Missing the 10 man Raids

[capri sunset]

10vs25 was a community created problem, it's obvious that both have their easy points and their hard points which have been listed a thousand times, but it's because of these that the brackets should not be compared in the first place. Both brackets should instead be respected for what they bring, some bosses are going to be more difficult on 25 man and vice versa, and as long as it's within reason that's okay because it's going to be traded back and forth throughout the instance anyway.

We've even lost what was quite a big problem for 10 mans in offspec raid cooldowns, for instance having 4 hunters back then was going to be a bit of a struggle, now you maybe need a gateway and a dk for grips but there are workarounds that could quite easily be implemented. More so, I think they sort of realised after blast furnace that you can't even expect a 20 man to have at least one of every class, minus dks for some reason, else you're completely shutting out guilds on low-med pop servers.

put simply if your guild cannot reliably get 20 people to even progress mythic then you shouldn't be in mythic.
And if you are having really big attendance issues then your guild should just die already and be done with it, don't beat a dead horse.

This is such a cold and serious way of looking at it, player skill should be the primary barrier to mythic, not recruitment. I'm not sure if you've seen just how weak a not insignificant number of realms are right now, with transfer costs as high as they are no one is transferring to a dying realm to join anything less than a top guild.

And it is still a game after all and you want people to have fun playing with people they like playing with, massively long lived guilds aren't about to just roll over and die by choice but it is a very vicious cycle once you're relegated to heroic clears. I just think if this is what the game is focused on, such arbitrary barriers aren't very encouraging for more casual and lower ranked guilds trying to break out.

[beelgers]

I liked 10H in Wrath when they didn't attempt to balance the two - when it was easier and rewarded weaker loot. Worse loot was a decent tradeoff to having a more close-knit group. I'd love that to come back, but that's just too many raid modes. LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic10, Mythic20/25... Think what we have now is the best we can do

[Jastall]

Now there is noone to whine about world first race since it has died down completely....like 3 guilds participating in the race.Having 10-man mythic the race would be a lot more interesting to watch since there would be many groups doing it.And as a 10-man raider myself i dont care if its harder or easier,i just love that tight-knit group and to be able to raid with my friends and fellow guild members of 12 years.None of the members from my guild are interested in merging with some random snot-noses just to raid 20 man mythic.Thats what blizzard thinks everyone should do now.

The usual suspects will dominate whenever the size is 10 or 30 man, and some guilds will have roster boss issues whenever the size is 10 or 30 man.

Seriously, I have no idea where this notion that a slew of super good, super motivated raiders are just waiting for 10 man raiding to manifest themselves. Most Mythic raiders don't really care about the size. if you aren't willing to manage a 20 people roster and aren't willing to put time in your guild, you aren't good enough to raid Mythic. It's part and parcel of the experience. 10m Heroic is there for you.

[Khallid]

Wish we had the ability to do mythics with 10 people as well as 20. It's crazy how hard it is these days to get a steady 20 to raid enough to really progress.
Anyone else desire the small raid size options for those guilds that just can't seem to reach that magic 20.

I am sure it has been mentioned before i just know we currently sit on 10-15 people at most that can raid together and its hard to pug on mythics on same server.

Just a few thoughts let me know how you feel thanks.

My guild was in a similar position at the beginning of the expansion, we didn't manage to start raiding mythic until halfway through Nighthold and even had to call it off once during ToS because too many people couldn't make it. It just comes down to recruiting more people. You can't make a non-hardcore 20-man raiding group with exactly 20 people because often a few of them will be unable to go. You need to have around 25 raid-ready people so they can cover each other. So recruiting more is the only real solution.

On the topic of 10-man mythic, I don't have a strong opinion either way. It's definitely obvious that some encounters are designed to be faced by a certain amount of people (like how Aggramar needs at least 5 long cc abilities on the adds) and the balancing is way harder than just dropping their health or damage dealt. On the other hand, 10-man is a nice size and easy to get a group going. I would be OK with it, but I'm pretty sure Bliizzard said no about it. For the foreseeable future, it's more pragmatical to actually work on recruiting for your guild.

[Azerate]

I think the current system is great. You can raid normal/heroic with 10 if your guild can't pull the number for mythic.

[Volardelis]

They could just have used the scaling mechanic they have on LFR, normal and HC though. It's just Blizzard being lazy, thats all.
Besides, it's not like the balance in Legion was that great anyway. ToS is one of the worst designed and balanced raids in WoW history after all. Flex size would not have made it worse.

