Mythic Raids Need to be a little easier

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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I am a raider in 2 mythic raiding guilds. Both ranking between 200-300 US. And raids have been getting consistently harder in mythic, specifically the last few bosses. Specifically G’huun, Jaina, COS, and Azshara. These bosses are tuned in such a way that all but the top 200 or so raiding guilds in the world that are not finishing the tier in the first 10 weeks or so. This is very hard on high level guilds as we do not get a period of Farm before the next tier. This creates burnout that is very hard to maintain healthy players and environments.

While I understand that for the world first race it is nice to have very hard bosses and tuning. But it is making it hard for the mythic raiding community to stay healthy. Please consider Nerfing the last boss to be more in line with bosses like Za’qul or queens court to promote a healthier raid environment. Also never do benthic again, it is destroying mythic raiders by forcing content on people they do not want and is a leading cause of burn out from players i talk to.

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If you can’t do the last boss, then you can’t do the last boss. It’s as simple of that. Nothing wrong with it. If it’s too challenging why do you need to do it? The worst part about your argument is you dont actually list any details about your issue. What made G’huun and Jaina too hard for you to do? What makes Azshara difficult? Youre basically asking for a nerf just for the sake of having a nerf.

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He can and has done the last boss. Jaina is a PTA because they changed it half way through progression so all the learning people had done up to that point went out the window. But he has killed it.

As a side note they apparently thought ashvayne was too hard because they nerfed her health recently. If that boss is getting a nerf is it crazy to think maybe azshara might be do for one?

This times 100. If you want catch up gear based on a currency do that, but do not make it invalidate raiding gear.

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High class problem so I am sure you will get lots of flak.

I understand a lot of these end bosses required a ton of coordination, complete knowledge of the fight, near flawless execution (pre nerfs), and adaptability.

I’ve personally only done Mythic Jaina prenerf so far, but I did significant progress before the nerf. RNG in fights where simple mistakes can mean wipes can be greatly disheartening.

I disagree along the lines of Benthic gear in a way though. It’s fine that it exists and I suppose even socket chance. However, special effects shouldn’t exist in the raid environment imo.

Boss difficulty has been scaling in complexity though. I am sure it’s possible for less mechanics that feel challenging based on how they interact.

I don’t know how to feel exactly about boss difficulty though. Needing damage or healing requirements is fine, but perhaps allowing for a greater margin of error could make fights a tad easier without directly removing complexity.

Again, its hard for me to say, perhaps partly because I enjoy the chaos.

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The tuning has been a bit disheartening. My guild was stuck on Mythic Jaina and recently Mythic Ashvane for a long time. Guild merged with another guild and killed Ashvane now but we were hard stuck for weeks.

I stopped raiding cause holy priest was quite undesirable. The strict DPS requirements on stuff like ashvane is pushing people to bring paly and disc. Holy priest also kinda sucks in pvp and is not great for M+. Maybe I’m just not hardcore enough to adapt. For now I’m done with retail wow and messing around on classic.

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The whole idea of making content that challenges the very top players is a bad one. It’s another way the E-sports mindset has damaged the game.

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I disagree completely with this. I’m not even a CE raider but having something to push for and work at with a group I enjoy is why I play this. If all it was was clearing for AOTC most of us would’ve probably quit by now, we do heroic in an hour and a half.

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But you are okay with them making content that a chimpanzee can handle by randomly pushing buttons and don’t think that has any caused any lasting damage to the game?

Why is it okay to have pathetically brain dead content (from a challenge perspective) and not have similar content for those who play better than the masses and want a challenge?

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If there is no content to challenge the top players, they leave. And what’s left is a different group of players at the top. So unless you tune it so it is challenging for no one, there will always be content that challenges the top players.

A better idea is to do the content that you find fun, whatever that is. If you want to do the hardest content, then do it. If it’s too hard, then either get better or accept that you’re playing at whatever level.

If something is mechanically working incorrectly, or is mathematically impossible, it’s fine to expect changes. If you want something nerfed because you personally can’t do it, then there is no need to change the game.

A better title for this thread might be “Mythic raid groups need to play better.”

If 200-300 other guilds are completing the content then the problem isn’t the content.

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Making encounters extremely difficult initially is fine. The problem is they’re just not aggressive enough in tuning them down. And even less aggressive in fixing obvious problems that crop up in encounters over time (Za’qul is the huge offender here).

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I’m not sure encounters in general need to be tuned down. Bugs and problems should obviously be fixed as soon as possible, but if the problem is “it’s hard”, and several hundred groups are finding success, then the fix is “be better”.

I don’t have the mythic experience to call out specific bosses for examples of broken vs. hard, so I’m just speaking abstractly. If the bosses the OP names are broken, then they should be fixed. If they’re working as intended then I don’t see a need for any changes.

One possibly related point: there is a special circle in hell reserved for game designers who believe that making success completely dependent on random factors is the same as making a challenging encounter.

Statistically speaking, only 1 person in 10,000 can flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row. It doesn’t mean that person is better at flipping coins, or that flipping coins is difficult. There can be random factors in boss encounters, but if success or failure is based more on those factors than execution, then it’s a bad design.

