Raid balance: worse since 20 Mythic static size

[styil]

Raid balance is arguably the worst it has ever been since the introduction of the static 20 Mythic raid size. 20 Mythic was sold to us with 2 main arguments:
1. much better finely tuned encounters
2. to encourage class and spec diversity
However, we are getting neither of these.

1. Encounters have been anything but finely tuned
- Emerald Nightmare released extremely undertuned.
- Trial of Valor released extremely overtuned.
- Nighthold released with extreme AP requirements, and steep difficulty spikes (Trillax --> Krosus, Botanist/Tich ---> Augur)
- Tomb of Sargeras with steep difficulty spikes (Harj/Demonic Inq --> Sisters, Desolate --> Mistress, Maiden --> Avatar --> KJ). Kil'jaeden is quite possibly the most nerfed boss in the history of WoW.

2. Class stacking has never been this extreme
2 Guardians/5 Rogues/HPally+RShaman+RDruid comp was essentially mandatory this expansion. About a quarter of all damage specs represented in most Mythic raid groups.

I believe that if Blizzard is unable to deliver on any of their promises, then the entire static 20 Mythic system should be scrapped and a return to a more flexible raid structure should be made. Currently this is the worst of both worlds.

[GutsAP]

Tell Blizzard to get off their weird obsession with soaking shit and it won't be an issue, has nothing to do with Mythic being 20 man.

[Firatha]

Raid balance is arguably the worst it has ever been since the introduction of the static 20 Mythic raid size. 20 Mythic was sold to us with 2 main arguments:
1. much better finely tuned encounters
2. to encourage class and spec diversity
However, we are getting neither of these.

1. Encounters have been anything but finely tuned
- Emerald Nightmare released extremely undertuned.
- Trial of Valor released extremely overtuned.
- Nighthold released with extreme AP requirements, and steep difficulty spikes (Trillax --> Krosus, Botanist/Tich ---> Augur)
- Tomb of Sargeras with steep difficulty spikes (Harj/Demonic Inq --> Sisters, Desolate --> Mistress, Maiden --> Avatar --> KJ). Kil'jaeden is quite possibly the most nerfed boss in the history of WoW.

2. Class stacking has never been this extreme
2 Guardians/5 Rogues/HPally+RShaman+RDruid comp was essentially mandatory this expansion. About a quarter of all damage specs represented in most Mythic raid groups.

I believe that if Blizzard is unable to deliver on any of their promises, then the entire static 20 Mythic system should be scrapped and a return to a more flexible raid structure should be made. Currently this is the worst of both worlds.

Your boss difficulty is all wack the only really bad spike in ToS was Dhost to mistress everything up to her was a joke then she was kind a wall at first but that faded after her first nerfs and its pretty clear they wanted avatar and KJ to be crazy hard as for needing that listed comp total bullshit the only people that ran with that comp were the first 10 kill there was pre rank 50 avatar/KJ kills using 0 rogues I did avatar/KJ prog as the only rogue in my raid be made out fine so I am going to say you have no real high TOS raiding exp and I just going by what you read about.

Tell Blizzard to get off their weird obsession with soaking shit and it won't be an issue, has nothing to do with Mythic being 20 man.

This is correct it has nothing to do with the raid size

[Cheze]

I think most of these are really just arguments about avatar/KJ; recency bias basically

2x guardian was hardly mandatory this expansion; I see the need for it on KJ but not other than that.

the five rogues thing was basically just for mythic avatar and got nerfed away relatively early in progression.

I agree that raids more or less require at least one hpal, but that's been a long running trend. I don't think there've been that many fights that required a rsham or druid (again, other than avatar and kj early on I guess.)

also ToV was definitely overtuned but that's not really a problem with the 20 man size

- - - Updated - - -

also flex scaling on mythic would probably make tuning/composition issues more pronounced, not less; it'd lead to scenarios where the raid wanted to drop or grow to a specific number of people or healers in response to mechanics, which would be much more obnoxious to deal with than just needing another of XYZ class.

[Revamp Man]

Raid balance is arguably the worst it has ever been since the introduction of the static 20 Mythic raid size. 20 Mythic was sold to us with 2 main arguments:
1. much better finely tuned encounters
2. to encourage class and spec diversity
However, we are getting neither of these.

