---
title: 'WoW Raiding is CHANGING FOREVER'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=KIomQxY0nBs'
video_id: 'KIomQxY0nBs'
date: 2026-08-03
duration_sec: 838
---

# WoW Raiding is CHANGING FOREVER

> Source: [WoW Raiding is CHANGING FOREVER](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KIomQxY0nBs)

## Summary

The video discusses the upcoming Spellfire raid in World of Warcraft's Midnight expansion, focusing on the significant change that the mythic difficulty will now be a flex raid for 15-25 players, breaking the long-standing 20-player cap. The creator highlights the implications for raid composition, accessibility, and the evolving design philosophy of the WoW team.

### Key Points

- **Spellfire Raid Announcement** [00:33] — The new raid, Spellfire, is a mini one-boss encounter releasing in a couple of weeks. On mythic difficulty, it will be a flex raid for 15 to 25 players.
- **Mythic 20-Player Cap History** [01:01] — Mythic raiding has been hard capped at 20 players intentionally, allowing for tuning around group composition and class representation. This has been a deliberate design choice with few exceptions, such as rogues being excluded from Race to World First.
- **Competitive Environment of Mythic Raids** [02:32] — The 20-player restriction creates a harder competitive environment, requiring consistent coordination among 20 players, which is difficult for many, especially adults with limited time.
- **10-Man Raiding Demand** [03:28] — Many players prefer 10-man raiding due to easier coordination, but it was removed due to balancing issues between 10 and 25-man difficulties. The new flex mythic raid is a step towards addressing this demand.
- **Flex Mythic Raid Details** [05:05] — The Spellfire raid will be a flex raid for 15-25 players, meaning difficulty scales with player count. This allows more players to experience mythic raiding without needing exactly 20 players.
- **Blizzard's Evolution** [05:50] — The creator acknowledges past issues (bugs, broken specs, silence) but notes significant improvements, citing Ion Hazzikostas' apology for Shadowlands and admission that formulaic end-game design is a problem.
- **Breaking the Formula** [09:09] — The flex mythic raid is a sign that Blizzard is moving away from the predictable patch formula (new raid, dungeons, rep, zone) and embracing more innovative content design.
- **Item Level Boosts** [09:55] — The new boss drops items with boosted item levels: mythic 298, heroic 285, normal 272, LFR 259. This is similar to Ascendant Void Cores, providing a reason to farm the boss.
- **Loot Table Breakdown** [11:22] — Each armor type has one set piece (plate chest, mail legs, leather head, cloth chest) and an off piece (plate/leather belt, cloth/mail boots). Also includes a crit/mastery neck, haste/mastery ring, and a trinket with random secondary stat proc.
- **Fight Difficulty and Design** [12:10] — The fight is likely to be easier than typical mythic bosses, serving as an intro for non-mythic raiders and due to balancing challenges with flex sizes. It's an AoE fight with many adds, which the creator enjoys.

### Conclusion

The Spellfire raid represents a major shift in WoW's raiding design, making mythic content more accessible while maintaining challenge. This change, along with improved communication and design philosophy, signals a positive evolution for the game.

