Greetings!
With the release of Embers of Neltharion, we have made several updates regarding Mythic+.
What has your experience been like so far? Let us know in this thread, and we greatly appreciate all of your feedback!
3 Likes
M+ feels better than season 1! My biggest gripe remains here Raid/Party wide utility
And the fact that people can leave groups whenever they feel like it, without any sort of penalty.
I do enjoy the fact that a lot of the dungeons are actively getting looked at and changing in a way that mechanics and affixes don’t feel overwhelming.
Oh and I really appreciate Razsageth not screeching in my ears every 3 minutes or so <3
7 Likes
M+ this week has been a trying experience for me.
A healthy mix of guild and pug groups, I’ve noticed a few specific pain points that could do with some improving.
In no particular order…
-
Grand Vizier (1st boss VP)
The lightning pool under the boss is very hard to see the edge of. The tornados that are around the outside and move in are very easy to see because of the dark circle, perhaps the effect under the boss could be changed to a similar visual? I’ve accidentally touched the lightning under the boss while dodging the balls several times. -
Brackenhide Hollow 1st boss
Ran this in a full melee comp this week, and maybe its our fault for not having any ranged, but it felt impossible to dodge the whirlwind while maintaining uptime on the bosses. I assume this is unlikely to be changed and will probably be looked at as a “get good” comment, but the targetting of the ability felt off as he would randomly swap targets without warning. -
Neltharion’s Lair - Avalanche ability
Both on the trash before the 2nd boss and on Ularogg as well the targetting of Avalanche is not obvious and hard to predict. There is no ground indicator to know how far to run away from the falling rocks, and again in a heavy melee composition it was overly difficult to survive this mechanic due to not being able to see where rocks are falling.
I’m sure I’m missing a few but these were the worst 3 of the week for me.
Beyond that… the biggest issue remains to be leavers. The worst example for me this week was a single wipe on the last boss of Neltharus, the timer hadn’t quite expired but we wouldn’t be able to time the key and the healer left after the single wipe. It’s obviously incredibly frustrating to just waste 30 minutes and get absolutely nothing for it. I would like to see a leaver system implemented in some way. I think this system could take some loose motivation from League of Legends *(1) in that there should be a “surrender” option so a consensual reset wouldn’t be penalized, but 1 person leaving pre-emptively would face some form of punishment (maybe they don’t get any crests from their next key at the crest level of the key left?)
I think a simple UI element could be added for this option as well, maybe only accessible by the group leader to avoid spamming?
*(1) The surrender system in LoL, for anyone who doesn’t know allows your team to surrender assuming a majority vote (which goes from 5-0 early in the game to 4-1 later in the game.
2 Likes
Can a change be implemented to award lower quality crests once you max out the crests from that difficulty?
Having to do lower level keys to max out crests is going to get annoying really fast.
2 Likes
Supposedly there has been a change to avalanche! Great to see!
Could you please remove the training dummies in Freehold? My minions and Starfall go on it…
6 Likes
Hi, I just wanted to say that I am equal parts surprised and impressed with the frequency of the dungeon tuning so far. The thing I was dreading most about this season was waiting two months for the dungeons to feel playable, and you guys have really outdone yourselves listening to feedback this time around. The disparity in difficulty between the hardest and easiest dungeon is already closing in to be only a moderate difference (a huge improvement from last season), and I am excited to see the changes to come.
I also second this:
Spamming 11s when I would rather do 20s for gear does not feel great.
Small QoL recommendation on behalf of my Boomkin homies: Can pulsar stacks please clear once the key is put in? It seems miserable to stack up on a target dummy before every dungeon.
<3
1 Like
General Feedback
I really enjoyed this season of M+. The tuning felt great for experienced players, apart from a few exceptions that have mostly been resolved. I’m just a little worried about the more casual audience - some skills and mechanics aren’t conveyed very well and the tuning goal might be a bit challenging if it’s expected to be within everyone’s reach to time a keystone on level 20 on every dungeon.
Esp. Neltharus seems rough for thoses since the timer feels very tight and bosses and trash get out of hand easily in respective weeks (fortified/tyranical).
