Raids Are Getting Too Hard, I Know

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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So first off I know, difficulty is part of the fun, I agree. But it’s gotten to a point where new players have no hope of clearing a lot of the content. Those of us that have been playing the game for nearly 20 years have a really good idea of what needs to be done and how to play our classes. And I’m not suggesting that new players should be able to clear mythic raids or be able to be totally carried or face rolling.

But we’re at a point where you have to use weak auras or addons, you have to wipe 400 times on a boss to clear it and it’s just not going to be fun for the majority of people. The game is a game, it’s supposed to be fun not a job. Having to get 20 people together for hours a night is just ridiculous. And I’ve said it a 1000 times but I’ll say it again, RWF is great for people who enjoy it but the vast majority of us don’t care. In the guild I was running of 100+ people maybe 3 actually watched it or even kept up with who was on top.

The game has to stop being tuned for the top players and start becoming accessible again. There are a myriad of ways to do it, the best idea being something like Raid+ where you incrementally scale the difficulty and those top 1% people can still have their bragging rights and challenge without additional rewards other than like a title or something. But the reality is it’s just too complicated and too much time to sink into a game.

It shouldn’t be a walk in the park to clear mythic no, but it shouldn’t be the huge time sink it has become either. The first step is to remove the raid lockout and put it in line with all the other lock outs so it is per character. The second step is to lower the damage being done. Mechanics still need to be punishing, but normal damage shouldn’t be the leap it is from heroic.

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Some of the points you’ve made are valid. I find it strange tho that you speak as though there’s only one difficulty, and you’re being blocked from being able to down the bosses. There’s lfr, normal, heroic that you can do if you find mythic too much.

Now, there’s gona be a lota elitist non enlightened responses to what you said, that go along the lines of: get gud play heroic newb.

I can understand where ur coming from. Some of us are wired in a way that if we can’t do the hardest difficult available, it feels like we can’t really do the game.

I achieved CE recently this tier. Post HOF nerds, I don’t think this raid is wildly too difficult. It’s somewhat in range of what we typically see for a while now …1000-1500 guilds getting CE in a season. This one we’ll be close to 1000 due to the shortened season thanks to season 4. So it does make it a more punishing season than usual.

The biggest problem with making it noticeably easier, is then you remove the prestige and weight to getting CE. It felt like I really achieved something when I did it recently, because it was a difficult journey. If it was noticeably easier, I wouldn’t feel the same way.

Now, I do agree this raid has some examples of content being too difficult for the core mythic raider base, even post hof nerfs. Smolderon is fine for a 7th boss. Tindral is still a bit much for a 8/9 boss, but not by much. There are some trollish mechanics that exist. Mushroom soaks spawning way far out that no one saw, terrible falling star swirls in horrible rng locations. (I actually find the 2nd flying orb sequence rng annoying in how the orbs cycle. I have to get 5 as a tank. Sometimes it’s easy. Other times the way they’re moving it’s very difficult to dodge if not impossible).
But if ppl r dying to fire beams. That’s just bad play

Fyrakk? Now with current strats p3 isn’t bad. Getting hit by frontals in p1? That’s a lack of awareness.

My only complains from this fight is the rng nature of the blaze line beams. It leads to player deaths here and there and there are really bad rng situations that it causes good players to die from, esp if they have to move to avoid hitting an add.

My tldr about what’s too difficult about this raid currently, is anything with rng nature, because that is a lot harder to learn how to overcome .

Mythic raiding is too difficult because it requires 20 ppl….thats the nature of the beast. U need an organized team. Even if it was 10 ppl, I think you’d still hear the same complaints. You hear the same complaints from basketball teams, football teams, we’re having roster issues. This is a social game. Probably the best part of what makes this game feel significant.

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I don’t play with addons, and in all honesty this is my only issue with the difficulty of raids the past few expansions. It feels like content I simply cannot engage with, because even in LFR difficulty the mechanics are designed with addon usage in mind. Sure, I’ll queue for an LFR wing if I really want something out of it (like that hearthstone), but the mechanics even on LFR’s difficulty level feel frustrating.

And, why don’t I break down and download addons if I truly want to engage with the material? Well, because I use one device for both my recreational (video game) time and my work life. I cannot risk a computer virus-- even if the risk is low from some well-trusted sites, it’s still not a guaranteed zero.

The firebombs at Tindral when you first reach the platform are the first thing that comes to my mind. I’m no big raider, so maybe I’ve got the mentality of it all wrong here, but it felt sort of like a troll by Blizz in that I feel like before boss fights is the perfect time for a brief afk, if someone really needed to go afk for a few minutes during the raid.

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Mythic raiding has always been for poop-sockers and the terminally unemployed, till late patch, every time.

Hence why M+ is so popular, you can get max level rewards without having to wipe 400 times on bosses and spend hundreds of thousands of gold so the 0.01 percent of players can celebrate their accomplishment of completing needlessly difficult and arbitrary content that gatekeeps a majority of PVE’ers from Myth loot.

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1000 haven’t cleared it, it’s only about 780 as of today. And I’ve seen more guilds than normal just fall apart at the end of this season. There are obviously more than 1 difficulty, but LFR and normal are honestly not even a challenge and heroic isn’t too much more difficult now. My guild went 6/9 this tier and called it because the fights just aren’t fun. It’s not fun wiping 40-100 times on something, it’s just not especially when you’re doing it for 2 to 3 hours 2 nights a week. It is nice to progress and all, but I’m tired of losing friends and having to join other guilds to get things down.

And that’s the real problem. If it’s made for only the top level players those people will tend to group together and with a limit of 20 people and the raid being locked per group, it’s just not accessible enough anymore.

