Ghostcrawler tweet about 25 man, let the speculation begin!

[Last Starfighter]

And been told many many times this is a stupid idea, your idea is stupid, and it will never happen. 25's need to stop bitching. You already gear faster than 10's. Yuo see more of a loot table than 10's. More forgiving if you lose people, more cooldowns, better chance at having all the buffs.

Complain too damn much, 25's are fine. NOTHING needs to change.

25's are not more forgiving if you lose people. First off, like many fights being at range of others is an issue in 25's (looking at you wind lord, blade lord, empress). And with that killing people around you. So something that kills a player in a ten man will likely take out several in a 25 man. You're stating things like "More cd's, having all buffs" but 25 mans also have a higher dps requirement per player. Even with buffs. Add in the fact that your average ilvl will be higher in a ten man, and 25's are much more unforgiving. Throughout cata and wrath when our guild was blocked on a boss at the end of a raid week, we'd go in a ten man and knock it out. And this is just splitting the raid group into 2 10's. 25's are fine. But blizzard still has yet to balance the two. Yes, there are a few gimmick fights like Heroic Halfus where 10's were harder, but as a whole, 25's take the cake. Getting 25 people to play optimally is harder than getting 10 to play optimally.

---------- Post added 2013-01-09 at 07:11 AM ----------

You pretty much lose legitimacy in your argument when you say "10 man is not a legitimate format." I thought 40 mans sucked because I was part of the 15 or so people carrying the whole group, but I don't suggest 40 mans were illegitimate content.

I wouldn't mind 25s having different skins for their gear, but I don't think that'd ever happen as Blizz already thinks they spend too many resources on raiding assets which not enough people see.

I would mind a bit more with unique titles and achievements, but that's because I'm a title/achievement whore. It could probably work.

Better gear is right out.

I'm telling you, make the smaller heroic size the "hardcore" size, make the bigger heroic size easier by a discernible amount but still hard (by design, not just in an argument between 10s and 25s) but drop the same gear. So if you take the effort of organization, you get the epic feeling, you have a better chance of the shinies because it's easier.

The "competition" in WoW is completely player driven. So if they say "Hey, 10 mans are hardcore now, you need one person solo healing a phase while your other healers go solo heal something else, you need one person kiting without getting hit for the whole encounter, etc, etc," and basically dial up the things that can make 10s hard (individual gimmicks with wipe-capability), the competition will flow towards 10 mans. It's already this way in parts of Asia, where 10 mans are considered more hardcore, but I think us NA/Euro types would need it for to actually be unbalanced for it to happen.

The main critique of this might be that you lose some sort of "epic" feeling losing 15 people in the process, but I think 10 people performing ridiculous feats in symphony can keep that epic feel. Hell, you only have 11 in football. Encounter spaces can be smaller, there can be moving mechanics (platforming, etc) because you don't have to worry about more people probably failing it, etc.

You may have been carrying a dozen or so ppl (25 is a huge stretch) through MC, but you were not carrying people through BWL. And especially not carrying people through AQ. People use this all the time and, and I think their memory is favorably siding with their ego.

[Talen]

Yeah, less gear is probably wasted less, but try to tell that to my guild who had 5x Gurthalak heroic sword drop once of a single Madness hc kill when no one needed it. At the same time we had total of ONE cloth boots from Warmaster in months and months of farming with 6-7 cloth users needing it while it dropped 4-5 times in our 10 man alt runs. RNG can screw you over just as same.

Yes. And overall? Less gear is wasted. There is much less chance that there will be noone there who can use it, less chance it'll be sharded, and you get more gear per person. The raid, as a whole, gears up faster. And yes, RNG is a problem, RNG can mess things up but RNG can also do that to 10s.

I am not saying those cds are not more effective but in the end it evens out the higher hps requirement 25 man has. I was just saying it can't be used as an argument.

Its supposed to "even out" the increased demands precisely because there are so many more, because some of them stack, because you can guarantee they are there.

[/quote]We don't know what they will do. But we do know, based on blue posts, that whatever happens it will benefit 25 mans in some way and it won't be a small change. Peopls should be aware of that.[/quote]

And if that benefit is a QoL change aimed at the raid leaders and the controversial part is that it is not a change that is intended to drive or attract players to 25s in the short term?

We don't know what Blizzard are aiming for. They don't like the current situation...few do as it applies to 25s....but the options for resolving that without killing 10s or contravening their own model are limited. That may be what they mean by controversial, but it isn't necessarily the case. There is a feeling on these forums that controversial means that there is going to be a drive to somehow directly attract or reward players who do 25s, and while that isn't impossible, the problem that I see is that it is far from a certainty.