Brackenhide Hollow
As for Brackenhide Hollow, there is a specific mob that will cause a lot of trouble and confusion for the pugs. https://www.wowhead.com/npc=187033/stinkbreath
His cone-shaped Stink Breath ability is, in my honest opinion, hard to spot and understood based on visuals alone.
You basiclly only see it on his mouth and when it hits you. There is no visual travel or range indicator on this ability. This makes it hard to spot and postioning harder then it should be.
I would really like to see a change here.
Cheers,
Yumuros
It’s already been said by a few other people already but I feel like it’s so important that I feel the need to touch on it again. People who leave your keys or purposely do things to fail your key deserve some kind of punishment. Not saying to outright ban people or something so severe but it feels so bad having the tank or healer drop because of something silly and waste everyone’s time with zero consequences.
I would love some kind of system in-game that let’s you give people accolades for being respectful or an amazing team player. Similar to overwatch where after the game/dungeon is over you can give people ratings on performance or for being a good team player/shotcaller or leader. Maybe it would add more meaning than just a raider IO score or a mythic score.
1 Like
My Feedback regarding the dungeons.
I’ve already done the KSM and these are just my general opinions in regards to the dungeons, i do hope my feedback does help shape the future better.
Overall advice for all the dungeons though: The Debuffs will state the wrong damage amounts, such as crossbowmen from Brackenhide Hollow, their bleed debuff description states about 12.5k damage every 1.5seconds but the actual bleed is hitting abouty 62.5k on a 15 this tyrannical week.
I’ll go through my experiences dungeon by dungeon though.
1st: Brackenhide Hollow. There’s not too much feedback i would probably have.
My first suggestion would be for Gashtooth, the marked for butchery can be lethal in high keys, but its just mianly because Gashtooth doesn’t skip leg day and runs at our healers every first opportunity they get.
For my second dungeon of choice i will talk about Freehold.
Freehold feels like a definite nostalgia trip from pushing keys back in BFA. The packs of adds are in perfect proportions for players to cleave through.
In regards to bosses though, i’ve only got issues with the council and the ring of booty encounter.
During the BFA Freehold, it was completely random which one of the three pirates could follow you, though i don’t know if its bad RNG or its completely set now but every freehold key i’ve ran, the follower has been Captain Jolly.
I would like to see the return of either getting Captain Raoul or Captain Eudora just randomly assigned to make the dungeon experience more interesting for us.
In Ring of Booty i’ve had an incident where i was “stun locked” by a shell that was hitting me multiple times, not able to get out the way as the knockback actually caused me to be hit multiple times. What i think could be changed here is rather than a knock back, the shellshock when it hits a player will send them jumping up in place while the shell passes through underneath them.
No comment for Harlan Sweete, maybe make his neck more visible.
The third one will be halls of infusion.
I’ve done a halls key on 15, 16 and attempted even an 18 (though i was unable to time that one.) and i think the most important feedback i could give is.
with the adds towards the first bosses, the containment devices still hurt a ton.
Watcher Iredus phases at half health and will start channeling an ability to gather power. during this phase, players will kite the titan orbs he spawns to him to cancel the channel out. What hurts a ton though isn’t this phase itself but rather what comes after. it encourages players to save lust to after the intermission phase so that they can burn the boss before they run out of cooldowns as the puddle sizes become a little difficult to manage. its handy that he can only gain a max of 20 stacks on an intermission phase but even with movement abilities, at 20% the pools created by Power overload can be fatal to classes without mobility.
The change here i would probably like to see, increase the timer by 0.5s for siphon power, this will let guilds and runs to have a bit more breathing room.
The other change which could benefit players majorly would be to increase the timer on Power Field which is left by Power Overload, rather than 1 second intervals, raise it by 0.2s to 1.2s intervals where players will tick for damage.
No comment for Gulping Goliath.
No Comment for Khajin
On the way from Khajin to Primal Tsunami, we walk down a corridor where at the end we meet Infuser Sariya. She, HURTS.
With high verse, i’ve seen tanks get slapped for 300k+ Damage. Inundate is pretty much mandatory for players to have a defensive up or else 80% HP is deleted in the snap of a finger. I can understand as it is a tyrannical week that the add will hurt but i have a feeling there’s a way to change it slightly while still preserving the sense of danger.