When blizzard made it that 10 man and 25 man versions gave out the same ilvl loot (therefore having the same "difficulty") in cata, some bosses were far more easier in 10 or 25 man. It isn't laziness. Blizzard wants fine tuning for the hardest PvE content in the game. Some mechanics on bosses wouldn't work so well in a scaling system. Such as mythic Aggramar, or Mythic Felfounds. having to split your group up into small groups for example. Or even Mythic Xavius with the dream beams

[Aggrophobic]

When blizzard made it that 10 man and 25 man versions gave out the same ilvl loot (therefore having the same "difficulty") in cata, some bosses were far more easier in 10 or 25 man. It isn't laziness. Blizzard wants fine tuning for the hardest PvE content in the game. Some mechanics on bosses wouldn't work so well in a scaling system. Such as mythic Aggramar, or Mythic Felfounds. having to split your group up into small groups for example. Or even Mythic Xavius with the dream beams

Thoes mechanics might not work but they could just design different ones. It's not like raid design has take a huge step forward since the introduction of 20 man only raids. Quite the contrary, I'd say.

Raid design as a whole has been lacking in Legion and I really doubt it would have been worse with flex. It might have taken more work to get it balanced but it might also get more people into raiding.

So yeah, laziness, being cheap, not caring about raiding. Call it what you want.

[halfawake]

Seriously, to everyone saying 20 man is the only mode that can work, get your heads out of your butts. There's so much variance in mythic already with titanforging being a thing. 18-22 flex mythic could definitely save a lot of guilds. Saying you shouldn't be raiding mythic as a guild if you can't maintain a 20 person roster is being stupid, it's been a long time since the switch to 20 man and I can guarantee there are less people raiding now BECAUSE of attendance problems associated with the switch to 20 from 10. If guilds aren't stable by now overall then maybe the mode is simply a failure. Also I don't agree that 15 would have had the same problems as 20. So many guilds were able to maintain 10 man guilds without attendance issues, those extra people in 20 man definitely add more variance in who might not be able to attend. There's the fact that the game is less popular than it used to be so it might be harder to fill any guild with quality people and going back to 10 would probably be too hard to balance but adding some flex to mythic would go a long way to saving the mode and like I said before, there's already a lot of variance built into mythic now with titanforging so the argument that the game wouldn't be balanced with a few flex spots is ridiculous.

[Mazzeric]

The only viable way to keep a mythic guild running tier through tier in 2018 is to recruit 25+ people that are mature enough and willing enough to sit. Simple as that. It's been this way for quite some time. Making Mythic flexible from 18-22 so that you're fine when 2 people are missing, or can bring up to 2 extra people, is a small tweak that has too many trickle-down effects on raid mechanics to be worth it. It doesn't do enough. It's really silly to get so defensive about, because it's just a really shit design.

Flexible Mythic doesn't work. As it's been said over and over in this thread, there will always be a way to "game" the raid size around mechanics, giving you advantages or disadvantages accordingly, which is an unnecessary burden on designers for very little impact to the community if it's on the scale of 18-22. Now if we're talking 15-25, then you're actually making some interesting decisions possibly, with your comp and roster but again the integrity of the hardest difficulty of raiding is still compromised because we yet again go down the path of "15man is easier than 25man" or vice versa when it comes to competition (which, whether you like it or not, is a compelling element to raiding).

Raid size has to be stable for anyone to take the mythic scene seriously. People using the "skill should matter more than raid size" strawman argument are actually proposing changes that make raid size matter even MORE because flexible mythic raiding will encourage degenerate behavior based on gaming comps and sizes for optimal effect. Your raid size will become a "meta" similar to how pug groups will only take a 2/3/9 comp. What's hilarious is that the same people arguing strongly for flexible mythic have 0-2 kills on mythic on their linked characters, while mythic has been out for almost 2 months now.

[glowpipe]

i would pay an extra sub fee monthly to get back 10 man heroic/mythic raiding. 20 man is just meh. Not really personal and its just to many people.

[Jastall]

Seriously, to everyone saying 20 man is the only mode that can work, get your heads out of your butts. There's so much variance in mythic already with titanforging being a thing. 18-22 flex mythic could definitely save a lot of guilds. Saying you shouldn't be raiding mythic as a guild if you can't maintain a 20 person roster is being stupid, it's been a long time since the switch to 20 man and I can guarantee there are less people raiding now BECAUSE of attendance problems associated with the switch to 20 from 10. If guilds aren't stable by now overall then maybe the mode is simply a failure. Also I don't agree that 15 would have had the same problems as 20. So many guilds were able to maintain 10 man guilds without attendance issues, those extra people in 20 man definitely add more variance in who might not be able to attend. There's the fact that the game is less popular than it used to be so it might be harder to fill any guild with quality people and going back to 10 would probably be too hard to balance but adding some flex to mythic would go a long way to saving the mode and like I said before, there's already a lot of variance built into mythic now with titanforging so the argument that the game wouldn't be balanced with a few flex spots is ridiculous.

