I’m finding that Uldir on mythic difficulty isn’t very fun.
This surprised me a lot. I’ve raided every raid in the game while it was the current top endgame content starting with Molten Core. I’m not a top-tier mythic raider, but my raid group does kill mythic bosses each tier.
Uldir seems painfully bad. Much worse than any raid instance from the last expansion or the one before. I think the following may be contributing factors:
Uldir loot is boring - the trinkets are awful, tier sets don’t exist, the loot from the final end boss is crap, and there isn’t even any awesome transmog gear. You can almost fully gear up with 385s just from the first half of the raid and from mythic dungeons. There isn’t much loot incentive to stick it out for Uldir’s second half.
Painful mechanics - After the first two fights, the rest are of the “long fight with complex mechanics where if anyone makes even the tiniest mistake at any point in the fight you wipe. And sometimes you wipe from bad RNG even with no mistakes.” Encounters with these sorts of mechanics are fine for the endboss or two in mythic difficulty, but simply don’t belong on earlier bosses. Unfortunately, in Uldir almost every boss after the first 2 follow that formula.
Extreme increase in difficulty after first 2 bosses - Taloc is a faceroll that only took a couple wipes. Mother took us maybe 10 wipes. But after that? … Zekvoz took us over 100 wipes to get our first kill. And we probably wiped 30 more times getting our second and third kills. We’re working on Vectis now and are maybe 65 wipes with best attempt 25%. I think if we’re lucky we’ll get maybe 4 bosses down in mythic difficulty before next raid comes out… which sucks considering this is the first raid of the expansion, which traditionally has an easier learning curve than later raids.
Boring Architecture - Zekvoz, Fetid and Vectis are all in virtually identical rooms. They’re so unmemorable I always have to pull up my map to remind myself which boss is in which room.
All of this has combined to make what seems to be the least fun raid in 5+ years. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. Burnout seems to be happening much faster among players in my guild and other guilds compared to prior expansions. In previous expansions, almost nobody burned out until the content drought after the final major content patch. Certainly not in the first tier of an expansion.
Very poorly done of you Blizzard.
That’s just my personal opinion though. Perhaps others are having more fun in Uldir than me. But I hope the next raid is better.
The fights are pretty interesting, and obviously challenging. The architecture however is uninspiried. Nothing really cool happens or looks special. Take Black Rock Foundry and Ulduar, two of my favorite looking raids. They both were so cool to run around in and explore.
I don’t expect the first raid to come out to be amazing. I can’t remember an expansion to have a first tier be awesome (molten core is the ugliest raid ever). But dungeons like Kings Rest, which feels like a theme park ride, give me hope for the next couple of raids (especially the mecha one drools).
Everyone is certainly entitled to an opinion and I respect yours.
But I have also heard of many people, including popular streamers say that the raid is the best part of the game right now because it is well put together and interesting compared to other parts of the game that are a train-wreck or boring. I enjoyed it for the first tier of an expansion. My guild went to 5/8M and then decided it was time for a break until next tier. Part of the burnout that occurs is from wiping so much. My guild felt in on Zek’Voz for a couple of weeks as well. We just couldn’t get it together for a couple of raid nights and it drained most of us. Thankfully we made it through and continued on with Vectis and Fetid. I believe first kill for most of these bosses was about 50ish wipes, probably less for Vectis.
Uldir I think was fine but far from perfect. I am definitely looking forward to the new raid next tier. Looks like a lot of fun from what I’ve seen.
I personally find mythic Zek and Fetid very fun. I agree that the look is kinda lame but. As far as difficulty, yeah maybe but I don’t think Zek is that hard. It’s all mechanics. Do them right and it trivializes the fight.
Zek seems at first like you can get RNG screwed by rings, but you can get around stuff. Worst case if someone’s forced to drop a cloud in a high traffic area you can pop it on purpose after any set of eye beams and use defensives/link to survive the blast.
The first raid for the past few expansions has not had OP trinkets and we knew from the beginning that Tier doesn’t exist anymore. Loot should not be the driving factor for clearing a raid.
There are no real painful mechanics on Mythic difficulty until Zul. I will grant that Fetid prior to the nerfs and some retuning could have some bad RNG but it is/was certainly killable with coordination.
Disagree here outside of Fetid’s RNG the difficulty curve is spot on. The only fight which was poorly designed was Zul. You could mechanically ignore the first 60% of the fight with CC and 4 Sub Rogues.
Aesthetically it isn’t Nighthold by any stretch of the imagination but it certainly fits what an ancient Titan facility would look like in the heart of Nazmir.
I hate to be that “guy” but it seems you are projecting the fact that your raid group is not up to snuff to get past the first 5 bosses consistently, so you are blaming the design.
Were you expecting Emerald Nightmare level of ease? Blizzard learned their lesson that no raid on Mythic Difficulty should be cleared in 17 hours.
I mean, welcome to how raids have worked for most of the game’s lifespan. Most of them get better as your group gears out and get muscle memory on mechanics, but especially on the higher levels a lot of them are intended to be skin of your teeth.
However, one of the problems is my raid group seems to be suffering an inordinate amount of burnout this tier compared to prior expansions. Players are simply getting bored, or burntout on progression … and quitting.
That didn’t happen prior expansions until after the final raid tier. It’s not a good sign. But then again… it could just be my unique to my raid group.
Yes I was.
Frankly, I wasn’t expecting early bosses in the first raid tier of the expansion to have comparable difficulty to harder raid bosses in the last tier of the last expansion.
Traditionally, there’s a progression with early raid tiers having easier encounters than later raid tiers for each expansion.
I’m a bit worried, because if this is the first tier of this expansion, I’m not sure my raid will be able to down any mythic bosses in the final raid tier.
… and the result will be we’ll blow through all of normal and heroic in a month or two, then hit a brick wall in progression at mythic and have nothing to do the final 8 months of the expansion.
I will grant you that burnout seems a bit high, my raid group has gone from 28 person rotation to 23 just since November and this isn’t including the natural shift as an expac opens with the cycle of initiates and IRL changing the roster. Outside of raids it seems the incentive to play is not very high in BfA. I feel for guilds that straddle the line of 20 - 23 man Mythic rosters that have to cross their fingers that open world content is enjoyable enough to keep guilds strong.
From there we will agree to disagree, outside of the mess that was Fetid pre tuning the option to tackle 3 different bosses all with unique characteristics was actually fun and provided different challenges to different segments of the raid.
Yes I mean the visuals are very boring, and the trash is an insult.
was emerald nightmare a joke too? yes
but why does the first raid have to be a bunch of patchwerks inside a boring square maze.
That’s what mythic is about : tough overlap requiring quick reactions.
Fetid pre-nerf (where the big egg always spawn in the middle) may have been a valid example, but there’s no RNG in zek’voz, vectis, zul or mythrax that make or break a pull. you get eye beam + roiling deceit during the AoE donut on zek’voz? that’s why your healers have external. it’s something you can plan and expect. the orb spawn in the AoE during the last phase? have someone with an immunity soak it… it is predictable.
Even on mythic g’huun the only truly RNG part is where the blood will spawn… but as you’ve said, tough mechanic are expected on the last boss of a tier.
Is this raid harder than emerald nightmare? yes… but EN was an anomaly. Zek’voz/zul/mythrax are definately much easier than sister/mistress/fallen avatar were in Tomb of sargeras