This topic is actually something that has been on my mind quite awhile, and in fact was something I brought up back in November when I was chatting on the Blessing of Frost podcast with Vidyala and Kurn. Back in November I questioned why Blizzard felt so strongly that they needed 10 and 25 man raiding to be considered “equal”. Which, frankly, has caused almost insurmountable problems as they’ve struggled with tuning and class/role balancing trying to meet this seemingly unobtainable goal – often times to the detriment of the player and their enjoyment in the game.
Put your torches away, and let me explain what I mean before you decide to torch me.
WoW has changed significantly since I first pulled those five CDs from the vanilla box and installed the game on my computer. One of the things that have changed for the worse, at least in my opinion, has become this focus on the progression “race” – which is heavily perpetrated by guild ranking sites like WoW Progress and GuildOx. But I’ve opined on that previously, and I don’t really want to go into a rant on my thoughts here as I’ve done that previously. However, I do think it’s important to acknowledge this change because it plays into what I do what to discuss: The “equality” of 10 man and 25 man raiding, or more specifically why there is such a push to make them equal.
When Blizzard announced that they were going to share raid lockouts between 10 and 25 man raids, that they were going to share loot and that they were going to “equalize” the difficulty between the two raids, a lot of eyebrows were raised. The question asked was how, exactly, was it going to be possible to tune these two versions “equally”. And as we sit in the final instance of this expansion the answer is clear – it’s not possible. In looking through the three progression tiers of this expansion, Blizzard’s failure to deliver on this equality is written all over the history of each tier. The back half of T11 was significantly more difficult on 10s, where the back half of T12 was significantly more difficult (and killed many guilds) on 25s. And to date, this trend seems to carry through T13 where a good number of the encounters can be cleared with greater ease with significantly less strict requirements in their 10 man iterations – yes, I’m looking at you Yor’shaj, Ultraxion and Spine.
And while this probably wouldn’t have been a huge deal, it became one when Blizzard in no uncertain terms indicated that these raids would be of equal difficulty and did everything in their power to try to hammer that home to the playerbase.
The illusive server first.
In an effort to prove that they were serious about tens being a viable option for progression raiding and that they were going to be of an “equal” difficulty when compared to 25s, Blizzard removed the distinction between clearing zones based on your raid size, and included 10 man kills into “server first” feats of strength. Which probably would have been fine – had 10s and 25s truly been of an equal difficulty. But they weren’t. What happened is that many 10s never had an opportunity to snag the titles in T11 due to strict class requirements and mechanics that were more challenging to overcome with only 10 players, and many 25s dropped down to 10s in T12 just so they didn’t miss out on the achievement due to a significantly more challenging end encounter. And the raiding community blew up as those running the “race” bickered at who had “legitimate” kills and who “cheated” by taking the easier road to see faster/smoother progress.
Sadly, those aren’t the only consequences of the changes. The community watched long standing guilds crumble under the pressure of the oversaturation of guilds, and the lack of skilled, dedicated and driven players to fill seamlessly never ending holes in all of those progression rosters – something that burned out leadership teams of both raid sizes. Tensions mounted in guilds (including mine) as arguments over progression vs community arose – and whether one should take the “easy road” when it presented itself rather than burning out on more difficult content offering the same rewards. And to be fair, it’s really hard to say “we are not going to bench 2/3 of our raid roster just to ‘win’ faster” when you look at the significant differences seen in some of the encounters. And the larger the differences were/are, the harder it is to justify.
What is wrong with just having different options?
I honestly don’t know what Blizzard was thinking when they were sitting down in the dev meeting where the thought they could effectively make two raid sizes “equal”. While I’m sure their intentions must have been in the right place, the technicalities involved in undertaking such a feat should have been seemingly impossible, even on paper. There are just too many differences and challenges to overcome to realize true equality. In the end one raid size simply receives overtuned bosses while another receives undertuned bosses (and this varies between the two raids) – and in the end it’s the player that suffers from the attempt to find “equality”.
Honestly, I think the 10/25 experiment was one of the worst things Blizzard did to the game for a myriad of reasons (some of which are listed above). I was very much hoping that they’d just settle on one raid size moving forward and spend their time developing quality content for that one raid, rather than splitting it between trying to make one equal raid for two sizes. A task that still daunts them after an entire expansion. However, since that is not something that is coming down the pike, I do have some thoughts on how to smooth things out a little bit.
