Hard modes and the problem of raid size

[Wintersong]

Don't think you're really getting what I'm saying though, Felhoof.

I admit. Skill > Gear. I have seen guys in all blues outperforming guys in all purples. However that is beside the point. Skill is ANOTHER variable thrown into the mix in saying 'OH 10S ARE EASIER THAN 25S'.

My point is that, barring skill, take a person who is fully decked out in epics doing a 5 man NORMAL instance. Compare that with a guy who is in greens and blues. Now, is the 5 man normal instance easy or hard? This is assuming both parties being compared are of the same skill level.

I remember tanking Uthgarde Keep with my t6 geared warrior. Zoomed through the instance without a hitch. I went through the motions again while levelling my paladin, tanking UK. Woah, totally different experience. I had to pull a bit more carefully and be sharp in the skills done by certain mobs. See the difference? No change in skill, difference is in gear.

As your gear gets better, encounters are slowly getting easier and easier to go through. Ulduar, which might take 2 nights to clear previously, now take 1, as the raid as a whole obtain gear to push the boundaries of raiding.

So argument is thus, barring skill, don't you admit that the guys who are decked in 25s gear coming in to say '10s are easier' are those who go through 10s with 25s gear? Compare this with guys who are limited to 10s gear going through 10s? This leads to me pointing out that ToGC10 is the same jump in difficulty from ToC10 as ToGC25 is to ToC25.

I run both 25s and 10s now. 25s mostly through semi guild run (part pug), and of course, those random pugs around. 10s are dedicated guild runs. 25s are a pain in the posterior logistically, compared to 10s. But they are definitely not 'more difficult' than 10s except for a few select bosses (in which, if Blizz decides to say 'ok, loot table for this would be different due to difficulty level', then hey, fine by me). Mechanics of the fight are not more difficult. What's difficult (and I agree to this) is that you have to live with people with lack of skill or awareness holding back progression (sorry if this comes across as elitist).

P/S: Does strict 25s in BC count... because I have loads of experiences for serious raiding in that content, aka I'm not the guy who comes in with barely enough experience in 25s, nay, LEADING 25s (I was MT + RL), and start dissing the 25s guys for overstating things.

[Brion360]

Well i came up on this post and i thought i might just post my opinion on the subject. 10 mans are easier to get going than 25 mans and for a few fights easier. I am a tank that normally runs 10 mans not just because its easier, but because i can't run 25-mans(really bad computer). If 10 mans had the same gear then I would be able to progress to newer content. But, I also know that having the same gear for both 10 and 25 mans would really make the choice between 10 and 25 mans between the little extra challenge 25 mans have. More people would just run 10 man runs, leaving some guild members not to be able to raid all the time. there is supposed to be choice in running 25 mans with the incentive, the gear and the small gap of extra challenge, plus a chance for more people to run raids and have fun. A 10 mans incentive is the less time spent on getting a group together, but they can not have all members join in. I believe that the current gear system is good for now because people should be able to get rewards for allowing more raiders to gear up and have fun. As for hard modes, I can see that on some occasion 10 man hard modes might be harder then 25 man hard modes. but once again the same rule applies. More people get to see the content, and while one of blizzards motos was choice for this expansion, another one is that all players should see the content. That is why toc5h was put in. That is why the frozen hall dongeons will drop ilv232 items. They want more people to see the content, and more people see the content in 25 man guild raids. Blizzard thinks this should be rewarded which is why 25 mans drop better gear. the difficulty alone is to little of a difference to give better gear. thanks for listing to my 2 cents.

[hapster]

Some people here are suggesting the same loot in 10m and 25m raids. I could not believe my eyes that someone would really say this and then afterwards stating 'I am no lootwhore, loot doesn't interest me'.

First of all there is not a single statement why you would want this unless it is to get better gear for your character, so basically gear does interest you.

Secondly if you think about this, it will mean blizzard has to develop allot more raidinstances since the 25m guilds will be able to get the same loot from a 25m clear + 2 or even 3 10m clears. Wich will result in the fact that those guilds don't have to farm only the 25m version to get gear and they'll have all the wanted gear in like a month after release of instance.



