Mythic Plus Impact on raids discussion (Hopefully good feedback.)

Community WoW Community Council
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Hey everyone!

I’ve been thinking about the role of Mythic Plus (M+) dungeons in the World of Warcraft endgame and how they might be affecting our raiding experiences. Lately I’ve seen improvements within the raiding scene but I would love to inspire some discussion and hear different opinions on this matter.

M+ dungeons have undoubtedly added depth and challenge to the game, offering scalable, rewarding content that demands precision, strategy, and coordination. However, their increasing popularity and accessibility have sparked discussions about their potential impact on raiding.

Here are a few points to consider:

  1. Time Commitment and Prioritization: M+ dungeons often offer quicker completion times compared to raids, leading some players to prioritize them for loot and achievements. This shift in focus might impact raid participation, especially among players aiming for efficiency.
  2. Reward Structure: With M+ dungeons offering gear comparable to raid loot, players might feel less inclined to commit to raids, opting for the faster-paced and smaller group-oriented M+ runs to gear up.
  3. Community Dynamics: There’s concern that the prominence of M+ content might divide the player base, with some solely engaged in Mythic Plus activities. This division could affect guilds and raid teams, leading to recruitment challenges or skill level disparities.

However, it’s not all negative:

  1. Accessibility and Inclusivity: M+ dungeons cater to a broader player base, providing challenging content for those without consistent raid groups or limited playtime. This inclusivity expands the endgame experience for many.
  2. Skill Development: Engaging in M+ dungeons often hones players’ coordination and execution, skills that can positively impact raid performance. Many players find that their M+ experiences translate into improved raiding abilities.
  3. Variety and Engagement: The randomized affixes and weekly challenges of M+ dungeons add variety and replayability, keeping the game fresh and engaging for a wide range of players.

Ultimately, the impact of M+ dungeons on raids can vary based on individual player preferences and guild dynamics. While they might draw attention away from raiding for some, they also enrich the game experience and cater to a diverse player base.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe M+ dungeons are impacting raid participation or enhancing the overall endgame experience? Share your experiences and opinions.

Me personally I would like raids to be more important as of right now it kind of feels like meh. Why raid when tier is on the catalyst and mythic plus gear is good enough. Either way can’t wait to see what you fine people think though.

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Mostly agree with what’s laid out here, but I don’t realistically think its affecting raid participation at all. I think the far more pressing matter is that it affects M+ participation in the opposite direction.

Loot from m+ being infinitely farmable is a large issue that forces raiders to spend a LOT of time doing it if they want to really take it seriously and raid at a higher level. I don’t see an issue with something like putting a weekly M0 type of lockout on dungeons. I believe it would make it comparable to raid loot farmability. You’d have a shot at loot from the 8 dungeons per week one time each, then the vault, which mostly reflects the chances at loot you would get from raid from 9-12 bosses (depending on tier) plus that vault.

I almost exclusively play the game for M+, I don’t actually much care at all for raiding but the last thing I want to see as someone who already doesn’t like being forced to raid for some specific piece that I want in order to perform in M+, is raiders being in the same boat where they have to run M+ for something to raid properly. It encourages bitterness, causes burnout, and has the effect of making one type of content feel comparatively useless from a rewards standpoint.

Hopefully in TWW we’ll see some changes to make the loot acquisition a bit fairer to raiders.

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I think this would be a good idea, but I’d like to still be able to help my friends and guildies in key’s when I am already loot locked, or continue pushing rating.

Perhaps to still give choice, just have a total of 8 dungeons a week where you can get loot from, regardless if they’re a repeat, and maybe decrease the loot pool of mythic dungeons and have 2-3 dungeons share the same loot pool for m+.

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You can currently re-do N/H raid if you’re loot locked, I’d imagine the same thing would be implemented if this were added to M+. I definitely don’t think it should affect your ability to physically re-do the keys, otherwise score pushing would be pretty much dead in the water.

To be clear I’m arguing for this from a raider fairness perspective, you currently can’t choose to re-do bosses in raid for their loot at the cost of taking away one of your rolls later on. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn’t, but I highly highly doubt that’s a bridge Blizzard would be willing to cross.