- Give up on equal. It’s never going to happen. It’s just not possible – there are too many moving pieces and parts. Just acknowledge that there are going to be two raid sizes and that they are both viable progression options, offering difficulty appropriate to challenge players. Keep loot the same, who cares, just focus on making fun encounters for each respective raid size and stop worrying about equalizing them. Just make them an appropriate challenge for a raid of 10 people or a raid of 25 people.
- Get rid of server firsts; alternatively offer them for each raid size. If server competition is so important, make a 10s and a 25s version of this achievement. Having one server first available when all things are not equal is just folly and causes nothing but stress and drama for guilds who are vying for this achievement for whatever reason. Either can the idea entirely, or create a representative achievement for each raid size so there is an equal opportunity for guilds to compete for them.
- Either give up on homogenization or give into it completely…and then design encounters accordingly. While this is something far more apparently in 10 man raiding, it’s certainly not absent in 25 man raiding. How many people have bemoaned not having a barrier, or a beacon of light, or this buff or that buff? Encounters either need to have an equal chance at success without such tools, or all DPS should have bloodlust and every healer should offer a barrier. I understand that class tuning is a challenge – but I have a really hard time believing that the devs didn’t know that raids lacking a BL or a barrier, as an example, wouldn’t struggle more than raids that had them available.
- Stop making legendaries. Sure, orange is cool, but they have caused nothing but trouble since the first Thunderfury was crafted. I mean, they had to nerf TF at the start of TBC because it was still the most powerful tanking weapon. And, I mean, honestly, how many Dragonwrath’s does one need to kill Spine of Deathwing on 25s? If you can’t balance around the weapons, just stop putting the damn things in the game. Or make them trivial items like tabards.
In the end, I’m OK with just being different. I mean, everyone in the community already looks at 10s and 25s differently, why shouldn’t Blizzard acknowledge that and work harder at making better encounters for everyone involved, rather than continue to attempt making equal encounters when it’s clear that it’s just not possible to achieve such a feat? Let people pick what they’d like to do based solely on what raid size they prefer, and not on the false presumption that the challenges that they face will be the same.
Falling Leaves and Wings 
The kicker is loot, though. Achievements, etc. are window dressing. So long as 10s and 25s drop the same loot, they will be considered equal.
What would you suggest be done about loot?
That’s answered in the blog.
I think what blizzard is missing is that they should be equitable… they can never be equal.
One of my biggest complaints about 10m Ragnaros was how you needed someone who could trip the Magma Traps. No Mage or Shadow Priest? Better hope your Hunter/Warlock had lightning reflexes, or that your heal team could afford to have your Priest flying through the air half the phase. Such terrible design. I haven’t seen as much class-specific difference so far in Dragon Soul (Death Grip is soooo nice for Twilight Sappers, but hardly essential), but we have had nights where we haven’t had Bloodlust. And actually, we haven’t had a Paladin all tier, so no Blessing of Might kinda sucks. Sometimes we have the Hunter component, sometimes we have the Shaman half…but it sure would be nice to just HAVE the buff.
Mind you, while I think it’s a nice goal to have both raid sizes and just let people do whatever they want, I think we all know that in such a setting it just ends up as a permanent clash with each size attacking the other size raid in terms of which setting is harder, which requires more skill, etc. Personally I would love to go through live never having to hear/read such debates again.
Magma Traps weren’t that bad. Every ranged DPS except for Ele shamans could pop them, and so could druids, rogues, and warriors. Sure, mages and spreists were easier, but you didn’t need to do something silly like rotating BoP if you were missing one.
Yeah, the buff issue in 10mans is still quite the kicker, I went through two tiers with no 5% spell haste which is quite important to resto druids. Pretty much every resto gearing tool just has burned into it that you have that buff.
Here’s the bigger question, what’s the gameplay value of all these buffs? Would we not be better just getting rid of all the buffs, and giving raids brez & bloodlust consumables?
