The Mythic Raiding Scene

[@darthenx2585]

I raid for gear, and I would love to see the titan-forge system to disappear. Especially with tier pieces. They make me feel disappointed every time I get the same shit item with lower ilvls

[@tekamer6566]

Darthen X actually you don't have to get titan forged gear to clear harder difficulties . titan forged gear is just there to make the gearing process faster/easier if you are lucky that is

[@darthenx2585]

warcraft monk player I can understand that. But as I mentioned I am only really doing it for the sake of getting cool gear that make me feel or think that I am stronger. I have no intention or interest in raiding mythic. I stick to heroic and normal for the sake of spending time clearing things quickly.

[@snotling5]

Im a mix of progress and gear, while i dont "hate" the titanforge system i wish it didn't apply to tier. Anytime u put a masterloot system on that its get really annoying to deal with. We have it do that sidegrade cost nothing and if u already have a piece addon rolls out for all those who sidegraded so they have a chance of a upgrade :/

[@PileOfMeh]

Could not agree more. I was fine with Warforging. An extra 5 levels every now and then felt good. Like a nice surprise. Titanforging has made everything trivial. The last thing this game needed was more reliance on RNG.

[@MultiUnknowen]

I mean it doesnt feel like you accomplished something when you get a sick bloodthirsty instinct 925 from heroic EN does it? compared to let's say kill elisande on mythic and roll a 900 convergence of fates. i always thought that higher item level = harder content, not this expansion tho

[@fallchiron]

This is a great summary, and best of all you can draw the conclusions out of bar charts! Appreciated more than anything, because I have been getting wound up lately with our 7/10 progress but arriving at the wrong conclusions - it was somehow certain players fault, being sat for fights after weeks of progress because of my own off nights, a comp screwing us, carrying alts/trials/lowAPtraitors. The revelation - the lame duck tuning and progression rewards are salting the earth before our eyes, while here I am looking for a witch. Son of a gun.

[@fallchiron]

Not to mention the simpler, yet instawipe (more often effective wipes than actual because of tight requirements) nature of the fights. You really are just counting the seconds in a boss fight and hoping for it to be over soon, because if something gets botched you have to start over. I guess that's why they feel longer despite evidence to the contrary.

[@Granolie]

I like the way you worded your shit. Well said.

[@Garwulf74]

Low AP TRAITOR? Fuck you!! I dont pay a sub fee to be forced into a grind you asshat! Go back to Vanilla!!

[@TheDrewStroyer]

You are so off....Mark of the Wild was a 30 minute buff. Paladins are the ones that had 5 minute buffs. If you had actually raided in Vanilla you would have said something like this.... So you want to raid on your Druid in Vanilla? Good, we need another healer. Not Resto specced? Fuck off. Oh and watch your mana, because your Innervate will be assigned to a priest. Be ready to cast it on them when they call for it. While I agree that Vanilla was no golden age, (To me the golden age of WoW was TBC), it does hold a special place in the hearts of many old school high end raiders (like myself). Yeah it was grindy, but so is Legion. The entirety of Legion is a grind in fact. That's just how it is for MMOs...gotta keep you busy and paying them a monthly fee afterall ;)

[@stryher]

You are dumb if you think this is great summary. Main reason why speed kills arent faster is that differance between ilvl at 1st kill and speed kill is approx 1-2ilvl, and in history it was 10 ilvls. Now you get higher ilvl gear in mythic+ dungeons over ilvl of mythic raids. Thats 90% of the reason why speed farming isnt faster as it used to be. #preachgaming always forgetting most important parts. nothing new there

[@Turskaify]

Oh look, the Warforged/Titanforged system is an issue after all. Who would've thought

[@claudiobornes9091]

i think its the fact that most bosses are impossible to cheese? Like even if you cheese Skorp, the only thing that's going to increase is your DPS, but the actually dmg to the boss will probably be lower because you are focusing your major stuff on the small adds. Also i think the fact that even on Heroic, a small mistake can wipe you, people are just afraid of focusing the boss.

[@e_munu]

This video is a really great critical analysis of game mechanics. You should make more videos like this. It is really something that contributes to the health of the game.

[@DrMAngelo]

*pushes up hipster glasses* I watched this video BEFORE the reupload

[@ZeppelinCDB]

Every person should only have to do the 54 grind once, and it should fully level all weapons they currently own. This change alone would go a long way to fix the burnout issue.

[@Kulikov7897]

Hey Preach, long time watcher (3+ years now). I am currently a top 50 U.S. raider, even though we are only on a 3 night a week raid schedule. I have agreed with 99% of everything you have said in the past, especially the legendary speculation a year ago from you (agreed with you then...called it right?). However with this video.... You have never, EVER, been more right. I am so sick of week, after week, after week, of simply not improving my numbers, gear, etc. We split ran heroic week 1, and week 2 we were well into mythic 4/10. Since then....the only way to really progress my toon is to pray for titanforged stuff that is super rare, or spam mythic + dungeons for again....the chance on titanforged. I haven't gotten a piece from mythic NH in weeks, though we have cleared many bosses and farmed them as well. You can't have titanforged gear be in the game, say it's ultra rare and that it is just there as a "Oh wow! That's neat!" instance....yet base mythic raiding on all mythic raiders having titanforged to the extreme gear from raids and especially mythic+. Very tiring indeed...

