Author’s Note: I understand that we already got another raiding thread but I felt my different approach to it could be interesting while many points will be very similar. I hope this should be seen as trying to put more light on raiding issues
The value of raid skips
Raid skips are enjoyable; people don’t want to slog through the same content week after week. Being able to progress to bosses more quickly content feels great.
I would suggest being more aggressive with the number of skips, even if some are focused on removing or speeding up trash clears. What if unlocking a skip made NPCs help clear the trash as they’re advancing their assault?
My suggestion would be to enable reaching any boss without having to defeat more than three prior bosses. Additionally, raid skips should be account-wide once unlocked. There’s no point in making people farm these on their alts.
The importance of long-term goals
Raiding is a very unique playstyle in wow but sometimes it feels like it lacks meaningful progression and worthwhile replayability. Raid gearing has become less rewarding as players can quickly out-gear content, diminishing the sense of progression.
You’re also less incentivized to keep gearing up once you’ve cleared content, knowing your gear will reset completely in the next patch. However I do appreciate Amirdrassil offering more cosmetic rewards with CE like a mount, a new tamable hunter pet, and a druid form.
I think making 1 tier old mythic raid gear nearly equivalent to the new heroic raid gear would help maintain a sense of progression across raids. This might pose a problem if old gear is still relevant for people that want to chase bis but I think a good solution would also to be to buff the loot drops by 50% from older raids (like they did for wotlk classic T7 once T8 got out).
I understand the reticence to making old raids much more relevant toward gearing but for sure we will also have the option to run M+. This could be problematic with current gearing system and reduce quick term engagement if people don’t need to gear as much but I think it would be a more balanced, healthy and fun approach.
At the end, I think it would feel great if you wouldn’t replace all your old gear in the first weeks of a new patch or at least it would feel like you have to farm less if you already did a lot of content previously.
The story shouldn’t be put aside
Raid bosses often lack proper introductions or connections to the overarching story.
While this has improved since Shadowlands, questions remain about certain bosses’ backgrounds (like the council boss in Amirdrassil)
A lot of raids setting and even patchs as a whole also feel more nebulous and feels less invested/connected in the overarching story and this happen more when we explore new places that were never talked/hinted about before. I feel sometime we go too fast just to get to a certain point rather than trying to build on what is existing already. Simply stuff like the gates of Uldum existing and being some kind of event when they open feels great.
I also appreciate a lot mythic secret phases showcasing alternate endings; they add depth to the story, despite concerns about accessibility. Those phases are some of my favorite moments in my whole raiding history and I would want them to be brought back.
Class diversity is great but can also be problematic
I enjoy a diverse class composition in raiding, but raiding doesn’t always support this well. I also like group loot as it also pushes for class diversity but it often feels like loot tables or in some cases legendary items will skew your group composition a lot.
On a side note, this issue becomes more pronounced in M+ where accommodating all classes buffs is impossible and where people end up trying to farm dungeons where not everyone can get upgrades.
We’re also starting to hit a problem where too many raid spots are locked because of raid buffs when it comes to mythic raiding and that it is hard to get them all also in heroic.
It would be interesting for different specs to bring different buffs so it doesn’t feel that if you have one warrior that you can’t really use more than one for buffs. Another avenue could be growing back to 25m but this could cause way more problems for many guilds even if personally I prefer the 25m setting.
Raid tuning and progression problems
The recent tier saw unfortunate tuning issues with mythic Tindral. While I appreciate the world first race, quicker tuning adjustments on challenging bosses like mythic Tindral would benefit top guilds and the wider player base.
If a boss that isn’t the last one last for more than 250-300 pulls for a top guild a red flag should be raised as a lot of players don’t want to prog multiple bosses at an end boss level of difficulty in one patch as those take a lot of energy and morale to push through. The same reason why I think really long fight over 10 mins should always be kept for last bosses. On that part I think Amirdrassil was great.
I believe it’s also not ideal that earlier bosses are considerably easier. The progression curve of bosses should be more interesting and even the early mythic bosses should provide a challenging experience, especially considering the reduced number of bosses. In many ways each raid wings should be another step of difficulty but the start should still feel relevant to that difficulty.
Similarly, a lot of heroic bosses feels around the same difficulty and don’t offer really much progression. While I understand that tuning heroic to be harder could be problematic I think scaling heroic raiding rewards appropriately could also be interesting if made harder.
Having the return of the aotc mount and the last bosses of heroic rewarding mythic quality gear (by scaling the last boss ilvl drops higher in all difficulties) could be interesting as many people are done with their heroic progression really early nowadays even as solo players and heroic should offer an endgame for those players that can last longer.
Private auras an annoying issue
I find also the idea of private auras interesting. However, being able to assign people symbols because they have a debuff shouldn’t be seen as an addon issue; it should be seen as a game issue.
If a boss mechanic require people to coordinate themselves in a certain way then giving them some way to distinguish themselves from one another just makes the mechanics feel less clunky. I will always like what was done on Odyn with the boss assigning people markers himself, if this was done I would feel much better having that mechanic being a private aura.
In short, a lot of issues can be removed if players are given the tools to solve the problems.
Other major concern - selling loot for gold in pugs
With the removal of trading barriers a problem that has been ramping up is people selling loot in pugs which they roll need on. This doesn’t seem fair or reasonable or “playing nice” that someone would want to roll need for selling gear.
This creates an even more negative experience as raids aren’t currently dropping a lot of loot and are mostly done for a couple of very targeted pieces. I think fixing this should be high on the priority list.
Thanks for reading I hope I was able to add to the discussion about raiding with my own experience and that we can talk more about raiding.