Raiding is Hard.

I feel compelled to emphasize something that I feel a lot of WoW players forget. Raiding is hard. Ok, maybe it's not fair to say that all raiding is hard. Blizzard has worked pretty hard to offer raiding at multiple difficulty levels, and I think most people would agree that not all of those difficulties are hard. So, let me re-state. Mythic raiding is hard. Truthfully, I think that what people perceive to be "hard" is based on a lot of factors: prior experience, expectations going in, ego ("pfft... nothing is hard for me. cuz i'm so pro") and of course, player skill. I think it's quite possible that there are people out there that find even the lowest raid difficulty - LFR - to be hard. Frankly, in some ways LFR is harder than most other modes of raiding, because of the sheer amount of stupid that finds its way in, combined with a depressing amount of "I'm here to troll the rest of you by intentionally making things harder," which is just a whole other brand of stupid, if you ask me. Wiping in LFR just proves to me that even the easiest possible raiding mode requires people with at least a sliver of skill and a clue what's going on. This brings me to my next point. When something is hard, it requires skill. And usually time. A lot of time. What really drives me to write this post are people that insist they want to raid, but, as far as I can tell, have no idea what that really looks like at higher difficulty levels. They are usually people fully flushed out in badly gemmed, un-enchanted LFR gear, and when they see your guild's progression team achieve a new boss kill (i.e. "Mythic ScaryRaidBossName!" achieves pop up in guild chat), they feel compelled to either: a) Throw a fit about not being there, if they're an aggressive personality. b) Make it clear that they'd like to come "next time," if they're a milder personality. I find both of these equally awkward to respond to, so I usually just don't bother trying. Last xpac, for example, our team got our very first Mythic Garrosh Hellscream kill with only 2 nights to spare before the release of WoD. The guild achieve along with 20 personal achieves all spammed guild chat at once. In general, the immediate response from guildies was "GRATZ!" However, following that almost immediately were things like: a) Why wasn't I invited? or Why wasn't that on the calendar? b) Can I come next time? My snarky side responds to these with: a) Because I don't have a clue who you are or if you're at all capable. Because we've recruited a specific list of decent players to attend such things rather than posting them as all-call calendar events. b) Next time? Really? We just finished - after MONTHS of time invested - the end boss of this expansion, two days before the next expansion. There won't be a next time.

Of course, I didn't say these things. I just rolled my eyes and let Neph handle it. A few minutes later, we saw one of those guildies posting a "lfm Mythic Siege" in trade chat. We both felt kind of sad for him for a bit. Though we'd never seen this particular guildy show any interest in raiding (i.e. he never asked about it before, and didn't show up a single time to our weekly free sign-up flex runs for the entirety of the tier), clearly seeing the Mythic achieves pop up had triggered some version of feelings of "left out" and "I wanna do it, too." Out of curiosity, we did a quick armory/wowprogress check. As I suspected, un-gemmed, un-enchanted LFR/Flex (new normal) gear, albeit with a legendary cloak and therefore some Ordos gear mixed in there, to his credit. I don't know if I blame LFR for this per say, but I believe it contributes. I believe that people that don't have a clue about mechanics, or how to properly play their class, can queue up and, with minimal wipes and time invested, complete the content. Generally I think that this is a good thing. However, lately I am wondering if it's precisely this that creates a false idea in people's heads of what raiding looks like. I can't fathom, for example, why someone who has mostly LFR'd and dabbled in regular mode (but never touched a single fight on heroic mode) would try to pug a Mythic group in trade chat. There's just no way that he even has a clue what he's in for. So that's what this post is about. Let me spell it out for you. Mythic raiding is hard. Here are things you can expect from Mythic raiding: 1) You will need to commit to a team for between 6 and 18 hours, every single week, for several months in a row. If you don't show up every single raid time, you are at risk of being kicked permanently from the group. 2) Even with said committed team, you'll spend hours, days, weeks, or sometimes months - yes, MONTHS - wiping on a single raid encounter before you successfully complete it for the first time. 3) The mechanics are hard and unforgiving. A single mistake means that you will likely not only die, but probably cause raid-wide failure resulting in a wipe. Multiple mistakes means that people will start getting nasty. The degree of said nastiness varies by raid group. 4) You need to be good at your class. As in, do research. Lots of research. Follow the advice and guides of the experts and theorycrafters. Do what they say, and do it well. If you're not pulling top-end DPS at all times, your group will not kill Mythic bosses. Period. Are you up for spending an average of twelve hours a week, every week, wiping on raid bosses just to get slightly closer to that eventual kill? Are you able to fully comprehend and therefore flawlessly handle dozens of mechanics at a time? Are you pulling a bare minimum of 60k DPS? If the answer to any of the above questions for you is "no," then Mythic raiding is not for you. Yes, we really do spend this much time in there, learning and wiping together. Yes, we really do sometimes spend months showing up and wiping on the same raid boss repeatedly. Yes, we do sometimes get frustrated - at raiding in general or with one another.

We push each other to excel at mechanics and output, often designing and/or downloaidng addons to help us be consistent. We're not just logging in to guild one evening, and going "Hey, who's up for Mythic?" and laughing our way to kills within the hour, as with LFR. So, next time a Mythic achieve pops in guild, instead of thinking, "They went in there without me?! I want to go!" try to remember that every time one of those achieves pops, it's a marker of serious effort and commitment, and instead try to think, "They're really working hard in there. Good for them."

Updated 12/31/15 for relevance