10m vs 25m progression, a closer analysis

There is so much theorycrafting done on these forums for how to best gear the hard-core, progression focused, 25m tank. Everything to the finest detail is carefully analyzed.

For a long time I've followed these discussions closely and keep a constant eye to the gear/enchant/gem/talent/glyph/consumable choices of the best 25m Warrior tanks.

But I am not a 25m tank. I am a 10m Strict tank.

Lately I've begun to wonder if the choices that a 25m tank makes are always the same choices that I should be making. Is it possible that there are key points at which the 2 tanks diverge?

For instance, I wonder if the value of something like the t10 4pc is drastically different for a 10m tank than a 25m tank. Another example is Blood Draining vs Mongoose vs Blade Ward. I've long felt that Blood Draining is the way to go for a 10m tank. And what about Socket bonuses or the notion that 'EH is king'? Are the answers the same for a progression focused 10m tank?

The problem for me is that, and its why I've started the thread, the mountain of numbers and data is almost entirely from the 25m context.

If I could borrow a little of the massive theory-crafting machine that is Tankspot, I'd like to hear some thoughts on how a hard-core 10m tank might make different decisions than a hard-core 25m tank. Maybe this thread will simply be confirmation that a 10m tank should do the same things that 25m tanks do and that is fine too.

Thanks in advance.

Short answer: no difference.

Long answer: we do mostly 10's in my guild, and the gearing recommendations lifted from people who do 25's regularly works like a charm in 10's.

It's a fair question. A lot of wow theorycraft in general tends to work like this:

- Good mathematician models something in the game, making some assumptions about X, Y and Z values
- Good mathematician posits a conclusion or summary, with some caveats
- Someone writes a guide, based on the summary
- Someone reads the guide and tells his mate
- Some guys mate posts on a forum
... etc

The point here is that "assumptions and caveats" could include "in T10.25 man gear" or "with X trinket only available in 25 man" but you'd never hear that from the guy that posts what his mate told him on the forum.

I personally wouldn't fret too much with tank theorycraft, I think however most things hold fairly true. Assuming you are in the current 10 man version of the raid content (i.e. you are only half a tier behind) then the gear difference isn't that huge. The principals are all more or less constant, and have been for the whole xpac. I'd certainly keep in mind your position when reading things like emblem of frost pick lists, but I think you'll find that there are 10 man oriented versions of those already.

I think gearing recommendations are really the only thing that change since 10M tanks don't have access to 25 man gear. For 10M glyph of indom becomes a lot more important since they don't have access to Jug's Vitality or Heart of Iron. (assuming they do zero 25 mans, but the bosses those drop off of can be PuG'd on my server so that also depends on your server, etc.) But that's just an example. As far as EHP, gemming/enchanting, etc. goes, it's the same.

I've always used the 25 man gear lists even though I am in a strictly 10 man guild as well. It's simple enough to just ignore the 25 man exclusive items, especially since most of those lists will say which it comes from.

About the only thing I can think of that might be worth thinking about would be block. Since the 10 man bosses hit for less, the value of block is slightly higher than to a 25 man tank. But overall block is a pretty useless stat to stack, so you're probably safe for the most part.

Also, some people will place a certain "value" on the set bonuses, and use the gear differences of their tier of gear to determine that. Overall, I think the difference is not something to worry about, but a 25 man tank might think that this certain setup is ideal for him, while it might be something else entirely because of the limited gear available to a 10 man tank. I think this is probably the question that needs to be answered if you're truely trying to identify differences.

The Op makes some very valid points.

Inc. damage is MUCH higher in 25m then in 10m. Considering the difference in EH between a 10m strict and a 25m is not extremely variant, do the 10m tanks have the same requirements as 25m's do?

An example the OP mentioned, the tier 10 4pc. (Just to clear up now, I don't like it.)
I imagine it's far more useful to a 25m tank where the incoming damage tends to be much higher, therefore the extra cooldown could be more valuable.

It's an interesting question, as there's no doubt the requirements are different for tanks between 10 and 25's. Further, 10's don't get all the buffs 25's do in most cases. They have to work harder to hit caps like spell hit (no boomkin / sp) or haste.