No comment for Primal Tsunami.
No Comment for Neltharus, it’s a good dungeon, the balancing is great
No comments for UR either.
For Uldaman, My only feedback i could provide is to be able to LoS Earthquake with the pillars in the room with the Construct.
Also i found a bug in this Emberon Fight. Most likely not intended but Sometimes Evokers can use the Hover ability to go through the Purging flames without taking any damage. I’ve been able to do this once and i’ve got the footage of said event happening with MedalTV https://medal.tv/games/world-of-warcraft/clips/1a7gyF8WNC4FYI/d1337V7MtikG?invite=cr-MSxLZVcsNjM4NTQ2MzEs
I would also like to see a slight nerf to the Hail of stone damage as it is not interruptible and requires a stun / CC.
That is all my feedback for Uldaman.
For NL / Nelth Lair, I’ve got a few bits of feedback i would love to have implemented.
No comment for first boss
On the way to the second boss though, we meet some Drogbar Breakers. They have an ability called Avalanche which hits like a truck. Anyone can agree its an annoying ability, mainly because of its ability to one-shot players if they so choose to stack up to make aoe healing easier for healers. Avalanche is an instant ability when it is casted, there’s no prep time, players are required to move the moment the ability is started to be cast because if you’re not already moving, you’re guaranteed to be hit for massive damage.
The way i would like to see this be changed for the benefit of the players is, rather than be instantly casted when Avalanche is complete, Maybe it creates a swirly for 2 seconds before starting to rain down the boulder on top of it. this gives players a chance to get out of it at the least, even if it is a slim one. It’ll drastically improve the success rate people have with Neltharions Lair keys.
With the Drogbar Pelters: Increase pelting time by 0.1s, all healers will thank you if there’s even the softest increase to this timer.
no comment for boss.
For Naraxas: need to make adds CC-able
No comment for Dargrul.
For Vortex Pinnacle: i would like to just request one change.
Skyfall Nova cast time be increase to 1.1s and that the skyfall Nova be unaffected by Tyrannical modifiers. That is my only change i would like to request.
That is all my feedback regarding the Dragonflight Season 2 dungeons.
At first glance this seems like a great idea - but it can easily go wrong.
Who’s to say what constitutes a good/bad player? Are you bad because you do low damage or because you missed 1 interrupt? Are you good because you didn’t die at all or because you clutched up and made something work?
Context is very important, and I feel like a system like this would be heavily abused. One person can be the problem in a key and give everyone else a bad rating for doing nothing wrong.
I think there just needs to be an invisible penalty applied. Lockout Crest awards for X number of runs or something
Hi!
Some feedback regarding Mythic+ in S2 of Dragonflight.
- Still love that we’re rotating dungeons each season.
- Quick response from Blizzard on tuning and clarity issues
- Blizzards overall attitude towards readability on abilities
- While I do not like affixes as a concept, I like the changes done this season (only two affixes and they’re added at higher levels)
However:
- The first boss in Halls of Infusion has some major performance issues. I’m not sure which spell it is but I drop from 60-100 FPS down to 10-20 when he casts it.
- Readability of which ice is broken and which is whole on the third boss in Halls of Infusion
And finally, I’d like to request an update to the Mythic+ timer that’s native in WoW (as part of your ongoing UI refresh).
- The current one doesn’t show the timer for +2/+3 in clear way
- We’re shown a percentage but as far as I’m aware, there is no way to know the % of mobs in game without third-party addons.
- Time for when you complete objectives (this gives a good indication on if you’re on time with the key).
I’d also love the ability to see drops from a certain level of M+ in the dungeon journal.
Having done a number of keys in the 16-20 range across the weeks and dungeons I have feedback to give on some of the bosses or pain points of each of the dungeons. Some are in more tricky spots than others balance wise.
Brackenhide Hollow
Hackclaws Warband:
- Fairly well tuned although it has the danger of snowballing you out of control should your healer fall behind for any reason making it very punishing. The Bloodfrenzy mechanic is also difficult to understand if you don’t know how it works in advance.
