Ghostcrawler tweet about 25 man, let the speculation begin!

[Granyala]

Unlinked achievements would be nice. Not to feel superior, but to be able to see whether the dude I'm inspecting raids 10m or 25m.

[Tiberria]

Its more loot dropping in 25 mans.

More loot dropping is kind of useless. Even if the loot per person in 10 man was the same as in 25 man (i.e. 2 items per boss in 10, 5 per boss in 25), people that wanted to gear up faster would still want to do 25 man, because there is a much greater chance of individual pieces dropping and much less loot that gets rotted because no one in the raid can use it. 25 man raids gear up something like 50% faster than 10 man raiders because of this.

On top of this, they already bumped 25 man bosses up to drop 6 items per boss at the start of this expansion, and it has not done anything to fix the 25 man problem.

[eschatological]

Sure, if you like to ignore data and good analysis =)

Again, I don't know the answer - I *want* to know the answer and see the data. You telling me what the data is going to say means absolutely nothing to me, in fact, it's the entire basis for my original statement.

Loot tables are the same in 10 and 25. The assumption is that drop rates for particular pieces are also the same (between the two difficulties, IE, agi gun has the same chance to drop on 10 as it does in 25 man). 25s have a chance to drop the same item more than once, which, afaik, isn't true in 10 man (at least, I've never seen it). On tier-dropping bosses, 10 mans drop one item off the table, one token, 25s drop 2 tokens and 4 pieces. The assumption is that each piece has an equal chance of dropping in comparison to other items on the table (tier vs. tier, non-tier vs. non-tier), which isn't entirely accurate but makes the math easier. This can lead us to some math.

Simple math for an item which has a 10% to drop off a boss with 10 items (with the assumption that in 10 man where loot isn't repeated that the "pool shrinks by 1" and each item has an ~11% chance to drop on the 2nd item, and the assumption that 3 of the 10 items are replaced by tokens on tier bosses):

10 man, non-tier boss: 1 - (.9*.89) = 19.9%
10 man, tier boss, non-tier item: 1- (.8572) = 14.28% [NB: because the tier tokens replace 3 of the items, you have a 1/7 chance as opposed to 1 in 10]
10 man, tier boss, tier token: 33% [as one drop is guaranteed to be a token, the chance is just a matter of which token drops of the 3, with vanq, and possibly now prot, having a slightly higher chance. I assumed an even chance here for the math.]

25 man, non-tier boss, assumption of max 2 of any one item dropping:
"worst" case assumption of first 4 items being 2 drops repeated once each: 1 - (.9^2 * .89^2 * .875^2) = 50.08%
"best" case assumption of 6 unique items: 1 - (.9^6) = 46.85%
25 man, tier boss, non-tier item:
"worst" case assumption of 4 items being 2 drops repeated once each: 1 - (.857^2 * .8333^2) = 49%
"best" case assumption of 4 unique items: 1 - (.857^4) = 46%
25 man, tier boss, tier token: 1 - (.666^2) = 55.55% chance repeating
[for these calculations "best" and "worst" refer to gear diversity, but you actually gain a higher chance to get your item once a repeat has dropped if the assumption is the table is then prevented from picking that item again.]

These drops rate mean very little if you don't put them in terms of role variation and how many of a certain item you need. But if you have 1 agi mail user (IE, one hunter, no enhance shamans, which isn't uncommon), that hunter is going to gear up pretty quick in 25 man. In order for 25s to gear up more slowly, you'd have to have more than 2.5x that particular category of gear needed in the raid, and that's in the "best" scenario (where the percentages are closest, for items off a non-tier boss). So if you have 2 mages/warlocks/spriests in a 10 man (not uncommon), you'd need more than 5 raiders in those roles to be gearing up slowler on those bosses. In some cases, the percentages are 3x to almost 4x as much, for every 2 of one "category" you'd need 6-8 in the 25 man raid. For tier tokens, you'd need almost double the people on the token that're on the token in 10 man.

For purposes of this post, item categories are unique, discrete gear categories.