A lot of players whipped themselves into a frenzy with the so-called Korean experiment, for example, or the issue with the SE Asia lockouts in Cata. I'm trying to caution them that, without further information, it is very easy to read too much into a simple set of statements.

Blizzard will be doing something (hopefully) to address 25s. The current debate is considering something controversial. Is it controversial in that it discards their current model, in part? Is it controversial in that they are doing away with 25s? Are they going to follow up on previous statements and simply do something about the logistics but do the controversial thing in NOT actively supporting 25s?

We don't know.

Ofc there is a 10 man race, maybe Blizz doesn't care

The important and pertinent part is bolded. That may change, but Blizzards current system rewards the defeat of the challenge. Who killed the boss first regardless of tactics or raid make up or size. The 10 man race may be broken, but it isn't a part that Blizzard care about so there's little point assuming they'll try and fix it. Removing the lockouts isn't an impossibility, but there are issues and there are likely to be side effects.

but 25 mans also have a higher dps requirement per player. Even with buffs.

That'd be because of factors such as stacking CDs which do indeed give players a higher DPS.

EJL

[Schizophreni]

That'd be because of factors such as stacking CDs which do indeed give players a higher DPS.

EJL

H: Vizier (Berserk 600 Seconds)
25: 654,205,504 HP – Avg. DPS(17): 64137
10: 218,058,496 HP – Avg. DPS(6): 60571

5.9% Difference

H:Blade lord Tayak (Berserk 480 Seconds)
25: 586,604,288 HP – Avg DPS(17): 71887
10: 196,261,648 HP – Avg DPS(6): 68146

5.5% Difference


That is with under healing a 25 because 30% worth a 25 man raid of healers would be 7.5 and both of those are using 6. If we were to give 25 mans the ability to have as much healing as tens by saying they had 1 more healer.

Logs to show amount of healers per fight in 25 man:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-1yi8h7idfspdqhg5/


H: Vizier (Berserk 600 Seconds)
25: 654,205,504 HP – Avg. DPS(16): 68137
10: 218,058,496 HP – Avg. DPS(6): 60571

12.5% Difference

H:Blade lord Tayak (Berserk 480 Seconds)
25: 586,604,288 HP – Avg DPS(16): 76380
10: 196,261,648 HP – Avg DPS(6): 68146

12.1% Difference


Exactly where is a 25 man supposed to gain 5.5% DPS per person while under healing, and where is it supposed to gain 12.5% per person if they use the comparative amount of healing to tens?

You can stack an extra skull banner/shattering for melee perhaps but there really aren't anymore cooldowns that I can think of, and that is not going to boost the average dps by a significant margin.

The difference would just widen more for any fight a 10 man can two heal, the only fight that a 10 man 4 heals is empress I believe, and that was already changed.

[Nuckels]

Could be worse like ultraxion hc 25 was compared to 10, but ya, tanks do more dps on 25man cause the boss hits slightly harder on most fights.
Other then that synergies is the usual arguement, not that i agree there.

[Talen]

Exactly where is a 25 man supposed to gain 5.5% DPS per person while under healing, and where is it supposed to gain 12.5% per person if they use the comparative amount of healing to tens?

Stacking CDs.
Guaranteed buffs.
Greater uptime on target as a smaller fraction of the raid may be affected by various mechanics.
Greater impact from a tanks Vengeance mechanic.

There are several sources which can provide a boost....and even when small, they do add up. 25s have a higher DPS per player for the simple reason that they can reach a higher DPS per player thanks to various factors that are advantageous to 25s. Now, if you want to argue that 25s are set too high or too low even taking all those factors into account, that'd be a different argument.

EJL

[Schizophreni]

Stacking CDs.

What CDs?

There is skull banner and shattering throw, and these only apply when you stack warriors.

Guaranteed buffs.

A reason for the consolidation of buffs to make this far, far easier than before and for a hardcore 10 man completely trivial.

Greater uptime on target as a smaller fraction of the raid may be affected by various mechanics.

This would apply only to instances where one person is specifically targeted by a mechanic, such as the amber shaper construct.

Any mechanic that goes to more than one person is scaled up to factor for the raid size. Any mechanic that interacts with the raid environment is more likely to affect a 25 man because there is less room.

Greater impact from a tanks Vengeance mechanic.

This is true though I would argue extremely minor, its effect on average dps ranging to barely triple digits.

There are several sources which can provide a boost....and even when small, they do add up. 25s have a higher DPS per player for the simple reason that they can reach a higher DPS per player thanks to various factors that are advantageous to 25s. Now, if you want to argue that 25s are set too high or too low even taking all those factors into account, that'd be a different argument.

