Missing the 10 man Raids

[Hallaster]

Wish we had the ability to do mythics with 10 people as well as 20. It's crazy how hard it is these days to get a steady 20 to raid enough to really progress.
Anyone else desire the small raid size options for those guilds that just can't seem to reach that magic 20.

I am sure it has been mentioned before i just know we currently sit on 10-15 people at most that can raid together and its hard to pug on mythics on same server.

Just a few thoughts let me know how you feel thanks.

[InfernalDark]

Too scared to post with your main acco?

[Crillam]

Too scared to post with your main acco?

Hey don't be like that.

Anyway no. To have like it was before 10 and 25 was a pain when it came to the hardest content. Harder to balance. People arguing over who was the real world first etc.
Guilds splitting because some thought it was more fun with 10man instead of 25... the latter happend to one of my guilds. Many guilds seems to merge now aswell, maybe try that?

[Aggrophobic]

Hey don't be like that.

Anyway no. To have like it was before 10 and 25 was a pain when it came to the hardest content. Harder to balance. People arguing over who was the real world first etc.
Guilds splitting because some thought it was more fun with 10man instead of 25... the latter happend to one of my guilds. Many guilds seems to merge now aswell, maybe try that?

They could just have used the scaling mechanic they have on LFR, normal and HC though. It's just Blizzard being lazy, thats all.
Besides, it's not like the balance in Legion was that great anyway. ToS is one of the worst designed and balanced raids in WoW history after all. Flex size would not have made it worse.

[Hallaster]

I hear you Crill I was just thinking more in line with Aggro that the scaling would have been nice , thou i understand its really hard being mythic with mechanics boss wise , i actually would only want the 10 or 20 or scaling from 10-20 we just have been stuck in between for awhile.

[Jargathnan]

Do I miss difficult raiding in a 10-man setup? Sure. Even when I was pushing hardcore 25-man HM/heroic raiding, I always enjoyed 10-man HM/heroics on off-nights to push achievements. But that team was really a selection of the best 10 people from our 25 man roster, so that also made a difference.

Do I want it back? Not really. Nostalgia aside, 10-man raiding brings with it a set of challenges that I don't relish reliving. If the devs tune encounters with 20 people in mind, and then dial it down to 10, you're inevitably going to have fights that are exponentially more difficult in 10-man. It boils down to resources, cooldowns, and bodies at that point. The alternative then is the devs need to design mythic encounters to change radically between 10 and 20 man. It's possible, sure. But I have a feeling the identity of the fight would be lost rather frequently, as the devs account for less people.

And to those that would tell me "if you don't want it, don't do it": you're absolutely right, I wouldn't have to do 10-man mythic. But, as we saw when 10-man raiding became a thing, the larger raid teams became less and less common. Ultimately many people will be subjected to 10-man raiding just because that's what the community will take a shift towards, even if they don't necessarily want to.

[Onikaroshi]

Always preferred the tighter group, so ya, I definitely miss 10 man

[Zoldor]

I really enjoyed 10 man, miss it quite often. Especially when my current group gets through with Heroic, we are between 11 and 14ish on a big night. So 10 man Mythic would be nice. We always get through the heroic content far enough in advance to really push through some Mythic (maybe not finish on time, but still get pretty close)

[TOM_RUS]

I miss 10 man as well. It was so much more fun than this 20 man mythic garbage that we have now.

[HyperJay]

They could just have used the scaling mechanic they have on LFR, normal and HC though. It's just Blizzard being lazy, thats all.
Besides, it's not like the balance in Legion was that great anyway. ToS is one of the worst designed and balanced raids in WoW history after all. Flex size would not have made it worse.

Lol Scaling for Mythic Raids. Not lazy it's Mythic the entire point is ruined if you have 20 OR 10. Mechanics are designed around multiple groups splitting or like Eonar having 4 Final Doom Casts with 4 Groups of 4 that go to stop it.

Imagine scaling Eonar or Aggramars groups, or Garothi Soaks, Aggramar rages etc for 14 people and 16 for another guild or 10 for another guild.

[fallenangel-succ]

It's not being lazy. Flex Mythics would have made it even more difficult to balance, because then they aren't just tuning for 10 and 25, they're tuning for 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17... You get the idea.

This is fine for normal and heroic because they are not the most difficult content meant to be available to players. Tuning doesn't have to be exact for every number, it can be ballparked and still be fine.

In Mythic, if any one number of people ends up being better than any other, that becomes the only way to do Mythic content. The best method is to pick one and stick with it, since the players are going to do that eventually anyway.

With that said, while I understand the point of 20 man being chosen, I do also miss 10 man heroic modes. That was my favorite style of raiding. (Yes, Heroic, because that used to be what Mythic was...)

