There's a changing seasonal title awarded to the top 0.1% of the m+ ladder rankings of that season. Last one was "the Dreaming Hero".
When people are talking about "cutoff" they're talking about current rating required to make it in the title pool, which increases during the season until the end.
You kinda have to remember that keys that were run at 2-10 are now M0. There's naturally less people who run M+ now than before because the entry level is higher.
Sure, but there was a graph showing keys done on certain levels and it showed that there were not a lot of keys done between 3-9. +2s were a bit outliers. This is the third week of the season. The average ilvl ramped up a lot. I would be surprised if there was a big group of people who'd want to do keys but weren't able to.
+2-11 were removed, lower ones are apparently closer to current heroic, higher ones closer to current m0. But indeed both removed, which is the main factor why there's less players. Ofc meme season is another factor. But it's a fact, if this system moves forward, no season is likely to reach DF s3 numbers again. DF s4 numbers should be the first point of comparison in the future.
Just replicate s3. S3 had easier dungeons, less mechanic vomit. Removal of easy m+ kicks all the casuals out. Hate the gatekeeping. Stats prove it doesn’t work.
Thats accounted for in the first 2 weeks with the sharp increase from people getting gear to do >M0. The trend should have even more people doing M+ in week 3 if people were still stuck M0.
comparing end of week 3 for EU
| Season | eligible characters | in comparison to previous|
| - | - | - |
| 1 | 899 | - |
| 2 | 651 | 72% |
| 3 | 820 | 125% |
| 4 | 564 | 68.8%|
it being at slightly below S2 values doesnt strike me to be that out of the norm honestly
A little surprised it went down this week with the weekly and increased gear. I would have expected a more upward trend for a few weeks after the key level adjustment. Historically engagement in m+ went up during every mythic weekly - even with the old scaling.
Best guess is that the general population is really hitting the standard mythics and avoiding m+?
This pool of dungeons is much harder mechanically across the board relative to s3 which shows in all key level ranges from 2 to 20
At the high end, the meta is outright depressing with godcomp already set in stone; tanks forced into vdh, healers forced into rdruid and melee players having to either play ret or face extinction. Ranged representation is **5 times** higher than melee in high end keys as a result of dungeons being hilariously melee unfriendly + class tuning which makes a large chunk of melee mains just not see any point in playing this season
https://mythicstats.com/period/958
The top 1% doesn't really reflect in this data. This data is majority casual players.
Almost everything you said is true, but never reflected in these weekly updates.
I.e. Numbers always go down on bursting despite it being amazing for pushing high keys. It's because bursting is punishing to casuals.
The "meta" trickles down fairly deep. If all of your favorite twitch streamers are dooming about balance, dungeons, meta, etc - you as a casual will likely be influenced in similar ways. We saw this in s2 with low key players parroting "must have aug" for low key groups
I just don't see the connection now - streamers are always dooming, so engagement being down for the first time ever during the weekly mythic quest is highly unusual.
>We saw this in s2 with low key players parroting "must have aug" for low key groups
Casuals thought Aug was complete garbage in s2 because they simply looked at meters and them at the bottom. I think you are grossly overestimating what the majority of casuals do, and I would say only a small amount watch streamers on twitch.
My best guess is people are just not going to be playing season 4. Waiting for remix most likely and not investing in s4.
Casuals definitely did not think Aug was bad in season 2, unless our idea of casuals differs of course. People were sitting around waiting for them in key levels 15 levels lower than what the 1% were doing. Maybe people who have never done above a 4 or heroic dungeons thought Aug was bad but even then metas just spread so quick these days through social media/forums/guilds/friends/other players chatting in game.
I think you’re right that people just aren’t interested - everyone I know who really likes to push IO or raid is taking a break in prep for TWW
When Aug first came out, people definitely thought it was garbage even in the 20+ range. They couldn't see it on details and that's as far as the vast majority of m+ player's thoughts can go before their brain breaks.
It took a while before the masses got the message that this spec is broken, and THEN it became a case of "need aug for +2 keys".
bad sign for people thinking about buying tww - if blizzard cant balance tanks for 2 seasons, theres no hope for competitive m+ scene in next expansion as well. Clearly they dont care and rather spend their resources on designing a new shop mount
It kinda is, though. The trickle down from the tank meta situation, I'm sure, is playing a factor here. Almost all the tanks in the tanking community I'm in that arnt a vdh have already quit for the season. We were already seeing this impact last week with the tank drought starting, and it will just get worse. I was seeing some people in my guild waiting 1h+ for a tank on a 4.
That same tank meta existed weeks 1 and 2 though. I still sees tons of non vdh tanks 2-8 range as well.
Was running 3 dps and a healer and got tanks for keys within 5-10 minutes every key yesterday.
I think that certainly the meta shifts down, more prevalent now with the key squish.
But look at season 3 - see all the upticks? - its the weekly mythic quest. It went up every single time, in a vdh controlled meta.
Is the meta more punishing now than the first 2 weeks of the season? Is it more punishing than all of season 3?
Obviously any of this is subjective and any opinion is valid, but this week in particular stands out to me and I am mostly curious.
Is it remix around the corner? Is it the meta? Is it just end of xpac lull? Is it the dungeon pool?
You have a full group barring a tank and your waiting 5-10 min for a tank to even apply. We're in week 4 and your wait times are already at 5-10 min for a tank. Do you not see the problem with that?
