Paragon on 10man vs 25man raids

[Deleted]

There was a short discussion on our forums regarding the difficulty between 10-man and 25-man raids a few months before Cataclysm where I posted the following:

Even though I have faith that the dev team knows how to make 10s hard, I have a feeling they don't really want to go there. The hard stuff would have to be brutally tightly tuned, limiting the experience to even fewer people than in 25s. Harder than now - definitely - but I simply don't see a lot of benefit in going all-out, and I doubt they do either.

From the looks of it, they did go there. This post isn't really about tuning per se, and I don't have enough personal experience from 10-man heroics to really comment in-depth on that anyway, but the encounters seem to pose a good challenge based on the (unreliable) rankings at wowprogress.

I won't go too much into the possible reasons why the top 25-man guilds have 11-13 bosses down and 10-man guilds only 5-6, but reading threads and discussing people, there's one point that is interesting and very relevant for what I'm about to write.

10-man heroics are very setup-dependent, and the favorable raid composition changes between bosses.

This isn't all that surprising, really. As a response to these threads, I started thinking how I'd run a top 10-man group. I'd probably have around 15 people, running two or three characters each. Regardless of whether a top 10-man guild should be expected to do that, or how it relates to the logistics of 25-mans, I don't think there are any 10-man guilds out there that are putting that kind of effort into their raiding roster.

On the other hand, the top 25-man guilds get this flexibility essentially for free if they decide to venture into 10-mans. Logically this would mean that strict 10-man guilds will be run over in the bracket if top guilds primarily competing in the 25-man bracket start viewing 10-mans as a completely equal substitute. This would mean a replay of WotLK, where strict 10-man guilds had to deal with inferior gear and a rigid setup. This time there is less gear difference, but the flexibility in the raid setup is even more important.

Many people have interpreted Blizzard's removal of distinction between raid sizes in achievements and loot, and closeness in difficulty to mean that 10 = 25, so let's stick 'em in the same bucket. I even see people announcing their kills without specifying the raid size.

Do we really live in a wonderful world of balance where Theralion & Valiona are equal in both 10/25? How about Al'akir? I don't know how well as a whole 13/13 10-man would relate with 13/13 25-man in difficulty, but let's face it: the balance isn't there for individual encounters, and it goes both ways. Nor do I think it will ever be close enough on every single encounter. I'd feel degraded if I had killed V & T in 10-man before the fix (or hell, even after it), and no one thought it was even newsworthy because it was the "world 50th" kill. Likewise my eye twitches whenever I see comments about 10 = 25 on the subject of old Albert over the skies of Uldum.

Aside from bruised egos, is there really harm from this? I say there will be, and not for the benefit of 10-man guilds.

The fact is that if the majority of people start accepting this encounter-agnostic 10 = 25 thinking at some point, the top 25-man guilds raiding for first kills will have to incorporate raid size changes into their overall strategy. I know Ensidia explored that at the start of this tier (and probably regret it the moment they found out they couldn't change back to 25), but based on my talks with people, many of these guilds do not view it as a real alternative. Yet.

The more the raid sizes are shifted to the same mental bracket, the more of a real alternative it becomes to get the first kill in the easier difficulty setting, whichever that might be. If that's 25 - tough luck 10-man guilds. If it happens to be 10 - tough luck again, large guilds will figure out an optimal setup and pool gear. It also spells more logistics and gambling for the larger guilds, as you will have to commit yourself to that raid size for the rest of that instance for a week.

Frankly I'm surprised that the people raiding 10-man heroics haven't been louder at the fact that they're getting no recognition for their kills. Based on the pattern we're seeing, they're also unlikely to get any in a while, since every "world first" has already been taken. In another raid setting. Apples and oranges, conveniently equal - too bad for the oranges.

If people started treating 10 and 25 both equally worthy of recognition and publicity instead of jamming them in the same bucket, the raiding game would be a lot better off for guilds of both sizes. There might be the occasional invader from 25 to 10, but the motivation to do so would stay at a low level with the way lockouts work now.

I think defeating truly hard encounters will always earn recognition, regardless of raid size. Now, if only I was informed about all of those and had the means to track them...

