Heroic teir 13 - an objective analysis of 10vs25

[ImpTaimer]

I "love" these threads, especially ones with cute little "rules" on them to delude the subtle intention of the thread.

Arguing, that 10-man is easier/harder because it has less people and 25-man is harder/easier because it has more people. By no means do any important elements to the arguments ever show themselves. It's as if 25-man players believe they're better than 10-man on a player-vs-player basis, for no reason. It's as if they believe noone in their 25-man raid is terrible at the game by any means. Because they won't be proven wrong, 25-man people take their best-10 players and trample over 10-man as if it's suppose to mean something. Oh, and lets all pretend 40-mans were actually hard. The hard part about 40-mans was getting people geared, and having 40 people on. By no means, if everyone in raid was properly geared, would these raids be difficult. Who remembers the world first Ragnaros-40 kill?

There's no point comparing Cata 10vs25 to WotLK 10vs25. 25-mans had a higher gear level in WotLK, thus it was statistically harder. There's no point even arguing it. LK-25 HM was not harder because it required 25 people. It was harder because it required a higher gear level. Any other measure of difficulty is superfluous. If these guilds actually thought 10-man was easier than 25-man in Cata, they'd be rushing 10-man heroics for world firsts, since 10 and 25-man Cata raids have no distinction between them other than the amount of loot that drops.

I would love so much for these guilds to play the game w/o the use of mods, third-party programs (vent, etc), or farming PTR to death. When you use mods, strategy guides, or third-party programs, you really have no right to complain how easy the game is. You're given the ability to make it easy. When you choose to make it harder, you're laughed at. When you choose to exploit resources to make it easier, you're praised. It's just fucking pathetic the way people argue about these things.

[Difficulty]: "Greeting, player, you're in for the fight of your life."
["Hardcore" player]: "Are there any rules to this fight?"
[Difficulty]: "You may use any weapon you like. I will be fighting you with my bare hands. I expect the same respect from you."
["Hardcore" player]: "Do I get anything for not using a gun?"
[Difficulty]: "No."
["Hardcore" player]: *BANG* "That was easier than I thought."
[Difficulty]: "You're a coward..."
["Hardcore" player]: "Who cares, you're dead."

(I put things in quotes because I'm not using them in the literal sense. Hardcore and Casual are not measurable forms of difficulty. Hardcore would imply someone refuses to change the way they do something, a "set in stone" mentality. Casual would imply that someone does something the way they want to, regardless of factors "set in stone". Any other form of interpretation to these words is incorrect.)

[tangedyn]

The kill numbers ARE valid data, because it seems for just as many casual guild 10 mans there are, there's 1 25 man that equals out in equilibrium. Which, the ratio btw is 14.66~/1 guilds, with the numerator obviously being number of 10 man guilds compared to 25.

Instead of calibrating against a fixed ratio, I think it would be more accurate to calibrate against the ratio of guilds that have completed the prerequisite (or virtual prerequisite) for each particular fight.

For example, N Madness is a definite prerequisite for H Morchok, so compare the H Morchok ratio against the N Madness kill ratio.
H Yor'sahj, H Zon'ozz, H Hagara and H Ultraxion are trickier because many guilds do them in different orders, so they should simply have H Morchok as their prerequisites. H Blackhorn should have 5/8 as prerequisite, H Spine should have 6/8 and H Madness have 7/8.

This way you get a number closely resembling the percentage of guild working on the encounter that has beaten it, which would more closely resemble the difficulty of the encounter. This method also cancels out some of the issues that have been mentioned such as attendance.

---------- Post added 2012-02-03 at 04:02 PM ----------

Why exactly is 10-man harder on Spine?
Less burst than 25 or something?

My guess is.. more Spirit Link Totems!

[schwarzkopf]

The best way to compare them - is to compare within each type (e.g. within 10man and within 25man). This can be done by looking at the ratio of kills of each boss to the kills for the benchmark (easiest) boss - Morchok.

That is - how much harder is Spine than Morchok in 10 man, how much harder is it in 25 man.

You then make one (big) assumption - that Morchok is as easy in both, then you get some meaningful info - without any concern for 25man vs 10man difficulty directly.

e.g.

Morchok vs Hagara vs Spine
10 : 15873 2623 282
25 : 2063 1110 123

Sort of shows that Morchok is a walkover in 10man (6x the kills of Hagara vs 2x in 25man), Hagara and Spine pretty much equal in both.

