Archimonde Scaling in Heroic

[Saori]

I'm in a big group with 30 players and we will try to kill archimonde in heroic in a couple of id´s.

I read something like 30 Players on heroic Archimonde is much more difficult as eg. 25 - is this still true or did blizzard make some adjustment to this kind of big group scaling? What is your suggested group size?

[Deja Thoris]

The bigger the better really. It's only very small groups that struggle.

Any competent player should be allowed in, if you decline people because someone on the internet said 20 people was the magic number then meh.

[Visor]

22-30 much more easy than 11-16. You can allow 3-5ppl die at start of last phase and still beat him. For last 5 pug kills I had wiped only twice.

[Deleted]

Bigger groups allow you to sacrifice players in the Nether Banish more easily without severely hampering your DPS on the boss and infernals. It also makes it easier to hold shackles because the dot is only on 3/30 players. The only downside to larger groups is Demonic Feedback spreading, so make sure you have enough room.

[sunxsera]

We had problems killing him on hc with ~12 people, because people were on holidays .. it was easy with 20+ people though.
The infernals / nether were the main problem and due to them - the missing execute on archimonde with so few players.

I don `t know how the fight works with ~30 people, but there should not be a big difference to ~25.

[Larynx]

Broadly speaking, the more people in a raid the easier the fight becomes. Each player is valued less as a proportion of raid contribution, so mistakes are far less punishing and poor performance doesn't bring the average down very much. If you're trying to carry, then obviously this logic works against you and you want less people.

eg.

You take these three people into a raid:
A: 20k dps
B: 50k dps
C: 60k dps

1/3rd of the raid is doing less than half the damage of the next highest. Your average DPS is brought down significantly. This same logic can be applied to mechanics, such as losing 1 player out of 30 vs 1 player out of 10.

Double the amount of people, and the outlier becomes less pronounced:

A: 20k dps
B: 50k dps
C: 60k dps
D: 55k dps
E: 45k dps
F: 70k dps

[Saori]

thank you for your feedback. I'm glad we don't need to cut if we don't want to.

[Bigbazz]

The more players you add the lower the dps/healing requirement per player becomes, the more people you have to deal with mechanics which are not scaling up enough to increase the difficulty. On the negative you're introducing more chance of death by error (wrought chaos, lack of dps in nether portal due to people not going in).

Really small groups are screwed, 20+ is very comfortable and 30 is easiest so long as you dont have too many being carried.

[Dracodraco]

The more players you add the lower the dps/healing requirement per player becomes, the more people you have to deal with mechanics which are not scaling up enough to increase the difficulty. On the negative you're introducing more chance of death by error (wrought chaos, lack of dps in nether portal due to people not going in).

Really small groups are screwed, 20+ is very comfortable and 30 is easiest so long as you dont have too many being carried.

Just wanted to say that this isn't strictly speaking true. While no 10 man groups has recorded a kill yet, the dps/healing requirements aren't actually higher on a per-player basis. It's true that other mechanics becomes harder to handle (such as shackles/infernals taunting etc) due to a smaller size, but for 12 man (lowest size with a kill), 20 and 30 man these numbers all hold true:

12:
Archimonde - 152.7M = 12.75M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 4.35M = 362.5K per player.
Void add - 3.52M = 293.34K per player.
Infernals - 1.09M = 90.83K per player.

20:
Archimonde - 258.71M = 12.94M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 7.37M = 368.5K per player.
Void add - 5.97M = 298.5K per player.
Infernals - 1.85M = 92.5K per player.

30:
Archimonde - 391.23M = 13.04M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 11.14M = 371.3K per player.
Void add - 9.02M = 300.67K per player.
Infernals - 2.8M = 93.3K per player.

Generally, this has always been the case; The ultimate dps/HPS requirements are lower on a per-player basis in smaller raid sizes.
It is, as said, entirely true that encounter mechanics will then (usually) favor bigger raid sizes - EG, having 3x people out of 10x need to run and break shackles will cost more overall damage/healing than 3x players out of 30, which balances it all up nicely in the end. Blizzard are not stupid - they tune low-size raids with the assumption that they'll do less damage/healing due to more players dealing with mechanics.
It is, however, just plain out FALSE that there is a lower dps requirement for bigger raid sizes than smaller raid sizes. It is the exact opposite; The ultimate DPS requirement is higher in bigger raid sizes.


Don't spread lies or information you have not researched, please.