[@LinkenLorko]

This is the first expansion I raid Mythic, or the equivalent of Mythic and I've been playing since Wrath. I noticed that in our tries on Chrono, we killed it on about 48 pulls, we were first struggling with the splitting. what's a good set up. and then we had to adapt to the time bombs. finally after that we did the fight but hit the enrage at 6 minutes so after constantly moving things around and assigning our rolls we killed it jn about 4 minutes. That made me feel a sense of progression. That's why I love raiding. Noticing the difference in everyone's play as we adapt. I don't care for the gear. then Trilliax died in 8 pulls.

[@mrdelioncourt8226]

Our guild has members that parse decently high as well as having a high quality of mechanical skill. We've cleared Heroic but will never step foot in Mythic. We dont have 20 raiders. Hell some nights we just scrape by with 12. We've gone through so many members that have quit its crazy, plus its almost impossible to recruit ranged or healers. I was a 99% DH but I rerolled to Druid in order to fill the gaps that we have sometimes. Why have a difficulty gated by players when you have no fucking players.

[@finnersz]

Mr De Lioncourt well you face a choice. progress yourself and join a mythic guild or enjoy the community you're in but lose the challenge. Wasn't an easy choice for me when I made the move.

[@Pyryp2]

Parsing high on HC has little meaning though.

[@mrdelioncourt8226]

Pyryp2 Don't downplay HC just because it isn't the hardest difficulty. If you don't put in the time to learn the building blocks of an encounter you have no business raiding. Also as mentioned we don't even get the chance to see if we suck at mythic encounters purely because there's a lack of Raiders these days. especially ranged.

[@silverspear21]

I was thinking about this the other day, the encounters were probably not tuned for a raid less than 20. I am guessing the devs design a boss around the mythic difficulty and then proceed to tune it down for the lesser difficulties by either scaling down the dmg/hp etc or removing mechanics. Scaling down the dmg/hp is easy but if you do that for a mythic boss you might have some bosses that are ridiculously easy or hard to clear and because of that it would require even more time and tuning. Remember what happened in cata with the 10 man heroic raiding? Some bosses were harder on 10man and they almost felt like the 25man raids.

[@mrdelioncourt8226]

silverspear21 yeah I've read that somewhere else as well. I don't understand why you would stay with that model though with a declining player base. I think it was Cata when subs started properly dropping off. the most frustrating part is when they add extra story stuff into mythic like fighting Illidan p3 Guldan.

[@rek8193]

This might be one of the most important videos you've ever made m8. It really highlights the mood in the mythic raid scene right now.

[@vysian]

As a player who is in a guild that raids mostly heroic, but with dipping of toes into mythic at a slower pace but still whilst current(leaning a bit on the natural gear progression of heroic and early mythic farming to help us over some of the trickier mythic bosses), I can tell you that this same experience translates down the difficulties to the lower skill levels. I went back into our logs and despite the increase in gear, our kill times on each boss in heroic have only decreased by a very tiny margin, just as your statistics show here for mythic. So this trend of people feeling a lack of progression seems to, in my experience at least, extends to heroic raiding guilds too and not just to mythic ones. Being healing lead and thus one of the raid officers I had noticed members of my guild showing signs of fatigue and frustration far earlier in a raid tier than you would normally expect, it hadn't occured to me as to why it was happening but I was feeling it myself. Now that you have highlighted it I realise that this is indeed a significant cause in that feeling we are suffering.

[@SilverPaladin25]

Basically everything Preach said. The whole War/Titanforged was a tradeoff between instant gratification and long-term satisfaction with the game. I also truly believe blizzard shouldn't have introduced a 4th difficulty to raiding; these two aspects killed raiding for me and my guild. Yes, we were a casual guild but we managed to take down Normal Garrosh back in MoP and some Heroic bosses as well; when WoD hit everyone just defaulted to Normal difficulty when we should've sticked to Heroic after the whole "Flex=Normal, Normal=Heroic and Heroic=Mythic" shenanigans blizzard dropped. I then noticed a much wider gap between hardcore and casual raiders along with an increase in the dreaded "you need a higher item level than the actual raid drops, for you to get an invite" due to the whole war/titanforged gear and being able to get heroic/mythic gear outside of raids with garrison and timewalking quests. I only completely raided Dragon Soul (with PuGs) and Siege of Orgrimmar (with guild), didn't manage to complete Blackrock Foundry, and quit WoD during Hellfire Citadel; I came back in Legion but I saw no real reason to raid and didn't want to deal with the bs that is killing a harder boss to get shittier loot and quit again. My point is, Cata and MoP never actually let you get higher item level gear than what you could get in a raid, Justice/Valor point gear was gear you got outside of raids yes, but it was always lower or the same item level as the current Normal mode raid and item level gap while not actually wider (15-17 item level difference between difficulties) there was little to no way for a Normal drop to be close to or better than a heroic one.

