I thought we left the mindset that raiding is better than everything else back in WoD

[SirBeef]

How do people still make this disingenuous argument in 2020? People want the gear because the point of the game is to get loot and be more powerful. That's it. A trivial minority of players approach the game as "well, time to pack it up boys, I can solo WQ now!" Everyone wants to be stronger all the time.

Anyway this change is not really that big of a deal outside of the first few weeks. The weekly box was already the only relevant source of loot to most players after blasting dungeons for a week. The devs just want to try and make heroic raiding instantly pointless.

How is it disingenuous? If all you do is WQs and heroic dungeons you will get gear progression. As your ilvl increases your ilvl rewards from WQs increase so you are still gaining power. Likewise with M+, raiding, or PvPing as your only vice, you have a progression. Frankly there is no need for gear above the rewards of the content you are participating. If I was someone who ran LFR and did WQs only, I would not care that I don't have or can't get gear equivalent to those that raid mythic. Nor have I ever believed you should get gear equivalent to that if you are not doing the top end content.

Should there be a way to progress your character in more ways than raids. Yes, and it's been in WoW for a while now. You only want to quest? you can still get epics just a lower quality. Which is fair. Don't forget, I also advocate for transmog only gear and pets/mounts from mythic raids. I feel it should be about the skill of the group and not getting more powerful gear. Tune it as tight as possible for 20 people in heroic gear. 1 mistake means a wipe. There should be no brute forcing it. And I know that means my guild would never clear a Mythic raid ever again. So I am not some gear or mode elitist that doesn't want people to have gear. Nothing worng with getting gear equivalent to the content you play.

[jellmoo]

What benifit is there in doing a +23 compared to a +15?

You misunderstand. I'm not talking about M+ as it exists. It's simply to counter the point that "the best gear needs to come from raids". My argument is that M+ could be designed in such a way to have meaningful gear progression comparable to raiding, in order to facilitate M+ progression.

[valax]

Are we talking mythic raiding? It takes more effort than mythic +15 and playing off a meta in arena to cap conquest.
If it suddently stopped dropping the highest ilvl of the patch even less people would try mythic raiding.

Taking 8.3 for example here mythic +15 being equal to heroic raid seems appropriate* , that's your equal path to a decent gear level . I do agree that elite pvp gear should be a notch higher than heroic and mythic 15 but still lower than M-Raid , but seemingly blizzard doesn't take pvp seriously outside of their tournaments where everyone can selectively choose the best gear possible and corruptions


* This though hurts heroic raiding , as it happened to my guild in 8.0 being already geared from mythic + totally destroyed the drive to continue raiding. Why struggle as a large group when you can go do 5man content and achieve the same result ? IMO at least in legion tier sets made running raids still desirable , in bfa there was no point..maybe one of two trinkets were worth having and that was it.
You can also argue that at some point you know every dungeon by memory and the only novelty at the start of a new patch is the seasonal affix which haven't been really that much of a challenge , 8.3 awakened has proven to be a boon even, allowing extreme skips of otherwise annoying pulls.

[arkanon]

You misunderstand. I'm not talking about M+ as it exists. It's simply to counter the point that "the best gear needs to come from raids". My argument is that M+ could be designed in such a way to have meaningful gear progression comparable to raiding, in order to facilitate M+ progression.

I dont misunderstand at all. I read your previous posts, you are failing to accept that the fact M+ is endlessly farmable is a major factor in the cap on gear quality.

- - - Updated - - -

Are we talking mythic raiding? It takes more effort than mythic +15 and playing off a meta in arena to cap conquest.
If it suddently stopped dropping the highest ilvl of the patch even less people would try mythic raiding.

Taking 8.3 for example here mythic +15 being equal to heroic raid seems appropriate* , that's your equal path to a decent gear level . I do agree that elite pvp gear should be a notch higher than heroic and mythic 15 but still lower than M-Raid , but seemingly blizzard doesn't take pvp seriously outside of their tournaments where everyone can selectively choose the best gear possible and corruptions


* This though hurts heroic raiding , as it happened to my guild in 8.0 being already geared from mythic + totally destroyed the drive to continue raiding. Why struggle as a large group when you can go do 5man content and achieve the same result ? IMO at least in legion tier sets made running raids still desirable , in bfa there was no point..maybe one of two trinkets were worth having and that was it.
You can also argue that at some point you know every dungeon by memory and the only novelty at the start of a new patch is the seasonal affix which haven't been really that much of a challenge , 8.3 awakened has proven to be a boon even, allowing extreme skips of otherwise annoying pulls.