I think with the way raid loot currently is (even with the other restrictions you laid out) would tip the scales back too far toward M+ loot being too overpowered.

This is purely antagonistic and would almost certainly be bad for the pace of reward structuring but as an M+ devotee I also wouldn’t be mad if they just made raid loot (maybe just from N/H) infinitely farmable lol. It’d never happen, but I certainly wouldn’t complain if it did.

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I think this is personally an important one for me, as after week 4 I am mostly done with gearing from M+ and just waiting for vault and crafted upgrades.

So after that I kinda just do M+ for filling the vault, upping my score (though after 2.5k it feels pointless) and helping others

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I mostly raid and find M+ to be very unpleasant. Do I still do it because it fills my vault with higher ilvl gear? Yes. Would I rather not? Also yes.

I never gear up from end of dungeon M+ loot except for an odd trinket or two. I just use it for GV and crests (last season and this season).

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They could also increase the amount of loot dropping from raid bosses, and bring back bonus loot rolls.

I think making raiding bosses farmable is incredibly unhealthy for the game, so I agree that they shouldn’t go that route.

Probably also increase the difficulty of keys too because especially this season it feels way too easy, without trying I am nearly on 2.5k.

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That’s so interesting for me it’s the other way around because of the having to follow a set schedule with a guild etc. I guess pugging is an option but even then it still requires more time commitment than a 20 minute dungeon etc.

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While I love everything you said, this confirms my above concerns though. There’s no reason why anyone should feel this way. In my opinion shouldn’t people WANT to raid? If you don’t mind me asking what could they add to raids to incentivize you to get back into raiding?

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My lack of want to raid doesn’t really have anything to do with raiding as a game mode. I just prefer the smaller group dynamic as I do it in discord with my guild nearly exclusively, I almost never pug. Raiding in my opinion is just fine how it is outside a few minor gripes, but my love for M+ goes somewhat beyond the actual game mode in the sense that it also is a social thing I really enjoy.

I just don’t get the same satisfaction out of larger groups piling in and spending a 2-4 hour block focusing in on progression as I do sitting down with my friends and going hard for 30-40 minutes at a time and breaking it up in between.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the physically DOING the dungeon part of it, I really REALLY do, but it’s just more than that for me and raiding doesn’t usually give me that same sense of “a good time with friends.”

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I can understand that.

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Reducing raid participation? I doubt it. And M+ has undoubtedly enhanced the endgame experience.

I do, however, find myself in the camp of the player who feels “forced” (for lack of a better term) into doing M+ to help my raid progression goals. To put it bluntly, I play this game to mythic raid. That’s it. Everything else is a means to that, or a side quest to collect something cool. Mythic raiding is where I have the most fun.

So, naturally it feels bad that a large portion of my “BiS” every tier comes from content not related to Mythic Raiding. I have to farm M+ for the latest DK trinket, whether it be IQD, Puzzle Box, Fragment, or Mirror (to name a few). These have all been BiS for my spec at one time or another since the start of Shadowlands. And the only way to get the best version of them is to get lucky in my vault by doing high enough item level Mythic Plus.

I would like to propose a possible solution.
As it stands right now, there are 3 end-game pillars. Raiding, M+ and PvP.
Of these, PvP is by far the most unique gearing system, as it uses currency earned through victorious battles to select the piece you want. But it has a very specific twist.

“Item level increased to XXX in PvP Combat”

What if we had the same thing in M+ and raiding?

“Item level increased BY XXX in Raid Instances / In Dungeon Instances”

You can easily keep the upgrade system and use the terminology to increase by a set amount as opposed to to a certain amount, but it adds the incentive to gear for the content you enjoy.

Now, there is 1 massive problem with this suggestion. Raid Lockouts.
One of the core features of M+ is that it is spammable. This is what makes it by FAR the best way to gear a character (assuming you don’t get an entire raid group to funnel you gear). And for this reason, its been for years that M+ has remained the most efficient way to gear your character.