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Frankly, I don’t think the difficulty of mythic is too much, in as much as I don’t think the fights are too hard. I think there are a lot of oversights in fight design that lead to a belief or trend towards certain classes dominating representation over others, and as Seelah has said, a lot of fights have glaring issues (Namely RNG spell queuing, and mixing phase and global timers) But those are all issues that have already been raised.

What I dislike is the “End boss formula” we’ve currently got, and how it leads to extremely long fights, with large sections of pointless downtime or “Training wheel” phases that after a night or two of progression just feel like a pointless slog.

Azshara, Jaina, and KJ, 3 of the most prolific recent end bosses, follow a similar formula:

  • Simple but fairly lengthy P1
  • Introductory intermission
  • P2 (Shows the bosses core mechanics, but is basically a target dummy)
  • Complex intermission
  • Extended burn phase with 1-2 new mechanics.

This has lead to these end bosses being over 10 minutes on mythic, and after a night or two, the first 2-3, even 4 minutes of all of these fights is mind numbingly dull to play through 300+ times.

My personal favourite end boss was Blackhand. A higher intensity, shorter end boss, where though the fight was distinctly split into phases, none of them felt particularly “filler” esque. (You could entirely remove P1 Azshara and the fight would remain essentially the same. You’d just trim 2+ minutes off it)

Making mental and physical fatigue a factor in end bosses by adding or keeping the training wheels phases from heroic is my least favourite thing about mythic raiding. Knowing that even though we’re doing decently well on a fight we’ve got to go through the motions for X minutes every single pull just isn’t fun.

Hard fights are great, they can be a lot of fun, but as someone who must’ve done Jaina P1 over 300 times on mythic, please trim the fat…

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The very top players do it week 1 with less gear than the typical player has now. No one had a 65 neck week 1 which is straight up a 2k dps increase alone. So yeah it is fine to make content that challenges the best players.

What are your thoughts on Argus?

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Strongly agree. Spell queuing and global phase timers ruined several recent bosses all on their own. And end bosses don’t need to be super long. There’s just something about recent end bosses that makes you feel like the first week or two of learning are just a waste of time before you get to the real fight.

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Argus didn’t have intermissions so I didn’t include it alongside those that did (All fights differ slightly from the base formula, azshara has 2 phases after her last intermission for example). But even then it suffers from the same general problems, the fight was so long that early kills were getting to bloodlust twice, and while P1 was fairly high octane with the damage buffs and one shot mechanics, phase 2 is by comparison rather dull and still not exactly short. The mythic phase itself was cool, being entirely different from heroic, though it did feel somewhat repetitive and very long.

I dislike the way in which so many end bosses, especially after a week or so of progression, become a 5-6 minute wait for a 2-3 minute fight. I haven’t mentioned the worst offender for this by far, Imperator, but I feel I should now, because I’ve just realised that it’s possibly Imperator progress that made Blackhand feel so refreshing immediately after.

Blackhand was just great. 3 no nonsense phases with a different feel, set of mechanics, and flow that for the most part kept you on your toes.

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I didn’t mind Argus as much because it was sort of fun to be able to blast dps and have a tight check in p1. P2 was zzz, but the rest of the fight was at least interesting and totally different than other difficulties.

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Pretty much same boat with you. Though rewriting an entire boss isn’t necessary for mythic, it’s always cool to see and play through something entirely new. P1 was indeed great, especially early on when the dps check was tight and you really had to play your best to get through it, P2 is what drags that fight down for me.

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Whether I am “ok” with it is irrelevant. What matters is how it affects the game as a business. Catering to low skill players is much more important than catering to the upper flakes of the upper crust, because the former group is so much more numerous.

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From what I can gather, the only end of raid boss blizzard has kinda screwed up on in BFA is G’huun. There is a reason why majority of mythic guilds just killed it once and never did it again. Even at this point, G’huun is really the only boss in Uldir that you need to actually do mechanics across ALL difficulties. Mainly due to the only way to move between phase 1 and 2 is running orbs. And since phase 1 punishes you the longer it goes for, you want to run those orbs asap. Leading to group comps where you want 4 locks and a mixture of classes that can easily solo run orbs with a lock gate, such as warriors and monks. Leaving more “slow” classes feeling rather useless. You can easily do the first 7 bosses on Mythic with a geared enough group without even worrying about mechanics, but once you get to G’huun, you feel the pain. A fight should get easier as time passes, even ones that are now “old content” but still within the expansion. Mainly due to gear progression etc. However that boss still feels like a slug fest (no pun intended) 2 tiers later as every time you do it, it feels like you are always progressing the fight. Majority of mythic Uldir groups I do just clear to Mythrax then stop. Which is a shame.

Which is funny as you can tell that mythic G’huun was made that way because of Mythic Xavius getting laughed at for being too easy. Just shows that blizzard likes to jump to the extremes.

Bosses should get more complex and harder as the raid goes on, but also the expansion. Having an insane convoluted end boss right off the bat is bad. A fight design like G’huun could work for a later tier end boss, but not the first.

Basically G’huun is the Kil’jaeden of BFA. And that is not a good thing. Considering on mythic KJ, being 1 degree off during orbs can lead to either life or death.

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Blizz does cater to lower end players.
Lfr
Normal
Heroic
There is no need for mythic to be added to that list and I think it would be extremely damaging if it were.

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