I'll agree with you that sorting out assignments for a 10-man and a 25 are in different ballparks. Sorting out 25 people is harder.Originally Posted by Kamani
But I actually feel there is more margin for error (at least when talking about regular modes on bosses) in 25's than 10's. You run with, what, around 7 healers in 25 man? Usually 3 in 10-man. You lose a healer in 10's, you lose 1/3 of your healing capacity. You lose a healer in 25's, you lose 1/7.
The difference is even greater when you talk about dps.
25-mans also make it easier to properly represent every class in the game in your group makeup. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "damn no boomkin aura" or somesuch in a 10-man; it seems that no matter what you do, you wind up lacking something you can pretty much always depend on having in a 25.
That being said:
I don't care if the 25's have better loot. I don't care if the people from the 25's can roll through in their better gear and roflstomp the 10-man content I prefer, because that's nothing more than a cheap trick, like 2-manning Kara at level 80.
I think, though, that one thing might make both sides happy: let the 25's have better loot, but prevent them from getting achievements in 10's if they use any of that loot. Might be hard to implement, true, but I think it would work; it would be a disincentive for people in 25's to bother with 10's.
Last edited by Bashal; 10-01-2009 at 12:49 PM.
Dont forget with tanks, a 25 can easily bring 3 tanks. A 10 man is limited to 2 tanks. On fights that require 2 tanks, like northrend beasts, a single tank death means it is a wipe. For a 25 man group that means your second off tank has something to do for the fight. losing 50% of your tank force and wiping vs losing a tank and having your backup tank pick it up is a large difference in difficulty
Actually, that's not quite accurate. It's that 10-man raiders have to do the hard mode content to get access to what a pug 25-man normal can get to, in terms of orbs and patterns.
It's fine that the loot's 13 ilvls different for organizational purposes, but I feel screwed that a pug 25-man can get the patterns and orbs that I have to do hard mode for.
Lets be honest, pugs go and do 10 man hard too, it's not really all that big a step up in difficulty (If it's one at all) compared to 25 normal.but I feel screwed that a pug 25-man can get the patterns and orbs that I have to do hard mode for.
Honestly to me this sounds like jealousy. "Well people who do 25 mans can do 10 mans easier, so give me better gear to keep up" is like saying, "The top ten guilds in the world do stuff easier than me so make the game easier".
I don't see the problem. If you want 25 man gear then do 25 mans. If you don't want to do 25 mans then that is your own personal choice, I don't see why the people who chose to do 25 man should be penalized because people don't have the skill to down 10 man content in 10 man gear.
I'll be honest, if 25 mans didn't drop better gear I wouldn't do them. When I was RL / MT of my last guild leading a 10 man was a cake walk compared to a 25. Why cause a headache for no additional reward?
Plain and simple it is harder to deal with a 25 man than a 10 man, and those of you saying you choose 10 mans for the close knit group just further prove that point.
The whole point is lost when you consider this.
25 man content IS harder than 10 man content. The bosses hit harder, they have more HP etc, etc.
I also think the OP is underestimating the difficulty of finding 25 solid raiders when compared to finding 10. In my guild (which I've been a central figure of for 4 years) we are finding 10 player content easy, only because we have a core group of around 15 raiders that sign up to every raid, and have LOTS of experience. That experience and dedication pays off when EVERY member of the raid group performs flawlessly.
We can't find 25 people to perform flawlessly hence we have 4/5 TotC 10 hard mode kills and 0 TotC 25 hard mode kills.
The increased difficulty in 25 man necessitates better gear from 25 mans.
Finally, like alot of people have stated, if I had a choice between trying hard to find 25 solid raiders or just rotating the 15 we already have for the same loot, I would do 10 mans every time. I'm glad I don't have that option though.
From an earlier post in this thread (posted by Mert):
This is one example of why, from a pure numbers perspective, 25-mans are harder. Blizzard has decided not to scale it perfectly from 10-mans.Case in point: Hodir Hard. In 25-man he has 32.5m HP and the average raid might have, at most, 21 DPS for this encounter. (32.5m / 21) / 180 seconds = 8597.88 DPS each. On 10-man he has 8.4m HP and you'd likely have 7 DPS. (8.4m / 7) / 180 seconds = 6666.66r DPS each. In terms of what's expected of your raiders, it's clear that the 25-man version represents a significant increase in DPS, even if not specifically skill. The difference in gear you get from 25-man against its 10-man equivalent does not make up for such a wide difference in the output required of your raid, so it would typically be something you completed later than the 10-man version. Thorim Normal is another fantastic example of an encounter being far harder on 25-man than 10-man.
And yes, this means Blizzard can do it, blah blah blah. But that's not the case now and wanting Blizzard to do so requires an entire paradigm shift in raiding yet again.