Why is tight balancing (which, lets be real, only applies to about 10 guilds) is more important than the ease and inclusion that flex mythic will bring to the table? Right now you're forced to have a larger than 20 roster and end up benching people every single night. Or someone can't make it and bam, 19 other players have nothing to do.
It doesn't even have to be 10-30. Just give some leeway from the strict 20 and only 20 version. It's an outdated concept at this point. Basically, the relelvant-to-100-people WF race is taking precedence over offering a better experience to thousands of mythic guilds.

[Deleted]

The biggest detractor from 10 man mythic raiding is the level of accountability and margin for error would have to be too high. It's already very high in 20 man, and in ToS frustratingly so how it all hinged on 1 persons actions on a number of fights. If you were to package up the current raiding experience, put that on 10 people its main difficulty would be precision.

10 man raiding inherently loses 1 aspect of challenge that 20 man (and bigger) carries with it. The logistics of actually getting a group around in a boss fight. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of situations you can come up with that portray it as being an issue in 10 man but anything with only 10 variables is inherently less complex than anything with 20, or 30 or 40.

Look at how boss fights have typically been, back when 40 man raiding was a thing the margin for error was huge. You could have a group of guys in the corner licking the walls and bosses could still die - quite easily. Your biggest issue with 40 man raiding was to get everyone facing the same direction and doing it in a coherent manner.

Flex will never work for the hardest difficulty of all because each fight will have a sweetspot - a pressure point. That will be figured out and that is how groups will go. There's no way to prevent that. It isn't a uniform challenge across the spectrum then and so its not really fitting of "the hardest challenge in raiding content" if 13 is easier than 15, but way harder than 17 but nothing touches the difficulty of 22.

- - -

With M+ they've shown they can introduce a new type of content, they're doing it with the islands content as well in BFA. Perhaps the time has come for there to be a separate, 10 man only end-game progression too. Something that can be fulfilling and embrace on a fight by fight basis what should be the challenges presenting a 10 man group.

It's no longer got to be a choice between A or B, it's about finding the way to present the means to Blizzard to give us A and B in a way they can deliver and we can enjoy.

- - -

For me personally, I'm actually an advocate of the complete opposite, I wish they would bring back larger scale raiding. I'd like there to be that larger margin of error, larger rooms to fight in and the ability to bring more people. It's far less likely to happen than some 10 man content, but I think the discussion has to move away from changing what mythic raiding is and instead looking at what 10 man content should be and how it could be delivered alongside 5 man and 20 man content.

[Aggrophobic]

Lol Scaling for Mythic Raids. Not lazy it's Mythic the entire point is ruined if you have 20 OR 10. Mechanics are designed around multiple groups splitting or like Eonar having 4 Final Doom Casts with 4 Groups of 4 that go to stop it.

Imagine scaling Eonar or Aggramars groups, or Garothi Soaks, Aggramar rages etc for 14 people and 16 for another guild or 10 for another guild.

Worked with 10 and 20 and it would work with 13 or any number as well.
It's not like Eonar was difficult anyway.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not being lazy. Flex Mythics would have made it even more difficult to balance, because then they aren't just tuning for 10 and 25, they're tuning for 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17... You get the idea.

This is fine for normal and heroic because they are not the most difficult content meant to be available to players. Tuning doesn't have to be exact for every number, it can be ballparked and still be fine.

In Mythic, if any one number of people ends up being better than any other, that becomes the only way to do Mythic content. The best method is to pick one and stick with it, since the players are going to do that eventually anyway.

With that said, while I understand the point of 20 man being chosen, I do also miss 10 man heroic modes. That was my favorite style of raiding. (Yes, Heroic, because that used to be what Mythic was...)

But as they don't really do a good job at balancing it anyway I don't see the issue. They might have to put a few more hours (probably not)into it so in the end, it's them just being lazy.

[Aggrophobic]

"They don't do a good job balancing it, so they shouldn't try" is basically your argument.

It's entirely senseless. And subjective - Arguably the classes are more balanced, at least in terms of PvE, than they ever have been prior.

We're not talking classes here though but raids and class balance would not be affected by raid size.
Balance is not subjective either.

[cparle87]

Hey don't be like that.

Anyway no. To have like it was before 10 and 25 was a pain when it came to the hardest content. Harder to balance. People arguing over who was the real world first etc.
Guilds splitting because some thought it was more fun with 10man instead of 25... the latter happend to one of my guilds. Many guilds seems to merge now aswell, maybe try that?

Yeah. I remember the first tier of Cata, for instance. 10-man was a cakewalk and 25-man was hell if I'm remembering right. Guilds that had similar progression in Wrath were having one guild clearing heroic-10 BWD and another not able to clear normal-25.

