once you get beyond normal antorus and M+ 10 in terms of gear you need it is time to get a guild or other semi-fixed group and that will mean getting better at the game.
to be fair, when I was in college this pugging scene where you wait around between bosses in pugs actually helped me get all my classwork and studying done, he's really right about the 20% of the time playing, one of the reasons I think M+ is great for pugging too, the timer makes people stay in the game and active
From another angle its saying quit playing MMO's they are a huge time sink and waste of time, this coming from someone who has been playing them since '99.
Lordpobby I think the main point is if you're going to spending huge amounts of time in an MMO, it should be enjoyed properly and to the fullest, and that basically requires a guild.
Mind blowing that all you're doing is showing your experience in a pug world and sharing pretty basic views with loads of disclaimers and still just getting drilled like at one point you didn't have to sit and learn your character while you were progressing through content, keep up the good fight my man, videos are the tits
I do have curve which I obtained with my guild, but I am a little worried that I fall into the category of players that thinks they're good, but aren't really. This series has inspired me to get better at the game. Thanks Preach.
Here's a small story... I tanked Normal Antorus the week before Holiday having it done on my main healer. I knew how to position the bosses but I wasn't shy to ask questions about the mechanics. After Imonar, I have had to leave for dinner. When I came back, I was sore sure they were done... They had just passed Kin'garoth and the tank that replaced me couldn't figure out how to deal with Varimathras... Oh dear and here comes the tank that never did it, ready to screw it up... yet I nailed it on my first try because I did ask what was the big deal... My tank was 928... in a world where tanks are usually expected to be further ahead in terms of gear for survivability... I was more than fine because I did search and asked questions. People are so afraid to screw up... Yes, there are elitists that will never tolerate a mistake... Maybe they've never seen a single bad run because they feel like they always need that "golden pass". I can't remember how many wipes I've had with my guils group against High Command, Kin'garoth, Coven and Argus. It's now child's play because we know what is going on... not because we have better gear. I think 60% of Normal/Heroic puggers don't know what Misery does or how important you need to get away when afflicted by Necrotic Embrace when fighting Varimathras. It may sound ridiculous but that's how pugging in WoW feels right now. Mike, I gotta appreciate that fortitude... But the thing is gonna happen again in BfA... And that's sad.
As preach said wiping and leaving hed understand and i dont really feel like its elitism in any way not wanting to reprogress same boss over and over again. But yea leaving after boss is killed because dps is low is just dumb.
I love this series so much, it has been a big wake up call for me. I was stuck doing low keys and normal antorus. I was also stuck in this mindset of "I just need more gear". After taking your advice of looking at logs I realised that, no, i just suck and i don't even know how to play my class. I was for example using the same talents and leggos on pretty much every fight, as an afflock(!) So in the past few weeks i have improved alot and got both keystone master and curve. Thank you preach for giving me the though love that i needed. I'm now looking at how i can improve my skills, not my gear
I have started this challenge myself, but to make it more difficult (since I had acess to gold and flying) I decided on trying healing for the first time. At first it was really hard (both getting into groups and actually learning to heal) but it has slowly come to me. I have now cleared normal antorus twice, done some +17s and got an ilvl of 943. Many of the challenges you have faced I too have faced these last weeks. The pug world is hard, but if I can learn healing, get into mythic+ and raiding (also a first) as an average player in just under 2 days playtime, almost anyone could do it. So to those out there who bash on Preach's experiment for whatever reason, look at my success so far :) Bonus: Rokmora (Nelf lair) as an undergeared hpala on tyrannical+grievous was painful. The whole group got to 60% by unavoidable damage. I had bit off a little more than I could chew and we wiped 6 times, because I couldnt top people off fast enough. My group was super nice though and started using healthstones and personal cds and even invited me to talk tactics on discord. I have never known a more friendly pug, they were saintlike :)
lol. Started using healthstones and personals. That's an issues with players right now as well. They should just always be using that stuff if it's available. As someone(not currently) who has raided mythic on a shaman. Survivability over damage shows through. I have spent large portions of m+ keys and raids just healing myself so I can keep dpsing longer. Sometimes that's the difference between killing something and not and if people started doing that stuff from the get go then there would be less wipes overall.
Not sure if u are aware but just throwing it out there... when Rokmora does his big smash, the damage is increased based on how many adds are up at the time. And yes also dps who have to wipe 6 times before poping personals are not so great. At least they were nice.
this is the game I member playing in TBC and Wrath, your health was your problem, if you got heals the healer was being nice! but meh! im being a back in my day it was better. But it was
to be fair, they should have been doing that to begin with. You're supposed to help each other, leaving EVERYTHING to the healer or tank is nonsense. Even if you're DPS, if you have some survivability CDs, items or interrupts, use them. You're all trying to get through it and it doesn't hurt to help each other out, that's the intention of those CDs and items anyway.
After months and months of trying to get it I finally did it! I got 2 other trinkets that sim higher than arcanocrystal unless titanforged so I dont have to bother trying anymore...
Apart from the part at 23:00 ~ the whole pug meta in BFA makes me really sad, as someone who's only previously raided in guilds; I recently got back into the game and was introduced to the pug world for the first time, masses of people leaving after every boss, nobody replies to whispers about gear, regardless of whether they actually need it or not, you (95% of the time) raid entirely in silence. Sad to see the direction it's taken, i'd take wrath pugs over the shite we have now any day of the week.
I think forcing the message of "you are bad" was the best thing ever to happen to me lately. Its very dangerous just because its very harsch criticism to something you spend years doing. But if you want to get better, it's necessary. I rerolled from disc priest to mistweaver, and didnt perform increddibly bad in our raids, but nothing special either. Someone very generous and very skilled then started teaching me lately, and its very harsch to be told over logs that youre basically failing at everything youre class is capable of. But if you take it like a champ, youre gonna get golden. Im pugging my ass off lately, just for practise. The worst m+ groubs, worst pug raids, but i started to get better and better. Logs are youre best friend there.
I've found some of these folks as well, and I'm a much better player for it. It's great running in to them. I've tried to also be that person to anyone willing to listen. I just wish more people played that way.
God I love this series. Everything you've said at the end about gear doesn't make bad players good is everything my fellow guild officers and I have been trying to tell our GM but it's just not getting through to him and our raid team is suffering for it. So it's not just the pug players that have that mentality. I think if you joined other guilds you'd find the same mentality as pug groups for a lot of them. Not all, but a good amount of them. That might be something to try for another series, joining failing or under preforming raiding guilds under a new account so they can't tell it's you and gauging what it's like to be in that kind of guild environment.
You're probably not gonna read this but I feel I have to write it anyway: I've done everything the same as you have with this project, got curve (after weeks) and an ilvl of 956ish. But unlike your goal for this project, mine was to join a raiding guild, to get out of this cesspool. So I joined a raiding guild on a trial. The difference between 956-960 gear picked up from mythic+, world bosses, anywhere I could really, and 960 BiS set+leggos raider gear is huge. Where I was doing 1.2-1.7 mil dmg, the rest of the guys were 2.2-2.7 mil constantly. They offered me a 2 weeks trial. I squeezed another 3-400k extra dps just from properly executing the fight tactics...they had to let me go. It's easier for them to snatch up a guy who left a raiding guild and is geared with BiS items, than have the patience to gear me up from where I am. I could not leave the cesspool. It's too late in the expansion I believe.
