What Ever Happened to 10 man?

[Mirishka]

Flex Siege is what Normal mode raiding is now. They just dropped the 10/25M component from what used to be Normal, now call that Heroic and rebranded what used to be Heroic to Mythic.

Regardless, I doubt we'll see authentic 10M endgame raiding again. Flex Mythic is impossible. Encounters designed around raid sizes below 20 generally seem less exciting and it limits the scope of what Blizzard wants to accomplish with endgame raiding. To me, it seems that fixed 20M Mythic is the sweet spot Blizzard is shooting for. Lower participation numbers hardly matter as Mythic raiding has never been about participation. If anything, Cata/MoP artificially inflated the number of people who identified as endgame raiders and the last few expansions have been Blizzard correcting this course.

Aye, I know that.

I meant that I literally miss running the flex version of Siege, back in Mists. We had a really strong raiding core, and flex let us bring along people that weren't necessarily 'raiders' without feeling like we were being punished for doing so. They got to come along, have fun, and participate without having to be beaten over the head about their dps and such.

Raids in WoD/Legion, in general, were less forgiving than Siege was.

[Relapses]

Aye, I know that.

I meant that I literally miss running the flex version of Siege, back in Mists. We had a really strong raiding core, and flex let us bring along people that weren't necessarily 'raiders' without feeling like we were being punished for doing so. They got to come along, have fun, and participate without having to be beaten over the head about their dps and such.

Raids in WoD/Legion, in general, were less forgiving than Siege was.

I see.

An argument could be made that Normal mode raiding currently fills that niche but I do remember SoO being considerably easier than anything in WoD/Legion even on Normal mode. At this point, however, there are already too many raid difficulties so it's unlikely for Blizzard to add something slightly more difficult than the LFR yet easier than Normal to the game. They could simply tune Normal mode to be even easier but I don't think that's a direction Blizzard wants to take with LFR already being as easy as it is.

[Khallid]

I used to pug heavily back in Wrath, Cataclysm, and Pandaria, back where your choices were 10 man and 25 man respectively. Since Flexible came out in Siege of Orgrimmar (and eventually became the bedrock foundation of the 10-30 man styled normal/heroic raids we have today) I've enjoyed filling alllllll the way up to 30 man as well, just for high octane fun, it feels like 40 man, but like, 10 less people. I kind of wish it could go to 40. The sheer chaos would be great.

But my thread is about why 10 mans fell out of style. Back in the aforementioned expansions the content was balanced for 10 people, with an exception for opening week raids for Cataclysm, which beckoned some hotfixes from Blizzard not properly tuning the buff system to accommodate for the lack of players. Nowadays the go-to size is 15 man, 2-4-9, but my preferred raiding style for nearly 6 years has been 2-2-6. Numbers don't lie, 2-4-9 must be mathematically better.

I had a lot of fun back in Hellfire Citadel where one of my favorite things to do each week would be to do 10 man Iskar on heroic with a strange 1-2-7 build, where massive dps would actually eliminate the need for a second tank. It was fun, but nowadays the scale of the raids seems counterintuitive, and less people makes it HARDER, when back in Wrath for instance, 10 man was the much easier version that dropped lower item level loot, Naxx for example dropping 200 loot equal to heroic 5 man loot, with the final boss dropping 213, equal to 25 man normal bosses.

What numbers got changed around to make 10 man bad, and 20 man the go-to size for what Blizzard considers optimal balance for Mythics?

The less people you have the more responsibility each of them has to take (except for tanks, which generally don't change in number). Flex raids make larger groups easier based on the way it is programmed.

In a 2-2-6 setup you can instantly wipe if one of your healers dies and you can't battle-ress him. The single healer left has to heal up to 9 people, which is typically not possible unless he's overgeared. A larger group has significantly less difficulties if one healer dies.

A dps dying in a small group is a larger proportion of dps being lost. So fights would be all-around more punishing for a small group, unless it's tuned to be easier on purpose, like it was during Lich King.

[rogueMatthias]

So in Wotlk it was basically - 10 man was easy mode, 25 was harder for more experienced raiders. Raiding boomed.

Then in Cata they "fixed" this so they were both the same difficulty. First, this all but killed 25 man. Secondly, there was a massive amount of more casual players that, without 10 man, couldn't do anything. Raid participation nose dived.