If you make it 18-22, people who can only field 17 players will whine that it's too big.

Also Mythic is not intended to be seen by as many people as possible. There are three other raid difficulties that cater to accessibility, which is good. But Mythic is for organized guilds who can maintain a large roster of competent players.

[fallenangel-succ]

If you make it 18-22, people who can only field 17 players will whine that it's too big.

Also Mythic is not intended to be seen by as many people as possible. There are three other raid difficulties that cater to accessibility, which is good. But Mythic is for organized guilds who can maintain a large roster of competent players.

No, you're missing the point. Any fixed raid size has that problem, and 18-22 allows for some flexibility that is not attainable by say, a fixed 15 player raid. It's not about the exact number, it's about flex.
And the latter line is both narrow-minded and false. There are over 6.5K kills on Garothi mythic right now (and wowprogress doesn't have all the chinese guilds, at least). This is over 100K players.

Adding more variables will make it harder to balance. That's not subjective. The more variables you have to take into account when balancing an encounter, the harder it will be to balance.

That I agree with. Never said otherwise. What I'm saying is that balance isn't the end-all-be-all consideration, and there are others.

[Odionis]

I personally miss 10 man raid format because it was a lot easier to manage the roster. I understand Blizzards reason as far as tuning goes but that was back when the it was 10-man or 25-man. However, now that it's 20 I feel they could balance the two in terms of difficulty much easier than before, mainly because half of 20 is 10. If a boss has a mechanic that targets 4 people in 2-man then it would target only 2 people in 10-man, obviously depending on what that mechanic is. An example would be the sleep canister from Imonar.

[velkroe]

Whether you miss it depends on your personality type. Some people really like the epic feeling of large raids. For myself I miss mythic ten man. You really got to know your raid team really quickly. In a twenty man there are certain outgoing people who you know and then theirs kind of the rest us. Tier 11 ten man raiding for my was kind of the pinnacle of raiding but that probably has more to do with the people I raided with then the size of the raid.

[xezar]

I miss 10mans, but more because with me anyways it was a tighter closer knit group of friends in my raid group, and you could focus and clear stuff a lot easier. That and no need for crap like loot council since you can just simply debate among friends if you wanted a piece, and people were nice about letting you have that thing you really wanted and vice versa. Plus you didn’t have the extra bloat of carrying bad dps or underperforming healers.

[DeuZWw]

i miss the 10man because with 10man i could actually see the fight. 20/25man stack mechanics means everyone is on top of everyone and you cant see shit your doing, unless you are ranged.

Not to say the huge amount of effects around. i enjoy seeying my character hitting the boss, and i just can't see it when playing as a Melee DPS.

also, having only 10man meant that any death would be a heavy loss.


i also miss fights that could be single tanked, as well as fights with 3 tanks. 10man you could think much more about your setup, number of healers, number of rdps vs mdps and while 2tanks were kinda always the option to go, you could still have 3 tanks or 1 tank and a DPS playing OffTank on some fights, or even 2tanks and an DpsOFFtank for dealing with Adds, kiting and stuff like that.


20man mythic raids are quite hard. but i think blizzard should look back to when they gave DPS mechanics to do, instead of just having to hit hard and avoid fire on the ground.


I Think Blizzard really should have used more the extra-action-button they made on fights to give some DPS more importance on fights in general, where you had to assign 2 or 3 dps to do specific mechanics at least. Like Alysrazor flight stuff, for example.


i got waaay off topic here, sorry about that.

TL;DR: I miss 10man, raiding with Flexible made me realize that the maximum amount of people i ever want on my raid group is about 15, more than that it turns into a game where you don't see shit happening on most encounters, not even your character.

[Furikun]

I'd love to see the 10 man raids back in the game. Getting 20 people at late night isn't easy for Mythic raiding

[Greylan]

18-22 flex would be amazing

[Nitros14]

You may miss 10-man raiding, but 10-man raiding destroyed 25-man raiding so I hate all of you ex-10-man raiders and I glory in the destruction of your format.

[velkroe]

The other thing about ten man is each persons presense was important. As a player you really got a sense that you has something of value to contribute. The feeling gets diluted in larger raids.