We both agree there should have been another “mage tower” this expansion, but Blizzard messed that up with their Azerite gear/system problems.
Well, seeing how I completed all 36 mage tower appearances I disagree with you. I raided on most of my characters to gear them up for the mage tower.
Also, we had raiders that never did any of the Mage Tower. So, it really comes down to if you enjoy any other content than raiding.
Timbo, I feel you bud. I haven’t read this thread entirely 100%, but I know it’s littered with 3/8N players telling us that there’s no problem. This game is just soooooo alt unfriendly atm. I played 4 healers last patch, and now I’m limited to only one because of the bs called essences. Ugh. Blizz takes one step forward and 5 steps back. Sad.
Was doing mythic alt BoD on my resto druid, priest and Monk last tier. Down to only playing one character.
I simply don’t have any desire to do the content they want me to do to be competitive when there are so many games fighting for my time. I’ll do the neck grind, which is already an actual grind.
But dawg, don’t put grinds in my grinds so i can grind when i grind. A mans got a limit.
Yeah, we’re in a similar boat here. We lost quite a few players to Classic, but we managed to hang on by cannibalizing other guilds who weren’t quite as lucky.
We’re not quite so close to Azshara, so the threat of killing her and then people quitting until next raid/expansion isn’t as immediate for us, but even then it worries me.
It REALLY doesn’t help that the “reward” for killing Mythic Azshara is an absolute joke. ONE Rank 4 essence? Especially when the essence system is probably going to be completely scrapped when the next expansion rolls around?
What a joke.
On top of that, an essence appearance is just… so whatever dude… I don’t think anyone outside a few healing specs even use it.
And yeah, it’s a great time to be a raid lead if you can be bothered hanging on and replacing with so many guilds collapsing.
Well, practically every DPS uses it. But even then it’s just so deeply unimpressive. All it does is make your Azerite dude look like the boss in Motherlode.
Whoopdee doo. I don’t even care about that and it’s still a relevant reward.
At least beating Jaina gave a sick mount. And that was just gravy ontop of the fact that BoD was an incredibly good raid.
Blizz there is still time, add account wide essences please!
Agreed. That would’ve gone a long way.
I didn’t get that at all. What I got from OP’s post is that people were clinging to mount collection as an incentive to reclear content they already had on farm…because nothing else outside of the raid was even remotely enticing.
Essences aren’t account bound, so the grind on an alt deletes any potential for fun playing another class.
The daily grinds are all time-gates on rep-gates, so even getting alts into M+ isn’t fun.
The Benthic system is an absolute requirement if you’re not doing at least heroic raids on your alts for gear–so OPs guild would have to do the aforementioned re-clears on alts as well as mains in order to get new toons into M+ keys, or they have to farm pearls for weeks to get their alts into S3 keys (or pray for decent RNG out of the chest).
I don’t know anyone who loves the S3 affix (I think it’s the dumbest, most pointless thing I’ve seen, and it totally ruined M+ for me). In S2, I got into it. I pulled the resto shammy up to like 1k or near it, and I rolled a druid alt from 1-120 specifically to heal M+. That was GREAT. I had a really decent score racked up on the druid alt and was having a fine time.
Season three came and the new raid dropped, and though we had fun in EP, the M+ season just blew chunks. I hate it. I have zero motivation to go in any of those dungeons again, and every time we do…I zone out and wish I was playing Classic instead.
I heard all of that echoed in the OP. I don’t know why you focused on the mount farming nugget…because there was a lot more being said in there.
First I would argue that trying to raid Mythic is generally not intended for a guild that just wants to raid log. Grinding out the stuff to min/max I believe is perfectly reasonable to expect for people going for the highest challenging thing in the game. That isn’t to say they have not maybe gone a bit overboard here and there.
Secondly though, I would argue with Benthic gear that at least it is reasonably farmable and it something you can directly work towards rather than most other things in the game based mostly on just layers of RNG.
My own personal bias has me favoring Benthic gear in part because it disrupts this reliance upon Mythic + a bit and I will be completely honest, I hate M+. I get that it is a popular thing and that many people on here would rather run M+ for gear over farming pearls on a daily basis but I am not one of them. I prefer having a lot more control over the gear I can get in a goal of reaching BiS.
AOTC raid lead here.
Got ours weeks ago.
Now with nothing else in sight (I suspect until December if trend holds), I have multiple members including tanks and healers which aren’t easy to replace already considering the ‘undefined hiatus’ status.
All the usual stuff; there’s no sets to farm, no offset transmogs, no legendaries to work for, no weeklies… nothing.
Too much content invalidates the rest of it.
Trying to keep the team regular, but three more months gunna be a hard stretch.
…super worried we aren’t getting back up again…
I’ve given up on raiding in general since back in WoD. If I want (or need as the case may be) to do raids for something current, I’m usually just using LFR for a quick grab and then skiddadle.
PvP for me has almost always been a bust and I’ve always hated it so I don’t even bother.
World Quests are about the only thing left that I do and now that I’ve gotten all the reps, I just don’t even do them anymore except for the 3k AP Emissary Quests.
The ONLY thing that keeps me playing 100% is the holiday events and my Arakkoa toys… My own guild is practically dead long before Classic came out, which means socializing is normally done on a shoulder to shoulder basis (meaning I’m just stuck in Boralus trying to find people to talk to while I’m an Arakkoa).
The reason I’m posting this? Because in essence, people like ME are part of the cause of what’s going on. The only thing we DO care about is the story and it’s practically gone to the dogs at this point (pun NOT intended… THIS time). So if anyone is to blame for raids and BGs dying out, its us no-life, no-commitment folk.
I feel for ya man… PvP is hurting for similar reasons…
I get giving us lots of content to try but man don’t force us to do stuff we don’t enjoy to be competitive in stuff we do. Makes zero sense.
The alt stuff also sucks.
Both these things have hurt PvP too… Blizzard needs to retrograde so much of this stuff.
None of the blue items that have dropped for me or my main has been usable by us. Most were items nobody wanted, and they were vended out.
Useful greens get equipped right away, as they are at your level.
The number and variety of BoE greens that drop is far too low to make a dent in gearing.
My main is a skinner. Beasts rarely even drop loot now except for cooking mats. Beasts that don’t drop cooking mats basically drop no loot at all. It’s rare indeed you get a BoE green off a beast.
It is a tough time for guilds and not just with this patch. Even though their goal is faster content patches it seems the current trend is for the players to play a patch for a few weeks and then take a break from the game.
The content doesn’t really have any longevity. I think that’s because players know that each patch is a reset on gear or so many rewards are temporary or easier to obtain later when you can solo farm content.
I suppose there is nothing wrong with this but it makes it hard to keep a community alive.
It’s sad for raiders because once a raid season is over you can never really experience those fights the way they were meant to be experienced again.
I dunno about that but some people don’t really enjoy much in the game other than raiding and you can’t change that.
Cmon Blizzard lets go
All of this is spot on. Great post.
Hear hear. Sparringly done mythic content since Antorus, but almost anyone that raids can understand the plight.
Classic + .5 patch introducing nothing worthwhile + BFA issues = good luck keeping people enticed after youve cleared the content.
Then dont?
Im sure your log data doesnt show the only preventing kills is a bit more AP farming…
Breaks might not hurt individuals, but it murders guilds. For the people playing behind the ap curve and don’t care about having strong azerite traits the game is great right now. For those that do the current system is a nightmare and just keeps doubling down on what makes it so.