I think you make some valid points. I think separating the server firsts into 10 man and 25 man formats is an important step towards stabilizing guild niches. If Blizzard were to do this, I think it would be important to make the feats mutually exclusive. If a guild downshifted to ten man for a server first, as many did for heroic Al’Akir, then they shouldn’t be able to also claim the 25 man title. this would add a lot more weight to the decision to change raid size, and it would also work to segregate the progression competition between guilds. Currently the line between 10 and 25 man guilds is blurred, and it’s a pain to sort out which is which for what kill.
As for homogenization, I don’t think they should go as far as giving everything to every class. I think Blizzard has it right with tanks right now, two tanks bring a raid wall, two tanks bring a Brez. Three classes bring heroism, all four healers have a raid CD.Things aren’t too bad on that front,but I would suggest to spread the 3% raid damage buff to more than two specs.
Legendaries? I would prefer that Blizz avoid creating niche legendaries that exacerbate existing DPS disparities further. I agree with the sentiment that if they can’t do it right, then they shouldn’t do it wrong.
rohan, I think the goal is to make it such that players don’t feel as if they were shoehorned into a raid size for the sake of getting a kill first, or because a tier’s too hard on ten man. You can make it so that the ten man guilds are ten man guilds without relegating them to second class citizen status again.
Something that’s related is the whole 1 tank vs 2 tank issue. Half of dragon soul are 1 tank bosses. You need two tanks for every raid, but one of your tanks is DPSing just as much as tanking, not what he signed up for. Depending on your raid make up it may not be an issue, but required that you have a raider that enjoys both roles? For many that’s not a reality.
Just to be clear, the problem that I (and the others you are addressing with the commentary about legitimacy) had with the 10 vs 25 argument back in T11 was never, ever that the 10 man kill was worth nothing. As you have correctly pointed out, just because the encounter is different doesn’t make it more or less hard. There were objectively fights that were more difficult for 10s on T11 and there were fights that were more difficult for 25s. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. And there were fights that were still difficult on 10 man but then presented additional difficulties on 25. They were different achievements, different fights, different tasks.
The problem that we had was with deception and progression — and how it impacted recruitment.
I firmly believe that all kills in this game, from normal mode Morchok to heroic mode 25 man Madness, are worthy of pride. That was why I originally got involved with the WOW community– I made so many different friends who do so many different things & helped me find my place in the game. But my place isn’t any better objectively than anyone else’s place. I’ve raided in casual guilds before and I think that the kills I achieved in a casual guild were worthy of just as much work and pride and fun as the kills I now achieve in my HM guild. I’ve got friends in guilds of different sizes and different progression levels and sometimes someone’s very first LFR kill, their very first taste of raiding, is worth just as many cheers and pats as an H Spine kill. Raiding is about overcoming obstacles, setting goals that you want to reach and then being proud of your accomplishment as a group when you’ve overcome them.
It somewhat cheapens the whole game when you set out to deceive others about what you’ve accomplished.
One thing I respect about the players I spent my time with is our commitment to honesty… even when it screws us. That’s what raiding is all about. It’s not about killing internet dargons– it’s about trust, honesty, and owning up to mistakes. That’s why I love raiding, as sappy as it sounds.
I was so disappointed in some of the raiding community in T11. So very, very disappointed. I felt honestly like they had cheapened their own achievements in an effort to make them look better than the competition, and frankly it was all about pride and recruitment… it wasn’t about what those guilds had done, it was about what they wanted others to think about what they had done. I think it cheapened those fights on 10 more than they deserved when the 25 man guilds went out, killed them, and then got purposefully vague about how they’d accomplished it, and it completely screwed the recruitment game that tier when you had to sit there and wonder…. so, what has this guild done? Which of these different tasks have they accomplished? For the first time, that clarity wasn’t there.
I just wanted to shake people…. seriously! Those kills are worthy of pride. Lying about what you’ve done just makes everyone angry. I doubt anyone would have been near as derisive of H AA 10 had it not been quietly listed as 13/13 25 man progression by a lot of people. Not even just “13/13” progression, or vague “25 man guild that is 13/13.” There were even people who specifically– specifically– would list themselves as 13/13 HM 25 man progression. Without 13/13 on 25. I just shook my head to see it…. it cheapened what they had done, in my eyes, and that’s not fair.