[Keoren]

This way you get a number closely resembling the percentage of guild working on the encounter that has beaten it, which would more closely resemble the difficulty of the encounter.

This is still flawed.
Let's assume you have an encounter with the difficulty value of 2 on X-man. You also have the same encounter with the difficulty value of 3 on Y-man. Both X and Y have an encounter with the difficulty value of 4 right after. You will have worse guilds on average on the latter encounter on X-man simply due to the lower requirements of the first encounter. This means a lower percentage of the guilds on X-man would likely be beating the value 4 encounter, even if Y-man also has the value 4 for it.

For a more striking example, let's say X has encounters with the values of 3 and 3 while Y has them with the values of 5 and 3 with the former being a requirement for the latter. In this case the latter encounter would more than likely end up seeming notably easier on Y simply due to the fact that the guilds facing it are on a higher level on average.

[Tsuna]

This basically. You can't use kill numbers. You can't use number of guilds. There's no plausible way to EVER determine which difficulty is harder.

And no, you can't use the argument of, "Paragon said 10 man is a joke lolz". Because what guild is honestly gonna say, "we did the easier difficulty"? Plus since when does someones PERSONAL opinion determine the difficulty of something?

But these threads ALWAYS turn into a 10 vs 25 debate. Never fails.

Uhh, this? This hasn't been an objective analysis of t13 heroic since the moment it came into being. Gaming forums do not work that way. Search yourselves, you know this to be true.

[Radalek]

Hello all. First off, let me tell you about what I do. By day I am a financial and business analyst. Basically I analyze data to help improve a fortune 500 company, so to say I am well ad versed with data and reveling the story I tell would be an understatement.

This forum, and a lot of the world of Warcraft community, seems to always get into a big uproar over the 10 vs 25 man debate, for reasons that are quiet obvious. People want to think what they're doing is "harder" so it makes their kills more legitimate and them more special. So what I decided to do, was bring this wonderful tool, wowtrack.org, which if you haven't seen, already breaks down the difficulty index of each boss based on kill numbers. The kill numbers ARE valid data, because it seems for just as many casual guild 10 mans there are, there's 1 25 man that equals out in equilibrium. Which, the ratio btw is 14.66~/1 guilds, with the numerator obviously being number of 10 man guilds compared to 25.

Anyways, without further ado, here is the rankings - http://www.wowtrack.org/encounter.lua

More Difficult on 25

Heroic Morchok
Heroic Yors'ahj
Heroic Warlord
Heroic Ultraxion

More Difficult on 10

Heroic Hagara
Heroic Warmaster
Heroic Spine of Deathwing
Heroic Madness of deathwing

http://www.wowtrack.org/encounter.lua

Data's all there. It's a clean split, with the 10 mans getting the harder content later in the Dragonsoul.

Please do not start a 10vs25 war. This is data driven only, if you have other analysis to add, i'd love to hear it but please don't spout out baseless opinions. Just because you did one difficulty the first time then switched to the second is NOT indicative of how difficulty the fight is due to the human learning curve for each boss. Thanks!

Sorry, I know you're trying to defend 10 man and it's difficulty compared to 25 but it's just not possible. This is coming from a guy who tried both 10 and 25 hc. Our rival guild on our server (Outland EU), Infamous, had issues and went from 25 to 10 man this week and killed Spine hc after 2 and a half hours of try. Total. They never did it before. No statistical data can make up for something you try and see. 10 man is just easier and there's no way going around it.

[tangedyn]

This is still flawed.
Let's assume you have an encounter with the difficulty value of 2 on X-man. You also have the same encounter with the difficulty value of 3 on Y-man. Both X and Y have an encounter with the difficulty value of 4 right after. You will have worse guilds on average on the latter encounter on X-man simply due to the lower requirements of the first encounter. This means a lower percentage of the guilds on X-man would likely be beating the value 4 encounter, even if Y-man also has the value 4 for it.

Yes it does have this issue, but it's still better than the current method.
Comparing against H Morchok kill ratio is an alternative but also has its own flaws because the number is affected by the difficulty of the in-between encounters. The most accurate method may be something that takes into account a running difficulty factor of previous encounters, if someone can work out a decent system for that.

---------- Post added 2012-02-03 at 04:19 PM ----------

Sorry, I know you're trying to defend 10 man and it's difficulty compared to 25 but it's just not possible. This is coming from a guy who tried both 10 and 25 hc. Our rival guild on our server (Outland EU), Infamous, had issues and went from 25 to 10 man this week and killed Spine hc after 2 and a half hours of try. Total. They never did it before. No statistical data can make up for something you try and see. 10 man is just easier and there's no way going around it.