The rest is looking at your average comp. Mathematically:

1) 25 man tanks gear quicker, as they have a higher chance of getting their items to drop than 10 man tanks, and you gear up the same number of tanks (generally 2).

2) 25 man healers gear quicker, as they have a higher chance of getting their items to drop than 10 man healers, but they have more competition (IE, maybe multiple priest, multiple rshamans, etc) in terms of armor. To be "slower" than 10 man, you'd need 2.5x-3x (in the best case; in the worst case almost 4x) of a certain healer for the drop rates to be compensated for - IE, 2-3 int mail users, 2-3 spirit leather users, etc. In terms of weapons/trinkets, they are (generally) a lower percentage of the raid than in 10 man (16-24%) vs. (20%-30%) so they gain those faster. It might be slower in certain cases if boomkins/ele/spriests want to go for spirit weapons, but IDK if that's been the case recently.

3) 25 man DPS can gear slower than 10 man DPS in certain situations, in certain categories. If there is 1 mail agi user in a 10 man, any combination of 3 hunters/enhance shamans in a 25 man will mean those 3 will have 3 of the same piece much slower, on average, than the 1 10 man raider. This would probably be exacerbated in categories of gear with overlap: Int cloth can be potentially used by as little as 1-2 DPS in a 10 man, and 3-6 mages/locks/spriests in a 25 man isn't unheard of. Categories such as spirit weapons might be much slower in 25 man if every boomkin/ele wants one on top of every healers, but you'd need 8-9 to want them to outweigh the 3 healers in a 10 man who'd want them. Nevertheless, it would be hard for the DPS as a whole to gear slower than the DPS of a 10 man as a whole.

4) Generally, 10 mans gain tier quicker, with the 10 man token drop rate 3/5ths of the 25 man token chance. If a 10 man has 3 people on a token, it is likely the same token in 25 man will gear slower (needing only 5 on that token to be "slower"). If there is 4 on a token, 7 people in a 25 would be needed on that token to be slower, and that's very possible, as an even distribution would have 8-9 on each token. Occasionally, 10 mans have only 2 people on a token, which would gear a great deal quicker than 25 man.

[Kagonos]

These "speculations" so far have made very little practical sense. There are too many reasons to believe that they simply will NOT reimplement separate item levels for the 2 raid sizes, logistically and from a design standpoint, it no longer makes sense. Also there is too much differentiation between the supporters of each raid size who think that 1 is harder than the other, and for good reason. They BOTH have things (specific encounters, logistics, etc) that are harder than the other version. But one thing about the split has yet to be discussed, and I feel that it should...

The fact that its 10 vs 25, not 10 vs 20. It's not a direct or even logical size difference. There's no direct translation. Both require no more than 2 tanks (except in the rare cases when you need 3 for a certain encounter) and several only require 1, 10 man seems to require 2 healers while 25 man TYPICALLY requires 6, so there's now a discrepancy in the number of DPS each takes. Why does this matter? I would argue that it makes balancing encounters more difficult since there's no truly equitable translation from one to the next. Invoking the name of another game here may get flamed, and I'm not trying to say that they got every(any)thing right, but Star Wars has 8 man and 16 man. It's quite obvious that there's a linear difference, and balancing the numbers is much easier.

What I'm getting at is maybe they are planning on shifting the paradigm so that balance is easier. Maybe they will borrow from SWToR (sacrilege, I know) and do something along the lines of 8 and 16 man or, sticking with their own formula, 10 and 20? It will make everything very basic for balancing and raid building. Encounters can be balanced around a simple 2 tank, 3 healer and 5 DPS and once gear and skill are appropriate, you can drop to 2 healers and 6 DPS. Then, when you bump it up to a 20 man, you simply double what you would otherwise bring. Although it makes no sense to bring 4 tanks, so, I don't see that being possible, so I can see there still being a few logistical wrinkles to iron out, but they seem fewer than having an uneven raid format.