Btw allot of the 10m hardmode loot are Bis items (both for totc and ulduar) and if you do tribute runs you get Trophy's. So i really can't see what the problem is.

Imo Blizzard did a great job for both hardcore and casual guilds/players.
The normal raidinstances are more then doable for the casuals and the hardmodes are both challenging (changing the fight totally in most cases) and allot harder.

I do believe both the normal and hardmode 10m could be developped to make it a tiny bit harder since TOTC was cleared by allot of guilds on day of release, wich in my book shouldn't be the normal.

Furthermore I hope that IC will be more in the direction of SWP in TBC after the nerf. Doable but still requires focus, teamwork and practice.

[Ollin]

1 point I don't dispute: Like what Ciderhelm and Kaz said, when encounters are tightly tuned (Hell, I went through Archi) 1 death is a wipe and for that kind of fights, your percentage of failing for 25s is 2.5 times higher.

My friends and I were discussing this very topic a few days ago, and this very point came up.

25's are harder when the loss of a single person means you fail the encounter.

This is an absolute value. Dead is dead, and if an encounter is so finely tuned that it cannot be completed at 96% of a raid's capacity if the 4% is lost too early then this is something that, presently, a 10-man raid cannot match. There's no way to take performance to that fine a grain when you deal with 15-less people.

That said, I have to assert that fine-grain measurements like this could be introduced to 10-man raids. Presently there is not any kind of mechanic in the game that would allow for something like this. However, this does not mean that this kind of mechanic could not be introduced. The WoW devs have proven again and again that they are up to far greater challenges, and the idea that they couldn't put something in the game, some sort of debuff that persisted until either you or the boss died and cut your abilities by a straight percentage, and have this sort of mechanic present in 10's but not 25's to take into account the loss of less than 10% of your raid for a non-lethal screw-up is beyond blind.

At present, yes 25's are harder than 10's at the very tightest level of tuning. The rest of the time though, the logistical and social complexities don't justify the better gear.

EDIT:

So argument is thus, barring skill, don't you admit that the guys who are decked in 25s gear coming in to say '10s are easier' are those who go through 10s with 25s gear? Compare this with guys who are limited to 10s gear going through 10s? This leads to me pointing out that ToGC10 is the same jump in difficulty from ToC10 as ToGC25 is to ToC25.

Something to add to this.

Being able to experience an encounter when you've got better gear than the encounter is tuned for is a huge advantage, especially if you're going to even attempt to bring in the "skill > gear therefore if 25s > 10s 25-man raiders must be better players" logic.

When you have better gear than the encounter is tuned for allows you more room for error. This is a given. However, this room for error allows people to more easily experiment with an encounter. When you can survive things that a lesser geared raid might wipe to, you get a more rounded perspective into exactly how certain mechanics work and this gives you an advantage that builds on every other advantage you can stack on top of it.

Simply being able to experience an encounter without giving your full attention to not dying is extremely advantageous to a raid, and isn't something you can really do before you outgear the encounter. Also, there's a difference between posthumous observation and real-time observation. Looking back at what you did to try to figure out what you did wrong can only get you so far unless you take major steps to record your performance. Combat logs allow you to extrapolate what you were doing, but the only thing that can come close to simply being able to grab a moment here and there to observe what's going on around you while the encounter is in progress is Frapsing the encounter, and it's still a distant second.

[Zothor]

At present, yes 25's are harder than 10's at the very tightest level of tuning. The rest of the time though, the logistical and social complexities don't justify the better gear.

While this is entirely an opinion debate at this point, I'd really like to know how you can defend this argument. The very fact that you are acknowledging the huge logistical and social complexities involved with keeping a 25 man raiding guild operating smoothly (ESPECIALLY now that there is the carrot of 10 man heroic raiding dropping almost complete sets of gear that's -significantly- better than 25 man normal, something that wasn't the case previously), demands that there be some incentive to go to 25 mans at all.