EDIT: I came back to edit this after doing another 20 this week and this boss is out of control. The rock blasts do a ton of damage to people. Marked For Butchery is damn close to a death sentence, the snowballing is insane with both gash frenzy serving as a grevious mechanic and the predatory instincts kicking in. This boss is WAY harder than all of the other bosses I’ve done on 20 this week.
Decaytriarch Wratheye:
- Good after the changes but also suffers from the snowballing effect of falling behind
Trash:
- Stinkbreath is a very difficult miniboss to deal with and tell what is going on.
- Rotbow Stalkers Bone Bolts do a ton of damage that when they volley it is incredibly dangerous
Halls of Infusion
Watcher Irideus:
- Pool left behind by Power Overload ticks fast and hurts bad. If your healer is one of the 3 players to get the debuff it can be very hard to move out of the pool while also keeping everyone alive due to the size of the pool. My suggestion is to have Power Overload only apply to the dps classes.
Khajin the Unyielding:
- Very high healing check but not impossible. Usually seeing my healers sitting around 100k+ hps for the entirety of the fight.
- Safe iceblock visibility is still a little difficult as well as knowing how big the blast radius on unsafe ones are. Have seen people get hit by unsafe ones that are simply too close to safe ones and they don’t realise.
Neltharus
- Overall this dungeon has gotten a lot of help and the changes have made the bosses much more manageable, albeit they are all incredibly hard on healers. Magmatusk could maybe use a little bit of a dampening to his damage and also it would be good if it took a few seconds for the magma pool buff to take effect as its frustrating when he spawns one under himself as he goes to do a mechanic.
Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr
Bromach:
- Overall it’s in a better spot but I feel there should be a slightly longer delay before he calls for more adds. It lines up with about when the totem dies in most groups in higher keys which means all these adds are out while he is stunned.
Sentinel Talondras:
- The Earthen Shards bleed either needs to be nerfed or have a decreased occurrence rate. Not going on the same person is nice but it does an insane amount of damage and there is basically always one up. If the person it’s on doesn’t have a defensive or get an external they will probably die.
- Inexorable is an interesting mechanic but it should only interact with the resonating orbs. Classes like destruction warlocks who call down Blasphemies result in the shield breaking way faster than normal and give the boss permanent stacking damage from something that the spec has to do to do damage. At the very least only targeted stuns should work.
Emberon:
- Burning Heat does insane amounts of damage on higher tyrannical keys, basically requiring dispels.
- The intermission is tough on healers due to them having to be moving while also keeping people alive through constant damage.
Chrono-Lord Deios:
- The constant damage during this fight is insane. It’s another one that healers are putting up 100k hps throughout the fight. add in constantly having to move from puddles and getting knocked back this fight seems like a nightmare to heal.
- Time Sink is a brutal debuff that once again basically requires a dispell but due to the nature of the fight requires precise positioning due to its AoE upon dispell. You want to be together however so that pools don’t spawn all over the place or you run out of room.
- Reverse Timeflow isn’t enough of a boost to help the healer catch up and quite often this fight becomes a ride or die extremely tough encounter.
Trash:
-Everything hits crazy hard in here. The earthquake should be an LoS mechanic considering how much it does as well as the pillars directly around it. Hail of Stone does a ton of damage that needs stun level cc to interrupt. Curse of Stone is basically an insta-kill if it isn’t interrupted. The debuff from the Infinite Timereavers not only do a ton of damage but also cause a haste loss.
Freehold
Sky Cap’n Kragg:
- When Kragg is mounted he shoots random players with pistol shot for a bunch of damage, if the healer doesn’t catch them within that one second window and you get unlucky the player might get shot again and just die.
Council o’ Captains:
- The player who gets trapped by Blackout Barrel sometimes just gets stuck in mechanics like Barrel Smash or Grape Shot happening very shortly after it goes on someone. The player should probably be protected from these mechanics while disoriented.
Underrot
Cragmaw the Infested:
- The damage the ticks deal to the tank are extremely high considering it’s close to impossible to stomp all the ticks during Tantrum. The dot also lasts after the fight ends.
Sporecaller Zancha:
- The first rotation of mechanics usually leave a few mushrooms up, requiring someone in the group to soak them. May be intended maybe not.