Emphasis highlighted.
Are you sure it has nothing to do with the 15% + 5% nerf?

[fsdfosdgj]

The best way to compare them - is to compare within each type (e.g. within 10man and within 25man). This can be done by looking at the ratio of kills of each boss to the kills for the benchmark (easiest) boss - Morchok.

That is - how much harder is Spine than Morchok in 10 man, how much harder is it in 25 man.

You then make one (big) assumption - that Morchok is as easy in both, then you get some meaningful info - without any concern for 25man vs 10man difficulty directly.

e.g.

Morchok vs Hagara vs Spine
10 : 15873 2623 282
25 : 2063 1110 123

Sort of shows that Morchok is a walkover in 10man (6x the kills of Hagara vs 2x in 25man), Hagara and Spine pretty much equal in both.

morchok heroic is puggable in both 10 and 25. the mere fact that pugs are almost exclusively 10 man render your conclusions fairly meaningless. :-)
then again, discussing whether 10 or 25 is more difficult by analyzing the morchok encounter is dumb to begin with. everybody knows that [what i play] is more difficult.

[crooklyn]

Hello all. First off, let me tell you about what I do. By day I am a financial and business analyst. Basically I analyze data to help improve a fortune 500 company, so to say I am well ad versed with data and reveling the story I tell would be an understatement.

Look here steakhead,
I didn't ask for your 2 bit opinion of what was easier or harder and I am not complaining, (Believe me you'd know it if I was complaining) I asked a simple question. I didn't ask for a lecture on how you or anyone else does things.

[natijs4]

Hello all. First off, let me tell you about what I do. By day I am a financial and business analyst. Basically I analyze data to help improve a fortune 500 company, so to say I am well ad versed with data and reveling the story I tell would be an understatement.

This forum, and a lot of the world of Warcraft community, seems to always get into a big uproar over the 10 vs 25 man debate, for reasons that are quiet obvious. People want to think what they're doing is "harder" so it makes their kills more legitimate and them more special. So what I decided to do, was bring this wonderful tool, wowtrack.org, which if you haven't seen, already breaks down the difficulty index of each boss based on kill numbers. The kill numbers ARE valid data, because it seems for just as many casual guild 10 mans there are, there's 1 25 man that equals out in equilibrium. Which, the ratio btw is 14.66~/1 guilds, with the numerator obviously being number of 10 man guilds compared to 25.

Anyways, without further ado, here is the rankings - http://www.wowtrack.org/encounter.lua

More Difficult on 25

Heroic Morchok
Heroic Yors'ahj
Heroic Warlord
Heroic Ultraxion

More Difficult on 10

Heroic Hagara
Heroic Warmaster
Heroic Spine of Deathwing
Heroic Madness of deathwing

http://www.wowtrack.org/encounter.lua

Data's all there. It's a clean split, with the 10 mans getting the harder content later in the Dragonsoul.

Please do not start a 10vs25 war. This is data driven only, if you have other analysis to add, i'd love to hear it but please don't spout out baseless opinions. Just because you did one difficulty the first time then switched to the second is NOT indicative of how difficulty the fight is due to the human learning curve for each boss. Thanks!

Are you self-employed? Or a high-schooler aspiring to be a financial and business analyst? Here's why I ask.

I am a raider in a 10 man guild on a server where our only competition for server firsts is a 25 man guild. Every time we beat them, we have to hear them cry about 10 being easier than 25. So my opinion is highly skewed towards 10 man being legitimate kills and what not. But using the data that you use and coming to the conclusions that you came to is just simply wrong. You are lumping so many different guilds into the 10 man category and so many different guilds into the 25 man category that your data just comes out to be so far from accurate.

Also, the whole "what I did is legit, so don't argue it" is a classic mistake stupid people make because they are almost always wrong.

[Zeta333]

Go look at WoWProgress, alot more 10 kills on pretty much every boss than 25man kills.

[zorbathegreek]

Go look at WoWProgress, alot more 10 kills on pretty much every boss than 25man kills.

You don't think there's many many more 10 man guilds? Even lots of 25s, as others have said, struggling to maintain members have been forced to do 10 mans.

[Deleted]

Always the same thread, always the same reasonings, while it can be summed up fairly easy.

