Another expansion, same old problem - raid configuration setup

[Ferocity]

I wanted to point one specific problem which started since the change in game systems designers in late TBC (aka coming of GC and his team, introduction of tight enrage timers and other bullsh!t, sorry). This is so called "flexible raid roster" problem. One fight requires x1 tanks, y1 healers, z1 dps. Other fight requires x2 tanks, y2 healers, z3 dps. Admittedly, in early TBC there were situations where it would be faster to do things for different fights with different amount of roles, but it was never requirement. For as long as you had roles covered, you had your boss kills unless your raid was performing really awful and consisted of green-geared people. If some fight could be done with 1-2 less healers, you could have those 1-2 for insurance.

This thread explains this problem very well in all details (though it was written yet in Cataclysm, problem still remains):
http://fallingleavesandwings.wordpre...stency-please/

Together with this problem, we have another problem - global class exclusion. As you could see from class representation in raid with full Heart of Fear heroic clear (which was published earlier on this site), they had 0 rogues in their 25-men setup (post Garalon "fix"), which we know wasn't due to lack of rogues in their roster, but because rogues have no place in MoP raids (I am so glad I don't play rogue), especially after Garalon "fix".

So how do people look at this current raid design approach? If this expansion was supposed to be more TBC-like (pre-SWP or rather pre-Ghostcrawler), why does it fail in almost all aspects?

[Toxigen]

Class exclusion really only applies to bleeding edge / world first chasers.

Give it another 2-3 weeks worth of gear and you can do these encounters with more diverse setups.

I chalk it up to Blizzard's continued efforts to produce challenging content (applauds boss 1 of HoF) compounded by the highly competetive nature of the world's best guilds. Stacking and exclusions are just a fact of the matter, and only really apply to 0.01% of raiders.

[DieFichte]

I wanted to point one specific problem which started since the change in game systems designers in late TBC (aka coming of GC and his team, introduction of tight enrage timers and other bullsh!t, sorry). This is so called "flexible raid roster" problem. One fight requires x1 tanks, y1 healers, z1 dps. Other fight requires x2 tanks, y2 healers, z3 dps. Admittedly, in early TBC there were situations where it would be faster to do things for different fights with different amount of roles, but it was never requirement.

Yeah glad you never needed a certain amount of tanks in vanilla WoW, every guild tanked AQ40 with one tank! And later in Naxxramas40, all bosses needed the same amount of certain roles...wait no they didn't, wtf are you talking about?

So how do people look at this current raid design approach? If this expansion was supposed to be more TBC-like (pre-SWP or rather pre-Ghostcrawler), why does it fail in almost all aspects?

pre-SWP raid design approach was: "Boss mechanics that are annoying as fuck but not really challenging" imho.

[Ferocity]

Yeah glad you never needed a certain amount of tanks in vanilla WoW, every guild tanked AQ40 with one tank! And later in Naxxramas40, all bosses needed the same amount of certain roles...wait no they didn't, wtf are you talking about?

Lack of reading comprehension blinds you, suppressing your ability to think. And from reading this I am not even sure you played WoW back then.

pre-SWP raid design approach was: "Boss mechanics that are annoying as fuck but not really challenging" imho.

I don't see how this addresses the problem. In other words, you look at highly inconsistent raid requirements (keyword - requirement, and not suggested setup) as "challenge"? Try to look it from perspective of, in example, healer. Pre-SWP you as healer were never pushed to dps role which you probably didn't even enjoy playing (it requires completely different approach and even personality - not sure about proper word in English). Pushing someone to play what he doesn't enjoy playing is extremely bad move.

Raiding in game was supposed to be not only about "bleeding edge" guilds, who don't think of any such things as personality and other things. If you won't downscale on healers at some point (or on tanks in fights where only 1 is needed), you will never ever in you life kill such-and-such boss unless you heavily outgear it (or don't have "broken" classes in raid, like same rogues), while other fight just requires you to have not less than 3 healers to outheal all the incoming damage. Which is the problem purely with SWP+ design (when GC came, and we started to hear things like "bleeding edge", class-stacking and other nonsence).

[Tinsoul]

It's more encounter design then raid composition. Any fight with a dps requirement will lead down this road. And there is a reason why there are so many encounters like this - they tend to be (at least IMO) far more interesting then attrition fights.

Pre-SWP you as healer were never pushed to dps role which you probably didn't even enjoy playing (it requires completely different approach and even personality - not sure about proper word in English). Pushing someone to play what he doesn't enjoy playing is extremely bad move.

If you want to heal, then heal. If you are being pushed into it, tell your GM/RL healing is what you want to do.

