Should flex mythic raiding exist in DF?

[Biomega]

This has nothing to do with economic inflation. Nobody thinks gear inflation has anything to do with economic inflation.

Bullshit.

When you say "gear inflation" nobody thinks "oh great, everyone has more ilvl, that's amazing!". They think instead "oh great, high ilvl means less and less and people will just demand insane numbers for groups".

Not recognizing that and pretending that somehow removing mythic gear will make everyone's gear better and that the correct term for that is "gear inflation" is some of the most ridiculous arguing I've ever seen.

We had no such situation.

Right. You didn't play during WotLK, because you were probably not born yet. Which I should have guessed from the way you argue, I suppose. My mistake.

Well, hop on grandpa's lap and let me tell you a story about welfare epics, badges, and a thing called "Gearscore"...

Blizzard has never made a balance change and said "This will make things worse at Mythic level, but it balances everyone else so it is a good tradeoff."

They've also never made and will never make a balance change and say "This will make things better at mythic level level, but it makes things worse for everyone else so it is a good tradeoff".

What a smart argument.

it is necessarily detrimental to balance the game for mythic rather than the average player, because the spec disparities at mythic level do not reflect the spec disparities for the average player.

First of all, prove that 1. this is actually the case 2. that this is due to balance and not something else (like oh, idk, mythic players being a lot better players on average, say).

You're just wildly asserting things.

You are just being intentionally obtuse here.

Yes, by demanding you actually be specific about what you say instead of swallowing a bunch of ill-conceived rants I am being "obtuse". If you don't want to justify yourself or prove your arguments, just say so. It's totally legitimate for you to come out and say "This is how I feel, I don't care if it's true or if there's proof for my claims, I think it's correct because #dudetrustme and that's good enough for me". Then we all know where we're at.

The game should be balanced for the average player, which is somewhere around normal.

But that carries with it the tacit assumption that balance can ONLY work for one difficulty. Why can something that's balanced in mythic not also be balanced in heroic and normal? What precludes that? And don't come with "but Blizzard is balancing around mythic!" because that'd be a circular argument.

And if it's not exclusive but relative - i.e. if something is more balanced in mythic than in normal (however that would work) - then why doesn't that go both ways? I.e., why couldn't there also be balancing that's more balanced in normal than in mythic?

You're throwing out a lot of stuff here that's far from evident. And the same thing as above applies, by the way: you'd first need to show that BLIZZARD is the problem, rather than something else (like player skill).

That's exactly how the game worked before the homogenization.

Prove it. Show me 30+ "ways of handling content" that didn't just result in "this is useless" like e.g. Fire Mage in Molten Core; and explain why Blizzard changed these things to no one's complaints YEARS before mythic or M+ were ever a thing.

Im not replying to each of these points. This is ridiculous. Learn to be more succinct.

I'm giving you the benefit of engaging very precisely with the points you are making. You have a lot of vague and/or unsubstantiated claims in there. You want me to be more succinct? Here you go:

Your arguments lack evidentiary substance or explanatory power. Provide evidence for your claims, or retract them.

[sensei-]

It's exceptionally skeptical to suggest this because the purported 5x increase in players exists only in the minds of the people making these suggestions. WoW's design direction has always been iterative. I have no idea why players think Blizzard's just gonna come in all of a sudden and go, "yeah fuck this, we changing errything."

The truth is they hit the jackpot with vanilla and have been iterating ever since. But after the initial hype of MMOs in general wore off they’ve been lazily riding their sacred cash cow to the ground and all of the iterations have been aimed at losing customers as slowly as possible, instead of actually gaining new ones or rebuilding the company’s status as industry leader in innovation. You can either keep getting these same old tired expansions where absolutely nothing changes until the customer base is too small to justify the investment, or you can have a reimagination of the game.

[ClassicPeon]

Problem aren't the players, it's the class / encounter design.

For example, Resto Shaman famously doesn't really work in smaller raidsizes because CH is hardly functional.
A Disc Priest, as per usual, is mandatory because absorbs are OP, so in your average raid, that only leaves you with a single flexible healer spot.
Then there's Locks with their Portal and Healthstones.

That's just some examples from the top of my head.
That's why they introduced 20man Mythic, so they could design encounters with more freedom rather than by restraint what a regular 10man raid could only do without homogenizing classes.

