I have 5 toons with 70 neck, Mechagon/Nazjatar essences, 2 of them with CLF and Conflict.
Even if you are one of the guilds that use 2 chars for progression, getting essences/neck level for 2 toons is extremely easy and low time required.

[GringoD]

The ICC buff was good

A flat nerf kinda feels bad. I can vividly remember barely not killing Illidan before the % nerf hit and facerolling him afterwards. I prefer amping player power.

I don't think the point of highest difficulty of a game should be "everybody must be able to complete it"

That's not the point. I even wrote that we don't want to be gifted an Azshara kill. We rarely ever complete a tier. That's fine.
The point here is that the difficulty feels tighter than ever before while the usual bump to player power as incentive to keep trying is all but gone.

If a guild can't kill Ashvane now, they'll probably never. They won't suddenly clear the tier if you throw them a bone every now and then. But they maybe won't disband because there's at least a chance to kill Ashvane down the line.

[AkundaMrdal]

this. the shit required to stay competitive combined with the release of classic is what's happening. it isn't mythic itself

Pretty much this, in the past you knew that if you kill 5 bosses, items dropped will give you small boost and you will have a chance to kill 6th boss, difficulty was scaled accordingly. Now thanks to titanforging blizzard is forced to tune bosses for higher ilvls, so top guilds won't stomp the raid in first day and get bored. So in order to have chance to progress, you have to grind m+ for titanforged items, while regular loot from that few bosses you are able to kill is often useless to you.
tldr: mythic is too tight because of large ilvl range between seasons.

[potis]

What are you talking about? My main has had a level 70 neck for months. Farming the essences you need on one character can be done within 2-3 weeks if you put in the time or over a period of a couple months with minimum effort. If the grind would truly never end I wouldn't even have had the time to play classic.
The grind never ends? This is clearly not the case unless you are playing multiple chars on retail and/or can only play a few hours per week.

Reality is, harder tier raiding was more active when grinding wasnt involved, raid logging raiding is the best raiding for those that want to raid.

All this grind is just annoying, 9/10 people that quit WoW the last years have quit for this reason, they love raiding, they hate grinding pointless stuff (AP) for it because they want to play a lot when things are new, gear up, farm for a bit, and then raid log.

Forcing them to grind World Quests for the last 3 years has made many older raiders quit.

I mean, this guild i ended up taking over to casually raid, had 20-30 people + all together for 6 years until Legion, they all were around 30-40 years old, they all massively quit at Legion because they could no longer raid log, because half the guild had farmed and could do shit, the other half was useless and started causing problems.

Thats when the raiding changed, you cant expect years of raid logging, to finally grinding.

[kranur]

Pretty much this, in the past you knew that if you kill 5 bosses, items dropped will give you small boost and you will have a chance to kill 6th boss, difficulty was scaled accordingly. Now thanks to titanforging blizzard is forced to tune bosses for higher ilvls, so top guilds won't stomp the raid in first day and get bored. So in order to have chance to progress, you have to grind m+ for titanforged items, while regular loot from that few bosses you are able to kill is often useless to you.
tldr: mythic is too tight because of large ilvl range between seasons.

Maybe if you want to try and fill the gaps where skill and strategy is missing, and you've literally killed 2 bosses in all of these months.

I recall the top guilds raiding the first days and not farming M+.

Fact is, end bosses in Mythic raids are very hard, and have been getting harder. And that is fine, it's why Heroic exists. Simply put, they are not for everyone. There have always been guilds that died when they hit hard content, it's not something new.