1. Encounters have been anything but finely tuned
- Emerald Nightmare released extremely undertuned.
- Trial of Valor released extremely overtuned.
- Nighthold released with extreme AP requirements, and steep difficulty spikes (Trillax --> Krosus, Botanist/Tich ---> Augur)
- Tomb of Sargeras with steep difficulty spikes (Harj/Demonic Inq --> Sisters, Desolate --> Mistress, Maiden --> Avatar --> KJ). Kil'jaeden is quite possibly the most nerfed boss in the history of WoW.

2. Class stacking has never been this extreme
2 Guardians/5 Rogues/HPally+RShaman+RDruid comp was essentially mandatory this expansion. About a quarter of all damage specs represented in most Mythic raid groups.

I believe that if Blizzard is unable to deliver on any of their promises, then the entire static 20 Mythic system should be scrapped and a return to a more flexible raid structure should be made. Currently this is the worst of both worlds.

class stacking never this extreme huh.....mu'ru and heroic nefarion 25

[Hctaz]

I don't mind having a diverse cast of healers. This is how it was back in the days when I enjoyed raiding the most. I loved having these unique healer classes which all had very different strengths and weaknesses. Back in Wrath, you always wanted a holy pally for the tanks, a resto druid for topping people off and brez, and resto shamans for their powerful multi target healing, mana tide, and Bloodlust. Disc was also very good for their Power Word: Shield.

Honestly I think healing is one of the few things they've gotten right a lot of the time. Seems like you always want a diverse cast of healers. I wish they could do the same to DPS classes.

I agree that DPS is a problem. Fire Mages making cleave fights a joke with their damage, as well as being able to soak infinite amounts of damage with Ice Block and having Blink to counter KJ's knockback. They're PREEETTY good for that fight. And then you have rogues which are basically the single target equivalent of fire mage (not to mention that Frost mage is very good single target still as well). Rogues have so many tricks to enable them to solo mechanics that are normally meant for multiple people. Cloak of Shadows is normally just a better version of Divine Shield or Ice block since most bosses just use magic damage anyway. The fact that Feint makes them so resilient is also a little ridiculous. It has zero CD and only a slight energy cost but reduces damage taken from AoE by 50%. Wtf is that? Icebound Fortitude is a 20% damage reduction on a 3 minute CD and they have a 50% damage reduction on practically all soak mechanics with zero CD on top of Cloak (which is like a 1.5 minute CD, yeah?). It's absurd. You'd think they'd be taxed heavily on their damage what with all of the utility that they bring.

Not sure where this "give the rogue all of the tools" thing came from anyway. In Vanilla, they were just pure single target DPS with little in the way of preventing their own death aside from Feint reducing their threat which made it possible for them to DPS even harder than other classes with limited ways to reduce their threat. Cloak wasn't added until TBC.





Also the balancing has definitely been worse. Part of the reason that they decided to consolidate raid sizes was the apparent difficulty problems they were having. In Cata, the first raid tier was plagued with 10 man being harder due to limited raid size. You could class stack the FUCK out of 25 man. They also had the luxury to three tank some encounters which made them significantly easier that 10 man just didn't have. When my guild did Maloriak for example, we had to have our holy pally swap to tank and just two heal that shit because we needed the DPS. A 10 man would lose 1/5th of their DPS if they had one swap to tank, but a 25 man would only lose 1/19th, 1/18th, or 1/17th doing the same depending on how many healers they took. And then you had the OPAF feral druid stacking on heroic 25 man Nefarian back when bleeds would snapshot. I forget the exact method of cheese, but I remember it was fucking NUTS. I think this was also back before they changed battle rez to be a group wide thing so... brez stacking was always pretty good as well.

[kneehidude]

2. Class stacking has never been this extreme
2 Guardians/5 Rogues/HPally+RShaman+RDruid comp was essentially mandatory this expansion. About a quarter of all damage specs represented in most Mythic raid groups.

Couple of points:

1) Class stacking is usually prevalent in world first kills (usually up to about world 10) then it usually trickles off

2) Even with class stacking, there are 12 classes in the game, even if everyone in a 10 man was a different class, 2 classes would be left out. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

Stop trying to use class stacking as an argument for bringing 10 mans back. 10 mans aren't in line with what Blizzard developers want and therefore aren't coming back. Get over it.

[Sixy]

Yeah no..
Flex raiding at the highest difficulty level would be a complete nightmare.
And 10 mans were terrible when they coexisted with 25.

[Kaykay]

agree that the reasoning they've used to excuse the removal of 10 man hasn't held up in court. But truth is 10 man or flex mythic will destroy 20 man raiding if it was reintroduced.

Guilds would disband in droves at the start and split into 10 man/flex guilds.

