I agree with everything you’ve said here except that ksm is “not an accomplishment”. That’s simply inflamatory. In such a casual game, geared towards casual players/whales, ksm is certainly an accomplishment for a literal textbook majority of the people who obtain it. Something like 60% of m+ players stop at ksm.
No need to insult folks about it if it’s a tad beneath you, or even if it is your cap, there’s still no need.
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Okay, granted, it’s not nothing. But, saying “60% of mythic players stop at KSM” is much like saying “60% of mythic players get KSM” which sort of highlights how meaningless it is. It’s not an exception, it’s an expectation.
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I look at it another way; I see only twenty keystone levels since level 20 is the maximum key level that gives unique rewards (483 Myth track item in the Great Vault and a dungeon portal for completed the key in time). Any key level above a 20 does not offer new unique rewards other than rating which after 2,500 doesn’t reward anything unless you are aiming for the top 1 or 0.1% playerbase title at the end of the season.
The timer is meant to be completed and gets easier every week as players’ gear increases in power.
I wish affixes were “artificial difficulty” instead of real difficulty…
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This is kinda the takeaway from the whole thread xD
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Nah, you double dip on dungeons on tyrranical / fort weeks so you dont need to go above 16. Dont even think you need to do all 15s tbh.
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This season wasn’t too difficulty to progress to 20 tho.
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Exactly. This is another one of my warrs:
h ttps://raider.io/characters/us/black-dragonflight/Nafear
The goal was just ksm for the token, but I got 2200 by doing 4 extra Fort dungeons to help a friend. Took me Sunday to Tuesday (1 reset) to get ksm from 0/pvp gear. No 20s, and I only did the two 17s because there were no 15/16s listed at the time.
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Generally when people play a game they expect to be able to enter the content of said game without already having 3 months of experience doing the content under their belt.
But that’s not how WoW functions when it comes to dungeon content. It functions like trying to land your first job instead.
And yes, for higher content, it makes sense that players are pickier with the random people they’re inviting. It’s inevitable. People should not be forced into bringing subpar or unproven players when there’s 20 in the queue with tangible data to judge them on.
However, the failing, in my eyes, is that Dungeon Content does not have even a base level casual entry equivalent to LFR. Either you put up with the horrendous mess of trying to catch up to the curve so you actually get invited to M+ groups, or you just don’t do dungeon content because the accessible dungeon content is literally worthless content from an era of WoW that doesn’t exist anymore.
(At least, this is the experience for the average modern WoW players trying to pug through everything – its not a given or even typical for people to be part of guilds doing this stuff together anymore)
At a bare minimum, Mythic 0 needs to be in LFD to act as an equivalent to LFR.
Even if M+ doesn’t quite make sense to get that same treatment, having an “endgame” level of dungeon content to pursue for players on the casual end would be a good thing. Heroics are not that and have not been that since like TBC (maybe Cata pre-nerf).
This wouldn’t help people like OP who “know” they’re skilled and therefore would still want to be able to participate in higher content, but at least it would normalize the dungeon endgame “pillar” to some extent vs the Raid pillar.
Delves sound cool and all but world content is not dungeon content, it’s a separate thing and should be treated as such.
A lot of that is because of how nerfed everything is now, while also having other sources of gear, mainly the overworld, which completely nullifies the reason of having anything, at least right now, below a +7 (possibly even higher).
This is also what causes issues in those mid-key ranges where you have a ton of people shooting for a higher key level with very little knowledge of the dungeons and their class, mainly because there is basically no reason not to.
I’ll offer my own take on this, as ALSO a casual who has literally never done M+ before this season, nor has ever done anything higher than LFR raid (last season) prior to this one. I played up through Draenor, then took an 8 year break, came back in SL, and was frankly a bit terrified of raids and M+, and never felt I had the proper time to commit (8 year break due to having 4 kids (!)).
As I’ve normally never raided, nor done M+, I’m used to grinding my ilvl the hard way. WQs, weeklies, crafting, etc. And this season, I hopped into LFR, a lot. I wanted to see the story. I’ve right now got 16 70s, with 10 over 450 ilvl. Because via LFR and the weeklies and crafting, it’s literally that easy now.
But on a few of my characters, I wanted more. I liked the vault rewards, and I wanted to see what i could do, and had a bit of time. So I started trying to pug into normal raids, and got in on several characters (hunter, monk1, monk2, rogue, mage, paladin, DH specifically). I got lucky on some vault rewards, and some TW weeklies, so thought I’d give some low keys a try. The whole +2 bit.
