20 man mythic and its real impact.

[Baconeggcheese]

Thank you Baconeggcheese for being very sensible to this debate. I do wonder if they'd be willing to try and do such a thing and it is why I'm at least hopeful that something will change as far as top end raiding goes in Legion.

To be frank I wouldn't hold my breath, it honestly seems more likely that mythic would go back to 25 than have them create 10 man again.

While they *could* do it, raid participation hasn't changed much relative to previous xpacs when you factor everything in (like time frame, which a lot of the posters in this thread seem to neglect when looking at the numbers). I don't think blizzard will see this 10 man thing as a problem, and there's been talk about how people who work for blizzard are saying they want to go back to 25 because 20 man is still too constricting for similar reasons that 10 is.

So while I personally don't see a reason mythic *needs* to be one raid size, I also don't see blizzard budging on this.

[cFortyfive]

I think there is a reality that can have the same level of gear dropping in two mythic raid sizes or that mythic flex is a thing down the road.

that alone is so far removed from any reality it's not even funny. Not in the sense that it can't happen but reality is you can't have two raid sizes dropping the same shit coexist without one and we know which one was destroying the other. Same goes for flex. You just happened to draw the short straw in that - well too bad.

[Baconeggcheese]

or that mythic flex is a thing down the road.

I personally don't see mythic flex ever happening after killing all the current available encounters on mythic.

If they're going to continue to tune / balance this way it is way too tight and demanding for it to reasonably be able to flex. The mechanics etc simply wouldn't allow for it. In a best case scenario there would end up being an "answer" to each individual fight for number of people to bring and what classes cheese it best while cutting the fat. Instead of needing to stack 5 of X class you can just chop out 3 of the players from the raid and ONLY bring the classes that cheese the fight.

It would be extremely unhealthy for what mythic is about.

[Manhands]

It's not so much this, it's the fight encounter design. certain mechanics just don't sit well with fewer players. That's the reason why a lot of fights feel very difficult with fewer players even on non mythic (as has been mentioned in this thread). As brilliant as you might think past encounters were, having more players in the raid allows for more mechanics to be designed which leads to better raids. It's that simple.

This is probably linked in the top 60 pages of this thread, but here it is again: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...0094?page=5#86

These reasons include (but are not limited to):
* better-tuned raid encounters
* faster encounter design process
* more variety in raid mechanics

I don't think the issue was the QUALITY of raid mechanics in 10 man. Having raided both and preferring 10 man, my opinion (and all of this is fucking opinion, even the blue post is opinion) is that the quality was still very high. But, reading between the lines, they had to scrap some boss encounter ideas because it didn't translate well and two different progression tracks diluted the race a bit. It was easier for them to pick one set of mythic mechanics honed for 20 players as opposed to finding ones that translate well.

(But it's not difficult to think of raid mechanics that are better for 10 players vs 20/25. In 10 man, you have less players per tank, which has advantages for design. One that comes to mind is having the raid split into two groups that push their way through narrow, epic hallway of adds and minibosses before meeting up on the final boss. This becomes 2 5-man teams in 10, so two dungeon groups which they have tons of experience balancing, whereas a 10man group with 1 tank in 20-man....so I'm not sure I agree with "more variety in raid mechanics", just different types of raid mechanics)

I'd love to see the numbers: How many players are seeing 20-man mythic vs 10/25-man heroic back then? How many guilds are breaking up when they finish heroic? These were two very important metrics the last few expansions. They changed the raiding paradigm from BC to LK because too few were seeing the good stuff, and they added flex to provide each raid group the progression that fits their skill. But for the heroic progression track, you would naturally move into the first set of mythics (1st mythic boss is easier than last heroic), but that requires completely changing the raid group.

Given the above and my personal experience, I don't think the raiding playerbase is better, as a whole, with 20-man. An okay compromise, which people propose all the time, is to add hardmode heroic encounters which provide mythic loot. Add enough of them, and a guild can stay in heroic size but see mythic difficulty.

