Lets change RWF to… “MDI raid version”. An e-sport event that lasts for more than 1 week.
No can do. What that does is just add another tier. So people would be wiping 400 times in Tindral heroic. Thats what people that dont raid mythic precisely dont want.
And then we would be having the same discussion about normal mode.
The best IMO is the + aspect. Choose a level that matches your taste. Simple.
On the other hand, what that means is that Mythic raid difficulty would remain super hard. As it was in day 1 of patch. No nerfs.
No, it doesn’t. It moves HC further away from normal and closer to mythic. It’s far too easy at the moment as it is. My guild’s social raid team killed Fyrakk HC in the second or third week of the tier. That’s WAY too soon for people who are mostly casual raiders. Week six to eight would probably be better.
And then people will be complaining about abilities that start to one-shot as the “+” gets higher (exactly as you are now in M+ threads) because it isn’t possible to create infinite scaling without one-shot mechanics. Not to mention the added difficulty in creating an infinitely scaling raid with flexible group size.
I complain about it. And I also propose a solution to that problem: Capping damage but increasing HP by double the factor after that point.
And in raids its even easier. You got enrage timers that would limit the level to a maximum possible.
Correct me if im wrong. But I dont see a problem here. Raid size/comp will determine the level you play it at. But there are infinite levels.
If one day you have the good number of people for that boss, then you can opt to go higher. If you dont, well you go lower.
Fact is you still have a challenge. No matter the skill, comp, or number of raiders.
My proposition would replace LFR, Normal and Heroic. Its exactly what you are suggesting, but instead of splitting difficulty into 4 tiers, I suggest doing it in 20 tiers (for example).
And you’ve already been told how that would mess up class balance even further.
Or more classes/specs will have difficulty getting spots in raids because groups will want to take the optimal number of characters and class comp to do the highest difficulty possible. Which is essentially what we see in mythic plus.
I’m not suggesting splitting LFR, normal and HC into 4 tiers. I’m suggesting making HC a bit more difficult than it is now (for the sake of people who are finding it too easy and getting bored).
And I have already said what my response to that is. When 1-shots are the limiting factor, it means that at lower levels that ability does not 1-shot, but still trucks a lot. Therefore, the classes with more utility (aka defensives, and specifically DR defensives on a short CD) will reign supreme.
On the other hand, when raw dps is the limiting factor, classes with more dps will reign supreme.
If you want to balance out classes such that the difference between them is as small as possible (it will never be 0):
To do it with defensives, you have to change talent trees, add/remove abilities, ect…
To do it with raw DPS you just tweek % damage of skills. Rotation might be clunky, talent reworks might be needed… but % damage is more fair and objective measure to balance.
So I don’t see HOW it would mess up class balance further. If anything, it simplifies it.
This is already what we see now in Mythic Raids, and even heroic PuG groups. How many Ele shamans have you seen out there happy about their “raid spot”?
So when you tell me that the people that take the game “seriously” will continue to take it seriously… well its no surprise to me.
However, for the rest of us mortals out there Heroic + wont change a thing. Because flex cannot be compared to M+. Many of the issues of M+ stem from the fact of a limited number of spots (5 people exact). Like in Mythic (20 people exact).
Therefore, in a Heroic + scenario, there is no “raid spot”. Because there no competition between 2 people for 1 raid spot. You got plenty of spots ! Take both !
Define “difficulty”. Its really hard. And difficulty tiers are already split into 4 today.
If this was M+, and judging my own skill level I could comment on the difficulty of a +18. And, more importantly, other people with higher skill than me can comment about the difficulty of a +27.
So instead of talking about this… why don’t we simply let the players choose what they feel most comfortable in. That way there is nothing to discuss. We all play and everyone happy.
Unfortunately, 4 tiers of difficulty is not enough to fit everyone’s opinion on what “difficulty” means. Its my POV at-least.
No, it isn’t that simple. Some raid fights are more AOE, some are ST, and some are in between. Various talents affect ST and AOE damage to different degrees, so adjusting the damage of an ability in ST can disproportionately affect its damage in AOE, and vice versa. This is why damage tuning is so difficult.