Were you to reduce the 25 man gear to 10 man level, or increase 10 man gear to 25 man level, everyone in this thread has at least acknowledged that, at a minimum, there would be logistical and social complexities that made 25 man raiding harder than 10 man raiding. An easier approach for the same reward, when both of those facts are known to all parties, is what's referred to in game theory (read up on it, it's fun and I don't think anyone wants me to write a textbook in this thread) as a dominant strategy. Suffice it to say that when a strategy dominates all other strategies, all rational parties will choose to take the easier path to the same reward.

Blizzard has wisely created a mixed-game instead of a dominated game. While one strategy is clearly easier, it reaps a lesser reward. Therefore players are given the choice of choosing between ease of organization or quality of loot.

Any of you who are claiming that you are not loot motivated and yet insisting that 10 mans should have the same loot that 25 mans are clearly deceiving either us or yourselves. Were you not motivated by the additional loot, the easier route becomes a dominant strategy and you wouldn't be complaining at all - you would be thanking Blizzard for giving you an option that in your view is clearly superior.

[Ollin]

There are other ways to reward players for the additional logical and social complexities besides better gear. I feel those should be explored. I feel it would be more fair for everyone involved, would help prolong the gearing curve for expansion content, and would require slightly tighter tuning on the 10-man content.

Any of you who are claiming that you are not loot motivated and yet insisting that 10 mans should have the same loot that 25 mans are clearly deceiving either us or yourselves. Were you not motivated by the additional loot, the easier route becomes a dominant strategy and you wouldn't be complaining at all - you would be thanking Blizzard for giving you an option that in your view is clearly superior.

That's a rather bold statement. Bit attack-ish though.

Besides which, presently you're getting the preferential treatment: similar difficulty scaled to better gear with an artificial block in place making migrating from the "lesser" path of progression into your "superior" path difficult at best. Far, far, far more difficult than going the other way.

So, because we have a problem with the status quo that places us solidly in second-rate content with second-rate rewards and loot holes (my personal beef) we must be attempting to deceive either us or ourselves?. I could care less about the ilvls so long as I can actually fill the slot with something. Go take a look at what dps daggers you have available if you can't run ToC (not enough dps to fill a spot) and can't kill vezax or yog (roster issues after losing three top raiders).

I take it back. That's not bold. It's simply an attack.

Besides which, 10's have logistical issues too that we don't get compensated for. I've personally seen what happens when your roster blows up three times since TBC. The loss of 3 people in various roles isn't impossible for a 25-man raid to overcome.

The loss of 3 people can mean the death of a 10-man raid. What if you lose a tank? A healer? Your best DPS? What happens when you can't replace them with someone of comparable gearing (because you've been defaulting gear to your tank and healers to get farther into content)? Ever degress as a raid? Ever do it because you lost one person to RL?

What happens in 25's when you have a bench? What happens if you have a bench that's too big? Can that even happen in 25's?

Know what happens in 10's? You suffer from roster instability as you try to get everyone time in content. Rotating 3 people in 25's is nothing. In 10's it's 30% of your raid. Changing out so much as one person can have a serious impact on your entire raid's performance depending on who you trade out.

When you've got 17-21 DPS with secondary roles you're far more likely to have those essential spots covered when RL comes up. Sure you've got to manage more people, but you gain benefits from having access to those other 15 people.

Sure, "But you can always PuG the spot. It's got to be easier to PuG a spot for 10's". What happens when that PUG wins loot? What if you use DKP? The same issues with how to handle pugs that existed in 40's, also exist in 25's, and exist in 10's now that we finally have a path of progression.

The logistical burden works on both sides of this equation. Except, only one side gets compensated for their troubles.

[Bashal]

...how about we leave everything as it is, take the gear we get and use it to progress, and if you pretty much only run 10's, ignore all the jerks who look down on your for not having 25-man gear?

Because as as far as I can tell, that's probably the real root of the objection to the loot disparity -- people being jerks to others over the quality of the gear they have access to.

Just a thought.