I know you went a little vague with your progression listings but I don’t think– well, I hope, I hope my memory’s not wrong– I don’t believe you ever did that. I certainly know that no one in any of the guilds I respect did. And even the ones who’d killed it on 10 man first started to regret that they’d done it, which is crazy. I never wanted anyone to be guilty about what they’d done especially when those 10 man kills aren’t anything to sniff at. But once you start comparing achivements without a useful metric– and I guess Blizzard is at fault for removing the metric– then it comes down to a battle of opinions, and the debate gets a lot messier than it really needed to be.
I wanted to shake those people back in T11. 11/13 isn’t nothing, man, it’s really pretty fucking badass. It’s a lot less badass when you’re trying to make it sound like you’ve done more… And again, the issue wasn’t whether they had killed on 10 or not, it was how they presented those kills to the rest of the world. There were a lot of guilds that proudly read “11/13 HM” and mentioned 13/13 10M. But not everyone. No…. not everyone.
So my argument I guess is that I don’t blame Blizzard.
I blame the community for how we reacted to it.
I suppose the logical argument is that “Blizzard made it OK by making the raid sizes equally rewarded so we had a right to say whatever we wanted,” but that really sounds like the petulant child’s argument to me. I thought better of the raiding community than that.
I guess the lesson to take away is that people will take every advantage at hand unless the system makes it impossible. It’s the same argument we always go back to when someone “cheats” at the game and we start arguing about whether it’s Blizzard’s fault that the game is broken or peoples’ fault for cheating. I personally don’t blame Blizzard as much as I blame people, but I guess there is an onus of responsibility in both places. It’s unfortunate that Blizzard needs to change the system to force people to be honest, but I guess that’s something we always knew about a game… the system needs to be precise or it will always be gamed.
So I guess I agree with you completely about what needs to be changed. I just think it’s not necessarily all Blizzard’s fault, that it ended up the way it did and that we talk about it like we do.
The decision to make 10 and 25 share the same lockout killed our 25 raid group. We weren’t a guild, we were a raiding group with players from a number of different guilds. The shared lockout gave us a harsh choice – either raid only with your own guild in 10s, or raid outside of your guild in the 25. In the end people were split, but all that meant was that the 25 was no longer feasable, as we lost half the members in one fell swoop.
It seems that whenever I watch ‘how to’ guides brought out by the more progressive guilds for 10 man content, they always have available the correct class balance to make the encounters that much easier. In our very limited roster, we don’t get that luxury. Of course 25 man guilds cherry-picking classes for 10 man encounters are going to find them easier than a typical small roster like ours. Melee heavy encounter – stack melee. Ranged heavy encounter – stack ranged.
For example, we found having no plate melee on Nefarian quite difficult for construct kiting. We found having only one ranged dps capable of 30k crits on Shannox quite a problem if that player got the dog on them. We didn’t have a Mage to nuke Alysrazor airborne, no DK tank for Baleroc. We did struggle on Ragnaros shadow traps, because the only one who could do it with any success was our Holy Priest, and so on. The point I’m making is that typical 10 man content can be easier or harder depending entirely on your raid make-up. While extreme encounters in 25 mans, eg Spine, may require class stacking and legendaries, I don’t think those with a full roster of classes fully appreciate how a very limited roster can make 10 mans more difficult. With 3 melee and 3 ranged dps, it seems we have no chance with heroic Blackhorn before we have even tried the encounter.
“Of course 25 man guilds cherry-picking classes for 10 man encounters are going to find them easier than a typical small roster like ours.”
But even without a perfect comp the 10s are still easier a lot of the time. Ultraxion is an obvious example this tier. On our first kill on 25m, we had to sit people out purely because of their class. We had to have tanks do a ton of damage – our DK tank was using some dps gear and almost broke 30k DPS. We had healers contributing a ton of damage (around 10mil I think). We popped hero at the start for max DPS with our healers using Heroic Will to avoid the debuff and get the hero in blue/bronze phase. We had to find the absolute limit of our lag and delay hitting will on our fading/hero as much as possible. And when everything went perfectly we got our first kill after the 6m mark when Ultraxion starts to cast his auto wipe ability.