If it's a different set of requirements, do the same rules always apply? Should they?

I'll be back to look at this thread; hopefully someone has more insights.

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Originally Posted by drae

The Op makes some very valid points.

Inc. damage is MUCH higher in 25m then in 10m. Considering the difference in EH between a 10m strict and a 25m is not extremely variant, do the 10m tanks have the same requirements as 25m's do?

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Also consider that the gear that drops in 10m isn't as good. They have done a good job (imo) of scaling the boss encounters down to match the quality of gear that a strict-10 raid group will have available.

With that in mind, the usual gearing recommendations as far as how to gem and how to spec etc., etc., work just as well in 10's as in 25's.

In short, maybe you can't follow a 25-man BiS gearing list, but you can follow the theorycrafting, gemming and enchanting recommendations with positive results.

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I'll be back to look at this thread; hopefully someone has more insights.

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Thanks for your thoughtful reply. 10m and 25m progression is different and I would not be surprised to find data suggesting a divergence in how to best tank them.

The only place I really see a divergence when going from 10man to 25man tanking is in the area of utility.

I'm much more concerned about the utility I can bring (and what I cannot) to the raid in a 10man because I can no longer assume that every avalible buff and debuff has been supplied already. I frequently use an odd-ball frost IIT spec for 10man when we don't have our regular enhance shaman (for example).

In terms of priorities in gear, these are roughly the same. I don't put on diffirent gear for a 10man, and the execution of encounters is usually similar in nature. Then again, I do 25mans on a regular basis so my opinon could suffer inherent bias.

Aside from just the different gear available to you, another consideration is raid comp. You only have 10 slots to work with so less buffs/debuffs are available.

If you do not have someone covering IMP Demo (or equal) and Max Commanding Presence a build like this would be highly beneficial to your raid: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The Glyphs used in that build would also be a bit more beneficial to a 10 man tank due to less external CD's being available. Which is probably what got you thinking about the 4Pc bonus. However like a previous poster I feel that it lacks. You give up a ton of EH from the non-set items to get it.

A point to consider in your musings is how much BiS gear is available to the dedicated 10man tank this patch for the first time.

I reckon the badge cloak, belt, chest and gloves are arguably BiS, as are the crafted boots and legs. Add in the badge trinket and you are looking at many slots with exactly the same itemisation as a dedicated 25 tank.

From my memory I'd always had to 'settle' for 10man loot in previous patches, as I only play 10s.

In this phase of progression, there isn't a ton of difference. Why?

1. Bonus Armor offset items are available to 10-man guilds, allowing them 264 items which most 25-man tanks are using anyway
2. In slots that have typically been a negative for 10-man instances, the ICC-10 surprisingly exceeds the availability in many cases compared to 25-man, such as Trinkets (Unidentifiable Organ), Weapons (A 3 known 10-man weapons are better than the 1 known 25-man one and as the only known 25-man ranged weapon is trash and does not have a heroic version, and not only is the Heroic 10-man ranged weapon the same ilevel as the 25-man trash weapon, the 25-man one is BoE)
3. The rep ring is still available at high ilevels
4. The few TotC 'carryover' items are generally from ICC-10, including the Twins-10H ring and Anub-10H bonus armor weapons

So, bottom line? Yes, while 25-man gear will be different--especially when certain 277 drops appear in 25H--the general approach and available items this early is almost identical.

Personally, the only thing I would say is that in 10-mans I place a bit higher of a weight on Burst Time and survivability rather than pure EH stacking. Given the available items right now, tanks can get far, far higher EH levels than 10-man seems to be balanced around, which means that with more limited mana (potential lack of raid buffs for healers makes this more of an issue) and especially if you only run with 2 healers, damage reduction becomes more important than in 25-mans IMO.

That said, most of the best 10-man strict items are Armor items which will both increase your EH and survival simultaniously, so it's hard to go wrong.

I was having this discussion the other night in guild. We have just started a 10 man guild since our old 25 man guild was full on unreliable people. I think for the most part the guides for 25 alligned well for the 10 man with one exception. At the present time tier gear is not as valuable unless the set bonus is amazing.