[Chamenas]

The inherent problem with hard modes is that they require gear from normal modes, as you said. Hard modes would be better if they were more about player skill with the same level of gear. Making the encounter actually more difficult as opposed to something you gear up to do.

As far as raid size, I've seen Blizzard's plan as this:
.................................................. ..-> ToC 10 Hard Modes
Naxx 10.....->.....Ulduar 10.....->.....ToC 10.....->.....IC 10
............................-> Ulduar 10 Hard Modes........-> IC 10 Hard modes

.................................................. ..........-> ToC 25 Hard Modes
......Naxx 25.....->.....Ulduar 25.....->.....ToC 25.....->.....IC 25
..................................-> Ulduar 25 Hard Modes...............-> IC 25 Hard Modes

If you only want to do 10 mans, you should be able to progress through 10 mans and not have to touch a 25. Granted, a 25 can step you up a bit in gear for the next 10 man, but it's not required. If you want to step into a 25 man, then be prepared for them to sigh a little at your gear, because it probably isn't what they're used to seeing on people. If you want to do both (I like doing both) then you need to be geared properly for 25 mans which will necessarily have you geared properly for 10s.

My point in simple is this: Don't worry about what other people think about your gear unless you need to worry about it. IF you're fine with 10 mans, stick with 10 mans and don't listen to 25 man people. If you want to do 25 mans, the be prepared to be inspected to see if you're 25 man capable.

Edit: Ugh, sec.

[felhoof]

What I continue to be puzzled about is why the same kind of gear would matter.

If you are a strict 10-man guild, what does it matter that you get loot that is one tier of quality below what 25s get? If it's challenging hard modes at that level of gear, I'm not sure I see the issue here.

Now, if it's impossible or so difficult it's effectively impossible to complete in that gear, I could see the point. That was essentially how Sarth3D 10 was; it was so tightly tuned and had such requirements on raid comp synergy and gearing that having anything less than perfect gear and skill at 10s level of gear would mean there was no chance of success. But that's not the normal argument, and certainly so far the design.

So if it's possible - just hard - to do the raids in strict 10, why do you need the same gear?

[Ollin]

...how about we leave everything as it is, take the gear we get and use it to progress, and if you pretty much only run 10's, ignore all the jerks who look down on your for not having 25-man gear?

Because as as far as I can tell, that's probably the real root of the objection to the loot disparity -- people being jerks to others over the quality of the gear they have access to.

Just a thought.

My specific complaint with the loot difference is purely one about loot holes and how they interact with the inability of raids to scale their efforts upwards. Honestly, I don't care about loot-whoring. Keep your shiny(er) stuff. I don't care that it's got 5 more int/dex/spirit and 20 more sp/ap/whatever.

My only concern is that, regardless of class and spec, there should be loot available for you for the important slots which brings me to my primary concern: If items for a specific slot/spec/class combo are available in 25's with no equivalent in 10's it becomes extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to fill that slot unless you raid 25's.

Because blizzard tries to keep loot tables just deep enough to be interesting without becoming so deep that specific pieces of loot become nearly impossible to find they decided to spread the loot out across all the available raiding formats at a specific tier of gear with the more widely usable/more important pieces usually defaulting to the easier-to-access areas.

This tends to create "loot holes" where some class/spec combos simply lack upgrades in certain slots until they hit (get carried to in some cases) a certain progression threshold that their dry-spell ends. When these holes occur to a very important slot item, it can really drag down your performance which makes moving out of the hold harder than it should be. In essence the problem feeds itself: to get out of the hole, you need gear from outside the hole.

Unfortunately, by addressing the loot table depth situation in the manner they have, Blizzard has inadvertently created the very problem they sought to avoid and the increased ilvl in 25 man loot only exasperates the problem by making it that much harder for people who don't have 25-man loot to go get it and thereby decreases the ability of 10-man only guilds to progress.

Presently it looks like they're trying to combat this problem by (sorta) scaling 5-mans. Unfortunately it's not at the same level as the hand-outs the 25-man raiders get with easy access to 10-mans. Saying "the new 5-mans should cover it" is like telling a 25-man raider to go fill his gear holes for icecrown in ulduar without stepping into ToC.