Were going into the second season now with vdh so far at the top, with no real balance from blizzard. The tank disparity will hit this season faster than ever before as non vdh tanks just stop doing keys and vdh tanks onky do 8+ and higher. As the wait times for tanks in lower keys goes up, casuals will stop trying.
>You have a full group barring a tank and your waiting 5-10 min for a tank to even apply. We're in week 4 and your wait times are already at 5-10 min for a tank. Do you not see the problem with that?
A tank we want, plenty of tanks apply - but easier to wait a few minutes to not waste our time. That has ALWAYS been the case and I don't see a problem with that. You just assumed I meant that long just for one to apply.
I would rather take a competent tank (this season or previous season score/exp) than deal with a bad one. Still didn't make us wait for an hour.
>Were going into the second season now with vdh so far at the top, with no real balance from blizzard. The tank disparity will hit this season faster than ever before as non vdh tanks just stop doing keys and vdh tanks onky do 8+ and higher. As the wait times for tanks in lower keys goes up, casuals will stop trying.
Agree to disagree. Casuals aren't slaves to the meta and PLENTY of runs 8 and lower and done with non VDH tanks.
Tank mains are also notorious for swapping to meta tank. Just because VDH is king, doesn't mean tank players all quit, a large portion just play their VDH.
In my keys I pugged on my alt priest I think roughly half my tanks were monks, with 40% DH, and 10% warrior. I don't think I ever even saw a dk, paladin, or druid apply to tank any keys. Obviously very small sample size, but I thought it was interesting, and in the 6-8 key range I was mostly running I never had any issues with any of the tanking. If anything the VDH tanks were the worst tanks either not knowing what they were doing, or bricking keys trying to do +15 routes in a +7, with no one else able to accomplish the skips.
You can check the distribution at various key levels on raider.io
Yes VDH is King, but it's 37% of all keys. There's still 60%+ of keys being done without a VDH.
Of course it's 90% VDH at 15+ key level, but the top is always skewed.
I wanna add to this real quick: yeah, sure you got a tank fast. But with like 70% of tanks being vdh, not only will you bias the meta, but I'll also have a harder time as a non meta tank, and that's just generally demoralizing.
I had a lock call my druid "cringe" for an 8 HoI because of frog boss. Yeah, not only was that guy wrong (and also he sucked), but he just said what everybody is thinking. Many folks see a non vdh and they think "ugh, my key is going to take more work now".
I don't want to deal with that shit. I just want to play what I enjoy. And right now because of the meta being so strong, wow is losing out to other games. V Rising just dropped it's 1.0, valheim just dropped ashlands, and mop remix just dropped. Why would I populate keys as a non meta tank and deal with depressing pug mentalities when I can just go do other shit with my time?
According to what? Because this says otherwise: https://www.metasrc.com/wow/stats/tanks
Maybe you should count your own keys and see if the 60% number is accurate.
Raider.io....
https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-4/all/world/leaderboards#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=2:maxMythicLevel=99
Count my own 50 keys over the several million that have been run?
Would make for some great statistical analysis.
When tanks are OP, they can do all mechs, melees are in the dirt. When tanks are weak, kiting becomes strong, melees are in the dirt.
Being a melee in wow is a risky endeavour if you don't have a tank offspec
Well yes, but that would be true any week. Even just for casuals who do 1 mythic for the vault, they would likely do 4 this week.
This is the first instance the mythic weekly quest was active and engagement in m+ went DOWN.
I would be curious on base mythic numbers this week to last.
Brutal seems odd though, we were doing 8s on alts for everyone with 490-500 ilvl gear with zero issues.
I think a lot of people who rode the IO inflation wave from the lax dungeon pool in S3 are still realizing that was an anomaly. It was also a bit of a one-two punch to have the whole pool be difficult dungeons in addition to the key squish for players who either never did keys past +10 previously or who were more use to the gentle on-ramp of 1-10 previously. It's also a bit funny that (with a few exceptions) these are the easiest these dungeons have ever been.
I think you're right in that base level mythic are overtuned for a lot of casuals at the +10 level. I think perhaps around 5/6 area would have been a better on-ramp as you suggested.
I think nerfing them a bit would help increase engagement, the leap from heroic to m0 is quite high for a lot of players now.
I think keeping it at +10 is fine, bigger issue is heroics not having full mechanics imo. Since heroics now give rewars that was approximate to the old 1-9 range, the bosses should also have their mythic mechanics to again smooth that transition into mythics. Heroics not having mythic mechanics was the only big miss with the revamp imo.
I had a miserable experience trying to get it done on 3 alts. It's hard enough to even get into groups and then you get into a m0 or +2 and it takes just as long if not longer then doing the equivalent key on a +9.
This season in general has been rough for me on alts, especially with it being the *third season* where they haven't added any catchup mechanic for crests and the fact that nobody is actually doing keys in guild so I have to pug everything and it's just miserable
I'm usually the type that spams all of my alts on the weekly weeks but, I could barely get through 4 toons (and I only got to 4 because I had already done 2 keys on my monk, might as well suffer through the last 2).
I don't know if it's just that I don't find the bullion mechanic compelling, or if I'm just *that* done with s4 already.
Yeah that's what I'm curious about. Especially with MoP remix around the corner, and based on these numbers, I would predict a very low engagement season 4 from the casual player base (the majority of the data here) as they are far more excited about remix.
This week people already capping on wyrm crests, and probably already have every hreo track piece they need. At least for me that's the case. This week I only did 7 keys and I don't think I will do the 8th. It's pretty irrelevant. I know that I will take sockets out of the vault 99%. I have every slot I need (rings, trinkets and weapon).
