So the new expansion is Warlords of Draenor. Apparently Garrosh goes back in time to stop the orcs from drinking the demon blood or something. But this doesn't alter the current timeline...or something. I suppose we'll get more details about how this apparently works. Blizzard's also talked about a lot of interesting stuff, from a Garrison (instead of the farm from MoP), no Hit/Expertise, no Dodge/Parry, no Reforging, new stats on gear, some other stuff...and then we hit raiding.
Oh boy, we hit raiding.
LFR (25) -> LFR (10-25)
Flex (10-25) -> Normal (10-25)
Normal (10 or 25) -> Heroic (10-25)
Heroic (10 or 25) -> Mythic (20)
So, uh...yeah. Applying Flex technology to LFR, sure. Renaming the difficulties, fine, whatever, sounds mostly like marketing but it also makes some sense because three difficulties are flexible now. Making normals scale like Flex, fine, they're not tuned to a razor's edge anyway. And 20 man is the new heroic.
Wait, what? 20 man?
20 MAN?
Okay, okay, I just had to get that out of my system.
I get what they're trying to do -- having just one raid size for the hardest difficulty makes it easier to tune correctly and having it be larger makes it easier to plan for group composition. Main thing I'm honestly wondering why Mythic simply isn't 25 man. Maybe they figure enough people will quit by the start of WoD that this prevents 25 man guilds from needing to recruit a bunch. Also means maybe guilds that manage to have exactly 25 people can bring all of them for "heroic" (current normal) bosses and pick the ideal 20 for mythic.
Of course, from the perspective of a 10H guild leader which raids twice a week...this really sucks. Really, really sucks. Really, really, really, really sucks.
We've been full clearing heroic content since Firelands -- my people aren't interested in just doing normals ("heroics" in WoD terms). We're done with normal in 2-3 weeks usually -- and that's only because our time is so limited. Which means I'll need to recruit another 12-13 people to make a Mythic guild. Need to find another dozen players interested in our exact raid days and light schedule and who also meet our skill requirements.
This is going to be awful.
But it gets better! We can't simply merge with another guild as we'll have too many tanks and healers (4 tanks, 6 healers). And we can't simply form a second group for the moment for similar reasons -- people are not exactly going to be eager to jump at that. We may have to try making a second group which specifically has off-spec tanks and healers once Siege has a 40% nerf or whatever and it's so easy that it can succeed.
Did I mention this was going to be terrible?
But wait, there's STILL more! Apparently no mode will share loot lockouts. Currently if we killed 8 out of 14 bosses on Heroic, we'd only need to clear the last 6 on normal to be competitive (plus Flex for some people, mainly trinkets/tier). In WoD, if we kill 8 out of 14 bosses on Mythic...we get to kill ALL FOURTEEN bosses on Heroic (current normal) for gear. PLUS likely bosses on normal (current Flex).
This sounds like the hell of ToC all over again except with more bosses. Hell, there are more bosses in THREE difficulties of ToC than in ONE difficulty of the first tier of WoD.
ARGH!
I think that sums it up succinctly.
The whole Mythic thing is going to be similar growing pains to the shift from Vanilla to TBC (and TBC to Wrath). Perhaps we've been spoiled with having a stable raid size for 3 expansions (Wrath, Cata, MoP), but yeah, 10H raid groups are getting shafted with Mythic :( Normal/New Heroic as a raid leader I am happy to see Flex get expanded though. And apparently you can opt-in to personal loot, or just get regular loot drops that scale with the number of people you have.
ReplyDeleteVanilla to TBC was at least downsizing -- you could continue raiding and cut people if needed. And in particular the vast majority (and I mean vast, vast majority) of players had tons of dead weight they could cut -- people were 20 manning MC in blues. The existence of Karazhan as a 10 man also made it easier to assemble new groups and gave people not utterly serious about raiding something to do.
DeleteI am a bit concerned about the expansion of Flex mechanics -- mainly in a situation like Sha of Pride's prisons where 2 people might be affected some casts and 3 another. You effectively have to plan for 3 prisons each time because it might happen.
Yeah, the whole "Randomly get N+1 mechanics" is totally wonky. I'd rather just have the extra prison consistently so I can plan accordingly.