So then Blizzard "fixed" this by make LFR. Which is a terrible experience all round and everyone hated it because it's awful and you achieve nothing from it but seeing the raid and welfare loots.

So then Blizzard "fixed" things again by adding flex raiding, as an somewhat easier version.

So now mythic is what was 25man heroic.
Heroic is what was 25 man.
And normal is what was the 10 man easier version.
LFR is for if you want to see what the raid looks like, follow the story, get a few loots in the process and rage because of all the noobs.

Personally, imo, if they put more exercises in to train people to be raid ready, I'm not convinced you even need lfr anymore.

Remember the weekly raid quest? Things like that to encourage more participation would be better.

[RoKPaNda]

So in Wotlk it was basically - 10 man was easy mode, 25 was harder for more experienced raiders. Raiding boomed.

Then in Cata they "fixed" this so they were both the same difficulty. First, this all but killed 25 man. Secondly, there was a massive amount of more casual players that, without 10 man, couldn't do anything. Raid participation nose dived.

So then Blizzard "fixed" this by make LFR. Which is a terrible experience all round and everyone hated it because it's awful and you achieve nothing from it but seeing the raid and welfare loots.

So then Blizzard "fixed" things again by adding flex raiding, as an somewhat easier version.

So now mythic is what was 25man heroic.
Heroic is what was 25 man.
And normal is what was the 10 man easier version.
LFR is for if you want to see what the raid looks like, follow the story, get a few loots in the process and rage because of all the noobs.

Personally, imo, if they put more exercises in to train people to be raid ready, I'm not convinced you even need lfr anymore.

Remember the weekly raid quest? Things like that to encourage more participation would be better.

Not quite.

Raiding didn't "boom" in WLK. There was a healthy pug scene but raid participation on any difficulty was still a minority. You can find Blizzard quotes about that, you can find armory data to show that, etc. 10m also didn't feel nearly as rewarding as it should have, and that is why they made the cata changes. Keep in mind that Normal difficulty then was harder than normal difficulty now. What is currently "normal" is a difficulty they added in MoP that was harder than LFR but much more forgiving than the old Normal.

Raid participation didn't nosedive in Cata. Raid participation was pretty stagnant since the start. LFR wasn't a response to raiding "dying" - It was a response to after several years Blizzard couldn't justify the resources spent on raiding when so few people actually saw the raids. Especially the end raids. Even with catch up mechanics, even with re-releasing Naxx, even with easy no trash filler tiers like ToC, they couldn't get participation up. That's why LFR exists, and since LFR was implemented the amount of raid participation skyrocketed and we get better raids than ever now because Blizzard can justify the resources.

The crying about LFR that we've seen since it was introduced would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. LFR is the only reason we have quality raids with no boring ass filler tiers like ToC and Firelands where Blizzard just phones it in and recycles all the assets from elsewhere. LFR cost us raiders nothing, hurt us in no way, and gave us fantastic raid tiers for years now. Even icecrown and ulduar are total shitholes compared to each raid tier from the start of MoP onward. Well assuming one can lose their rose tinted goggles for a moment.

Btw weekly raid quests did nothing for raid participation and a BETTER version of weekly raid quests were added in Legion through the follower missions.

You're NEVER going to get people that do LFR as their end game (and there are a lot of them.) to do any kind of organized raiding, and especially not pug raiding where requirements are higher. Blizzard tried to get those casuals into raiding from launch all the way up to Firelands and failed miserably.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

Unless you can show some evidence of your raiding prowess, I stand by my original response.

It's pretty ironic that you talk about egos. Looking at your posts, your ego is clearly inflated.

oh hell yea it is, that's why i get to call out other people on theirs. raiding and ego experience bruddha. my raiding experience is in heroic pandaria btw, so i'm a few years removed from the hardcore raiding.

but even then, when everyone showed up, wasnt stoned or drunk, and was in...i think it was mumble at the time...we wiped the floor with that expansion.

[baskev]

I used to pug heavily back in Wrath, Cataclysm, and Pandaria, back where your choices were 10 man and 25 man respectively. Since Flexible came out in Siege of Orgrimmar (and eventually became the bedrock foundation of the 10-30 man styled normal/heroic raids we have today) I've enjoyed filling alllllll the way up to 30 man as well, just for high octane fun, it feels like 40 man, but like, 10 less people. I kind of wish it could go to 40. The sheer chaos would be great.

