Return of 10s"Mythic". Yes? No?

[tPesti]

inb4: "Mythics were always 20man" please, just don't - troll somewhere else - I am referring to 10man "mythic" as being the highest raid difficult available.

Hi all,

Direct question: what are your thoughts whether they should give another shot at 10s available at the hardest raid difficult?

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I am stating my personal thoughts in the texts below:

short;
Since introduction of m+, i don't feel ilvl are that important and couldn't care less if 10s gave a lower ilvl than 25s - the sheer difficult of organizing bigger groups shall indeed be rewarded.
Anyway, in the end, weekly pve/pvp chests (and warforged, or new "corruption" items) will always close the ilvl gap between playerbase.

Required classes and specs can be worked with just how Blizzard well managed to do so for 03 entire expansions (WotlK, Cata, Pandaria) - As a last last resource, if really needed in order to implement a super cool new mechanic, they can give players an extra ability (like they give in us CC totems in MOTHERLODE!!!) or make many classes able to do a very specific mechanic (ie: disorient add Sinestra / Bastion of Twilight / Cataclysm)

10s and 20/25s don't need perfect balance - it can happen here and there where a boss is easier in a setup than the other.
In the race for world/rankings first, each race is its own: for Cataclysm and Pandaria, we didnt hear 10s guild claiming "world firsts" against 25s competing guilds and vice-versa - it was simply two different rankings.

In the end, I want challenging content that can be done in a smaller group of friends (just as m+ exists!) - For me, in 2020 and with my personal life as it is, attending a guild is pretty much hard and raiding content runs out fast (as LFG is enough to do all the content in weeks 1-3)

long;
To help some of you that weren't around in the game back in the days & if my memory serves me right...

Back to mid-late WotLK (Ulduar, TOC, ICC) I used to raid both sizes - 25 and 10 and enjoyed them equally.
The 25s was my main's guild raid group whereas the 10s was a close friends group.
The loot ilvl difference was understandable - Not only 25man were harder to group/organize, the dps-healing requirements overall were higher in the 25s.

WotlK Issues:

For some raids (TOC + onwards) it felt like a burden having 4 difficulties (10, 10H, 25, 25H)
It was a burden mostly because of Alts, Emblem of Triumph/Valor (currency that would drop bosses) and specifics drops (ie: trinkets or set pieces)

Then Cataclysm came and changed some aspects:
First, the 10/25s lockouts were shared and then the loot table ilvl was made equal between 10/25s.
My gaming routine didn't change much: still raided with a hardcore guild 25s and with close friends in the 10s setup.
At later expansion, other than my guild main raid, I also managed making some 10HC with 50% friends/50% pugs.

It was a concern for our 25s guild that we would face issues with recruitment (since people would rather just focus on 10s), but tbh it didn't affect us.
"Race To World First/Rankings" drama also didn't affect us, as we'd only compare ourselves/compete with others also raiding on the same raid size.

Cataclysm issues:

Since the removal of 4 difficulties, the downscaling of "2" difficulties with "2" raid sizes made pugging somewhat harder.
(didnt affect me, but) it was clear that pugs weren't being as common/successful as before (normals were harder to pug and heroics were plain impossible, as now 10H was indeed harder and now meant for organized groups)
Inbalance between same difficulties but different raid sizes - tuning encounters was very hard
The death of some 25s guilds (as some took a hit after recruitment became significantly harder)

Pandaria followed pretty much the same recipe, only change is that now we have LFR (since Dragon Soul)
Then Siege of Orgrimmar came and flex was implemented.
Raided only the 1st tier as a 25HC guild and the last tier in a 10HC group.
The cool part of the 10HC group is that we were a group of 7-8 friends and we'd pug the other 2-3 from a pool of 5-7 players that we knew/were around.

Pandaria issues:

The same as cataclysm + we had too many difficulties available: flex, normal, heroic.
Flex was amazing (tech-wise), but deemed too easy and low ilvl (same as LFR today)

Nowadays Dranenor/Legion/BfA:
Nothing much changed, except the flexible sizing now affects "normal mode" and "heroic" changed to "mythic" and now we have a built-in LFG.

