What Ever Happened to 10 man?

[Birdofgerror]

I used to pug heavily back in Wrath, Cataclysm, and Pandaria, back where your choices were 10 man and 25 man respectively. Since Flexible came out in Siege of Orgrimmar (and eventually became the bedrock foundation of the 10-30 man styled normal/heroic raids we have today) I've enjoyed filling alllllll the way up to 30 man as well, just for high octane fun, it feels like 40 man, but like, 10 less people. I kind of wish it could go to 40. The sheer chaos would be great.

But my thread is about why 10 mans fell out of style. Back in the aforementioned expansions the content was balanced for 10 people, with an exception for opening week raids for Cataclysm, which beckoned some hotfixes from Blizzard not properly tuning the buff system to accommodate for the lack of players. Nowadays the go-to size is 15 man, 2-4-9, but my preferred raiding style for nearly 6 years has been 2-2-6. Numbers don't lie, 2-4-9 must be mathematically better.

I had a lot of fun back in Hellfire Citadel where one of my favorite things to do each week would be to do 10 man Iskar on heroic with a strange 1-2-7 build, where massive dps would actually eliminate the need for a second tank. It was fun, but nowadays the scale of the raids seems counterintuitive, and less people makes it HARDER, when back in Wrath for instance, 10 man was the much easier version that dropped lower item level loot, Naxx for example dropping 200 loot equal to heroic 5 man loot, with the final boss dropping 213, equal to 25 man normal bosses.

What numbers got changed around to make 10 man bad, and 20 man the go-to size for what Blizzard considers optimal balance for Mythics?

[Femininity]

A single raid size is demonstrably easier to balance. 10-man balance was always wonky.

In wotlk, 10-man was easier because it was tuned to be easier, notable exception being Sarth+3 10-man.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

blizzard decided that none of us enjoyed being on a smaller, more tight knit team.

[Birdofgerror]

blizzard decided that none of us enjoyed being on a smaller, more tight knit team.

Damn, I have memories of my guild having "The raid team" of 25 people and then "The elite" of our guild who came out of the 25 man into a more organized, tight and efficient 10 man for us to do ulduar hard modes and achievements and stuff. I guess nowadays the flexible raid sizes allows for MORE freedom in cases like this, but I still enjoyed going in with a hitsquad of hyper optimized individuals.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

Damn, I have memories of my guild having "The raid team" of 25 people and then "The elite" of our guild who came out of the 25 man into a more organized, tight and efficient 10 man for us to do ulduar hard modes and achievements and stuff. I guess nowadays the flexible raid sizes allows for MORE freedom in cases like this, but I still enjoyed going in with a hitsquad of hyper optimized individuals.

20 man mythic raiding is fine, but i feel like it can be a revolving door with usually around 5 people on the team. our 10 man team during mop was just that, a team. actually got to know people during raid time. i feel like i have to be in discord all the time now to get to know anyone.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Mythic needs to provide a satisfying but fair challenge. Flex was a great innovation but doesn't allow for the tight tuning that was required, so that was out.
They'd never been able to balance around 2 different sizes to everyone's satisfaction. Initially it was "easy mode," then they tried to make them equal in difficulty, which caused players to gravitate towards 10-man, which makes 25-man redundant.
Blizzard also took the view that raid content should be for larger groups-remember it was originally conceived as a 40 man endeavour. Smaller rosters are also harder to balance for specific mechanics-it limits encounter design. It's not fair to require a shadow priest for Mythic Blast Furnace in a 10-man group, but it can be reasonably expected in a 20-man. Certain things like boss room space are also wonky across different raid sizes. Floor covering mechanics are either nullified if fewer people get them in a smaller group or too difficult to manage if too many get them.
They did however understand that some preferred a slightly smaller roster, hence the compromise from 25 to 20.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Because the game has something like 12 classes and 36 different specs that Blizzard builds raiding to fit or require a good mix of them all.
10man simply is too hard to accomidate that amount of diversity, Blizzard would have to design raids around half their potential classes but which ones? Maybe a fight is made easier with a Resto Shaman but a raid doesn’t have one. Now that group is fucked. Or maybe a boss is made easier if you got classes with immunities or abilities that allows then to soak lots of thing, in 10m that is rare, so what do Blizzard do?

