Is the 20 man hard limit for Mythic raiding too restrictive?

Community WoW Community Council
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TLDR;
For less “hardcore” guilds who clear heroic and want to move into mythic, the hard 20 man limit is too much of a burden and results in guilds falling apart or just not trying. The challenge of mythic should be the bosses, not roster management. Could there be a way to allow some flexibility while maintaining the challenge? full thoughts and ideas below.

== Full Post ==

This post is more about starting a conversation around a particular pain point which has hindered my own guilds progression and enjoyment of raiding this expansion, and I’m sure is a familiar story for a lot of heroic-mythic level raiding guilds.

Let me start with my own experience from early Shadowlands. I’m in a guild of long time friends. We’ve all played wow and raided together for years. Many of us are IRL friends too and play other games together. Shadowlands launched and we were all hype to jump into Castle Nathria. We recruited a bit to fill out our roster and entered heroic with ~30 man roster.

We cleared heroic Nathria after a few weeks. We were having a blast, all was good, but we were hungry for new challenges and more progression.

So the natural next step was mythic, and this is where the problem started. First we had to cut down our roster. A few volunteered to step down as they weren’t that passionate about mythic, but we still had to cut 4 or 5 people from our main roster and put them on the bench. This was really really hard for me as an officer and I hated that I had to do it. This was the first time the 20 man limit really wounded our guild.

A few more weeks past, we downed a few mythic bosses. The friends we had to bench ended up quitting out of boredom, and burn out was starting to set in for some. Suddenly we had the opposite problem and found ourselves only hitting 18 or 19 logging on for raid night. So we had to start pugging a couple people which delayed out raid start time, increased frustration and hindered our progress. This was the second blow the 20 man limit dealt us.

As an officer I took it on myself to start recruiting, which was extremely time consuming. It felt like a second job, and I was struggling to balance my life, work and wow. it was around this point that WoW stopped being fun for me and started feeling like a chore. But I was doing it for my friends, so I stuck with it.

We started filling ranks again, but the more new people we brought in the less our guild felt like the little happy community we all loved. The culture changed, and it just sped up the burnout as people we having less fun.

Finally about the time we were progressing on Council of Blood Mythic, we several people quit (including our MT) in the same week, and I just couldn’t take the time to replace them. The guild died.

We had a great guild, full of good players and friends who finished Heroic fairly easily and had the will to progress mythic. What killed our guild has having to navigate the exact 20 man limit. Had this limit been a bit more flexible, we would have been able to smoothly transition form heroic to mythic. Dealing with the 20 man limit was more challenging than the actual mythic bosses we so badly wanted to fight.

Now I understand the argument for a hard 20 man limit. It allows the devs to design incredible precise and challenging mechanics. However I feel like overall more people would be served by loosening this restriction a little bit to alleviate the struggle of so many mid-level guilds who just want to continue raiding after they finish heroic without decimating their roster.

I still want Mythic to be ultra-challenging, so here is my suggestions: Keep mythic 20 man only for the first few months of raiding. Let the hardcore guilds compete on an even paying field, until the hall of fame reaches a certain point. At this point, the loosen the restrictions a little bit to 15-25 players, to give the more semi casual guilds a way to move into Mythic.

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When it comes to Mythic raiding, I feel the groups should be flexible like Normal and Heroic. I don’t see why it’s restricted to (20) players personally.

In my Guild when we raid on our fun run on Saturday’s we normally fill up the raid completely. This being (30) players. For our Heroic Teams, We fill up pretty full as well. We actually have multiple raid team’s due to the amount of interested raiders in my Guild.

I would love to see the (20) person restriction lifted for Mythic raids. Mostly because we can combine some of our raid teams for Mythic once we get more geared and may want to try it out.

One thing I would love to see however is the limit of players you may have for ALL difficulties raised back to (40) players like back in the day when (40) man raiding was a thing.

You wouldn’t need to fill it up with (40) players, But it would make more room for perspective raiders to join your team! :smiley:

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It might be restrictive to some extent but it’s also necessary to have it for the encounter design, tuning etc. What you did mention although with having it open up as an option later when crossrealm opens might be an option.

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Yes to both of these. I think this is a great compromise. Typically, guilds will need to maintain a mythic roster of around 22 people to avoid ever pugging (since people have to miss raid nights from time to time), but that leaves 2 people not raiding until they’re called on.
I understand that for the competitive integrity of the RWF and HoF it should be locked to 20. But once cross realm mythic (and now cross faction) opens up lets have it flex like normal and heroic does. (I’d like to see lockout changes as well, but those talks have already happened :wink: )

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My guild is currently also having the issue of either having to pug 1~3 people, or having 4 people too many and having to bench them.