[felhoof]

Perhaps I'm being myopic, but for ferals there exist no loot holes in ToC 10 vs. 25. There is at least one non-tier piece for every slot save the head, and the head is obtainable in two ways via emblems. There are a number of trinkets (DPS and tanking). There are cloaks, necks, rings (including the best in slot ring), weapons...about the only thing that doesn't drop is an idol, and that's a vendorable item. The only thing I can thing that doesn't exist that's totally unobtainable is the belt. That's it. And you can get a very good one for crafted gear from the previous tier.

Is this truly that different for the other classes?

[law90026]

Basically, what Ollin is saying is that he can't get an upgrade in EVERY slot if he doesn't run 25-mans. I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying.

Having said that, I'm also pretty sure that isn't accurate, putting trinkets aside. I think the crux of the matter for him / her is that there are some item slots where 25-mans drop a better item. I'm saying all this based purely on what he says (and I quote):

My specific complaint with the loot difference is purely one about loot holes and how they interact with the inability of raids to scale their efforts upwards. Honestly, I don't care about loot-whoring. Keep your shiny(er) stuff. I don't care that it's got 5 more int/dex/spirit and 20 more sp/ap/whatever.

My only concern is that, regardless of class and spec, there should be loot available for you for the important slots which brings me to my primary concern: If items for a specific slot/spec/class combo are available in 25's with no equivalent in 10's it becomes extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to fill that slot unless you raid 25's

Of course, like I said, I don't think that's true. I'm pretty sure that gear drops for every slot in 10man, just that there's better in 25.

Frankly, if this is the issue, then making the same gear drop from 10 mans isn't the solution. It's just a question of populating the loot table properly .. of course then you will have threads about how there's sooooooooooooo many items and how it's impossible to get geared because of RNG.

/shrug, can't please everyone.

[mavfin]

Of course, like I said, I don't think that's true. I'm pretty sure that gear drops for every slot in 10man, just that there's better in 25.

For example, no mail spell bracers exist in 10-man ToC, normal or hard mode. You have to craft them from patterns that 25-mans get in normal mode, and 10-mans have to do hard mode for.

That's what has brought on my irritation with the patterns that drop for 25-man pugs, but not for 10-man raiders until hard modes. My shaman had to use cloth because no mail bracers exist without using crusader orbs, which also do not drop in 10-normal. Sure, I can get them in hard-mode 10, but why should I have to when some bad in a pug-25 can get the orbs and the patterns? Why can he get those patterns for lying on the floor dead, when I have to do 10-man hard mode, or pug myself to get them? Oh, sure, some of you will say 'go pug 25s'. I HATE the 25-man PuG format. Too much drama, too many idiots. But, said idiots can get stuff that a dedicated 10-man group of friends has to do hard-mode for, or go into the cesspool that is 25-man pug raiding.

Keep your 13 ilvls on your shinies, I don't care about that. I just want the same access to patterns and orbs, even if they're reduced to 232, rather than 245, in the example of ToC.

[law90026]

But you do have access to them via your emblems. Or the AH. In fact, some might say that it's easier to get the crafted gear as opposed to having to actually raid for it.

Pattern? You don't need the pattern. You just need to know someone on the server who has the pattern. Crafting fee? Sure that sucks. But it's gold, a resource that anyone can have.

Using cloth? Were you gimped really badly because you had to use cloth? Did the lack of armour result in you taking too much damage so you died?

I realise the above comes off a bit snarky but the comments don't necessarily make sense when you take a step back and think about what is available at this time.

[Xianth]

For example, no mail spell bracers exist in 10-man ToC, normal or hard mode. You have to craft them from patterns that 25-mans get in normal mode, and 10-mans have to do hard mode for.