## Transcript

Also, items at a much higher item level. Did I catch your attention yet? This week, we have attacked Blizzard on the gold situation that seems to be almost identical to last time we visited this topic. We also went hard on them on the
fact that we don't get a money as a playable race. Still upset about that, by the way. But now, it's time to switch it up and talk about the actual Ws that the wild team has been cooking with Midnight so far, which will culminate
with the new raid that is set to release in a couple of weeks. Spellfire raid, which is the name of this mini one boss encounter,
is the fact that on the mythic difficulty, this raid is a flex of 15 to 25 players. If this doesn't sound impressive for you, let me tell you
three things. First of all, mythic rating being hard capped at 20 players has been very intentional and also decision that devs are very stuck on with no intention of changing it in the foreseeable future at the very least. 20
players makes mythic rating really good to be tuned around group composition and class representation, we assume, most of the time anyway. With 20 people, you can have one of each class and then stack a few that are
exceptionally really good that one season. There have been very few exceptions from this rule in the last three or four expansions, with most recently rogues, which have been excluded from the race world first.
Sad rogues. Outside of that, top guilds have made it Outside of that, top guilds have made it their objective to have ideally, one of each class. That doesn't mean everyone should do it, but having control over
should do it, but having control over group composition as a wild developer, I imagine, would make the content easier to design and tune. I'm, of course, not talking about the multiple nerfs that always hit mythic raids and lower
nerfs happen strategically to give the most amount of people a chance at clearing the whole thing without invalidating the prestige around clearing it early where it's most difficult.
difficult. That ties into the second thing. Mythic raids being restricted to 20 people creates a harder competitive environment for players to engage in as the ultimate goal in a particular wild season. Having
20 consistent players all work towards the same goal is difficult, especially if you are an adult. On paper, if you ever organized anything anywhere with three or more people, you would know how hard it is to get everyone on the same
page when it comes to doing stuff. Let alone 20 people. Yet, if 20 people can actually come together and cooperate for a common objective to be cleared, they
get to do the pinnacle of wild PvE, a mythic raid. Because of what this means for the game, the devs never budged on the number requirement for a raid. Lastly, we need to discuss 10-man raiding. 10-man raiding in a modern
conversation mostly refers to mythic raiding being available for 10 people since all the other difficulties already are flex raids. In case you didn't know what flex raiding is, it means that you can have a
different number of players enter the raid and the difficulty will dynamically adjust to how many raiders you have. Flex always has a minimum of 10 raiders, however, so not less than that. Over the years, for a lot of people, it has
always been easier to gather about 10 players for a raid rather than 20. And a lot of them want to do mythic, but just cannot gather the 20 required. Obviously, 10-man raiding bypasses that since we can probably agree that within
a guild, you might like everybody, but really the number of people you really want to play with is usually smaller than 20, mythic or otherwise. Plus, the availability of those people is usually lower.
When 10-man raiding was introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, a lot more players enjoyed raid progression, so much so that you are hard pressed to find a Wrath of the Lich King player that doesn't want this 10-man raiding
back. One of the main reasons this went away was because it was difficult to balance. At the time 10-man raiding was a thing, 25-man was also in the game, and these were not equally hard or equally easy across the board, and
balancing between the two was a nightmare. Hence, 20-man became the norm and the most consistently good balanced raiding environment. Balanced from all points of view, not just unholy Death Knight does more
damage than your fire mage. And now, after almost 18 years, we have a change in the meta. Not only do we get a mythic raid that can be done with less than 20 players, it will actually be a flex raid. The number of players it will be
to in the realm will be 15 to 25, meaning that if you bring 14 players, the boss won't have less HP or do fewer mechanics than on 15. But the change will be perfect for a lot of players that have been itching to try mythic
raiding, but just couldn't get a round to doing it because of whatever encountered. This also means another thing. Maybe 10-man raiding is no longer thing. Maybe 10-man raiding is no longer a dream.
Blizzard changed and I totally get where you're coming from. I was there when the patch launched with more bugs than my university shared bedroom. I was there when specs were broken for a whole season before fixed.
I know stuff isn't perfect and likely never will be. But, I also remember back in BFA and Shadowlands when the community was burning inside because the devs were absolutely silent. They weren't fixing the game. They were
creating borrowed power nobody asked for and putting us on covenant grinds that they could have totally removed but said they couldn't until they did. I remember when specs were playing the same talents for two expansions in a row with no
changes, no new spells, no new points, not even stat or gear changes, just the same thing. Those were boring and terrible times to be a wild player and the wild team looked like it was 100% dying.
I remember when everyone jumped ship to Final Fantasy because wild was killed by Final Fantasy because wild was killed by scandals and well, very nasty stuff. I remember when Affliction Warlock and Feral Druids had no way to apply dots in
