Cataclysm Raid Progression Refinements

[Deleted]

Theres some good things and some bad things to this change.

The bad :

- Balancing nightmare, 1 mc --> 1 mage --> 1 sheep. 3 mc --> 3 mages --> communication chaos and etc etc.

- Unless 25 man gets more than 20% of the players in loot (over 5 tokens) it wont be worthwhile.

- The big scale of which you think a raid is will be reduced, therefore the potential epicness.

- Some classes/specs behave better in 25 man than 10 man.

- Extremely big loottables in 10 man making it hard to get specifick items?

The good :

- Core guilds just got a whole new meaning, finally that close group of 10 man who carried your 25 man can work together
and achieve the loot you deserved

- Gear inflation stops , no more full 25 man HC gear in 10 player modes steamrushing.

- More flexible to raid, if 25 man on, you raid that, if not you can always get nice gear from there.

[wisher]

Also, how does this change compare to the 40-25 transition? While there are no 40-mans anymore, there is absolutely NOTHING that's stopping you from doing a 25 man if that's your preferred format. This change shouldn't really put a stop to 25-mans, because there is absolutely nothing to stop you. It however, does put a stop to mandatory 25-mans. So what the changes actually do is give you the option to choose what you want to do. And if u think that that 25s will die out as soon as people don't HAVE to do them, doesn't that mean nobody wants to do them in the first place? The logic confuses me

No, it's absolutely logical. People will go the way of the least resistance. If they can get the same items in a 10 man raid, why should they bother with 25? It's really that simple. This transition will be a slow progress, but in a few months, the true 25 man raiding guilds simply won't find new players willing to put in the effort it takes to replace their old, quitting members. In the end, most of the 25 raiding guilds will cease to exist sooner or later.

[Zamien]

I'm hoping in the next expansion they will allow us to do all the raids in a 5 man group.

10 man raids are too hard to form.


Maybe they will allow you to do 1 man raids.

Fantastic post! I only think like 200 more of the posts in this thread was copies of this one!

Mate there is a 1 man format, it's called questing, there is a 5 man format called Dungeons/Heroics. I like to play 25 man raids and do them in a 25 man guild. Why should I not continue to do that in Cata? Others like 10 mans and why would they not continue to do that?

If you are right and people don't want to play 25-mans cause it is such a struggle why should Blizzard continue to offer them?

[Zamien]

No, it's absolutely logical. People will go the way of the least resistance. If they can get the same items in a 10 man raid, why should they bother with 25? It's really that simple. This transition will be a slow progress, but in a few months, the true 25 man raiding guilds simply won't find new players willing to put in the effort it takes to replace their old, quitting members. In the end, most of the 25 raiding guilds will cease to exist sooner or later.

I just don't get this? Is not a raiders primary interest to down new challengers in the format they prefer? I could not care less about gear as long as I pull my part in a raid. And if the challenge is equal in 10 and 25 why not run the format you prefer?

Your argument is that everybody in the game is playing to get gear and that it would be the main goal. Is it really that bad?

[stupid11]

c'mon guys! lets beat Celestial steed thread, only 700 posts to go ;D

[Calliakharg]

They will steal 50% of my raiding time.

Not a million words will change this fact. Again:

They will steal 50% of my raiding time. period.

[Quesly]

...Maybe...but who in their Right mind spends 10 hours a day on a video game and calls it healthy?

hypocrite much? You're the one debating in a forum thread about a possible change in a video games raiding community

[cerbul]

I would personally like the idea of having different lockouts between normal and hard mode. But prolly the second tier into Cata will bring that, who knows.
This would allow us to have some fun in 10 man, but only when we reach hard modes with the 25 pl raid.

As its been announced to be it does bother me that my alt won't be boosted anymore by mains(and same way for my main boosting other guildmates alts), since will be an entirely alt raid wich will obviously underperform.


For now, the fact that you can chose what you want to do heroic mode and what not, is a really nice addition to organizing guild raids, since it allows the leader to scale the time needed to clear an instance simply choosing between bosses that will be done normal mode and the ones that will be done hard mode.

One great addition about 25 ppl players is that we won't have anymore 10 ppl raids with mains, so the pleasure of downing a boss for the first time won't be trivialized by downing that boss in the 10 ppl version of that raid. Why? Because 10 ppl raids will be challenging enough, or even more challenging to make up for the hassle of running 25 ppl, and doing the instance in 10 ppl first to learn the fight will not exist anymore.

[skaarrj]

Keep at it blizzard, and don't give in. This was a direction i was hoping you would take in WOTLK, but better late than never!

Now i don't feel forced to do 25 mans, and i hated doing 25 mans simply because i dont have 24 friends. I have around maybe 7-8 i play with a lot. This is wonderful news for us.

It's also wonderful that i don't need to do both raids to maximize all my badge loot.

[Quesly]

I guess you missed the part where you still can "work together with 24 other people"? They didn't remove 25 mans, they will even have on over-proportionally larger amount of items, gold and badges drop to acknowledge the extra effort of raiding and organizing 25 mans. Gratz on failed reading comprehension and quitting for the wrong reason. "Oh..ppl that I don't know can get the same reward as me". Why didn't you quit when random ppl that you don't know could get T10 from VoA

It will not even be less skill needed, because soon you cannot outgear 10 mans in 25 man gear.

quality of gear>quantity badges that become pointless after a month and more emoney isn't enough to satisfy the point that I could just do 10 man with far easier strategies(yes 25 man raid strategies are harder get your head out of your ass its not just gear that makes them faceroll)and the raids are far easier to set up why bother with 25s?