That's what has brought on my irritation with the patterns that drop for 25-man pugs, but not for 10-man raiders until hard modes. My shaman had to use cloth because no mail bracers exist without using crusader orbs, which also do not drop in 10-normal. Sure, I can get them in hard-mode 10, but why should I have to when some bad in a pug-25 can get the orbs and the patterns? Why can he get those patterns for lying on the floor dead, when I have to do 10-man hard mode, or pug myself to get them? Oh, sure, some of you will say 'go pug 25s'. I HATE the 25-man PuG format. Too much drama, too many idiots. But, said idiots can get stuff that a dedicated 10-man group of friends has to do hard-mode for, or go into the cesspool that is 25-man pug raiding.

Keep your 13 ilvls on your shinies, I don't care about that. I just want the same access to patterns and orbs, even if they're reduced to 232, rather than 245, in the example of ToC.

I think the main source of your problem here is ToC itself rather than 10 man in general - only a handful of a bosses and hard mode loot being exactly the same thus creating a really small selection of items. What i find illogical is blizzard itemising slots that can be filled with tier pieces with non-set drops and then completely ignoring something like bracers (in your case). Lucky for our shammy we have the pattern cause we do hard modes. Blizzard just needs to be a bit more careful when itemising 10 man content, especially one with a small amount of bosses like ToC.

Finally, going back to the more recent argument of gear: It's true that 25 gear being different ilevel shouldn't matter and anyone upset about having lower ilevel purely for the reason of not having "as good" gear have no argument because gear is relative to the content you do. However, the main knock-on effect that can be annoying and that's 25 man guilds blasting through 10 man hard modes and being blasé about how easy it is but to be honest, now that there are 10 man strict rankings the 10 man guilds can set themselves goals relative to the content they do without having progression lists being polluted by 25 man guilds

[mavfin]

I realise the above comes off a bit snarky but the comments don't necessarily make sense when you take a step back and think about what is available at this time.

Yes, it is a bit snarky. If 10-man and 25-man are 'equal progression paths', then we should have equal access to patterns and orbs in the same modes. If the patterns are 10-man ilvl, that's perfectly fine with me, but if I have to go to 10-man hard mode for them, then the 25s should have to do hard mode for their patterns, rather than giving them to any mouth-breathing 25-man pug. If Blizzard wants 10-man raiding to be 'equal except 13 ilvls for organization', then give us 10-man patterns in normal mode for us to use to fill those slots they didn't give us anything for.

As far as the cloth, the issue is that I had to take it from another cloth DPS who could have used it.

[Bashal]

...If 10-man and 25-man are 'equal progression paths'...

...If Blizzard wants 10-man raiding to be 'equal except 13 ilvls for organization',...

From what I've read about the whole 10/25 raid content concept, they were never really meant to be equal at all. They were meant to be parallel progression paths, but not so disparate that someone in 10's would find it impossible to move up to 25's if they decided it suited them better.

Blizzard never meant for 25's to steamroll through 10's for additional loot, although they never did anything to explicitly prevent it. I believe the notion they had was in case someone from 25's wanted to help out a 10, or someone in 10's wanted to pug a 25 to see what it was like, which is why they didn't have them share a lockout. In short it was to enable individual migration between the two, not simultaneous farming.

From one or two other threads I've read at tankspot, people who raid both 10's and 25's every week get pretty burned out on this stuff -- and it's entirely unnecessary. You can get what you need to progress just by sticking to 25's or 10's.

[Boeten]

But you do have access to them via your emblems. Or the AH. In fact, some might say that it's easier to get the crafted gear as opposed to having to actually raid for it.

Pattern? You don't need the pattern. You just need to know someone on the server who has the pattern. Crafting fee? Sure that sucks. But it's gold, a resource that anyone can have.

Using cloth? Were you gimped really badly because you had to use cloth? Did the lack of armour result in you taking too much damage so you died?

I realise the above comes off a bit snarky but the comments don't necessarily make sense when you take a step back and think about what is available at this time.

Let me do the service and give you a good example then

Plate melee DPS Feet, let's look at my options if I don't do 25men, and I'll include craftables inside.