That's basically your options:
1. Design Classes around 10man raiding (=homogenization)
2. Accept that the highest difficulty in the game is a clownfiesta balance wise, with all the ramifications of the Meta being defined by an inheritely imbalanced difficulty

Your arguments doesnt really make sense.

Having 20 people instead of 10 doesnt make warlock or disc priest less "mandatory". Shamans work absolutely fine its all about positioning.

They introduced a fixed size because it meant they could focus on tuning for a fixed size of people. Thats fine for WF race but the rest of the community suffers from it - which is by far more important.

My options are: i want flex raiding in mythic. I dont care if its 1-2 weeks after the mythic race is over - i dont care if 12 is numerically better then 13. I just want to be able to go into mythic with 10 friends.

[Kralljin]

Having 20 people instead of 10 doesnt make warlock or disc priest less "mandatory". Shamans work absolutely fine its all about positioning.

In a 20man roster you have obviously more slots available, as WoW doesn't have 20 Classes, but 13, so by just sheer math you'd leave at least 3 classes in the cold.

Nevermind that Shaman aren't mandatory because Mages and BM Hunters have Bloodlust as well.

They introduced a fixed size because it meant they could focus on tuning for a fixed size of people. Thats fine for WF race but the rest of the community suffers from it - which is by far more important.

If that was the sole factor, they would've gone with 10 man because that was at this point far more popular than 25man, and the transition to 20man was obviously easier for 25man guilds than 10man guilds.

And, it literally was all about those unique abilities:

https://www.engadget.com/2013-11-13-...y-20-man.html?

We chose to put Mythic at 20 largely for the function of raid design. One of the biggest issues we're currently facing with 10-player Heroic raiding is that of raid composition. It's impossible for every group to have every class, and often that means they're lacking in certain tools, which in turn means that we can't design encounters around those tools (or if we do, it becomes extremely frustrating for the 10-player Heroic guild that suddenly needs a Paladin for Hand of Protection).

We want to be able to use those sorts of mechanics again. Those of you who have been with us for a while might remember things like Mage tanks on High King Maulgar, or Priests using Mind Control on Instructor Razuvious. We want it to be okay when, say, the Paladin can use Hand of Protection to clear a dangerous debuff, because we can reasonably assume that most guilds will have at least one Paladin in their raid. We like it when someone gets to feel awesome and have a special task on a fight because of class abilities that otherwise wouldn't get much use.

We can't do that when we're designing with a 10-player raid size in mind. We don't think we'd be able to get away with it at 15 either. At 20, it becomes a lot more acceptable for us to say "you should probably bring a Mage to Spellsteal this." And honestly, that's just one example of the sort of encounter mechanics we can start to utilize in a larger group size.

My options are: i want flex raiding in mythic. I dont care if its 1-2 weeks after the mythic race is over

People are just going to poke massive holes into that because breakpoints exists and thus people will meta slave the shit out of the highest difficulty.

People like to pretend that what the world first guilds are doing doesn't matter - except it totally does when those "tricks" are doable for the more average player as well.

[neescher]

In a 20man roster you have obviously more slots available, as WoW doesn't have 20 Classes, but 13, so by just sheer math you'd leave at least 3 classes in the cold.

With the state of the game today, I wouldn't say wow has 13 classes, I think saying wow has 36 specs, in regards to raiding and raid slots.

People are just going to poke massive holes into that because breakpoints exists and thus people will meta slave the shit out of the highest difficulty.

The people he mentioned, simply won't care about that. Who cares if tryhards and world first raiders cheese the shit out of the system. They're doing that anyway, no matter what Blizzard does. But making mythic raids flex, would greatly improve it for more (semi-)casual guilds, who just want to play with friends.

[Kralljin]

With the state of the game today, I wouldn't say wow has 13 classes, I think saying wow has 36 specs, in regards to raiding and raid slots.

...which would make 10man raiding an even greater pain.

The people he mentioned, simply won't care about that. Who cares if tryhards and world first raiders cheese the shit out of the system. They're doing that anyway, no matter what Blizzard does. But making mythic raids flex, would greatly improve it for more (semi-)casual guilds, who just want to play with friends.