The short answer is that balancing the game is hard enough as it is and you don’t need 2-3-4 different raid sizes to make it harder.
Another good example is Mythic + 5-man. EVERY top group will hav the same 5-7 class/spec combination because that’s the strong 5-man choises.
DK or DH tank. Good damage tanks with lots of utility.
Rogue or WW monk Good damage, utility.
Warlock. AoE stun, Healthstone, Gateway.
Mage. Good slows so tanks can kite, heroism.
Disc Priest. Good cds and heals, important damage potential.

- - - Updated - - -

Mythic needs to provide a satisfying but fair challenge. Flex was a great innovation but doesn't allow for the tight tuning that was required, so that was out.
They'd never been able to balance around 2 different sizes to everyone's satisfaction. Initially it was "easy mode," then they tried to make them equal in difficulty, which caused players to gravitate towards 10-man, which makes 25-man redundant.

I still think the highest raiding should be 25 man, if not more, just so we’ll more of the classes in raids.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Damn, I have memories of my guild having "The raid team" of 25 people and then "The elite" of our guild who came out of the 25 man into a more organized, tight and efficient 10 man for us to do ulduar hard modes and achievements and stuff. I guess nowadays the flexible raid sizes allows for MORE freedom in cases like this, but I still enjoyed going in with a hitsquad of hyper optimized individuals.

There was a relatively large segment that felt slighted for having a lower reward ilvl for their content, so they brought the ilvl drops to parity. Then the problem is you're now running two world first races, and bosses cannot be tuned to the same relative difficulty simply due to how mechanics had to be handled. There was a lot of complaining and dick measuring competitions on who had it harder on what boss. While that should be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, it caused a great many forum arguments and elitism from both sides, and in the end Blizz has to moderate those. Their encounter team has to try their best to tune two sets of raids at the same functional difficulty, without making one harder than the other despite the massive size difference. Not possible, for the payoff, anyway.

Combine that with the fact that WoW had grown past 10 classes, and the desire to return to interesting class-specific mechanics, meant that in theory a 10 man run could be forced to swap someone to get that Mage for Spellsteal or Priest for Mind Control when they usually didn't have one. 10 simply wasn't usable for the singular hardest level. Flex wasn't usable because you had breakpoints for certain mechanics early in its life. 25 would cannibalize 3 10 man guilds with people to spare, where 20 would only eat 2 ideally. Dropping to 15 would split 25s harder than they were already hit when 10 became equal in drop ilvl to 25.

It's a shame 10 died, and it wasn't the perfect solution by any means, but I can appreciate the desire for the larger styled raids to persist and feel like an actual raid, as opposed to a slightly larger group.

[Teri]

I still think the highest raiding should be 25 man, if not more, just so we’ll more of the classes in raids.

I think 20 or 25 man should be a fixed size again for the entire Raiding scene, so guild rosters are on the same page again no matter what difficulty.

Sure you'll get people say "but we cant 12-man this, or invite extras to get 30", but the game worked fine with a fixed size before.

[Deleted]

It is hard to balance. That is it. 10 man content had two times smaller toolkit to execute the fight, either it let it be easier to compensate for it, or it was harder, because you lacked some class.
You can still still 10 man, just not the mythic. Mythic stuff is very pug unfriendly, as it should be.

[Lithiye]

Simply because now mythic difficulty is lile 90% about the pol around you who will fail and whype the raid so more ppl more way to fail. I used to play a mmo where it was 8 man raid (2-2-4) and it was really comfy, it was like a true team and raid encounter was tuned to be a real challenges regarding mecanics, dps/heal checks etcetc.

I would say, group size are depending of game design and what kind of difficulty they want to bring us

[Zogarth]

Balance mainly i would guess. And there being more than 10 classes (12) also would result in the development team having to heavily restrict themselves in the encounters they can make. Sure, the mechanic may not require a specific classes, but having said class/classes will make it so much easier that not doing it is simply insanity. 10-man also just feels too small compared to the setting of a raid, but then again I always enjoyed raiding 25-man more than 10-man, and dungeons like Kara always felt more like mini-raids and not "proper" raids. But for the sake of balance Blizzard needed to decide on a number, and they concluded that 20 would be the best.