But my thread is about why 10 mans fell out of style. Back in the aforementioned expansions the content was balanced for 10 people, with an exception for opening week raids for Cataclysm, which beckoned some hotfixes from Blizzard not properly tuning the buff system to accommodate for the lack of players. Nowadays the go-to size is 15 man, 2-4-9, but my preferred raiding style for nearly 6 years has been 2-2-6. Numbers don't lie, 2-4-9 must be mathematically better.

I had a lot of fun back in Hellfire Citadel where one of my favorite things to do each week would be to do 10 man Iskar on heroic with a strange 1-2-7 build, where massive dps would actually eliminate the need for a second tank. It was fun, but nowadays the scale of the raids seems counterintuitive, and less people makes it HARDER, when back in Wrath for instance, 10 man was the much easier version that dropped lower item level loot, Naxx for example dropping 200 loot equal to heroic 5 man loot, with the final boss dropping 213, equal to 25 man normal bosses.

What numbers got changed around to make 10 man bad, and 20 man the go-to size for what Blizzard considers optimal balance for Mythics?

All i know it killed raiding for a good chunck of people. My guess is that 10 man was harder to balance. But again it killed raiding for a good portion of the raiders that i know.

[RobertMugabe]

There's nothing really Special about the size 2-3-9 or 2-4-12, at least not nowadays. 2-3-9=14 Players used to be important in SOO, because with 15+ Players the raid would "behave" like a 25-man, but since WoD this isn't the case anymore. People just see others making Groups with these sizes, so they do as well.

[caervek]

But my thread is about why 10 mans fell out of style.

10m Mythic never fell out of style, it had been slowly killing off 25m for a long time and it came to the point where Blizzard had to make a choice. Either let 25m mythic (their preferred format) die out, or kill off 10m mythic (the playerbases preferred format). Their decision was to instead choose something of an "option C", they killed both off and replaced them with one 20m format.

What numbers got changed around to make 10 man bad, and 20 man the go-to size for what Blizzard considers optimal balance for Mythics?

Nothing really got changed around, blizzard always preferred larger raid sizes, it was the playerbase who preferred the smaller raid format. This is why they changed 20/40 to 10/25 in TBC and why they made 10/25 equally rewarding in Cata, to cater to the playerbase's preference. However with WoD they decided that they had to finally make the choice between player preference and their design desires, so for WoD they killed off 10m (resulting in a huge drop in mythic participation).

[stomination]

Not quite.

Raiding didn't "boom" in WLK. There was a healthy pug scene but raid participation on any difficulty was still a minority. You can find Blizzard quotes about that, you can find armory data to show that, etc. 10m also didn't feel nearly as rewarding as it should have, and that is why they made the cata changes. Keep in mind that Normal difficulty then was harder than normal difficulty now. What is currently "normal" is a difficulty they added in MoP that was harder than LFR but much more forgiving than the old Normal.

Raid participation didn't nosedive in Cata. Raid participation was pretty stagnant since the start. LFR wasn't a response to raiding "dying" - It was a response to after several years Blizzard couldn't justify the resources spent on raiding when so few people actually saw the raids. Especially the end raids. Even with catch up mechanics, even with re-releasing Naxx, even with easy no trash filler tiers like ToC, they couldn't get participation up. That's why LFR exists, and since LFR was implemented the amount of raid participation skyrocketed and we get better raids than ever now because Blizzard can justify the resources.

The crying about LFR that we've seen since it was introduced would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. LFR is the only reason we have quality raids with no boring ass filler tiers like ToC and Firelands where Blizzard just phones it in and recycles all the assets from elsewhere. LFR cost us raiders nothing, hurt us in no way, and gave us fantastic raid tiers for years now. Even icecrown and ulduar are total shitholes compared to each raid tier from the start of MoP onward. Well assuming one can lose their rose tinted goggles for a moment.

Btw weekly raid quests did nothing for raid participation and a BETTER version of weekly raid quests were added in Legion through the follower missions.

You're NEVER going to get people that do LFR as their end game (and there are a lot of them.) to do any kind of organized raiding, and especially not pug raiding where requirements are higher. Blizzard tried to get those casuals into raiding from launch all the way up to Firelands and failed miserably.