People said the same thing about Covenants.
"It's just the 1% that cares about this, everyone else will just choose what they like!".
And then it suddenly wasn't just the 1% that chose the optimal covenant.

And the same thing will happen here, you're going to wipe on Boss X until someone brings up the topic that it's actually easier with fewer people, then suddenly an argument will start whether the group should do that and if so who they're going to bench.
This is still Mythic we're talking about, wipes aren't that optional, especially in progression and people who want to raid mythic are very likely aware on how to min/max something.

[neescher]

...which would make 10man raiding an even greater pain.

My point is, you can never fit everyone in a raid. I think it's pointless to even try

People said the same thing about Covenants.
"It's just the 1% that cares about this, everyone else will just choose what they like!".
And then it suddenly wasn't just the 1% that chose the optimal covenant.

The problem with covenants though is how big the difference was. If one of the covenant abilities is literally useless (eg. necrolord hunter without legendary), while another does a shitload of damage, then most people will naturally get the covenant that actually does something. If for no other reason than being more fun.

With covenants that were closer to each other in terms of performance, there was a spread. The majority still picked the better one, but not everyone did.

The biggest difference between covenants and flex raiding size though is the social aspect: People will gladly take a small penalty if it means they won't have to invite PUGS to their guild raid. That aspect simply doesn't exist with covenants, so I don't think you can really compare the two.

And the same thing will happen here, you're going to wipe on Boss X until someone brings up the topic that it's actually easier with fewer people, then suddenly an argument will start whether the group should do that and if so who they're going to bench.
This is still Mythic we're talking about, wipes aren't that optional, especially in progression and people who want to raid mythic are very likely aware on how to min/max something.

And that's fine. Let people min/max, I don't see a problem there. But why not let 12 friends enjoy the raid too, without having to invite pugs? As I said, harcore raiders will always find ways to cheese the system. Why is it not a problem to bring 4 of the same spec to a fight because it'll make it considerably easier, but it's a problem to increase the raid size by 2 for a fight? Hardcore raiding guilds will have enough people anyway to adjust raid size if it's really that big of a difference.

Flex raiding already exists for heroic, and it's not a problem there. And you might say "but heroic is so much easier than mythic!", and while that's objectively true, there are guilds out there that struggle as much with heroic as other guilds do for mythic. They already have the choice of "just go as we are" or "invite pugs" for hardcore, and I know of many guilds that prefer to just go without inviting pugs.

[Kralljin]

My point is, you can never fit everyone in a raid. I think it's pointless to even try

Okay, if you have 36 items and the option between a 10 slot and a 20 slot bag, you will argue that the choice is pointless as you couldn't fit all of them into it?

If your answer is "yes" then i'm done with arguing with you because no reasonable human will agree with you.

The biggest difference between covenants and flex raiding size though is the social aspect:

i quoted a literal bluepost where Blizzard explains how it affects their encounter design.

It literally affects how they design the game.

And that's fine. Let people min/max, I don't see a problem there.

When you see people adjust their raidsize on an encounter to encounter basis (which means literally benching people to get them out of raid), then i'd say that is a problem.

Flex raiding already exists for heroic, and it's not a problem there. And you might say "but heroic is so much easier than mythic!", and while that's objectively true, there are guilds out there that struggle as much with heroic as other guilds do for mythic.

Because the highest difficulty is always subject to the biggest level of exposure of Meta gaming.
And yes, difficulty makes a difference here, because Mythic encounters are tuned that even the best players in the world have to progress them and not just walk over them.

More casual players ironically then benefit even more every advantage they can get so their wipe count doesn't become even larger.

[Jujudrood]

The primary issue with a flex difficulty is that there will always be a "sweet spot" where X number of people mean Y results.
Normal and Heroic doesn't really require a lot of cutting to that sweet spot; you can more or less take whoever/whatever you want with you and come out the other side just fine.
Mythic, however, is a bit different, and if it flexed, you could see a situation where all of a sudden 14 becomes the "ideal" size, with 2 tank/2 heal/10 DPS because that's where the sliders meet the most efficient outcome of mechanics to performance.
Who knows, if it flexes higher than 20, maybe it's numerically easier with 23 people (adding 3 more DPS), which then becomes the new norm and now guilds are forced to bolster their bench.

