Ghostcrawler tweet about 25 man, let the speculation begin!

[Deleted]

I'm in a guild that raided 25s for, what, 5 years? Recently, due to our relative lack of progression and to the fact that keeping a 25 running requires 2.5x more people than running a 10, we downsized. It was sad. I and many others would still love to be raiding 25s, but we just didn't have the people to do it, and were having no success recruiting people. It was a vicious cycle. The first week of doing 10s, in which we raided for seven hours, we killed four new bosses. Two of them were bosses we'd never seen before.

I'm just guessing here but if your guild was forced to downsize due to lack of players for your 25man roster then the overall quality of player wasent that good. So when you downsized ,I'm guessing again, you took the top/stable players to form the 10man group so the overall skill of the team increased by quite alot. Then by doing so i'm quite sure these people had gotten more gear than the others you left out so making it even more easier to go into 10man. Tactics+gear+higher skill level of the people, is it then so weird that after 7hours downing new bosses?

[Deleted]

I'm just guessing here but if your guild was forced to downsize due to lack of players for your 25man roster then the overall quality of player wasent that good. So when you downsized ,I'm guessing again, you took the top/stable players to form the 10man group so the overall skill of the team increased by quite alot. Then by doing so i'm quite sure these people had gotten more gear than the others you left out so making it even more easier to go into 10man. Tactics+gear+higher skill level of the people, is it then so weird that after 7hours downing new bosses?

Yep and you know what? As soon as the first few of this 10 guys quit playing, there won't be a 25 player guild left where you can "recruit" new member... and the great 10m guild will die... as probably 90% of the 10m guild... they come and go... I even do not know the names of the topguilds on our server anymore, is not important anyway since they vanish every 2nd patch...

[Ygorl]

Eh, looks like you're right, CDShaidar, regarding the mechanic counts. My mistake. Your hypothesis about our improved progress is a reasonable one, but undercut somewhat by the fact that we formed two 10-person raid groups, both of which saw a dramatic leap in progress (and it wasn't the case that there were five "bad" people who were exclude). Thanks for the congratulations, though.

[Deleted]

Talen, what 10-person raid doesn't have Heroism/Bloodlust? You mentioned Skull Banner, as has been previously acknowledged, and that's true. But personal cooldowns exist in 10s just as much as they do in 25s, and will be stacked with Heroism just as much. What's different other than perhaps being able to keep Skull Banner active for a higher fraction of Heroism?

Regarding differences in target counts, true. However, most mechanics that affect one person in 10s affect three people in 25s. Most that affect two people in 10s affect six in 25s. This is actually a higher fraction of the raid affected.

In addition to typically-higher DPS requirements in 25s, you also have (as I believe was alluded to above) an increase in failure chance. If there's a mechanic where screwing it up wipes the raid (which there tends to be!) and any given person has a 1% chance of screwing it up, due to lapse in attention or cat on keyboard or lag or choking on beer or whatever... If it happens six times in a 10-person raid, and 18 times in a 25-person raid, you've got a 5.85% chance of it wiping the raid in 10s and a 16.55% chance of it wiping the raid in 25s, with raiders of the same skill level! Another reason why 25s are harder even if they're not mechanically any more difficult.

Some people have argued that there's more room for screwing up in a 25, less personal responsibility. I'll join with the people arguing against them. If you're working on a fight, there are generally two situations: Either you're having a hard time of it, pushing progression, and any victory will be by the skin of your teeth, or it's easy. In the former case, having someone lying dead on the ground is probably going to mean failure, regardless of raid size. I've seen this time after time after time, raiding 25s, where a new boss will not go down until we do it with nobody dead. In the latter case, if the fight's easy, it's easy. If having a few people dead doesn't matter, then who cares? You were going to kill it anyway, regardless of how many people are in the raid. In the hard cases, where one person licking floor kills the attempt, you're in the situation I covered in the previous paragraph: 25s are harder.

I'm in a guild that raided 25s for, what, 5 years? Recently, due to our relative lack of progression and to the fact that keeping a 25 running requires 2.5x more people than running a 10, we downsized. It was sad. I and many others would still love to be raiding 25s, but we just didn't have the people to do it, and were having no success recruiting people. It was a vicious cycle. The first week of doing 10s, in which we raided for seven hours, we killed four new bosses. Two of them were bosses we'd never seen before.

Okay, lets try the scenario where a DPS dies and it doesn't wipe the raid. Assuming equal skill, gear and damage is equal amongst all members (For this example I'll use 10,000, a low number) - What happens to the DPS when one person dies?