Yeah, M+ put a HUGE dent in the more causal oriented raid difficulties. The less committed players who were unable or unwilling to commit to a full time raid spot were still plentiful when forming heroic raid teams - now the majority of them seem to have moved over to M+ as it is even more flexible, and the rewards are equal. Maybe thats just my personal experience on my realm, but forming alt pugs etc for heroic became harder and harder over the coarse of Legion and in particular, BfA.

[jellmoo]

I dont misunderstand at all. I read your previous posts, you are failing to accept that the fact M+ is endlessly farmable is a major factor in the cap on gear quality.

Yes, you misunderstand. I'm saying that the way you acquire loot from M+ would change to accommodate. It's a hypothetical. Gear acquisition and progression would have to change, but allowing multiple paths to the best gear is more than doable.

[Gref]

m+ rewards on the link
https://www.wowhead.com/news=317979/...on-reward-redu

this will cause some qq i guess.

[Krimzin]

Not everyone likes to raid all the time... why don't raiders (and apparently the dev team) see that?

I think its fantastic. I like all facets of the game, not just Raiding.
WoW started as a Raid centric game, its just getting back to what made it great.

[Ashleyxoxo]

In my group it’s been rush-to-raid since TBC, and everyone else just hasn’t caught on.

[SanitariumZ]

Limiting the amount of loot at the end of dungeon chest was a good change. The ilvl nerf though was not a smart move. It straight up kills the incentive to grind M+. And there's a reason why M+ has been as successful ever since it was first introduced. The obvious explanation is the loot quality/quantity. The other not so obvious one has to do with demographics and how the average 30yr old boomer still playing the game after 10-15 years has to succumb to adult responsibilities while still being able to play his favourite game at a decent level.

At the end of the day I feel like Tier sets (noone will ever understand why they went away with BFA) and Raid trinkets would be enough to incentivize M+only players/pushers to step into a raid without making them feel like children of a lesser God by giving them shittier loot for IMHO equally difficult content. And yes, high M+ keys are just as/if not way more difficult than your average entry-tier mythic boss. Anyone that doesn't agree with that obviously never tried pushing past +20 pre 8.3 when corruptions weren't a thing. And on that note, scaling ilvl rewards with higher keys would be a good change as well.

All this turmoil between the M+ community and the raiding community reminds of me of the all time classic PvP vs PvE gearing argument. PvPers got the middle finger a long time ago and now it's time for M+ to suffer the same fate. Meanwhile the MMORPG genre and with it WoW is dying. Younger gamers follow the battle royale/fps meta. The playerbase isn't renewed, it is recycled. We're all playing the same game we played 5/10/15 years ago. Alienating a large portion of the community WILL kill WoW, DO NOT BE MISTAKEN. It happened with lots of frustrated PvPers quitting the game a long time ago and it will happen again now. And when you won't have enough people to recruit for your little raiding guild cause there'll be noone around, only then will you realise how dumb this argument is. Don't believe me? Have you tried playing on the Alliance side lately? Whatever guilds survived the faction change locust in BFA had to either adapt by changing faction themselves or disband due to the lack of decent players left to recruit. The same thing will happen to the entire game if this train of thought doesn't stop. And that doesn't necessarily apply to M+ but to PvP as well. Why tf do you care so much if someone that isn't interested (or lacks the free time) in raiding the same way that you do has fun playing the game the way he likes, doing the thing he loves. He's not competing directly to you, he doesn't get YOUR loot, nor is he going to outdmg/outheal you if for some reason you end up in the same environment (e.g a PuG HC).

LET.PEOPLE.ENJOY.WHATEVER.F'ING.CONTENT.THEY.DESIRE. Don't be a c*ck.

[cparle87]

I'll tell you what we need. Pet Battle Raids.

If we're allowed to heal our pets and still get the top reward I'd be down for it. I love pet battles but I'm not fond of the dungeons because there's some strats that require a specific pet, and if you have bad RNG you can still lose and end up having to start the entire thing from the beginning again.

[threads]

a weekly raid should give better loot than spammable dungeons.

[LDancer]

Would the M+ jockeys be happy with M+ gear that was ever increasing, but then scaled down to a standard level of entering a raid setting? They have the almost heroic equiv gear, but it could be scaled up in M+?