Neltharion’s Lair
Rokmora:
- The skitterers spawning based on how much damage the boss has taken can lead to it almost being an rng fight in a pug environment. Skitterers that spawn right as the boss goes to Shatter is basically a wipe. This is more of a skill issue than anything but it’s a tough mechanic to get across in pugs.
- The Razor Shards frontal does not have a great indicator and will sometimes clip players that appear to be outside the cone.
Naraxas:
- In a much better place since the nerfs but still requires a large amount of healing. The toxic retch going on everyone is still very damaging when combined with the crowd hurling rocks at players.
Dargrul:
- Another fight that’s tough to coordinate with pugs. Failure to get the crystals to spawn close to where the add will spawn means a ton of damage will be hitting your group. Repositioning The boss itself is also not really an option because it does the same large damage.
- The lava geyser also deal a large amount of damage consistently, and if coupled with the fact that spikes are far from the add it puts an incredible strain on the healer with no way to tell who is about to get hit by the geyser.
Trash:
- The spit from the Lurkers does an insane amount of damage that basically requires them to be hard cc to interrupt it.
- The Emberhusk Dominators pulsing out spikes on top of the pelters throwing jagged discs is a ton of aoe damage for healers to have to deal with.
Vortex Pinnacle
Altairus:
- Considering that you have to get hit by a tornado to dodge a mechanic that’ll kill you they do a lot of damage even after the nerf.
Asaad:
- The amount of strain on a healer with overlapping mechanics on this fight is insane. The Nova does a ton of damage and has enough health where healers will have to deal with it for a while. At the same time someone will get hit with the chain lightning, requiring them to move it away from others. On top of all of this Static Cling will also happen forcing healers to cancel a cast that may be necessary to save someone. In my opinion, Static cling should be changed to be more like the mechanic on Patrol Captain in Court of Stars or removed completely.
Trash:
- The pull near the end with 2 executors, a minister of air and 2 servants of Asaad deals insane amounts of damage. The combo of double stomps, the servants charging people, and having to deal with keeping track of the lighting lasso and overloading grounding field is a lot to worry about in one trash pull. The Executors who do the stomp cannot even be crowd controlled so even if you cc the servants it’s a ton of aoe damage while managing the Minister’s mechanics.
- The adepts will chain cast their Heal even after being interrupted leading to a scenario where you can easily run short on interrupts.
- Skyfall Stars are both annoying and deadly.
- Turbulent Squalls shield aoe does a ton of damage and almost requires a dispel for them
Checkpoints and “Triple Threat”
The topic of checkpoints in dungeons have come up a lot in discussion lately and while we have seen some improvements (move speed bonuses) to some of the worse ones I think Blizzard should reconsider their stance on checkpoints in M+. When your team full wipes you are punished 3 times over by the game.
1: Each death subtracts 5 seconds from the timer, assuming a full wipe that is automatically 25 seconds off the timer.
2: The entire party has to run back from wherever the respawn point is. Running from the start of Neltharus to the Forgemaster for example even with the cooking speed boost is another minute or two off the timer.
3: Whatever you were fighting resets to full health. If you wipe on a boss at 5% all the time you spent on that boss is also lost.
Obviously full wiping should be punishing but it is insane how much you can be punished for it. The easiest solution would be to just make it so that once a boss is defeated that is your new respawn point. We claimed that area, it is theoretically safe now, no longer “enemy territory”. Also with a system like M+ in place I don’t feel like immersion and aesthetic should take priority over gameplay and enjoyment.
2 Likes
Mythic+ Season 2 is the best its been in a long time.
Positive
- Having a whole new dungeon pool is exactly what M+ needed to stay fresh. We can never go back.
- Less impactful affixes are way more fun than seaons 1 affixes
- Crests give me a reason to do keys with friends, even if they offer me no upgrades or score increase
- Great dungeon pool overall
Negative
- Balance is better than season 1, but still a few outliers (Underrot too easy, Netharius too hard)
- Tyrannical still feels much harder than Fortified in the 11-20 key range
- Timers could use tuning. Can time a Freehold+17 with 15 deaths, but 1 wipe in Vortex Pinnacle+17 will kill your chances of timing.
