Raiding feels meaningless currently with to many forms of different progression

[Drusin]

i have a feeling this is all going to change in shadowlands. "The team is going to reduce the amount of loot that drops in Shadowlands raids." only 1 box a week (m+ and pvp boxes are the same box in shadowlands). the other side to no real rng (titan/war forging, corruption etc) is that you are just not going to get loot as often.

and people are going to complain. but its what we aked for, right?

I don't recall seeing anyone asking for less loot than what dropped prior to Titan/warforging, corruption. Am I wrong? I could be wrong, MoP was a long time ago but I feel like Blizz is doing something fucky and if so fuck them.

[Saltysquidoon]

So what? It’s a dungeon. Not a raid.
*snip*
M+ is not all-encompassing, class-wise. Therefore it is garbage and requires cosmetic only rewards or normal raid.

X is not Y is not an argument with respect to difficulty. If M25 is harder then the raid it's harder then the raid, the fact it's a dungeon is literally irrelevant.

The counter to raids needing to account for composition is that M+ requires greater individual responsibility, it's swings and roundabouts.

[Itori]

Isnt that a good thing though? You got an area for raiders who love raiding to progress, and you got a place for small group players to progress and be on decent footing.

[Kralljin]

It doesnt matter more at all, if your raiding in classic then your gear is more than sufficiant to clear any content in the game already, i bet a group of decent players could clear naxx in pre raid BiS or just basic MC geared with no issues, gear just make things easier and the leap between MC gear and naxx gear in classic was not that big of a difference.

You're just repeating what you said and missed the point:
Some People are playing the game to improve their character first and foremost, not necessarily because they need it to tackle a greater challenge.

Said upgrades are far more rare and Classic, thus they are more valueable.

[Rune B]

Argument seems to boil down to "choice is bad", which I very much disagree with. Virtually every great system in the game is great, because there is choice and player agency.

What percentage of players do raid content when it's relevant, anyway? What percentage does mythic dungeons?

You don't *have* to do gear progression into mythic. You can chill and enjoy other aspects of the game. This is actually part of the reason why I'm about to reroll on RP servers on a new account for Shadowlands. Those people know how to enjoy the game and game world as more than just stats and ilvls.

[cparle87]

There is a reason that WOTLK had the biggest player base ever in Warcraft history, the game was easy. There was meaningful progression, when you were done gearing in dungeons for that patches current gear, you would look to find a 10 man or 25 man normal raiding guild. The content wasn't that hard, people had fun being able to clear the content, or learn the content together with their guild. I remember Naxx being easily puggable, Ulduar also wasn't half bad.

Wrath? You mean the expansion in which they increased the number of raid difficulties to 4 and you would often have to run all of them because you got loot and currency from all of them to progress the most? You just shot your argument in the foot.

[Weeps]

Aww, you jealous that better players than you can handle content that you're not cut out for? Does thinking of it as just "a dungeon" make it not count for you? That's adorable. I'd ruffle your hair if I could, you little scamp!

Lmao! You completely whiffed.

M+ is meta only. Only select few classes are capable of going high keys. You can’t just field any spec any class.

Therefore it is garbage.

Skill?! In WoW?? LMAO. OK, kiddo. (Ruffles your hair). Go play buddy.

Cosmetic rewards. You triggered little scamp!

[Topornic]

Mythic raiding should stay where it is but I would substract other game elements that can make it really painful for top players, i.e. farming crazy amounts of AP etc. Some amount of grind is absolutely understandable for that tier of raiding but sometimes it gets really crazy.
Normal and Heroic should be merged into a standard raiding mode somewhere inbetween but closer to HC raiding.
LFR should award only some form of cosmetic rewards or maybe better - currency to buy normal/standard level of gear, allowing LFR "raiders" to buy items every second lockout.
Stuff pointed out above would also help the gear ilvl inflation with only 2 ilvl tiers and mythic+ dungeons filling the gap inbetween being capped like currently in BFA just below mythic raiding (be it even just because m+ is spammable and mythic raiding is not), with maybe weekly chest having even higher rewards if they would introduce some sort of ingame leaderboards.
Mythic + ilvl could scale every three/four key levels to adjust and having more currency drop for higher keys, while allowing m+ currency to buy even mythic raiding level of gear just like currently residuum allows you to. M+ currency drops could be capped with a chunk of it coming in weekly cache and not being counted to cap.
"Casual" guilds would have stuff to do, "hardcore" guys would have stuff to do. I really don't completely understand why we currently have 4 tiers of raiding.