If you look at the badge chest/gloves or tier chest/gloves as an example, one is ilvl 251 the other ilvl 264. For a 25 man tank the tier pieces can be upgraded fairly quickly so they are in effect paying 95 badges for an ilvl 264 item. For a 10 man tank the upgrade to ilvl 264 is going to be a lot longer and the ilvl 264 item is probably better. It is plausible that a 10 man tank who does the weekly raid and a daily every day will have enough badges to buy the tier pieces once the tokens drop even if he buys the ilvl 264 pieces.

So my advice would be to objectively assess the speed at which you are going to be able to down H Saurfang and rate the tier gear appropriately.

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Originally Posted by Kanguran

I was having this discussion the other night in guild. We have just started a 10 man guild since our old 25 man guild was full on unreliable people. I think for the most part the guides for 25 alligned well for the 10 man with one exception. At the present time tier gear is not as valuable unless the set bonus is amazing.

If you look at the badge chest/gloves or tier chest/gloves as an example, one is ilvl 251 the other ilvl 264. For a 25 man tank the tier pieces can be upgraded fairly quickly so they are in effect paying 95 badges for an ilvl 264 item. For a 10 man tank the upgrade to ilvl 264 is going to be a lot longer and the ilvl 264 item is probably better. It is plausible that a 10 man tank who does the weekly raid and a daily every day will have enough badges to buy the tier pieces once the tokens drop even if he buys the ilvl 264 pieces.

So my advice would be to objectively assess the speed at which you are going to be able to down H Saurfang and rate the tier gear appropriately.

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Tanks don't really have that problem (well, maybe druids do, i'm not sure there) since tier10 is horribad compared to the off-set frost badge gear (even considering the set bonuses).

Have been having similar discussions with many people in our 10m guild. At the moment I think the tier gear would be nice but I find it hard to justify spending emblems on an i251 tier item when I can spend the same emblems on an i264 one.

I have decided that most likely I will purchase the majority of the emblem gear before I will go anywhere near the tier gear. It will be a long time before I will be in regular 25's, so I wont be able to upgrade the i251 to i264 for some time anyway. There is also a chance of T10 dropping with Toravon in VoA.

I have chosen the path of higher survivability now with a possible improvement later.

We run only 10's and really haven't been doing hard modes and I've noticed that some of the fights are very tightly tuned without hard mode or 25's gear. The only way we have beaten Saurfang is by not allowing Mark to go off and getting the achievement and Festergut took bringing in a paladin for shadow aura (we don't have a priest or paladin in our regular roster) so the raid didn't explode during transitions from inhale to gas. People have to put in 110% or we don't get the kill. I guess that really means they are tuned correctly? Another two weeks worth of upgrades and it won't matter but until then it's rough and honestly a little frustrating.

I think what it really means is that gearing for survival is the only way to go and that everyone has to be on top of their gear and abilities the whole time.

Well, it IS the final content release of an expansion, AND it's the muther f'in lich king we're talking about here. Sunwell was largely not cleared by something like 90% of the wow population when it was current content because it was so difficult, ICC is already seeing higher numbers than 10% of people clearing it because of the advent of hardmodes/regular modes. I expect < 10% of players probably getting through all of it in Hardmode when it releases, but >75% of the people seeing at least regular mode lich king sounds reasonable and probably what blizz is gunning for. So yes, expect things to be hard, and even more so when heroic modes are released.

My guild started doing 10 man naxx clears, then shifted to weekly 25 man naxx clears. In Ulduar we mostly did 10 man raids, with a couple of (not overtly successful) interguild 25 mans. In ToC we only did 10s but several of us did 25s outside of guild. I can't yet say anything about 25 man ICC, but otherwise in my experience there's no difference in min/maxing gear choices, enchants, etc between the two. Speccing can be a bit different In a 25 man raid you may be able to assume you'll have Imp Demo Shout, which let's you put more points into threat talents. In most of our 10 man raids I have to have a survival spec that has all of those utility talents, and my DPS/threat suffer as a result. But then the DPS are in 10 man raid gear and are not knocking out 10k DPS on non-gimmick fights, so it's been ok so far.