2 219 items (Ulduar-10 and 5-man H ToC)
1 226 items (none from Ulduar-10 hardmode, one pattern from Ulduar)
0 232 items (none from ToC-10)
0 245 items (none from ToC-10 Heroic, none from pattern)

Don't bother looking at Mail/Leather alternatives, because they are inferior, and how Blizzard makes all plate wearers very dependent on STR.

Clearly, for that slot, my progression path ended when I craft that boots. And worse still, I don't need Crusader's Coliseum content patch at all. I had reached my progression end *for that slot* last patch. So loot holes exist. No point arguing whether it exists or not.

And I'd like to emphasis his argument again. You can keep your 13/26/33 ilvl differences - I couldn't care less. But I want my progression path. That's the only thing I want. It really sucks to look at your character, at that specific slot, and the first thing that comes across your mind is "I'll wait for next patch to see if I can upgrade that slot, because there's no upgrade for me in this patch".

Now, I'd like to bring another point about the progression path. It's the itemization and the lack of alternatives for our gears.

All the badges gears, even though they're at the same ilvl, are generally poorly itemized compared to the drop in instances. Now - I wouldn't mind
if, for example, you give me 100 haste rating instead of 100 strength (for DPS DK, strength is generally a lot more favored compared to haste rating). But the 245-trinket from badge are covered with 128 hit rating, a stat that is *useless* for me because the other tier-gears and the other badge gears have made me over the hit-rating capped. And I can tell you that I'm not the only one with this problem. We're lacking in *alternatives*.

Had I had access to BOTH 10 and 25-men content, I can probably mix-match my other slots to accomodate that trinket. But because I don't have access to 25, that trinket is not even a path for me.

Let's look at another example. This forum is full of people mulling over whether to use armor trinket (badge-245), dodge trinket, or stamina trinket from ToC-25 (avoidance vs EH? Halp). Well - isn't that a nice problem to have? If I don't do 25, I'm limited to only dodge trinket (ToC-10) or armor trinket (badge-245). Sure I can go back and farm Yogg-Saron for King's Llane, but, again, that path of progression has stopped for me since last patch, and I'm forced to use Brewfest trinkets for Stamina alternatives. [edit] To make it clearer, imagine if this patch had happened during Lunar Festival or Love is in the Air. Then I would be without any stamina alternatives until next patch or Brewfest arrives, whichever comes earlier.

The problem is compounded with the fact that ToC-10 and ToC-10 (H) share exactly the same item types, only differentiated by 13% increase in the every stats. In my opinion, it would be more elegant to make 10/25 normal share the same itemization type, and 10/25 (H) share the same itemization type. Easily done, easily satisfy a lot of people.

Having more *different itemised* items available for access opens up different progression paths. Let's admit it - having the different alternatives spread out for us and choosing it is one of the several fun parts of the game. Ghostcrawler admitted that they're looking into gear mix-match as one area of the game where they think it's fun. Right now, 10-men content have very limited progression paths, and a lot of them involves going *back* in content, not forward.

25-men loots can keep their extra over 9000 strenghts - I won't make any noise. But Blizzard should give me my new content and my fun for every patch

[Ollin]

Basically, what Ollin is saying is that he can't get an upgrade in EVERY slot if he doesn't run 25-mans. I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying.

Yes. That's the short version of what I'm saying.

The longer version is the short version, plus me pointing out that the devs are specifically trying to avoid the short version but the logistical and social aspects of 25's make the present loot situation nearly non-existent for people who run 25's while exasperating them for people who don't. If you don't run 25's you get punished for making a choice that you shouldn't be punished for. PvPers get excelent gear coverage every season because they need it. 25-man raiders get excelent gear coverage every tier because they need it.

People who don't or can't run 25's get the shaft when an oversight is made, and sometimes our only recourse is, like was mentioned in a previous post, to wait for the next patch.

If you put the time and effort into running and maintaining a 25-man raid, learning the encounters, and farming the content only to find that you had found the best item you could get in a specific slot for an entire tier of content you'd be a bit upset that they had forgotten something.

10-man raids have basically been told "too bad. Go run 25's if you want your ups". At times it's not about getting something shinyER even if you are a loot whore.