We can do mythic, we can’t expect people to be ready every raid night due to real life.

I disagree, and I’m also of opinion that the HoF is a dated concept that only hurts Mythic Raiding.

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Respectfully i disagree with this.

Raids are by their nature meant to be done by large groups.

The very highest level of raiding should require exceptional ability in all three of the main areas of competency:

Oganization, Effort and Skill.

It absolutely should be about more than just the bosses and should require the defeat of all of the encounter mechanics the designers intended at the raid size it was designed for.

It’s not for me. I’m not good enough to beat it, interested enough to dedicate the effort or feel like running a fortune 500 caliber of guild… anymore. A long time ago for a brief time I gave it a shot and what I was able to accomplish was very rewarding even if ultimately not super successful. If you can’t beat it, you can’t beat it, but it should be there for you to try without compromise.

If you cant do it do the other difficulties. Not every guild should be able to do it. It should not be an entitlement.

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Blizzard has given us a clear stance on why Mythic is locked to 20, as well as even larger community figures having discussions and agreeing with the state of the game(# of classes and specs) 20m just works. I’d say there’s an issue with the feeling of “needing” to do Mythic and not being happy with what can be accomplished, but that’s an entirely different topic.

What I can say, is the logistics required to maintain a roster of 20 players comes with many hurdles and it feels there’s almost no support from Blizzard in alleviating any of the hurdles a guild has. I believe once HoF or at a certain date after a tier releases, Mythic can be moved to a “Flex” style(Say 18-22, or 15-25) to allow more friend oriented guilds the ability to go into Mythic and try something new or even take pressure off of guilds in maintaining a strict 20 man roster. Maintaining a 20 man roster is difficult for mid-tier Mythic raiding guilds because players don’t want to sit the bench, but expecting 20 people to show up each raid week is unrealistic as their goals don’t create that motivation 18 weeks into a tier to keep committing X amount of nights to WoW.

There needs to be more done in general with helping guilds/communities/raid teams stay afloat, and a big part of that is alleviating the massive amount of hurdles as well as the logistics strain that mythic raiding brings.

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Big disagree. I’m playing a game. If I wanted to do this in a game I’d fight my boss IRL.

I think this is a good idea to start with, and probably also easier to tune around. Though perhaps it should be certain increments? Either 15, 20, 25 or 18, 20, 22, due to how mechanics scale?

Anyway, my hope is 10 person mythic raiding, simply because it’s so much easier to find 10 people rather than 20.

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You can’t make the raid group to small because the absolute best design of encounters is when it’s 20 people. For example with how Jailer Mythic works you can’t really do it as 10 unless you would create a new stratergy or completetly rework the encounter.

The design of encounters is much more interesting when scaled upwards rather than for smaller raidsizes.

Anyhow, if you would make it flexible at any point it must be very late in progression when atleast HoF is closed and any relevant progression is done.

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By that time guilds that can dabble in mythic raiding without the perfect roster, will already have had players give up. It’s too late.

HoF is a dated concept and should be removed, just add an official ranking that lasts until the end of the season and call it a day.

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The concept isn’t dated although the current HoF system is not working as intended with Alliance being a dead faction. The Horde HoF works well except for some guilds selling HoF titles. There is an official ranking sytem already if you mean world ranks, HoF is a guild title although. This system isn’t obselete and shouldn’t be removed.

Sure, it’s late - but it’s late or nothing imo. The raid should be tuned and designed for a 20 man raiding guild with nothing else in mind.

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I have thoughts on all this but no clear opinion on whether mythic raids should remain strictly 20-person.

My AOTC guild has occasionally made forays into mythic raids, just for the early bosses. But most of the time we don’t, and the strict 20-person raid size is the primary reason. Some tiers we’re a bit short and not interested in pugging for progression. Other tiers we have too many and have to leave some people out, and that really feels bad.

On top of that, we’re a “real life comes first” sort of guild designed for busy adults with families, demanding jobs, etc. We have no attendance requirements for our raids and do not pressure people to raid if they have real-life stuff going on. We find that this is not compatible with mythic raiding because of the fixed raid size.

Recently there was a reddit post from an expectant mother who said her husband was upset that their upcoming newborn’s delivery conflicted with his raid schedule. His guild was on mythic Jailer. That is awful on so many levels (on the husband’s part), but I understand the pressure he is feeling. That’s exactly the pressure my guild has decided to avoid by not raiding mythic.

