As I was exploring the new recruitment feature on Warcraftlogs I decided to do a little test.
I set one of my characters to search for heroic-only raiding guilds with a boss kill score of 10/11 in Season 3, and again with a score of 11/11, then delved into their calendars to check out their last week of Season 3 logs.
A pattern emerged in this anecdotal sample set of ~10 guilds that came up first in the search order that I’m sure most AOTC raiders are familiar with.
In each log, it’s a few players scoring purple, a few blue, and a sea greens and greys.
Each purple player and most of the blue ones had mostly M+ gear outside of trinkets.
Most of the players doing badly (grey) had almost entirely Raid gear.
Most of the players doing below average or badly (green and grey) were also doing badly for their ilvl, meaning that their bad performance was not just a result of their gear, but that they were actually struggling to play effectively.
It was clear that if the top 3 DPS played merely average (parsed a 50) that the groups would not have made many enrage checks
It was less clear if the groups could have succeeded without a standout healer when one was present since I can’t think of a way to measure whether the others would have been able to increase throughput if they had more “opportunity” to heal the raid damage
It seems odd that such strong ability players would play with such low ability players, maybe an unobservable factor like friendship is in play.
My take aways:
A lot of guilds out there only have AOTC because their M+ members carried their raid-only members
A lot of guilds out there don’t have AOTC because they have too many raiders who are unwilling to do a single +10 a week and not enough M+'rs to carry them over the line
Increasing ilvl in heroic to match ~10-15 keys depending on the boss is probably a good call for fairness
The people most upset about M+ ilvl vs Heroic are likely the ones not willing to run M+, and those people are still going to be performing very badly for their ilvl with better gear unless they practice more, and they still won’t keep up with people who do M+ and play their character properly
If the average relative ilvl Raids are tuned for increases (maybe because of better raid ilvl on later wings), this will probably make it harder than it is now for most AOTC guilds, rather than easier
Relative difficulty might retained if M+ items continued to scale into Mythic Raid ilvl drop at key levels with success rates comparable to Mythic bosses
M+ is providing an outlet that allows strong players to feel okay staying in guilds whose average ability level is far below their own
Many Heroic guilds would be dead if the M+ players only ran M+ or moved on to Mythic guilds that matched their own ability level
Raiding is in a state where it’s so hard for the average player, that you’re better off getting mythic+ gear and then try raiding. That is only one thing wrong with raiding. I spent 3 hours in heroic SotFO last thursday and got a big fat nothing burger, and even if I got something, it wouldn’t have replaced my mythic+ 298 gear. Raiding is a waste of time as it stands, it’s old design that’s nearly 2 decades old is solely designed to waste your time and keep you coming back. They need to rework raids from the ground up.
I agree with the rework but I disagree that they’re designed to be time wasters.
I think they genuinely want raids to be the great pillar of gaming that you just can get anywhere else, but in their pursuit of making great encounters at some point they stopped iterating on everything that happens outside of the actual encounter.
Why the heck are summoning stones outside the instance? This is a holdover from days before group finder where you might legitimately find other players on your server at the stone. Now it serves two purposes that don’t justify keeping it outside: Making sure no one wants to step outside and summon a person and making sure people in warmode experience pre-raid murder.
Why when you die is the respawn point a 5 minute walk from where you died instead of at the entrance to the boss room?
Is it really necessary that every single death 20+ people must spend 10 seconds eating food that’s barely palatable at best?
Trash is fine as a filler between one boss and the next, but does it always need to be trash? Why not a vehicle ride. Why not a puzzle? Why not a maze / obstacle that some people can go through and eventually disable for the people who couldn’t figure it out. Why not a shortcut for rogues to lockpick or warlocks to gate over or some other class thematic flavor stick.
The gearing situation in raids should be improved, but frankly raid loggers owe a big thank you to all the M+rs who are getting them through the game.
And maybe a little realization that better gear from raid might mean harder encounters from raid, leaving them the same or worse off than they are now, relative to their M+ peers.
Something not really highlighted too is, who’s going to be better practiced at their character? The raid logger who spends spends maybe 4 hours a week actually playing their character, or the M+ Raider who put in another 5, 10, etc hours a week running keys?
You’re not looking at the main issue (or I glossed over it).
A tryhard is going to, as the name implies, be trying hard. This means they are going to be running any and all content streams that make sense to pursue upgrades. These are the same types of players who are going to be parsing themselves, simming themselves, and generally care more about performance.
By contrast, and idgaf what raiders only want to say, but mythic+ takes a lot more skill in mechanical execution and output than most raid fights, especially at heroic. Someone doing their best to push keys and time them (not to mention running 4-8+ for multiple vaults) is just caring more about their performance and being good than your typical raider just wanting to show up for their few hours of farm content. I saw so many times in heroic progression the people making the least amount of mistakes and/or surviving until the end are the mythic+ players who are used to a world juggling a bunch of mechanics and “things happening” as well as making their own survival their own responsibility. It’s not just the ilvl difference at play here rather than an entirely different mindset that augments it.
Maybe this is all what you meant, but I feel you were targeting ilvl upgrades as the reason which I find is just a singular and ultimately minority reason.
I’m saying increasing ilvl from raids may provide an important sense of fairness and may make raids feel like less of a waste of time, but that it will not actually help the normal/heroic-raid-only crowd who have been complaining about M+ ilvls.