Once the world first horseshit is over each tier, they just need to allow mythic to be cross-realm and cross-faction, then getting to 20 people shouldn't be as difficult.
This whole "wait for 100 guilds" thing is dumb and the largest barrier from people getting into Mythic, especially if it's hard to get groups within your faction/server.
But also, I don't do mythic anymore because of the time requirement, so my opinion is probably less valuable. /shrug

[neescher]

Okay, if you have 36 items and the option between a 10 slot and a 20 slot bag, you will argue that the choice is pointless as you couldn't fit all of them into it?

If your answer is "yes" then i'm done with arguing with you because no reasonable human will agree with you.

That's just a bad analogy. One has nothing to do with the other.

i quoted a literal bluepost where Blizzard explains how it affects their encounter design.

It literally affects how they design the game.

Again, why is this a problem?

When you see people adjust their raidsize on an encounter to encounter basis (which means literally benching people to get them out of raid), then i'd say that is a problem.

People are already being benched for having the wrong class/spec. Why is that not a problem, but raid size is?

Because the highest difficulty is always subject to the biggest level of exposure of Meta gaming.
And yes, difficulty makes a difference here, because Mythic encounters are tuned that even the best players in the world have to progress them and not just walk over them.

"Highest difficulty" is subjective though.

A guild that manages to progress to 7/11 heroic by the end of the season will have the same subjective difficulty on the 8th heroic boss, as a mythic guild that progresses to 7/11 mythic has on the 8th mythic boss. The only difference is, one of them has a flex raid size, while the other doesn't.

More casual players ironically then benefit even more every advantage they can get so their wipe count doesn't become even larger.

I don't believe that for a second. A casual guild who just wants to raid with friends, will simply not care about the "sweet spot" in regards to raid size. They will never bench someone for that, and will never invite pugs for that.

[NineSpine]

Bullshit.

When you say "gear inflation" nobody thinks "oh great, everyone has more ilvl, that's amazing!". They think instead "oh great, high ilvl means less and less and people will just demand insane numbers for groups".

Not recognizing that and pretending that somehow removing mythic gear will make everyone's gear better and that the correct term for that is "gear inflation" is some of the most ridiculous arguing I've ever seen.


Right. You didn't play during WotLK, because you were probably not born yet. Which I should have guessed from the way you argue, I suppose. My mistake.

Well, hop on grandpa's lap and let me tell you a story about welfare epics, badges, and a thing called "Gearscore"...


They've also never made and will never make a balance change and say "This will make things better at mythic level level, but it makes things worse for everyone else so it is a good tradeoff".

What a smart argument.


First of all, prove that 1. this is actually the case 2. that this is due to balance and not something else (like oh, idk, mythic players being a lot better players on average, say).

You're just wildly asserting things.


Yes, by demanding you actually be specific about what you say instead of swallowing a bunch of ill-conceived rants I am being "obtuse". If you don't want to justify yourself or prove your arguments, just say so. It's totally legitimate for you to come out and say "This is how I feel, I don't care if it's true or if there's proof for my claims, I think it's correct because #dudetrustme and that's good enough for me". Then we all know where we're at.


But that carries with it the tacit assumption that balance can ONLY work for one difficulty. Why can something that's balanced in mythic not also be balanced in heroic and normal? What precludes that? And don't come with "but Blizzard is balancing around mythic!" because that'd be a circular argument.

And if it's not exclusive but relative - i.e. if something is more balanced in mythic than in normal (however that would work) - then why doesn't that go both ways? I.e., why couldn't there also be balancing that's more balanced in normal than in mythic?

You're throwing out a lot of stuff here that's far from evident. And the same thing as above applies, by the way: you'd first need to show that BLIZZARD is the problem, rather than something else (like player skill).


Prove it. Show me 30+ "ways of handling content" that didn't just result in "this is useless" like e.g. Fire Mage in Molten Core; and explain why Blizzard changed these things to no one's complaints YEARS before mythic or M+ were ever a thing.


I'm giving you the benefit of engaging very precisely with the points you are making. You have a lot of vague and/or unsubstantiated claims in there. You want me to be more succinct? Here you go:

Your arguments lack evidentiary substance or explanatory power. Provide evidence for your claims, or retract them.