The only other thing that makes sense is a convergence, which HAS been suggested already, of both raid sizes to a single raid size. Probably 15, since they seem to like multiples of 5. Maybe 2 tanks, 3 or 4 healers and rest DPS. It all remains to be seen, but regardless of what everyone who defends 25 mans asserts, NOT everyone would rather be raiding 25 mans. They don't feel epic to everyone and to some, like myself, they are just a place where it's more likely that people within the raid will not like each other, where some people only care about loot (we call them lootwhores) and where a few lazy people can be carried. Like the "AFK on trash" or "can I get a rez when you guys all run back and I don't?" types. At least in a 10 man I know who those people are and I know WHY they do it (like the guy in college who does homework when he can, rofl.) There's no good reason to reward the people who like 25 mans. There's a REASON they are dying out. It's because there were a TON of people who really didn't want to do them but did anyways because of the ilevel, and because of the perception of "LOL 10 man raider." We still have a few knuckle draggers on our server who say that only 25 mans count, yet they are more than happy to complete the content in a 10 man group and recruit based on THAT group's progress. I'm fairly certain that 25 man raiding is on it's way out. That's pretty damn controversial.

[Deleted]

Free Gametime, exclusive pets/mounts or other such rewards for people who lead 25 mans on a consistent basis.

The bottleneck is raid leaders, blizzard aren't dumb.

[Knockerz]

Complete bullshit. If players liked them that size, they wouldn't need the incentive of better loot to do 25 mans.

We had exactly the same argument when 40 mans went extinct.

Except that when bc came out and raid size went from 40 to 25 the game subscription numbers grew. When Blizzard downgraded raid size to defacto 10 man size, the number of subscribers decreased. However, Blizzard will do whatever is in there best interest regardless of what is said in this thread. The only thing that matters to Blizzard is the bottom line.

I never liked the fact that 25 raids did not mesh well with 10 man raids even going so far back into bc era. You would need two 25 man raids to split evenly into five 10 man raids. The down grade from 25 to 10 man further highlight this problem. There are less spots to dps if you downgrade two 25 man raids into five 10 man raids. You would need to convert 6 dps into tanks, two tanks per 10 man raid. For healers I don't remember exactly how many on average you find in a 25 man raid. It's been a very long time since I raided. I think it's around 5-6 healers per 25 man raid, but I don't remember exactly, but probably need to convert one to float between healer or dps in 10 man. Point is that the switch from 25 to 10 man cost Blizzard dps raiders, especially for melee dps. I stop playing wow in firelands, but I stop raiding about the time when cataclsym launched. I did try to find a guild to raid, but it became more difficult especially on a warrior dps for the odd times I played on Illidan. Now the subscription losses aren't purely due to 25 vs 10 man problem, but the general decline of mmorpgs. Every major mmorpg has had some form of subscription losses for the past year.

Personally, I would never consider 10 man raiding as a real substitute for 25 man raiding, which is why I never bother looking for a 10 man guild. It's just too small. You can't even have all the viable pve specs in a 10 man raid. Perhaps cause I'm old school and will always correlate raids with large number of people. Ultimately, I don't care what Blizzard does since it won't affect me. I canceled my two accounts of WoW back during fireland and stop raiding early during cataclysm. I mostly play swtor now days, which has other problems, but at least I don't have to put up with people afk or botting in warzones since the problem is non existent in swtor. Now if only there was some world pvp and a paid transfer service. I too have canceled my swtor account over unresolved problems that BW hasn't fixed for about half a year already. They had more than enough time to fix it already.

[Deleted]

Except that when bc came out and raid size went from 40 to 25 the game subscription numbers grew. When Blizzard downgraded raid size to defacto 10 man size, the number of subscribers decreased. However, Blizzard will do whatever is in there best interest regardless of what is said in this thread. The only thing that matters to Blizzard is the bottom line.

I never liked the fact that 25 raids did not mesh well with 10 man raids even going so far back into bc era. You would need two 25 man raids to split evenly into five 10 man raids. The down grade from 25 to 10 man further highlight this problem. There are less spots to dps if you downgrade two 25 man raids into five 10 man raids. You would need to convert 6 dps into tanks, two tanks per 10 man raid. For healers I don't remember exactly how many on average you find in a 25 man raid. It's been a very long time since I raided. I think it's around 5-6 healers per 25 man raid, but I don't remember exactly, but probably need to convert one to float between healer or dps in 10 man. Point is that the switch from 25 to 10 man cost Blizzard dps raiders, especially for melee dps. I stop playing wow in firelands, but I stop raiding about the time when cataclsym launched. I did try to find a guild to raid, but it became more difficult especially on a warrior dps for the odd times I played on Illidan. Now the subscription losses aren't purely due to 25 vs 10 man problem, but the general decline of mmorpgs. Every major mmorpg has had some form of subscription losses for the past year.