10 man = 6 DPS = 60k DPS
25 man = 17 DPS = 170k DPS

One dies in each raid:

10 man = 5 DPS alive = 50k DPS - This leaves the DPS at 83% the potential maximum
25 man = 16 DPS alive = 160k DPS - The leaves the DPS at 94% of the potential maximum

Which of the above two is more likely to lead to a wipe due to enrage timers? I'd say the 10 man. This same situation applies to any death that doesn't cause a wipe. In that scenario, 10 mans are certainly harder.

[Talen]

Talen, what 10-person raid doesn't have Heroism/Bloodlust?

One without a mage or shaman. Without getting into the ultra fine detail, the point is that there are various CDs/buffs out there, that 10s may or may not have access to all of them and that a simplistic analysis based solely on DPS does not account for the various differences in requirements.

But personal cooldowns exist in 10s just as much as they do in 25s, and will be stacked with Heroism just as much. What's different other than perhaps being able to keep Skull Banner active for a higher fraction of Heroism?

What's different is that a personal CD buffed by 2 or 3 raid CDs delivers more DPS than a personal CD buffed by 1 single raid CD and doesn't require any work or effort at all by anyone. Even if they aren't stacked, multiple CDs will mean DPS is buffed more often...so long as the CD is used. If the CDs are stacked correctly, personal DPS can be greatly increased. Again, without any appreciable effort on the part of a player.

Regarding differences in target counts, true. However, most mechanics that affect one person in 10s affect three people in 25s. Most that affect two people in 10s affect six in 25s. This is actually a higher fraction of the raid affected.

And a splodge of goo on the floor may cause 2 people in both sizes to have to move. Then we take into account how many DPSsers there are in each format, the likelihood that they will be affected, the greater chance of a counter being available and so on.

In addition to typically-higher DPS requirements in 25s, you also have (as I believe was alluded to above) an increase in failure chance. If there's a mechanic where screwing it up wipes the raid (which there tends to be!) and any given person has a 1% chance of screwing it up, due to lapse in attention or cat on keyboard or lag or choking on beer or whatever... If it happens six times in a 10-person raid, and 18 times in a 25-person raid, you've got a 5.85% chance of it wiping the raid in 10s and a 16.55% chance of it wiping the raid in 25s, with raiders of the same skill level! Another reason why 25s are harder even if they're not mechanically any more difficult.

And if the system is adjusted so that the odds of a wipe from this activity are essentially equal? Take a simplistic version of a DPS race for example. Assume you need everyone alive and DPSing to win. If a DPs fails some check...he dies. 5.85% chance. With 25, you have a 16.55%...roughly triple.

Good thing 25s have three BRezs then, isn't it? Triple the chance for failure....triple the chance to recover. Unless, like so many raids, the mechanic is wasted somehow. Please note I am trying to be very simplistic here.

Some people have argued that there's more room for screwing up in a 25, less personal responsibility. I'll join with the people arguing against them.

Blizzard has also stated this. Not sure I fully agree with them myself though.

EJL

[Dubalicious]

Assuming equal skill, gear and damage is equal amongst all members
...

One dies in each raid:

If we're assuming the first statement, wouldn't that inherently mean that TWO people must die in the 25 man raid? Seems like a flawed analysis to prove/support your point.

[Deleted]

Regarding differences in target counts, true. However, most mechanics that affect one person in 10s affect three people in 25s. Most that affect two people in 10s affect six in 25s. This is actually a higher fraction of the raid affected.

Oh really? Reshape life wants to have a word with you. Maybe that's why paragon had world 3rd on that boss, perhaps it could have been harder on 10 men, right?

On 10 men grand empress Sha energy affects 2 targets, in 25 it affects 5.

[Dubalicious]

Oh really? Reshape life wants to have a word with you. Maybe that's why paragon had world 3rd on that boss, perhaps it could have been harder on 10 men, right?

Not the best example considering reshape life actually allows you to defeat the encounter. If 10 man gets 1 reshape, then 25 should have gotten 2 or 3, thus making stacking the debuff much easier and quicker. (obviously, though, they take things like this into account for balance)

Again, it's just a bad example - there's tons of them for this whole argument =)

[Deleted]

Not the best example considering reshape life actually allows you to defeat the encounter. If 10 man gets 1 reshape, then 25 should have gotten 2 or 3, thus making stacking the debuff much easier and quicker. (obviously, though, they take things like this into account for balance)

Again, it's just a bad example - there's tons of them for this whole argument =)

How it allows me to defeat the encounter when 1 of the 2 healers is controlled just before the 3rd phase? Or our shaman gets controlled and we don't have bloodlust for the last phase? Tell me really.