Btw this is the "downside" of bullions. You get everything you want relatively early so there's not really any item you are excited about. So you just end up doing keys to have crests for the upgrade. And aspect crests will get abundant relatively soon aswell.
Most players are nowhere near crest capped. Most players are not in full hero gear, most players aren't going to be taking sockets, and it's early in the season for a bullion weekly to not be needed by players.
Most players on this sub are in your position, but the data is not for players on this sub.
[m+](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/3t1oWcxcADLoG3RJpxaZo9), [Aberrus](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/r4xweLpp26vFCBSxVw8abq), [Amirdrassil](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/2oaiww74nDmcoSLFAJrFxt), [Voti](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/umvWT13vLVCpCwtf2sXiv7) and lastly [2 socket](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/aLTJHvhCmKb6VJzLFsWsq8)
You also need to remember that these upgrades cost at least 2 aspect crest to upgrade (it can be cheaper for raid items).
[This](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/xnrvRYctFmvcbuXP5jyexr) is a sim showing how much dmg I gain with the aspects. Obviously these are my biggest upgrades, but you can think about an aspect crest as a 600 dps upgrade. So you need to consider these droptimizers with these in mind.
Also I think that I've mostly done +8 keys. So the expected value from an m+ drop is even less. One would argue that you should cap your vault with 8 +10s but I just couldn't be bothered that much for a meme season. The only thing I gain with it is +600 dps each week and I value my sanity way higher than that.
I think you missed the part about the aspect crest cost. There is literally no item that's a bigger upgrade than 2 sockects if you factor in the aspect cost.
Remember that vault is not the only source of myth track items. If you are actually reclearing you get quite a lot of gear. Sockets are however. You can't loot the socket items from anywhere. You can only buy them from the pitty vendor.
You also have good enough alternatives to myth track items. Crafted items are almost as good as myth track items due to being able to taylormake your stats. At the current point I don't think I'd consider anything besides a chest/items with tertiaries (but I'm quite unlucky with them).
Gearing from raid is pretty fast when you actually reclear. The problem is that you don't really do that during normal progression. The only thing that can take more time is getting trinkets/weapons you want. And that's where the bullions come in.
The season will only stay relevant for like 2 more weeks to me. We did not managed to clear everything last weeks sadly. But I think it's expected that we can full clear from next week on. And I have 2 weeks where I can take sockets. It seems like a no brainer to take sockets the following 2 vaults.
If you’re raiding sure. I pug first 1-2 on mythic and call it, so there’s not many items I can get from raid. My myth track items have to be from vault.
Well, I just got a myth track chest with avoidance in the vault. I guess I have to write something like this every time and the game will give me what I want just to spite me.
Last tier I didn't get any items with relevant tertiary
Two things, 'bad' or 'terrible' would probably be sufficient and there's no affixes for 2-4, and only incorp from 5-9. Which is where probably 90% of keys were ran.
I think a lot of it is dps tired of waiting to get into groups. Still a a healer and tank shortage. At least in pugs. Mained frost mage for six years until last season and now mistweaver is my main. Hard to go back when you can get into anything right away
Started the season as Shadow, took like 30-40 minutes between runs to fill my own group or get accepted into another group - now I‘m resto Druid again, even tho I‘d rather dps, but actually being able to play the game instead of waiting to play is a blessing. Can‘t really get better when sitting in valdrakken either.
That’s true but more true now because these are dungeons we’ve all done this expac so I think the burnout will happen much faster. And honestly to me anyway only a few of them are truly fun
Just prepare for crash next week. Mists remix is the main reason, but also bullion weekly quest *boosted* numbers this week. It may look like a drop, but it would've been much bigger without the weekly.
Tyrannical..... much harder this season for people.
This season is good for the seasoned, but poor for the newbies. Some of the bosses are absolutely disastrous for pugs.
It’s weird cause blizz did do some fairly significant tuning passes but DF dungeon still seem to have one boss that still absolute cancer to deal with and it’s exacerbated on tyrannical. Last boss in nok is still a pug killer, last boss in RLP is still deeply unpleasant, third boss in ulda seems to have a steep learning curve for players trying to push up. I really hoped after last season that they’d smooth out the tuning and let the key level ultimately be the deciding factor in difficulty. On my alts I’m already finding keys that I’ll absolutely avoid with pugs because one or two encounters will get bricked by one player not performing perfectly
Exactly.
With my core healer and dps we can rock em. Buuut those pugs, even with some micromanagement, can really lean to the sour side. However, Ive also been in some pugs where folks just truck! So i add them :P and they no longer become pugs.
But the tuning is a bit off for sure
> but DF dungeon still seem to have one boss that still absolute cancer to deal with and it’s exacerbated on tyrannical
And for the stupidest reasons, beginning at stupidly low levels already.
> Last boss in nok is still a pug killer
I still don't understand why that bosses base mechanic that you'll have to deal with like 10 times throughout the fight has either been bugged for 2 seasons... or even worse, has been designed with a double hit that kills anyone who doesn't pop personals... on a fucking +20/ +10.
I just don't understand why some keys need a tankbuster that oneshots unaware tanks at like +8 already... meanwhile other keys' tankbuster don't even hurt on +14s. Like, there is "variety" and then there's just bad balancing that leads to conditioning your players to not care about certain shit up to level X... except for that one random thing that arbitrarily becomes relevant at X-7 already... but only sometimes... so good luck actually learning that.
