I think there are two issues here:
I’m sure this week, or at least next week, will be much better for PuGs.
You visit the forums, therefore everyone else must as well?
There should have been a banner on the screen when we logged in last Tuesday with the dungeon updates, just like they do whenever we get a major content update.
People like us are the exception when it comes to video games. Most people don’t visit external resources for games they play, they pick up the game and make do with whatever the game communicates to them. If forums, wowhead, and dev interviews are the only place a given change is communicated, a minority of the player base will have any idea such a change is happening ahead of time.
So you’re right about this…
…but then lose the plot here. No matter how many times people repeat the sentiment that players can slowly learn mythic dungeon mechanics with one run per week or players should forego any reward to spam the M0 dungeon to learn the mechanics, that’s just not a realistic expectation of most humans. I have gotten KSH every season since Shadowlands S1, and even I find myself learning new things about bosses the 10th time I kill a boss in M+. It’s unrealistic to expect the average player to spend hours spamming M0 with no possibility for a reward to learn these mechanics, and it could take literal months for the average player to even begin to truly learn the dungeons on mythic difficulty when only seeing each once per week.
I don’t disagree with the assessment that players need to reorient themselves to the new difficulty curve that exists today with normal > heroic > M0 > M+. I’m sure many of the challenges players are facing are related to a false expectation.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate gripes with the environment going forward. There simply does not exist an environment that most players will feel is worth their time where they can learn mythic dungeon mechanics; in previous seasons there were 10 keys worth of levels that could be spammed as much as a player wanted where they could still earn rewards before the new entry point into M+ today.
I cannot fathom why Blizzard is insisting on sticking with M0 having a weekly lockout, but changing that alone would go a long way. Beyond that, I would have loved to see Blizzard not eliminate ALL keys from +2 to +11 as part of this change. It would have been great IMO if we had something like +2 being akin to an old +6, +3 being akin to an old +10, and then +4 being akin to the +12 (and then keep the scaling we have now from there).
I’ve tried to get my kids to play wow a few times (14, 12, 9) but none of them like it.
Probably for the best.
Blue post and patch notes are blizzards way of communicating things.
I don’t expect everyone to look at the forums but if people ignore the blue posts on the launcher that’s on them not blizzard.
There was an announcement. Not anyones problem but those who missed it.
There was literally an announcement on the launcher. This is flat out an excuse. If people don’t look it’s on them.
My older brother has his own kids, and those that are old enough to play WoW are instead playing Fortnite and Roblox.
I can’t blame them- WoW is a slow drip of dopamine/fun, often times asking of a huge task for a return, like with achievements and mount grinds.
The minute-to-minute gameplay in WoW is certainly less exciting and takes some getting used to, for an outsider.
And those other games can mimic a massively-multiplayer ecosystem of their own, with like-minded (and aged) players. Voice chat in FortNite or Roblox is kids talking to each other, among other things.
A kid aged 8-9 playing WoW is like one of us playing FortNite or Roblox. It just feels like a fish out of water lol.
Even though I started WoW at around 9 years old, myself lol. It was a different time. There’s more games to market towards specific audiences now.
Difficulty changes were needed for awhile, I had no idea just how bad they were needed until they actually happened.
The lines were so blurred between M0 - to around 11 or 12 in seasons prior, all you needed was 1 competent group member to carry the group and succeed.
Now that we’re back down to 0, with the difficulty to match - these bad players who did nothing but get carried all of last season are mad because their underperforming is being exposed now. You have no choice, you actually have to learn the boss/trash/your class or you just don’t cut it even in M0’s now.
If I queue up for an M0 and I have a tank that has no clue what to do and can’t pull anymore than 2 mobs at at a time - I can simply just leave now. Nobody’s key bricked, no harm done.
Carry culture legitimately made low - mid keys completely unbearable, this difficulty change is going to go a long ways towards combating that.
I am starting with my VDH. season 3 2.5k rating. running 18/19 pretty confortably in s3.
i have only done +2s and one or two +3s. taking things easy.
I an in 485 gear with a couple of really good s4 tank trinket drops.
but the struggle is real.
i mean +3 isn’t even timed and I have seen leavers before the first boss. in many of the boss fights, I am the last guy standing with maybe one dps still there too.
I think there are two significant gaps:
the jump from heroic to M0 to +2 is actually pretty big in terms of scaling. If you are sitting in 470-475 gear and trying +2s it is going to be work. doable, but work.
the jump from last season heroics to m2 from a mechanics perspective is night and day. If people were used to simply running heroics all expac and are now getting into +2, the difficulty rises substantially.