[@michaelcole1099]

Cracking point made re titanforged. This also applies to LOWER raiding also, the titanforged system means you can obtain gear beyond your skill level too, not just that Mythic raiders are struggling with how to "progress". Point in case, I can't reliably get gear from raiding that my guild can defeat now, at a normal level, but Spellblade and Tichondrius are glass ceilings for casual raids yet we can get gear from "other sources" more easily, even to the point of just playing the game a lot and the RNG of titanfoged/mythic chests/world quests/random drop. Lots of casual guilds are also breaking apart, thinking they can get further. You might not see mythic and casual/social raids as connected due to difficulty level, but it's interesting that everything you said applied to lower raid difficulty and casual raiding. It's a well made point about progression curve rapidly dropping off to effort level.

[@antico1986]

well basically NH is build in a way that makes going for logs/padding/cheesing boss mechanics by outgearing content impossible, thus every single farm kill looks like as if it was progression, I can imagine Naguura being excited about that,, but yea nobody wants to progress skorpyron for the 10th fucking time, and that becomes even a bigger issue the further you get into the instance, plus the fact that Mr Hazzikostas himself admitted of tuning the later bosses for 54 traits, thus creating a pretty steep difficulty curve, with ridiculous boss HP pools, damage output and fight lengths

[@NiekVL]

You ever gonna get that cough checked out? Feel like you've had it for nearly a year.

[@Aybo1000]

Primici smokers cough

[@RRJStudioo]

Aybo1000 yup irritable tickle at the back of the throat randomly

[@Mythger]

preach has sarcoidosis

[@Giondi]

Geats Mirnet Nah, mate, it's lupus.

[@youtubedeletedmynamewhybother]

Might be a meth smoker you never know

[@rickymak391]

Great research here. Really eye opening with the kill time charts. Certainly provides a very tangible reason raiders are getting burned out. To be a little more concise you could say 2 major motivations for raiding at any level is gear and performance; which nighthold (mythic) is not providing. Both factors of course also lead to satisfaction of achieving the boss kills themself, so without them that act becomes even more neutered. Once guilds get to the farm phase, missing those 2 elements certainly leads to a lot of wondering, "what am i doing here ugh" Thanks Preach!

[@FigmentofyourImagina]

Preach it man. I hope Dev's really take this message to heart as someone who raids slightly below very high end (currently 4/10M & working on Spellblade), it's been apparent since the first week that besides tier there was no reason for me to be doing the content anyways. Raid gear used to be something unique or especially powerful, but in this design it's simply something that fills a slot which you could've obtained with much less headache playing Diabocraft dungeons.

[@westcliff23]

Thanks for that preach. Hope this gains traction. There is also barely any gear progression for ~ rank 2k+ guilds. The mythic bosses were tuned around ilvl 900 gear. The top guilds went in there with that and ended their mythic progression with around ilvl 905. My guild is still on average at around 902 and we are in the 9th week of NH progression. If you compare it to EM. top guild went in there with around 865 and ended it around 875. My guild went in there with 872 and ended it with 884. Now if you look at the gear Mythic NH drops, ilvl 900-ilvl 905. we are getting items that are barely upgrades for the content we are doing..

[@Interrobang212]

I raided from the end of Dragon Soul through Hellfire Citadel. At first normal (current heroic) and during BRF-HFC Mythic. I played 3-4 characters, mostly dps, and felt pressure to play them all at my peak and keep them geared. I barely missed a single week of raiding - yes, even the SoO and HFC content drought nightmares. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Micro-analyzing guides, patch notes, parse logs, strats, videos. Practicing my class, optimizing gear. Mastering boss mechanics. I lost my ability to devote consistent time to Heroic/Mythic raiding, and at first I was sad, but as i stopped logging into WoW altogether, I felt a sense of freedom. I no longer had to devote 3 or 4 nights of my week to raids. I no longer had to dump hours into this game while my other favorite titles gathered metaphorical dust in my Steam library. I was able to join a D&D campaign, something I wanted to do for YEARS. I value the experience of raiding, but at this point, I feel like it's "been there, done that." I got everything I could out of progression raiding, short of the world/server first race. It's time to move on for me.

[@Xenoun]

I miss raids back in BC where there was one difficulty per raid and the difficulty scale was set by progressing into the next raid, not repeating the same one with a different setting. Sure it may have been harder at the start, but the sense of progression was so great when you finally get the last boss down, farm the raid for a bit and then move into the next raid. I know that doesn't work for the "everyone can see the story" mindset that exists now but I'd love to see it tuned to just LFR and normal raid. LFR is dumbed down, like it is currently or a bit tougher (maybe current normal?) and then the "new normal" is either current mythic difficulty or scaled down slightly to be between mythic and heroic. Scale the bosses through the raid to increase in difficulty as before and you get meaningful progression for guilds going through the raid and then more progression when you hit the next raid.