[kaminaris]

m+ rewards on the link
https://www.wowhead.com/news=317979/...on-reward-redu

this will cause some qq i guess.

Wait what? Guess M+ is kinda dead now. I mean people still do it for vault but besides from that heroic raid is better.

This creates a funny situation where if you ever want to have good gear without actually raiding, you would need to buy yourself a boost.
Or better yet, earn gear with vault, sign up for boosting community, get gold, buy mythic gear run.

That is kinda sad tho.

[Berndorf]

Raiding should always be the best source of the best gear. Otherwise there's no reason to raid and can spam M+ instead.

Yet I'm always hearing how the main reason people love to raid is being in a group with friends and beating bosses together over time and that loot is completely secondary to the overall experience.

[kaminaris]

noone will ever understand why they went away with BFA

Its actually super simple, because tier sets sucked in both idea and execution. It was dead gear slots with random dev ideas that might suck totally and there was no option to equip something different in these slots if you wished to be competitive. If you didn't raid, you couldn't ever catch up to power level of raiders.

Tier bonuses will never ever work properly vs normal gear. PoE is good example of that.

[Grimbolt]

Raiding should always be the best source of the best gear.

Otherwise there's no reason to raid other than clearing the raid once for the achievement and call it a day until the next content update.

That's just my opinion though and who am I to say how a game should work.

[kaminaris]

It happened with lots of frustrated PvPers quitting the game a long time ago and it will happen again now. And when you won't have enough people to recruit for your little raiding guild cause there'll be noone around, only then will you realise how dumb this argument is. Don't believe me? Have you tried playing on the Alliance side lately? Whatever guilds survived the faction change locust in BFA had to either adapt by changing faction themselves or disband due to the lack of decent players left to recruit.

You aren't wrong but... actually is probably due to two things: first increase in raid difficulty (I believe Wotlk difficulty level was optimal) because average players aren't really capable of clearing mythic, and heroic is joke to them. Second, fixed 20 raid rooster, you just don't have option to raid with more intimate setting (10). No heroic is just a tutorial.

- - - Updated - - -

Raiding should always be the best source of the best gear.

Otherwise there's no reason to raid other than clearing the raid once for the achievement and call it a day until the next content update.

That's just my opinion though and who am I to say how a game should work.

Well there is a fault in your logic. Game first and foremost should be entertaining. If you are raiding just for few pixels that are better (by artificial standards) than other pixels, and you don't have any satisfaction then you prolly should reevaluate.

If you need to incentivise people to do activity that is suppose to be entertaining then it's what I call failed design.

Mythic raids should give best gear but not better than obtainable via different methods. If other methods are significantly faster than you should just adjust them to have the same pace. As easy as that.

[Lollis]

2.) The last 2 bosses award higher ilvl gear. Just 2 bosses thats literally it.

(And that was only for one raid for the whole of BFA)

[Azerate]

Yet I'm always hearing how the main reason people love to raid is being in a group with friends and beating bosses together over time and that loot is completely secondary to the overall experience.

This is all true, but there's also a lot of people who are purely loot driven. And I'm not saying that's wrong btw, in a game such as wow it's perfectly understandable to have that approach. If you lower dungeon loot slightly, these people will probably still do dungeons from time to time, but will in turn be incentivized towards raiding.

Raiding should always be the best source of the best gear.

Otherwise there's no reason to raid other than clearing the raid once for the achievement and call it a day until the next content update.

That's just my opinion though and who am I to say how a game should work.

I mean it differs between people. I enjoy raiding and certainly prefer it over m+ and have mostly been raiding through bfa and legion with some ocassional dungeon here and there, despite there being the same ilvl of items available at the end of a mythic plus dungeon. In a way, I'd argue that raiding has always been the best source of gear per time invested, but that hasn't been what the community believed and maybe Blizzard decided to make a radical change to make that even more clear.

[kaminaris]

This is all true, but there's also a lot of people who are purely loot driven. And I'm not saying that's wrong btw, in a game such as wow it's perfectly understandable to have that approach. If you lower dungeon loot slightly, these people will probably still do dungeons from time to time, but will in turn be incentivized towards raiding.

Purely? I mean maybe there are some people like this but lets be honest, if these people don't have even an ounce of entertainment from raids then they are either stupid or masochistic.