The last time we raided mythic was in 8.3, where we killed 4 mythic bosses after finishing AOTC. In Shadowlands the desire to raid mythic just has not been present in my guild. For one, the raids feel harder, so by the time we get AOTC we’re ready for a break from raiding. But the main reason is that we’ve gotten heavily into mythic+ instead. Mythic+ offers all the difficulty of mythic raiding once the keys get high enough, but in smaller time chunks and in smaller, more flexible teams. We have a wide variety of skill levels in the guild, and mythic+ allows us to each run at our own level, whereas in raids there can be frustration from the more skilled players at having to wait for others to master the mechanics.

Mythic+ has basically replaced the early mythic bosses for us.

The one thing that has been frustrating for us has been that not raiding mythic has left us unable to get the best gear, which impacts our ability to do high keys. In 9.2, this was greatly ameliorated by the Creation Catalyst. Yeah, there are a few raid trinkets and weapons we still can’t get at high item levels. But the Creation Catalyst and itemization in general have allowed us to gear up to a place that is close enough to what mythic raiders can get that we can do keys higher than 20.

That said, I always do look a bit wistfully at the mythic encounters. I read a post, I think it was here, where the person said mythic Vigilant Guardian felt like a more complete encounter than the LFR/Normal/Heroic versions because the boss is always present and you don’t have that weird downtime. Clearly that fight was designed for mythic and then scaled down awkwardly for the other difficulties. And I know my guild is totally capable of defeating that boss. But we’re not willing to bench our friends in order to see it.

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We’re in the same boat. We have a mythic raid scheduled for tonight, which is now in jeopardy because of some circumstances that my raiders couldn’t control. We may be forced to raid heroic tonight because we don’t want to pug multiple spots, and we may not have 20 people available.

Yes that was me. Since the first time I killed the boss on opening day of the raid, I have not looked forward to doing it again because I severely dislike downtime in a boss fight (I had the same issue with P2 sylvanas)
But on mythic, I am looking forward to pulling it again because it’s such a better encounter!!!

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The average age of WoW’s player base is going up over the years. Every year the demographic of players who no longer have the time to deal with the hurdles and drama of Mythic roster management grows.

Meanwhile,the brain trust of player raid knowledge gets bigger, and there are more guides, addons and tools available to help conquer raids.

The result is alot more guilds who have the capability of easily clearing heroic relatively quickly, but also don’t have the time or patience for Mythic raid roster management.

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We all eventually get to a point in our lives where it becomes impractical to prioritize the hardest content of a video game within it. To me this should mean that we find other things to do within the game that better suits our lives.

I wouldn’t want to make game content like Mythic raiding easier so that I can do it according to my own life constraints if it means depriving a new, younger and more committed group of raiders the opportunity to enjoy the same challenges I did.

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In my opinion, if the mythic mode were 10 players, it would be very positive for the game. There would be significantly more guilds active, and some roles like tanks would have more players as well. In addition, it would be much more valuable to have a gap in a guild since, being smaller rosters, they would close earlier and there would not be as many jumpers.

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Regardless of size the same challenges will present themselves. Encounter spaces will still be made significantly easier to Navigate with a Warlock. Damage checks will still be easier to manage with certain specs. The buff/debuff matrix is still something that is a gain to manage effectively.

The 20man size made it so that these challenges could be made with some roster flexibility after the fact all of these checks have been made.

However, challenges that some guilds face are purely down to the management of a guild and the raid roster. This isn’t an issue of the game per se but one that can be resolved by making those challenges easier to navigate.

For example, a second gateway option could be afforded to mages as a “mass blink”, debuffs could be given out via consumables at a weaker rate, buffs could be done via consumables at a weaker rate (as they had been done in the past).

For the final stage of the number of people. To be honest, that’s not an issue. If you’re wanting to push to the highest levels of the game, some level of organisation is required on your part, if that’s not for you then you jump ship to find a team that’s willing to do that.

Finding a team where the goals resonate with yours is your prerogative as a player. Yelling into the void isn’t going to fix that issue.

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Had to give up on Mythic raiding last week because we only managed to get 18/20, and pugging for guild progression on a boss we’re just starting (Xy’mox) is just a no-go. Even if people apply to join us exploring the boss in the first stages, big chance they won’t stick around.

Mythic raiding should be challenging gameplay, not team management. I’ll go play some kind of soccer manager simulator if I enjoyed that.

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We already did that too in Nyalotha though :wink:

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I’d love to have 10 man myth back… still enough to handle and manage. This was the best time that I ever had in raids… is has never been the same after that. As the population of the game sinks, it’s harder and harder to fill raids with people that have the same goals in raiding.

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