[@docskillzgaming]

Thanks for posting yet another informative video, Preach. Good to see such quality content being pushed out to KZbin.

[@callumsmith3048]

I miss the 123

[@seeker11]

Summ plox?

[@callumsmith3048]

inv mate

[@spacegarnaal]

LFM, ICC 25m. Come dala for inspect and whisper GS

[@rampage3337]

5,1k gs but i have 25hc Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand !!! inv

[@RockMiach]

Very well done video. Really appreciate the effort put into research to support the arguments.

[@TheBluewaffIe]

A big part of what you are saying comes back to the AP. We started pushing into mythic first week with a guild average of 48 traits (downed the first three that week). With everyone at 54 traits now we have significantly more damage and health to deal with mechanics, so the first few we now annihilate. When we started getting first kills of the later bosses we were mostly 54, which means a MAJOR form of "gearing" progression has simply been finished. Krosus kills with ~1.5% more damage basically equates to the vantus runes we had popped for our first kill (which you didn't acknowledge and may be a factor in shortening first kill fight lengths), thus a similar kill time. In short, AP is also a huge factor when discussing fight length in legion.

[@trevorbaugh1335]

My guild actually just had a falling out (not in mythic yet) in heroic NH. We've been tightly knit and kicking ass through EN and TOV but people seriously just had enough after not progressing on heroic for weeks and the core team fell apart.

[@anonairman]

It's pretty simple: AP grinding, having characters that can't perform (or are benched) because of trash legendary luck, and seeing what's coming in 7.2 (with more grinding, etc. coming).

[@anonairman]

Oh yeah.... and not being able to blow off steam playing alts because you're neglecting the things above by not staying on your main.

[@TubbleStarcraft]

If titanforging from a lower difficulty capped to the following (e.g. LFR can only titanforge to normal ilevel) I think a lot would be different. Also previously raids were exclusively the one place to get the best items. Now there's BOTH mythic+ and titanforging from lower difficulties. If you included ilevel increase in previous raids I wouldnt be surprised if they would increase dramatically where as in NH you'd see it be much more static, at least from personal experience. The whole argument about having to deal with mechanics and NH being tightly tuned is because you hardly get any power increase from week to week. If NH mythic had a flat 20 ilevel increase I'll assure you the killtimes will go down and you might be able to drop a healer here and there.

[@koujimoreno]

Dat thumbnail... Rip Bill Paxton, may the game never be over for you, man.

[@xZyrux]

Blizzard should give Mythic-bosses special trinkets and relics, maybe interesting offpiece sets like the ArcW/ CoS sets.

[@JesseB3r]

If titanforge and gems didnt exist, and only 5 ilvl warforged, then mythic gear would be much more interesting, and make a much larger difference. Mythic is tuned around titanforged and gemmed gear, which makes it extremely hard to actually "outgear"

[@leopoldbernstein3787]

Im a Mythic Raider myself, I can only agree. Eventhough we've cleared the bosses, they somewhat are a new challange every week. We get less and less wipes on certain bosses like Star Augur and Elisande every week, however we are still wiping every single week and that wont change in the near future either, because people simply arent as focused on rekills as they are during progress. The bosses are very simple, which makes it very frustrating to have a "mini progression" every week again.

[@PerryCS2]

You always have decent insight into the game... that's why I keep watching your videos :)

[@spyral71]

Here's an interesting point . The kills early on in many of the old raids, we've all seen the videos, 3 or 4 guys alive, the rest of the raid yelling and screaming. Bosses could be killed that way. You could lose a random DPS early (On most fights) and not feel the IMMEDIATE need to use a BRez on them. Those moments of accomplishment made the initial kill worth it. Between getting gear, and mechanics not literally being instant wipe, you actually had the opportunity to make a mistake and still kill a boss. There were bosses that could punish the raid for individual mistakes, but even those seemed recoverable in many cases(Teron Gorefiend for example). And you can't say those bosses/fights weren't hard. Look at things like Sunwell Plateau, difficulty was extreme, but when we killed Twins for the first time every melee was dead, and ranged was about to eat it.

[@dirtymike7290]

crazy how relevant this video was. Preach dropping mad wisdom

[@anthonyglennmollicasr.425]

That is how it felt in the original WoW, the raid always got quicker each time you completed one and started a new one.

[@RosaBrandDesigns]

It's rather heartbreaking to see this, but it makes sense. My guild is a semi-hardcore raiding guild and we're struggling on stuff we should have on farm by now. It's so frustrating. And frankly, it's getting old.