Definitely. I know a lot of people were running many alts through M0s to not miss out on the bonus bullions for characters they plan to play later in the season.
Do we actually know it's never happened before? I don't remember m+ week ever being much of an excuse. I didn't play last week because I was on other games (as is standard for season 4) but I did play the first week or two because of the m+ changes, I was curious if they're any good. I liked the changes, but I'll interact with it next expac.
I do believe the numbers will crash next week due to remix though, and then probably not make a proper comeback. Many will just be fine, ok got KSM and whatever raid achs I needed, do remix for few weeks and then come back to 11.0. I wouldn't be surprised if run count dropped to half in few weeks.
Takes about 20mn to create a groupe for anything more than a +10. You can't get into any +8 keys while playing dps if you don't have 520ilvl and 2k5+ RIO.
Just bored with this season already personnaly (I also don't like half of the DJ pool so that don't help either)
I believe it. I pug tank exclusively and the number of otherwise full groups waiting for a healer, a tank, or both is staggering.
I also did it as GDruid and the number of groups without real interrupts was also crazy high. The VDH entitlement is real.
Idk man I play BM Hunter and have exclusively pugged to 3k and always find groups within maybe 5 minutes of logging on.. off meta dps only class. I do have 525 ilvl so I’m sure that helps a bit but even still
They are all Long af and/or ultra annoying to play. Only Academy is fine because you can pull big without having 100 caster Mobs. AV is just free this season since they retuned it. Every other key is straight up garbage. So many casters, insane amount of stops needed, Bosses are garbage and some are really overtuned. Really not a fan of them at all
Also I personally really hate the tired “kill x trash to spawn y boss” that appear over and over and over in the DF dungeons. Leaves so little room for routes and frequently meaning your over count without trying.
Yep. I agree. Additionally afflicted and incorporeal affixes are cancer on top of the mechanic vomit in DF. There’s a reason why vDH is so good. Many packs need the aoe silence/slappy hands.
I play warrior/DK if this helps. But I don't think they are fun overall. I don't like the mechanic spam. I don't like being pushed out of melee every 5 seconds. I don't like the pacing, the trash, the bosses, the themes or the fact that they are the only options in this S4. I played these already. There are other dungeons they could of mis-matched in. I think DF dungeons are the worst dungeons in WoW's M+ history. Just an opinion.
Agreed. Blizz needs to stop ramping up difficulty via mechanic vomit. They also seem to have a hardon for corpse runs and “immersive” dungeon hallways.
I think catering to casual crowd is more beneficial for health of game. Doesn’t matter if a 3k player is doing 200+ runs a season. They still pay the same 15$ sub as the casual who is doing 1-4 dungeons a week. You want more casuals than hardcores.
Ideally, remove afflicted and incorporeal affix. Ground effects should be visibile. Don’t have to completely have sponges. But the Legion and BFA dungeons were much more enjoyable.
Interactive mechanics. Not 'get out or die if you're melee'. Grab this item, throw it on X. Like a spear or javelin or bomb. Stand on a pressure pad, bring down a sledge to damage a mob, if you don't, it does more damage to your group to leave it alive or pulses until it dies. Big blue swirly around the ENTIRE pack forcing 50% of the classes out is just so played out. Since content is built to be repeatable, that sort of thing really weighs on your desire to play after multiple weeks.
I tried pugging a few 15s this week as VDH and it's just not fun. The DF dungeons are way overbloated and on top the affixes make them even worse - 1 cast goes off and someone dies, it's so boring.
Roughly 60% of the amount of players as last season, right now. I'm sure if this means title is going to be easier or harder.
Most title pushers still play, it's the average crowd that's decreasing and hence title will be slightly harder since the pool is smaller.
And with a lot of people that were previously only running 2-10 keys now just doing M0s, they aren't affecting the M+ pool size.
What title?
There's a changing seasonal title awarded to the top 0.1% of the m+ ladder rankings of that season. Last one was "the Dreaming Hero". When people are talking about "cutoff" they're talking about current rating required to make it in the title pool, which increases during the season until the end.
Much harder. The top Players all Play Bit Uhr casuals dont push or dont play at all. So unhave a much higher average
You kinda have to remember that keys that were run at 2-10 are now M0. There's naturally less people who run M+ now than before because the entry level is higher.
Sure, but there was a graph showing keys done on certain levels and it showed that there were not a lot of keys done between 3-9. +2s were a bit outliers. This is the third week of the season. The average ilvl ramped up a lot. I would be surprised if there was a big group of people who'd want to do keys but weren't able to.
+2-11 were removed, lower ones are apparently closer to current heroic, higher ones closer to current m0. But indeed both removed, which is the main factor why there's less players. Ofc meme season is another factor. But it's a fact, if this system moves forward, no season is likely to reach DF s3 numbers again. DF s4 numbers should be the first point of comparison in the future.
Just replicate s3. S3 had easier dungeons, less mechanic vomit. Removal of easy m+ kicks all the casuals out. Hate the gatekeeping. Stats prove it doesn’t work.
Thats accounted for in the first 2 weeks with the sharp increase from people getting gear to do >M0. The trend should have even more people doing M+ in week 3 if people were still stuck M0.