This part I do somewhat agree with, I'll admit. While it was a bit screwy in Ulduar (Flame Leviathan +2 dropped a pattern and was entirely possible to pug if you picked the right towers) it does always seem a bit unfair that it's so considerably harder to acquire these items in 10-man.
A reduced drop rate for 10-man would be fine, as would equivalent patterns that are simply 13 iLevels beneath the 25-man patterns but denying a more casual (or simply less experienced) 10-man guild any chance of getting them does seem a little unfair.
Having said that, I do think Blizzard is making strides in the right direction here. Tier 9 brought an end to the disparity in badges with the only difference being that a 25-man group could collect them more quickly. They also released Orbs quickly into the Triumph Vendors, allowing people of any raid size the opportunity to acquire them should they wish. Perhaps the patterns could be made available for badges also, allowing 10-man guilds to purchase them rather than have them drop but at least have the opportunity to get them eventually?
Blizzard aren't there yet, I'm not arguing that they are, but I think 3.2 has represented more fairness in this sort of regard than 3.1 or 3.0 did and I'd hope that the trend continues into Icecrown.
Figure in the lack of buffs in a 10 man raid and that accounts for most if not all of the dps difference.
By this logic, a 40 man AV should give the best possible gear in the game because finding 40 half intelligent non AFK pvpers is nearly impossible, or even better yet a 100 person WG should give even better gear because of the "idiot" factor. Balancing loot based on Real life problems and people is a stupid thing to do, balance it in the gameI also think the OP is underestimating the difficulty of finding 25 solid raiders when compared to finding 10.
This then leads back to the issue of how hard it is going to be to make 10-mans = 25-mans. Because now you need to be able to fit every single class/buff into a 10-man.
Oh sorry, I really didn't realise that AV was a raid instance! I haven't been there in a while, guess I'll need to get my guild to start raiding it.By this logic, a 40 man AV should give the best possible gear in the game because finding 40 half intelligent non AFK pvpers is nearly impossible, or even better yet a 100 person WG should give even better gear because of the "idiot" factor. Balancing loot based on Real life problems and people is a stupid thing to do, balance it in the game
Well, quite. When designing a 25-man encounter it's entirely reasonable to assume that every buff (or at least the vast majority of them) is available to you however that is clearly not reasonable for a 10-man encounter.
Let's say that two equally-geared 10-man groups take on a boss who has 10m health and a four minute enrage timer.
Group 1 has a Prot Paladin, a Prot Warrior, a Holy Paladin, a Resto Shaman, a Holy Priest, a Blood Death Knight, a Boomkin, a Fire Mage and two Warlocks.
Group 2 has a Frost DK, a Bear, two Holy Priests, one Resto Druid, a Ret Paladin, a Blood Death Knight, two Hunters and a Shadow Priest.
Both groups are entirely reasonable groups to bring to a 10-man raid, yet Group 1 has a number of buffs or debuffs that Group 2 simply cannot replicate. Group 1 can use Heroism at the 20% health mark, Group 2 can't.
You see the issue? There's nothing inherently wrong with either raid composition, but if you make it so the group has to do 10m total damage in four minutes, it's likely that Group 2 simply won't be able to do it. You either say that some classes, raid setups or even guilds can't do that fight or you tune the 10-man to be slightly easier on the DPS to allow for the range of buffs that could or could not be present. Blizzard has clearly chosen this path rather than run the risk of excluding raid setups that a guild might have.
What an utterly ridiculous straw man. Nobody's talking about the difficulty of finding 25 likeminded people who play the same time as you and as regularly as you and aren't afk and so on. People are saying that actually inside the raid, getting 25 people to move to the left whilst keeping a minimum of 10 yards apart is harder than getting 10 people to do the same thing. That's clearly an in-game issue, not one of real life or "idiot factors" or whatever else you want to call it.
So why not make the game smart? Have it look at the group going against it, and then calculate the damage the boss will do, the health of the boss, or even special abilities the boss might use. Get rid of the one raid boss for all groups idea and instead change to the idea of having the raid boss match the group presented. With that you could also tune a boss to the average gear level of the raid. So when you go in the higher level 25 man gear you face the same challenge that the 10 man raid faces in their 10 man gear. Having bosses or encounters that would scale with the group facing them and even possibly changing the loot table as well would add in some much needed change from week to week so it doesn't become a pure face roll every week after you hit a special gear level.
Sigh.
Read what you just wrote. Consider how hard it would be to implement.
It comes back to the original premise ... In theory, 10-mans could be as hard as 25-mans. However, the actual implementation becomes unbelievably complex.
Your solution requires the instance itself to adjust to the raid composition. Not just gear level but also the class composition. What if I go in with 1 healer? Or I go in in greys but change to my epic gear inside the instance?
