The consequence of no grind

My guild just finished up the current WOW raid on heroic mode.  We are now ready to start working on mythic.  This is slower than the group is used to, but that is explained by the raid being harder than expected.  I like that, and I am perfectly content with slightly slower progression.  In the previous expansion I landed in the middle of a patch and didn't get to experience most progression.  Now I get to see the whole thing start to finish, which is great.

However, we have some problems.  Castle Nathria is a tough raid.  One of the hardest start of xpac raids ever.  The absolute top guilds cleared it in 8 days or so, which isn't unusual, but I am concerned for middling guilds like mine.  In previous expansions there were mechanics to let weaker guilds gradually beat extremely hard content.  Initially Blizzard just put in % bonuses, but those didn't feel good.  Lately they have been adding in slow grinds that let players gradually get more powerful so the weaker players can slowly overpower difficult content without feeling like it was handed to them.  In the previous raid tier we had Corruption, which increased my damage by about 40%.  This allowed me to put out sufficient numbers to do content that the best guilds beat without that bonus.

This expansion we don't have those systems that slowly power us up.  There are a few small things like sockets from Venari, additional conduits, and gradual gear increases, but if the best players in the world beat the content at 220 item level, and my guild gradually gears up until we are fighting the bosses at 226 item level, we are only getting an 8% increase over them.  Even with sockets and conduits we are still only going to be 15% better than them in raw numbers.

That won't be enough.  We have good players, and some middling players, but the absolute best in the world are more than 15% better than us, especially when you consider that they can stack classes to have any composition they want while we simply have to run with the group that we have.  Given their class stacking options we might well only have a 10% advantage by the time we arrive at the final boss.

It seems entirely possible that we will simply be flat out unable to defeat the mythic raid this tier.  It won't be just us, either - any guild that is more than 10% worse than the best in the world isn't going to be able to win.

I get why Blizzard did this.  They wanted to get away from infinite grinds where players felt obligated to play forever for marginal increases to power.  They wanted to just make the game about getting your gear and then being able to log off for the week if you want to.  I get that, and I don't disagree.

But the consequence is that if the raid is extremely hard for the best, then the pretty good cannot win, ever.

If we can't beat the final boss before the next raid tier arrives, that isn't a disaster.  I will just keep on practicing to beat whatever it is we can beat.  Still, I bet there will be a massive outcry about this once other people realize what is happening.  They haven't seen it yet because they are used to beating bosses a couple months after the cutting edge people do.  When they finally realize they cannot do so, then a reckoning will come.

It turns out that even though people complained about the infinite grinds those infinite grinds had a purpose.  Getting rid of them has consequences that we will have to grapple with, whether or not this is a net positive change in general.