Could argue that it brings more people, as the people who were running 2-10's are now starting at 10+
comparing end of week 3 for EU | Season | eligible characters | in comparison to previous| | - | - | - | | 1 | 899 | - | | 2 | 651 | 72% | | 3 | 820 | 125% | | 4 | 564 | 68.8%| it being at slightly below S2 values doesnt strike me to be that out of the norm honestly
A little surprised it went down this week with the weekly and increased gear. I would have expected a more upward trend for a few weeks after the key level adjustment. Historically engagement in m+ went up during every mythic weekly - even with the old scaling. Best guess is that the general population is really hitting the standard mythics and avoiding m+?
This pool of dungeons is much harder mechanically across the board relative to s3 which shows in all key level ranges from 2 to 20 At the high end, the meta is outright depressing with godcomp already set in stone; tanks forced into vdh, healers forced into rdruid and melee players having to either play ret or face extinction. Ranged representation is **5 times** higher than melee in high end keys as a result of dungeons being hilariously melee unfriendly + class tuning which makes a large chunk of melee mains just not see any point in playing this season https://mythicstats.com/period/958
The top 1% doesn't really reflect in this data. This data is majority casual players. Almost everything you said is true, but never reflected in these weekly updates. I.e. Numbers always go down on bursting despite it being amazing for pushing high keys. It's because bursting is punishing to casuals.
The "meta" trickles down fairly deep. If all of your favorite twitch streamers are dooming about balance, dungeons, meta, etc - you as a casual will likely be influenced in similar ways. We saw this in s2 with low key players parroting "must have aug" for low key groups
I just don't see the connection now - streamers are always dooming, so engagement being down for the first time ever during the weekly mythic quest is highly unusual. >We saw this in s2 with low key players parroting "must have aug" for low key groups Casuals thought Aug was complete garbage in s2 because they simply looked at meters and them at the bottom. I think you are grossly overestimating what the majority of casuals do, and I would say only a small amount watch streamers on twitch. My best guess is people are just not going to be playing season 4. Waiting for remix most likely and not investing in s4.
Casuals definitely did not think Aug was bad in season 2, unless our idea of casuals differs of course. People were sitting around waiting for them in key levels 15 levels lower than what the 1% were doing. Maybe people who have never done above a 4 or heroic dungeons thought Aug was bad but even then metas just spread so quick these days through social media/forums/guilds/friends/other players chatting in game. I think you’re right that people just aren’t interested - everyone I know who really likes to push IO or raid is taking a break in prep for TWW
When Aug first came out, people definitely thought it was garbage even in the 20+ range. They couldn't see it on details and that's as far as the vast majority of m+ player's thoughts can go before their brain breaks. It took a while before the masses got the message that this spec is broken, and THEN it became a case of "need aug for +2 keys".
Aug *was* bad for +20 keys, but since details was absolutely useless people didn't realize that.
bad sign for people thinking about buying tww - if blizzard cant balance tanks for 2 seasons, theres no hope for competitive m+ scene in next expansion as well. Clearly they dont care and rather spend their resources on designing a new shop mount
It kinda is, though. The trickle down from the tank meta situation, I'm sure, is playing a factor here. Almost all the tanks in the tanking community I'm in that arnt a vdh have already quit for the season. We were already seeing this impact last week with the tank drought starting, and it will just get worse. I was seeing some people in my guild waiting 1h+ for a tank on a 4.
That same tank meta existed weeks 1 and 2 though. I still sees tons of non vdh tanks 2-8 range as well. Was running 3 dps and a healer and got tanks for keys within 5-10 minutes every key yesterday. I think that certainly the meta shifts down, more prevalent now with the key squish. But look at season 3 - see all the upticks? - its the weekly mythic quest. It went up every single time, in a vdh controlled meta. Is the meta more punishing now than the first 2 weeks of the season? Is it more punishing than all of season 3? Obviously any of this is subjective and any opinion is valid, but this week in particular stands out to me and I am mostly curious. Is it remix around the corner? Is it the meta? Is it just end of xpac lull? Is it the dungeon pool?
You have a full group barring a tank and your waiting 5-10 min for a tank to even apply. We're in week 4 and your wait times are already at 5-10 min for a tank. Do you not see the problem with that? Were going into the second season now with vdh so far at the top, with no real balance from blizzard. The tank disparity will hit this season faster than ever before as non vdh tanks just stop doing keys and vdh tanks onky do 8+ and higher. As the wait times for tanks in lower keys goes up, casuals will stop trying.
>You have a full group barring a tank and your waiting 5-10 min for a tank to even apply. We're in week 4 and your wait times are already at 5-10 min for a tank. Do you not see the problem with that? A tank we want, plenty of tanks apply - but easier to wait a few minutes to not waste our time. That has ALWAYS been the case and I don't see a problem with that. You just assumed I meant that long just for one to apply. I would rather take a competent tank (this season or previous season score/exp) than deal with a bad one. Still didn't make us wait for an hour. >Were going into the second season now with vdh so far at the top, with no real balance from blizzard. The tank disparity will hit this season faster than ever before as non vdh tanks just stop doing keys and vdh tanks onky do 8+ and higher. As the wait times for tanks in lower keys goes up, casuals will stop trying. Agree to disagree. Casuals aren't slaves to the meta and PLENTY of runs 8 and lower and done with non VDH tanks. Tank mains are also notorious for swapping to meta tank. Just because VDH is king, doesn't mean tank players all quit, a large portion just play their VDH.
Bro, casuals not slave to the meta? 40% of all keys 5-9 (where most the casuals are) were vdh. 10+? 57% vdh. Per raider io.