[Tziva]

Strongly disagree. More options are always better. Giving players choice is a good thing.

I raid because I find raiding fun. If you don't enjoy it for its own sake, maybe it isn't for you. Maybe one of the many other options is. Good thing they exist!

[Weeps]

X is not Y is not an argument with respect to difficulty. If M25 is harder then the raid it's harder then the raid, the fact it's a dungeon is literally irrelevant.

The counter to raids needing to account for composition is that M+ requires greater individual responsibility, it's swings and roundabouts.

It’s not harder when most classes or specs do not meet the “meta.”

Cosmetic reward for unbalanced content. Done.

[Saltysquidoon]

It’s not harder when most classes or specs do not meet the “meta.”

Cosmetic reward for unbalanced content. Done.

Oh yeah, how many holy priests and ret pallies were in the world first race? It's almost like there will be a meta in every asymmetrical game ever.

By way of example, I just looked and every single tank spec is represented in the top 100 m+ runs.

Again it swings and roundabouts.

[Tyris Flare]

Just realized my 478 paladin is wearing 1 piece of raid loot, and it is from heroic. Really it's just the carapace/Nzoth gear that is actually worth anything since it is higher ilvel (unless you are a lucky class with an insane corruption like slapcaw)



Note: To be clear, I don't mind this. I think it's good for the game to have multiple avenues of gearing.

[McNeil]

Imo having to many different difficulty settings for dungeons/raids is not a good thing. I'm fine with having just a normal/heroic option like in WotLK, but as of now we have like 4 for just raiding. LFR completely takes away what raiding is in the first place and brings out the worst in people, who can just AFK or do the bare minimum in every boss fight and not called out for it. Mythic is bloated with way to many mechanics and there are hardly any guilds willing to run them because its not worth putting the time into. And the loot gets a lot more ''boring'', as they are just the same items with upscaled stats and hardly a different look while in WotLK you had unique gear in normal/heroic. I could still name items that I wore back in TBC because they had a lot more of an identity.

Ideally I'd love to see an Ulduar progression system with the return of hard modes and achievements tied to very challenging boss fights.

[Wheeler]

If you raid - Raid for CE or AOTC if you're in a lesser skilled group. Titles and Mounts.

If you do M+ - Do M+ to push that IO as high as you can.

If you PvP - Do arenas and push your rating as high as it can go. Titles and Mounts.

If you do none of these - Heritage armors exist. Allied races. Transmog. Mounts. Achievements.

If anything - Progression is better than it's ever been, and M+ is actually LACKING in giving players something to chase other than player-invented IO. Without IO, those players have nothing to strive for. For the first time in the game, GEAR isn't the only proof of progression. While this feels bad if you're trying to float between multiple forms of progression, it's actually beneficial when you figure out which you like best and stick to it.

[Belloc]

M+ is meta only. Only select few classes are capable of going high keys. You can’t just field any spec any class.

Oh, you mean like how the harder world-first Mythic raid bosses require rigid class composition to meet the DPS/utility checks? That doesn't sound similar at all.

Quit crying about gear. We've been getting welfare epics since TBC (since Vanilla, tbh) and this way, at least, requires skill and effort. Raiding has always been my favorite part of WoW, whether it be raid leading server-first accomplishments, selling heroic Ragnaros mounts while it was still current, or even bringing a tight-knit group of 10 raiders for the fun, if not super challenging 10-man WotLK hard modes.

When I actively played WoW, I was a raider, through and through -- raiding was my life for several years. If I hadn't gone and got married, I'd still be investing full-time job hours into WoW raiding. Even so, I would never pretend that raiding is so unique and important as to be the only source of high-end gear. That's bullshit. There are people playing this game that want a challenge that doesn't involve hours upon hours upon hours of wiping to raid bosses. High-level Mythic+ keys are, perhaps, the most challenging PvE activity in this game and those players deserve to have quality, non-cosmetic loot rewards. You can disagree all you want, but you're being completely self-serving in doing so. They want people to actually play the content and cosmetic rewards will never be able to draw in the amount of players that they want. If they're going to remove quality loot from M+, they might as well remove M+ while they're at it.