But the mythic raiding community as a whole would see a huge surge of players, more than double the current amount, due to a lower barrier to entry.

Some 20 man guilds would survive, but the majority of players dont care for epeen or "doing the bosses pre-nerf" they just want to progress through hc, then start working on harder content. And currently they hit a wall once hc is cleared, and that wall is:
dropping the flex format,
having to recruit x amount of players,
Justifying to people with limited time that they are benched for raids due to needing a larger roster than the raid allows.

[Deleted]

Raid balance is arguably the worst it has ever been since the introduction of the static 20 Mythic raid size. 20 Mythic was sold to us with 2 main arguments:
1. much better finely tuned encounters
2. to encourage class and spec diversity
However, we are getting neither of these.

1. Encounters have been anything but finely tuned
- Emerald Nightmare released extremely undertuned.
- Trial of Valor released extremely overtuned.
- Nighthold released with extreme AP requirements, and steep difficulty spikes (Trillax --> Krosus, Botanist/Tich ---> Augur)
- Tomb of Sargeras with steep difficulty spikes (Harj/Demonic Inq --> Sisters, Desolate --> Mistress, Maiden --> Avatar --> KJ). Kil'jaeden is quite possibly the most nerfed boss in the history of WoW.

2. Class stacking has never been this extreme
2 Guardians/5 Rogues/HPally+RShaman+RDruid comp was essentially mandatory this expansion. About a quarter of all damage specs represented in most Mythic raid groups.

I believe that if Blizzard is unable to deliver on any of their promises, then the entire static 20 Mythic system should be scrapped and a return to a more flexible raid structure should be made. Currently this is the worst of both worlds.

So much things are wrong here... And the recency bias is real... You think it was better with 25/10 HC???
The tuning was spiky in a lot of other raids (first 11 bosses of SoO--> Blackfuse, All of firelands -->Ragnaros etc...). There will ALWAYS be spike in difficulty in any raid.

And now on to Class stacking.... "2 guardians + 5 rogues" mandatory this expansion? First it was not this expansion, it was only this tier and only the last two bosses. Second it only concerned the top tier guild (top 50). My guild killed KJ world 138 in 210ish pulls (we are a two day raiding guild, so this is a more than decent ranking) and on KJ we had NOT A SINGLE GUARDIANS (2 Monks and 1 Bdk) and only 2 rogues.
So yeah your class stacking argument is useless and only concern a tiny tiny fraction of the raiding population (less than 50 guilds).
And finally, do you think that class stacking WAS NOT extreme with 10/25 HC for top tier guilds? Well then you should check Nefarian 25HC and Spine of Deathwing 25 HC world first, you'll see what is extreme class stacking.

[xcitng]

Sound like someone who just wants 10 man back, give it a rest

[Reloe]

only reason people stacked rogues is because guilds like method did it btw. You could be soaking touches as dk, demonhunter, balance/restodruid aswell, but only those guilds who had absolutely no way of getting enough rogues in their roster would actually do that at the time.
Actual class balance is in a pretty good state right now.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=80&boss=2032
doesn't look to bad, 13% between first and last spec isn't something to be worried about especially when you think about the fact that good players aren't playing the underperforming specs so they look even worse than they are.
EN was undertuned yes but thats about the only raid with a problem.
ToV wasn't overtuned, it had 2/3 bosses tuned around 35 traits and if your raid had those, it was totally fine. Only because everyone expected it to be an easy raid that doesn't mean we can blame blizzard for making it harder. Helya was a endboss worthy encounter and thats exactly what everyone wants.
Nighthold was difficulty curve wise the best raid instance blizzard has ever made. You get your 3 easy bosses every guild can easily do. Then you get your 4 medium bosses that most guild have to progress a little bit on. And lastly you have 3 bosses that were "hard". I think thats exactly how a raid should look like. An Argument could be made about trait-requirements, but in reality thats only a argument to make if you wanted to kill more than 7 bosses in week 1, which not a lot of guilds did.
Tomb had the host -> mistress -> maid issue, where mistress should've been a little easier and maiden a little harder. Mechanically KJ isn't really harder than other bosses, its just that his mechanics immediatly wipe your raid if done wrong. Endbosses like Archimonde were fun to me, but a boss-design like KJ or even avatar just feels bad, the actual difficulty wasn't that bad.