DeleteThey mentioned that some mechanics would still have fixed break points, in fact they specifically gave the Sha of Pride's prisons as an example. The examples they gave of ones where you would get 2-3 (or 4-5, etc) were things like dispels and raid damage.
DeleteAh, good to know, thanks.
DeleteStill not really sure that matters -- still have to set up a system for 3 dispels even if you only might get 2.
Which means I'll need to recruit another 12-13 people to make a Mythic guild. Need to find another dozen players interested in our exact raid days and light schedule and who also meet our skill requirements.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the world of 25-man raiding. Actually no, you'll have a lot easier life, since you won't be having the competition from the 10-man guilds.
It won't be ToC reborn because the main reason to run all the ToC lockouts was emblems, needed to buy the tier pieces. Right now the situation is different: I almost never run LFR and even flex is dumped quickly when the normal progression advances. In the end you'll do heroic for some weeks then drop it completely for Mythic, while VP comes from side activities.
How many 25 mans raid on just Sunday/Monday? I've never seen any but I'm willing to acknowledge the possibility some MIGHT exist.
DeleteAnd with trinkets/tier pieces I'm not sure we'll be dropping Normal or Heroic as quickly as you think for Mythic -- especially Heroic. Many LFR trinkets this expansion beat any other trinket except the flex/normal/heroic version of the trinket trinket.
Historically (if you can count one tier as history), flex gear is basically the same as pervious tier heroic gear, as long as you're running heroics in the previous tier, new normal shouldn't be even something to consider running for your main raid group, new heroic will more than suffice and give you the reps on the boss that'll benefit you in heroic along with some minor gear upgrades. So, knock that one off your list.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of new heroic, in the early weeks you probably will do a full clear to get the gear and the reps but eventually it won't be worth it anymore, assuming you can do wings the way you can with flex now (far from a guarantee, I haven't seen that discussed one way or the other) you can just do whatever wings cover the bosses you aren't killing on mythic. What I think *will* be interesting is that with mythic as a separate lockout, you won't be able to hand-pick bosses to do, aside from any flexibility that the raid design itself offers (I'm expecting more of a Firelands-like hub design than a linear ToT run).
There's one other upside (overall, if not in every single aspect)... without the option of flipping from mythic to heroic within the same lockout (really trying to train myself to talk in WoD terms), it'll remove the "what boss do we do on mythic next?" discussion that's in play right now (yeah, you can just check kill numbers to see how other raids progressed but that doesn't necessarily apply to every group). There's also no option to pull x times and then drop it to normal (er, heroic... damnit) to move on. Mythic is mythic. From a RL perspective I think this will make for a much SIMPLER progression model... less debate, less discussion, fewer disagreements about strategy. Heroic will be a quick clear and Mythic will be a relatively constrained progression path. I think that'll be generally a good thing.
Should be "benefit you in mythic" in the first paragraph, not heroic...
Delete"So, knock that one off your list."
DeleteUnfortunately, that's simply not true. Easy example: you know which trinkets are better than the LFR version of the Sha of Pride trinket (cooldown reduction) for rogues? ONLY the Flex/Normal/Heroic version of that trinket. Yes, the LFR Sha of Pride trinket beats every other heroic (ilvl 566+) trinket. Trinkets and set pieces are the main issue.
Same deal with other trinkets in SoO and trinkets like Ji-Kun's feather and Unerring Vision of Lei Shen.
So even if they gut LFR enough so normal/heroic raiders can skip it it is very unlikely we'll be able to skip the new normal. We'll need to do Normal, Heroic, AND Mythic at the start of a new tier for a while -- eventually just shrink it to heroic and Mythic two or three months down the line if we're lucky.
"From a RL perspective I think this will make for a much SIMPLER progression model... less debate, less discussion, fewer disagreements about strategy. Heroic will be a quick clear and Mythic will be a relatively constrained progression path. I think that'll be generally a good thing."
Generally true but that's really not even an issue right now outside of the first week or two (in terms of figuring out order). And I'd rather *not* be needing to do a "quick clear" of Heroic each week -- we'll see how their "skip bosses" idea works out.