You think being long winded means you engage with my points. In reality, I make a point and you sidestep it completely with some insanely long tangent that is barely related to what I said at all. Example: You are still rambling about how I must mean gear inflation is like economic inflation even though I already explained twice that that is not what I am saying. How the hell can I possibly engage with someone who, when I explain what I mean, just says "NUH UH YOU MEAN THIS!" It's a waste of time.

[ClassicPeon]

In a 20man roster you have obviously more slots available, as WoW doesn't have 20 Classes, but 13, so by just sheer math you'd leave at least 3 classes in the cold.

Nevermind that Shaman aren't mandatory because Mages and BM Hunters have Bloodlust as well.

If that was the sole factor, they would've gone with 10 man because that was at this point far more popular than 25man, and the transition to 20man was obviously easier for 25man guilds than 10man guilds.

And, it literally was all about those unique abilities:

https://www.engadget.com/2013-11-13-...y-20-man.html?



People are just going to poke massive holes into that because breakpoints exists and thus people will meta slave the shit out of the highest difficulty.

People like to pretend that what the world first guilds are doing doesn't matter - except it totally does when those "tricks" are doable for the more average player as well.

You are missing the main point here.

The fact that this might be a bummer for 0,01% of wows population literally doesnt matter. There are shittonnes of guilds out there who want to raid mythic at a casual level but cant because of the fixed raid sizes. You even see big old wf raid guilds buckle under because of it.

The games availability > the opinion of the top 100.

For anyone outside the top 100 there is no such thing as a mandatory class or spec btw. We outgear the checks and just take longer to learn the fights.

- - - Updated - - -

The primary issue with a flex difficulty is that there will always be a "sweet spot" where X number of people mean Y results.
Normal and Heroic doesn't really require a lot of cutting to that sweet spot; you can more or less take whoever/whatever you want with you and come out the other side just fine.
Mythic, however, is a bit different, and if it flexed, you could see a situation where all of a sudden 14 becomes the "ideal" size, with 2 tank/2 heal/10 DPS because that's where the sliders meet the most efficient outcome of mechanics to performance.
Who knows, if it flexes higher than 20, maybe it's numerically easier with 23 people (adding 3 more DPS), which then becomes the new norm and now guilds are forced to bolster their bench.

Once the world first horseshit is over each tier, they just need to allow mythic to be cross-realm and cross-faction, then getting to 20 people shouldn't be as difficult.
This whole "wait for 100 guilds" thing is dumb and the largest barrier from people getting into Mythic, especially if it's hard to get groups within your faction/server.
But also, I don't do mythic anymore because of the time requirement, so my opinion is probably less valuable. /shrug

Here is the thing though - who gives a shit?
It literally doesnt matter. People have always gone trough different hoops to optimise for world of warcraft and for most of us it never really mattered in the end anyway.

1 person slightly changing their attitude/understanding of a fight when you overgear it like my segment does - matters far more then being 10 or 14 peoples in a flex raiding size.

When flex first became a thing in pandaria everyone was minmaxing it the group sizes. Now that flex is a thing in both normal and hc noone gives a shit. I can honestly say that we havent given it a single thought this entire expansion.

[Lathspell]

What they should do is make heroic raid drop max ilvl gear and remove gear from mythic.

[ClassicPeon]

What they should do is make heroic raid drop max ilvl gear and remove gear from mythic.

That doesnt change the barrier if entry to mythic raiding that many guilds have though ??

[Biomega]

You think being long winded means you engage with my points. In reality, I make a point and you sidestep it completely with some insanely long tangent that is barely related to what I said at all. Example: You are still rambling about how I must mean gear inflation is like economic inflation even though I already explained twice that that is not what I am saying. How the hell can I possibly engage with someone who, when I explain what I mean, just says "NUH UH YOU MEAN THIS!" It's a waste of time.

Right, and me asking to please, you know, PROVE YOUR CLAIMS is just a "waste of time", too, is it?

You're using this to evade responsibility. DEMONSTRATE that what you're asserting is ACTUALLY THE CASE.

I don't care if you disagree about the inflation part, you're trying to use that as a smokescreen to wriggle out of having to back up all the other stuff you're just putting out there without a shred of evidence.

