It’s simple.
It either is or is not allowed. Blizzard needs to make the decision. Cause if it is allowed, everyone would do it. If it’s not allowed, these people abusing it should have the runs stricken.
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They’re important to the individual and the group they’re playing with. They’re not important to someone outside the group.
Already answered above:
The answer to your question is right there…
If you’re predisposed to that conclusion you will find all sorts of evidence to support it, correctly or not.
I object in principle to poorly reasoned perspectives and feel empowered to communicate that objection in discussion forums. If someone can present a reason I didn’t consider, then I get the opportunity to change my viewpoint.
That’s a false dichotomy. I neither care about making them feel better nor making Blizzard look less inept.
You clearly care more about the media coverage and the perception of Blizzard than I do. I’m not sure I understand why, but there it is.
I don’t agree that this is just being allowed to sit necessarily. I think the most likely situation is that storymode buff being able to continue into M+ was an oversight, with a bad interaction from a new system. Rather than ban people for using buffs the way they were functionally designed to be used in a format Blizzard didn’t intend, I think they decided that the fault is theirs and not the players. Rather than throw the ladder into tumult and start disqualifying runs that have the buffs, and possibly making a bad situation worse by incorrectly or inconsistently trying to rectify the situation, I would guess they’ve decided to eat the L, let this season play out however it does, and make the relatively simple adjustment to either cancel the buffs upon leaving story mode or upon the placing of a key for the beginning of S2.
Maybe I’m wrong about all of it, but this is the most plausible scenario that I’m seeing about the whole issue, and I just don’t understand why anybody outside the 0.1% cares. It’s such a tiny, niche problem.
Because I consume that content. Listening to people outside of this community rail against it for being a farcical clown show of bugs and exploits makes me sad and I turn back to Blizzard as being responsible for that perception. Allowing this to fester isn’t helping the very negative perception that the game is fostering publicly.
People outside of this game don’t have a stake in the content but they will ride that negative press as far as they can just to highlight Blizzard’s shortcomings.
I recognize that nothing can be perfect, that people make mistakes. I also agree with most of this, except that players should bear no responsibility.
The bans for MoP: Remix were actioned against accounts that literally spawn camped and ground out mobs for currency. Things that have been core content since inception and which, outside of seeming overly-rewarding, required no tricks or additional setup.
This on the other hand is a clear exploit. Nobody is accidentally queuing for follower dungeons and then timing their exit to ensure they receive buffs before being ported out.
“Oops, I meant to zone in this DB 17, but I accidentally dropped group and queued for a follower dungeon by mistake.”
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I don’t know, I like playing and I’ll keep playing as long as I’m having fun. I’m not really worried what people are saying one way or the other. If I’m not having fun I won’t play, even if everyone says it’s the greatest thing ever; if I’m having fun, I’ll play even if everyone says it’s the worst. All the external commentary from streamers and such is just noise for me.
Are you certain there were bans? I was under the impression they nerfed the spawn rate and possibly reverted some gear, but didn’t actually issue any bans. I looked it up for this post and can’t find any evidence of bans.
It’s shady, but I’m not sure it rises to the level of an actual exploit. Saronite bombs recreating platform in ICC is abusing a programming problem. Standing in a spot where Sartharion can’t damage you is abusing a programming issue. These things resulted in bans.
This is more like mages spellstealing a boneshield and using it correctly in a way that wasn’t intended. Blizzard made a fix but no one was punished.
The buffs are acting as intended and not otherwise altering the game environment. They’re just not supposed to be accessible in this situation.
But could somebody have done a follower dungeon, then joined a M+ and discovered their buffs were still working?
And if it can happen legitimately by accident, how should they determine which ones were shady and which ones were unintentional? And if they vacate the scores for people who obviously abused the buffs, do they leave the scores for people who maybe didn’t? It’s a more nuanced situation than people want to make it, and the easiest fix is to just change it for the next season and not introduce all the chaos that would ensue from removing certain dungeons from being counted.
Competitive balance is about consistency. If the buffs are available to everyone, than no one can claim that other people had an unfair advantage. Doing anything about this midseason opens the door to all manner of complaints, both legitimate and illegitimate. Waiting until S2 leaves the only legitimate complaint that Blizzard maybe should have anticipated this problem and fixed it ahead of time. But on the other hand, it’s a big game with a lot of moving parts, and it doesn’t seem catastrophic to me that something like this can fall through the cracks.
It’s not because, if I understand it correctly, they are bypassing the automation implemented to prevent it. The game is programmed to remove the buffs once you leave the group, but they are timing their exit such that they receive the buffs after leaving group, bypassing the auto scrub.
It’s not something you get for doing content. This isn’t the mistletoe buff, or some random world event buff. This is physically evading automation in order to obtain something the game intends to prohibit.
I appreciate this. I don’t hold you accountable for not caring, but I do think that trying to shut down complaints about it without understanding the full context feels hypocritical. It smacks of “I don’t care, why should you?”
I want to assure you I’m not criticizing you, or looking to pick a fight, I just disagree with the assertion that because it doesn’t impact someone directly that they shouldn’t be free to describe it as problematic.
I wasn’t aware of that, and if true, definitely makes it worse. It’s one thing if the buff persists when you leave and you do a key and it’s still there. Oops. It’s different if you have to follow a procedure to bypass preventative programming.