Razvan T Its not to late for you to catch up to them, assuming your doing things right and following your classes stat needs on gear from your m+ runs, you would just need to get your tier set and move on up. I have swapped mains for each tier (started on a moonkin EN/tov deathknight for NH, DH for tos and now a monk for ant) the leggos will come so long as you do your content and the big need is to get your tier and stats in order. This all assumes you have your rotation doen ofcourse.
I love this series. It really opened my eyes. You talked about how people leave after one wipe because they think they're above it and deserve to get loot in one episode. And that kind of stuck with me. I didn't mind wiping once or twice, but after a while I wasn't enjoying myself because I wanted to get going. This week I joined a group with a lead who didn't know what he was doing. His dps was bad, he could explain any boss and he left after several wipes at the third boss. A lot of people left, but we decided to go on and look for other people. I was joking around a lot (trying to keep everyone's mood light) and was the leader of a raid group after the first one left. In the end we raided over four hours and couldn't get past Hasabel. But because of the way I went about the raid, just wanting to meet new people and have a good time, other's were actually saying how much they missed this kind of game play and that they were falling in love with WoW again. I forgot what playing should really be about: having a good time and enjoying ourselves. So thanks for that ^_^
Videos like this are motivating, it pushes me to want more out of the game. I know a lot of people stuck in this who aren't bad players but who have a fear of M+10 up to M+15 and even players who were raiders years ago in TBC but are afraid to do any Raiding in Legion. It's amazing to see how many people don't want to see the end game content.
Nothing better than to hear and watch Preach talk about the things in WoW that I no longer see because I quit back in Lich King. Got two days off of work on account of my grandmother passing, so I'm sitting here watching this LEGEND talk about what it would be like if I hopped back into WoW now, even after like 7 years of being away. I love you man, keep up the brilliant work and never let the haters bring you down!
Preach, I really appreciate this series. I always enjoy hearing you talk about game mechanics and design or really anything at length in long videos like this. You do a great job of communicating your knowledge in a swift and interesting way and sprinkle in just the right amount of humor. You also always make sure to back up what you say with examples and/or explanation so that even when I disagree with someone you say I still know where you’re coming from. Keep up the great work!
It's very fun to watch indeed. And I understand what people mean by he can't unlearn everything he knows. I think the biggest problem for most people that never really gets acknowledged is that you can sit there and make an hour long video of what you did to do this or that and say that it's super easy but for a lot of people they'll need more of an explanation. I think this is a fine experiment for someone like Preach, I just wish it was used more of almost like a guide for new or returning players who easily get confused in all of it when there is so much going on. I still enjoy the series though.
Thanks for giving an insight in todays PUG world. I'm really glad to be in an organised raiding guild since forever. After the first month i played Legion only 2x 3h raiding and about 2h mythic+ runs per week, 5/11M and 971 ilvl atm. Seems like you can save a massive amount of time when you join a raiding guild.
Thanks for these videos! I started playing in WoD with some friends who mostly all left the game after a year. I've been going solo since and doing just lfr and a couple of pugs here or there. I found a guild recently after watching this series and have been having a lot more fun learning mechanics of mythic dungeons and making new friends. Also with the updates to the scaling in older content I'm also learning mechanics i never knew existed in old dungeons. Without videos like this I really wouldn't know what I was missing.
thank you so much for doing this series preach, me and 2 friends had recently came back to the game just for something to do together, we're all EX mythic raiders and just do mythic+, its hilarious how many bad players you actually run into that just flame others for no apparent reason when their the one going wrong and they cant even understand that they themselves were the problem, its been so joyus to watch you go though the struggle arround the same time we have :D much love keep up the great work
The BC Heroic comparison was eye opening and so accurate. This whole series has caused me to re-evaluate how I play as the pug method is simply an inefficient time sink. I only have time to play a couple of days a week but those days are wasted entirely. Going to continue my search for one of these fabled day time raiding guilds.
Great video with lots of important observations. I havent really been in the game for about a year now, so definitely out of any loop. But picking the points that were fresh in my mind: 1. Gear issue. You were talking about ganking. I always remember being bewildered around 6.1 with PUG groups looking for ilevel well above the gear drops in the instance. This wasnt the start of this by any means (gearscore all the way back in wrath got a justifiable shoutout), but the sheer antagonism between the lower geared players looking to break into raiding and banging their heads against that wall (and likely being immediately kicked for poor performance on their first shot at the first boss), and those players with the golden ticket as you say (or what they think is the golden ticket - to chill in pug farms), bred a toxicity that the game hasnt recovered from. What you're likely recognising is the fruits of what should have been a side-aspect of raiding (pug running outside of guild raiding) becoming the dominant style of raiding (since you suggest its the preferred playstyle for the majority of the player base). Conclusion is therefore easily drawn that the barriers of access have come down (thanks no doubt to mythic dungeons, world bosses and multiple gearing avenues), whilst ilvl smash and attrition is now the default mechanism for 'progression'. Bringing me to the second point you were making during court of stars on people not having the slightest clue whats going on. Clearly the aim is to just overwhelm the mobs through brute force. But the real bitch about this was the gutting of LFR in 6.0. I remember that move from LFR to flex to normal being so incredibly fluid. Each layer would throw in another mechanic you'd HAVE to pay attention to, along with an incremental increase in responsibility. Sure, thered be carries, but it buillt up the picture of the raid in a way that lesser players could find their genuine level. You were taught the raid through playing it. And when you'd get through it 15-20 or so times, you might be geared enough to attempt the next step. I cannot describe the absolute bewilderment of the wod light show going on in LFR. Instead of stripping it down but making you pay attention to crucial mechanics (yeah, you could still screw up, its lfr), you were met instead with all the mechanics from lfr to heroic only now, none of them mattered remotely. It was just a wall of noise. A wall of noise which you eventually found your way into when a pug finally let you in (and then booted you after the first boss because your dps was too low because suddenly ignoring mechanics and tunneling isnt working quite as well). There's no learning curve there. Theres no people helping, or offering advice. No one was there to carry you. They were there to get through it as fast and efficiently as possible. They owed you nothing. It was just humiliation on top of humiliation. And they solved the problem the only way they probably could after the lfr backlash at the tail of panda, and the casual backlash at the end of wod: They threw gear at the problem. Sure, you dont learn the fights in any way, but we'll drop massive purple swirlies and big green lines telling you to gtfo, the rest of the encounter is simply attrition and gear. Eventually, if youre patient enough, you'll smash through it on the fifth or sixth rotation of people so long as you keep throwing yourself at it. You dont need to learn anything. Just wait for the right people to come and stay alive and high enough on the dps charts to not get called out. It was so ridiculously obvious that it was going to happen this way.