[Deleted]

I think 20 or 25 man should be a fixed size again for the entire Raiding scene, so guild rosters are on the same page again no matter what difficulty.

Sure you'll get people say "but we cant 12-man this, or invite extras to get 30", but the game worked fine with a fixed size before.

What is the point on locking hc/normals into set size? The game is working fine with this size, and casual guilds can still raid if someone does not show up. Set size is "oh...x and y did not show up, now we will have to get pugs in" as opposed to "ok, x and y is not here, z change to dps and we are gucci"

[AwkwardSquirtle]

I think 20 or 25 man should be a fixed size again for the entire Raiding scene, so guild rosters are on the same page again no matter what difficulty.

Sure you'll get people say "but we cant 12-man this, or invite extras to get 30", but the game worked fine with a fixed size before.

I don't agree. Having only 25 players for a 25 man raid is a bad plan-not everyone can make every raid because life happens.
Also as a more casual heroic guild we really appreciate the flexible raid size. Roster size varies wildly from week to week, and it would be a nightmare trying to pug those slots every week. This way no matter what we can raid as a guild.
Yes, the game worked fine before, but it works better now. Why would you go back to an inferior system? What is the benefit of us having the same number of people in our raids as mythic raiders who are essentially playing a different game?

[Teri]

What is the point on locking hc/normals into set size? The game is working fine with this size, and casual guilds can still raid if someone does not show up. Set size is "oh...x and y did not show up, now we will have to get pugs in" as opposed to "ok, x and y is not here, z change to dps and we are gucci"

But at the other hand you get people who are used to raiding heroic or whatever with 13-16 but can never get people for Mythic.

[vsb]

Because 10-man raiding was too much fun and fun is not really allowed in WoW.

[Teri]

Roster size varies wildly from week to week, and it would be a nightmare trying to pug those slots every week. This way no matter what we can raid as a guild.

I raided just fine for years when it was 40 man, 20 man , or 25 man, and 100% the same guild and no puggers.

This current game won't go back to 1-single size+difficulty, I can understand. But I never prefered this system myself (I Didn't play during SOO and WoD so I never adjusted my mindset, so my opinion is different then many I suppose)

Back In wotlk, 10 man was always some bonus raid for my guild. Even back in Vanilla ZG and AQ were bonus raids and later Alt raids.

Cata and MoP 10 man was different as it wasn't an inferior size in terms of itemlevel. Sure 25 man had more drops, I know.

[Deleted]

But at the other hand you get people who are used to raiding heroic or whatever with 13-16 but can never get people for Mythic.

Your statement was that it should be set to 20 or 25 lol, so how that would help? Mythic is another question because of balance and coordination in needs. HC is easy mode, so balance is not much of a problem and it does not require specific toolkits to be doable, so it can be flex 10-30, game works better now, ofc it worked with 10-25 too, but it is inferior. No one uses steam engines now, do they? Even tho it worked

[Teri]

Your statement was that it should be set to 20 or 25 lol, so how that would help? Mythic is another question because of balance and coordination in needs. HC is easy mode, so balance is not much of a problem and it does not require specific toolkits to be doable, so it can be flex 10-30, game works better now, ofc it worked with 10-25 too, but it is inferior. No one uses steam engines now, do they? Even tho it worked

Well if it works better for normal/hc, great. But I still see regular discussions about that Mythic size is too big...

Or I've seen discussions that 10 man was too hard (when not overgearing it via Titanforging or gear from other higher difficulties)

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Because for some reason the development team of this game things the game should be balanced and designed around the top 5% (or so) of the game instead of where the majority of the player base plays. Which is why now the game is start to turn more and more focus to mythic+ design and pure raid superiority is slipping away. Should have just put in the extra work to balance the 2 sizes or just realized size doesn't matter and people crying about it are losers that will continue to sub either way and just like to bitch. But instead they caved and started the beginning of the end of raiding focused game and instead will move it to mythic+ to satisfy people that want smaller groups. When the solution was already alive and well.