Today issues:

LFG takes you far - you can fully clear normal and heroics weeks 1-3 (even if you are not that hardcore).
After that, you are left with not so many options: either you join a guild or raiding content is pretty much over (well, rekilling/farm is available, but I am speaking about challenges)

Mythic pugging is not possible for the great majority of the realms - Lockout ID assures that your group won't go far and will not be "interchangeable", therefore by joining a pug that kills (or even only attempts) the 1st boss and then disbands you are very likely not be able to regroup and further proceed into the raid during that week's lockout.

[Eapoe]

Having 10 person raiding with separate loot tables or lower ilvls is t a great idea. 1). Separate loot means that people will feel obligated to run the same raid multiple times a week, which also leads to (2) burnout caused by raiding, as well as people in guild having team A and team B which leads to a whole new list of issues. There’s also the issue of (3) lower ilvls still making people go into #’s 1 and 2 as ilvl technically doesn’t mean what Blizz has stated they want it to mean. When a 445 ring is better than a 475 then Blizz has failed on that issue.
Bringing back 10 person raiding also brings up the issue of guilds falling apart again.
Then there’s also the issue of balancing. There’s a reason some bosses are faceroll easy on 10 man vs 25 man and vice versa, as well balancing class abilities and brez style mechanics.
So, the short version, no. I don’t think Blizzard should bring back 10 person raiding. It was a balancing nightmare and caused a big rift between the player base, as well as guilds disbanding and causing players to just give up when 10 person raiding was taken away.

[Nzx]

Doesn't make a lot of sense. You want this because you say LFG means you can do normal and heroic in "weeks 1-3", but unless your proposed 10 man is just as hard as mythic, the exact same thing will happen. If it is as hard as mythic though, then you'll still have the same "problem" of needing a guild to kill it. It really isn't anywhere near as hard as people make it out to be to join a guild and raid.. all 20 of the people in my current team work fulltime jobs and have varying levels of relationship commitments to keep.

[tPesti]

Having 10 person raiding with separate loot tables or lower ilvls is t a great idea. 1). Separate loot means that people will feel obligated to run the same raid multiple times a week, which also leads to (2) burnout caused by raiding, as well as people in guild having team A and team B which leads to a whole new list of issues. There’s also the issue of (3) lower ilvls still making people go into #’s 1 and 2 as ilvl technically doesn’t mean what Blizz has stated they want it to mean. When a 445 ring is better than a 475 then Blizz has failed on that issue.
Bringing back 10 person raiding also brings up the issue of guilds falling apart again.
Then there’s also the issue of balancing. There’s a reason some bosses are faceroll easy on 10 man vs 25 man and vice versa, as well balancing class abilities and brez style mechanics.
So, the short version, no. I don’t think Blizzard should bring back 10 person raiding. It was a balancing nightmare and caused a big rift between the player base, as well as guilds disbanding and causing players to just give up when 10 person raiding was taken away.

10Mythic and 20-25M can share lockouts (as they did in Cata/Pandaria), so running both is not an option (and thus not a burden, as I stated it happened in WotlK)

Doesn't make a lot of sense. You want this because you say LFG means you can do normal and heroic in "weeks 1-3", but unless your proposed 10 man is just as hard as mythic, the exact same thing will happen. If it is as hard as mythic though, then you'll still have the same "problem" of needing a guild to kill it. It really isn't anywhere near as hard as people make it out to be to join a guild and raid.. all 20 of the people in my current team work fulltime jobs and have varying levels of relationship commitments to keep.

My experience from pandaria summs it up:
The cool part of the 10HC group is that we were a group of 7-8 friends and we'd pug the other 2-3 from a pool of 5-7 players that we knew/were around.

I, myself, know, here, very specifically me, do have 7-8 friends to play with - and I am sure we'd manage to pug the other 2-3 players and proceed into mythics and clear up to first/mid bosses with ease. And as the time goes, also work on the end bosses.
But if my friends do not feel raiding for a week lockout or for a day - no problem, no pugs are called and none is left "waiting".

[Saltysquidoon]

The death of some 25s guilds (as some took a hit after recruitment became significantly harder)

You massively downplayed the problems that the h10/25 split caused (seemingly because it didn't affect you).
Blizzard has stated they made mythic 20 because it was always impossible to balance 10 and 25 properly (exemplified by the first boss in cata Halfus being like twice as hard for people wanting 'easy' 10 progression).