Hi Preach, Really enjoyed this series showed it to my guildies they loved it. I am in a 1 day a week raiding guild we have 6 bosses dead in Mythic but we pretty casual and not serious. Been leveling some alts and man this series is my life the past month trying to get gear etc... What I found worked for me is I actually "joined" some guilds trying to do progression in Heroic content and was able to help them get to Argus and kill them by trying to teach them a bit. Anyways great content and subscribed!
I've been loving this series, Preach. For the first time in a long time I am coming back to your channel every day to check if a new video is uploaded.
Love the series preach! I just wanted to add my experiences to the pot. What does a person do when they don’t want to schedule time to play a video game, enjoys playing 4+ characters across both factions and multiple servers, and gets bored of having a “main”? Guilds become less viable as you’d be offline for long spouts while playing other toons, not being around for scheduled events, not having a geared main, etc. Loads of people fall into this category and perpetuate PUG cycle. Hard truth to a lot of people that to really progress in the game, they need to change the way they play it (choose a main, find a good guild, make friends, progress with guild).
This is such an awesome series. I can't even play WoW right now due to the demands of college on my time, but it's still interesting to see such a detailed analysis of the way WoW is currently affecting mid-range players. Love it preach!
So, ironically, these vids have just encouraged me to start pugging. I assumed that, this late in the expansion, pugging was completely out of the question and I was doomed to just farm Argunite and hope for Reliquished token titanforges.. But after watching this series I realized I was completely off base there, and I've been pugging the hell out of mythic+, and I've even been able to do a few (incomplete, but still...) normal Antorus runs. So, Preach, even though these vids exist to show how bad it is out there in the pug world, they actually showed that it isn't as bad as I feared. Thanks to you I've been having a hell of a lot of fun over the past few weeks!
So I did the same thing you have done with this series of yours, but without the skills you have. I stopped playing in Wotlk and just recently started legion so i missed most of WoWs life. I completely agree with the points you are stating, the circles, the vast majority of utterly bad players... When I reached 110 on my DH i felt overwhelmed by the information there was in WoW. Like millions of artifact power? What is that? Mythics, World quests??? Felt like this is too much for me, but then in like a week, finished all this content. Antorus has just arrived so i started doing Raid finders but i noticed that I lack the item level for that. So I went to lower level raids without any knowledge about them. Got carried easily, got gear, done Argus World Quests, got gear for ABT Raid finder so in I went. Next big step was Antorus normal for the Seat achievement as everyone was looking for that. So I started organizing my own raids and those were quite successful. Normal was cleared I got gear, I got my paychecks each week as well :) Then I started pushing heroic and I noticed that this is getting harder so I joined a guild. Note i had like 950 ilvl just buy waiting paychecks each week and I was bad player too. At this point my friends told me about logs. So I dived into them, and tried to max every reachable boss. As I played as a tank it was more easier than as a DPS. So got full legendary normal logs I improved on my rotation learned the basics of tanking. Then got invited to a HC clearing guild. Cleared HC, then maxed out my HC logs. Got invited to a Mythic raiding guild. This is the point when the game finally got interesting. I try to perform my best, watching videos and maxing my rotation and willing to sacrifice time to progress with the guild. Currently we are 8/11 and I noticed I do nothing but mythic raiding each week. Maybe some achievements beside that. I have improved quite much, I know my limits and my rotation. I keep maxing Mythic logs for fun. So as a conclusion, I agree with you. There is a huge player base stuck in this never ending rotation but you can jump out of it if you are dedicated and willing to improve ... and find a guild :D
For those who are having issues funding a guild, I would recommend you look into the forums and search for guilds that are posting for members to join for specific reasons. I know it's counter intuitive to look for a guild while not in-game, but it is much more likely for you to find a guild that has a legitimate community about it there. Blizzard provides the forums for things like finding guilds because it's a lot easier to get your message across and promote your guild there. What a lot of people don't take into account is their server might not have a strong community for what their preferred playstyle is. For example, I used to raid with a guild back in Cata on Kil'jaeden, which at the time was one of the most popular PVP servers. It was tough finding a good guild that wasn't "Huge In Japan" that actually pushed difficult content on that server. Now move forward a few years to WoD and Legion respectively, and instead of looking specifically for guilds on my server, I checked the forums and looked specifically for Heroic raiding guilds looking to push Mythic content. That's where I found my first true guild that had a true community, and where I made some life-time friends. And Legion was no different, I checked the forums for guilds who's intent matched mine, and applied through there. Sometimes it takes the extra effort to go out of your way and check the forums and server transfer to find guilds that will match your playstyle and intent. Don't reside yourself to one server because there is a large chance you won't find what you're looking for on your home server. That, and forums are your best friend for a multitude of things.
please never invite them. I always tell my rl that when we need that one or two slots filled occasionally for just an easy heroic clear real quick and they are always shitters. I had a healer who ruined his own key by disconnecting on Eye and we couldn't kill Wrath because it was a high tyrannical and we didn't have a dispel.
Rewatched this again this year and now I want to truly get better. I set a goal for BoD to be in a Mythic Raid guild and I made it. Got to Mech and just couldnt keep up with the time commitment. I am good enough to be Mythic but only have time for heroic. With the daily check list of things to do I find I dont even have time to raid. I hope Shadowlands changes this. But thanks for the content. I know all of this is doable but with the time sink even harder for BFA its tough to stay up to date for high end raiding. Even you said it yourself. You played 2 plus full DAYS in 1 weeks time. I can maybe play 2 days full in like 1-1/12 months times.
I love the idea of the game popping up telling me i took damage from x and how to avoid it in future, maybe mythic raiders and such would want an option in settings to turn it off? It would help loads if youve only played on daily heroics and mythic +2s for the weekly cache.
Speaking as a mythic raider and M+ yuge key runner, I'd love this feature. The game can be opaque a lot of times on exactly what killed you and tooltips don't reflect the damage boost that m+ keystone level brings (an ability that hits you for 7m will have a tooltip that says 400k). Addons like details help a lot to piece together the numbers, but it sometimes takes some research to understand a mechanic, particularly that of a little trash mob in a dungeon. I.e., the fact that you only have 2 seconds to dispel the poisoner poison in DHT afore it absolutely wrecks the party member and that it has nothing to do with stacking or not stacking despite the animation making it seem so.
Actually I think mythic raiders and high key pushers would, at least in the beginning, love to have that pop up since they can quickly and easily tell what to avoid and how. Mythic raiders aren't just mystically better than others, they just put more effort into learning the game, mechanics, and characters.
read the recap, every spell that hits you have their tool-tip there, then for bosses you can even read the dungeon journal, but there are 2 kinds of ppl, those who bother or those who don't, and those who don't wont read a popup on screen with more info, just as they don't read it now.