Our alts went into a 10m run with a mediocre comp and less gear than our 25s were when they first did it. A new warrior was competitive enough but significantly undergeared from the rest of us. We didn’t really worry about tank or healer DPS. And once we had people cut out the stupid deaths and got healing down in bronze, we finished with several seconds to spare.
I’m cherry picking a bit, but a lot of arguments I tend to hear have been that 10mans are normally easier because you can take the 10 best resources of a 25m guild and cut the slack. This makes the 10m raiders feel good and feel like they were inherently awesome all along they just needed to get rid of the deadweight to shine. And this clouds people from seeing that in actuality, no – the fight really is just plain easier.
Yes, if that is the case then I can’t argue against it.
The problem is that people can’t just accept that things are different – they have to belittle the content that the other mode works on as being easier. As a 10 man raider, it stings when people in 25 man guilds are killing things months after you and still getting better gear and telling you that you’re a moron because you raid 10s. I hear in Korea, 10 man raiding is considered harder than 25 man raiding. I’ve heard things from 25 man raiders that make me cringe (“I don’t want to raid 10s because it’s too much responsibility – if I screw up in 25s, there is someone to cover for me”).
As someone who is a good player, dislikes 25s and believes that you can make 10s work with a sub-optimal composition (H Blood Queen with 3x holy pallies was indeed possible), I am happy with the system where we get the same loot at least.
@AliPally Hear hear. In strict 10s, you have to be really good at strategising for yourself and thinking about how to use everything your class has to make it work. Our hunter kited constructs on Nef with a turtle pet and a holy pally with RF to help, and we set multiple backups for the 1 30k capable person on H Shannox. We had a shadow priest and a warlock flying on H Alys – and when the warlock wasn’t there, we had our rogue do it and utilised holy pally stuns at bottom instead. The enhancement shaman even got to fly one week (now that was funny). Baleroc with our bear tank was fine. Normal Blackhorn with 1 ranged and 4 melee was tough, but we got it down.
It’s all part of the fun that 25 man raiders don’t seem to get. I don’t envy them their strict healing assignments either.
I’ve been arguing for a while that they should just have 15-mans and scrap 10/25 altogether.
Me too! One unified raid size is the way to go.
Hi Beru,
I agree with you on the idea of it being “all or nothing,” with regards to raid wide cooldowns for healers. It was frustrating to have my class (or specifically, discipline spec) be held up as the poster child for such things, not only by the community at large (i.e. other classes wanting something similar), but by people in our immediate circles (like our raid leaders) who believed that many fights weren’t possible without these things. And in fact, some of them weren’t. I always viewed cooldowns like these as things that were great, if you have them, but you shouldn’t feel like the encounter couldn’t be done without them. It made me angry that the focus for healers in this expansion wasn’t actually to heal and make the green bars more full, but to prevent, misdirect, or make damage seem like it never happened. Some would say that this is just the natural evolution of healing and others say it’s a cop out.
I have to say, though, that I disagree on the assumption that 10s are fundamentally easier than 25m. I had this discussion with someone in my previous guild during a guild meeting. We had been raiding 25s for the first few weeks of Dragon Soul, ran into the roadblock called “Ultraxion” and spent two Sundays working on it. On the third Sunday, we dropped down to a 10m, and got it down, Spine, and Madness down to 28%. The next week, we split into 2 10s, because we didn’t quite have enough for a 25m, and one 10m was significantly more successful than the other one. My argument was that if 10s are so much easier, why wasn’t the other 10m able to clear at the same pace that we were? You could say that the group was stacked, or what have you. But, I still think that skill does play a part in that. I think the same thing applies if you look at the bigger picture. If 10s are easier, as a whole, why aren’t we seeing more successful 10m in the guild rankings and world wide firsts. You don’t. I would be inclined to think one would naturally lead to the other.