EJL

I just don't agree that 25s have a significant advantage in any of those departments, and this comes from seeing it in action again and again through the tiers playing in both sizes.

The argument is important because there are already acknowledged added leadership responsibilities while people go on about the rest of the raid apparently having no change at all.

My points are against the mindset I see of just railing off a short talking point that gets repeated ad hominem without taking the time to look at the reasoning.

[Phasmy]

Stormlash Totem from shamans can account for 1-1.5% of a player's damage in 10man. Each shaman brings one on a 5minute cooldown.

Also tanks do considerable damage and you are not accounting for their damage at all. Tanks do more damage in 25mans as well. About 10k more each with an average of 60k in 10man heroic and 70k in 25man heroic.

As someone else said, fight mechanics that affect a player in 10man has considerable more impact on the raid's DPS compared to a single player in 25man.

It does not seem that 25 has a more difficult dps requirement at all.

[Schizophreni]

Stormlash Totem from shamans can account for 1-1.5% of a player's damage in 10man. Each shaman brings one on a 5minute cooldown.

Also tanks do considerable damage and you are not accounting for their damage at all. Tanks do more damage in 25mans as well. About 10k more each with an average of 60k in 10man heroic and 70k in 25man heroic.

As someone else said, fight mechanics that affect a player in 10man has considerable more impact on the raid's DPS compared to a single player in 25man.

It does not seem that 25 has a more difficult dps requirement at all.

You're right, the stormlash does bring it really close for the first scenario.

[silverhatred]

Anything blizz does on the 10v25m issue is controversial.

[JhanZ]

Top 10 man Raiders would abuse the Higher Ilvl's in 25 man to progress in 10 man.

Easily rectified. They could simply lower your iLevel to the 10 man equivalent of whatever 25 man gear you are wearing. They already have the tech with challenge modes.

That's a non issue at this point.

[Deleted]

If you have equaly skilled 10 and 25man ppl and fail chance per person is let say something like 1%? There is still ablities which insta wipe raid, so its not very hard mathematic to count that it takes 10pulls in 10m for one fail, while 25man needs just 4 pulls..

[Radalek]

Stacking CDs.
Guaranteed buffs.
Greater uptime on target as a smaller fraction of the raid may be affected by various mechanics.
Greater impact from a tanks Vengeance mechanic.

There are several sources which can provide a boost....and even when small, they do add up. 25s have a higher DPS per player for the simple reason that they can reach a higher DPS per player thanks to various factors that are advantageous to 25s. Now, if you want to argue that 25s are set too high or too low even taking all those factors into account, that'd be a different argument.

EJL

Poster above responded better than I would. Point of the whole thing is that having more cds, stacking, guaranteed buffs can't be used as an argument when 10 vs 25 healing and dps requirements are discussed. There's no less responsibility per raider on both sizes. But when you scale things to 25 people...logistic, teamplay, organization, chances of random deaths, mistakes...it just get's so much more complex. And that's just talking about raid it self. Managing guild, recruitment and all other non raid logistical issues are just off the chart compared.

[Deleted]

People are talking about more raid cds like it is the easiest thing in the world to chain em in a timely manner...
You don't understand that in order to achieve them the level of coordination and cooperation in a 25 has to reach a level that 10 cant even dream about cause of the sheer absence of people?

Raiding 10 man is more clean and tidy, easier to coordinate but, flat, weather you like it or not, when you put it next to a 25.
Flat as the dead sea and bellow the level of the actual sea.

You can achieve perfection easier, you can hope for the perfect try faster, since simply there are less moving parts that could spoil the perfect try, and there are fewer things you can do to save the day if something goes wrong.

And that my friends, is the definition of...FLAT!

[Cthulhu 2020]

I hope it's the ilvl change, in that 25man ilvl / stats are slightly higher. Been wanting them to go back to it for a while, I honestly hope they do.. I'm not wanting to start some bullshit 10 vs 25 man argument so that's all I will say

It's probably the idea that's been being thrown around that 25 man drops will start at 1/2 upgrade. Only a 4 item level advantage and is something that doesn't necessarily make the item "exclusive" to 25 man raiding, 10 man raiders will just have to dump more VP to fully upgrade their gear.

I can see why this would be highly controversial though, because as it is that would mean each item would come with 750 VP (3/4 of a week's worth) rolled into it, and Blizzard would probably have to lower the VP cost of upgrading, say to 500 VP per upgrade.

[Talen]

What CDs?

