I’ve found the opposite to be true. While I get the issues with tyrannical on high keys, I don’t understand the “dead key” mentality for tyrannical up through the 15-16 that I do. 6 of my 8 KSM dungeons were done on tyrannical. It seems like the tyrannical timers are much more forgiving than fortified, as long as the group’s dps is good and you don’t screw up boss mechanics.
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How is no one sick of rotating “buff trash” / “buff bosses” week on week off for years now? I can’t stand it anymore. They really need to spice up that +2 affix to inject some new life into the M+ scene. It’s bad enough they don’t add an entire new set of affixes per expansion. They really should.
I never really said it’s a dead key, I just said it’s significantly harder to make timers on tyrannical keys… at least in my experience. For me, I was 3/8 on Tyrannical weeks. I’ve subsequently timed runs on Tyrannical weeks, but it’s just generally tougher to make the timers.
A good example that springs to mine is Mists. The first boss often requires a second cycle, sometimes even a third depending on your dps. This doesn’t mean the DPS is trash, this can happen even with a 5k average group, it’s just a slog to burn through the add’s health and then knock the dude over. The last boss is also really slow, which adds a lot of extra mechanics you have to deal with, which further slows down the boss fight. You don’t really make up this time on the trash, with it being normal health.
There’s other dungeons that seem to have this effect (DoS and SoA spring to mind). I think the key difference is that a lot of bosses have mechanics. You have to deal with those mechanics to succeed, but in dealing with them you’re often not doing as much damage. This has a cascade effect of making the fight go longer. By contrast, trash doesn’t generally have a ton of mechanics. So when they have a larger health pool, it doesn’t matter as much… you just have to DPS more.
Again, this would all be fine if the timers adjusted accordingly. But they don’t… and so generally, runs on Tyrannical weeks just seem to take longer. If Blizzard balances this, Tyrannical probably wont’ be as undesirable; however, it’s still crappy that they’re doubling the effort required to get the achievement without actually giving any additional gain.
It feels like your boss coming to you and saying, “Look, I’m gonna need you to work double the hours… but we’re not going to give you a raise.” Even if you love your job, that’s going to start to suck a lot of the enjoyment out of it for you 
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Who is “many”? The top 5% of M+ players and sellers?
You’re overexaggerating this a bit. The first season of an expansion is always tougher because you have to account for time leveling and all of the other player power this is timegated heavily.
Ah, the ol’ “get gud” argument to defend bad decisions. While some people who are complaining might not have the skill level to get KSM even the old way, there are plenty of people who are upset with this change who do have the skill to do it. Most people who are upset with this are mad for a few reasons:
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Gearing is already slow enough. Back in the day you could gear solely through raiding. This is not viable any more, you have to do either PVP or M+ as well as raid. Not enough loot drops from raid, and the ilvl of gear that drops from even +15s isn’t even heroic ilvl. This is a problem. Most people who are running these keys are doing it for the gear… and because they don’t like PVP. M+ got nerfed hard as a gearing option, while PVP, as always, has remained untouched despite way more people doing M+ compared to PVP (which Blizzard cares very little for to begin with).
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You’ve pugged most of your keys. Most of the people who are complaining are those who are playing classes no groups will take. Melee? Forget it. Ranged but bring nothing to table (Hunter)? But hey, you heal (and bring a brez) and could probably Boomie offspec, so who cares if people who play those other, lesser classes can’t get groups. And don’t even get me started with “well you can get KSM on any class if you’re just good!”. This is true, but people making groups want no part of classes outside of the current meta. The solution shouldn’t be to make everyone re-roll.
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They’ve tied the valor system to KSM, and this has also effected people trying to find groups. You want to upgrade your M+ gear to a good ilvl, gotta get KSM. Why? Because the ilvl of gear that drops from keys is too low. You can’t have it both ways: Either the ilvl needs to be increased for completing +14s and +15s, or untie the max upgradeable ilvl to KSM. A +15 is way harder than killing a heroic boss, yet the loot that is dropped from a +15 is lower ilvl. Makes NO sense.