[@alexhooper6625]

Everything you mentioned in this little discussion here Preach, can actually be seen in normal and heroic too. Our guild blew threw the Nightmare on normal in a week. It took us two raid nights to get Cenarius, and we one shot Xavius. We moved on to heroic, and because of a lack of dedicated players, who didn't want to do mythic+ each week for better gear, we couldn't get past Ursoc. ToV came out, and we again got through normal. Nighthold, we've gotten through normal. For some reason though we see a serious lack in overall damage increase from the gear we're getting. I'm sure we can easily do the first 3 heroic in Nighthold, but people just don't want to because of this issue. We don't feel like we're getting stronger at all with more gear.

[@carlhillman7724]

you couldn't have said this any better, I hope Blizzard sees this.

[@Thebigbull994]

Hey Preach Gaming. So many memories are brought back when i watch your TBC raid footage with myself in it. I am Kammel the holy priest We raided together till mid Black Temple :D

[@easye137]

This is exactly what ive been saying for a month. Titanforge killed the need to raid for gear. Seeing how fast you can kill farm bosses once your team has geared up is one of the most as addicting things about raiding. I don't want to feel like every week is a progression week anymore, where one person screwing up can jeopardize the raid on almost any fight

[@DirtCheapFU]

That Solarian fight. Thought you were showing us an emulated game for a sec lol

[@host.]

I noticed this, especially on Anomaly. every time it's a fucking challenge, even though we killed it like 4 or 5 times already. kinda frustrating.

[@smellyfish36]

A good thing about how the game used to be is you when you hit max level you would have to raid through the older raids to gear up for the current content, that gave the game so much more variety.

[@danieljacob7145]

Great point to make, felt the same way but couldn't quite point out as to why. Thanks Preach!

[@themetalone7739]

I'd really like to see them do 2 things... 1, Bring back the badges of valor system (the WotLK exchange badges for gear version, not the WoD exchange badges for a +5 ilvl upgrade version). Doing this would help keep raids invested in content they've already cleared, and give you a greater sense of progression. 2, Shit can the war/titan forging system. It simply doesn't do what it was meant to do, which is to fill the hole that was left vacant by the removal of the badge system. If you've got a group that has pretty much everything they want out of heroic NH, virtually no one is going to be interested in continuing heroic just for the slim chance at a war/titan forged piece.

[@eXileLies]

I raid 2 days a week with 6/10 mythic - and i'm seriously considering to become a casual heroic raider & play the 5 man content with friends rather than raiding aside from facerolling over Heroic bosses for Titanforged loot. So yeah, mythic raiding is boring & unrewareding, especially as a tank.

[@joeldoxtator9804]

I don't see how blizzard doesn't see this. The RNG gear system is killing BOTH PVP and Raiding. The only people that are happy with this expansion is people who hop on for one hour a day and do a mythic dungeon, world quests and fiddle with their order hall. You are actually better off just doing world quests and dungeons then grinding up an alt than ever raiding because the reward is just not there for the time investment.

[@strongside4565]

Blizzard is so afraid of another scenario where guilds could skip entire phases or nullify abilities with cooldowns that they made the bosses punishing to the point where you have to play near perfectly every time to beat them and gear is a near non-factor. If you walked into the dev floor right now and whispered "Patch 5.4 Power Word: Barrier" you'd be tackled and dragged out the front door.

[@marxman6896]

TLDR: Legion's shitty loot system is fucking up mythic raiding. Again.

[@frankie5821]

This made so much sense with how I've been feeling with raiding lately.

[@Terminus_4]

Haste breakpoints on my Spriest, that is what I miss most. use to be so cool to hit those progression points in my character. Something as simple as that, made me feel so much more powerful then I was just that little bit ago. Shame thats gone.

[@sterlings7098]

Look at me I'm going around correcting posts without taking a second look to see what he's arguing for. Am I special yet?

[@Bluebozzy]

As someone who is still playing a class with breakpoints, fuck them. It makes picking upgrades so much more annoying as it juggles everything around. It was like the old hit cap, really fucking stupid that you couldn't use an obviously better item because a different piece of shitty gear is preventing you from hitting the threshold.

[@Zoljiini]

But then, shadow still has haste breakpoints and softcap?

[@Terminus_4]

Aye, but the way stats are balanced is so negated by the fact your primary stat has such a higher weight then any secondary you could possibly put on at this point. Ask yourself how boring of a stat is intellect, I mean honestly haste is not even that interesting. But at least you got to see yourself take a marginal step in power for achieving something. At the moment most of my gear does not mean squat to me, Basically comes down to. What Legendary's I have on, What Trinkets I use. That is it.

[@divadoh1]

I think you need to reevalauate your shadow priest. Most of the time haste and mastery have greater weights than intellect depending on where you're sitting at. As for spriest legendarys, the bracers which are considered BIS are a 5-6% dps boost max. Spriests are in a great spot right now. Not too legendary dependent at all. As for trinkets, Stat sticks are still very good compared to other classes.

