Asmongold is right RWF is ruining WoW - The thread strikes back

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.

66 Likes

Why the need to give that pleb credit for what majority of the potential playerbase have been aware of for years?

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If anything, putting “Asmongold is right” in the title takes away any credibility a person might have had.

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If you want to enjoy WoW, don’t watch WoW streamers!

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Again. And such an opus. You really have a lot of spare time.

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I post this everywhere but it doesn’t seem to sink in.

If you make a group and list it as ‘‘chill/noob friendly’’ it will be full within 15 minutes, filled with people who want to learn the fights. This gets you passed people asking for stupid gear requirements.

Anyone can do this raid on normal difficulty if they can be bothered to put in a tiny bit of effort and make their own group. People are itching to join '‘chill/noob friendly’.

Or you can do traditional approach and just make or join a casual raiding guild.

Sadly people would rather play the victim and cry on the forums about wanting to do raids but not being able to, when they could if they tried.

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The only fight thats hard is Raszageth in the raid and no it doesnt need to be easier even its not that hard on normal tough. If RWF destroys raiding yes and no, first of for pugs remove group loot (that is what destroying pug raiding), second off let bosses drop more loot, or maybe think about bringing back the vendor what they did with season 4 of SL.

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i legit thought LFR is for the Friend and family catagorie
I love how DF is playing out. yeah the raids are a bit difficult but on the other hand they are nerfing it a lot too.
and i love it that almost all classes have or are getting a real rotation.
i hated the faceplant into keyboard and outdps anyone cus ilvl is 1 higher
But these are my opinions

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LFR is the loner category
Normal is the Friend and Family difficulty
Heroic is the Raid guild difficulty
Mythic is the “Now you are just flexing” difficulty

Edit:
Alternative Mythic difficulty description: “You want the boss to whip you like the pig you are”

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Ahh yes, that makes sense =)

yeah i agree that rotations are overcomplicated, bunch of bloat on top of mechanics that are on top of other mechanics, might be fine if all you do is play single class on wow, but too much of a pita to jump in a class, i more often feel like im fighting rotation not targets and look more at cooldowns/weakauras than game.

it is engaging, but not fun and every expansion it is getting worse.

Keep it simple, stupid!

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Didnt read any of your post but as it has “Asmongold” in the title its all 100% wrong.

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Have they? I would have thought that would have been all over the forums if true.

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Raids difficulty are fine.

The rewards just suck and the time it takes to run back to bosses is and will always be annoying.

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Link please ?

should have stayed dead as you are basically doing this to troll and bring anger to the forums.

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Get your own opinions no one listens to a parrot

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Cool if Asmongold is so dumb it would be easy for you to refute my point?

Go ahead

Most of the replies in this thread seem to indicate that most people are fine with the difficulty? So I am not sure I agree?

Do you see prominent figures in the WoW community talking about how WoW is currently too difficult? Because I see no one except Asmongold?

Thdlock (A race to world first raider) makes a lot of good points and rightly complains about M+ design in DF, so does Towelliee, although I think he (Towelliee) might be more angry about tuning in general of the DF dungeons instead of mechanics. Of course this is MYTHIC PLUS design, and not raid design. So not really relevant to the discussion at hand.

Okay, go ahead and make an argument why, should be super easy right?

Almost like the rewards suck, because the ilvl required for the majority of the playerbase to actually kill the bosses is too high compared to what drops?

Like it´s all connected… come on…

I like how I waste my time actually providing log numbers and stuff, and then people just cry about how I am troll because they know they can´t refute what I am actually saying.

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Ok

You can clear the entirety of NM without using addons. Cleared ot week one, after having a debate with a few people on the forums about the difficulty of the raid decided to try and clear it without using any addons for week 2 and guess what managed just fine with ilvl 385. The boss mechanics are pretty well telegraphed and the dps checks are fairly easy to overcome (on normal at least). I would say that this Raid is somewhere around Legion difficulty and if asmongold is having trouble clearing it he should focus more on improving his gameplay and less on inviting people to carry him.

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Raids, and dungeons are created with esport in mind, and not for RPG purposes, so yes, this whole Blizzard deal with esport is screwing up the game. Nothing really new tho.

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Thanks for actually arguing in good faith.

Here is a video from BFA where Asmongold clears the raid in one go.

Here is a video from raid of the Incarnates

Asmongold gives up at the final boss during Incarnates.

This raid is more difficult than Legion and BFA raids (except first week Nyalotha). Asmongold previously always managed to clear the raids (to my knowledge) in one go before things started going really off the rails during Shadowlands.

I also find the argument that just because you can clear a raid without addons that the raid is acceptable for friends and family somewhat ridiculous sorry. Ideally you should be able to do Mythic raid without any WA / Addons. That the game is even designed around addons / WA is a massive problem, that makes getting into WoW incredibly difficult. 385 is also higher ilvl than should be necessary to even clear the raid.

I do for the record, agree that you do not need addons or even any WA for the raid on normal at all and that anyone who claims so is trolling.

It is important to note, that from my POV WoW success depends on the game being widely accessible. Maybe we just want different things from the game, that is completely fair!!

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