And as others have stated, the only boss that "required" 2 guardians was KJ, I agree that tankbalance is in a very bad state, but monk/dk are just as viable.
5Rogues was never mandatory, gul'dan "required" 2rogues, avatar required atleast 4people that can soak every wave of touches, when you have one additional immunity per wave. Classes that can soak every wave of touches are: dk, demonhunter, balance/restodruid, rogue and one of the tanks. Doesn't sound that big of a requirement to me.
For KJ stacking rogues was completly unnecessary after they reduced small armaggedon's to 6, previously you'd do that as with 8+2 it was almost impossible to not get double stacks.

[Dangg]

Pretty hard to deny.
When blizz cant deliver on the reason which led them to introduce 20 man they should get rid of it.

I dont know if it is worse but would anyone argue that it was made better by the static difficulty?

[Deleted]

Raid balance is arguably the worst it has ever been since the introduction of the static 20 Mythic raid size. 20 Mythic was sold to us with 2 main arguments:
1. much better finely tuned encounters
2. to encourage class and spec diversity
However, we are getting neither of these.

Actually it was because
1. Its impossible to have an encounter equally difficult in both 10 and 25 formats
2. Blizzard wanted to add mechanics that could only be countered by certain specs and there was a strong argument it was possible not to have that class(let alone spec) in a standard 10 man heroic guild.

As for the rest of the post. 10 man was much less balanced than 20 ever was/will be, it just wasn't needed to class stack because outside of Paragon the rest of the 10 man guilds were trash.

[Deleted]

So look at this and tell me 5 rogues are a problem. And there a lot other bosses where you stacked classes.

[Gaidax]

megalol:

OP thinks class stacking was never such a problem and there were no difficulty spikes and overtuned/undertuned encounters lul.

It's frikkin usual thing, top guilds stack classes and specs like no tomorrow to beat the race, then those coming right after them get tips and go monkey sees monkey does and suddenly every trash guild follows the suit long after it's no longer a thing, just because they all watch fatboss and method killvids.

As for difficulty spike dayum, it's a thing every tier of every bloody expansion - you have a bunch of throwaway initial bosses then some shit like Gorefiend pops put of nowhere and shuts you down hard. Ye total new thing there.

And yes, this tier was frikkin rough. And it has nothing to do with 20 man, just Avatar was tuned tighter than virgin schoolgirl's cat and ended up being a massive brick wall and honestly it is as it should be because it's frikkin Avatar of Sargeras.

[Deleted]

If you think nighthold and tomb had a "steep difficulty curve" what do you call gorefiend in hfc or ragnaros in fireland compared to previous bosses in the respective zone? Maybe use your brain and realize why there are always 2-3 mythic bosses that are way easier than the endboss on heroic.

But then again you think resto druid was mandatory this xpac which instantly shows that you have no clue at all.

Oh and btw 10 man will NEVER come back, join a good mythic guild or finally quit.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Mythic raiding has been designed around making a very tiny percentage at the top happy. Specifically at first. They overtune the shit out of it. Then about a month after the race is over they give it a slight nerf. Then a couple months another slight nerf. Then about a month before the next tier a karate chop nerf.

Might as well be the 5% every 2 weeks it was in ICC at this point. Or Blizzard be willing to just tell people "we know you think your on this level.. but you arent" which they seem to have no problem telling a lot of other people.. besides the sqeeky "but I am godmode" raiders (that arent).

[Manico]

agree that the reasoning they've used to excuse the removal of 10 man hasn't held up in court. But truth is 10 man or flex mythic will destroy 20 man raiding if it was reintroduced.

Guilds would disband in droves at the start and split into 10 man/flex guilds.

But the mythic raiding community as a whole would see a huge surge of players, more than double the current amount, due to a lower barrier to entry.

Some 20 man guilds would survive, but the majority of players dont care for epeen or "doing the bosses pre-nerf" they just want to progress through hc, then start working on harder content. And currently they hit a wall once hc is cleared, and that wall is:
dropping the flex format,
having to recruit x amount of players,
Justifying to people with limited time that they are benched for raids due to needing a larger roster than the raid allows.

Yeap, exactly this. Don't care if 10man would be harder or easier than 20/25, just want to have some more challenging content with the same people. I would love the return of 10man.

[krl]

Top difficulty will be fixed-size. That is a given.

What size should it be ? Imho anything under 15 doesn't really feel as a raid. A "group of friend" or "family" is not a raid, this should be a cooperation with a lot of other people, strangers. Think about barbarian groups, savage looters and the like. 40-ppl raid conveyed this feeling well.

However, anything too large forbids personal responsibility mechanics. Everyone fails sometimes and wipes the raid. Statistically, the more people you have, the more chance of someone fucking up.
15 to 25 is good imho.