I argued about this back and forth with my boyfriend (me – tried 10 and 25, prefer 10s, him – 25-man raider since forever). The conclusion we reached is that we were both talking about the same thing, but expressing it differently. He kept saying that 10s are easier and I very strongly disagreed. What he actually meant was that 10s are easier *if you have very good players*; I was saying that 10s are harder if you’re playing with just regular people. Since you very rarely have 10 people who are absolutely perfect… overall, I’d say 10s are harder due to the responsibility each player carries. Hell, FL 10 heroic stressed me out more than DS 25 heroic in the same week! A couple of people playing alts in one 10-man raid meant that we wiped for hours on bosses we had roflstomped on 25-man for months. On the other hand, any fight where you have to spread out gets harder on 25-man due to basic space constraints, and herding 25 cats is way harder than 10.
(This being said: Beru, how would you feel if Blizzard did decide on a size, and it’s 10 man? How would a dedicated 10-man raider feel if the new size was 25 and only 25? I think it’s a good idea to keep them separate, because different people like different things.)
Yeah, to me this is the biggest difference between 10s & 25s (obviously there’s tons of mechanics/tuning issues too, but when it comes to performance/ease this is the greatest difference). People who raid 25s and 10s out of the same raid group are not experiencing 10 man content in reality, you’re taking your best / most consistant of 25 and putting them in 10man. From the perspective of a raid group who can just barely come up with a 10 man roster, its quite a different story. Absolutely no class balance options, you run with what you have. One of your two tanks can’t make it? Better hope that your other role constraints are met so someone can flip to their tank spec, or else its bring an alt or no raid. Those one or two less than average players you have on your roster that without you couldn’t field the required numbers? Well that’s 33% of your DPS or 40% if you have to 3 heal the fight, or they are responsible for a raid wiping mechanic because there’s not enough bodies for the luxury of backups on any tasks.
I’m not saying that 25man raids don’t have these issues, they most certainly do and I too experienced them when I was in a raid group that could barely field 25. But a raid group with a 25 man roster that runs a 10 man raid does not encounter these issues, they are essentially “out–skilling” (play on out-gearing) the encounter.
I can say that 25-mans don’t have at least one problem: healing. I’m not saying healing a 25-man is *easy*… but when I switched from 10 to 25s I found it *easier*. I died? Oh well, we have 3 battle resses and 5 more healers, they can either get me up or heal a bit more. On a 10-man? Either waste our only res on my dead ass or hope the other healers are amazing… I felt way more pressure there. (When we were doing Alysrazor heroic, I was very happy to be in a 25-man guild. I doubt we could have done it in our old 10-man with stands-in-fire-tornadoes-me…)
40 mans are easier than 25 mans are easier than 10 mans.
10 mans allow the hardcore or elitists to dump the chaff and not have to worry about “carrying ” the rif raf.
The only thing easier about 10 mans is organization.
The bigger the raid the easier it is to have a little slack that lets you bring the less than perfect player. It’s just common sense. If you have 8 healers and 4 tanks and 28 DPS its ok if a few of them are kiddies, wifes or friends that just want to come along or are learning or getting geared up.
“Kiddies, wifes [sic] or friends…”
Dude. Are you trying to be sexist, or are you really that ignorant?
Beru, I completely agree.
I strongly suspect that by the end of this expansion, the shared lockout — and the recruiting nightmare that the resulting oversaturation of guilds has created — will have killed my 25-man raiding guild. After nearly five years, it’s too depressing to reflect on long enough enough to write about (which is the main reason I no longer blog), so suffice it to say I REALLY wish Blizzard would stop trying to parent its players (If I want to spend enough time in-game to raid twice a week, for Thrall’s sake, LET ME!) and allow 10’s and 25’s co-exist again, with their own sets of challenges and achievements and equal — if not necessarily identical — rewards.
The rewards need to be the same between 10 & 25 man, or else its no longer a choice for most players.
Unfortunately, I’m not seeing a solution to having lockouts that are not shared. If you don’t share lockouts, you’re bringing in a big time commitment to competitive raiding. Raids will be required to run both 25s and 10s for loot reasons in order to keep up with the joneses. This, unless you bring in the LFR concept of only getting one roll per raid lockout but shared by 10s and 25s.
Of course it’s a choice. It’s a game. There is absolutely nothing compulsory about it. If a single player or an entire raid wants to run both the 10 and 25 man versions of the same raid instance in a single week to maximize loot — fine. It’s no skin off my nose if someone with more time on their hands or a higher level of interest in the game can do more in one reset than I can. That’s Beru’s entire point (at least as I understand it), and one I agree with: the raid game doesn’t HAVE to be equal.