[Kralljin]

You are missing the main point here.

No, you're just not grasping what i'm saying.
They made the decision for 20man raiding because they wanted to avoid the situation that you had multiple times in Cata / MoP where a certain class / spec was damn strong on a given encounter and thus every 10man raid had to basically bring that specific class.
Which is a huge pain in a 10man raid, as not every class is automatically represented because you only have 10 total slots.

Whereas in 25man, it was far more likely that a given class / spec is present by itself, because you have 25man slots to choose from.

I gave you even a specific example on this, Disc priest is a damn OP healer because of absorbs, in a 25man setting where you have 4-5 healers, fitting in a disc is a no brainer, because you have multiple slots.
In a 10man setting, you only have 2 healer slots, meaning that one of your two healer players must play a disc, if they prefer Resto Druid / Hpal, well too bad, you just make everything A LOT harder for you (which most people naturally avoid because #Metagaming).

And Encounters must be designed around this, because if you don't then you can turn towards Wotlk 10man to see what happened there.
Blizzard balanced these encounters around NOT having Bloodlust and everyone proceeded to treat Shaman as mandatory for 10man, because it's an easy advantage that no sane person passes on.

If you want to have a balanced 10man difficulty, you need to homogenize the shit out of classes.
And Blizzard did this already way back in Cata, when Blizzard gave Bloodlust to Mages, because they didn't want that Shaman is a mandatory class for 10man.

And Blizzard simply didn't want to homogenize classes even further just for the sake of the highest difficulty in the game.

For anyone outside the top 100 there is no such thing as a mandatory class or spec btw.

If you are talking about the hardest difficulty in the game, then there absolutely is.
Some classes are simply way stronger than others in a given scenario and the encounters in the highest difficulty are balanced around players performing at a cutting edge level without a lot of leeway.

We outgear the checks and just take longer to learn the fights.

By "We" you mean your group, not everyone else.

Most people choose the path of least resistance, if you disagree with that, you just plainly deny that Meta gaming does exist.

[neescher]

If you are talking about the hardest difficulty in the game, then there absolutely is.
Some classes are simply way stronger than others in a given scenario and the encounters in the highest difficulty are balanced around players performing at a cutting edge level without a lot of leeway.

There really isn't. We raided mythic Nathria without a mage, priest and warrior. We simply didn't have those classes, and it's a quite casual guild. Granted we didn't clear the entire raid, but that was more because we didn't have enough people to consistently raid. If flex mythic raid existed, we could have probably done it eventually.

[NineSpine]

Right, and me asking to please, you know, PROVE YOUR CLAIMS is just a "waste of time", too, is it?

You're using this to evade responsibility. DEMONSTRATE that what you're asserting is ACTUALLY THE CASE.

I don't care if you disagree about the inflation part, you're trying to use that as a smokescreen to wriggle out of having to back up all the other stuff you're just putting out there without a shred of evidence.

There is no "proof" when I use a term, explain what I mean by it, and then you just keep telling me that that's not what I mean over and over and over and over again. It's a waste of time, and it's the kind of thing you engage in constantly while providing these absurdly long winded Gish gallops. You do shit like demand proof for things I have explained my logic for multiple times, but each time you get more long winded in a larger and larger Gish gallop, then you just strut around and declare victory when people get tired of it.

[Biomega]

There is no "proof" when I use a term, explain what I mean by it, and then you just keep telling me that that's not what I mean over and over and over and over again.

That's a lie.

Fine, ignore the part about inflation completely. What other "term" did you explain that I then said didn't mean what you said it meant?

Let me know. With quotes, please.

You're just making wild accusations to get out of having to back your claims.

You do shit like demand proof for things I have explained my logic for multiple times

Like what? Feel free to quote instances of this happening.

And what do you mean by "explaining your logic"? You can't just prove a claim by going "that makes sense, right?". You have to provide EVIDENCE.

Let's take an example case of yours:

You claimed:

it is necessarily detrimental to balance the game for mythic rather than the average player, because the spec disparities at mythic level do not reflect the spec disparities for the average player.

