Hello I would like to discuss the current state of Mythic+ and some of the changes that are being proposed as well as outline some suggestions from someone who primarily only interacts with Mythic+ as a form of progression.
Mythic+ has been my favorite gameplay mode since its release in Legion. The accessibility, the variety, the routing, the adapting. Myself and a group of 4-5 others have long made Mythic+ our primary form of interacting with WoW. But at the same time we are players that like to push ourselves, multiple of us having experience in top 100 in the world raiding guilds (long ago). With that in mind we are continually frustrated with the inability to compete with players on the Mythic+ score leaderboards because the gear available to us is just vastly outperformed elsewhere.
I have seen the recent blue post:
that outlines in my opinion good changes for Mythic+ overall, however there are still two main issues with Mythic+ that can both be solved by the bonus ILvl within Mythic+ that is suggested in that same thread.
Those issues are:
Raiders are forced to spam M+ to try to gear up at the beginning of a tier.
Mythic+ only players are multiple ilvls behind in gear from Mythic raiders
I support the idea that in order to maximize the amount of loot available to you every week you must engage in multiple forms of content. And I understand that as someone who interacts with only one it makes sense that I will not get as much loot as others who do. However the biggest issue is top end power. The most egregious case that comes to mind to me was domination sockets in season 2 of Shadowlands. They were essentially unavailable to Mythic+ players and therefore we got our mounts and checked out with no desire to push further. Then the next season the catalyst was introduced which was an extremely good way to provide tier gear for Mythic+ players even if its slower than what could be obtained in raid. We are less concerned with speed of obtaining the gear as much as top end power.
This power scaling based on the content you interact with has been used now for awhile with the PvP gear which has been hugely successful in my opinion. And it was experimented with in PvE with the some Azerite traits that provided bonuses only in Uldum in the first tier of BFA.
Progression is always two fold. Yes you are technically competing against the dungeon in Raids and trying to get the highest rating in Arena. But ultimately you are going to websites to determine where that ranks you in the world in Raids and what top % that puts you in for Arena. The same holds for Mythic+, we push the keys but ultimately we compare our success to others with in-game Mythic+ score as well as scores on sites like Raider.io. And right now it feels like we are disadvantaged and it feels bad. Especially with the new Ilvl changes to raid adding additional ilvls to end wing bosses.
Too bad because blizzard considers mythic raiding their end tier gaming content and I doubt they’d change things around. They’re just stubborn about it and that’s how it is. You can either keep playing or leave it. Unless they make some changes for DF S1, I might just leave for a few seasons.
I think Blizzard could do a lot of development to expand M+ and players would like it, even if it means separating progression paths of raid and M+ further apart.
An additional tier sets for M+ which focus on fun gameplay loops for each spec that let players enjoy 5man content - cannot be used in raid.
The SL conduit system but focusing specifically on spec utility, granting more team bonuses/buffs.
Vendor system for trinkets, mounts, recipes for completing M+ content.
Integrating professions into the dungeons themselves (at the end of run chance for rare gathering nodes, recipe drops, mats) or allowing special benefits to bringing those with profession skill (skips, buffs, dispels).
Having weekly achievements related to completing boss or trash encounters in M+ keys under specific conditions.
Blizzard could do a lot more in each expansion than just rotating/introducing affixes, ilvl of loot chart. M+ could be designed in a way that is separate progression endgame path.
Dragonflight is looking better then SL for M+ progression. At the top end you will only be 3ilvl behind on a handful of slots found on the last two bosses. Mind you, if M+ matched this ILVL, it would be flat out better then mythic raiding gear for many slots. And I think actually finishing the mythic raid is a pretty solid reason to get a few +3 ilvl slots.
Tier gear early on is still a sore spot. But overall I feel like this might be an ideal sweet spot for M+ gearing and Raider gearing. Both are providing competitive loot that tops off at extremely similar levels, and there’s still rewards for participating in both.
That said, hopefully any half baked borrowed power systems (dom sockets), don’t break this in later patches.
I dislike the idea of separating WoW into chunks of exclusivity via gearing. The entire game loses accessibility at a certain point if there is a power stat for raiding, one for M+, the other for leveling; another for pvp, another one for catch up mechanics.
How many gear sets do people need to carry with them if they just like playing WoW and want to do everything? If this sort of thing gains traction, I’m pretty much going to get stuck into just doing M+ as it’s the thing I have the most time for. I enjoy it, but I also like doing other things as well.
Another edit-
The entire game will have to be redesigned as raiders aren’t garnering much loot via raid these days with raid extensions. Raiding almost requires M+ (and absolutely requires it for AotC and mythic.)