As a mythic raider and a key pusher this would be the best thing ever. Every now and then you either just forget about something, or something really random happens. It would be hell of a lot more useful then reading through logs.
the group from 15 COS are czechs, probably kids judging by those massages that could have been seen in the video ... no wonder they cant speak english , also if they were writing something in the chat it means they had 0 communication in terms of voice call or something
This is my little story, and maybe it'll help explain the 'terrible player' phenom stuck in the loop. I was very nervous about higher M+ keys because I always felt overwhelmed - like everything just happening SOOOO fast - and not super confident about my dps, which of course would lead me to screw up... self-fulfilling prophecy! What really turned the key for me was forcing myself to a) complete endless +30 for proven assailant and b) get my challenge skin (fuck you Xylem!!). The mindless repetition of basic abilities, then trying out new things to overcome obstacles and getting comfortable with them until that becomes mindless... now going into high M+ (okay 15-18 is high for me) is no big-deal - the game is moving slower and I see all the things coming and I don't worry at all about my performance. I know people shit the bed when WoD Heroics and Mythics were locked behind _silver_ training grounds, but seriously actually getting the endless will teach you so much about your character in terms of planning CDs, saving burst, and efficient movement that the game comes at you slower and becomes more manageable. Just my two cents...
I Love this series so much, just sitting and waiting for a new video all day, it really shows how hard it is to be in the pugWorld, anyway keep up the good work (y)
I made a group for +8 Maw this week and invted a mage that qued up he was around 925-930 I think, he was the first one to q, I didn't ignore lower ilvl ppl. I was on my 900ilvl monk and I was planing on going as a dps and then the mage said that we need a 940ilvl tank... I thought to myself, I had a 940 ilvl tank on kj mythic and this is leaps and bounds easier then that so no, we don't need a 940ilvl tank so I switched to my tank spec and we cleared it with ease. At the end of the run I asked him if I changed his mind and he just replied:"Why you so mad?". And then mssged a guildy that was tagging along (920ilvl) and told him that I suck. Good thing to note is that he was the highest ilvl in the group and he wasn't far ahead on the dpa mettera from me and I was a tank, he was ninja pulling and he wasn't interuptong or doing cc of any form, no xp on his account eighter, but for some reason he thought that he knew what he was talking about when he said that we need a 940 tank without even knowing what ilvl brings to the tabble. Just another small story about how ilvl doesn't mean shit if you don't know how to play and absurdity that is asked from ppl. He said we "need" 940 I proved that it can be done with 40ilvls less.
It is a very frustrating attitude most people have. My rule when running a PUG mythic+ group is that I set the minimum item level to the loot level. For a +8 this would mean the minimum item level would be 910... because the gear that drops in +8 is level 910. And I consider this "harsh"... but I do it because I figure it is so easy to pad your average item level now, with things like the free legendary ring from LFR Argus.
You can get 930+ in few days that's not the problem. The problem is that you can't tell if the person that qed for your key is a good player or not and ilvl doesn't show that. You can have 960 ppl getting outdpsed by 900 ppl or 960 ilvl ppl padding on things that don't need to die and standing in shit while 900 ilvl ppl doing everything properly. I've mentioned this on few videos, there should be a challenge system in place that you climb through which will teach new players and prove your skill lvl when qing. The challenges would have to be spec specific and they would have to have ilvl scaling which would mean that no matter how much gear you obtain you'd be doing the challenge with the scaled ilvl or maybe even make a challenge mode default sets so that trinkets don't play a part in it.
Not going to lie.. I'm subscribed but don't always watch every video. This series has been EXCELLENT though, enjoyed every minute both the highs and lows along with your commentary!
Took me all tier to get to 900 in tomb. I joined a raiding guild first week of antorus, they helped me spam some m+ for gear and then we did HC progress and a month later I had curve raiding two days in a week. I was amazed by how much better the game was when you join a guild. I was miserable before in the pug world and now I really have fun
as someone who takes long breaks from the game and then comes back in most times half way through or at the end of expansions I can say that the suggestion at about 13:30 about having some kind of optional suggestions pop up letting you know what you are doing wrong would be amazingly good. I don't know what's going on in most dungeons now and havent even stepped into a raid this expansion yet. This kind of suggestion help text somewhere would greatly shorten my learning process when going into content I have no clue about.
Blizzard have kept saying that upgrades need to feel powerful. Do they though? I mean back in TBC when I got an upgrade that was 10 iLvls higher than what I had from the previous tier it didn't do much to my overall damage on its own but it still felt great. Slowly getting more powerful felt rewarding. Just start off every expansion with iLvl 210 for LFR, 220 for Normal, 230 for Heroic and 240 for Mythic (made up numbers btw). Then the next tier LFR becomes 220, Normal 230, Heroic 240 and Mythic 250. This solves both power creep to some degree and also the issue with split runs since heroic will never offer upgrades over mythic.
Love you for doing this... I'm in a guild with like 5 good players then like 5 okish and 15 more who are total garbage. And this guild clears heroic Antorus no problem. Those 15 never get even when we say on discord that they are being carried because their dps is close to 2M they think they are the shit. But when we make like +20 group for something lice CoS their bad play can't be hidden. They do not understand the game any deeper then watching at dps meter. And those people are wast majority.
close to 2m dps is atleast above average player lol, ive made 99% parses and struggle to hit 2m on my ele quite often (depending on how lucky i am cuz gambler lol)
This is partly why having so many difficulties is a bad thing. Rather than forcing players to get better to beat a harder raid difficulty (Normal to Heroic) you just give them lfr.... then they get more gear and go normal.... then they go heroic.... etc - without ever actually getting any better.
GhostCrawler once said that they overestimated the number of people who liked harder content and who would try to get better to do said harder content in Cata. Turned out that git gud didn't work, instead of stepping up to the challenge, the majority just waited till it became easy/trivial while doing something else, or worse they quit the game. Also, did you forget how Blizz decided to use silver PG as a requirement for heroic dungs in WoD? Did you forget numerous comments and threads on official forums about dungs being locked behind the PG. For many people even silver PG was too difficult.
This mentality of yours is why the pug world is so bad. It's all about ilvl to you. You never take into account the mechanics. High ilvl does not mean that you can ignore heroic/mythic mechanics. Not everyone is meant to do mythic, you're not entitled to do it, you've got to earn it. Not by item level, but by hard work, skill, coordination and communication.
It is absurd to think that way, because it doesnt matter if you're 800 ilvl or 1000ilvl if you die to the same mechanic. All you're doing is more damage before you die. Provided that you even know how to play your class.
Yep. Totally agree with everything you said. Every time I log into my alt it feels like playing a different game compared to my main. Another issue is that you won't generally escape this loop even if you join a guild. Because majority of guilds are just people like this under one banner. They don't care about the guild, they don't care about anyone else other than themselves. The guild is there to get THEM loot. I could swear that at least 80% of guilds are like this. Not just the cesspool guilds which are whole new level.
I'm only speaking from my personal experience. I have alts on a different server than my main and Ive been to several guilds with them(I have a lot of alts) and in most of them the people were basically like this. They had no idea how to play the game, they had no idea how bosses in dungeons/raids work and the only thing they were chasing is gear. If guild got stuck on a boss, they just left for a different guilds because that guild could get them lootz without work. Of course I'm not talking about mythic guilds, I'm talking about guilds that are still progressing heroic. The problem usually is that the leadership of the guild is genuinely nice, but the people they can recruit are "shit".