The Claim: "it is necessarily detrimental to balance the game for mythic rather than the average player"
Your Proof: "the spec disparities at mythic level do not reflect the spec disparities for the average player"

Can you explain, please, how this works? Where's the causal connection here? You have an OBSERVATION: "spec disparities" are different at the mythic and average level. How do you demonstrate that this is due to BALANCE, and not something else, like, say, sampling bias because mythic players tend to be more skilled than the average player and so their spec performance profile will necessarily be different. And even if you just call that "balance", too, how do you demonstrate that it's MYTHIC balance that causes this, and that we don't just see different disparities in mythic because of how it's balanced for NORMAL, say, or heroic or whatever else.

You are throwing wild statements out there that you then claim are self-evident or "logical", but they really are not - as I have demonstrated here.

Feel free to refute any of this with actual evidence, but just going "I've already explained this you just don't want to admit it" only makes it even more clear your claims are baseless and you're trying to wriggle out of owning up to that.

[ClassicPeon]

No, you're just not grasping what i'm saying.
They made the decision for 20man raiding because they wanted to avoid the situation that you had multiple times in Cata / MoP where a certain class / spec was damn strong on a given encounter and thus every 10man raid had to basically bring that specific class.
Which is a huge pain in a 10man raid, as not every class is automatically represented because you only have 10 total slots.

Whereas in 25man, it was far more likely that a given class / spec is present by itself, because you have 25man slots to choose from.

I gave you even a specific example on this, Disc priest is a damn OP healer because of absorbs, in a 25man setting where you have 4-5 healers, fitting in a disc is a no brainer, because you have multiple slots.
In a 10man setting, you only have 2 healer slots, meaning that one of your two healer players must play a disc, if they prefer Resto Druid / Hpal, well too bad, you just make everything A LOT harder for you (which most people naturally avoid because #Metagaming).

And Encounters must be designed around this, because if you don't then you can turn towards Wotlk 10man to see what happened there.
Blizzard balanced these encounters around NOT having Bloodlust and everyone proceeded to treat Shaman as mandatory for 10man, because it's an easy advantage that no sane person passes on.

If you want to have a balanced 10man difficulty, you need to homogenize the shit out of classes.
And Blizzard did this already way back in Cata, when Blizzard gave Bloodlust to Mages, because they didn't want that Shaman is a mandatory class for 10man.

And Blizzard simply didn't want to homogenize classes even further just for the sake of the highest difficulty in the game.

If you are talking about the hardest difficulty in the game, then there absolutely is.
Some classes are simply way stronger than others in a given scenario and the encounters in the highest difficulty are balanced around players performing at a cutting edge level without a lot of leeway.

By "We" you mean your group, not everyone else.

Most people choose the path of least resistance, if you disagree with that, you just plainly deny that Meta gaming does exist.

The only thing that WF race has shown us is that larger raid sizes doesnt lead to more class differentiation in the WF race it just leads to class stacking. Noone is going to bring the feral druid unless he is OP.

You also keep using the WF race as if its some sort of gospel as to how players play the game. Outside the wf race almsot every guild has its fotm rerollers and its "i always play shadow priest". Its the same in practically every raid guild no matter the content they do.

Its an absolute misconception that people outside WF guilds do class stacking and plan out their comp and so on. I dont know if you are either in the WF race or just not in a mythic guild at all but thats just not how people play.

f you are talking about the hardest difficulty in the game, then there absolutely is.
Some classes are simply way stronger than others in a given scenario and the encounters in the highest difficulty are balanced around players performing at a cutting edge level without a lot of leeway.

No - there really isnt. And its hardly cutting edge anymore after 2 months when everyone is in welfare epics from m+ and has full tier gear and so on. We literally overgear the content. The only barrier left is learning the fights - as i said previously. WHen talking about "mandatory" classes its on applicable to wf guilds who are undergeared for the content and on a strict timer to down the content as fast as possible.

By "We" you mean your group, not everyone else.

Most people choose the path of least resistance, if you disagree with that, you just plainly deny that Meta gaming does exist.

I'm not denying metagaming exists whatsoever. People optimize their spec as much as possible. Doesnt mean everyone FOTM rerolls because its just not needed whatsoever.

The endgame that we are playing and the endgame that echo and limit are playing are two completely uncomparably different beasts.

And yes by "we" i mean my group - hence the "we".