Lfr was blizzards answer to not giving non raiders content. It only lead to them making raiding the end all of the game even more so that it was.

[MidnyteTV]

Not quite.

Raiding didn't "boom" in WLK. There was a healthy pug scene but raid participation on any difficulty was still a minority. You can find Blizzard quotes about that, you can find armory data to show that, etc. 10m also didn't feel nearly as rewarding as it should have, and that is why they made the cata changes. Keep in mind that Normal difficulty then was harder than normal difficulty now. What is currently "normal" is a difficulty they added in MoP that was harder than LFR but much more forgiving than the old Normal.

Raid participation didn't nosedive in Cata. Raid participation was pretty stagnant since the start. LFR wasn't a response to raiding "dying" - It was a response to after several years Blizzard couldn't justify the resources spent on raiding when so few people actually saw the raids. Especially the end raids. Even with catch up mechanics, even with re-releasing Naxx, even with easy no trash filler tiers like ToC, they couldn't get participation up. That's why LFR exists, and since LFR was implemented the amount of raid participation skyrocketed and we get better raids than ever now because Blizzard can justify the resources.

The crying about LFR that we've seen since it was introduced would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. LFR is the only reason we have quality raids with no boring ass filler tiers like ToC and Firelands where Blizzard just phones it in and recycles all the assets from elsewhere. LFR cost us raiders nothing, hurt us in no way, and gave us fantastic raid tiers for years now. Even icecrown and ulduar are total shitholes compared to each raid tier from the start of MoP onward. Well assuming one can lose their rose tinted goggles for a moment.

Btw weekly raid quests did nothing for raid participation and a BETTER version of weekly raid quests were added in Legion through the follower missions.

You're NEVER going to get people that do LFR as their end game (and there are a lot of them.) to do any kind of organized raiding, and especially not pug raiding where requirements are higher. Blizzard tried to get those casuals into raiding from launch all the way up to Firelands and failed miserably.

CHeck out the WoWprogress numbers during ICC. Now this is data for guilds only. But clearly nearly 10% of the population was raiding ICC. The guild raiding population dropped about 15-20% in Cata comparing the numbers from Wrath. That's pretty significant. We will never know the pug numbers, but clearly guild raiding has dropped since ICC according to Wowprogress.

[RoKPaNda]

Lfr was blizzards answer to not giving non raiders content. It only lead to them making raiding the end all of the game even more so that it was.

Now they've got both. Raiding and Mythic+ dungeons. And it's good for everyone.

CHeck out the WoWprogress numbers during ICC. Now this is data for guilds only. But clearly nearly 10% of the population was raiding ICC. The guild raiding population dropped about 15-20% in Cata comparing the numbers from Wrath. That's pretty significant. We will never know the pug numbers, but clearly guild raiding has dropped since ICC according to Wowprogress.

Oh wow 10%. And people wonder why LFR was needed.

[Relapses]

10m Mythic never fell out of style, it had been slowly killing off 25m for a long time and it came to the point where Blizzard had to make a choice. Either let 25m mythic (their preferred format) die out, or kill off 10m mythic (the playerbases preferred format). Their decision was to instead choose something of an "option C", they killed both off and replaced them with one 20m format.



Nothing really got changed around, blizzard always preferred larger raid sizes, it was the playerbase who preferred the smaller raid format. This is why they changed 20/40 to 10/25 in TBC and why they made 10/25 equally rewarding in Cata, to cater to the playerbase's preference. However with WoD they decided that they had to finally make the choice between player preference and their design desires, so for WoD they killed off 10m (resulting in a huge drop in mythic participation).

10M was hardly "the playerbase's preferred raid size." It was the easiest raid size to organize, of course it was more popular... but try not to conflate participation numbers with preference.

10 and 25M Heroic parity resulted in, imo, far more vanilla raid encounter design where one version of the encounter was always inexorably more difficult or easier than the other. The limitations of designing essentially two versions of every Heroic encounter was likely the largest impetus behind the change to 20M Mythic.

[caervek]

10M was hardly "the playerbase's preferred raid size." It was the easiest raid size to organize, of course it was more popular...

Nope, this myth has been dispelled many times over the years.

