Last thread I argued that Asmongold was correct in his assessment that Blizzard were basically creating raids for the Race to World First Raiders(RWFR) and that this had disastrous consequences for enjoyment and raid participation. Blizzard have later admitted that this was the case.
Asmongold still argues that the raid is too difficult, and I agree. Normal difficulty is the ´Friends and Family´ difficulty and the Vault of the Incarnates raid in my opinion failed the Asmongold test by not being clearable by the Asmongold raid on day one. Even worse go to the grp finder right now and you will find pugs demanding at least 390 ilvl and 4 healers for Raszegeth (normal). The boss drops 398 ilvl so if you are 390 ilvl average, drops will barely be an upgrade (and they can´t even warforge / titanforge). Again, need I remind you that normal is the ´Friends and Family´ difficulty and yet ppl need to bring an extra healer and make bizarre ilvl demands just to cope with the encounter.
But there is an even bigger problem, the true, joker. Because the biggest issue currently in WoW difficulty isn´t just encounter design, it is GAME design in this thread I will argue that these things compound and make raids way too difficult which hurts our game.
WoW ´´playing your class difficulty´´ and Preach Gaming´s BFA video
Remember the old Preach Gaming video where he complained about how in BFA large parts of his DPS came from just pressing random buttons?? He showed how ´´ridiculous´´ this was in a video of his, by showing that by just pressing random DPS buttons on his Balance Druid filled with corruptions he could still do acceptable DPS.
I want to make clear that I am NOT blaming Preach. Because what really surprised me was the WoW community reception. The entire WoW community clapped like seals and agreed, DPS should be dependent on the skill of the player, not gear was the prevalent opinion. Well, the community got what it wanted!! Congratulations!! The problem is though, that the almost complete lack of passive DPS in Dragonflight, together with increase in encounter difficulty has immensely increased the difficulty of WoW.
Let´s look back at WoW Classic which was very simple to play, and this meant that you could bring a friend who had never played the game before, and they could still contribute to the raid. Now however WoW rotations are incredibly complex, and the issue has for most specs been exacerbated by the new talents which have made most specs more difficult to play. Even worse things like auto-attack damage which performed significant damage in Classic, are now borderline meaningless. This means that bad DPS players perform significantly worse than good players even with identical gear.
So not only are raids more difficult than ever, performing well demands mastery of your class or you are basically trolling the raid. Combined these two things are a disaster.
But wait! There´s more (Lack of borrowed power)
To make matters worse, WoW players cried constantly about borrowed power, now, there´s barely any borrowed power. Why is this a problem? Because Borrowed Power gave Blizzard a smart way to let players outgear / outpwer content without just depending on ilvl. Increasing your HoA ilvl in BFA, by accessing more Artifict Weapon abilities in Legion, azerite armor slots and so on, all these things, made the content significantly easier weeks and months after release. The most extreme example being Corruptions in BFA. Which in my opinion was an absolutely genius system. Not only would you become significantly stronger as you got the RIGHT corruptions or BiS corruptions. But every week the amount of corruptions you could wield would increase. This led, in my opinion to one of the most successful periods in Modern WoW history post-Legion. Where even casual guilds would raid Mythic Nyalotha, and where pugs would farm Jaina on mythic for the mount all thanks to outgearing content due to corruptions.
Now though, we are stuck in this boiled broccoli mode of WoW, no borrowed power to make things easier, no titanforging to enable outgearing content, way too difficult content and a game that punishes bad or even mediocre players because all healing / damage comes from playing your class well.
I would argue that the end of a patch everyone who has put actual effort into their character, should be able to murder hobo their way through heroic raid difficulty if we want to increase the amount of WoW players, and prevent what is a slow and agonizing death for the game. WoW can´t start losing all the 30 year old Dad and Mum gamers who just want to have a good time and socially raid. Wtlk Classic is about to end and then what? Retail is way way too hard.
How is Retail WoW performing?
Looking at the logs for Mythic raiding Vault of the Incarnates the numbers are actually so atrocious that I have to believe there is some sort of mistake.
Warcraft Logs - Combat Analysis for Warcraft
Meanwhile WoW Classic, re-released Naxx. Yes, a raid that players already played back in the original WoW in Wrath, then re-played in WoW Classic and is now being played for the THIRD time in WoW Wrath of the Lich King has been enjoying some of the best raid logs in Classic´s history.
In Conclusion
The game is still too difficult because raids are designed with RWF in mind, failing to perform your class optimally is too punishing and lastly there is a lack of ability to out-gear content because this expansion barely has any borrowed power to enable ´´out-gearing´´ content. Combined these things are a disaster for the game.
Yeah, I was completely right. Here are the numbers 4 weeks in. Yikes.