[Bigbazz]

Just wanted to say that this isn't strictly speaking true. While no 10 man groups has recorded a kill yet, the dps/healing requirements aren't actually higher on a per-player basis. It's true that other mechanics becomes harder to handle (such as shackles/infernals taunting etc) due to a smaller size, but for 12 man (lowest size with a kill), 20 and 30 man these numbers all hold true:

12:
Archimonde - 152.7M = 12.75M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 4.35M = 362.5K per player.
Void add - 3.52M = 293.34K per player.
Infernals - 1.09M = 90.83K per player.

20:
Archimonde - 258.71M = 12.94M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 7.37M = 368.5K per player.
Void add - 5.97M = 298.5K per player.
Infernals - 1.85M = 92.5K per player.

30:
Archimonde - 391.23M = 13.04M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 11.14M = 371.3K per player.
Void add - 9.02M = 300.67K per player.
Infernals - 2.8M = 93.3K per player.

Generally, this has always been the case; The ultimate dps/HPS requirements are lower on a per-player basis in smaller raid sizes.
It is, as said, entirely true that encounter mechanics will then (usually) favor bigger raid sizes - EG, having 3x people out of 10x need to run and break shackles will cost more overall damage/healing than 3x players out of 30, which balances it all up nicely in the end. Blizzard are not stupid - they tune low-size raids with the assumption that they'll do less damage/healing due to more players dealing with mechanics.
It is, however, just plain out FALSE that there is a lower dps requirement for bigger raid sizes than smaller raid sizes. It is the exact opposite; The ultimate DPS requirement is higher in bigger raid sizes.


Don't spread lies or information you have not researched, please.

You miss the point completely, when someone is not dpsing because they are dealing with mechanics they offload their share of the dps requirement to another player and are putting themselves out of the game during that time, smaller the group the more this becomes apparent.. Insignificant differences in overall dps required per player in a perfect world are meaningless when compared to the reality of a fight where dealing mechanics can completely disable the dps of multiple players at any point.

Special strategies can be built to allow melee dps to have higher uptime in smaller groups while dealing with mechanics, but they add extra risk and increase the difficulty of the fight in terms of execution.. From a realistic point of view the dps requirements do become much more forgiving with large groups, because mechanics stopping players from being able to dps has the same effect as increasing the dps requirements on other players.

Same was true on Blackhand, same was true on Blast Furnace.

[Einsz]

You miss the point completely, when someone is not dpsing because they are dealing with mechanics they offload their share of the dps requirement to another player and are putting themselves out of the game during that time, smaller the group the more this becomes apparent.. Insignificant differences in overall dps required per player in a perfect world are meaningless when compared to the reality of a fight where dealing mechanics can completely disable the dps of multiple players at any point.

Special strategies can be built to allow melee dps to have higher uptime in smaller groups while dealing with mechanics, but they add extra risk and increase the difficulty of the fight in terms of execution.. From a realistic point of view the dps requirements do become much more forgiving with large groups, because mechanics stopping players from being able to dps has the same effect as increasing the dps requirements on other players.

There is no mechanic on archimonde heroic that makes you lose dps if you "handle" it. You are just looking for excuses to get away with your crap damage. Your problem seems to be that you raid with really bad players not the group size.

[xcess]

Wouldnt it more depend on your raid comp more then how many ppl and how good the players you bring are.? 20 great ppl would be better than 30 average players. More ppl means you have more healing cd to rotate and things like stamping roar will be up more for each time vs if you just had one druid. More DKs means able to pull the adds in more often.

[gruxxar]

There is no mechanic on archimonde heroic that makes you lose dps if you "handle" it. You are just looking for excuses to get away with your crap damage. Your problem seems to be that you raid with really bad players not the group size.

what the hell you talking about? you have to get in to soak shadowfel burst, get out if doomfire fixates on you, move out with the laser, avoid the silences from felhunter and run a fuckton to break your chains.

Let's take Chains as an example here. In a 10man, 3 ppl have to run out with this (usually staggered though). That's almost 1/3 of your raid and 1/2 of your actual dps that won't be dpsing for that time window (except if you're a hunter maybe..).

If you take the same ability in a 30man raid, it's only 1/10 of your total raid size and only (aprox.) 1/7 of your dps that will do this.

Do you see where i'm going with this? The fact of the matter is that you just create a smaller margin of error with a bigger group and let's be honest, there are usually quite the errors going around in a pug
(assuming the people you take to your raid aren't all degenerates)

IMO: "Having pugged (and lead) HC archi, I've found that 30man is definately the way to go."

[xcess]

Yeah also with resses your tanks/ heals are allowed to die more in bigger grps. 10 man supposedly only gets another res in 9 min. Wheras 30 man you can get 3 resses in that same time.