25 requires more logistics.
10 vs 25, the individual skill level is... the same, as long as the tuning is correct. T11 favored 25, T12 10, T13... spine and madness, do excuse, but they have been fairly equal in both sizes. We could ask the people who have done it in both, but it have been claimed to be a bit worse in 10.

Though really, when looking at the individual roles how much different it is?

Tanks are required to do the same, a bit more in 10 when there was interrupts to do (none since t11), a different approach of gearing/external cds in 25. Healers? Can't say, although they do seemed to suffer mana issues when going from 25 to 10 back in t11... although that tier >was< harder in 10, at least until fixes came in. Dps? Usually you can leave more free dps (as in more people not preocuped of the mechanics of the encounter) in 25, the tuning is generally higher too. A mix of blizz not expecting 10 to have all the buffs, less external CDs and less leeway with the number of healers VS dps, and more % dps taking care of mechanics. If blizzard didn't got the balance right (sometimes in one direction (cho'gal) sometimes in the other (baleroc, ultraxion)), what can we say... Even so, the role of the dps is the same, pour as much as they can. The difference was how many below average you could carry, not something that affects what you should do in the combat.

[Deleted]

10 man is easier if you have 10 equally skilled players. It gets immensly harder if you have one or 2 people not pulling their wheight tho.

10 man raider here. 10 man is also extremely comp dependant still. If you don't have the right comp on certain bosses, they get really really hard. It's easier in 25 man to get the right comps. Having that said, having the right comps, and skilled players 10 man is probably easier.

[Lumpriest]

10 man is easier if you have 10 equally skilled players. It gets immensly harder if you have one or 2 people not pulling their wheight tho.

10 man raider here. 10 man is also extremely comp dependant still. If you don't have the right comp on certain bosses, they get really really hard. It's easier in 25 man to get the right comps. Having that said, having the right comps, and skilled players 10 man is probably easier.

So much of this, oh my god.

I agree with the conclusions the op posted. I'm a 10m raider, so I don't have experience with 25m, but going off of mechanics and numbers, I came to the same conclusions a long while ago.

[Fiana]

I guess the only reliable source of information about difficulty will be kills/wipes ratio
As we can clearly see here http://worldoflogs.com/zones/Dragon_Soul/
Morchok, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj , Ultraxion is WAY easier in 10man.

Hagara, Warmaster Blackhorn and Madness of Deathwing is WAY easier in 25man.

Spine - parity. Almoust equal numbers.

The only thing that bothers me about spine is
25man: 292 kills, 36658 wipes, 0.8 % success.
10man: 348 kills, 42963 wipes, 0.8 % success.

It looks like 25ppl guilds did almost the same number of pulls on spine as 10man guilds did. Considering that there are 5 times more 10man guilds than 25man guilds, it safe to assume that most 10man guilds just don't care about top end progression, while most 25man guilds - do.

[Paskgotsheal]

Go look at WoWProgress, alot more 10 kills on pretty much every boss than 25man kills.

wowprogress is woefully inaccurate. The algorithm or crawler they use at wowtrack seems to always be much better at separating the two.

[Emane]

I guess the only reliable source of information about difficulty will be kills/wipes ratio
As we can clearly see here http://worldoflogs.com/zones/Dragon_Soul/
Morchok, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj , Ultraxion is WAY easier in 10man.

Hagara, Warmaster Blackhorn and Madness of Deathwing is WAY easier in 25man.

Spine - parity. Almoust equal numbers.

The only thing that bothers me about spine is
25man: 292 kills, 36658 wipes, 0.8 % success.
10man: 348 kills, 42963 wipes, 0.8 % success.

It looks like 25ppl guilds did almost the same number of pulls on spine as 10man guilds did. Considering that there are 5 times more 10man guilds than 25man guilds, it safe to assume that most 10man guilds just don't care about top end progression, while most 25man guilds - do.

Or that some 10 man guilds have been stuck on Warmaster, and facing spine, and notice that they're not even close to the dps requirement and therefor waiting abit.

[Lucyinthesky]

Personally for me every encounter on 10man has been easyer so far, i havent tryed the last 2 on 10hc, but 6/8 is deff easyest on 10 man.

I base this on my own raiding experience, i have done both 10hc and 25hc this tier.

[Opeth69]

10m is generally easier from personal experience, gone 8/8 heroic in both now and znozz and madness heroic seemed harder on 10m. The really depressing thing is how little 25m guilds there are, seems people were right when they said the community is dieing.