Skull banner is the only raid DPS CD you can think of? I'll throw out the big one...Heroism/Bloodlust.
Now use both BL and SB at the same time....the effects are increased over each one singly. Now add in any personal DPS CDs. Magnified again. A syou get more players, more classes involved, you can start balancing around the stacking effect of the various CDs that are in game. And...because of the way these work...a straightforward and simplistic DPS calculation such as health divided by time isn't necessarily going to be fully accurate or representative of the increased raid size.

A reason for the consolidation of buffs to make this far, far easier than before and for a hardcore 10 man completely trivial.

Unfortunately, you can't balance around just the hardcore.

This would apply only to instances where one person is specifically targeted by a mechanic, such as the amber shaper construct.

It applies to a lot of mechanics. A stun which affects one player remove 16% of the DPS in 10s, but only 5% in 25s. A fear which affects 3 players can remove 50% of the DPS in 10s, but only 155 in 25s. An AoE effect which causes 2 players (32% of DPS) to move in 10s may still cause only 2 players (10%) to move in 25s. All this affects uptime for each player but if you expect 10s to be affected more often, the end result is that, with less uptime on the target, they'll need to balance around a lower DPS.

I just don't agree that 25s have a significant advantage in any of those departments, and this comes from seeing it in action again and again through the tiers playing in both sizes.

They aren't supposed to have an advantage. They're supposed to be balanced around the various factors and interactions that take place. Tank DPS increases in 25s, there are more Raid CDs available, and their effects can stack better in 25s. Movement and uptime based on raid effects can have less impact on the raid in 25s if they affect fewer players. And so on. All factors which argue for an increase in personal DPS in 25s....and all factors which aren't necessarily affected by a players skill or gear but arise simply as a result of being in 25s.

The argument is important because there are already acknowledged added leadership responsibilities while people go on about the rest of the raid apparently having no change at all.

Yes....because often, there is no change. 25s require more personal DPS for reasons that do not depend on personal skill or gear. It is very easy to say that it is unfair that 10s require 50k DPS while 25s require 100k DPS from the same player, but if the various aspects of the format bring that 50k DPS up to 100k naturally, through the presence of various buffs, CDs, greater uptime and so on on....that can't be unfair. It still requires the player to through his usual DPS rotation and react to the in game mechanics.

Poster above responded better than I would.

And could only think of one single solitary raid CD.

Point of the whole thing is that having more cds, stacking, guaranteed buffs can't be used as an argument when 10 vs 25 healing and dps requirements are discussed. There's no less responsibility per raider on both sizes. But when you scale things to 25 people...logistic, teamplay, organization, chances of random deaths, mistakes...it just get's so much more complex. And that's just talking about raid it self. Managing guild, recruitment and all other non raid logistical issues are just off the chart compared.

You just argued for helping the raid leaders. Not raiders. Raid leaders

EJL

[CDShaidar]

H: Vizier (Berserk 600 Seconds)
25: 654,205,504 HP – Avg. DPS(17): 64137
10: 218,058,496 HP – Avg. DPS(6): 60571

5.9% Difference

H:Blade lord Tayak (Berserk 480 Seconds)
25: 586,604,288 HP – Avg DPS(17): 71887
10: 196,261,648 HP – Avg DPS(6): 68146

5.5% Difference


That is with under healing a 25 because 30% worth a 25 man raid of healers would be 7.5 and both of those are using 6. If we were to give 25 mans the ability to have as much healing as tens by saying they had 1 more healer.

Logs to show amount of healers per fight in 25 man:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-1yi8h7idfspdqhg5/


H: Vizier (Berserk 600 Seconds)
25: 654,205,504 HP – Avg. DPS(16): 68137
10: 218,058,496 HP – Avg. DPS(6): 60571

12.5% Difference

H:Blade lord Tayak (Berserk 480 Seconds)
25: 586,604,288 HP – Avg DPS(16): 76380
10: 196,261,648 HP – Avg DPS(6): 68146

12.1% Difference


Exactly where is a 25 man supposed to gain 5.5% DPS per person while under healing, and where is it supposed to gain 12.5% per person if they use the comparative amount of healing to tens?

Um, firstly, your math is odd. 6 dps in a 10 man either means 6 dps, 2 healers, and 2 tanks, or 5dps +2tanks summed to one dps + 3 healers. 17 dps in a 25 man either means 17 dps, 2 tanks, 6 healers or 16 dps +2tanks summed + 7 healers. In either case you aren't doing your math right for your argument.
However you've hit on one of the major advantages a 25 man has and that is granularity. You can tune the number of healers used much more finely than you can in a 10 man. For ten mans it's either 2 or 3 (let's ignore empress).

Also, stormlash totem is the major raid CD that scales based on raid size to increase personal dps.