[Kyanion]

that alone is so far removed from any reality it's not even funny. Not in the sense that it can't happen but reality is you can't have two raid sizes dropping the same shit coexist without one and we know which one was destroying the other. Same goes for flex. You just happened to draw the short straw in that - well too bad.

oh you mean where the smaller raid size was more popular? *shocked face*

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To be frank I wouldn't hold my breath, it honestly seems more likely that mythic would go back to 25 than have them create 10 man again.

While they *could* do it, raid participation hasn't changed much relative to previous xpacs when you factor everything in (like time frame, which a lot of the posters in this thread seem to neglect when looking at the numbers). I don't think blizzard will see this 10 man thing as a problem, and there's been talk about how people who work for blizzard are saying they want to go back to 25 because 20 man is still too constricting for similar reasons that 10 is.

So while I personally don't see a reason mythic *needs* to be one raid size, I also don't see blizzard budging on this.

Yeah I'm not holding my breath on it, I'd not be surprised at all if they go back to 25 (which would be stupid considering they made guilds trim people that were 25 man raiding last few expansions). I mean it is just a debate for me at this point, as this is not the official forums and it is not like Blizz is looking at this thread in particular.

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I personally don't see mythic flex ever happening after killing all the current available encounters on mythic.

If they're going to continue to tune / balance this way it is way too tight and demanding for it to reasonably be able to flex. The mechanics etc simply wouldn't allow for it. In a best case scenario there would end up being an "answer" to each individual fight for number of people to bring and what classes cheese it best while cutting the fat. Instead of needing to stack 5 of X class you can just chop out 3 of the players from the raid and ONLY bring the classes that cheese the fight.

It would be extremely unhealthy for what mythic is about.

That is a fair point as well, it is why I don't have the solution to the particular problem. Good to talk about but hard to figure out the best course of action.

[cFortyfive]

oh you mean where the smaller raid size was more popular? *shocked face*

Well just keep on dreaming

I don't think the issue was the QUALITY of raid mechanics in 10 man. Having raided both and preferring 10 man, my opinion (and all of this is fucking opinion, even the blue post is opinion) is that the quality was still very high. But, reading between the lines, they had to scrap some boss encounter ideas because it didn't translate well and two different progression tracks diluted the race a bit. It was easier for them to pick one set of mythic mechanics honed for 20 players as opposed to finding ones that translate well.

During mop I found that quality to be really lacking especially on my favorite encounter of that expansion Lei Shen.

[Kyanion]

Well just keep on dreaming

During mop I found that quality to be really lacking especially on my favorite encounter of that expansion Lei Shen.

Dreaming? There is hard data that proves 10 man raiding was by far the more popular of the two options. And this is after figuring in the number differences in raid sizes.

[cFortyfive]

Dreaming? There is hard data that proves 10 man raiding was by far the more popular of the two options. And this is after figuring in the number differences in raid sizes.

Dreaming in regards to your bullshit ideas. Obviously 10m was the more prevalent format with less effort for the same rewards.

[Kyanion]

Dreaming in regards to your bullshit ideas. Obviously 10m was the more prevalent format with less effort for the same rewards.

Oh I love how you add the rest there. Thanks for proving my point though that 10m raiding was the more popular format,

'less effort' lolz. Just like some fights were easier on 25? Derp.

[Baconeggcheese]

I'd not be surprised at all if they go back to 25 (which would be stupid considering they made guilds trim people that were 25 man raiding last few expansions).

I don't think it'd be very stupid even if they planned on doing it the whole time, which I don't think to be the case.

When they initially rolled out the idea they pretty much needed to fuck over both sides in some way in order to avoid calamity. They also needed to learn what would / wouldn't work for what they wanted size wise and didn't necessarily know that before making the decision. I don't think they planned on going 40 to 25 initially, and then 25 to creating 10 man, and then bringing 10 man up to try and match 25 man, and then realizing they couldn't make them equals despite their best efforts and went to this current model.

They're clearly just learning as they go.

