I’ve started to enjoy 5 man far more than raiding.
Reasons:
In five man my presence makes far more of an impact. No single person can screw up on higher keys or its a wipe. In a raid my efforts are diluted far more.
Five man difficulty scales far better than raiding. In raiding it’s no skill mode, easy mode, harder mode, and impossible mode. In five man I hit a much more accessible skill barrier and I can keep meeting that barrier and improving on my terms.
In five man I feel much more accomplished. Completing a +10 or +15 on time means that you ran a marathon for 30-40 minutes versus a 5-8 minute fight in a raid. And many of those wipes in raid could be because of bad players that will only get axed if your raid is hardcore.
In five man I’m not beholden to a set raid time, or beholden to a raid leader who I may not like. If I don’t like a tank in 5 man I’m just a minute away from finding one I like much more.
Five man weekly loot is far better than what I can get out of heroic raids. Oddly I can complete a +10 easily and get 220 loot, but 226 mythic gear is out of reach because mythic raiding is far far far harder to get into than timing a +10 or +15. I look forward to my weekly vault. I don’t look forward to heroic loot.
In five man raider IO will put you where you belong, in raiding you may frequently find yourself in the wrong raid. You may not get a 20 man mythic slot because of a much higher degree of scarcity on your server versus the vast abundance of 5 man slots to fill. This can also happen in 30 man flex if demand increases.
Five man content increases with difficulty but does not hide mechanics the same way that mythic raids do. Mythic raids are very different than heroic raids. Mythic raiding is the “real raid” and the rest of the population gets a watered down version. The only way to experience the content is to watch twitch.
Ironically someone that can time +15 and higher could maybe become a mythic raider but are artificially held back, or just held back by the structure of mythic raiding. 20 people, and only a handful of raid leaders on each server that have the management capability to run one correctly. Five man doesn’t have this limitation. You just need a good healer and a good tank, and dps that listen.
The mechanics in raiding are becoming convoluted because the developers are in some arms race with people that make weak auras. Five man has far more intuitive mechanics that are more fluid and keep the action moving.
Five man can be toxic… but if you find your niche it becomes far less toxic versus a raid that may hit a barrier in progression and rip apart without good management.
I’ll still raid, but increasingly I’m wondering what the point is. Without access to 226 gear heroic raiding will quickly become obsolete, and it does not meet my skill cap at all. It’s supposed to be the pinnacle of end game for PVE, but it fails in so many ways to hold my attention.
Not everyone likes Mythic + but because Blizzard won’t fix the raid structure, either by dialing back mythic requirements so that the top 10% can clear, not just the top 1%, or by bringing back mythic 10 man etc, I"ll focus on 5 man instead.
Different strokes for different folks. Outside of vault goodies I avoid mythic plus. On the other hand I greatly enjoy Castle Nathria. Bosses are dying so I’m really not worried about my gear.
I remember…I think it was Warlords of Draenor? The table would reward raid loot pieces, and if you cleared a certain number of a difficulty it would upgrade that raid piece to the next difficulty (like 15 Normal would upgrade the cache to Heroic, 15 Heroic would upgrade it to Mythic). I thought that was a pretty good system. I kind of wish the Great Vault did the same thing, that way raiding also had the same item level opportunity as M+.
At the same time, though I’m pretty happy with my loot progression, and raiding I find so much more enjoyable. Though the dungeons this expansion ARE better.
In five man parses mean more too. In raiding a lot of high parses are cheesing or someone getting lucky by not having to do x y z mechanic. Not so in five man, where everyone has to literally do everything they can to push through. The only cheesing is finding out a way to kill things faster which isn’t always the best in raiding where people pad far more.
I do both and enjoy both, but I would generally agree that I have more fun in M+ than I do in raids. Then again, I have no desire to mythic raid and limit myself to normal/heroic raids only with my guild.
5 mans are a joke. And yes, you can impact a raid. Just have to be good enough to. Raiding takes far more coordination, skill, and preparation to defeat. Also, raiding builds better communities which is really what an MMORPG is all about. Big communities banding together to kill and loot giant monsters. People push for more 5 man content because it is simple.
You can get a 226 piece from completing a +14 or +15, even failing it.
If I do ten Heroic bosses, I get three Heroic options.
M+ has an Avenue to get to Mythic raid gear, Heroic raiding doesn’t. And that isn’t a problem for someone who does both forms of content, but I wish killing enough bosses on a certain difficulty would increase the reward like in WoD.
I vehemently disagree. I don’t dislike M+, but I mainly do it to prove to myself that I can. I genuinely look forward to raid night, I think it’s a blast (usually–I really hate Sludgefist).
That said, good for you man. Glad you’ve found an aspect of the game you enjoy. This thread is far better than most on this forum.
You are comparing heroic raids to m+, from the looks of of it, most of your points dont apply ro mythic raids, where 1 player dying is basically a wipe on most bosses.