- Runbacks. Some dungeons have nice QoL for runbacks (Uldaman, Vortex Pinnacle)… then there is Halls of Infusion… I don’t understand the philosophy of having shortcuts and checkpoints in some dungeons, but then refusing to have them in others.
1 Like
I’ve said it once and I will say it again. These affixes are not fun.
On fort weeks the bosses are a joke, and on tyrannical weeks trash feels non-existent.
Please consider removing them next season.
Not only were some bosses very difficult on high keys this week, but if you wipe you are punished further by having the Exhaustion debuff and you have to wait for CDs to come back. I don’t know if a hard reset on Exhaustion/CDs like in raid would be appropriate for M+, but M+ is on a timer and raid isn’t. The punishment is excessively severe.
I did 2 Brackenhide hollow runs last night. The first the checkpoint never saved so we had to run from the start to the last boss every time we wipes. The second only the checkpoint after boss #2 (Treemouth) activated.
2 Likes
My feeback remains the same as in my original post but I will try to change a few things.
From my point of view there are three major areas that need to be addressed and improved and these are:
- Design, Innovation and Variability of the dungeons
- Cultivation of an unhealthy mentality and environment in dungeons
- Players being forced into content due to the reward system
On my post below I will attempt to describe the issues and potentially offer a couple of ideas on how things can move forward.
Design, Innovation and Variability of the dungeons:
First, I would like to mention the design of dungeons.
For me so far this expansion does not offer any dungeons that I could call favourite. Instead, it feels like dungeons lack innovation, new or special mechanics and notable design.
I was always amazed by dungeons like Dire Maul, Blackfathom Deeps, Gnomeregan, Old Hillsbrad Foothills, The Black Morass, The Culling of Stratholme, Deadmines, Well of Eternity, Stormstout Brewery, Grimrail Depot, Iron Docks, Court of Stars and more. They all offered unique design and unique mechanics. Of course, there are tons of dungeon in the game now, but I haven’t been impressed by the DF ones.
Something that bothers me a lot is that we have been introduced to only 8 new dungeons for this expansion. For reference I will throw a comparison per expansion:
- Classic: 20 dungeons
- TBC: 16 dungeons
- WotLK: 16 dungeons
- Cataclysm: 14 dungeons
- MoP: 9 dungeons
- WoD: 8 dungeons
- Legion: 13 dungeons
- BFA: 11 dungeons
- Shadowlands: 9 dungeons
- DF: 9 dungeons (including the upcoming Mega-dungeon)
Now out of those 8 new dungeons we get to play in M+ just 4 of them per season, plus 4 old ones. The idea is ok but for someone like me who has been playing the game for such a long time, I would rather play new dungeons for the entire expansion. Playing the same old ones for a second expansion was always weird for me, and now feels even less interesting since they haven’t been redesigned. Someone might say I do not wanna play 8 dungeons for 2+ years and that I understand too. But I prefer to play 8 new rather that 4 and 4 old which 4 old I was already playing for 2 years in the previous expansions. Makes absolutely no sense. Maybe for new players is better but for someone who is playing since the first day of WoW it is not fun.
Again, for reference I will say that I am not playing Diablo much as I don’t like repetitive content much.
Instead, I always liked the lore/story development in the Warcraft franchise.
Cultivation of an unhealthy mentality and environment in dungeons
As it stands, the game has created a very unfriendly and unhealthy environment over the past years due to how M+ works.
I will try to describe my experience.
I do not consider myself a top player. I am doing many mistakes, mostly in rotation and dps/hps output but I consider myself capable to survive tough fights and use more of my skills/abilities that the game offers to any of the class/specs I am playing.
The first season that just ended my Mage was at 419 item level and my Warrior at 416 item level. The Mage had 2685 rating, and the Warrior had 2619. Now I am standing in a similar situation with both character above 440 item level and 2,6k rating. Same deal.
For me to be able to get in a 20 with a random group was very unpleasant situation. I had to wait for ages for a group to form and even if I manage to get into a group, the moment 1 player fails the group disbands and never finishes the key.
At this point I would like to mention that I am in a guild with 400+ accounts, most of them active players. When we are doing keys with our guildies the second part of the problem doesn’t exist as people would be glad to finish any key regardless. However, on the odd times that I need to pug something the experience is dreadful and I can only imagine of how much worse this will be for people that are not in high populated guilds.