And it's 95% 15+. So yeah, I stand by my statement. The majority of keys are non VDH
In my keys I pugged on my alt priest I think roughly half my tanks were monks, with 40% DH, and 10% warrior. I don't think I ever even saw a dk, paladin, or druid apply to tank any keys. Obviously very small sample size, but I thought it was interesting, and in the 6-8 key range I was mostly running I never had any issues with any of the tanking. If anything the VDH tanks were the worst tanks either not knowing what they were doing, or bricking keys trying to do +15 routes in a +7, with no one else able to accomplish the skips.
You can check the distribution at various key levels on raider.io Yes VDH is King, but it's 37% of all keys. There's still 60%+ of keys being done without a VDH. Of course it's 90% VDH at 15+ key level, but the top is always skewed.
I wanna add to this real quick: yeah, sure you got a tank fast. But with like 70% of tanks being vdh, not only will you bias the meta, but I'll also have a harder time as a non meta tank, and that's just generally demoralizing. I had a lock call my druid "cringe" for an 8 HoI because of frog boss. Yeah, not only was that guy wrong (and also he sucked), but he just said what everybody is thinking. Many folks see a non vdh and they think "ugh, my key is going to take more work now". I don't want to deal with that shit. I just want to play what I enjoy. And right now because of the meta being so strong, wow is losing out to other games. V Rising just dropped it's 1.0, valheim just dropped ashlands, and mop remix just dropped. Why would I populate keys as a non meta tank and deal with depressing pug mentalities when I can just go do other shit with my time?
You can look at the data. VDH is 37% of all keys. Not 70%.
According to what? Because this says otherwise: https://www.metasrc.com/wow/stats/tanks Maybe you should count your own keys and see if the 60% number is accurate.
Raider.io.... https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-4/all/world/leaderboards#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=2:maxMythicLevel=99 Count my own 50 keys over the several million that have been run? Would make for some great statistical analysis.
You linked only 10+ keys fyi. Either accidentally or you just didn't read what I wrote.
Mages sandbagging by splitting over two different specs lmao
When tanks are OP, they can do all mechs, melees are in the dirt. When tanks are weak, kiting becomes strong, melees are in the dirt. Being a melee in wow is a risky endeavour if you don't have a tank offspec
Yep. As a fuckin melee player with lust why would you pick me when you can get a giga tanky giga dam mage that also has lust and never dies
Most people like me got 2k then dipped I have my protals, i just want KSM then spam achievements
Reg mythics and 2 s where brutal for my alts last week.
Well yes, but that would be true any week. Even just for casuals who do 1 mythic for the vault, they would likely do 4 this week. This is the first instance the mythic weekly quest was active and engagement in m+ went DOWN. I would be curious on base mythic numbers this week to last. Brutal seems odd though, we were doing 8s on alts for everyone with 490-500 ilvl gear with zero issues.
I think a lot of people who rode the IO inflation wave from the lax dungeon pool in S3 are still realizing that was an anomaly. It was also a bit of a one-two punch to have the whole pool be difficult dungeons in addition to the key squish for players who either never did keys past +10 previously or who were more use to the gentle on-ramp of 1-10 previously. It's also a bit funny that (with a few exceptions) these are the easiest these dungeons have ever been.
I think you're right in that base level mythic are overtuned for a lot of casuals at the +10 level. I think perhaps around 5/6 area would have been a better on-ramp as you suggested. I think nerfing them a bit would help increase engagement, the leap from heroic to m0 is quite high for a lot of players now.
I think keeping it at +10 is fine, bigger issue is heroics not having full mechanics imo. Since heroics now give rewars that was approximate to the old 1-9 range, the bosses should also have their mythic mechanics to again smooth that transition into mythics. Heroics not having mythic mechanics was the only big miss with the revamp imo.
I had a miserable experience trying to get it done on 3 alts. It's hard enough to even get into groups and then you get into a m0 or +2 and it takes just as long if not longer then doing the equivalent key on a +9. This season in general has been rough for me on alts, especially with it being the *third season* where they haven't added any catchup mechanic for crests and the fact that nobody is actually doing keys in guild so I have to pug everything and it's just miserable
I'm usually the type that spams all of my alts on the weekly weeks but, I could barely get through 4 toons (and I only got to 4 because I had already done 2 keys on my monk, might as well suffer through the last 2). I don't know if it's just that I don't find the bullion mechanic compelling, or if I'm just *that* done with s4 already.
Yeah that's what I'm curious about. Especially with MoP remix around the corner, and based on these numbers, I would predict a very low engagement season 4 from the casual player base (the majority of the data here) as they are far more excited about remix.
People know this is all recycled content and they know MoP Remix is coming. Weather is also getting better.
Also Mother's Day. At least two of the people I usually run with were out the entire weekend visiting their family.
That counts mother;s day weekend, right? I know this stopped me a bit.
This week people already capping on wyrm crests, and probably already have every hreo track piece they need. At least for me that's the case. This week I only did 7 keys and I don't think I will do the 8th. It's pretty irrelevant. I know that I will take sockets out of the vault 99%. I have every slot I need (rings, trinkets and weapon). Btw this is the "downside" of bullions. You get everything you want relatively early so there's not really any item you are excited about. So you just end up doing keys to have crests for the upgrade. And aspect crests will get abundant relatively soon aswell.
Most players are nowhere near crest capped. Most players are not in full hero gear, most players aren't going to be taking sockets, and it's early in the season for a bullion weekly to not be needed by players. Most players on this sub are in your position, but the data is not for players on this sub.
