I ask this based on events over the weekend that saw the death of my heroic guild. We got to 7/10H pretty smoothy, with Inerva being a bit of a roadblock but dance boss and artificer downed fairly easily… Then we got to sludgy… After about 10 pulls, our way overgeared (from M+, no less) Tank ragequit and proclaimed he’s off to join a guild that focuses on M+.
Since the introduction of M+ in Legion, it has definitely impacted the raid scene. Emerald Nightmare was crushed within 3 days of launch because Blizz underestimated the impact of how powerful you could get from it. After that M+ became almost mandatory for artifact, HOA progression.
Now in SL, I find myself asking more and more; Why would I raid for 213 gear when I get better than that from M+7s and above (vault, specifically).
An M+ team is 5 people and far less to manage in terms of roles so a group of 5 M+ers can go smash 10s for an evening fairly easily and get far more reward than raiding could ever hope to provide. I myself outgeared normal mode before ever stepping foot into the raid. And my gear was better itemized than what the raid has on offer as well.
After watching Preach’s video on the death of his guild, I find myself in the same boat. CN hasn’t been all that fun, and certainly not as rewarding as M+ for me. I’m in my 30s and have been playing this game for a long time. I remember when 10 mans came into the game and that really hurt the 25 man guilds because smaller sizes were easier to manage and back then the rewards were less. So now that the rewards are as good, if not better, why would anyone raid?
Does anyone feel the same way? Has M+ hurt the raiding scene? I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this because there’s really no solution at this point. M+ is too popular to do away with, and frankly, it’s my favorite part of the game right now. So what could be done? Or am I projecting and wrong?
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Does m+ damage the popularity of the raid scene? Yes, there used to be only PvP and raiding. Now there’s PvP, m+ and raiding. So raiding will take a hit.
Is m+ killing raiding? Not at all. Raiding is still the big endgame draw.
Is there actually an issue? No. You can have both sets of content just fine.
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Is it? I can gear much faster and better through M+. Raiding isn’t even the hardest content in the game now with the infinite scaling. Oh and I can get a sweet mount from M+ too.
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I’ve been playing the game since m+ was a thing. In all that time there are a lot more people that raid and have low IO scores than people with high IO scores that dont raid.
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Takes time for change to set in but it’s noticeable now. 10 keys a week for 4 chances at a good vault item means IO is going to go up for raiders as well. And having to do so in order to raid and for better gear than raiding even offers means why bother?
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If all you care about is gear, then why are you doing PvE content at all? Just run PvP content and get PvP gear from conquest points. You’ll gear much faster than from M+ and raiding combined.
But I suspect it’s not all about gear for you. You run M+ because it is fun, not just to gain stats. That being the case, you should then understand why people raid despite other content being faster gearing paths.
People raid, and particularly progression raid, because raiding is fun. That’s been the case since Vanilla, and dungeons do not provide an adequate substitute. And I say this as someone who really likes M+: it’s simply not the same and does not scratch the same itch that raiding does.
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Yes but in those days raiding was the clear progression path. Saying it’s just for gear is reductive. Character growth is the core of an rpg. Raiding used to be the place where you got the big gear. People standing on the bridge in IF so you could see their Thunderfury. Guys in front of the bank in orgrimmar with Might of Menethil and T3… Raiding seems to fundamentally lack that at the moment, and as someone who’s always preferred raiding, I can see the appeal M+ provides for so many and why its the path of least resistance
It’s kind of a yes and no answer.
Yes in the sense that it pulls some of the less dedicated or more time restricted players away from the raid scene. No in the sense that alot of players play both in the mid-high end aspect of overall gameplay.
Since you need gear from both to do either M+ or raid, majority of people will do M+ and raid.
Blizz pretty much scattered gear across all 3 levels of gameplay. To gear up most efficiently now you need to do PvP, raid and M+
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Blizzard took a ‘fish from all ponds’ approach to this expansion, which is great in theory.
Match that with how drops work this expansion and your throwing hours and hours away at 10 chances at loot (which often does not happen) but at least your vault fills up.
And getting together with 4 other players is a lot easier than 19.
Paired with the time commitment of M+ vs Raiding ? I take M+ 9x out of 10.
These days if I want to see the raid content I just smash through LFR and call it good, don’t need artificial challenges and mechanics stacked on mechanics to witness 3rd grade story telling.