I totaly get your point. I got back to wow after 2-3 years off and have even tried realm changing to get a decent guild. It doesn't even have to be a guild full of amazing players or anything. Just a couple people dedicated to doing the next hardest thing, whether that be mythic,heroic or even normal. In my opinion it mostly boils down to people being too lazy to research or try to learn the mechanics.
TbC Baseline progress system was sooo good. Natural barriers and WAY less gear showers. I agree on almost everything you said in this video and i think Blizz is the sole culprit for this kind of situation. After years of cuddling clueless players and making them think they could do stuff just dumbing down the game, it's no wonder that we got at this point. I want to add a couple of things to this. The middle of the pack guilds are dead, i mean by this that when there was a reasonable progression (TBC) middle of the pack guilds were a thing, they were smaller relaxed versions of the top end, so players could see and touch a bit of guild life without being too much time invested, that kind of aggregation was beneficial for everyone because good player would eventually go up the ladder and become better, while "bad" or casuals were stopped in theyr track and more often than not realized they were actually "bad" or casuals. The death of middle guilds was caused solely by BLIZZ. Starting with hc dumbing down followed by 10-25 split, wellfare epics, LFG, Normal-hc split, LFR, Flex, Crossrealm and finally titanforge and m+ giving ridicoulous high gear. Guilds have lost almost every purpose to exist outside of the mythic raid scene, that means in turn that people who want to create communities have to deal with a total lack of bargaining power with the playerbase, just because most of the middle pack guilds were a bunch of friends or old gaming pals trying to find theyr own place and in need of say 10-15 people more to sustain a reasonable roster, but the lack of bargaining power makes this guilds almost a joke since EVERYTHING they can at first glance do is doable solo, EXCEPT the most important part, and that was training and socializing, the subtle nature of the real advantage that those guilds provided was eventually the cause of theyr downfall. The natural barriers to content that were in place back then were used to set the pace for the player growth, and if you were willing to take the journey eventually you will find yourself among other like minded players. I think that the biggest mistake blizz made since WOTLK is to not take into account the human nature of it's playerbase and thinking torough what the long terms effect the systems changes they introduced would bring.
I remember my first M+. I got a MaW 3+ key from M0 and so I wrote about it in the guild chat. The problem was that it was a typical RU-vidr's guild, which now I know isn't much different from your standard trade chat guild. So some high-itemlevel rogue whispered me and before I realised anything, I was in a group with people having a way better gear than me, forced into the DPS role even though I mained the tank spec. And as soon as the dungeon began, those people, way overgeared for some stupid 3+, started complaing about me, my gear and my dps. The dungeon ended in like 5 minutes and the only experience I got from my first M+ was the feeling of being humiliated.
I did one lfr the other day for my fresh pally for the lego ring and some essences...but my god any gear that dropped for me instantly 3 or 4 whispers from people begging me for it, even if it was tier for the wrong class (I had a DK ask me for the pally tier from bridge bro). The begging and pleading is totally real and it blew me away, I'm not surprised that you mentioned it.
I had a guy back in the tomb days that I tagged along for the weekly rush (I was mythic raiding at the time and missed our weekly hc clear) and I started to question why he brought in people with really low ilvl, always asking for gear they should not need based on the ilvl requirements of the group. Turns out the leader took money from them to boost them through tomb with mythic geared/skilled people carrying them, they guy straight up told me when I left the group and I got into a discussion about using people for your own benefit and the guy seemed to think that he was a saint for providing a PuG for people like me to just queue into and that he had the right to get paid for it. The selfishness stretches beyond just getting yourself geared, it makes people use each other like this as well, at least that's what it was like for me.
Reading lots of comments here and I keep noticing a trend of. "Just research this" or "Just learn that" and I can't help but think it takes just as much typing to say "Hey, this site or this video really helped me learn this or that tactic." There's an entire community of people in this game that just don't care to actually help someone. I'm glad I found your channel and have found the "Get Good" series, or Fatboss guides and I think others are glad for this too, I just wish more people would really try to help those that clearly don't get it instead of just arguing about why this person doesn't care or is just bad and won't do anything about it. Thanks for all the content Preach, it's helped me immensely in getting into and doing better at playing WoW.
You mention that an optional, in game way, to see what killed you as a way to figure out whats going on. There's a death recap button to the right of the release button. Don't know how long that's been there, but I'm convinced that no one knows about it.
I experienced this elitism when I did a full Antorus normal run. Now I've never raid lead before but I wasn't getting into groups, so I and a few friends made a raid group. Started from the beginning and the full run took from 6pm till 1230am. I had looked up tactics and was asking before each boss if people knew what they were doing. Most bosses we didn't have to explain. But when we got to Argus we wiped 5 times before we were able to down him and I was accused of just wanting to be carried. So I had to pipe up and say that I had been there from the first bosses and I was paying my way, and then I was just getting told that we were all shit because we didn't one shot the boss. We did have some good players and a few randoms, including one of the tanks, had been there from the start. Got lucky and gained about 6 upgrades, only 4 ilvl, but gained 6% haste and 5% crit
Love the series, been online gaming for 20 years, guild leader early. 5 years in guilds in wow, last 5 years no-guild PUG world you describe. The things you discovered are accurate, I returned in December after 2 years off and have all 12 toons around 940-945, things really slow down in that spot and a lot of things you comment on are correct. I think the part you haven't covered much is why players do this. You should dedicate a long video at the end of this to WHY do players make this CHOICE, and that's what it is, I could run stuff with a guild but I have done that for years and prefer this. Take some time to look at it from their perspective. You should look deeper into the negative aspects of being in a guild that make people make a choice to not participate in the content with one. I think one of the main reasons people walk away from the game is actually issues that occur within their guild either falling apart or internal issues with other people and the struggle this creates. Some of my very best, but almost all of my negative experiences within WoW have happened in this environment and I am glad Blizzard created a game that I am not FORCED into this, my life is still complete if I don't get Mythic kills in a Wow Expansion.
The conclusion: get mythic gear and life is easier. Log into WoW for 3x 3 hours a week for mythic runs and one upper kara 15+ a week or MoS for the cache. Have a life outside of that. Before I joined a mythic raiding guild during ToS, I'd spend 5-6 hours a day every day playing to get worse rewards. It's not even equatable. It's pretty much the old saying: the more specialized you get in an activity, the less time you need to spend doing it. With the difference, in mythic it's not really about specialization, just don't suck at your class, do mechanics and cooperate with group. ToS was different, but with antorus, there isn't that much more per single person that needs to be done over heroic, it's just the coordination, i.e. social element.
I would not call myself a good player. I started in legion and played affliction warlock. I raided heroic in a guild and we got each done quite quickly so some of us wanted to try mythic. Eventually 5 people from the guild joined a mythic guild, including me. Me, a newbie, raided mythic tomb. I never made the most damage but I did the right tactics and ok damage. What I noticed was that when you're on the level of mythic, everyone in the group has to know the tactics and follow them or you all die immediately. But if you're only raiding casually, you feel like you don't really have to learn them, because as long as some people know them you'll get the kill, even though it would make everything so much easier.