So what is the answer? Obviously it’s not adding lockouts to M+, and I don’t think not having raid lockouts is it either, but maybe each character can kill a boss X number of times before they are loot locked? I’m not sure what the number is, and maybe there should be a cooldown of sorts on it as well, but the fact would remain that something would have to change here to accommodate this new philosophy.

As an extra note to this, if this were implemented I would want to see Tier tokens added to M+ loot pool (probably not class locked), and more items in general added to the raid loot pool to give some better options for statting gear.

Yes to this under my suggestion as well.

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I would not like it if M+ rewards were nerfed. A cap on the amount of potential dungeons runs to roll on getting a piece of gear would be disasterous for participation and would make getting bad drops feel even worse than they do already. Raids need to be brought up a level and be more rewarding. This is achieved relatively well early on in a patch where tier drops and it is possible to get tier set earlier, but this remains only a short-term incentive. There is also the head enchant which everyone will want to acquire too.

Adding in maybe another drop per raid boss could be a good way to help level the playing field more, as well as changing some of the way group loot behaves. Today on my guild’s kill of Tindral Sageswift heroic three bows dropped. There probably should be a little bit more ‘sanity check’ on what can drop. Suggestions for bonus rolls to come back are also an option and would allow slightly more agency over which boss you want things from. Personally I’d love this (more so than just another drop), even if detractors would say it would simply be another avenue for disappointment. They could also look toward the Fated ‘experiment’ of Season 4, which seemingly never went very far, of acquiring specific items through limited tokens. This would avoid the RNG disappointment of the bonus roll whilst keeping the agency but it would also be a tiny bit lacklustre in terms of excitement.

As someone who enjoys participating in both raiding (albeit at a much more casual level now, merely dabbling into Mythic as and when roster allows) and M+. I also would not want to see the PvP gearing equip status of having the gear become much more powerful in specific content. I like that my progress within dungeons translates over to my raid. I like that I can go out and get gear from outside sources that work in tandem with raid drops to ultimately improve my character. I like the cohesion and would despise having to farm an entirely new set of gear specifically for M+. It would also create really awkward and jarring situations where your character is basically redundant in other types of PvE content and would potentially create a barrier to entry for one sort of player to dabble and try out the other.

I don’t think M+ dungeons existing is necessarily having a huge amount of impact on raid participation, people’s availability and the general inaccessibility of properly difficult raiding content. Don’t take that to mean I am advocating for some sort of ‘flex mythic’ - certainly not, I don’t think it would work.

I presume that at least a good number of people who are now primarily M+ players would simply just not play the game since they do not have the availability to attend scheduled raids on a consistent basis and PuG raiding is often a frustrating and soulcrushing endeavour which saps the life out of you and curses your family for a thousand years.

Sorry if this came off as a bit rambly, 2am.

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I raid at and AotC level with mythic progression each tier while not achieving Cutting Edge. I also do Keystones at a KSH level and have started obtaining portals. To me both raiding and dungeons are in a healthy spot right now and I don’t believe the rewards of M+ or PvP should be suppressed to make raiding superior.
These calls seem more about reward parity than ensuring people interested in raiding continue to find enjoyment in the activity. If raiding started dropping 1 piece of gear for every 2 raiders, it would not be more fun, it would just flip the issue of where the efficient gearing is found.
So my question to the Council would be: Do you feel that raiding cannot be a compelling activity if other end game activities have comparable rewards?

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I don’t think that would be a problem if the difficulty gap of rewards between the two modes and the reward weren’t so big.

I think in general the problem is:

M+ too easy for the rewards they give
Raiding doesn’t give enough rewards to compete with M+

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Raiding is also comparatively a bigger time investment compared to M+ for the (relatively) same rewards, if you don’t count the vault. Having to gather and herd 10 to 25 people at the same time through tactics will just always be more troublesome than gathering 5 people to take through a smoother 20 minute run that doesn’t require too much coordination.

Just to throw my hat in the ring, would it be too much for raid vaults to offer an item of the next level of difficulty if certain conditions were met, similar to how M+ offers much higher level items for comparatively lower difficulty keys?