In addition, when tuning for raid damage, you also have to take into account how M+ damage is affected, and also performance in PvP. What seems like a small tuning adjustment for raid can lead to a spec one-shotting players in PvP. If you only play healer at a high level, I can understand why you might not realise this, but it’s worth taking time to do some research before throwing out wild suggestions.
Plenty of spots if the optimum raid size for a particular boss at a particular difficulty is 10-man? That isn’t even enough for one of each class, never mind spec.
You say this, and yet you don’t seem to understand what it means. People who want to push “HC+” to the highest possible level will optimise RAID SIZE as well as everything else. Considering that most fights are easier with a small raid size (due to things like more space, fewer people to wipe the raid, etc), this will mean fewer spots available and the development of a HC+ meta comp.
I don’t define it by opinion, but by results. If people who play casually, and only log into the game once a week for their guild’s social HC raid, are clearing HC within the first 3 weeks of the tier, the difficulty is too easy. They might do a few reclears before they get bored, but then they’re left with nothing to do for the rest of the season.
As I said before, around 2 months into the season is about right as an average for social HC raiders. Some will get curve faster, others (particular those who only pug) will take longer, but we’d be looking for the largest number of first HC last boss kills to be happening at around the 2 month point. (That’s actually how tuning has historically been done, and I think the devs will look at the results from this tier and see that they made the last bosses too easy on HC. We’ll see the difficulty step up a bit in TWW.)
I totally agree with you. But im still confused as to why I cant get my point across.
The way I see it is that today we are already in that situation regarding damage tuning. And blizzard already tries to balance damage of all specs. With all the complexities and unintended consequences you pointed out.
Except that on top of that reality that already exists, we have to add utility balance as well (because of the 1-shots). Which, today, doubles the complexity.
If you remove the need to balance utility. Your left with only damage balancing, which I will say again, we already have.
So sure. Its hard to balance damage. But you cant deny that its harder to balance damage AND utility simultaneously (which is what we have today).
Thats my vision basically. And to be honest, I am really confused as to why its so difficult for people to wrap their head around. Help me see where im wrong here because I cant compute how removing the weight utility plays in PvE content would make balancing specs worse than it is today.
I would not be concerned. The mythic raiders that like to push already do that with 20 man raids. They would just continue to do it.
The rest of us can go 1 level lower than that to fit in our 11th friend into the group.
In addition, if removing 10 people (half of the raid) gives such an advantage well then there are grounds for blizz to intervene and balance tune the boss. Like they already do currently.
I got ya ! That seems fair to me. And to be honest, one more thing to work on. Gives more variety to the high end content.
Thing is that not many people would do that. For the same reasons not many people push keys, and for that reason the game should not be balanced around high end players. And in this case, with more reasons because Mythic would still exist. So there is a niche for players that want to push the hardest.
And I share the same opinion for M+ by the way. I got a history of saying this.
I belong to one of those social HC guilds. And I know plenty of people that are in one as well.
None of them aspire to be 2 months wiping to Fyrakk HC. But you are right. If blizz nerfs the bosses in HC, then you are in the situation im in: After 2 weeks HC was cleared and there is nothing else to do.
So how do you make a raid, that would
(A) give content for the longest time possible. More than 2 months (Ideally the whole patch).
(B) where the definition of progression in not wiping endless times but “killing more stuff”
(C) can fit into the ideal difficulty range of as many players as possible.
In my head, heroic + is one candidate to, at least partially, contain all 3 requirements.
Oh this boss. The raid in mythic was going so well until this point. But this thing is just, well, ridiculous. Everything all at once. Swirlies under swirlies which are virtually impossible to see. It’s a tough fight but without inky black potion, countless WAs it feels like we’re fighting against a UI incapable of fairly displaying everything that needs to be seen. And the frustration buildup (and not mine, but the frustration of others ends up spilling over onto me so I become so frustrated that I end up taking another long break after being kicked from yet another raid team because I find this complete mess of a fight hard to deal with).
Surely this kind of situation is not healthy for the game - where heroic seems trivially easy but mythic is like some super brick wall. Come on Blizzard, you can do better than this rather than trying to see how much of a challenge you can give to world first raiders make some content for those of us who pay the subscription. It’s quite bizarre.
I’ll write down some facts. It’s almost the end of the season, yet only 767 guilds (at this exact point) have killed it. That’s a diminishingly small proportion of the community.