[@hinney827]

Definitely the big issue with progression feeling slow is the Warforge/Titanforge system. When they introduced it in WoD, if you got really lucky, you'd get a bonus of fifteen item levels (and maybe a socket). Now, you can go into normal Nighthold and, if you get super lucky, can possibly get a bonus of SIXTY FIVE extra levels on an item. You could get a 925 piece from normal NH, then that piece *never* gets replaced (if it's your preferred stat spread) for the rest of the tier. That literally means no more progression for that item slot. They need to scale back the height to which items can forge up, and balance the higher difficulties around those lower item levels.

[@MrMrTravman]

I'm wearing the same gloves I got first week of Mythic Emerald Nightmare.... 895 with a socket. Haste Mastery BIS, I'm 903 ilvl, and honestly, I'll never replace those. Maybe in Tomb of sargeras. Its fucking stupid really.

[@KaizenMethod]

It took you 16min to get there... but man you make a great point. An extremely well explained and detailed point.

[@Farbenfinsternis91]

Been talking about your video in our guild - will say what I said back then: While WF and TF feels great to get, they make balancing incredibly difficult since you can't balance around people getting lucky as that would be a kick in the nuts for players who haven't gotten lucky but you also can't balance around people not getting them since you'll outgear the difficulty you're progressing on, leading to gear being relatively meaningless and no real difference between first time killing and farm runs in terms of necessary time. And the worst thing is that Blizzard themselves created that situation by letting items TF 75+ levels. You can't balance around that and the good feeling of getting one is offset by all the problem it creates. Together with legendaries it feels like Blizzard shot themself in the foot but instead of removing the bullet, they're just putting a bandaid over it. Really hoping they'll get rid of TF with 7.2 or with the next expansion the latest.

[@Zandohaha]

Yeah your point about gear upgrades is valid. I'd say it became somewhat of a problem in previous expansions already. Everybody ran the lower difficulties and got their BiS items. Upon killing the boss on a higher difficulty you were just looking for higher ilvl versions of the same item. That was already far less exciting than getting that super item with a really cool effect that you'd never used before when you downed a new boss. It used to be really just restricted to select stuff like trinkets though. Now it's everything because of warforged/titanforged and having what should be your BiS item drop from your first mythic kill only to look and see that it's not an upgrade is quite deflating. I also feel that it screws badly with tuning. It's meant they've had to tune the dungeon for a higher ilvl because of the fact that everybody has warforged, titanforged and high ilvl mythic+ gear. This screwed with raid progression badly. If you are killing the first few bosses and nobody is getting upgrades, where does your gear progression come from? It doesn't happen naturally where your raid slowly increases in power and the bosses eventually become doable, it just leaves it down to purely RNG where you hope people get lucky with high rolled gear, and looking at Simcraft, 15 ilvls gives a huge DPS increase. So rather than gradually powering up, people are brick-walling because they aren't getting meaningful upgrades unless they get lucky, because the dungeon is tuned for a higher ilvl than what is actually dropping without warforging/titanforging. It's a poor system overall. Also, yeah. World first guilds are so good that mechanics are less of an issue for them than everyone else. Their challenge has always been doing it so perfectly whilst undergeared that they kill it before everybody else. For everybody else they had to wait for more gear to steadily progress. The gear system has made a mess of that sort of progression.

[@nateo1819]

I really loved HFC... where we struggled for 1-2 weeks/4 raid nights per boss on HFC assault/Reaver/Kromrock etc but after 2-4 weeks of clearing we started one shotting all of them...., if was super run to kill reaver or krom a whole phaze quicker. or drop a healer for DPS etc

[@Jackpkmn]

I'm just in heroic right now and it's VERY discouraging. Watching the top end guilds crumble and die is scary and discouraging as hell. It makes me FEAR getting through heroic and trying out mythic rather than excited to get there. I'm driven by personal performance improvement. And as such gear is just a means to that end. Exactly the kind of thing that preach says you won't be able to squeeze out of mythic nighthold...

[@Bondrin]

I learned a lot about this video, good work!

[@montious1]

Some good, eye-opening points made Preach. I'd like to think that it's a combination of things, including these. I have to say I never have been particularly motivated by gear in itself, but now you mention it, I think not having a "Goal" piece of gear to attain from bosses does impact motivation somewhat. I think the warforging system worked fine in HFC with it's standardised +6 ilvl to an item. In no way, should there be reward to mindlessly farming trivial content and praying to RNGsus for gear that overshadows gear from mythic raiding.

[@karlzone2]

I don't think the difficulty is the problem. Gear rewards definitely are, though. From the second I cleared heroic Nighthold, I've had enough gear to get orange parses pretty much anywhere. Now, that's fun for me, but that does mean that there is very little character power progression left. The bosses that we, as do other guilds, might have killed in previous tiers with the help of gear, we now face at their original strength, and we don't stand a chance.

[@ynatanel101]

Wow, you just put into words exactly how I feel about the Nighhold I stopped raiding mythic just join the guild heroic run and lvling all my alts and gearing them atm

[@short0811]

Mike! Thanks for re-uploading!

