M+ already makes all of raiding irrelevant in terms of gearing, including mythic raiding bar special trinkets or cantrip weapons.
There is a limit to how far they can drop boss difficulty, but they will always nerf end tier bosses to a point where you don’t have just 100-200 guilds killing the last boss. If CE were attainable by even fewer guilds, there would be a lot less interest in pretty much the games only good PvE content.
For guilds deciding what to do after heroic, I also don’t think theres anything wrong with not getting CE if it’s their first venture into mythic raiding. Blizzard still needs to ease lockout restrictions further once HoF is filled however.
M+ and the massive gaps in ilvl this patch completely trivialize every raid tier below Mythic, it’s some what disappointing imo.
yeah, exactly. my experience in a CE guild a while back was this. the RL would ask for 3 volunteers to sit on a farm boss and get 5 people who wanted to go smoke or get a snack or whatever.
Mythic isn’t binary you don’t have to choose between never doing it and completing it. Take your team in the dungeon and see how far you get. If you get to a wall that is the point where more serious considerations could be made to put in more effort or quit. Until then just play the game. If you cleared heroic in just a few resets it shouldn’t be that hard to keep pushing. If your guild decides the challenge isn’t worth it then fine, find something else to do.
I don’t think the difficulty is the primary barrier for heroic guilds stepping into mythic. It’s the strict 20 man that is both a requirement and a restriction. It is hard for most guilds to get 20 committed players and then as you said you will need a few subs who will mostly just be bench players and that gets tiring eventually too because everybody wants to actually play. I think if mythic raid could be flexed like other difficulties there would be greater participation. But the tuning would suffer and top guilds would complain that it hurts the WFR.
They could definitely do a small flex, maybe 19-21 or 18-22 to allow some guilds to log around their bench a little while still maintaining tight enough tuning.
Blizzard clobbers many fights with nerfs and changes anyway.
The fights are designed and balanced around having 20 players. Any sort of flex, at all, will result in meta gaming it and playing the exact amount of players on each fight that results in the easiest way to beat it. You want to talk about salty raiders? Imagine being part of a mythic raid team and get on the last couple bosses and get told you gonna sit because 18 is easier than 20.
Casuals just need to not worry about mythic raiding. It’s okay to not be included in everything. Go do you TRHEE other versions of it and either get better and try out for the 4th or just go do pet battles or something.
Imagine being so self centered that you have 3 entire tiers of the raid designed specifically for you and your friends, and just a lone single version is designed for other players and you are just like…but I want that version to! Make it easier so I can have!! MEEE MEE MINE. GIVE NOW!!!
I think you read my post as being in favor of flex mythic raiding when all I said is I think the fact it is not flex is why it has the lowest participation of all end game content by a mile and has nothing to do with the difficulty.
There’s 5 tiers btw. Mythic is 2 tiers. There is mythic for the RWF when it first comes out and then there is nerfed 100x mythic which is what the majority of mythic raiders clear.
If you think mythic is nerfed 100x you are delusional. And mythic has the lowest participation because most wow players are god awful, have zero awareness, click their buttons, keyboard turn, play while drunk / high. Just look at classic raids with 25 players. You can fill that instantly and people clear it weekly. Player count has nothing to do with the overall numbers.
Would they increase if we lowered the count a bit? Probably. Would it be a high participation event after? No. Not to mention you would lose raiders that only stick around for the challenge. They wouldn’t keep playing if the exact 1 thing in this entire game that took any effort at all was just faceroll. Casuals already own 99.99% of wow. Leave mythic raiding alone.
I was obviously exaggerating. I stated my opinion. The barrier to mythic raid participation is the strict 20 man requirement not the difficulty. There are plenty of guilds that could kill the first few mythic bosses but don’t bother because the headache of maintaining a 20 man group is not worth it.
You don’t need 20, you need 25. And a fifth of the team can’t come in on every boss.
Mythic needs to scale with raid size, not to make it more approachable to more guilds, but so that people can actually play the game instead of logging off.
I think the problem with this tier is that Normal and Heroic–and I’d argue the curve from Gnarlroot through Larodar on Mythic–are horrifically undertuned.
RWF was completed at iLvl 480 average, and I’m cracking 484 this reset. Between that, and the inevitable tuning changes, the ‘hard’ bosses will be a reasonable progression kill, but everything before them feels way too easy.
They had to buff Fyrakk on week 1 because he was too easy on heroic. Let that sink in. He should’ve been tuned for 4-set and around 476 iLvl as challenging. However, even after buffs he still pretty much falls over. Easiest heroic end boss of the expansion, even beating out Sarkareth.
I think all of the above tuning issues is heavily compounded by the reality that they’ve simply made M+ the most powerful, and easiest, method of acquiring high gear. I got 2k rating week 1 and a non-meta class and spec, and ended up with 5-set on reset.
The crest/upgrade system has accelerated gearing as well. Combined with how powerful crafting gear is, aspect crest acquisition from mythic+, and the early catalyst.
There is no real slow gear progression, it’s just a spike to near max gear in 3 weeks then a slow tail curve after that.
I don’t personally see that as a problem. I’d rather experience the gear closer to full power than only getting stronger once the content is already defeated.
Perhaps that highlights two of the most basic ways that players get enjoyment from content. For some fighting the bosses is the highlight and gear is secondary and for others defeating the bosses is the path to satisfying their loot goals.
Not sure how they could better account for both sets of values.
It just means there can’t really be decent linear progression because everyone is almost full geared very quickly. So earlier bosses are easier and later bosses tend to be walls.
The design of having mid bosses be harder at first but guilds gear up over time to beat them died in legion. Everyone is geared almost immediately.
Not saying it’s better or worse, just a fundamental change starting with Nighthold (after players exploded EN by walking into the raid already out gearing it).
When you boil down the current Mythic formula, all the firm 20 man restriction for insanely hard content means is exactly this: you need 25 players and you’re asking 5 players to “play” every Boss by sitting there… not playing the game… hoping they can eventually be reshuffled back in.
If nothing else, Mythic Raiding should go flex. That change should absolutely happen.
While there’s some cons to that of course - like meta break points that swing the balance of players and mechanics a bit toward an easier experience - the pros of actually letting players who want to play WoW actually play is better.