[Lucetia]

You realize the reason they got rid of 10 man Mythic raiding wasn't for fun or anything. They got rid of it because it was very hard to balance and tune.

[Azerate]

I think it's fine to just keep mythic as that fringe cutting edge difficulty for the absolute most hardcore raiders. And if you are such, you should be able to find a 20 man team.

[Eapoe]

10Mythic and 20-25M can share lockouts (as they did in Cata/Pandaria), so running both is not an option (and thus not a burden, as I stated it happened in WotlK)



My experience from pandaria summs it up:
The cool part of the 10HC group is that we were a group of 7-8 friends and we'd pug the other 2-3 from a pool of 5-7 players that we knew/were around.

I, myself, know, here, very specifically me, do have 7-8 friends to play with - and I am sure we'd manage to pug the other 2-3 players and proceed into mythics and clear up to first/mid bosses with ease. And as the time goes, also work on the end bosses.
But if my friends do not feel raiding for a week lockout or for a day - no problem, no pugs are called and none is left "waiting".

Still doesn’t address the 2nd part of my post which was explicitly out in there in case they did share a lockout.

[Nebron]

There are lots of problems associated with WoW state right now.

The biggest one is a paradox - the more 'socializing' tools Blizzard gave to players, the less socialized people became. These tools gave people a chance to roll through the content. A perfect example would be the very first boss in Uldir. PUGs did it on mythic in the first weeks of raid release. LFGs, copying the OpenRaid app etc. made guilds meaningless, so that playing with friends is mainly reserved for RP.

I much prefered 10s over 25s, since the latter was a pure 'precision kills' while 10s were more fun doing it with people you know by the name.

Also,many people playing WoW now are getting pretty old. The game nona longer attracts new players, especially youth, since they prefer to play more dynamic and rewarding in short-term games like MOBAs, Fortnite and stuff like that.

They should get rid off LFR and normal difficulty, leaving heroic as a new normal and mythic as a new heroic. Done. Just like it was before. Return of 10s would surely make guilds meaningful again as friends could play in smaller roosters. Shared Lockout ID for 10s and 25s with a little bit different ilvl loot tables and two difficulties would solve a couple of problems.

Balancing would focus on 4 rather than 2 difficulties. Same with size rooster since it wouldn't be flexible (they could eventually leave normal diff flexible). People would decide whether they prefer to play 10s with worse rewards or 25s for hardcore gaming.

And they should give the MasterLoot back, ateast for mythic raiding.

It's that simple. People are leaving the game so give them what they want. Most people are unhappy with Master Loot change, yet Blizzard behaves like a good, wise, old man who says: "you don't know it guys, you don't understand it, but we do. we know what is good for you". Maybe they are right, but they lose more on taking the MasterLoot, than players did when it was there.

[Nzx]

There are lots of problems associated with WoW state right now.

The biggest one is a paradox - the more 'socializing' tools Blizzard gave to players, the less socialized people became. These tools gave people a chance to roll through the content. A perfect example would be the very first boss in Uldir. PUGs did it on mythic in the first weeks of raid release. LFGs, copying the OpenRaid app etc. made guilds meaningless, so that playing with friends is mainly reserved for RP.

I much prefered 10s over 25s, since the latter was a pure 'precision kills' while 10s were more fun doing it with people you know by the name.

Also,many people playing WoW now are getting pretty old. The game nona longer attracts new players, especially youth, since they prefer to play more dynamic and rewarding in short-term games like MOBAs, Fortnite and stuff like that.

They should get rid off LFR and normal difficulty, leaving heroic as a new normal and mythic as a new heroic. Done. Just like it was before. Return of 10s would surely make guilds meaningful again as friends could play in smaller roosters. Shared Lockout ID for 10s and 25s with a little bit different ilvl loot tables and two difficulties would solve a couple of problems.

Balancing would focus on 4 rather than 2 difficulties. Same with size rooster since it wouldn't be flexible (they could eventually leave normal diff flexible). People would decide whether they prefer to play 10s with worse rewards or 25s for hardcore gaming.

And they should give the MasterLoot back, ateast for mythic raiding.

It's that simple. People are leaving the game so give them what they want. Most people are unhappy with Master Loot change, yet Blizzard behaves like a good, wise, old man who says: "you don't know it guys, you don't understand it, but we do. we know what is good for you". Maybe they are right, but they lose more on taking the MasterLoot, than players did when it was there.

