Really, if you are the player that “PUG’ed keys” before Dragonflight Season 4, thinking the PUG market would always just be there to help you meet your gearing goals, there are two things you should know:
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Heroic dungeons, as of Season 4 of Dragonflight, are meant to replace “the low key experience” and its PUG game. They’re harder, more intense with higher gear requirements, and yet still queueable. If you just bopped around PUGing in low to mid level keys, the new queueable, “relevant” heroics are part of the plan to scratch that itch of PUGing small group, challenging trinity content. They are the long desired “queueable mythics,” in all but name.
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The other part of serving the “Low to mid M+ PUG” player demographic is delves. Flex groups of one (as in SOLO) to five players tackling a variably difficult short instanced extension of the open world, which occupies the open world track of the great vault, and drops, I forget the name of the upgrade track but I’m told it’s about low to mid M+ or so. There are time and effort gates to getting that gear, but it’s very rewarding and “path of least resistance,” on purpose.
Mythic plus was intentionally upped in intensity and, yes, PUG unfriendliness as part of a return to its roots as a team mode or a mode shared with friends. Don’t believe me? Look all over the forums and social media: The experiment of delves and “relevant heroics” is working, and we’re in its growing pains now. Delves are the most popular content type as indicated by a recent official WoW twitter account poll. That’s on social media, where the “most engaged” will see it, not even the majority who will just embrace delves as the intentional path of an individual player’s least resistance to gear. Angry healers, a shortage of tanks, an uptick in “my god, the M+ PUG scene is insane,” or “how does anyone PUG this in M+” takes are all indicators that the new vision for M+ and the modes meant to catch everyone actively falling out of it are functioning as intended. Growing pains.
Mythic plus is not the default and PUG-intended “everyone mode” at the PVE endgame any more. If you are playing under that assumption, and quit (as I’ve seen a few people do now for these reasons) without giving the two modes meant to potentially catch you a shot, that is of course your decision, but you are missing out on a transformative moment in WoW’s history. The War Within is bloody good, and I’d hate to see you miss it.
That’s just about all I’ve got. I can’t tell you how to think or play, but the messages of frustration I’m seeing tell me people aren’t getting the moral of the story out there: Your options are intended to be that you play with friends (or at least a regular team) in M+, or in groups smaller than five, even solo, you play in delves or queue for heroic dungeons, which are essentially “queueable mythics.”
If you think you deserve the highest gear possible, and insist on PUGing M+, I can’t stop you, but the misery vortex of M+ PUGing is intentionally being made very optional, as it is abandoned and designed away from because it’s the worst face of WoW. It exists, it’s supported still, but It’s so obvious and I applaud the social engineering of trying to smother it by the devs. It really is the worst face of the WoW community.
Give delves or heroics a try! Or don’t, I’m not your (real) dad.
Good luck!