It was fun. Fairly easy. I put 8-10 different characters into those +2s, grinding away to fill up the vault boxes, for some better loot. For a few characters, starting with this one, I tried some harder ones. +5s, +6s, was fairly successful. DPS every time. Saw someone mention WME, so I hopped onto that discord, figured when I made myself look like an idiot, at least no one would flip out. Was nice. Let me push myself a bit, started getting up to like +8s, and then some +10s. And +11s.
I got this character to like 1300+ io, then pushed my hunter up into the 1400s, and then got on my other monk (I just like him better, fat pandas get old sometimes) and have this week pushed him up to almost 1700, doing +15s.
I’ve only had 2-3 groups fail and fall apart, and I’ve seen maybe 1 or 2 bad apple type groups this whole time? I’ve come across so many folks that are super nice, and helpful, and friendly, and this isn’t just the WME stuff, this is all of my pug runs, and I exclusively pug. My guild is the trio of me, myself, and I. I literally have no friends on this game, no regular people to play with of any kind.
I’ve now got 8 characters over 460 ilvl, one at 470, and another one or two runs from being there. I pug normal raids on a weekly basis for several characters, frequently push good DPS comparatively, work hard to learn the interrupts and idiosyncrasies of the individual dungeons and raids, and am honestly having a great time. I’ve found that different characters are more stressful for me than others, my BM hunter feels way more stressful than my monk, for example. My ret pal feels smooth, but it’s so much smash smash that it feels rushed all the time.
And I’ve had zero sense of ‘gate keeping’ the entire time I’ve been going. I’ve been declined a lot, and had to apply to lots of groups at times, but I’ve always had a good ilvl, and worked hard to get my io up to a level I thought was fair to get an invite. No paid boosts, or carries. Even the WME runs I did I felt I was ‘capable’ to do them in terms of gear and ability, just nerves more than anything.
I’ve yet to do anything higher than a +15, so the folks talking about these runs being terrible, it’s not the experience I have had, but everyone’s experience is different, of course. I just wanted to share this to let folks know it’s not all doom and gloom, and suffering, and you can pug your way to a lot of fun. And get some great gear in the process, to help enable you to do the things you want to in this game.
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It’s a hierarchy of competence. People want the most qualified players for the job to ensure highest likelyhood of success.
People are not going to just choose the first 3 dps that apply and throw caution to the wind hoping the first people applying are somehow qualified to run the key.
And let’s not forget there are also many dps (and tanks/healers) who apply to groups they KNOW are beyond their skill and gear levels, hoping they’ll be invited and carried.
Being choosy about who you invite is necessary once you’re out of trivial content.
You are also not even mentioning duplicity, or weekly benefit based on the affixes. I know to not apply to other groups that have ww monks in them on my ww monk, for example. Would likely end up in being declined anyway.
Grinded Keystone Master for the 1st Time
Lol, ok.
Woah… really? Wow…
Almost as though you had no idea what you were doing.
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Yes, that’s something people look for as well. Group composition matters and can make things significantly harder in some cases.
I pugged a Waycrest Manor on incorporeal week once and the leader was another demo lock. Suffice to say our group had trouble with the kicks at certain points
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You hang out on these forums at all. Yes, you are a casual.
Or do you actually get paid either by streaming the game or by competing in tournaments to play the game?
Furthermore, no. M+ is hugely positive for the game’s PvE scene. So it is here to stay, no matter how many upset GD-trolls post about their rage for healthy systems existing in-game.
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Enjoyed the read, as someone that has played since Vanilla, Mythic +, the keys process and all of that has always sounded like a grindy nerdfest headache, pain in the butt with crappy rewards for the effort. I play to have fun, never have participated in the “headache fest” and happily probably will never. Tmog is the end game for me and Ive never seen ANY Mythic + gear worth the headache. I get more out of PvP. You Esport ppl can have all that stress for the bragging rights if thats your thing 
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I incorrectly assumed OP meant, baught one run, then worked on the rest.
3/4 of the 20s were carry group
3/4 of the 17s were a carry group.
Only 2 of the runs had different people in them.
Basing M+ off of being carried over and over while only (maybe) pugging 2 dungeons. Easy to see why you didnt like it.
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No wonder they didn’t like it
Being out of your element, not knowing what’s happening while all these super good players fly around nuking everything and you’re just caught in the whirlwind is probably not as fun as being a contributing member of the group
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They shouldnt be allowed to buy a boost.
Obvious solution is obvious.
Also anybody should be able to find a group at any phase of the expansion to enter mythic+. Thats a failure of the game man.
OP clearly bought a carry through all of the 20s they did. Can go check their raider . io score here:
https://raider.io/characters/us/thorium-brotherhood/Tinakoffee
Pretty interesting to have not gone up barely any ilvl, never change your talents from when you were running M+7s and somehow consistently get a group with people 10-20 ilvl above you and 600-700+ score above you.
Shocker
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