Source: http://www.paragon.fi/blogs/why-10-25-should-be-10-25
Author: Arx of Paragon

Very insightful read, would be interesting to see what everyone here thinks about it.
Would also be extremely interesting to hear from Blizzard on this.

[Herecius]

An excellent read, and I'll be quite cross with anybody that goes 'TL;DR' and by quite cross, I mean you'll get a vacation.
Anyhoo, it's always been my personal belief that while merging the raid lockouts was the best thing Blizz could have possibly done, they never should have merged the achievements. The reason for this is pretty clearly explained by Arx here, in how it's simply impossible for those achievements to ever be even. While I give a lot of kudos to Blizzard for taking the ballsy approach and making 10mans tuned absolutely brutally, as opposed to simply shrugging and making them laughably easy in comparison, a la WotLK, there really ought to have been separate achievements.

Who knows? Perhaps there will be, after all, Blizz changed the raid design multiple times during WotLK, who says they can't in Cataclysm?

[blizzardcashshop]

that was a long way to say "10m have less room for error"

which they do

blizz admitted to making 10h too hard on some fights in LK and have already done it here. when one mistake is so much more costly, how tight can you tune a fight?

as for the perception of it all, who gives a shit, when it's all said and done we'll see where people stand.

wotlk raiding was PERCEIVED as overall "lol" but some of the hardest wow fights ever came from wotlk raids

[Deleted]

I don't have enough personal experience from 10-man heroics to really comment in-depth on that anyway

So without even having knowledge for himself he still comments on 10 vs 25. Currently 10 heroics are really much harder than 25 heroics. It's not just about the setup, it's alot more than that. The hp of Maloriak adds have been posted here more than once, the necessary of interrupts at certain encounters (e.g. Omnotron Council) and especially encounter spells that deal nearly as much damage in a 10 heroic as in the 25 version. Just look at the Al'Akir heroic kill vid - you have 3-4 people standing on the same spot, in 10 heroic you can't even have 2 people standing on the same spot...
Also with many encounters where you just heal the group with aoe spells 25 are in a great favor.
It's really not about class stacking / raid setup that 10 guilds are lacking which Arx is poiting out - that is just wrong. It might be for some 10 guilds but for sure not for those who raid "hardcore".
And don't forget the gap between 25 and 10 man loots. 25s are getting a lot more gear, it may be only round about 1 item per encounter but thats a total of 14 items every ID. Not to mention the valor points difference which isn't a huge factor but as most use a 2nd raidspec you will need a 2nd raidgear for which those extra points are very useful.

[gibbie99]

So without even having knowledge for himself he still comments on 10 vs 25. Currently 10 heroics are really much harder than 25 heroics. It's not just about the setup, it's alot more than that. The hp of Maloriak adds have been posted here more than once, the necessary of interrupts at certain encounters (e.g. Omnotron Council) and especially encounter spells that deal nearly as much damage in a 10 heroic as in the 25 version. Just look at the Al'Akir heroic kill vid - you have 3-4 people standing on the same spot, in 10 heroic you can't even have 2 people standing on the same spot...
Also with many encounters where you just heal the group with aoe spells 25 are in a great favor.
It's really not about class stacking / raid setup that 10 guilds are lacking which Arx is poiting out - that is just wrong. It might be for some 10 guilds but for sure not for those who raid "hardcore".
And don't forget the gap between 25 and 10 man loots. 25s are getting a lot more gear, it may be only round about 1 item per encounter but thats a total of 14 items every ID. Not to mention the valor points difference which isn't a huge factor but as most use a 2nd raidspec you will need a 2nd raidgear for which those extra points are very useful.

I agree with this, further, this stands in contrast to what Paragon was saying "10 and 25 HM first should get equal recognition". They are too different, each encounter is tuned so that one or the other is invariably easier, and from what Paragon is saying, mostly easier on 25 man. This is just common sense for the most part, the raid makeup isn't quite as crucial, every single player isn't quite as crucial. Now, should 10 man HM firsts get recognition, I think so yes. We can't just shrug it off and say since they have the same raid lockout everything is fine. It's not, the encounter and mechanics are different to some degree. Lastly, we can't really expect a '10 man strict' guild to get server firsts when it would be comparatively easier to do the 25 man HMs which award at least more gear, then turn around and use that for progression on 10 man HM.