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The valor that is awarded for completing a key needs to be tied to the level of key you are doing. People who would normally get taken to that +10, +11, or +12 get their spot taken by the 1800 IO person who is just valor farming. Why take the guy who is trying to improve their ilvl/IO when if I just wait three minutes some high ilvl M+ only player who just got their BIS trinket from a dungeon wants to upgrade it? This is doubly true if you happen to play one of those “undesirable” classes.
The outcry isn’t just because this is more work, it’s yet another thing Blizzard refuses to listen to the community on. People don’t like the Maw, so they’re going to double down on it. People think the class balance (particularly with how bad melee dps is compared to ranged) is some of the worst the game has had, so naturally no major changes. People are tired of more convoluted systems and borrowed power, so now we have shards of destruction and soul cinders and specific covenant legendries.
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ugh too many quotes, i literally can’t read all that, but…
yeah something about “git gud” - i think that’s what blizzard is going towards…good for them i say…hopefully you agree
EDIT: oops almost forgot mah nerd glasses 
Gearing wasn’t slow for the people who actually played the content. Especially considering how long the season ended up being. This expansion has really shown that skill outweighs gear.
No one has to re roll. Not even melee. Every group should have at least 1 melee, and according to RIO all melee specs are evenly distributed at +15 and above besides feral druid/survival hunter. If people are having a hard time getting into keys then it is because there are other players with better experience. The trick that no one seems to know is to open your bag and run your own key.
I mean plenty of people including myself got KSM pre nerf and pre tank buff with the gear that drops from +14/15s. Your not getting into groups because you have little to no experience, not because the gear is too low. Read above on how to get experience to begin with.
Who is 1800 and still farming valor. This was true maybe the first 2 weeks of the valor system launching. Even then, it was 1800s joining +2, 3, 4.
They completely redesigned the maw and how players can interact with it.
This statement would be true if the season didn’t last for 6 months.
Take a peek at RIO to see all the keys being run - and no they are not all paid carries.
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I was going to respond to him, but most of it is nonsense. “Gearing through only raid isn’t viable anymore, because not enough loot” when it’s the same amount of loot that dropped in earlier, pre m+, expansions. The most detached rant I’ve seen in a while around here.
I play M+ as my main content, I think this is more nuanced then people seem to take away from the article. You know that you get score even if you don’t time a key and just complete it, you can now get KSM without all timed keys (Not Specifically at 15). In s1 that was a requirement, people left group if they didn’t think the key was timeable. In s1 when I wanted to help friends with KSM I would have to bust my key down to 15 to ensure victory, now we can run it at a higher level as even untimed, points are awarded towards KSM. This may help groups finish out the key for score. Score based is a much healthier approach for the game.
As to the KSM requirements, it is unlikely a player timed all 15 on the first try for s1. In s2 it’s just complete for score and move on, and circle back on the weak ones. I would say this takes less time investment as every run counts for something but is still time gated by the weekly affix. The article mentions completed “barely in time”. I think it’s fair to say some runs will go well adding more points then the bare minimum.
At this level the issue isn’t really Tyrannical itself, it’s the awful affixes that come on Tyrannical weeks.
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This is assuming people stick with blizzards system instead of RIO. I think initially players are going to stick with what they have been using.
Also people will still leave if things go wrong early on because a run taking an hour means they could have left and timed another one and start a 2nd one.
I most certainly will use RIO, but my points are towards the perks and rewards system, we cant totally ignore the in game system. People will most certainly still leave in some cases, but there is at least an incentive to finish out the key in some scenarios. Your example is very extreme, I am thinking more of a 2-5 min off scenario or if you have guild/friend runs for a weekly complete increases in value. Its pretty clear when trying to push KSM in S1 if your not going to time the 15, no point in completing, where now you might have some extra points from another run that went well, it will certainly diminish as the season moves into a late stage.