The raid leader is only one person, the rest of the raid are simply there because they like to be there, the raid leaders preference over what size raid to lead has very little effect on raid size popularity. The playerbase has always favoured smaller more closely knit raid sizes (part of a team > cog in a machine) which is why Blizzard leaned more and more towards the lower sizes the playerbase preferred over time.

I.E, in Vanilla the 20m raids proved to be unexpectedly popular compared to the more numerous 40m raids leading to the switch to the 10m and 25m raids in TBC, in TBC the 10m raids proved to be overwhelmingly popular compared to the more numerous 25m raids leading to the switch to the 10/25 format in WotLK, in WotLK 10m's superior popularity with the playerbase resulted in the equal loot/difficulty in Cata. Then with WoD Blizzard switched stance from catering to how the playerbase preferred to play to how they wanted to design the game (an overriding theme with WoD and later expansions) and changed to the fixed 20m format to avoid 25m dying off (causing something of an exodus of mythic players in the process).

[Deleted]

I still hope 10 man raiding return in some point... In cataclysm raiding firelands was best in 10 and i met good people there and we was good team... Miss this 30 people is too many

[gaymer77]

Basically the 10 man raiding prevented you from taking some people from your guild into the raid. Flex raiding opened it up so you could take that "casual" or the "friend & family" ranks or that person who logs in every few weeks but knows how to play their class well. Flex was probably the best thing that Blizzard did for the raiding scene in the entire game.

[Linkedblade]

I used to pug heavily back in Wrath, Cataclysm, and Pandaria, back where your choices were 10 man and 25 man respectively. Since Flexible came out in Siege of Orgrimmar (and eventually became the bedrock foundation of the 10-30 man styled normal/heroic raids we have today) I've enjoyed filling alllllll the way up to 30 man as well, just for high octane fun, it feels like 40 man, but like, 10 less people. I kind of wish it could go to 40. The sheer chaos would be great.

But my thread is about why 10 mans fell out of style. Back in the aforementioned expansions the content was balanced for 10 people, with an exception for opening week raids for Cataclysm, which beckoned some hotfixes from Blizzard not properly tuning the buff system to accommodate for the lack of players. Nowadays the go-to size is 15 man, 2-4-9, but my preferred raiding style for nearly 6 years has been 2-2-6. Numbers don't lie, 2-4-9 must be mathematically better.

I had a lot of fun back in Hellfire Citadel where one of my favorite things to do each week would be to do 10 man Iskar on heroic with a strange 1-2-7 build, where massive dps would actually eliminate the need for a second tank. It was fun, but nowadays the scale of the raids seems counterintuitive, and less people makes it HARDER, when back in Wrath for instance, 10 man was the much easier version that dropped lower item level loot, Naxx for example dropping 200 loot equal to heroic 5 man loot, with the final boss dropping 213, equal to 25 man normal bosses.

What numbers got changed around to make 10 man bad, and 20 man the go-to size for what Blizzard considers optimal balance for Mythics?

You still can do 10 man, if you have a guild, try to recruit for two 10man teams that way you can progress from four 5man teams in mythic dungeons to two 10 man or one 20 man raid through normal and heroics and if you feel good enough try mythic raids.

And i think that's probably the best scenario too. For mythic dungeons you would need 4 tanks, 4 healers, and 12 dps. That's pretty close to the 2 tank, 3 heals, 15 dps for raiding.

- - - Updated - - -

Ten man raids are little less forgiving than 20/25 man. One dps is a fifth of your damage, and could seriously be a wipe, whereas in 20/25 a single dps down is only one fifteenth or twentieth of your damage. Or a healer in a 10 man is a third of your healing done, but in a 20/25 is more like a fifth of healing done. A tank that goes down in a fight is half or all of your tanks regardless of raid size lol

[frogbound]

IIRC in Pandaria when Flex was introduced people opted for 12 or 13 player raids because at that size the bosses dropped 1 extra piece of loot while also staying at the low end of mechanical difficulties.
And since then it evolved into 2-4-9.

[Charge me Doctor]

25 geared people started doing 10 and facerolled them into oblivion

[Nitros14]

It died its deserved death. The community isn't big enough for two raid sizes.

20 is a good compromise that keeps the scale of raids epic and lets them keep the heavy organization aspect in encounters.