[Dubalicious]

How it allows me to defeat the encounter when 1 of the 2 healers is controlled just before the 3rd phase? Or our shaman gets controlled and we don't have bloodlust for the last phase? Tell me really.

If Reshape Life never happened it would be impossible.

The answers to your questions, though:

1) Solo heal the last phase

2) Kill it without bloodlust

-OR-

3) Pull again, difficult encounters should be difficult

You chose a raiding format that is slightly more subject to RNG in many situations, I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me because we have 15 more people who had to *LEARN* how to operate the construct.

[E] My original point was that your argument against the "mechanics scale", using the Amber Shaper example wasn't really a great one, because having a 2nd or 3rd construct on 25m would actually be beneficial imo.

[Arhippa]

Which of the above two is more likely to lead to a wipe due to enrage timers? I'd say the 10 man. This same situation applies to any death that doesn't cause a wipe. In that scenario, 10 mans are certainly harder.

You can just blindly throw a few numbers around, ignore every other aspect and claim that you've proven you're right. Remember heroic ultraxion as an example ? First 25man kills were really down to fractions of a second from wiping, whereas first 10man kills had ~40 seconds left to enrage (I know they were struggling another battle but that's not relevant to this right now). There's also a lot of encounter-specific mechanics you need to consider.

Mind you, it works both ways.

[Radalek]

Yep and you know what? As soon as the first few of this 10 guys quit playing, there won't be a 25 player guild left where you can "recruit" new member... and the great 10m guild will die... as probably 90% of the 10m guild... they come and go... I even do not know the names of the topguilds on our server anymore, is not important anyway since they vanish every 2nd patch...

And exactly this is hurting the game so much. Guilds are dying, communities are dying. Every time 25 man guild dies community dies with it. And 10 man guilds are rarely community on their own, they just come and go most of the time. On the other hand every big 25 man guild is community and this system is killing them, killing one of the main reasons this game became so great. Social aspect, being the part of something bigger and often logging just to chat with bunch of people online.
It's good that Blizzard is starting to see that and that revitalizing 25 man guilds will help the game.

[Count Zero]

I came to see what people thought the changes would be but instead found a 10 vs 25 man pissing contest.

This is what every thread that has any even super-remote link to 10s and 25s turns into. People dismissing notions that don't align with their own preconceptions. People demanding their reasoning is the only correct reasoning. Opinions presented as facts. Nothing ever gets resolved because nothing ever can be resolved, yet that doesn't stop everyone from trying their damnedest to.

[Nuckels]

Oh really? Reshape life wants to have a word with you. Maybe that's why paragon had world 3rd on that boss, perhaps it could have been harder on 10 men, right?

On 10 men grand empress Sha energy affects 2 targets, in 25 it affects 5.

Unsok was bugged on 10man and when it got fixed they did it in an hour.

[phyx]

Okay, lets try the scenario where a DPS dies and it doesn't wipe the raid. Assuming equal skill, gear and damage is equal amongst all members (For this example I'll use 10,000, a low number) - What happens to the DPS when one person dies?

10 man = 6 DPS = 60k DPS
25 man = 17 DPS = 170k DPS

One dies in each raid:

10 man = 5 DPS alive = 50k DPS - This leaves the DPS at 83% the potential maximum
25 man = 16 DPS alive = 160k DPS - The leaves the DPS at 94% of the potential maximum

Which of the above two is more likely to lead to a wipe due to enrage timers? I'd say the 10 man. This same situation applies to any death that doesn't cause a wipe. In that scenario, 10 mans are certainly harder.

Good thing you ignored most of his post, besides using bad mathematic.

[Espe]

Mind you, it works both ways.

Except that it doesn't. In 25m you get more battle rezes, more loot per person and a higher chance of having someone who can use that loot (which accelerates the rate that content is nerfed relative to your group over time) and much, much less executional responsibility per person. As the dev Taepsilum said recently in his example "10s are quieter and cleaner; people are more accountable"

So you see, it doesn't work both ways. 25m will always be much easier to execute in-raid than 10m. There may be a bit more logistical (i.e. outside of raid) planning required but just remember, there is a reason that they have no 10m version of LFR

In the end, you should play how you want to play and not really worry about how other people feel. If 25m feels right for you then stick with it. Some people just like more of a challenge.