Personally, I would never consider 10 man raiding as a real substitute for 25 man raiding, which is why I never bother looking for a 10 man guild. It' just too small. You can't even have all the viable pve specs in a 10 man raid. Perhaps cause I'm old school and will always correlate raids with large number of people. Ultimately, I don't care what Blizzard does since it won't affect me. I mostly play swtor, which has other problems, but at least I don't have to put up with people afk or botting in warzones since the problem is non existent in swtor. Now if only there was some world pvp and a paid transfer service.

Implying subs decreased because of the 10 men raid. Not because cataclysm was a shitty expansion. Riiiiiiight.

[Shmeh]

The ideal way to make 25 the only desired choice for every raider is to remove the heroic version of the 10m size. It's not like it was heroic before, so the best thing to do is to actively break every 10m guilds and merge them under a new banner, for 25m raids.

Why wouldn't anyone want that to happen?
-Break 3 or 4 10 man guilds where only 6-7 are actually decent to good players
-Make a reliable 25m roster where only the best players can raid

Everybody wins in this scenario.

Because some people prefer 10 mans. Just because you like 25 mans more doesn't mean that 25s should be the only desired choice. Not everyone wins.

[Gamez]

- More gear drops per person
- More battle resses
- Less personal accountability per person

The only (and admittedly big) drawback to 25 man raiding is gathering the people. Seeing as how groups are already able to do so, I don't really see why they need anything else to make it easier / more attractive.

obviously you don't raid 25 man raids.

[tehdef]

There is no incentive to doing 25man, even if you're a progression guild. 10 man get to steal the realm firsts, can be noticed for world first, and have to deal with less bodies. That's not to mention faster turn around for wipes, easier logistics, etc.

That said, there is basically absolutely ZERO incentive to running 25 mans. That said, controversial is a huge word. He wouldn't use that word if it wasn't a big deal. I'm expecting achievement splits between 10 and 25 man, with a possible change to pre-upgraded items, potentially 1/2. The item upgrade won't change, but I am thinking they will make all 25man gear have a different color, maybe even provide full sets 5/5 with Challenge Mode like animations.

The extreme side would be to bust 25-Man's and make 10/20/25LFR.

[Deleted]

There is no incentive to doing 25man

One more loot is enough incentive. Besides, there shouldn't be any incentives if the content is of the same difficult of 10 men. Just because you are 15 more people you should not get more things.

[Knockerz]

Implying subs decreased because of the 10 men raid. Not because cataclysm was a shitty expansion. Riiiiiiight.

We will see if Blizzard does any better this year using this same model. If subscription continue to decline, Blizzard will be force to take more drastic changes.

Have you seen the numbers on wow progression website. Compare the cataclysm vs mop first raids, tier 11 vs tier 14?

[Pua]

Backing up from favoring 10man would be a disaster for Blizzard. Them saying it's controversial i'm guessing it might be the end of 25man raiding.

I strongly doubt they'll do that in MoP, but I do think this is on the table for the future and could be the basis of this announcement.

The real problem with this isn't the raiding content and the effect on "the race" that only a tiny percentage are involved in; the problem is that 25-man guilds were once full communities, and it's this that people tend to overlook in the whole debate. The number of 10-man guilds out there, whose only calling card is their progress, is unbelievable - whilst back in WotLK, the best guild on my server (at the time) still had loads of players that didn't actually raid at all.

It's for this reason that I feel any devaluation of 10-man will have a smaller effect than the removal of 25-man raiding. But that's just an inkling.

[Talen]

Complete bullshit. If players liked them that size, they wouldn't need the incentive of better loot to do 25 mans.