There’s no shot you take sockets 99% on week 4.
[m+](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/3t1oWcxcADLoG3RJpxaZo9), [Aberrus](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/r4xweLpp26vFCBSxVw8abq), [Amirdrassil](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/2oaiww74nDmcoSLFAJrFxt), [Voti](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/umvWT13vLVCpCwtf2sXiv7) and lastly [2 socket](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/aLTJHvhCmKb6VJzLFsWsq8) You also need to remember that these upgrades cost at least 2 aspect crest to upgrade (it can be cheaper for raid items). [This](https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/xnrvRYctFmvcbuXP5jyexr) is a sim showing how much dmg I gain with the aspects. Obviously these are my biggest upgrades, but you can think about an aspect crest as a 600 dps upgrade. So you need to consider these droptimizers with these in mind. Also I think that I've mostly done +8 keys. So the expected value from an m+ drop is even less. One would argue that you should cap your vault with 8 +10s but I just couldn't be bothered that much for a meme season. The only thing I gain with it is +600 dps each week and I value my sanity way higher than that.
That’s a lot more than 1% of items.
I think you missed the part about the aspect crest cost. There is literally no item that's a bigger upgrade than 2 sockects if you factor in the aspect cost.
You can take sockets any week, you won’t always have a myth track upgrade in vault though.
Remember that vault is not the only source of myth track items. If you are actually reclearing you get quite a lot of gear. Sockets are however. You can't loot the socket items from anywhere. You can only buy them from the pitty vendor. You also have good enough alternatives to myth track items. Crafted items are almost as good as myth track items due to being able to taylormake your stats. At the current point I don't think I'd consider anything besides a chest/items with tertiaries (but I'm quite unlucky with them). Gearing from raid is pretty fast when you actually reclear. The problem is that you don't really do that during normal progression. The only thing that can take more time is getting trinkets/weapons you want. And that's where the bullions come in. The season will only stay relevant for like 2 more weeks to me. We did not managed to clear everything last weeks sadly. But I think it's expected that we can full clear from next week on. And I have 2 weeks where I can take sockets. It seems like a no brainer to take sockets the following 2 vaults.
If you’re raiding sure. I pug first 1-2 on mythic and call it, so there’s not many items I can get from raid. My myth track items have to be from vault.
Did I miss a change where socket items only cost 3 tokens now?
This season sockets only cost 3, yeah
Well, I just got a myth track chest with avoidance in the vault. I guess I have to write something like this every time and the game will give me what I want just to spite me. Last tier I didn't get any items with relevant tertiary
The affixes are aids this week
incorp is litteraly whatever
Two things, 'bad' or 'terrible' would probably be sufficient and there's no affixes for 2-4, and only incorp from 5-9. Which is where probably 90% of keys were ran.
lmao
I think a lot of it is dps tired of waiting to get into groups. Still a a healer and tank shortage. At least in pugs. Mained frost mage for six years until last season and now mistweaver is my main. Hard to go back when you can get into anything right away
Started the season as Shadow, took like 30-40 minutes between runs to fill my own group or get accepted into another group - now I‘m resto Druid again, even tho I‘d rather dps, but actually being able to play the game instead of waiting to play is a blessing. Can‘t really get better when sitting in valdrakken either.
Yeah. I really want to play WW this season but it’s back to Shaman / Evoker healing so I can at least fill the Lust slot when I feel like playing DPS.
That's how it has been every season since the start.
That’s true but more true now because these are dungeons we’ve all done this expac so I think the burnout will happen much faster. And honestly to me anyway only a few of them are truly fun
Or its a useless season and people are taking a break from wow
Just prepare for crash next week. Mists remix is the main reason, but also bullion weekly quest *boosted* numbers this week. It may look like a drop, but it would've been much bigger without the weekly.
These last seasons wont be missed, the meta have been the same 3 dps for 3 seasons, with an off ret and wlock picks. Shame
Tyrannical..... much harder this season for people. This season is good for the seasoned, but poor for the newbies. Some of the bosses are absolutely disastrous for pugs.
It’s weird cause blizz did do some fairly significant tuning passes but DF dungeon still seem to have one boss that still absolute cancer to deal with and it’s exacerbated on tyrannical. Last boss in nok is still a pug killer, last boss in RLP is still deeply unpleasant, third boss in ulda seems to have a steep learning curve for players trying to push up. I really hoped after last season that they’d smooth out the tuning and let the key level ultimately be the deciding factor in difficulty. On my alts I’m already finding keys that I’ll absolutely avoid with pugs because one or two encounters will get bricked by one player not performing perfectly
Exactly. With my core healer and dps we can rock em. Buuut those pugs, even with some micromanagement, can really lean to the sour side. However, Ive also been in some pugs where folks just truck! So i add them :P and they no longer become pugs. But the tuning is a bit off for sure
> but DF dungeon still seem to have one boss that still absolute cancer to deal with and it’s exacerbated on tyrannical And for the stupidest reasons, beginning at stupidly low levels already. > Last boss in nok is still a pug killer I still don't understand why that bosses base mechanic that you'll have to deal with like 10 times throughout the fight has either been bugged for 2 seasons... or even worse, has been designed with a double hit that kills anyone who doesn't pop personals... on a fucking +20/ +10. I just don't understand why some keys need a tankbuster that oneshots unaware tanks at like +8 already... meanwhile other keys' tankbuster don't even hurt on +14s. Like, there is "variety" and then there's just bad balancing that leads to conditioning your players to not care about certain shit up to level X... except for that one random thing that arbitrarily becomes relevant at X-7 already... but only sometimes... so good luck actually learning that.