I think mostly this is an issue for guilds like Paragon. Most of us could care less. Our guild hasn't even seen the inside of a raid let alone a heroic one since Cata hit (well not cata raids anyway).

[Draenox]

Props to Paragon for writing that, in a 10man guild now I recognize the setup issues far to well, a player goes on vacation, and then there's 2-3 encounters we simply cant kill without him - his class.

The way 10s are tuned atm seems to go against blizzard own-made motto, bring the player not the class.

[Cairm]

They would have had alot less trouble if they had kept it simply 25, and no 10-man at all. While it was fun when they were easy (Naxx/Ulduar-a little less/Coloseum-really easy/Icecrown-really easy).

Now they have to deal with the double of the balance to do. And the achivements discussions are in the middle of the 10/25 debate, not knowing what to do, or where to go...

[jearle]

I don't see the big deal with this. What the guy from Paragon says is pretty much just common sense, 25 man hardcore guilds will always do better than 10 man hardcore guilds. Regardless of whether said guild is doing 10 man or 25 man content.

The main reason is flexibility of classes and makeup and filling in gear holes is a lot easier when doing 25 man content. Anyone who has killed the same boss on 10 man 4 weeks in a row and seen a total of 3 different pieces would agree with this.

If the 10 man content wasn't so tightly tuned it would be cleared by 25 man guilds most likely long before 10 man guilds. Seeing how difficult the 10 man content is and how its "easier" has caused some 10 man guild to rethink their stand and attempt to form a 25 man guild just to progress. I know this is happening on my server and I'm sure its happening elsewhere.

[Arcangel14]

Interesting post he made.

It's obvious there's way less room for error in 10 than 25, and you need almost the perfect set-up in 10m heroics. How is this going to work for my guild? We run 10m, twice a week. Currently we are 11/12, and will have Nef down next week. Our raid set-up is far less than ideal. We dont have all the aid buffs (missing 3% damage), run with 2 locks...I mean, its not optimal by any means. We probably arent even going to attempt heroics until we clear BWD/BoT a couple more times, until most of us are close to full 359. Im sure we could do Chimaeron, MAYBE Halfus (don't have 2 priests that can smite spec unfortunately). But I mean, there's a lot of fights that are damn near close to impossible (Magmaw, V & T for example) to do.

What am I trying to get at? 10 man heroics are WAY overtuned as it is right now. Yes, there are some fights where 25 is obviously harder, but thats only fights were spreading out is a major factor in the fight (Al'Akir). Other than that, it's quite obvious 10 > 25 overall in heroics. Blizz needs to fix this, it's kind of ridiculous...

[jearle]

They would have had alot less trouble if they had kept it simply 25, and no 10-man at all. While it was fun when they were easy (Naxx/Ulduar-a little less/Coloseum-really easy/Icecrown-really easy).

Now they have to deal with the double of the balance to do. And the achivements discussions are in the middle of the 10/25 debate, not knowing what to do, or where to go...

Its far too late for this, the 2 raid forms are totally fine. Combining the achievements was really stupid IMO and should be changed, along with implementing different titles for 10 and 25 ect.

25 mans are not harder then 10 mans, putting together a raid force of 25 competent players is much much harder than a 10 man raid.

[Blackcompany]

Props to Paragon for writing that, in a 10man guild now I recognize the setup issues far to well, a player goes on vacation, and then there's 2-3 encounters we simply cant kill without him - his class.

The way 10s are tuned atm seems to go against blizzard own-made motto, bring the player not the class.

We may or may not have enough information to assume this right now.

We've down magmaw in 10man and it took our 4th night, with about... 8-10 wipes to get him down. I noticed, that with 2 bugged situations where when we jumped onto his back one player could get knocked off for no reason and wipe the entire raid. 1 mistake and there goes your 20% life left attempt. This was so frustrating, because finally when we get the motion of the fight down, it's the encounter that is bugged and ruins the attempt, we got the damn worm the second time, but it doesn't feel as good as the encounter before. obviously the last statement is somewhat unrelated to the topic

While I feel that the Magmaw fight is really basic, if we didn't have a hunter in our group, it wouldnt happen for the ranged classes.