AOE and literally had to click each enemy in a mythic plus dungeon and put their dots up and their rotation just had the tab key to be pressed every other global. You may not remember all of these and that is absolutely awesome.
The fact that for some of you these sound like alien things to exist in the development of the game speaks volumes to the evolution of the wild team. Again, not saying it's perfect. Hell, we already went through some of this this
week on our previous videos, but it is getting better. And if you would have told Marceline and myself a few years ago that we will not only have three raids within the same season, but also one would be a flex mythic raid, we
would look through your bags to find the mushrooms you were eating because we're going to be fighting a mushroom? One of the best moments I have personally had with wild developers was an interview with Ion Hazzikostas.
I I can't remember who had it. I think it was Taliesin and Evitel, but Ion said two things in the last few years that I enjoyed. One was, "Sorry for Shadowlands." And two was that the formulaic design of WoW's end-game
content is a problem. I don't know how much WoW you have played, but a new patch bringing in a new raid, maybe a new zone, maybe a new dungeon is the exact same formula we've been
having for over a decade. With the advent of mythic plus, we also have been having the eight dungeon rotation every season. But it was always the same thing. You could predict 90% of the content of a patch by looking at the
patch you are in. New raid, eight new dungeons, a new rep, a new zone. That sounds good in a vacuum, but do this three to four times per expansion for four to five expansions in a row, and now you have 12 to 20 seasons of the
now you have 12 to 20 seasons of the exact same content just repackaged. The fact that this formula has been flipped this season is an incredible sign. It's a sign that the rusty cogs at Blizzard are finally getting greased so we can
actually move the game into the future and have more cool stuff to do and not just rinse and repeat like a hamster wheel. The fact that we have our very first flex mythic raid since mythic became a difficulty 12 years ago is a
sign that the rigidness of wild development is changing even more. The signs have been there for a while, but now you cannot ignore them anymore. I'm sure your unique favorite thing in WoW still sucks and should be addressed, but
raids number of bosses notwithstanding and flex mythic is a big step up for the wow team.
increase in item level drops from the boss. Recently we have had the Ascendant Void Cores that we are using to raise the item levels of weapons and trinkets. Particularly those of six out of six hero and myth tracks respectively to 285
hero and myth tracks respectively to 285 and 298 item levels also respectively. The loot table of Rothmire, the new raid boss, will have the same item level boosts. Mythic loot table will drop 298 item level, heroic 285, normal 272, and
LFR 259. This makes a bit of sense if you think about it. You want players to have a reason to farm this boss outside the one-time kill. At the same time, it keeps inflating player power to
ridiculous numbers and then season two will need an even higher item level jump impactful. On paper, however, I am enjoying this style of gearing more than a static predictable loot table despite item
level being the most boring design for an RPG item. They clearly wanted this season to keep players engaged with the content and give them something to do, chase, and work towards at all points during the patch. Obviously this works
in their favor since the player drop-off is allegedly staved off whenever cool new stuff gets added to the game. I guess we will have to see how it evolves as the expansion moves further towards its later seasons.
As for the loot table itself, every armor type has one item that can be catalyzed into a set piece. Plate wears have a chest piece, [music] mail have legs, leather have head, and cloth have chest again. Aside from this,
every armor type gets an off piece with plate and leather getting a belt, while cloth and mail get boots. There's also a crit mastery neck piece, a haste mastery ring, and a trinket with a random secondary stat [music] proc. This is
actually really good. With there just being a few items, it will not invalidate all of the previous content since you will only get to replace at most five items, but still desirable enough to do for some more upgrades.
unfortunately haven't been able to test it ourselves, but there are plenty of people that have, and we included the footage in our video so far and links to their actual videos in the description that we recommend you check. The fight
looks really fun, and as it seems to be the season the case, uh another AoE fight with a lot of adds, which I'm not going to condemn. I love adds. I have a lot of AoE with my class. But, would have been very interesting to
see at least a pure single-target fight this season. Either way, the difficulty of the fight will likely be very low comparatively to other mythic bosses because of two main reasons, we would guess.
One would be that this is supposed to act as an intro fight for non-mythic raiders to test out mythic raiding. Two would be because, on paper, it should be harder to balance around 15 to 25 and having a rigid tuning on it will
probably prove more trouble than it's worth. Hence, keeping it on the easier side will push it into more people and group compositions. And actually, a third thing is that this is a raid fight introduced
more than four months into the season. A lot of players would have dropped off by now. It has to pull people into trying it, but also adjust to a much scarcer player base. It just isn't the same thing as Void's fire or Dream Rift
being released early on, at least in theory, which means all the more that you should try it. Bring your casual friend in as well. The items, at the very least, will be 100% best in slot. If you thought we are shilling for
Blizzard, you need to watch our recent Amani video. It's ideal to take in the bad with the good and acknowledge both sides, and I have to be honest, their stance on Amani trolls is a little bit disappointing at this point.