[@TheDarkFrog86]

good evening preach i dont say much or ever really post on ur vids but this one hits home for me i myself was a mythic raider in a top 150 us guild back in WOD and i now dont even log in anymore or feel like raiding has anything that makes it worth it to me anymore because of everything ur saying in this vid my guild is still raiding and going strong but for myself i dont feel the need to raid mythics anymore do to the gearing progress anymore so ty for this vid and setting the info right that ppl r getting wrong as to y mythic raiders and raiding guilds r calling it quits now and keep up the good work mate

[@Lighthammer18]

Decreasing time for boss kills is just about the only reason to raid after you've cleared everything. I remember the joy of killing Ragnaros before he submerged, or Onyxia before she flew all the way to her corner and started firebombing the raid.

[@GabrielSilva-dg6tf]

🎼"The Mythic scene has got me down, Cause i don't want to be a clown." 🎵

[@garyjager1]

16 Minute fight? Screw that... I had one of those back in WotLK Naxx when we fought the safety dance boss. Tank and myself were the two to survive, and it took 15 minutes. Boss fights can be epic without being long.

[@serenitynowwww]

I feel like you're on the money here Preach. There is no incentive to keep bashing your head against the brick wall when there is no tangible increase in power and/or rewards. 15 mins + fights can also go die in an aids fire, I don't know anyone who enjoys them.

[@truetype80]

even the most perfect boss run has someone fucking up. and that's ok. there should be room for error

[@wyrmtung8700]

I suppose this video could be the first video for a potential new viewer so i understand you want it to be spot on. The small mess up and the bants with an appearance of ghostie in the comments was well good. The void claims more victims.

[@maxpheby7287]

The concept that mythic raiders are better than every-one else come from the mythic raiders themselves you only need to read the endless L2P posts on MMOchamp to know that.What they dont highlight is that every mythic boss they have killed they did 100s of times more often then normal raiders. Really the only difference (inside the raid)between a world first mythic raider and a causal raider is the commitment to endure 100rds of wipes every boss.

[@Aegishand]

One of your best more heartfelt videos bravo.

[@mattmccune2778]

Totally agree. I hate wiping due to someone durping for 3 seconds 8 minutes into a fight. It gets old real fast and your raid ends up angry at each other.

[@GollySwoggles]

I think this is totally accurate. I felt the same way and because of it, stopped raiding and playing WoW all together, I never got that sense of progression. Hopefully, Blizz will do something about it with ToS

[@SUNIKIGAMING]

The only way to tackle the way people have memorized every possible mechanic is to put in some randomness to it. Remember the elemental dropping in Karazhan?... (Random location) People memorize shit, make things a little less memorable and just add some extreme randomness.

[@Boxkar24]

I absolutely agree here preach! So weird this expac not being fully mythic geared and yet a lot of stuff in mythic not being an upgrade. I think the war/titanforged system should definitlyl be slimmed down. Let's say warforged +5, titan 10. that way when you move up a difficulty the rewards mean something

[@Woosle]

The final (lengthy) point Preach made about not feeling stronger is actually affecting my guild really hard. We're having a smaller kill time, but not really enough to even feel proud of or noticeable. There was satisfaction for the transition from between two-phasing il'gyanoth and one-phasing him I've never really felt that satisfaction or pride like that in NH. I can see my numbers getting bigger, but that only really means the world content that I already shit on just dies a bit faster. Sigh

[@degunshow]

The people at FatBoss made a point that it takes a very long time to gear alts for split runs (with legendarily and all that) so that makes top/high end guilds burn out even faster.

[@bloodmorel]

A well-reasoned position. I know it's not the same, but I have a similar view of the Legion levelling experience. Because the content levels as you do, there's never a point where you can bypass low level mobs. (But yes, things do get easier at 110, when you get gear that escalates your power levels).

[@Xarick]

Since gear seems to have become more of a none issue with world quests and mythic plus, mythic raids are just looking more like challenge modes in raid form, independent of gear levels and just a set encounter, how long until mythic tier simply becomes cosmetic like the trail of valour rewards.

[@ThMrksman]

When I think about it, compared to vanilla wow bosses a lot of those first kill times are actually quite long. EDIT: and you're definitely right about the impact that sense of progression has. The guild I'm in has in the last month gone from having to do a certain raid over two nights of the week, to clearing the whole thing in under a couple of hours. That improvement has felt so satisfying.

[@Britt_350]

You hit the nail on the head. Character progression is no longer something you can work on yourself. Its all based on luck. Gotta get good RNG procs on abilities, legendaries, gear, fucking everything. You definitely made me reconsider why I'm a 'mythic' raider. Why am I wasting my time when I could just spend 3-4 hours a week farming heroic/normal NH (and EN and TOV... if that gear procs 925, omg... my best relics are in old content, and I better pray they proc high). Do quick speed runs of all of it, at my time, when I want.. vs spending 9 hours a week wiping 100+ times to each new boss... fuck that.