The game has changed alot since SWP. Not just dual-spec, but alt saturation. A significant part of the player base is able to play multiple classes and multiple roles. There are a large number of players who enjoy both healing and dps. I'm one of them. I think the "swing" healer is the best job in the game. It shouldn't be that difficult to find a few folks who like switching things up - and then those who want to heal can heal.

Rogues are feeling some pain b/c of monks. The motivation for bringing a variety of classes is buff coverage and loot distribution. With consolidated buffs, that's less of an issue (a non-issue in 25). With monks in the game there are 5 (bears, cats, rogues, brews and wind) chasing a single armor type (agility leather). That's way out of whack with the other armor types. And then there are 2 more (enhance and hunters) wanting their non-typed loot. This is squeezing all those classes.

[blackblade]

Rogues are feeling some pain b/c of monks. The motivation for bringing a variety of classes is buff coverage and loot distribution. With consolidated buffs, that's less of an issue (a non-issue in 25). With monks in the game there are 5 (bears, cats, rogues, brews and wind) chasing a single armor type (agility leather). That's way out of whack with the other armor types. And then there are 2 more (enhance and hunters) wanting their non-typed loot. This is squeezing all those classes.

Cloth:
Warlocks, All three specs (Int, No spirit.)
Mages, All three specs (Int, No spirit.)
Priests, All three specs (Int, spirit.)

Priests "can" sub out spirit, non priests would rather not take spirit.
They also compete with the following for rings/trinkets

Balance, Elemental (Int, Pref. No Spirit.)
Resto, Resto, Holy(paladin) (Int, Spirit)

Puts 15 specs competing for non-spirit cloth, +2 for dps rings/trinkets. (assuming none of the non-spirit classes go for non-spirit rings/trinkets.)
and 3 specs competing for spirit cloth, +3 for healing rings/trinkets.

Loot competition between leather is fine.
Loot competition between cloth has been this way since the beginning, and is also fine.

[Herecius]

Together with this problem, we have another problem - global class exclusion. As you could see from class representation in raid with full Heart of Fear heroic clear (which was published earlier on this site), they had 0 rogues in their 25-men setup (post Garalon "fix"), which we know wasn't due to lack of rogues in their roster, but because rogues have no place in MoP raids (I am so glad I don't play rogue), especially after Garalon "fix".

I just want to head this off right here. Other guilds are using rogues. BL used rogues in other kills besides Empress. Rogues are not NEARLY so bad that you should worry about sitting them because they aren't a good class. Rogues were not ideal for BL's strategy. That is all. This is not something the average guild has to ever, ever, ever worry about. I'm not saying bring 6 rogues to your 25m raid, but let's not blow this out of proportion. Please. I know people love to do that.

[Tinsoul]

Cloth:
Warlocks, All three specs (Int, No spirit.)
Mages, All three specs (Int, No spirit.)
Priests, All three specs (Int, spirit.)

Priests "can" sub out spirit, non priests would rather not take spirit.
They also compete with the following for rings/trinkets

Balance, Elemental (Int, Pref. No Spirit.)
Resto, Resto, Holy(paladin) (Int, Spirit)

Puts 15 specs competing for non-spirit cloth, +2 for dps rings/trinkets. (assuming none of the non-spirit classes go for non-spirit rings/trinkets.)
and 3 specs competing for spirit cloth, +3 for healing rings/trinkets.

Loot competition between leather is fine.
Loot competition between cloth has been this way since the beginning, and is also fine.

I wouldn't separate out the specs for the pures. A warlock isn't going to roll on a different armor type for their off-spec.

And even then ... 15 specs for cloth? Armor specialization has been in since Cat. Warlocks, mages for hit cloth. Priests for spirit cloth.

Agility leather is under pressure with 5 after it. Next worse is dps plate with 3. Many have 2.

[Modify]

Class stacking and making people sit out because they play a certain class only applies if you are going for world first, if not you'll do fine with pretty much any composition.

[shimerra]

I wanted to point one specific problem which started since the change in game systems designers in late TBC (aka coming of GC and his team, introduction of tight enrage timers and other bullsh!t, sorry). This is so called "flexible raid roster" problem. One fight requires x1 tanks, y1 healers, z1 dps. Other fight requires x2 tanks, y2 healers, z3 dps. Admittedly, in early TBC there were situations where it would be faster to do things for different fights with different amount of roles, but it was never requirement. For as long as you had roles covered, you had your boss kills unless your raid was performing really awful and consisted of green-geared people. If some fight could be done with 1-2 less healers, you could have those 1-2 for insurance.

It actually was a requirement for some fights, or at least a requirement in the same sense that it is now that it's just a lot easier to change the comp. The only difference was instead of having people change their dual spec we had them hearth to org and respec or we had a sub come in. In wrath before dual spec we had people switching all the time between tank/dps and healer dps via hearthing out and summoning them back in especially in 10 man(not as much in 25 where we had a larger roster).