[cFortyfive]

'less effort' lolz. Just like some fights were easier on 25? Derp.

I wasn't even talking strictly encounter difficulty although I could mention obviously brew/prot/doublewl/disclol but if you are too dense to get that there is shit to be done outside of the raid as well - again too bad.

[Desparil]

Dreaming in regards to your bullshit ideas. Obviously 10m was the more prevalent format with less effort for the same rewards.

Didn't method(25) and paragon(10) clear both t15 and t16 just few days apart? So it seems that difficulty was comparable if you consider whole instance seeing that they are similar guilds quality wise, if what you say was true paragon would clear it way before method. If you meant less effort managing rooster then i apologize.

[Chetnik]

You are comparing things that were meant to be for 10 man to things that were not. Do you honestly mean to tell me that the current content could be done in mythic 10 man? Because there are a lot of fights I can assure you it would not be possible.

Ok, I'll bite. Besides just tuning numbers for 10 people, lets go over what would have to change in each fight:

Assault: no mechanics that require more people.
IR: During air phase, target 2 people with artillery instead of 4
Kormrok: Maybe half as many explosive runes to make up for the lack of people?
Council: Dispelling would move the debuff to 2 people instead of 3
Kilrogg: Bottom phase would be shorter since mobs would have less hp, so no need to change mechanics
Gorefiend: Shadow of Death and Touch of Doom fewer players at the same time
Iskar: Make the debuff for holding the eye stack a little slower
Socrethar: 2 people get gift instead of 4, slightly fewer ghosts spawn
Fel Lord: maybe 1 or 2 pillars less spawn each time
Xhul: fewer people get surge
Tyrant: fewer people get font
Mannoroth: 1-2 people get mark of doom, fear, and shadowforce instead of 3
Archi: This is the only fight where things might need some mechanical changes, or some tighter number changes, particularly when the group of 3 goes under. Also, I think only 1 or 2 people would need to get chained instead of 3.

So besides just changing some numbers around to make it for 10 people instead of 20, there aren't any real mechanical changes that would need to happen.

[Deja Thoris]

Dreaming in regards to your bullshit ideas. Obviously 10m was the more prevalent format with less effort for the same rewards.

Less rewards, stop talking rubbish.

Less rewards, 3 times as popular. Seeing the pattern of just how wrong you are?

[Enitzu]

Oh I love how you add the rest there. Thanks for proving my point though that 10m raiding was the more popular format,

'less effort' lolz. Just like some fights were easier on 25? Derp.

Yes 10 man was more popular. It was much easier to recruit and manage 10 good players versus 25 players that you may have to take some mediocre people just to be able to fill the ranks. I ran heroic 10 man guilds for years. As a 10 man we stomped through content. Yet when we switched to 25 it was much harder logistically and encounter wise. We had many more people to review and many more mistakes made due to people not being the best players.

10 man is easier. The only time it was better for 25 was for certain encounters when you had more people to handle mechanics.

Didn't method(25) and paragon(10) clear both t15 and t16 just few days apart? So it seems that difficulty was comparable if you consider whole instance seeing that they are similar guilds quality wise, if what you say was true paragon would clear it way before method. If you meant less effort managing rooster then i apologize.

10 man logistically is easier. Much easier. However for Paragon to do what they did, they had to have every person with multiple geared alts to swap in based on the fights. Which meant they ran 2-3 times more raids then others to keep up with gear needs.

Possible, yes very much so. But only the most dedicated people would even try it. Most of us don't spend 80+ hours a week raiding

[Risale]

I wish they brought back 10 man as going mythic messed a lot of guilds up, bad mergers between guilds, not enough people of mythic quality on low pop servers.
The reason for them going 20 man only as it takes less work and makes it easier to balance was one that I could live with when they explained it at blizzcon and during beta however with the piss poor lack of content in WoD I think its 50% true and 50% BS.