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There are social pressures to get all the power you can to not “hold the team back” and that is not totally addressed if keystone dungeons cease to be the most efficient way to gear. This is because the social pressure to get as much power as possible will always push players into activities they may not have elected to do otherwise. If Delves prove to be efficient sources of gear, you can bet players will use/abuse it. This was the case where, in a season, PvP was the most efficient way to gear. Many raiders participated for the quick item level of those rewards.
This pressure can still exist even if the path isn’t efficient but the chance of a powerful reward exists. If a world quest has a chance to Titanforge into a BiS trinket, you will see players continuously do that activity far after its intended point. Recall farms for Arcanocrystals. For this reason, even if dungeons only dropped 1 piece of gear per week players would still feel some social pressure to participate for that one piece. There would be admittedly a reduced reason for it but then players could simply “feel forced” to PvP / Delve instead OR in addition to Keystones.
This could also create the inverse issue where raiding becomes the activity that players feel forced into doing for gear. I recall many posts about this pressure. It’s one reason tier is accessible through the vault and the catalyst. Yet raid trinkets, legendary items, or other desirable drops in the raid are often pursued by some PvP players who feel just as “forced into PvE.”
Often this causes items to be disabled in PvP or behave in a reduced capacity when in PvP. This is a pretty convoluted balance where a player will learn that I’m X % less effective when doing this and these moves all behave differently and these items also don’t work. That makes character power needlessly obtuse and makes many players feel like they are starting from square one when moving from one activity to the next within the same game.
I stress that feeling forced to play parts of the game that you do not want to play for the power is not wholly a design issue. A large and fundamental part of it is from the community applying social pressures upon itself when the game is not balanced in that way.
This is why I do not see the problem as simply “M+ is too easy for the rewards earned” but a far more involved question. It’s more than how much gear you get per player per hour.

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Firstly, on the Idea of an Item Level Bump for respective content:

I don’t think this is good in itself - for PvP this totally works since the base scaling gear is provided fairly early on to even the playing field to some extent. For PvE relevant content, it will be hard to judge how decked out someone is in M+ or Raiding Gear since the tool don’t provide a native content ilvl in the dungeon/raid tool.

Personally, I think the Dungeons and Raid being relevant isn’t an issue in itself for both Player types past the first few weeks with some work to it. What is more of a problem is that you’re forced to do Raiding and M+ intense the first few weeks to not fall behind on tier and vault options.

For me, the only way to achieve a balance and not a pressure for both ends of content, it would be to conclude the vault option into a Raid/Dungeon Vault Row instead of 2 separate ones.

How it should work:

  1. Player does 7 Dungeons or Raid Encounter to unlock the Row fully each week.
  2. The System checks the highest completed difficult in each content.

Author’s Note: If a Player cleared f.e. seven +18 Dungeons he unlocks the possibility to drop Myth Track Items out of the Raid (If he cleared some Mythic Raid Bosses once - the last two raid boss items remain locked till you defeat them once) or Dungeon.

If the Player did seven Raid Encounters he unlocks the possibility to drop Myth Track Items out of the Dungeons (if he cleared them all on +18 once) or Raid Loot.

  1. The Player will now get a prompt when he decides to open the Vault on Reset to choose between Raid Specific Drops or Dungeon Specific Drops from the Vault they then get generated.
  2. The Player can choose freely the content he likes to do each week without feeling forced into any content more then once.

This will reduce the options each week by half, but will lift some pressure and makes gearing a longer process but offers the choice of playing content you like.

Another Option would be to have 6 Raid/Dungeon shared Vault Slots in General.

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Would you not have to include the Delve row in this amalgamated track as well in TWW?

The second question becomes the difficulty obtaining BiS and the increased chance of disappointing choices in the vault. This would result from your solution presenting fewer options each week to choose from; and, having a larger loot pool of options thrown into one row.

Now this would be especially frustrating to the player who only do one of the activities but are presented with gear they might feel they “never opted into” during the week.

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You → choose ← between the option of having M+ Loot or Raid Loot before to prevent loot bloat on the drop table. The drops in this row won’t mix with Raid and Dungeon Loot, you choose between both.

I didn’t think about Delve yet - was more trying to find a solution for the current system to build a solid foundation.

Side Note: Dungeons and Raid will drop their loot just the vault offers a choice.

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