I see this a lot and don’t understand it. Very few casual guilds got through anything except Naxx. And Naxx was a joke. People hit a wall in Ulduar and ICC. Trial, maybe? I don’t know. But most of my servers were the same in Wrath as they were in BC: only the progression guilds were clearing the raids.
Well, originally it was introduced as Flex, back at the end of MoP, and was the only raid difficulty with scaling.
Of course, everyone has scaling now except Mythic (and I think they should add it for Mythic, but that’s another topic).
There ARE groups that only clear Normal and then stop. Some of them take a while to do it, too. As for how large a population we’re talking here… my hunch is “pretty small” but there’s no way to know for sure.
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It really won’t. Because we’re going back to a Legion model where you’ll use a lower ilvl piece from a lower difficulty simply because it gives you your set bonus over a higher ilvl piece from M+. You will likely use a hodge-podge of normal, heroic, and mythic raid loot to get your set piece bonuses and gem bonuses, with M+ only filling in the gaps. Trinkets + weapons will be beneficial early in the tier, but Mythic raid trinkets and weapons already influence M+ on the tail-end of a season, so this relationship is nothing new and isn’t a “pro” for M+ - as someone who M+s, I’d rather it take longer to get my weapon initially if it meant I could get a 233 weapon in the long-term.
Blizzard is upsetting what was something of a balance and tipping the scale majorly in favor of raiding. And that’s catering.
Yes it will. You’ll be full clearing heroic every week (because you want your stygian embers each week), which means three slots to target which means it will be much easier/faster to get your heroic ilvl “tier” pieces than comparable raid tiers with tier pieces in the past.
Normal is a nice stepping stone for new players to get into raiding. I don’t mind it. There are some really bad players playing this game, and normal raiding gives them a chance to progress content and see a version of the fights that is “real” (LFR is not real raiding and never will be).
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210 gear is bis? Ok.
30 minutes of dailies grinding for 60 dps upgrades. Oh no.
6 slots vs 10-14. Done in 30 minutes. Compared to visions?
Two weeks of conquest cap for most slots. 4 for weapon. Yeah, raiding is “irrelevant.”
Thankfully it all lasted less than 6 months. Good thing we have WoD 2.0 now.
/looks at his 226 M+ gear…
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3 raid options, 3 M+ options, 3 pvp options. Can pick 1.
The M+ pool is hundreds of items. 1 RNG piece a week is not making raiding irrelevant.
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And how many months does it take most Mythic raiding guilds to unlock those 3 boxes?
Meanwhile, unlocking 3 boxes for M+ has zero increase in difficulty compared to unlocking just one.
People keep making this MASSIVE mistake of thinking that every raider is full clearing Mythic Castle Nathria the first week. Go take a look at the actual wowprogress chart of who’s done what, and note the drop-off after each boss. Half the people who have killed Generals (which is in itself a pretty small group) are still working on Denathrius.
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People keep making this MASSIVE mistake thinking that the first few bosses are difficult. Or that a 5/126 chance of getting a bis M+ item somehow makes raiding irrelevant.
An average guild is easily capable of getting a 226,226,220 raid box.
Heroic is glorified normal. A guild still raiding heroic 5 months into a tier is not struggling to recruit because of M+. The first 1-4 bosses of mythic are puggable as soon as it opens.
They aren’t after 5 months of people gearing up with 226 M+ gear, no.
Even 5 months into the tier, only half the guilds that have killed M Shriekwing have killed Xymox.
The Blood Council numbers are at only one-third. (Which used to be the 2-box requirement.)
Guilds that are clearing that deep into M Nathria aren’t wasting a raid night on doing farm. They’re extending from Council until they kill Sire.
226 gear is BiS.
And every single class has their BiS trinkets from either M+ or PvP so…
You missed the point.
Which is that if the game was designed for raid logging, that content wouldn’t exist. If the game was designed around raid logging, M+ wouldn’t exist, PvP and PvE would have their gear segregated and none of the extra content that you have to do outside Raids, whether it be Torghast or the Maw dailies or Horrific Visions would exist either.
If you think any of that content would exist if the lead developer designed the game around raid logging, you don’t actually know what raid logging is.
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Brewa, you’re not getting this. In sanctum of domination, a “213” raid item can beat up a “226” M+ item because of the gems and set bonuses. You don’t need 3 Mythic boxes to get superior loot to M+.
Not in SoD.
I mean trinket tuning hasn’t even been done yet for SoD, so that’s a pretty spicy take.
Though reducing the cooldown of SPEC COOLDOWN by 7 minutes seems pretty OP.
While this is yet another example of Blizzard believing that stacked systems = good gameplay, how does this affect you exactly?
It’s difficult to place much faith in things that aren’t live, for the record I think overtuned raid trinkets aren’t exactly enjoyable from the raiding PoV either. Especially ones that just do flat damage and gradually begin to invalidate your ability to actually play your character. SL has been good so far about avoiding random proc damage, at least from a caster PoV.
Yes agree 100% OP, I think they shouldn’t be allowed to be used either outside of raid. The bonuses will be really damn strong and it’ll pracitcally force every player to have to try and do raiding regardless of if they want too.
That said, I would be all for these (and hell even the set bonuses) working outside of raid if you could get these gems from all forms of content and not just the raid. Another solution could be to also just give bonuses to each type of gear - Raid/Mythic+/PvP/Open world (and personally I would love this).
Alas, lets just hope Blizzard listens.
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While I think that each track should be valid for progression I struggle to empathize after valor was added while raiders got nothing.
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Is the raid gear guaranteed sockets, or have a high chance of dropping with one already? Or will you have to grind out an exalted reputation on top of obtaining the raid loot to socket later?
That’ll feel terrible, on top of the fact that it’s likely that heroic SoD gear w/ socketed shard will be stronger than any m+/vault gear, even outside of the raid.
Then, to top it all off, you’ll have to re-craft your legendaries if the slot you made it in in 9.0 just so happens to coincide with a necessary piece of raid loot from 9.1.
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From what I can tell, dominion sockets are baseline on specific gear slots from the raid. The placeholder items have “unknown socket” written on their text in the wowhead database, but someone on the PTR can check the dungeon journal and see if that’s since been updated.
Hopefully the massive soul ash quantities will offset this, but it’s definitely a concern.
It’ll help, but the 5 week grind on soul cinders will also still suck. Not to mention the massive gold sinks already associated with obtaining a rank 4 legendary, even with increased soul ash gains.
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God, I’m seriously thinking of going back to FF14 just so I can dance around town in a bikini and pass by all this nonsense lol.