We’re talking about the majority of the population here. Except the bleeding edge progression guilds, I doubt any guilds *required* you to do 25-man and 10-man in the same week. I know people in my realm’s top guilds and they never did anything except alt runs on 10-man. It is very much possible to find a competitive guild without ridiculous requirements.
Beru’s whole argument is framed around the issue that competition between guild kills is very real if not from an achievement aspect but from a guild recruiting aspect. If that is the case, then if you have a guild on your server that’s willing to put in the time to run both 25s & 10s for 2x time the loot then you’re going to feel might pressured to do the same or fall behind, lets not even mention legendaries (which I doubt will ever stop, maybe they need to be taken out of raids).
Maybe its insignificant because the gear advantage it may present doesn’t last very long, but you know its going to be a requirement for any guild even considering any server first achievements as seen by the LFR exploits that went on.
“It’s no skin off my nose” doesn’t exist in a competitive environment.
Yeah, but should Blizzard really design the whole game around the handful of guilds going for server firsts? I don’t think they should.
I like the LFR format — bang your head against the boss as many times as you like on 10 or 25, but you only get loot once. If you tie the achievements (plural) to how many people were in group for each kill that dropped something, then it solves the problem of world first, too. Though I’m certain that the second week, world first would have occurred, I have no problem with that. It still makes it doable for 99.999% of guild who could care less about getting world first.
What always had me scratching my head was that the amount of loot you get isnt 150% more in 25 man versions. if they really want them ‘equal’ then it should be shouldnt it?
Halfway Homogenization of the classes means some people get permanently sat when their class got deliberatly or accidentally nerfed. I was told if I wanted to raid to drop shaman and roll a druid or make my disc priest into holy to heal since Shamanas added nothing to a raid that wasnt inferior to other class buffs and their straight up healng was under performing.
Something you might find amusing, my Sister tanked with TF in ICC. By the End fo Wrath it had had 2-3 undocumented nerfs to its Proc and she was finally forced to stop using it.
As someone who likes 10 man raiding I feel like I’d get kind of forced to do 25s like I was in Wrath. There weren’t very many, if any, heroic mode 10 man guilds on my server in Wrath. So to get what I wanted, to do highly challenging content with 9 other people, I had to just do 25 man stuff as my “day raid” and I could do a 10 man hard mode team on the side.
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People who belittle 10 man raids are pretty naive. Your margin of error is considerably higher the more players you have. If you roster is 25 people strong and you do a 10 man, then yea it’s going to be inherently easier, for a number of reasons. You have gear, experience, etc. In 10man you have to work with what you have, or chances are there is no raid, unless your on a higher population server then you can probably get a decent pug.
Some of the posters have a good point, blizzard should just stop trying to parent the players, if people want to run the same raid with different groups then do it. It’ll have the added benefit of us on lower population servers(Staghelm-US), to be able to run more challenging content when our 10m guild isn’t able to. Take away the lock-out for 10/25. Make them separate but equal in quality.
I am a fan of 10m, done 10m for many years. I used to say exactly what you are saying: that there is little margin for error in 10m, that if I lose a few ppl in 25m or if they slack, no big deal. But lose one in 10m and it’s a wipe. For DS, done both and I have experienced the opposite. Take Ultraxion, if we lost one person even half way through the encounter, it was a wipe. We struggled a lot to get the kill. Went next week (with an unlikely comp to boot, not cherry picking, had one ranged and rest melee, no shaman etc). Lost our highest dps at the start of the fight. Still killed Ultaxion. Another one – Zon. 25m, had to use proper CD rotation between me (tank) & my healers not to die, due to increased damage on only one tank (just like in 10m). In 10m, 2 healers, no CDs at all, no problem.
I do 10m now again. In a guild that has 4 10m groups. No, we are not going 25m. I LOVE 10m for several reasons and I’m proud of my 10m team. But hands down, 25m DS is harder than 10m DS. Maybe it wasn’t always so, I am only talking about the one I experienced, meaning current content, DS. What I have learned is: not to compare the two till I try them out and never draw a general opinion, but always mention it in relation to certain content.