Now there are some folks that think that one of the big things they haven't talked about regarding Legion might be cross faction raids (i think they base this of the fact that class halls will be cross faction and it is everyone against the Legion) if that is true then you get a shitload of new people that you can try and recruit, granted we ill need to see it life before we know if any of it is real or not.

[Lorianus]

Ok, I'll bite. Besides just tuning numbers for 10 people, lets go over what would have to change in each fight:

Assault: no mechanics that require more people.
IR: During air phase, target 2 people with artillery instead of 4
Kormrok: Maybe half as many explosive runes to make up for the lack of people?
Council: Dispelling would move the debuff to 2 people instead of 3
Kilrogg: Bottom phase would be shorter since mobs would have less hp, so no need to change mechanics
Gorefiend: Shadow of Death and Touch of Doom fewer players at the same time
Iskar: Make the debuff for holding the eye stack a little slower
Socrethar: 2 people get gift instead of 4, slightly fewer ghosts spawn
Fel Lord: maybe 1 or 2 pillars less spawn each time
Xhul: fewer people get surge
Tyrant: fewer people get font
Mannoroth: 1-2 people get mark of doom, fear, and shadowforce instead of 3
Archi: This is the only fight where things might need some mechanical changes, or some tighter number changes, particularly when the group of 3 goes under. Also, I think only 1 or 2 people would need to get chained instead of 3.

So besides just changing some numbers around to make it for 10 people instead of 20, there aren't any real mechanical changes that would need to happen.

Thats exactly what i tryed to say earlier in the thread, and people are like nah and come with things like nope it would not translate well as if WoD bosses are super innovative or something.

[Glorious Leader]

Well just keep on dreaming

During mop I found that quality to be really lacking especially on my favorite encounter of that expansion Lei Shen.

ToT was singularly hailed as the best raid since Ulduar. I remember bitching about how awful it was so many ways and just got shit on.

As for 10 man being more popular it was even when the rewards were worse. 25 man should have died but like alot of what's wrong with this game it got saved because the devs have antiquated regressive notions in their head and screw what the player base actually wants.

[Desparil]

Yes 10 man was more popular. It was much easier to recruit and manage 10 good players versus 25 players that you may have to take some mediocre people just to be able to fill the ranks. I ran heroic 10 man guilds for years. As a 10 man we stomped through content. Yet when we switched to 25 it was much harder logistically and encounter wise. We had many more people to review and many more mistakes made due to people not being the best players.

10 man is easier. The only time it was better for 25 was for certain encounters when you had more people to handle mechanics.



10 man logistically is easier. Much easier. However for Paragon to do what they did, they had to have every person with multiple geared alts to swap in based on the fights. Which meant they ran 2-3 times more raids then others to keep up with gear needs.

Possible, yes very much so. But only the most dedicated people would even try it. Most of us don't spend 80+ hours a week raiding

Don't wanna dig too much but here you go for Siege top 20 mixed 10/25

method(25)
BL(25)
paragon(10)
Экзорсус(25)
envy(25)
midwinter(25)
depraved(10)
sanitas(10)
tg gaming(25)
scrubusters(25)
Ascendance(25)
Moonzlinge(10)
genuine(25)
set sail for fail(25)
dads(25)
КрашТест(10)
Престиж Гейминг(25)
Not So Serious(25)
Би Негатив(25)
Practice(10)

So in top 20 there were 14 25m guilds and 6 10m if what you are saying is true that 10 man was easier (be that rooster/mechanic whatnot) situation would at least be opposite and considering that there were 3 times as many 10 man guilds doing "way easier" content all spots in top 100 should be 10 man and we can clearly see that's not the case.

What i'm trying to say is that difficulty was close enough and is what most of people rooting for 10m/flex are content with.

[Baconeggcheese]

Don't wanna dig too much but here you go for Siege top 20 mixed 10/25

garrosh was harder on 10 man, lei shen was harder on 25 man, shit flip flops all the time on any random bosses. That was part of what blizzard felt was a problem, they couldn't achieve parallel balance between the two.

Not really important to the discussion imo.