I'm not saying make 10 mans 15 mans, but if you look at the ratio, 1 man in a 10 man, is worth 2.5 men in a 25 man. Meaning on average if you lose 2.5 people, that means 2-3 people per encounter screwing up in a 25 man is the same as the 1 unlucky guy in a 10 man because he's gonna feel like ass for letting his raid down for zoning out for 3 seconds and dying.

The issue here is not difficulty, it's penalty for the encounter not bugging or getting hit by the 1 or 2 man killing blows.

I think much of the difficulty of an encounter for a 10man could be tuned if those 1 or 2 man killing blows scaled down a little, so instead of 1 man dying (worth 2.5 men really) you get dealt 50% of that damage instead of 100%, that way it makes it difficult to recover, but not wipe the whole raid for 1 person's mistake.

Really, is it fair to say this after killing magmaw and wiping on the next boss (electron, etc.) ? I think so, after one boss I learned a lot about the give and take of the raid.

If you're running 10 mans and 1 player just can't remember to jump and use the chain, or your cc class keeps forgetting to slow those larva down, boot and get a new one. Mistakes are very, very hard to recover from. 10man = perfection

[Steakums]

They would have had alot less trouble if they had kept it simply 25, and no 10-man at all. While it was fun when they were easy (Naxx/Ulduar-a little less/Coloseum-really easy/Icecrown-really easy).

Now they have to deal with the double of the balance to do. And the achivements discussions are in the middle of the 10/25 debate, not knowing what to do, or where to go...

It would definitely help recruiting out, when 2 pages on your servers forum page are dedicated to being recruitment threads there is a problem.

[jearle]

What am I trying to get at? 10 man heroics are WAY overtuned as it is right now. Yes, there are some fights where 25 is obviously harder, but thats only fights were spreading out is a major factor in the fight (Al'Akir). Other than that, it's quite obvious 10 > 25 overall in heroics. Blizz needs to fix this, it's kind of ridiculous...

Blizzard is giving you an equal shot at the best loot in the game, achievements, and titles for a 10 man raid format when putting together a 10 man raidforce is 3X easier then putting together a 25 man raid force and coordinating the force. Did you expect it to be easy? Did you expect them to tune every heroic encounter to fit any 10 man raid setup?

What the Paragon leader said about 10man progression is correct, you would need a pool of 15 players each with an alt getting geared in order to tackled certain encounters. Whats that give you 30 characters to choose from, roughly the size of a 25 man raid pool.

Blizzard was probably sitting around hashing this out and it went

Dev 1 "Traditionally the hardcore raid force has always been 25 mans lets try to tune the 25 man content as well as possible so the real race for first will still continue in this format"

Dev 2 "What about 10 mans?"

Dev 1 "10 mans are well tuned for normal mode and it will allow a large number of the playerbase to see encounters and obtain the same gear as the 25 man content but the heroic modes are going to be extremely difficult to kill and the hardcore players interested in doing this are going to have to put in the same effort as 25 people, possibly forcing 10 mans to combine and do 25's anyway."

Dev 2 "Doesn't that go against the idea of having 2 formats?"

Dev 1 "Kind of but who would you rather piss off, the hardcore 25 man guilds or the hardcore 10 man guilds which are fewer in subscriptions and in number"

Dev 2"Point noted"


I run a 10 man guild, I'm not a fanboy, I'm just a realist and it just makes more sense. Now that the race is over the 10 mans will be tuned down in future hotfixes. If a 10 man format won the race Blizz would alienate a MUCH larger subscription base.

[Spillage]

I have to agree with some of the posters here. We run with 2 hunters, not ideal in 10 man. We are missing buffs. One mistake and its over for us.

Fights like Halfus with nova interrupts are just a pain compared to 25 man. If we have no shaman we need 2 people to interrupt since they are the only sub 8 second cd for interrupts. That slows all other dps down. In a 25 man you will always have a shaman making just that one part of the fight that much easier.

Balancing a 10man there have to assumptions made, but the problem with that is you can be missing any class or even 2 or 3. In a 25 man you can balance knowing all classes will be there. That is one of the issues with 10 v. 25 man difficulty.