I see a lot of really bad positioning by people, too. this is either due to ignorance, laziness, or just lack of awareness.
A lot of this will work itself out on its own as people get the 493/496 gear and their tier sets over the next few weeks, and they will get experience in the dungeons, too, of course.
I want to get KSM and will. I am taking it easy but it might take me a couple of weeks. and as OP’s title indicated, they might be weird
But the question is, where do we expect those players to learn? I get your overall point that a lot of bad players had a free pass, and that’s certainly fair. But for the player who wants to get better, where would you have them learn? Heroic dungeons, while more difficult than before, can still be soloed by most mediocre geared tanks; and even in groups where the tank does allow the group to participate, there are mechanics completely missing.
There needs to be a place where mythic dungeon content can be repeated, with reward possibilities each time you complete the content so players feel it’s worth their time. That could be M0 if Blizzard would remove the weekly lockout. Or that could be making +2s somewhere between old +2s and +12s, but there needs to be something.
What are you even talking about? No one is saying anyone should be spamming 0’s for no loot to learn mechanics, nor do you need to. If you have done each M0 three or four times over the course of a month, and maybe like I dunno read the dungeon journal to see what the mechanics are, there is no reason you shouldn’t know them well enough to start doing +2’s once you have the gear. You are already doing the mechanics in 0’s if you’ve been successfully completing 0s. They just do a little more damage in a +2, but that’s what gearing up is for.
M0? You die to something you work out why and you try again, I don’t really get why learning can’t be done in an environment where the mistake has consequences. I ran an AV m0 on my 473 Evoker, we wiped 3 times to leymor while people got their bearings and then we killed it and moved on. Tank went from not understanding he needed to even hit the trees to getting 4~ each time and people got better at fanning out around the room every time. Had two wipes on umbreskul too while people understood to prioritise the shielded crystal.
As for lockouts I think they could drop them to daily but I’m not sure making them farmable would work, given M0s currently drop on average double the loot of an M+ key.
Where do raiders learn how to raid with weekly lockouts?
It’s the same answer for mythic the way it is. Is it completely out of the question that they pull up their dungeon guide and simply read about encounters?
You can literally carry keys as a vdh. The spec is so broken right now my guild DH tank tells us to not even use any cc unless he calls for it.
He solos 90% of it.
That is the problem, when people get carried they do not learn the dungeon and when they Queue for a new key the “problem” gets passed on to the next group.
it’s not difficult but there are some hard checks and mechanics matter a lot right now because mobs are tuned differently than they were. If you haven’t noticed, if there’s a bird (any bird from what i’ve seen) in a dungeon and you miss an interrupt, he’ll wreck your face… 1 interrupt.
It just a learning curve right now along with you very under geared people thinking they can do an M0 like last season when an M0 is equivalent to a +10.
Bird is the WORD !
They didn’t have to jump right into 12s before, they could still do M+ at the lower keys. An old +2-5 is a much better way to learn because you’d get all the mechanics, the timer, and you got more than one try a week.
You can’t be mad that people are jumping in too high when blizz not only took out most of the in-between steps, they changed the name of harder stuff to what all the old in-between stuff used to be called.
Let’s not pretend like these players are hardcore players looking to climb the ladder of mythic and be the best player they can.
These are players who don’t know their class, their abilities, the dungeon, the trash, the boss or ANYTHING. Trust me I do nothing but PuG, I’ve pugged every key range in every season in dragonflight so far.
What these players are are just simple casual players who just queue up to get a reward and move onto the next thing.
They can get their 489 gear in heroics, without having to burden other players with their refusal to learn anything.
If you want the best gear - then learn how to do keep up in content that rewards the best gear. No more freebies and carries.
Anybody who’s actually serious about getting better at the game will transition to M0’s just fine. OFC there will be a learning curve, but they’ll get it done. Remember, this isn’t timed content / key bricking if failed. They’re free to jump group to group until they get stuff learned.
In previous seasons the key ranges of M0 - M14ish, you demanded to have some insanely high ilvl to even get accepted to the group, and when you did get int he group, guarantee you had a group that had DPS doing sub 70K overall, a tank who doesn’t pull anymore than 2 mobs at a time because he has no idea how to tank. People who just refused to learn the content and their class that you now have to carry so they can get the same rewards as you despite the alarming skill discrepency.
true that , also imagine paying for four accounts at some point