The reality is many raid-only players appear to both play badly AND have bad gear, and fixing the latter wont fix the former.
Worse, if the raids are tuned up to accommodate higher average ilvl, then they are actually taking two steps back, because not only will they not have improved at all relative to the raid, but their M+ teammates might be less able to help them overpower the tuned up content.
Regardless of what happens in the future, the raid-only players of the AOTC guilds should be grateful about the M+ runners on the roster this past expansion, rather than resentful. Without them, their team probably wouldn’t have been AOTC at all.
I feel like there are some Heroic-raid-loggers who are of the mindset “I would rather my guild fail at obtaining AOTC than get beat by my guildie with better gear” while ignoring that they still would’ve got beat on an equal gear footing. It’s a pretty negative take.
Worse, they might have less raid friends, since those M+ players might decide that there isn’t room for them to grow in an AOTC guild if their M+ gear isn’t enough to help their teammates succeed anymore.
Increase ilvl from normal and LFR? Sure. I think raid gear should be upgradable to the same as valor gear once you clear heroic. Ilvl from mythic raid is already bis and far better than what you get from even the best keys in the world (which are magnitudes harder).
I still think this more has to do with the good players (or better players) being tryhards over people just expecting to show up. I very strongly suspect if you gave both an only raider and an only mythic+ player the same character, the mythic+ person will do better, on average, in not only the mythic+ dungeon but also the raid.
Now add on a player whose also raiding BECAUSE they are trying to be their absolute best against someone who, again, is just looking to coast on by. Again, same character played by both players will absolutely yield very different results.
It’s not simply the ilvl difference. It’s the attitude/mindset and I definitely feel that attitude and mindset is a far bigger contributor to what you are seeing that anything else.
Were I pugging a raid, and I very well may tonight, I’d be FAR more likely to trust someone with a decent IO score but no/limited raid experience than someone with no IO score and only some raid experience assuming similar gear levels. I just trust the mythic+ player to be a far more adaptable and capable player.
Yea, I don’t think a lot of players would raid w/ out full M+. They are way too bad at the game. Usually get AOTC pretty fast b4 the gear inflation, then as the weeks go on the PUGs get more geared, but far worse. It’s because so many players actually suck and need that big ilvl to get past content. IMO, keep the loot farm going w/ M+. I’m not trying to beat my face against the wall for weeks while people try to play catchup w/ slow gearing and no alternate content.
I think there’s a really important logistical aspect of M+ as well that folks tend to forget:
If you play WoW for its PvE content … what do you do outside of those raid nights if there’s no other forms of PvE available in the game? PvP? Lots of folks hate PvP but likes PvE and vice versa, but a PvP player can play all week, where as a raider can only raid with others once or twice a week on average generally speaking
M+ is not only a way to improve the gearing process through raids, but it also improves retention of players who likes PvE but dislikes PvP because I mean… log in, get enough gold to buy consumables, log out until you log in, get buffed up, and then have fun with friends
M+ makes people care more about the days in between the big raid nights as well
I disagree. IMO, a “tryhard” is someone whose main strategy for improvement is simply trying harder. They’re stuck because they don’t understand what they’re doing wrong. That’s why so often it’s used as a pejorative.
I always felt the pejorative was because it’s annoying for the people who want to “relax and who cares if we win” to have some sweaty dude around stressing themselves or others out about cc / numbers / timings / placements.
Tryhards absolutely do more than just increase their focus and mash keys harder. Some might show up with potions for everyone and insist everyone follow directions to some strategy guide and maybe they’re even trying hard at the wrong thing (eg padding with non-effective dps).
Parse Rankings are simply not a complete metric. People care about them far too much, and holding them to be the end all be all of judging a player’s skill is folly when getting real high parses requires external CDs from other players anyhow, like Windfury or PI. It doesn’t matter if 1-2 players parse purple if they’re making the raid healers blow CDs to save them for ignoring mechanics for more throughput, which may cause some lower parsing players to die, for example.
DPS is not a complete metric of what a raid needs to succeed. It’s part of it, sure. More DPS means faster encounters means everyone has to not mess up for less time.
Mechanic avoidance/handling is important.
Interrupts and add control are important.
Knowing when to save CDs vs Blow CDs is important.
The largest issue I’ve seen since Flexible Raiding came out, which was also exaggerated by M+ as it’s existed for awhile is that people are just impatient more than ever and most group leads point at bad metrics like item level and parses to gate keep actually needing to put in the investment to teach their raiders, or individual players that don’t want to feel obligated point at M+ rating and say they’re a good player despite the fact that they die just as much as most of my gray parsing players.
It used to be that people would sign up to be on the roster, the group sizes and comp usually didn’t change much after the group established itself, and those groups would either fail or grow as a team. Now it’s musical rotating raid spots every week.
One factor to also consider is that the parse pool only ever increases as more and more players do the content and kill the bosses. The entire bell curve of bottom and top parses moves linearly away from the theoretical “we have to do this good to win” line as time goes on, to the point that a group parsing grays can indeed kill the bosses. Content Nerfs accelerate that process as well.
Furthermore, you’ve got some selection bias in that you’re only looking at these guild’s successful progression kills, where progression kills are usually hard won and close shaves. Look at encounters by the same players after they’ve got a fight on lock-down, if variable group compositions and sizes aren’t plaguing them. I bet you’d start to see some different metrics.