[kamuimac]

There is no mechanic on archimonde heroic that makes you lose dps if you "handle" it. You are just looking for excuses to get away with your crap damage. Your problem seems to be that you raid with really bad players not the group size.

ye ye ye we know that according to mmochampion 95 % of wow players should "get good or gtfo this game " but thats not the point of this thread.

[Deleted]

Just wanted to say that this isn't strictly speaking true. While no 10 man groups has recorded a kill yet, the dps/healing requirements aren't actually higher on a per-player basis. It's true that other mechanics becomes harder to handle (such as shackles/infernals taunting etc) due to a smaller size, but for 12 man (lowest size with a kill), 20 and 30 man these numbers all hold true:

12:
Archimonde - 152.7M = 12.75M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 4.35M = 362.5K per player.
Void add - 3.52M = 293.34K per player.
Infernals - 1.09M = 90.83K per player.

20:
Archimonde - 258.71M = 12.94M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 7.37M = 368.5K per player.
Void add - 5.97M = 298.5K per player.
Infernals - 1.85M = 92.5K per player.

30:
Archimonde - 391.23M = 13.04M per player.
Doomfire spirit - 11.14M = 371.3K per player.
Void add - 9.02M = 300.67K per player.
Infernals - 2.8M = 93.3K per player.

Generally, this has always been the case; The ultimate dps/HPS requirements are lower on a per-player basis in smaller raid sizes.
It is, as said, entirely true that encounter mechanics will then (usually) favor bigger raid sizes - EG, having 3x people out of 10x need to run and break shackles will cost more overall damage/healing than 3x players out of 30, which balances it all up nicely in the end. Blizzard are not stupid - they tune low-size raids with the assumption that they'll do less damage/healing due to more players dealing with mechanics.
It is, however, just plain out FALSE that there is a lower dps requirement for bigger raid sizes than smaller raid sizes. It is the exact opposite; The ultimate DPS requirement is higher in bigger raid sizes.


Don't spread lies or information you have not researched, please.

This calculation doesn't fit. You can't just calculate every player as a dps. 12 man is 3 Heals + 2 Tanks + 7 DPS. You can calculate 2 Tanks as one DPS. With this in mind your DPS requirement is lower on a 20 man raid with 5 healers than a 12 man with 3 heals. On 30 man it just get ridiculous. You can have 7 Healers, the Damage per DD is still ridiculous lower then 12 and 20 man raid and just a fraction of your raid has to deal with mechanics.

So in conclusion, just go for 30 People with 7 Healers and 3 Tanks to handle infernals and your DDs still have to pull lower numbers then a 12 man raid.

[Tech614]

He will eventually be nerfed the smaller the group is just as Blackhand was. You can't just linearly scale something like him with all the variants of adds, and players being in and out of the fight dealing with mechanics. Especially when he is basically a 3 heal fight at 10-15, yet a 4 heal fight with 20-25 and a 5 heal fight with 30. The damage scaling on him is virtually non existent and you only need to add a healer when you add enough players that would stretch the heals too thin, while he is a healing intensive fight with low numbers he is a joke to heal with high numbers.

[xcess]

Did blackhand get nerfed seperatly for smaller raid sizes? IIRC it just got blanket nerfs for all difficulties.

[Deleted]

Did blackhand get nerfed seperatly for smaller raid sizes? IIRC it just got blanket nerfs for all difficulties.

No, he never did but he was OK with small groups, harder but OK. Archimonde isn't.

[Deleted]

No, he never did but he was OK with small groups, harder but OK. Archimonde isn't.

Wrong, he actually was nerfed for smaller raid sizes. There was a nerf that mainly effected 10 player mode and the nerf was progressively less effective as the raid size went up and 30m roughly had no changes.

April 13, 2015 hotfixes

BlackRock Foundry
General
The health and damage scaling of aspects of several encounters on Normal and Heroic difficulties havebeen adjusted to make them less punishing for smaller RAID groups, to account for reduced availability of external cooldowns and the larger relative portion of the group did must deal with Certain mechanics , Overall, These Changes Should make the encounters easier for groups with closer to 10 raiders, while having little noticeable effect for groups with closer to 30 players.

-Kromog
Stone Breath now deals up to 20% less damage on normal and Heroic difficulties.

-The Blast Furnace
Foreman Feldspar, Security Guards, Bellows operator, Fire Callers, and Engineers now have up to 15% less on Normal and Heroic difficulties health.

-Blackhand
The Damage overtime dealt by the Impaled effect has been reduced by up to 30% on normal and Heroic difficulties.
Blackhand now has up to 10% less on Normal and Heroic difficulties health.

also -Cast time for Iron Soldier's Explosive Rounds ability should now be scaling smoothly with raid size and should no longer have breakpoints where the damage ramps up more than intended at 16 and 26 players