- - - Updated - - -

Tight balancing applies to every guild that does the content. Whether it's 20 man or up-to-300-man flex, balancing applies to every guild that fights the boss, and the world first race will go on with whatever-number-of-players-is-mathematically-more-favorable. Locking it to 20 just means Blizzard says 20 is a good number, and then they tune it for 20 people - If it were flex, it would take way more dev time to balance because it would need to be balanced for all group sizes, otherwise players themselves would just limit their group size to whatever-number-of-players-is-mathematically-more-favorable to the group.

Whether it's imposed by Blizzard or not, Mythic will always have a set number of people going into it. It won't ever be flex. Their time will always be better spent making new content than tuning the same content for unlimited possibilities.

Yeah. I remember when the flexing was first added in SoO. Many groups wouldn't run larger than I think it was 14. Because at 15 the number of bombs or debuffs or whatever it was increased. Take Tomb of Soakgeras for instance. Not knowing that inviting that 18th guy will cause a 6th puddle that 3 people each will have to soak can wipe you. It can make group leaders only want to run certain sizes, or never above or below a certain size. Which damages the point of flexing in the first place.

[Mercane]

ITT: "You think you miss 10 man raiding, but you really don't"

[exochaft]

Yeah. I remember the first tier of Cata, for instance. 10-man was a cakewalk and 25-man was hell if I'm remembering right. Guilds that had similar progression in Wrath were having one guild clearing heroic-10 BWD and another not able to clear normal-25.

Depended on the fight, as some fights were harder on 10man while others were harder on 25man. Typically it came down to 25man having more resources and bodies to do mechanics/CDs, while 10man had the advantage of more room to work with because they had less bodies in the same space. That being said, I think the raid size being 20 for mythic raids is less important than the trouble actually getting 20 competent people for a mythic raid nowadays. Unless you're on one of the few always high/full-population servers, the chances of being able to maintain a mythic raiding roster becomes insanely difficult. The biggest barrier to mythic raiding right now is that the inevitable roster turnover becomes very limited if your server grouping is small. I'd rather they allow mythic raiding to be cross-realm from the get go, and if you still want realm first achievement stuff (which is a dying breed in itself) you can have the same old requirement of 18 people in the group needing to be on the server grouping.

[Tipton]

10 man 'hard difficulty' was really bad for the game overall, which is why they removed it.

One of the things they had to do shortly after it was introduced was homogenize all the classes, first the was the 10 man complaints about interrupts (everyone got an interrupt), the constant complaining about having all the raid buffs (raid buffs were removed). Eventually the 10 man whining got so much they just removed 10 man, so that that could normalise the game.

Classes have already been de-homogenized in Legion, and more is happening in BFA. With 12 class buffs in the next expansion, 10 man 'mythic' is never coming back.

[Jastall]

They could just have used the scaling mechanic they have on LFR, normal and HC though. It's just Blizzard being lazy, thats all.
Besides, it's not like the balance in Legion was that great anyway. ToS is one of the worst designed and balanced raids in WoW history after all. Flex size would not have made it worse.

The solution to a shaky balance is to make it even shakier? Blizzard clearly learned their lesson in Antorus which is a far better designed and balanced raid.

But making it flexible would be a nightmare. How do you really make a flexible Eonar? Flexible Kin'garoth? Flexible Coven? While keeping all the mechanics and difficulty, obviously. It would just lead to shitty situations where players figure out that boss X is easier with 12 and sit everyone else, then boss Y is easiest with 22 so now they gotta get 10 more people who will mostly be sat for boss Z who is easier with 15.

The only way I see Blizzard re-implementing 10 mans without affecting Mythic's balance and design, is if they had a special 10-man difficulty that would be explicitly easier than 20 man. But then these people could just run Heroic with 10 man.

[Mercane]

The solution to a shaky balance is to make it even shakier? Blizzard clearly learned their lesson in Antorus which is a far better designed and balanced raid.

But making it flexible would be a nightmare. How do you really make a flexible Eonar? Flexible Kin'garoth? Flexible Coven? While keeping all the mechanics and difficulty, obviously. It would just lead to shitty situations where players figure out that boss X is easier with 12 and sit everyone else, then boss Y is easiest with 22 so now they gotta get 10 more people who will mostly be sat for boss Z who is easier with 15.

The only way I see Blizzard re-implementing 10 mans without affecting Mythic's balance and design, is if they had a special 10-man difficulty that would be explicitly easier than 20 man. But then these people could just run Heroic with 10 man.

I want 10 man content back, but in a different manner than a flexible raid size. Some quest lines just end abruptly (Gorgrond) or build towards a conflict you don't really see to fruition (Stormheim)- I'd be stoked if they brought 10 mans back as something harder than dungeons, yet easier than raiding that served as a plot device or means to end a storyline.

It will never happen because people that aren't willing to group up or use the group finder will complain incessantly everywhere about 'muh story' though- combined with the fact that there's no reason to lock it to 10 man and just make it flex to begin with.