Together with this problem, we have another problem - global class exclusion. As you could see from class representation in raid with full Heart of Fear heroic clear (which was published earlier on this site), they had 0 rogues in their 25-men setup (post Garalon "fix"), which we know wasn't due to lack of rogues in their roster, but because rogues have no place in MoP raids (I am so glad I don't play rogue), especially after Garalon "fix".

This is not really new, or at least I don't consider it anything special. I mean I guess if you want the sole ret paladin or enh shaman to be there because of a singular buff they provide to help the real dps and for no other reason at all we can go back to that. Who was it that killed Heroic nef with like 12 druids? Does that mean that druids are proportionally more powerful than everyone else? No it means that for whatever crazy strat that guild came up with they needed a lot of druids. Hell the first time I killed Twins we used 12 healers and on Mu'ru we used 5. This is only a "problem" for the absolute best of the best. Once you get out of the top 10 even you see far more normal class distributions and not only do those weird comps become less practicable they become much less sensible if your rogue is one of your top performers in your guild.

So how do people look at this current raid design approach? If this expansion was supposed to be more TBC-like (pre-SWP or rather pre-Ghostcrawler), why does it fail in almost all aspects?

It doesn't differ in design of the raids themselves so much. What differs are things like dual spec. You choose to blame GC for things that serious business raiders were already doing long before dual spec on raid design instead of what you really have a problem with. You're mad your GM makes you switch because it's so easy to have you switch rather than brute force the fight with a less ideal comp like some folks used to. Once upon a time you used to inflate your roster, now you force people to play dual specs. It's both annoying and convenient depending on who you ask and you're not going to make everyone happy.

[DieFichte]

Lack of reading comprehension blinds you, suppressing your ability to think. And from reading this I am not even sure you played WoW back then.

I know what you meant, but it was imho horrible design. You weren't actually "challenged" or rewarded for playing it optimal. I mean, ofc our reward was to bomb MC in under 2 hours to pieces or blow up BWL in 3 or less hours, but that wasn't really that funny. (and actually the only challenge in vanilla, after you killed a boss with underwhelming mechanics). But in the smaller raidsizes (20 back then, 10 now) you had always to be a bit more flexible with your role, as there could be lack of certain players.

So you have either challenging content, that needs certain adjustments to get rewards, or you have boring content, that can be killed by whatever the fuck you want for a raid composition.
It's a tradeoff, but anyone who calls pre SWP raiddesign better than after, well, Normal mode should offer the challenge you need. (Even in SWP half of the bosses were mindnumbingly boring, but in Black Temple they could have changed half the encounters to more trash pulls, people wouldn't have minded, yes I call on you Najentus, Supremus, Akama. And don't get me started on T5 or before that, oh my god!)

[SurrealNight]

In Cata I was the tank that had to build a DPS set each tier and it was annoying as you are also expected to pull similar #'s as the normal DPS. This tier we are struggling because the healer and tank for the 2 heal/1 tank fights aren't up to par, but it's hard to hate on them for not executing a spec they don't want to play really.

Ironically since BrM and WW gear the same my DPS set is just as good as my tank set, but BrM damage is so crazy high that I'd have to pull insane #'s as WW to justify the swap.

[Libertarian]

This is something that is bugging me greatly but in a different way. Removing certain buffs and debuffs, to add more "cohesion" actually hurt our 10 man. Our issue comes down to the 4% phys debuff. In 10 man, it is logical for our plate dps to be tank too. Many fights are 2 tank so we're stuck without this.

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 04:09 AM ----------

I just want to head this off right here. Other guilds are using rogues. BL used rogues in other kills besides Empress. Rogues are not NEARLY so bad that you should worry about sitting them because they aren't a good class. Rogues were not ideal for BL's strategy. That is all. This is not something the average guild has to ever, ever, ever worry about. I'm not saying bring 6 rogues to your 25m raid, but let's not blow this out of proportion. Please. I know people love to do that.

It's funny you say that, when you play a hunter. Hunters are almost in the same bad place as rogues and are being sat. You can look at WoWprogress or logs, hunters are being sat on Garalon and even other fights you would think they would show up. This isn't just BL or other top guilds.

This game is world of castercraft now. Bring the mage, moonkin, lock, priest and ele sham, then you are good to go.

[DieFichte]

This game is world of castercraft now. Bring the mage, moonkin, lock, priest and ele sham, then you are good to go.

No it isn't, and no the sky is not falling because some guilds killed some boss without some classes, if because of that the sky is falling, then you should wear a protection helmet since WotLK (or even late TBC)