[Radalek]

Except that it doesn't. In 25m you get more battle rezes, more loot per person and a higher chance of having someone who can use that loot (which accelerates the rate that content is nerfed relative to your group over time) and much, much less executional responsibility per person. As the dev Taepsilum said recently in his example "10s are quieter and cleaner; people are more accountable"

So you see, it doesn't work both ways. 25m will always be much easier to execute in-raid than 10m. There may be a bit more logistical (i.e. outside of raid) planning required but just remember, there is a reason that they have no 10m version of LFR

In the end, you should play how you want to play and not really worry about how other people feel. If 25m feels right for you then stick with it. Some people just like more of a challenge.

There you go again.
You have 3 battle rezes for 25 people vs 1 for 10. It's more than fair since ofc you have that many people more along with bigger chances something will go wrong and bigger chances of random deaths mostly due to damage on the raid per person being higher in 25 man. What would you suggest, 1 res, 2? So you're wrong there.

There's more loot per person only on heroic mode, not on normal. And that's small incentive that recognized the effort needed. Since it's only heroic loot and increase per person is whooping 4% more you're again very much wrong.

There's more executional responsibility on any hard 25 man heroic boss. You can't afford a single mistake or death, if you do you're gone just as same as on 10 man. Do you even understand how much harder is to organize the raid, tasks and get 25 people to work as one unit and allow not a single mistake? No you don't cos you never did it. So again, you're wrong.

So yeah, 25 man boss of the same difficulty as 10 man boss will always be harder to execute and that will never change. Logistical effort in the raid is uncomparably higher than in 10 man raid cos yes, this time you're right 10 mans are more quieter and cleaner, easier to manage. Go and look how Ragnaros 25 heroic Phase 4 looks and how much effort, communication and teamwork between 25 people is needed to get it executed.

Reason they have 25 man LFR and not 10 is that they know 90% of LFR population will be afk or incompetent and that will not work in 10 man LFR, that's the only reason and devs already said it.

In the end can I ask you do you know why the best guilds, best and most dedicated players raid 25 man? By the best I mean best of the best. Paragon is one of them and they stated they would rather raid 25 man but they can't atm. Reason is because it's challenging. They want to be the best on the hardest content cos they want recognition and satisfaction which they won't get if they do it in 10 man.

[Dranged]

There you go again.
You have 3 battle rezes for 25 people vs 1 for 10. It's more than fair since ofc you have that many people more along with bigger chances something will go wrong and bigger chances of random deaths mostly due to damage on the raid per person being higher in 25 man. What would you suggest, 1 res, 2? So you're wrong there.

There's more loot per person only on heroic mode, not on normal. And that's small incentive that recognized the effort needed. Since it's only heroic loot and increase per person is whooping 4% more you're again very much wrong.

There's more executional responsibility on any hard 25 man heroic boss. You can't afford a single mistake or death, if you do you're gone just as same as on 10 man. Do you even understand how much harder is to organize the raid, tasks and get 25 people to work as one unit and allow not a single mistake? No you don't cos you never did it. So again, you're wrong.

So yeah, 25 man boss of the same difficulty as 10 man boss will always be harder to execute and that will never change. Logistical effort in the raid is uncomparably higher than in 10 man raid cos yes, this time you're right 10 mans are more quieter and cleaner, easier to manage. Go and look how Ragnaros 25 heroic Phase 4 looks and how much effort, communication and teamwork between 25 people is needed to get it executed.

Reason they have 25 man LFR and not 10 is that they know 90% of LFR population will be afk or incompetent and that will not work in 10 man LFR, that's the only reason and devs already said it.

In the end can I ask you do you know why the best guilds, best and most dedicated players raid 25 man? By the best I mean best of the best. Paragon is one of them and they stated they would rather raid 25 man but they can't atm. Reason is because it's challenging. They want to be the best on the hardest content cos they want recognition and satisfaction which they won't get if they do it in 10 man.

I applaud your patience mate Trying to make mentally challenged people like this Espe see reason is a real sisyphean task.

Infracted~

[Deleted]

There's more loot per person only on heroic mode, not on normal. And that's small incentive that recognized the effort needed. Since it's only heroic loot and increase per person is whooping 4% more you're again very much wrong.

No it's not. All 25 modes drop 6 items wheter it's normal or heroic. 4% more means you raid gears faster. period.

[Radalek]

No it's not. All 25 modes drop 6 items wheter it's normal or heroic. 4% more means you raid gears faster. period.

Did I say it's not faster? It is, a whole 4% faster. And that's the only benefit at the moment.