Gonna be honest: this all sounds fucking awful. Your argument falls apart at the very first step when you pretend that people pugging the easiest Mythic boss in history is in any way equivalent to "making guilds meaningless", and never really improves from there.

[VinceVega]

Nah. 20 Man Mythic is fine as is. As others have mentioned, the balance issue will be horrible for guilds.

PuGs will maybe profit from it, but i am against everything that takes the game even further from having a guild.

I don't really see 20 Mythic as problematic. The first few bosses can be downed in PuGs the rest is something to do for the really motivated which does not take that much development time anyway.

The problem with these ideas is always "i don't want to join a guild". I am sorry but if you don't want to take part in the MMO part of the game and only want to play with strangers you get some negatives that come with it. Don't make guilds obsolete!

Rather get people into guilds again with more guildperks. (easy reachable to not kill guilds) Than you have enough people to play mythic 20.

I was in a guild once which just set raidingdays for everyday and took the two each week where the most could play because most of the players could not definitely say when say have time.

I would rather have them make an entrance raid like Karazhan. After which you can progress into the 20 man raids. If it is JUST 10 the balance problem is gone. And if there are two 20 man raids parallel slightly harder after that the guilds don't die off before reaching that point.

[Great Destiny Man]

It had its day. I don't think Blizzard want to put themselves through that again with having to constantly bear in mind how raid mechanics will affect different raid sizes differently. Far simpler for them in the current model.

[Razion]

Not only did 10m+25m bring another team size to balance, it encouraged those who progressed on the bleeding edge to stack classes that could abuse mechanics - like mages, rogues, paladins. Even with the removal of signature abilities, flavor of the month would still be the order of the day. And while this isn't any real difference to current situation anyway, it exacerbates the problem to normalcy whereas currently it's more along the lines of something you do only when it's an option available to you because of the scarcity of players brought on by the difficulty pools diluting available players into their own brackets. In a way, the difficulty pools spreading the player-base around so they're harder to herd into your own group makes it harder for bleeding edge guilds to abuse mechanics with things like immunities or individually over-tuned specs with unique build compositions. While I appreciate that different group sizes being stricter can be appealing on a numeric level, in reality having the raid size adjust difficulty dynamically on all but one difficulty (the highest) gives the accessibility where it matters while restricting it where it is necessary to allow for a more diverse set of classes in end-game bleeding edge progression.

[Rotted]

Are you referring to 10 man raids in TBC, early wrath, then 10man hc late wrath onwards being the equivalent difficulty of Mythic today?

Because if thats the case you're 100% wrong. I cleared all of TBC content up to mother when I was 18, I had no friken idea how stats worked beyond the obvious, no min maxing, no pre potting, no flasks, shit buff food if any and our guild was ranked 47 on a medium population server. We also cleared got Brut down in SWP.

Wrath wise I wised up a bit and had LK HC cleared on 10 man and 25 man, which was more difficult granted, but still I did it.

In short, I was a bit of a tool and pleb back then and even I managed to get those kills.

I've tried mythic in MoP and Legion, knowing my class inside out. And its 100 times harder than any of those previous fights.

That being said, I am pro bringing back dedicated raid sizes, bonus point if we got a scaling difficulty opposed to normal, hc, mythic. A man can dream

[Relapses]

Wheel chair accessible endgame raiding died with MoP. M+ is the closest thing to it.

[Rucati]

I'd be totally down for that. I run with like 8-11 friends, we've been raiding since ICC, and it's still fun and we have a good time, but we full clear heroic in about two resets and then we just kind of farm for a couple months until we're bored. It would be really fun to be able to actually raid difficult content for a change, but I kind of accept that won't happen. And of course we could try to find another 10 man guild and merge, but frankly we enjoy playing with our group and just talking shit on Discord while we play, and adding another 10 people is going to make it way less fun.

Luckily m+ kind of take its place since pushing those past +20 is fairly fun, but it would definitely be nice to be able to have a difficult raid again, don't think Nyalotha took more than three attempts for any boss other than N'zoth and Ilgynoth, and even those were both killed within a couple hours.

[docterfreeze]

I like the idea of a guild going into raid with only their best players. For many guilds 20 spots means not everyone in raid will be a great player.