On top of that I would like to mention that every group or group leader or tank have different ways to complete the dungeon. They use bloodlust/heroism in different parts of the dungeons, or they do different paths, with different skips, etc.
Many times, I find myself in the situation where people will go literally mad at me or any other member of the group, just because they failed using bl/hero or they went from a different path or anything similar, even though it has not been explained to them.
Generally, my experience with pugging Mythic+ more than half of the times was unpleasant rather than enjoyable. Most of the times the key will either just fail, or people will get mad about it.
I understand that you cannot succeed in everything, but having this environment if far from fun when you are playing a game to have exactly that, fun.
Players being forced into content due to the reward system.
Currently the game offers 3 distinct modes when it comes to end game content.
- PVE – Raiding
- PVE – Mythic+
- PVP
Now, one could argue that because Raid & Mythic+ are both PVE modes, they should also fall under the same umbrella.
However, in reality, they are very different in their design, purpose, type of difficulty, time investment requirements and mentality.
Few of the most notable differences are:
- Group size
- Admin and organization time needed.
- Raid teams promote communities and guilds due to the nature of the activity whereas Mythic plus promote individuality and disregards the need of a community.
- Raids are rigid and need to be run on a set schedule where Mythic+ are very flexible.
- M+ are extremely fast paced and stress driven due to the nature of the activity (timer on completion/depletion) whereas Raids have a somewhat slower pace and although a mistake could wipe you, the consequences of that is not as harsh and unforgiving.
And they list could continue but I will leave it at that.
As a consequence of those differences, there are many players out there that get attracted to either one of those modes or the other. Yes, there are people that enjoy both and also there are people that want to have one of those modes as their main mode of playing and have the other one as the one they play at the end of a tier let’s say.
For example, once you have achieved the things you want in Mythic + you can do bit of raiding or PVP to get achievements, maybe a mount etc.
Also, one should consider time restrictions. Unless you are not working, Raiding & doing Mythic+ at the same time is extremely time consuming and it is something that in the current content is mandatory for anyone that wants to Raid Mythic mode.
For example:
My Guild raids 3 evenings every week. That leaves 4 more evenings for me to do Mythic+. And that if I spend all my 4 remaining evenings to play the game.
So, let’s say that I like to be a competitive raider and I want to help my team as much as I can. Or that my team has as requirement to be at a certain item level, as they struggle on dps with some of the bosses.
In any of these cases I will have to maximize my chances with loot. So, I will have to do 8x20s. That’s about 5 hours of playing Mythic+ if all of the keys I do are straight into 20 and they are all successful or pugged.
This also means that after doing all that there is not enough time to do other, more relaxing things, I enjoy in game like mount hunting and achievements etc.
So, a lot of people are now forced to spend a significant portion of their time in a week, into an activity they do not enjoy, in order to be able to perform in the activity they do enjoy.
Another unfortunate consequence of people being forced into content is that we have lost a few good raiders due to the fact that they either do not like Mythic+ at all, or do not have the time to spend both for Raiding and M+. These are skilled, good and reliable players that were driven off from Raiding due to the pressure of M+.
There is also the issue of people that do not like Raiding but get into a Guild and a Team just to get the gear they want from Raids for Mythic+ purposes. They don’t care about the guild, about building teamwork, or the team’s development, resulting in ruining teams that have been running Mythic Raids, leaving them midtier etc, after they got all the items they need out of the team.
As I mentioned at the start of my post my goal is to open a constructive discussion and taking that into consideration, I would propose the following:
- Make 3 distinct gear sets, one for each mode which will be tailored to the content it caters to. PvP gear and vendors are a prime example, you will just have to drive the separation forward to Mythic+ & Raid and detach those two.
- Make each respective bonuses not active in a non-appropriate content. i.e. (PVP bonus works only on arenas battlegrounds etc, Mythic+ bonus only inside Mythic+ and so on. I would say maybe have it on for outside content like wqs etc.