It's about simply being able to get something at all.

For example, and this illustrates how we have our own logistical and social challenges to deal with, my guild lost four of our best raiders to scheduling, burn out, and real life half-way through the Ulduar tier including our very best DPS and our best geared tank at the time (not the best by much, but light-years ahead of our #3 tank).

This, combined with several straight weeks of wall-to-wall healing plate took us from our first hodir kill to struggling with siege of uld bosses. When we shuffled people into the raid to fill the spots I was lucky enough to be able to switch from my disc priestess to my freshly 80 rogue.

Finally, after several weeks of extremely low morale (struggling with bosses you used to steamroll can tends to do that), encounter learning for players new to the instance, and the learning curve for previous alts-turned-raiding-main-gap-fillers we were back to where we were when we lost our regulars.

...just in time for ToC to hit. This put me into a strange situation. My gear wasn't high enough to really pull my weight in ToC (was still figuring out the rogue class as well to be honest) and I was lacking my most vital ups: my daggers. The ilvl 200 daggers I had served me well in Ulduar, but held me back from contributing a lot in ToC. I couldn't PuG ToC because the gearscorers would kick me (even with someone there telling them I could pull 3.6k...bastards) which cut me off from the dagger upgrades on Jaraxus and the twins. In Uld, losing four regular raiders while we were moving onto the keepers meant that we weren't going to get past mimiron until after we had finished re-gearing the raid (forget the dagger on thorim hard mode if you can't beat mimiron. Also, let it be known...I want to punch the dev who thought the healing plate drop frequency would be a good idea) which put the dagger drop on general vezaxx and yog very cleanly out of my reach.

Need more DPS for ToC, and in order to have a chance on the keepers I needed to bring my priest for the raid to stand a chance (note: the 219 dagger didn't drop off of the black knight until 3.2.2. Once I got it my DPS jumped a cool 300 or so. Then it was just a matter of time until we made progress in ToC...and normal 10-man ToC is a joke).

But yeah...10-man roster-loss logistics + back loaded loot table = lots of swearing on my part.

Also, please note that there are a metric ton of caster daggers before vezax and Yog. Also I hate combat. I'll run a different character (I've got 6 80s) before I run a combat spec...

Anyway, that was my personal experience with a big loot hole in uld 10. If we ran Uld 25 the hole wouldn't have been there.

Additional holes:

The big one is the +200 ilvl melee DPS trinket. There's the pyrite infuser and that's it until hard modes unless you run 25's. Meanwhile you've got more caster trinkets than you can shake a stick at.

There's a thrown weapon hole between nax/heroics and ToC. All through uld you're stuck with a stat-stick or the ilvl 200 vendor thrown. If you like being able to actually use all of your abilities (like deadly throw) this can be a problem considering how hard the stats on some of the guns are to pass up.

Really, my issue isn't necessarily that it happens all the time (because it doesn't) but rather that it can happen and does on occasion. Blizzard is really good about their loot coverage, but when you're putting your shopping list together and you see a lone slot next to a "will up if I'm really lucky" near a bunch of single-entry badge-vender slots things get frustrating. Especially when pieces don't have the stats you need on them or waste budget on worthless dross. While the threat of not being able to find anything for a specific slot for an entire tier is there, it's far more likely that you'll only have access to one item unless you run 25's.

An example of this is cloth bracers that have crit, but no hit on them. There's two. The first is a BoP zone drop in 10n and I've never seen them (wanted them for my disc priest).

The other is found in H:VH off Cinigosa.

[Mert]

You're basically saying that something for every slot in every spec should drop early on in the instance and a line clearly has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise what are you even bothering to get to the end of the instance for?

You'll notice also that tank and healing loot is somewhat front-loaded in Ulduar and TotC, which I assume is an acknowledgement that geared healers and tanks are more likely to lead to progression than slightly higher DPS. After all, if the tank dies, having a new shiny sword means diddly. If you then up the loot for DPS classes into the front end also, that line of thinking doesn't apply any more, so you're still having tank death being a primary reason for wiping on the harder bosses.