While in this circumstance it would be even more understandable that Blizzard wouldn’t have anticipated the problem, it is less understandable why it’s been allowed to persist. Maybe they’ll do a surprise title removal for anyone over the cut whose scores contain the buffs, like they did in SL s4. Personally, I think it would be better to announce it early that the runs are invalid, so people who used it have an opportunity to get the rating legitimately. But maybe Blizzard doesn’t want to give people that opportunity if they’re obviously cheating, and this is arguably worse than Zenkiki, if they have to exploit a loophole to keep the buffs.
I still don’t think it’s a huge deal for most of us, because it’s such a small part of the population being affected. But I do concede that it’s a bigger deal than I initially recognized, if in fact it’s something they need to be doing intentionally to activate. For people at the upper competitive end, it’s shady enough to walk through an open door you know you’re probably not supposed to be entering. It’s much worse if you have to jimmy the door open yourself.
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I agree with all you said and I think the concerns of those players, though few, are worth consideration. I don’t know if it would be worth trying to investigate who started it versus who copied it, or if any punishment could be levied fairly with enough expediency to make it worthwhile.
Hot take, but perhaps the move is to apply a hotfix that activates the four raid buffs in all keys above level 17 and call it a new affix. Mainly because I suspect most teams would prefer to not jump through hoops for the buffs, but will if they think it’s necessary. If the dungeon provided the buffs no further action would need to be taken and Blizzard could deal with it for 11.1. No clue how hot garbage that is, but it feels like a compromise that saves a lot of headaches.
can you not be a karen on stuff that doesnt effect you? its like hoa saying your door isnt a certain color.
Not sure who you’re talking to, but the title cutoff is something of a competition. Fairness in competition is in everyone’s best interest. WoW needs top gamers to represent it on platforms like Twitch, to maintain the credibility of the game. If cheating becomes the default behavior many of those players will simply not waste their time if they’re going to lose out to exploiters.
You may not think it affects you but I assure you it does.
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There are tricks in m+ to skip things should we ban those also? Using mechanics in our favour to make a run go faster isn’t against the rules. Everyone can do it like the warlock teleporter skip in mists etc. just learn em
No we should not ban m+ skips 
taking story mode raid buffs outside that instance and into a key is not the same as using a warlock portal to skip some mobs
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It’s the same as asking a random Druid to give you a buff or a guildi……
Tell me you don’t understand how buffs work without telling me you don’t understand how buffs work…
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What in the half-baked sophistry is this? If someone is starving in another country, I can’t care because I’m not personally affected?
Yes, you can be concerned about problems that don’t affect you personally. It’s absolutely wild I have to point that out to you.
You’re going to accuse me of sophistry and then immediately try to create a moral equivalence between starving people and competitive imbalance in a video game, which by the way is not even a competition for 99.9% of the participants? Seriously?
If you’re going to be a pedantic word parser who ignores dozens of posts in an evolving discussion then at least parse them correctly. Nothing in the statement you quoted says someone can’t care. You can care about starving people but does that mean that you are also somehow hungry? It’s absolutely wild I have to point that out to you.
Regardless, what should be obvious to any competent person who takes the time to read the thread is that I was speaking specifically in the context of this specific niche issue, and not attempting to create foundational tenets of a new philosophy that should be applied to all aspects of life.
But thanks for your contribution days later. It really added to the relevant parts of the discussion.
I obviously hit a nerve 
Half-baked sophistry, I have no issue with good sophistry. Your argument was just terrible.
I’m not sure what to do with this strawman you’ve build me - I haven’t made any moral equivalences. I only used an extreme example to point out how bad your argument was.
I’m not sure that means what you think it means. When was I pedantic? I had an issue with your entire argument, not it’s details or words you used. You’re just tossing spaghetti at the wall now to see what sticks.
Ohhh, I need to spell things out for you. This was your argument:
- If a problem doesn’t affect the a person
- Then it isn’t a problem for them
I showed how this is an absurd argument by pointing out a consequence of it:
- I’m not affected by X problem (starving people)
- Therefore it’s not a problem for me
This is obviously an absurd conclusion. It’s a problem for me that people are starving, and also that there are issues in top end M+ balance - even though neither affect me personally.
You’re welcome, no more bad arguments please <3. Players don’t need to be browbeat just for expressing concern about a bug in the game, regardless of their io 
This sentence alone tells me you have no idea what you’re talking about.
No, you really didn’t.
Peak irony from someone who thinks there is “good sophistry” lol. Remedial debate class is that way (see yourself out).
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About the substantive response i was expecting. Will do - have a great evening! 
But m+ has had this forever. DHs enter meta, mages use mass barrier, paladins use their shield thing, etc. Battlepots. Blizz let the mistletoe thing slide before saying it was ok like 5-6 years ago.
I think people using the vantus rune on Rash in raid AND THE BUFF WORKING IN THE DUNGEON is one of the most absurd, and kinda funny, things to come out of this.
Tbf though I kind of don’t care. I think blizzard made this season so unfair and so unfun that of course players are trying to find any way they can just to barely get by. I haven’t and don’t want to, because I don’t want my runs to be invalidated if it does end up happening (I worked very hard as an off meta healer I don’t want that to happen) but I don’t care that others do. I completely understand why they are doing that. It does still despite that feel a bit silly that we can’t take healthstones from the last key into the next key but that people can abuse stat increases.
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