[@shaark393]

Tfw you've cleared N&H nighthold since day 1 and still dont even have your 4 set.

[@Fingolfin3423]

Good commentary, Preach. Couple of things: - I agree that Nighthold is very tightly tuned relative to other raids. - I agree that there is no progression within the mythic farm bosses (your time data is great). - I disagree that the first three bosses are "ludacrisly easy" as you say. There are tons of guilds stuck at 1/10 and 2/10. - I disagree that mythic Emerald Nightmare was easy. Easy relative to other raids? Yes, some. But not easy. I could keep going but I won't. Overall good video and I agree with most.

[@jakel2217]

Max titanforge should be lower than what any mythic boss drops.

[@hopemyers799]

Love the metrics! Thanks for the work put into them~

[@bansheeownz]

Very insightful video. Well, you definitely feel progressively more powerful in Mythic+ though. Not to mention, cheesing 4 DPS is a thing. IMO, just go for your first Mythic kill, then farm Heroic, swapping in alts as needed. If you can clear Heroic and still have time for Mythic, sure why not. Mythic just isn't worth it unless you can clear it relatively stress free. Keeping a consistent drop rate of medium high gear per week seems like the best way to progress. Not to mention, it gives people time and a platform to gear up alts, if they are so inclined.

[@shinozukaeu3197]

I see a struggle alone in keeping 20 ppl for a Mythic raid team.....that is our biggest problem atm. But I do very much so agree with all points you made.

[@stalkholm5227]

"Sorry, I have a little cough right now." You've had that little cough for the past six months, talk to your doctor. =/

[@LilianOrchard]

17:17 Damn, there's someone who needs to have a cup of tea and chill for a bit. On topic, mechanics that just crunch your health bar are never fun. In any game.

[@Hellbent1691]

when they retuned the # of points/% for stats, they shit on gear. From ilvl 890 to i905 my stats have barely changed, the only stat that is noticeable is Stam. I believe this is to avoid another # crunch before the next xpac.

[@Voojitsu]

After clearing NH hc couple of times I felt I began to lose interest in raiding for the first time since I first killed mythic Archimonde. I was ok with warforged gear, but titanforged? Now only like 3-4 items in mythic are an upgrade for me because of the heroic titanforged gear. Oh right, I forgot about AP grind... I can only hope that when I come back to WoW in 7.2 I will enjoy playing again. If not, well... spring is coming, perfect time to leave the house and chillout outside.

[@demoneyesrakka]

Another on-point video. Great work!

[@LittleBastard696]

We are a heroic guild, and it still takes us the same amount of wipes and time to clear it since we first cleared it. We only raid 2 days a week and since we need all that wf and tf gear we can't even try progressing on mythic. Such a shame, and we were climbing the rankings so nicely since the beginning of Legion.

[@benedictifye]

it doesn't matter how hard it is, what matters is that it gets easier over time with experience and rewards

[@CaptPonyholder]

For me it is the grinding of artifact power. It is painful when you don't have a ton of time to play outside of raid nights.

[@derbigpr500]

I said this was gonna happen about 7 years ago when blizz started adding different difficulty levels to WOW raids. It's just bound to happen because raids don't have the character and soul that they used to, and the biggest reason for that is the fact that we have raids that are pretty much the same, but with different difficulty levels. Who cares about mystic level if you can clear it and get a very similar experience at a much lower difficulty level.

[@Benny-tb3ci]

So I joined my guild's second mythic group late into ToS and we were progressing onto Sisters. Now I see how funny it was that we tried to kill the boss with 5 markers instead of 6 with the excuse that other guilds killed it with way less traits, gear and the crucible bonuses. On the other hand, a friend rolled a Tauren Paladin for that 1% extra stamina. I argued that nowadays raid mechanics don't have to do with your stats as much, rather than with your "mechanics" (a term that gets thrown around in MOBAs, meaning how good a player is at executing certain actions to perfection). At the time I thought it was fairly interesting, especially for the hardcore mode of the raids. Now Antorus is out, I'm in a more casual guild that's progressing into Heroic. I must admit it's not fun having to waste 4 hours a week to clear 9 or 10 bosses with the amount of time or effort not going down at all. I enjoy raiding and I want to play casually because of my obligations. The way raids are currently, not only is it time-consuming, but it also doesn't allow for much fun or relaxation. I really appreciate your content Mike, hopefully Blizzard will listen to you for the next expansion's raid designs.

[@IshayuG]

M+, warforging, and infinite runs per week plus split runs basically made you progress ahead of the raid almost immediately when it opened, and then it burns you out with AP farming. I believe that about sums it up. Now, the progression of gear is actually huge. We just do the progression when Blizzard releases content rather than when we defeat them. The game is too rewarding and too random.

[@Xyzrad]

Great video Preach. Thank you for doing the research