[jearle]

We've down magmaw in 10man and it took our 4th night, with about... 8-10 wipes to get him down. I noticed, that with 2 bugged situations where when we jumped onto his back one player could get knocked off for no reason and wipe the entire raid. 1 mistake and there goes your 20% life left attempt. This was so frustrating, because finally when we get the motion of the fight down, it's the encounter that is bugged and ruins the attempt, we got the damn worm the second time, but it doesn't feel as good as the encounter before. obviously the last statement is somewhat unrelated to the topic

If you're running 10 mans and 1 player just can't remember to jump and use the chain, or your cc class keeps forgetting to slow those larva down, boot and get a new one. Mistakes are very, very hard to recover from. 10man = perfection

Magmaw fight still being bugged is pretty stupid, this far into the expansion this should be fixed. Condolences for an attempt like that going to shit due to the fall off bug (which you can't even recover from with a battle rez).

I agree there is 0 room for error in 10 man, 1 person screws up and its over alot more pressure on folks. This is good though the 10 man faceroll idea needed to be killed and I think they did a good job of that.

[Buckwald]

Good read. A key point that I would love to draw attention to:

but let's face it: the balance isn't there for individual encounters, and it goes both ways.

My guild's main focus is 25. When the raid week is over, we have a few people who do a 10 man and make attempts on what is left. And they have been saying that for a long time. Each size has it's difficulties and problems.

Will Blizzard ever get the tuning right? Probably not. They can come close, but some encouters will just be harder. Based on room size, adds, player deaths, etc. I think it's perfectly acceptable that a "10 man strict" have a roster of 15 or 20. If a player sits in the name of guild progression, so be it. If Blizz tuned raids for 10s then it would almost "face roll" for 25s (few exceptions). Having less wiggle room is something 10s will have to deal with. The general statements of "10s are harder" and "25s are harder" doesn't cut it.

[Deleted]

Very insightful post, I totally agree with Arx.

I'd especially bold this:

I think defeating truly hard encounters will always earn recognition, regardless of raid size. Now, if only I was informed about all of those and had the means to track them...

Would also be extremely interesting to hear from Blizzard on this.

This would have to be on battle.net forums.

[jearle]

Good read. A key point that I would love to draw attention to:

My guild's main focus is 25. When the raid week is over, we have a few people who do a 10 man and make attempts on what is left. And they have been saying that for a long time. Each size has it's difficulties and problems.

Will Blizzard ever get the tuning right? Probably not. They can come close, but some encouters will just be harder. Based on room size, adds, player deaths, etc. I think it's perfectly acceptable that a "10 man strict" have a roster of 15 or 20. If a player sits in the name of guild progression, so be it. If Blizz tuned raids for 10s then it would almost "face roll" for 25s (few exceptions). Having less wiggle room is something 10s will have to deal with. The general statements of "10s are harder" and "25s are harder" doesn't cut it.

Agreed, most 10 man guilds need to realize they should have a larger pool to pull from for encounters. Whether it be a pool of 15-20 players or 10 players each with an alt they can play with equal skill.

[Deleted]

Agreed, most 10 man guilds need to realize they should have a larger pool to pull from for encounters. Whether it be a pool of 15-20 players or 10 players each with an alt they can play with equal skill.

No, again: It's not about the player pool! In that case Arx is totally wrong. There are 10 "hardcore" guilds who can run every setup they want to, but that doesn't mean that they can beat the encounter. It's about the encounter mechanic and abilities which are really overtuned in 10 heroics comapred to 25. For details read my post above -> http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post10332409

[Buckwald]

No, again: It's not about the player pool! In that case Arx is totally wrong. There are 10 "hardcore" guilds who can run every setup they want to, but that doesn't mean that they can beat the encounter. It's about the encounter mechanic and abilities which are really overtuned in 10 heroics comapred to 25. For details read my post above -> http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post10332409

There are instances where mechanics are laughable on 10s that are difficult on 25s. You take what you have and adjust accordiningly based on the strengths of your guild and pool of characters. Does that work for EVERY situation, no it doesn't. But, once again, as I said, Blizzard will never get it perfect. It's just something that 10/25 raids have to deal. Neither group will get a full raid tier that is perfectly balanced.