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This is where I’m starting to lean. The content itself is fine. The reward system is broken. I can ho bang out a 14 in 30 minutes and get a vault piece on par with someone who’s pulling mythic inerva for hours. I dont even have to time the key. Just finish it. I think raiding needs to provide the best rewards and pvp needs their own stats again I think. Or perhaps set bonuses that work in specific content like they tried with bfa
Raiding isn’t the only game in town anymore. It’s natural that some people will prefer M+ over raiding when given the choice. That doesn’t mean that raiding is dead or dying.
Blizzard seems to have designed the M+ and raid loot systems to be complementary in Shadowlands. Both have clear pros and cons. That’s already a step back from BfA where M+ was just better. Unfortunately they borked both systems by reducing the drop rates, and noone in the PvE community is happy right now.
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Except M+ has 8 dungeons worth of loot so you can target better itemized pieces. I know that’s class specific but looking at it from a brewmaster perspective theres very little in the way of properly itemized pieces in CN almost to where it feels like a waste of time to be in there. Weapons make this doubly noticeable
For the people in those guilds, the loot was never the prime motivating factor. If it was you were going to burn out or not make it to the high end.
It’s much the same today. Gear upgrades are fun, but at the end of the day your primary motivation needs to be killing those bosses and completing those encounters with people you like (hopefully). If you’re just doing it for gear you’re wasting your time and should, like you said, go to M+ only.
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By that logic most people should only kill a boss once. Except that’s not the norm.
You can’t target M+ gear at all above 210 ilvl. Even below that, drop rates being what they are, you’re looking at dozens of runs of a single dungeon to get a specific piece. And you’ll probably have to PUG most of those unless your guild/friends have an infinite supply of high level keys and the time/inclination to run the same dungeon over and over.
I know the grass is always greener, but if you’re looking at M+ thinking, “this is the ideal loot system!” then PvE gearing is even worse off than I thought. >_<
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Killing a boss is still fun a few times after the first time. I enjoy optimizing how I respond to encounters, how I do my job in a raid, and what I bring to the table.
You do realize that people can still be fun to be around, even when repeating a task? Part of the fun of being in a raiding guild is all the silly interactions, the inside jokes, the shared experiences.
Which do you think resonates longer, the time we all fell about in hysterics because I called the wrong lane to avoid Vexiona’s breath and killed everyone, or that time that one dude got bis bracers from that one boss?
I think you’ve highlighted a disconnect between people who play this game for the game, and people who play this game to satisfy their completionist tendencies.
There’s surely some grand philosophical sentiment that properly explains how the the journey is more important than the destination.
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They kind of screwed things up in my opinion.
- Raiding = Only 213 Great Vault rewards from clearing Heroic. To get the 4/10 reward in Mythic is out of the hands of the majority of players.
- M+ = 14 and higher keys give 226 gear making it desirable to do 4-10 dungeons a week minimum for your Great Vault.
- PvP = Totally screws over PvE gearing now due to the ease of getting rating from RBGs. You hit your desired rating and don’t drop below it and just farm conquest every week for a guaranteed item every 1-2 weeks. Most PvE people go PvP route to fill in holes in their equipment.
So to conclude my thoughts…
- Raiding heroic should give the same Mythic item level option when completed 10/10.
- M+ should have a higher iLvl (higher than heroic) at 15+ keys, but should not give access to mythic level items.
- PvP should not even give anything close to Mythic level items so easily making it appealing for PvErs to form RBG groups and farm rating.
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I get irritated with mythic plus because the rewards seem greater than raiding. Not only does gear drop more often but it also rewards an item which is +10 ilevels above what that mythic+ dungeon drops in the great vault. The raid great vault rewards…same ilevel as dropped in the raid.
This doesn’t make sense to me. I used to be able to gear up through raiding but now I have to gear up through mythic+ and that’s extremely problematic for me. Either I’m hurting my team by not doing mythic+ or I have to do an insane amount of mythic+ to get an ioscore, something I am loathe to do (not to mention insane amounts of time spent in queues).
I think mythic plus is bad demographically (20m raiding requires 2 tanks, 4 healers, 16 dps–so 70% dps versus 60% dps of mythic plus). Maybe that’s the idea, they want to strangle raiding without seeming to strangle raiding. But they’ll definitely lose the 10% or so ratio who won’t be able to find teams in mythic plus.
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I’m kind of in the middle. By the time we find a group willing to teach the raid to us, it’s just not worth spending all day looking for different groups willing to teach it. I play with 4 other guys that I know personally. M+ is the only thing we pretty much do that allows us progression. We did find a group that was able to teach us and we killed a few bosses in normal. I feel that M+ with certain affixes is pretty damn hard. I’m sure the mythic raid is pretty damn hard too. I feel that you have to do both to get a decent set of gear because the piss poor drop rates on both instances.
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