[Ygorl]

Talen, what 10-person raid doesn't have Heroism/Bloodlust? You mentioned Skull Banner, as has been previously acknowledged, and that's true. But personal cooldowns exist in 10s just as much as they do in 25s, and will be stacked with Heroism just as much. What's different other than perhaps being able to keep Skull Banner active for a higher fraction of Heroism?

Regarding differences in target counts, true. However, most mechanics that affect one person in 10s affect three people in 25s. Most that affect two people in 10s affect six in 25s. This is actually a higher fraction of the raid affected.

In addition to typically-higher DPS requirements in 25s, you also have (as I believe was alluded to above) an increase in failure chance. If there's a mechanic where screwing it up wipes the raid (which there tends to be!) and any given person has a 1% chance of screwing it up, due to lapse in attention or cat on keyboard or lag or choking on beer or whatever... If it happens six times in a 10-person raid, and 18 times in a 25-person raid, you've got a 5.85% chance of it wiping the raid in 10s and a 16.55% chance of it wiping the raid in 25s, with raiders of the same skill level! Another reason why 25s are harder even if they're not mechanically any more difficult.

Some people have argued that there's more room for screwing up in a 25, less personal responsibility. I'll join with the people arguing against them. If you're working on a fight, there are generally two situations: Either you're having a hard time of it, pushing progression, and any victory will be by the skin of your teeth, or it's easy. In the former case, having someone lying dead on the ground is probably going to mean failure, regardless of raid size. I've seen this time after time after time, raiding 25s, where a new boss will not go down until we do it with nobody dead. In the latter case, if the fight's easy, it's easy. If having a few people dead doesn't matter, then who cares? You were going to kill it anyway, regardless of how many people are in the raid. In the hard cases, where one person licking floor kills the attempt, you're in the situation I covered in the previous paragraph: 25s are harder.

I'm in a guild that raided 25s for, what, 5 years? Recently, due to our relative lack of progression and to the fact that keeping a 25 running requires 2.5x more people than running a 10, we downsized. It was sad. I and many others would still love to be raiding 25s, but we just didn't have the people to do it, and were having no success recruiting people. It was a vicious cycle. The first week of doing 10s, in which we raided for seven hours, we killed four new bosses. Two of them were bosses we'd never seen before.

[CDShaidar]

If you have equaly skilled 10 and 25man ppl and fail chance per person is let say something like 1%? There is still ablities which insta wipe raid, so its not very hard mathematic to count that it takes 10pulls in 10m for one fail, while 25man needs just 4 pulls..

Don't use Poissonian statistics like that. Firstly, most "skill" mechanics effect a set number of players, not the full raid so you aren't doing your math correctly. In addition, you need to be talking about the same player set for each of them. You're either talking about world first level players, for whom the chance to fail on a simple pass/fail mechanic like you describe is essentially 0 or you are talking about your average player and in those raids the difference in Battle resses makes up the difference as the dps loss from a dead player isn't what's causing the wipe.

---------- Post added 2013-01-10 at 03:08 PM ----------

Easily rectified. They could simply lower your iLevel to the 10 man equivalent of whatever 25 man gear you are wearing. They already have the tech with challenge modes.

That's a non issue at this point.

I'm all for normalized ilvl in raids, hell I'd leap at the chance for a challenge mode raiding progression path where there was no gear at all. However if you are normalizing gear down to do 10 mans why wouldn't you then shift it up when you went into a 25 man? If at that point, your gear is dynamic based on what raid you are in why does it matter at all what each raid drops and thus, they should likely be dropping the same thing. If the only reason you want to do 25s is so that you can stand around in your gear that's higher ilvl when you aren't raiding then I'm afraid I just don't care about your opinion on the matter.

[dodonpachi]

I came to see what people thought the changes would be but instead found a 10 vs 25 man pissing contest.

[CDShaidar]

I'm in a guild that raided 25s for, what, 5 years? Recently, due to our relative lack of progression and to the fact that keeping a 25 running requires 2.5x more people than running a 10, we downsized. It was sad. I and many others would still love to be raiding 25s, but we just didn't have the people to do it, and were having no success recruiting people. It was a vicious cycle. The first week of doing 10s, in which we raided for seven hours, we killed four new bosses. Two of them were bosses we'd never seen before.

Congratulations on your progress. My guess is you've just identified the effects of playing with 10 players of better average skill level rather than simply the difference in number.

Also I think you're wrong on the mechanics numbers, I think it's mostly 2->5 and 1->1 for mechanics I can think of unless I'm completely missing a fight in my head. Voodoo is the only odd one going from 3 to 4 when you include the tank or 2->3 if you don't.