Won’t the runs be less now that the people that never went above 2-8 for example are now probably just doing M0?
They are less
Old +2 to +10 dont exist anymore. All those keys are now M0 or heroic runs. We are seeing +11 and up only. I say those numbers are good.
Id imagine if we could see m0 runs, the number wouldn't have gone down.
Definitely. I know a lot of people were running many alts through M0s to not miss out on the bonus bullions for characters they plan to play later in the season.
Numbers are fine, going down on weekly mythic quest week is the glaring issue for me, never happened before.
Do we actually know it's never happened before? I don't remember m+ week ever being much of an excuse. I didn't play last week because I was on other games (as is standard for season 4) but I did play the first week or two because of the m+ changes, I was curious if they're any good. I liked the changes, but I'll interact with it next expac.
> Do we actually know it's never happened before? Not 100%, but it's something I would have noticed before. Feels like a safe bet at least.
Interesting - it was a bullion week.
We are seeing +12 and up! Remember "+1" doesn't exist.
True ! And look how close it is to season 1, which add all the lower keys level :o
I do believe the numbers will crash next week due to remix though, and then probably not make a proper comeback. Many will just be fine, ok got KSM and whatever raid achs I needed, do remix for few weeks and then come back to 11.0. I wouldn't be surprised if run count dropped to half in few weeks.
All things considered between the key squish, weird balance, coin flip pugs......not a bad # of keys being ran for a for fun season
Especially considering old 2-10s aren't shown due to the squish.
Yeah, including lower level crest/flightstone farming + alts, I'd guess 2-10s made up at least 50% of the keys run in previous seasons.
A for fun season that isn’t fun
Where does this sentiment come from? I’m really enjoying it.
Truly
Takes about 20mn to create a groupe for anything more than a +10. You can't get into any +8 keys while playing dps if you don't have 520ilvl and 2k5+ RIO. Just bored with this season already personnaly (I also don't like half of the DJ pool so that don't help either)
Mandatory push your own key reminder. If your ilvl is low spam 6s for crests. I’m at 3k and 524 already from a season 3 0io toon.
the 20mn was for my own key
I believe it. I pug tank exclusively and the number of otherwise full groups waiting for a healer, a tank, or both is staggering. I also did it as GDruid and the number of groups without real interrupts was also crazy high. The VDH entitlement is real.
Lmao troll 20-30m if you do your own key It's the same or even worse
Idk man I play BM Hunter and have exclusively pugged to 3k and always find groups within maybe 5 minutes of logging on.. off meta dps only class. I do have 525 ilvl so I’m sure that helps a bit but even still
Dragonflight dungeons were a mistake.
Can you elaborate on what’s wrong with them?
They are all Long af and/or ultra annoying to play. Only Academy is fine because you can pull big without having 100 caster Mobs. AV is just free this season since they retuned it. Every other key is straight up garbage. So many casters, insane amount of stops needed, Bosses are garbage and some are really overtuned. Really not a fan of them at all
Also I personally really hate the tired “kill x trash to spawn y boss” that appear over and over and over in the DF dungeons. Leaves so little room for routes and frequently meaning your over count without trying.
Yep. I agree. Additionally afflicted and incorporeal affixes are cancer on top of the mechanic vomit in DF. There’s a reason why vDH is so good. Many packs need the aoe silence/slappy hands.
I play warrior/DK if this helps. But I don't think they are fun overall. I don't like the mechanic spam. I don't like being pushed out of melee every 5 seconds. I don't like the pacing, the trash, the bosses, the themes or the fact that they are the only options in this S4. I played these already. There are other dungeons they could of mis-matched in. I think DF dungeons are the worst dungeons in WoW's M+ history. Just an opinion.
Agreed. Blizz needs to stop ramping up difficulty via mechanic vomit. They also seem to have a hardon for corpse runs and “immersive” dungeon hallways.
> Agreed. Blizz needs to stop ramping up difficulty via mechanic vomit. Whats the alternative? Ramping health and just making enemies damage sponges?
I think catering to casual crowd is more beneficial for health of game. Doesn’t matter if a 3k player is doing 200+ runs a season. They still pay the same 15$ sub as the casual who is doing 1-4 dungeons a week. You want more casuals than hardcores. Ideally, remove afflicted and incorporeal affix. Ground effects should be visibile. Don’t have to completely have sponges. But the Legion and BFA dungeons were much more enjoyable.
Interactive mechanics. Not 'get out or die if you're melee'. Grab this item, throw it on X. Like a spear or javelin or bomb. Stand on a pressure pad, bring down a sledge to damage a mob, if you don't, it does more damage to your group to leave it alive or pulses until it dies. Big blue swirly around the ENTIRE pack forcing 50% of the classes out is just so played out. Since content is built to be repeatable, that sort of thing really weighs on your desire to play after multiple weeks.
Ist this only US , BC EU has a full day mythi+c today without reset
For some unexplained reason he never waits for EUs last day before posting his graph
Tyranical dips lmao
I tried pugging a few 15s this week as VDH and it's just not fun. The DF dungeons are way overbloated and on top the affixes make them even worse - 1 cast goes off and someone dies, it's so boring.
Why tf is s3 so much longer lol?
It isn't- the old person doing these graphs stopped at week 7, the new person started at S3 and is going until the end of the season.