Flex PUGs: why always 14 players?

[Deleted]

Well for pugs from the realm especially large number of players can be bad
I was yesterday in gates 22 ppl group we pass first 3 bosses with no problems (several dead on shamans only) but then we reach Legendary General Nazgrim
I can told ya that we spend over 2 hours on wipes there (yes in flex) after that time we change many players many left new comes and so one but we manage to down it at last with 11 ppl group with 3 healers the big problem was that boss was nearly 10% before defensive and ppl just stop dps till meanwhile we got swarmed by adds after we decide to ignore defensive and baner and just keep shamans away from him when he is below 15% he dies

So mine opinion is less players in random PuG group makes boss more easy if you get more players then make sure that you will use voicechat

[Azrile]

It's not.

10 man is ideal, 2 heal 6 dps

That is absolutely not true. Each person after 10 adds progressively less HPs and damage from the boss. In other words, if you have 13 players and add 1 more.. that 14 player actually does not have to do as much damage as the 13th player. As long as you have a decent healer ratio, the bigger you get, the easier it gets (purely based on health of boss and damage he does).

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The thing I wonder about is why this specific composition is so common. For example I signed up for a Wing 3 event tonight on Open Raid... the roster? 2 tanks, 4 healers, 8 DPS. For what it's worth, the couple times I have done >14 player raids (which honestly hasn't been since maybe the 2nd week of Flex, and I've only done a couple), I haven't been able to tell any difference tuning-wise.

When I do Openraid.. I always get a ton of DPS signing up.. but you have to keep healer perspective. 2T-4H-8Dps works out nice... but that is because most groups are begging for healers. I think the reason people are seeing groups stop at 14 is because once you go to 15 or 16, you really need that 5th healer ( if you are in a pug for sure) and it is hard to find even 4 healers. In other words, leaders aren´t stopping because of some magic ´14´ thing.. it is more the difficulty of getting a 5th healer that allows you to bring more dps. The first week of Flex, I did it with 6 healers and a full 25 group and we one-shotted our way through in under an hour.

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the more people you take the more health and damage the boss does. you actualy want less people, 10 would give you the weakest boss ever. the thing is, the more people there are, you need to believe in them all to have skills and experience to avoid shit and do damage

This is not true. With every person you add, the average DPS needed to kill the boss goes down. Yes, the boss´s health increases, but it is progressively less with each person added.

[Ninotchka]

We had problems with a flex raid of 10, average ilvl 520, last week. I took those identical 10 people and 15 others with close to the same average item level and we stomped over the same content without issues. Although that 'average' is probably deceptive - I had 5 people with 548-550 item level and 5 people who just barely broke 500 in the new batch. But having a couple of extra dps with cloaks who could wreak deadly ruin makes a huge difference.

[hablix]

When I do Openraid.. I always get a ton of DPS signing up.. but you have to keep healer perspective. 2T-4H-8Dps works out nice... but that is because most groups are begging for healers. I think the reason people are seeing groups stop at 14 is because once you go to 15 or 16, you really need that 5th healer ( if you are in a pug for sure) and it is hard to find even 4 healers. In other words, leaders aren´t stopping because of some magic ´14´ thing.. it is more the difficulty of getting a 5th healer that allows you to bring more dps. The first week of Flex, I did it with 6 healers and a full 25 group and we one-shotted our way through in under an hour.

Good answer.. I think that explains it for me.

[Kalmah]

When I do Openraid.. I always get a ton of DPS signing up.. but you have to keep healer perspective. 2T-4H-8Dps works out nice... but that is because most groups are begging for healers. I think the reason people are seeing groups stop at 14 is because once you go to 15 or 16, you really need that 5th healer ( if you are in a pug for sure) and it is hard to find even 4 healers. In other words, leaders aren´t stopping because of some magic ´14´ thing.. it is more the difficulty of getting a 5th healer that allows you to bring more dps. The first week of Flex, I did it with 6 healers and a full 25 group and we one-shotted our way through in under an hour.

You are massively over-healing flex. 4 healers for 14 ? 5 for 15?

With those numbers you're looking at 7-8 healers for a 25 man, which is obviously complete overkill. Even LFR only uses 6 healers...

[judgementofantonidas]

been seeing mostly 10 or 11 in a group. makes it dead easy to pick out and remove who is screwing up and the difficulty to not gear dropping ratio is easy cheesy.

[Vanisari]

For those who are doing Flex groups with 17-25 players, what's the source of your groups? Guild runs, server pugs, etc? Seems like maybe this is specific to oQueue.

Ours are normally 20-25. We do it with guild and then just whoever else wants to come that we may know.