I don’t think my example is extreme as it happens to people frequently. As it sits, I would like to think most people finish the dungeon off if they are close to the end and only a few minutes off time.
My apologies, perhaps extreme is not the best term. In my mind each run is 30-40 mins, using an example of a run taking an hour (double the time) seemed extreme in my mind, but I understand your point people do not want to limp through a run, I don’t think any incentive would help that scenario. I would account a wipe for about 2 mins off a run, from my experience if a group wipes twice its scuffed. Perhaps this system will add some wiggle room.
Raider IO already stated that they are working with blizzard to make adjustments with their systems. I would assume that they would no longer use their own scoring system in lieu of the new Blizzard system but will still retain data such as number of keys timed at different brackets, highest key completed, and information pertaining to Raid progression.
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The gear is not worth it, I’d rather just get better gear from the vault and run 10 14’s a week.
There’s no incentive to do this for poor item level gear. If this was mythic level raid gear, then it’s a different story.
Tyrannical should be preferred. If we are trying to time runs what is hard plowing through trash and actually do mechanics for 4-5 mins. Fort just slows down keys when every pack has boss level HP.
This is not what Blizzard are doing at all. If it was, Keystone Master would require something about requiring every affix combination or something silly like that. People will still gravitate towards easy affix combination weeks even with this, because that is how the affix system is.
What they’ve actually done is sidestep any feedback, or discussion, or thought about Tyrannical vs Fortified, a topic they’ve seen in an issue among the playerbase, and thrown a blanket “Do 2x the dungeons” bandaid on top of it, in the hope that it will make it seem like players don’t prefer one over the other (because they HAVE to to unlock the rewards behind Keystone Master).
Mind you, this also bleeds over to lower versions, Keystone Conqueror won’t be unlocked until 1.5k rating, and (afaik) that threshold of Valor upgrades is also still locked behind that.
Tyrannical should be preferred. If we are trying to time runs what is hard plowing through trash and actually do mechanics for 4-5 mins. Fort just slows down keys when every pack has boss level HP.
From every indication we can parse, there seems to be no difference in average time between the two, so neither affix “slows down” a run (on average) more than the other. It purely comes down to which one is more likely for a given group to fail, and why.
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Has anyone else been kinda wondering why they’re helping Blizzard design something that will render their own product irrelevant? Must’ve been a hell of a payday.
I mean, that’s a bunch of speculation and (even in that person’s own words), an admitted assumption. It could just as easily be more like the addon creators getting assistance from Blizzard so they can hook into some API or service to display the results that Blizzard is tracking - rather than dealing with the infrastructure costs to store/update/access all that data on their own servers.
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Worth noting, you don’t have to do do every key on 15 on both modes to get KSM. You need to do every key on both modes with an average key level, across all of them, of 15.
If you’re really having a tougher time with Tyrannical vs. Fortified (and you wouldn’t be alone), it’s not just 15 on each vs. 24 on Fortified. The score system threshold lets you do, say, 13 on each in Tyrannical and say a 17 on each in Fortified (though you get more points for the first of the two modes than the second, according to Wowhead numbers, so it may not even need 17’s in each to balance). And it lets you do, say, only a 10 in Sanguine Depths Tyrannical, and an 18-19 on a handful of the others on Fortified to make up for it.
Really, the score threshold makes the whole thing more flexible, not less. Yes, you actually do have to engage with Tyrannical dungeons, unlike current KSM (where you can do 100% of it on Fortified “push weeks”). But it gives you a lot of flexibility in “making up” score in one dungeon to cover a lower key level in another.
The only downside, imo, is that it reduces the need for Blizzard to balance the modes against each other, and the instances against each other, since you can cover lower scores in harder instances/affixes with higher scores in easier ones and still get the same result.
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