- All content to be able to be done on an average level without any special gear. For example, be able to time a 15+, get to 1500 - 1600 on pvp and do Heroic raid without much penalty (obviously you will need some speciality gear in order to excel on these modes on said difficulty etc)
There will always be some cross contamination in slots like rings maybe etc like it happens with pvp now but that would be minimal.
If you do all of the above then you can have ilvl rewards that are reflective and relevant to the content without having anyone from any side PvP, Raiding, Mythic+ feeling they get the sort end of the stick.
Also, it will help immensely with balancing the game both for Raiding & Mythic + as right now there are a lot of classes that are not even considered for picking in a group when it comes to Raiding or Mythic+.
As a closing comment I would like to mention Challenge modes.
With everyone that I have discussed, that has experienced Challenge Modes in Pandaria and WoD, they all told me the same thing. They all enjoyed thoroughly and were proud and happy to have participated and have an awesome set of transmog to show for it!
I understand that Mythic+ kinda replaced the Challenge modes, but they are very different both as reward system and duration.
Challenge modes you had to succeed them once per dungeon whereas with Mythic+ you have to do them over and over again. CMs had mostly cosmetic and mount rewards and Mythic+ have mostly gear rewards.
So, my question is, why did we lost CMs?
These are few of my thoughts and I would love to discuss and exchange more thoughts on this topic with the rest of the community.
Thanks for reading!
Ath
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Most expansions after Cataclysm has had around 8 dungeons. MoP had 6 new and 3 reworked. WoD had 8. Legion had 8 at launch, two added in 7.1, mega in 7.2 and two in 7.3 for a total of 13. BfA had 10 at launch with a mega added in 8.2. Shadowlands had 8 at launch and mega at 9.1
So the amount of dungeons we’re at right now in the patch cycle of this expansion seems resonable.
I’d argue that Temple of the Jade Serpent was a pretty different dungeon in m+ compared to the version that’s available in MoP. I can’t say regarding Shadowmoon Burial Ground as I didn’t play it on mythic but I enjoyed it. See no reason to update Legion dungeons as they are quite on par with “newer” dungeons. Vortex Pinnacle has seen some updates to it as well, making it more “fresh”.
We’ve yet to have a Shadowlands dungeon in Dragonflight m+ rotation so this is false.
But you’d be fine with having the same 8 dungeons for an entire expansion?
I 100% agree that they need to do some solid improvements on how to handle pugs. However, I exclusively play with pugs both in raid and m+ and more often than not it’s the attitude you bring that makes the group. I play tank and as long as I communicate my pathing, making sure that people know that I, as a tank makes the calls on what to pull and respect the mana of the healer it’s ok. Just communicate and it’s fine most of the time.
While I understand this statement, I don’t feel that this representative of the majority of the player base. You don’t need to do 8 timed +20 if you’re not doing mythic raiding. And if you are doing mythic raiding, you’re pushing the high limits of what the game has to offer and I’d argue that you have to make a time investment in order to do that.
Please no. I’d honestly see this as a punishment for enjoying two different end game pillars and if they went this way, I’d probably stop raiding altogether.
I would love to see the return of cosmetic items for playing high-end m+. Let’s say you’re rewarded a weapon skin-set for getting 2-2.5k rating as an example.
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Yes. I prefer not to play and not to pay for a slightly redesigned version of a dungeon I was already playing for 2 years in the past. I am paying for new content.
I do not fully agree. Yes not everyone runs a mythic raiding group, but 4k guilds set foot in mythic raiding. Used to be 6k+ guilds in the past. 4k guilds globally is 100.000 to 150.000 players. Not is not a minority if you consider that many other people play just for pet battles, many are just pvpers, some are roleplaying, others are pushing M+.
Personally I do have the time to spend and still feel ok with the commitment it requires. The time investment needs to be at least more linear. What happened this patch with having the crests cap per week so high lead to more toxicity in communities and to more people burning out. People do not have limits, which is a good and a bad thing.
While a relevant number on its own, it’s still a small percentage of the player base.
So the issue is more the high limit of crests forcing some players to do m+ to stay relevant in mythic raiding? Would a lower weekly cap help with this? Instead of compartmentalizing the end game pillars further (as the other alternative).
A lower weekly cap will make the environment less toxic and the players not to get burned out and be interested to play for longer.