[Mardux]

Oh yeah, how many holy priests and ret pallies were in the world first race? It's almost like there will be a meta in every asymmetrical game ever.

By way of example, I just looked and every single tank spec is represented in the top 100 m+ runs.

Again it swings and roundabouts.

Several. You'd know that if you checked before spouting off nonsense.

[Saltysquidoon]

Ideally I'd love to see an Ulduar progression system with the return of hard modes and achievements tied to very challenging boss fights.

I think the problem with Ulduar style hard modes is they're going to have the same problem classic has with 42 minute BWL clears.

If the 'hardmodes' are set to heroic difficulty every single mythic guild and top tier heroic guilds will clear the entire raid in one reset and if they're set mythic difficulty then normal and heroic guild's just get kicked in the dick and can't progress past 'normal' mode.

[Amariw]

You're conflating two different things. Ease of gearing and actual skill requirements for boss mechanics (at appropriate gear levels).

With gearing, i agree, there's too many grinds that are completely seperate (if you could grind all essences and corruption at start of 8.3 by spamming raids exclusively, it would be okish, bit instead you ahev to do outdated palace and stupid rep grinds and even arena). This is a problem for pvp too.

Asfor skill requirements, nah current modes are fine; Lfr is tourist mode, maybe not needed anymore with group finder and normal mode.
Normal mode is the tourist mode too somewhat but can be challenging.
HC is "hard for good pugs at start of patch" mode and for casual guilds. It suffered a bit from m+ giving better gear that's faster to farm, but you could deal with that by making m+ gear only scale into high ilvl in dungeons and outdoors and being capped at slightly below HC ilvl in raids.

Mythic raiding is for stronger guilds.

M+ is a brilliant system that lets you get engaging and rewarding group action without the logistics of a 20 man raid. At its highest levels it takes making social connections and that's also ok. A solid modern addition to an mmo that my only regret with itis that it got implemented after wod/mop brilliant class design. M+ with mop dps class design is like a wet dream.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

The thing about Mythic raiding is that, for Mythic quality players, it's really not any more difficult, usually. Replace a bunch of your Mythic raiders with Heroic raiders, though, and it becomes significantly more difficult.

why would you play with HC players as a mythic raider? this is masochistic, i would never ever raid with some one whos below my standarts in my case top 1-40. This creates a toxic environment mecanics i can do with 1 hand and drunk hc raider cant do while 100% tryharding this would frustrate me and any normal mythic top <500 player.

You cant mix good player with bad ones.. i saw guilds disband cuz of if (raidleads GF griefed a raid i used to play back in WOD) this costed us like 50 ranks she had a 80% or so deathrate on every boss and we end up some were in the top 150 gutter. Ppl could not wait to leave the guild everyone was mad and super toxic at the end and after we finaly killed blackhand 8 ppl bloted me included.

OT: remove LFR and normal mode dungeons they serve no purpose with how easy normal mode raiding and HC/m+0 dungeons are.

[Mardux]

Imo having to many different difficulty settings for dungeons/raids is not a good thing. I'm fine with having just a normal/heroic option like in WotLK, but as of now we have like 4 for just raiding. LFR completely takes away what raiding is in the first place and brings out the worst in people, who can just AFK or do the bare minimum in every boss fight and not called out for it. Mythic is bloated with way to many mechanics and there are hardly any guilds willing to run them because its not worth putting the time into. And the loot gets a lot more ''boring'', as they are just the same items with upscaled stats and hardly a different look while in WotLK you had unique gear in normal/heroic. I could still name items that I wore back in TBC because they had a lot more of an identity.

Ideally I'd love to see an Ulduar progression system with the return of hard modes and achievements tied to very challenging boss fights.

You really didnt outside of toys and transmogs and the quest item for a legendary. It was all the same shit just with different scaled stats and maybe an extra socket. Soooo different.

Having multiple difficulties doesn't effect me. If I don't want to run lfr, i just don't. Same with normal. No one is forcing me to play on those difficulties, so I'm unaffected by them. And most mythic fights add a mechanic, maybe two. Mythic just means its harder to carry the people who simply cant be bothered to play better.