We had exactly the same argument when 40 mans went extinct.

If Blizzard still created 40 man content, there would still be 40 man raids.

But yes...there are players who do like 25s, who don't need the promise of gear and yet can't run 25s because they cannot get a group. True, a large proportion of those who argue for 25s have admitted they do so for gear.

But....there is still a proportion who can't do 25s because there is no guild available.

EJL

[Kissme]

Here's a guess: All loot changed to LFR style. You have a chance at 10m loot and a chance at 25m loot--clearly the chances of getting loot in 25m are higher. You can't trade loot. Charms can only use them once per boss/week.

Terrible idea. The LFR loot system inherently kills the advantage of loot through organized groups, which is that your chance of getting your item increases as each person gears out. Making organized raids follow the LFR system would neuter better guilds as they could no longer put gear where it is most needed, would make instances require longer farming as you wouldn't be able to gear out new recruits in one or two runs by just passing all gear to them, and would essentially make anyone who raids for loot want to claw their own eyes out.

This system also would encourage guild hopping and lead to even faster guild turnover. No point in building up rep with your guildmates, or showing loyalty as neither loot councils or dkp would work with that system. Always jump ship as fast as you can to the guild farming even one more boss than yours - there's no penalty in a gearing sense for doing so with that system, in fact even two weeks of killing one extra boss would be a huge advantage gear wise in your favor with the LFR system.


Terrible, terrible idea.

[Talen]

If said players love 25 mans, what stops them from taking the burden unto themselves and become a raid leader? Nothing. In fact, I would hazard many of those that enjoy 25s are simply lovers of a free ride.

Not everyone wants to be a raid leader, not everyone will be good at it. I've seen how much effort my own leaders put into the role and it's one I don't want.

Which happens to be entirely true. It is equivocable to the twinking situation; people stated that they did 25 mans/twinked just because they were fun, but the true reasons came out once fixes were applied in the form of XP locked brackets and the shared lockout.

And yet there are still players who twink.

EJL

[Deleted]

People got over the death of 40 mans, they'll get over the death of 25s.

Why does everyone keep saying that they're going to kill 25 mans? Why would Blizzard want to remove the top guilds from their game completely? Most top end raiding guilds are 25 man, and most of them would more than likely completely quit if 25 mans were "removed". I think it's far more sensible to assume that 25 mans will get some sort of server first title as recognition, something currently not in the game and something that would be inaccessible to 10 man guilds. It wont be anything on a "loot" front, and if it is Blizzard will scale 25 normal/heroic to that increased item level of gear so the actual change would be negligible. It will be entirely vanity, but something that 25 man raiders will receive recognition for and (speaking as a player who's cleared MSV HC on 10 and 25) 25 man HC is harder. I don't want to comment on normals, they do not count (in my mind).

[Talen]

It's entirely possible the change may be what was suggested; killing both 10 and 25s, and making 15 mans the universal raid size. But, as you said, knowing Blizz it will be gimmicky carrots on a stick.

GC said the idea they were discussing was controversial....not suicidal. They won't kill 10s mid X-Pac.

GC and the rest of the developers clearly lack foresight if they did not see this as a problem when they introduced shared lockouts.

They did. At least foresee how players would react to the size issue.

EJL

[Sarthan]

I hope they crush this ten man raiding crap. It's not even real raiding. Go do a 5 man dungeon if you want a smaller group. Only reason more people do ten man raids is because it is a lot easier.

[Talen]

Unlinked achievements would be nice. Not to feel superior, but to be able to see whether the dude I'm inspecting raids 10m or 25m.

Blizzards current concept is that it shouldn't matter as the ach simply recognises who defeated a particular challenge.
The players point is that the two sizes are different with different tactic.
The counterpoint is that tactics can vary within sizes due to group makeup, ability and gear so why should tactic changes due to size be recognised?

Other than that, I have the question as to how effective such a change would be. Ach hunters would want both but they'd only need to finish the run once to get it. Others either won't care or can't get into a 25 to get it. It will create more of an identity for 25s, but also ensure that each size format is seen as different with one being seen as the must-have and the other the also-ran.

EJL