Awesome series Preach. I'm having problems with raider.io as well. Getting into groups has been very interesting. I don't blame them for using it. Just as you said you'd want to have the best chance of a successful run as well. It falls short of showing the true skill of the player. Great work man.
It's just like with raid achievements. Curve migh just mean you are a social player in a mythic guild while cutting edge probably means you are reasonably competent. 3k score might mean you are a social player in a mythic guild while +5k score probably means you are reasonably competent.
lol 5k as reasonably competent. If your looking for someone to push maybe. I don't really like the m+ scene personally because it's still the same dungeons all day every day. I personally only have a 1.3k but that is because I run a very select group of dungeons(that I have gear I could use from) and never above a 16 because theres no point if I don't view pushing as a personal goal. The issue with raider.io is they reward quantity over quality of player. If I run as many different dungeons as I can then I would get a decent rating to get into pushing groups and even if I was bad if I ran with enough pushing groups some would complete them. Then eventually until you get to the ceiling number you'll eventually plateau. While it is the best system in place right now it's not one I'm an overall fan of.
In fairness, Raider.IO isn't really rewarding quantity over quality... it is just people are lazy and use the overall score as a guide, rather than the persons best run at the dungeon they are recruiting for (which is even shown in the addon). But, I guess Raider.IO does provide the overall score, so they are at least partly to blame. My big problem with Raider.IO and similar tools is that they desocialise the game. The logical way to progress in the Mythic+ scene would be to make some friends, set regular practice times, and get to know each other via comms. Learn the dungeons. Get better together. But very, very, very few people are interested in this approach, because it is just easier to look at one overarching number and not communicate at all... still results in running in to a wall over and over again, but the higher that number on the people you recruit, the less times you have to run in to the wall before you break through.
My buddy and I played high end M+ from legion launch until 7.2.5. We were unguilded because we both had work schedules that were flexible enough that we could play a lot but too random to commit to a raid schedule. We quickly learned the same thing preach learned in this experiment... almost everyone who pugs in WoW is "catastrophically terrible." Despite that we managed to use group finder to build a friends list of rockstar M+ players and we pugged curve in nighthold the second week after release... The way we did this was to go beyond wowprogress (or raiderio nowadays) and actually look up every single applicant on warcraftlogs. We simply refused to invite anyone who did not parse at LEAST 85th percentile on the majority of bosses in heroic, preferring 90+. Basically we found that ultimately warcraftlogs was the only true metric of individual performance. Occasionally you'd still encounter someone terrible who inexplicably had good parses, but most of the time if someone consistently parsed well it translated into overall competency. Is it elitist? Maybe. And obviously it callously excludes anyone who hasn't participated in a raid where someone was logging... but as preach clearly demonstrated in this series it was really the only way to survive in pugland. Any time we strayed from this strategy it was a catastrophe. Using it we sometimes cleared raids faster than our friend's mid-tier guilds. Of course it also requires being the sort who is willing to create and lead your own groups and raids, which is not for everyone. Ultimately, unless you have some extenuating circumstance like we did... just join a guild. Really.
This is so relatable. I have played like this for a while and now that I saw the struggle pf Preacher i said to myself “hey! I can do the same thing” I mained healer (priest) for 8 years and the only other class that i played was paladin. So i boosted a new character that i never even touched before. A rogue. The journey was tiring and tideous. In 2 weeks i managed to go from 870 to 945 with Keystone master done and curve on argus. The only leggos that i have are sephuz and the reward for killing argus ( quest reward from Vellen ). So nothing too special and clearly not Bis. If you ask me it’s cancer to go through this especially as a pure dps class. And to reinforce what Preacher said in the previous episodes I was easily out-damaging ppl with more gear than me just because i looked up guides and talent sets and learned my class.
In case someone wants to argue my char is Rarebambi-Kazzak and the guild is called crazy for cats. Personal guild in which i’m the only member because i have the crazy cat lady achievment
I love this series, Some really high quality content. Also makes me so happy i'm in a nice guild that just goes for Ahead of the curve each new raid. I just have to be there for 2 nights a week and do some farming to keep up at the start of a patch, feels good man.
I already knew how pointless the pug world was, but when you made the equivalence between pugs and my day job it had a sobering reality for my real life. Thanks for the wake up call, i need to get something sorted out IRL
I thought it might be time to share my story, as this video is essentially the point in the journey where most would say "time to join a guild". This final step of joining a guild is where most have polarizing views. Joining a guild that can meet your schedule and also does the content you're interested in, is either ridiculously easy (just do research noob), or ridiculously difficult (they're all try-hards, a-holes, they suck, etc)...depending on your point of view. So...here's my story. I started playing in late Wrath. I knew nothing about this game or this franchise at all. My dad and younger brother both played and were constantly harping on me to try it out. I eventually bought and installed the game and was then directed to create an alliance character on Norgannon US, where both my dad and brother played. (this is problem number 1, btw). I quested to max level, keyboard turning and mouse clicking the whole way since that's what dad and bro did. (this is problem number 2). At max level I looked at dad and bro and said "what now?" Well neither of them raid, so naturally the answer was "run dungeons and do dailies". I got bored very quickly. Not until half-way through MoP did I finally make a friend outside of my dad and brother. This person invited me to his guild. There, I was immediately called out for keyboard turning and clicking, and I was taught how to key-bind. I did not actually get the hang of keybinding until the beginning of WoD. But I started raiding with them, just a little, in MoP. And i learned. I learned that I sucked, that i didn't know crap-all about the game and that my dad and brother also sucked. It was a harsh lesson. Fast-forward to Legion. I am for the first time, fully prepared and excited to get into Mythic raiding. I did loads of research. LOADS. everything from guilds, to upcoming boss fights, to alpha and beta research, to class guides. I joined the second best guild on my crappy server. We only got to 2/11M EN. This is when it occurred to me that I wouldn't get far on my current server. I spent the rest of EN bouncing around from server to server on my Warlock main, slowly getting higher progression, wasting loads of money, drowning in frustration and never finding a guild to call home. Then NH hits and I stepped back. Took a break. Re-evaluated. I started doing more research. Did i really want to play a warlock? Did i really want to play alliance? etc. I started leveling a couple horde toons on a brand new horde-dominated high pop pve server. I fell in love. The light bulb came on. When i capped my Blood DK i had my "aha" moment. Tanking was for me. I loveeeee my blood dk. and my prot pally, and my druid. This was my Cinderella shoe. Finally. I then proceeded to basically do the same sequence of events Preach is doing now in the series. When I hit 938 ilvl and cleared Normal Antorus on my DK, I started looking for a guild. And after 9 days of looking for and researching the exact right fit, I found it. The people, the progression, the atmosphere, the schedule, the demands....everything is just right for me. The point here is....look how much time I wasted. From Wrath, when I started, until last month when I found my perfect guild on my perfect server. So much time wasted! so much banging my head against the wall! All those years! it never occurred to me before this xpac, to try another server completely. Or to try the other faction. To all the guildless and frustrated who are reading this....my advice is: Take this time before BfA hits to take a step back and experiment. Play on other servers. Play other factions/classes/roles. Get clear about what you need and want. And most importantly, challenge yourself to get better. GL & HF.