It's all "could, if" etc ...
It'd also no doubt be open to exploits - you could run in with iLevel 200 weapons and then switch after the fight has started, to get the lower scaling, for exmaple. No doubt endless theorycraft would spring up on the "best" team to take on any given boss to get the most favourable scaling and once there was an accepted "best" you'd find it difficult to get into a team for it if you weren't on the list.
As I say, the only way I can see them balancing 10-man effectively against the 25-mans would be to make every buff have an equivalent to so many other classes that you couldn't really fail to bring everything. The question is, would we be willing to give up that much class uniqueness in order to get 10-man content of exactly equal difficulty? Given the amount of upset it causes when, for example, Paladins get a version of Demo Shout, I'd wager that homogenising the classes to that degree would do more harm to the community's view of the game and/or Blizzard than good.
Surely making the game "smart" would mean all class buffs would be come meaningless, also every DPS would have to produce exactly = dps for there gear level otherwise you'd just stack raids with the highest dps class.
Considering Tier 9 both 10man and 25man Normal modes are easy. And as far as i can tell, additonal DPS requirements are simply made up through buffs, since alsmot every player has lower DPS in 10s than 25.
The hardmodes on both 10 and 25 are also equally hard for players at those levels. Unfortunately the 10man hardmode rewards equal gear to the far easier 25man normal. and that is what is currently hurting 10man raiding.
Option 1: Clear 10-normal, suffer 10man hard
Option 2: Join a 25man guild and clear 25man normal and 10man normal and with the assistance of gear attempt 10man hard.
Currently on my realm (Doomhammer EU) no 10man guild had cleared 10man hardmodes (best is 2 bosses in i believe) where as approximately 7-9 25man guilds have cleared 10man hard. No guild has cleared 25man hard yet (stuck on Anub).
Both sides of the argument have made some really good points.
Again, I have no problem with people who go through the trouble of assembling a decent 25-man getting better loot. I think some of the problem people in 10's have with loot is that the loot tables are different. Someone wants an upgrade to their offhand? Sorry; it only drops in 25-man. But if the items were the same (same name and ratio of stats, just dialed back to reflect lower ilvl) then the upgrade is there no matter what; it's just a bigger upgrade in 25-man.
The other thing I thought was weird is a lot (all?) of the normal-mode weapons that drop in Ulduar 25 are 232's, whereas the armor slot drops are 226. In Ulduar 10, everything in normal mode is 219 without exception. I find that an odd disparity.
Last edited by Bashal; 10-02-2009 at 06:27 AM.
I'm not sure about that, to be honest. While usually the same in terms of iLevel, the 10-Man Heroic gear is usually better optimised or has additional sockets to the 25-man Normal gear. A couple of examples (Cloak from 10-man Heroic is actually also a higher iLevel):
Cloak of the Unmoving Guardian (10-man Heroic)
Pride of the Eredar (25-man Normal)
Dreadscale Armguards (10-man Heroic)
Armguards of the Shieldmaiden (25-man Normal)
And there're plenty of other examples along these lines - 10-man Heroic does equal 25-man Normal in terms of iLevel, it's true, but the 10-man Heroic pieces are still pretty much unanimously better than the 25-man Normal counterparts.
As I said in a previous post, Blizzard are still far from having perfected it, but I think they're getting noticably closer this Tier to a fairer distribution between 10 and 25-man encounters and associated Hard Modes.
But you also have more healers, more DPS, and slightly better gear to compensate. I don't think that makes it harder in and of itself. However:
- Some of the bosses have an extra mechanic thrown in which does make the fight more difficult in 25-man.
- In other cases, the size of the room the boss encounter takes place in makes the fight harder when you have to cram 2.5 times the number of people into it.
An easy example of both is KT in Naxx: it is harder to get the spacing needed to avoid multiple ice blocks in 25-man mode. You also have to deal with people getting mind-controlled.
EDIT: They could include those effects as well in 10-man (make the room smaller, keep mind-control in 10's). But it would be more dev work to create a separate map for each version of the instance, and in many cases leaving the "extra" mechanic in could more easily wipe a 10-man. In some cases the mechanic can't be scaled well (a mind control is a mind control), so they were forced to leave it out. Some boss fights in 10's will consequently be easier because of this.
Last edited by Bashal; 10-02-2009 at 06:46 AM. Reason: additional thoughts
So because you dont trust blizzard to make it so you cant exploit it ( heard the same thing about duel spec) and the fact that it would allow the theory-crafting community something to do.
I have no doubt that blizzard could design a smart instance, the skill is out there...
Or you could look at it as the 25 man version was so easy they had to add the mind control to make it as hard as the 10 man version...
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