I enjoy the small group atmosphere of hanging out with my buddies and blasting something while also taking it serious. Raiding seriously requires 25 man and I think the fun casual atmosphere falls apart at that many
I have kids now. It is extremely difficult to carve out 4 hours multiple nights a week where my wife is expected to fully cover in case they wake up or whatever.
But at the same time I am considering a return to raiding if I can make it work. I understand that they don’t necessarily need to design their systems around me, I made my decisions in life. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not alone.
Every change they make to mythic plus makes it less fun and I have had enough. It’s as if the devs don’t play the game at all. Folks act horribly lets face it and adding more stressful situations to the dungeons and grouping make things worse.
I completely understand your concern Sambouki. I’ll admit a 3rd gear set is definitely a problem. There are certainly solutions but none of them that I can think of do not come with trade offs. That being said leaving behind M+ gear wise is also a trade off that should be considered when discussing those trade offs.
they’re being way too hands on with a popular system that is working just fine as it is (in M+)…
there’s some improvements here and there that were needed (like addressing certain affix combinations and such)…but idk why they’re reinventing the wheel…
just make a fun seasonal affix, get rid of necrotic, add cosmetic rewards to different ratings, and keep everything the same with the loot model we have now.
they’re creating their own problems and overcomplicating this game, and it always seems to happen with things the players love the most…
M+ is supposed to be an activity that brings people together, but they’re like segregating the community more and more with some of these changes, just like in PvP.
M+ is a side game. It’s a completely different community and should just be an eSport tacked onto WoW. It should be a mini game you can log into and play not actual progression in WoW.
M+ Don’t want to raid and raiders don’t want to M+. Just separate it.
So I’ll admit Lavarious the data I was looking at was wrong and I thought it was 6-9 ilvls. 3 ilvls is definitely better. That being said, if you keep the M+ bonus relatively low like 6ilvls it will still make it better in M+ but raiders won’t feel as punished for not focusing Mythic+ gear. I think pinnacle content providing a bonus is good. But the trade off is it feeling almost mandatory for M+ if it is too strong.
I don’t actually mind the tier gear system. You can still get it from the weekly chest (though I never did until I got all mine from catalyst) and ultimately M+ progression is slow, you only realistically get one chance at an upgrade a week (once you’ve run enough) so you aren’t going to be fully geared to push high keys super fast unless you supplement with raid gear. And like I said, I think providing a bonus if you engage with multiple content paths is a good idea.
I think your reply is interesting because one of our Gladiator buddies strongly believes that’s how Arena should be. Mostly because they hate raid or M+ trinkets being OP in Arena. That being said that feels very anti RPG. It removes the sense of character identity, even more so than it already is with how easy it is to reroll every tier. Gearing is a strong part of the fun and I wouldn’t enjoy the game very much if there wasn’t gear to chase or consider.
There’s no RPG in M+. It’s finding the same items over and over with a +15 on the end. Then spending currency on them to improve them. It’s just a fast paced blitz through content you already know and any slight error causes incredible derision and an ultimate fallout that leads to disbands and fighting.
The same could be said about raiding except I don’t feel that way and you don’t feel that way about M+. So split the content.
I haven’t met any raiders who want to do M+ and vice versa. And PvPers certainly don’t want to do PvE content.
Just divide all of it. M+ gear increases iLvl in M+. Raiding in raids. PvP in PvP. In open world content, it’s all reduced down somewhat.
If I never had to M+ again it would be too soon. It’s not hard. Raiding isn’t hard. I just hate it just like you hate raiding.
If you and your crew are top m+ players and top 100 in the world so to speak then maybe the few ilvls mythic raiders have over you matters. But for the rest of the 99% of the WoW population this isn’t the case. So only a very tiny percentage of players can get behind your thinking otherwise even blizz thinks raiding deserve to have a higher ilvl than m+ based on skill content not on what you and your boys play and well at the most .
This argument has many flaws. First one being that only a tiny fraction of the player base is even able to clear Mythic Raids, let alone have it on farm enough to be geared up from it. Another flaw is that thinking the measly difference in ilvl makes a difference for anyone, but bleeding edge players pushing the highest of keys. Gear doesn’t prevent players from doing challenging content, skill does.
This is not true. My self and others pushed high keys in season 2 without having any Domination Shards.
This is the kind of cry hard stuff I’m seeing all over…mythic raiders might have a little ilvl top end than m+ lawls to 99% of the population it’s so trivial that it will never manifest itself in any harmful way. Just crying for the sake of ego crying that somehow m+ is inferior in some way