26:36 I love how he is backpaddling there. My guild told me I am bad because I do that and it brings me joy that even such a good player as Preach does that
Thank you for doing this series. I recently joined back into legion and was confused as to why I was having such a negative experience with an expansion that seemed so promising. I have encountered all of the problems that you have hit on and I am now looking for a guild to hopefully get out of this PUG world.
I actually make an aim out of never accepting grouped people. If they suck or start being awkward you're automatically against the odds and they'll just leave in a pinch. Adding to that, I generally find it more beneficial to take a group of 5 individuals with an acceptable score/ilvl because if you have 5 people in it for themselves, then the presumption is that they'll all be doing their best to see things done.
Preach my man, i got to take my hat off. This is one of the best wow series ive seen on youtube. The reality of this is so scary, i could feel my own week for the whole Legion, from day one. I basicly raid mythic on my main. But i have 6 alts, that im a complete loner on. and most of the ideas u gained trough this experience, is exactly the same as mine. Everyone of em, you did not miss one. For a while, i was wondering, is it just me? or is this how wow have turned into? And, is it every players nightmare every week. Ive done this on 6 alts, and the game starts to hurt me, in ways i never knew. To get into something, u know so well, like Antorus and M+ on ur main, does not mean shit on that other character. even if u link em half of the Antorus raid in mythic kill. they turn around look at ur IO score, or the ilvl. I cant imagen how it is for a player, that has no knowledge of legion as a returning player, or just got ur first 110. they prolly would think that the world has gone mad. Im on a European server, and its not looking any better. There are grps, of players over 970 in Antorus, that cant get down bosses even mid ways, and have a dps of 1m, even if its a huge aoe fight. The issue is not gear, its the player knowledge. They focus so much one the perfect rotation, to keep the highest dmg, that they forget what the fight is all about. Its so bad, they dont know even the core mechanics. So what happens, is the bigger ilvl the bigger mouth they get. And u cant tell a ilvl 970 to play, because they know it all. In eu, to join somthing, as a fresh player, u need to outgear it before u start gaining, what u are looking for. So all instances has like normal. 945-950 to join, heroic, u need to have 950-970.. Logic!! Anyways, im like you, i like to talk to much. Im looking forward to ur next journey to ur endless goal. Cheers
Getting dangerously close to the core gameplay loop in WoW, what we've known for years. Gear is what keeps people playing more than anything, and this loop is reinforced by DPS meters and being able to see improvement. Think about how much time you spend in WoW doing tasks that are utterly boring (World Quests, legendary grinding, Arcano grinding on Argus). Then look at how much time you spend actually enjoying the game. I remember hearing way back in Wrath that Blizzard works with psychologists to figure out how to get players hooked in the game. And thats what they're doing to the vast majority of people. Yes, there is fun outside of gearing such as playing with friends and family and raiding, but its the core loop.
Honestly its why I liked WoD more. My guild shadow priest and I discussed this in Emerald Nightmare, not even 3 months into the expansion, how much more we enjoyed WoD because we could have 2 mythic level characters and have a life outside the game. I was downvoted on reddit bringing it up around then too about how much time WoW is sucking up. On top of that, I have very mixed feelings about M+. My shadow priest has multiple BiS pieces that come from only titanforging in M+. Say I want the neck (high haste and crit) from VotW. To see it drop its somewhere between 1/5 and 1/10 runs. For the neck to Titanforge to 960, likely need to see it over 25 times. So I have to run 15 VotW over 250 times about to have a reasonble chance of an upgrade. What is that nonsense even?
then maybe you don't need the upgrade. Which you probably don't if a regular one won't do. A lot of "mythic raiders" and I don't use quotes as an insult but as a it's a terrible label as mythic with an organized group isn't hard it's just practice. And the grinding was never as bad as most people complained honestly. While it should be better with what they said for bfa I have had 5 toons mythic ready while working full time with a family. It's all about realistic expectations. TF is meant to be a bonus not something that you have to have. And looking at it like that is terrible. If you aren't having fun don't do it. I actually to some extent enjoying killing world bosses and rares. It passes the time in a way that lets me try different things.
Mindset > tactics > individual skill > gear, that is the order, that is how you win at wow. They all work together and you can't do well without them. Having a great mindset and tactics without having a minimum amount of gear wont get you very far but if you have that minimum you will out perform someone that values gear over everything.
Working,having a family/life practically means I couldn't do the solo life grind as preach has done here. This must be a very specific group of players that do this.
The way I got better at the game, was learning mechanics and learning how logs worked. Trying to get perfect logs is a good way of getting to know your character, and how much you can squeze out of it. It also requires you to look up what talents to use, what statpriorities you need and stuff like that.
You should make a standalone video about how to get better in an economical fashion. Your class guides are great for seperate classes but I think people can benefit from just a general rundown, what mentality, what tools, what logs, how to look at your logs, how to take a class guide and apply it. Or how to use that super handy recap feature taht Blizzard totally did put in the game which very clearly lists you the last 5 or so sources of damage that killed you. That kind of basic stuff.
I love this series. It is possible to play the game solo (due to 10 day rotating watch schedule) and enjoy it if you ignore end game altogether (once in LFR to see the cut scene). Still lots to explore and do. But if I did get back into end-game content, this series is the shining light for finding a decent guild and working on building a strong social connection within it (whilst learning mechanics/rotations).
Man, you just read my mind with this series...and i only play healer or tank...i dont like DPS. I have a Holy Pala 960, a MW/BrM at 960, Shaman Resto 954 and a Blood Dk at 962...i just frozen in time know...i just made a mage and a Prot warrior insta 110 and gonna do all again because i just love to play this game but i just cant progress with my mains...just tired of pugs...but i work, i have a child with 2 years and a wife...wow is just a hobby...many nights i just close the game just to not wake them up or destroy the pc...it's sad... keep up the great job!
I liked the analogy of real life dead end jobs.. That's part of why I don't really play MMOs anymore, I still miss WoW occasionally, but then I remember how it just seems like a never ending treadmill. The part I miss most was raiding with my guild and just hanging out and tackling raids together, I just hated how if I had a busy week at work and missed a couple raids and fell a week behind on gear I was suddenly behind the curve and no longer a part of the 'clique' of core raiders and no longer welcomed to partake in dungeons anymore.. In the end, I feel like my monthly sub is not always worth it, especially if I get busy IRL and take a break for a bit, with the price of expansions plus monthly fees, WoW becomes very expensive.. So I just choose not to play.. I play GW2 but I think GW2 is the other extreme of the gear treadmill, where there's really no way to advance your gear at all, which leaves me feeling like there's not a whole lot to do other than try and complete all the achievements and get cool skins (which kinda goes against their business model anyways, they'd rather sell you the cool skins). There aren't any really cool or unique sets of armor in GW2 either, which kinda just takes all the fun out of it and leaves me yearning for WoW again.. I wish there was some game that had a middle-ground where you still had cool sets of unique gear, but those sets were more of ways to advance sideways, rather than just pure stat upgrades on a never ending treadmill of gear that will inevitably become utterly obsolete due to stat inflation over time.