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What the heck Davidus, you don’t want to wipe 150-300 times to multiple bosses for a checks notes 6 ilvl upgrades, a FOMO achievement, and 2 mounts for your 20-man raid that you need to farm 10 times to get everyone one of?!

Think of how you can lord that kill over people that don’t have it, and how superior you will be to everyone in 19 year old video game!

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Personally i would perfer if max ilvl raid rewards were from heroic same as mythic just have mythic be for the flex.

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I meant a 1000 as a guess to where we’ll end up before season4.

I don’t particularly consider myself some amazingly gifted gamer. I came back to this game in dragonflight, with 0 friends. And I got CE in aberrus and this raid. By grinding hard, improving my performance each night, and applying hard to guilds posting on the wow discord.

I’m no special talent, just a 35 year old working a career. If I can do it, anyone can.

The question if u have the want to, is really what it comes down to. Don’t want to? Cool. Don’t

I agree with u this raid has killed too many guilds. Again, Tindral was too hard for a second to last boss. I think smolderon is appropriate. If they made the 1-7 bosses this mythic raid easier…they essentially would nerf the entire esteem of mythic raiding. There’s a reason I don’t play elder scrolls. I find nothing significant and worthwhile accomplishing cause the challenge isn’t there.

I also don’t get this angry reaction regarding add ons and weak auras. Some in the path of exile community complain about the same thing. The weak auras I use, and customize further, literally lets me enjoy the game further. I don’t get the perspective of: I SHOULDNT HAVE TO USE THESE.

Well you also shouldn’t have to buy a comfortable pillow to add to ur bed. Or, tint the windows in ur car But, like why not…do it? If it’s more enjoyable?

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I think people take issue with the more problematic weak auras that are the result of the devs just not giving a crap and the only solution available to the playerbase is a weak aura as a result to deal with a mechanic that gives them no time to react/figure out something

Examples:
Among Us game Lords of Dread
Jailer Bombs
Fyrakk Intermission assignments.
Fyrakk Break Assignments Phase 2
Smolderon Seeking Inferno
Echo of Neltharion Volcanic Heart

I’m sure someone will chime in “My elite gamer guild doesn’t use these!” but I could easily show 30 videos of guilds each all using these Weak Auras. You’d be hard pressed to find 5 guilds that don’t.

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You’re def right I mean they’re required for fyrakk. Esp consider imagine if you didn’t use them for the fyrakk intermission, and you had a few last minute roster changes. Total chaos

Yeah I find that particular argument about add ons being reasonably REQUIRED a more viable debate than a lot of the general grumblings about mythic raiding.

It’s also easy to get a sense that mythic raiding is totally a mess and an utter failure. The players enjoying it are not the ones being vocal about it lol. Only those annoyed. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been annoyed several times this raid during my CE adventure. And also very pleased at other times.

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Oh come on, I remember when everyone complained about N’zoth, Crab Boss, which were genuinely fun bosses! Long encounters, you had to be on your toes, coordinated. This expansion really dropped the ball, the most intense boss was Razsageth and you just had to aim correctly to be cast onto other platforms.
Kinda disappointing!

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Agree to disagree here, but I feel like a game should not require outside resources that are not produced by the company in order to complete their content. I have nothing against those who do use them and enjoy them. I simply feel like I shouldn’t have to run the risk of downloading something that is not verified by the game developers in order to play the game.

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When Diablo 3 came out, it eventually needed a massive amount of tuning after launch because the upper ends were just punishingly difficult and unfun.

Jay Wilson (the guy in charge) just came out and explained in an interview that while they tested the lower difficulties, they never actually bothered testing the highest difficulty.

He just said something like “we took the numbers from the second-highest, and then we doubled it”. They never bothered to see if it was even doable. (just google “jay wilson and then we doubled it”, it became a meme like “don’t you guys have phones”)

It’s the same with Mythic raiding, on many bosses. Especially the end ones.

Blizzard doesn’t actually have ANY idea how people are supposed to do these fights. They just make them crazy and leave it to the players what to do.

We’ve seen this on display many times. Their idea for Mythic neltharion was that people would break the walls and take the hearts into the other areas. Apparently nobody ever told the developers that Neltharion was filling in the other zones with lava and making them into death zones.

And then there was Zskarn, where the solution was to cheat. And the guy who developed the fight just used that cheat strat (one he saw it) with his guild. And then changed how the fight works the next day (mid-week!) to fix it after his guild did it.

This is why they also change the fights during RWF. They really have no idea how people are supposed to do the fights.

People are just chasing a red herring with the hand-wringing about addons. Addons aren’t the problem. The complete lack of care on the developers’ part about the people playing the game… that’s the problem.

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I’m guessing you didn’t do Mythic Tindral.

(checks)

You did not do Mythic Tindral.

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I agree for the most part, the addon complaints is basically throwing out the baby with the bath water. Under the impression if addons go away Blizzard will deal with all the issues with the UI for playing the game.

This is the same company that took like 18 years to make most features from Bartender baseline, I wouldn’t hold my breathe lol.

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They couldn’t even add coordinates to their dragonflight “ui revamp”.

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Sometimes Blizzard includes things like that to ‘troll’ the playbase. From Nefarian’s class role calls to Jaina ice blocking when you pop hero / lust / time warp etc.

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They’ve said they’ve done this for a while, it isn’t something super new.

And tbh I don’t see how it is really that bad of a thing. It’s not surprising that players are better at the game than the devs. There was a video game documentary and the guy that created space invaders could barely get passed the second level.

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The game is accessible. You were describing the hardest raiding difficulty.

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I’m simply pointing out that the developers do not “design the fights with addons in mind”. They don’t seem to design them with anything in mind, including how anyone is supposed to beat them.

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