I really enjoy these kinds of series, and i would definitly be down to watch another, even if the rules are the same, the rng wont be, and i really enjoy how you share your knowledge in these series :) Maybe longterm have one with each class? :)
You could do a series of these videos focused on leveling a new toon using dungeons. At EVERY level people ninja pull, stand in mechanics and never CC or interrupt. I've frequently been in dungeons as a healer in which a tank is using 0 active mitigation and I get kicked because he's dying. People just cannot be bothered to learn the game anymore.
i remember that i was pretty new to raiding and m+ in legion and i started playing at the begining of 7.3 and i remember spending literally hours just to kill Kil'Jaeden in LFR compared to me now doing hc/mythic raids with a guild in bfa spending around 6-9 hours a week. I can confirm him that real people who commit themselves to get a kill are not top mythic guilds, they are lfr heroes.
Can't believe I found this series only now. Sitting in BFA these days, absolutely hating pugs so much. I have a group of friends I play with when we all run together. Easily time +15/+16's, not a problem. But as soon as not everyone is on, and you try run PUGS...God it's awful. Even timing +10's can be challenging with pug groups.
This series has been quite a bizarre journey for me. I have been a mythic raider since before it was called mythic and I almost never pug. Even on the rare occasions when I do pug I won't pug as my main spec (tank) I will just que as a DPS or healer because you see less toxicity that way. The ilvl I naturally acquire because of my guild activity means I get to pick pretty much whatever group I want as well, so I never see the things you have shown us with this series. I genuinely had no idea the hours these people are putting into the content I stopped even bothering to do ages ago, or how terrible people actually are at the game. I suppose because I see it as such a trivially easy thing to kill the adds and my guild would rarely ever take more than 1 or 2 wipes to figure out a mechanic so easy I just don't ever expect that people may find that hard to do. Guilds will help you if you have the inclination to actually become good at the game you don't have to stay living in this world if you are one of these people, surely it cannot be fun or rewarding to play the game this way. Though it is important to understand if you do join a guild you do need to put in the effort. 20 minutes is all it takes to learn the key parts of a raid from online resources and most guilds have a forum that links to all the places your guilds strategies will be coming from.
Good series and very thought provoking. I come from the masses. I like playing the world doing crafting and generally having a stress free life in the game. I only do instances if I have to. I know at 67 (and a clicker) my reactions are too slow and that the youngsters (thats almost everyone else) wants to play thrash and dash. I dont. I will collect gear in the way you describe to make the next expansion start up easier. But I also know there is no future for Blizzard in making the next expansion start up so high geared its un playable without using high level gear from the previous one so i know i will be able to play regardless its not gated. I think its important to appreciate that there are players who want different things from a game. Some want to play at the optimum level possible. "Mythic Raiders". Others want to dip in and out. "Filthy Casuals". And others want to be somewhere in the middle. "Blizzards revenue stream" There is also as you describe aspirational ones who thing they are great but suck. "Deniers". With this final group probably brings the most damaging people to the game they rant and rave generally behave like school children and put off people who try to get better and understand the mechanics but get totally pissed of being told they are useless and generally worse. My conclussion is to live and let live. Its a game and that is the reality. In life only a few people get to play for MU or make it in acting or the pop world and thats the way it will always be. I still enjoy watching you tube videos about the game and seeing what the better players do but its not for me." I know my place". Reference to a famous sketch by John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbet.
OMG the portal keeper part. I have nightmares from pugging that fight. You know its a bad time when you and ONLY TWO others, go up and are sitting there like.."uhhh guys..portal.......GUYS!!!....dead" 🤣😑
I love this cause it's basically the same thing i went through coming back to the game a week ago, started my own HC Antorus since for some reason people think 930 ilvl isn't high enough for it (even though guilds used to do it with 910ilvl on average), took in everyone that had about the same score and kept them as long as i saw they knew how to play the freaking game. Every single 950+ ilvl dude that came, left after we one shot the boss saying "Terrible group, sorry i don't wanna play this". We haven't wiped a single time, and it was those elitist dudes that died for most fights , blaming the healers and the overall lack of dps for making them have to dodge shit for that long :')I hated the pugging progression so much, so many bad players with great gear thinking they're actually the ones doing the carrying, why anyone would willingly avoid finding a guild is beyond me. Even if they're bad players, at least there's no overall toxicity, every wipe contributes to everyones progress.
"If I get more gear the game will get easier" - my guild is 3/11 M and we have been for a while because two of the locks have that exact attitude. They make no effort to learn the class or the fights, but because they're raiders they keep being given gear to help them out in an attempt to improve their damage. In reality they're just shit and need to spend 2 hours reading forums and trying dummy testing
I'm no mythic raider, but I've been heroic raiding with the same group of friends since Wrath. (7-ish people now) We have to recruit new guildies every exp to fill out the roster because we inevitably lose people every exp that isn't from the "core team". In rare circumstances we keep 1 or 2 members from exp to exp. For the last couple exp, we have intentionally tried to keep it as close to 10 as possible to cut out the overwhelming abundance of poor play and thus compensate for it with our experienced players. Particularly this exp we have had to pug on most raid nights, due to a variety of RL and in game reasons. That being said, we still have ahead of the curve as the guild is usually able to carry most bad play that we end up suffering through in the raid. I hate that I feel a lot of satisfaction knowing that your experience in the pug world mirrors my own. I know many players, like myself that had played since Vanilla, complain about the pandering in the game over time and what its done to the player base....but this is really starting to drive home that average player just does not pay attention or care to get better at what they do. Considering they can get rewards equivalent to raid quality over time with little to no work, why should they? (Thanks warforged/titanforged!) The fact that they are removing tier sets in the next exp (which means its ALL about raw stats) takes away the last barrier of someone who frequently raids and someone who just did enough X content to have an equivalent gear quality. I don't want to make this sound like a job, but as a hobby it requires some level of work to be able to do what you want to do. (People who woodwork for fun don't rapidly gain the ability to make quality furniture for their house.) In many cases that is raiding, even for these terrible players that pug raids. Unfortunately the "level of work" required to get in is just attaining gear. Since that can be gotten from many sources not related to technical ability to defeat raid bosses, we are left with many players in a world trying to do something that they know nothing about and feel no need to further learn on. The move to things like Raider.IO scores is just the community trying to find a way to tell the trash players from the ones that stand a chance at success in skill based scenarios. I cant stand Raider.IO because it makes it very hard on alts or new mains to get anything done in a pug if you cant go with guildies. Maybe we are too far afield from the "You must raid, to get gear good enough to raid. You must do intro raids, before you can do current raids." world. I don't want to say we have to gate content behind a demonstrated ability to do it, but it seems like that is the only solution to this problem. TL;DR Thank you, Preach. I hate that you have to experience this, but maybe some higher exposure (like your videos) will stir something in the community. Either in how Blizz has created this environment, or maybe in how the player base approaches it. Keep up the great work!