[Styrka]

For the ones of us that has spent 2 years or more to form and organise 25 man raiding guilds, with 40+ members in the guilds, this feels like a bit of a set back. As Blizz says, it takes a bit more to manage and get a solid 25 man raiding guild then a smaller 10 man raiding group and this far the reward has been slightly better gear.

For there to be any "item profit" (not mentioning the "profit" to the feel of being part of something bigger) there needs to be 6-7 items / boss dropping in 25 man.

10 man / 2 items = 20%
25 man / 6 items = 24%

and even with that I wonder if 4% more item / player coverage will be enough for the so much much more and hard work it takes to manage 25 man raiding guilds.

Whats wrong with having a smaller group of players doing almost only 10 mans and getting slightly worse gear?

On top of this, the lock out. Our guild currently is raiding 4-5 nights / week. Fridays and saturdays is a relaxing off night where you can join 10 mans either to learn a fight better or to just have some relaxing fun. Letting a tank or a healer dps for fun, and the other way around. We can do that cause we gained gear from the slightly harder 25 mans.

Now, we will run the risk of having ppl beint stupid enough to get saved to the wrong thing. Ofc this will mean more organising from the guildleaders to let everyone know wich 10 mans is ok to get saved for and not and I can just imagen all the confusion. So promoting 10 man small guilds, punishing the 25 man raiding guilds with more organising work and time spent on administration.

--edit--
Lets not remember how much easier it is to gain very decent loot from badges already.

[cerbul]

will not even be less skill needed, because soon you cannot outgear 10 mans in 25 man gear.

I strongly agree to this, prolly many of you didn't do Mimiron hard 10 ppl or Algalon 10.

There are plenty of examples where the fact that you were outgearing a 10 player content, leaded to no special cooldowns needed from tanks, no detailed organizing the heroism/trinkets/cooldowns from dps, or no healers running out of mana/no situation where keeping up with the incoming damage was a problem.

[Quesly]

I strongly agree to this, prolly many of you didn't do Mimiron hard 10 ppl or Algalon 10.

There are plenty of examples where the fact that you were outgearing a 10 player content, leaded to no special cooldowns needed from tanks, no detailed organizing the heroism/trinkets/cooldowns from dps, or no healers running out of mana/no situation where keeping up with the incoming damage was a problem.

you gave 2 examples of fights that are more difficult on 25 because of strategy not gear

[Gilian]

I just don't get this? Is not a raiders primary interest to down new challengers in the format they prefer? I could not care less about gear as long as I pull my part in a raid. And if the challenge is equal in 10 and 25 why not run the format you prefer?

Your argument is that everybody in the game is playing to get gear and that it would be the main goal. Is it really that bad?

If 10 and 25 man are the same except for raid size then why would anyone choose for 25 man that is much harder to organize? Do you prefer something that is harder to organize? Do you really think that people in trade chat will ever make a 25 man pug just because it is 25 man? At least a lot less than now.

If they don't reward 25 man raids more than 25 man raids will die out. Maybe except for that "1%" of the top guilds who already have a very well organised group of raiders and the resources to keep it running.

Giving more gold when gold is never ever a problem for someone raiding or giving more emblems/points wich you won't need after a few weeks is not enough.

Keep at it blizzard, and don't give in. This was a direction i was hoping you would take in WOTLK, but better late than never!

Now i don't feel forced to do 25 mans, and i hated doing 25 mans simply because i dont have 24 friends. I have around maybe 7-8 i play with a lot. This is wonderful news for us.

It's also wonderful that i don't need to do both raids to maximize all my badge loot.

Good example of someone who plays only for gear. Why is he forced to do 25 man? Only for the gear. He doesnt need it to do 10 man raid.

you gave 2 examples of fights that are more difficult on 25 because of strategy not gear

People also give examples of 1 or 2 bosses to claim that hardcore raiders have enough to do and have fun.

Having more space to move around and having a much better overview on what is happening with only 10 people makes it easier on every fight.

[cerbul]

you gave 2 examples of fights that are more difficult on 25 because of strategy not gear

No, I gave this example cause I did 10 ppl with 10 ppl gear and with 25 ppl gear, and also the 25 ppl version with gear from Ulduar 25/hard modes only, and also did it with ToC25 gear and also ICC25 gear.

In those fights, is the gear that trivializes the use of strategy/cooldowns/assignments. If you do them with the gear that was ment to be done, there is almost no difference between the 10 and the 25 ppl, except for the fact that the dps requirement in 10 is a bit lower.

[Nuveena]

Whats wrong with having a smaller group of players doing almost only 10 mans and getting slightly worse gear?

As a 40 man => 25 man => and now 10 man raider, I think I can answer your question. In fact, when the news broke about this change, my friends told me "seems you get what you wanted to have months ago".

The main problem from a 10 man raiders point of view is that you have people coming in to "my content" with +1 tier gear above what is intended claiming all possible firsts and achievements before anyone has a chance to do the same thing honestly. As an example, we had members from a pretty shit 25 man group parading around Krasus Landing with their ICC10 achievement mounts some weeks ago before they had even managed to kill the Lich King on 25 man. This tends to kill off the motivation to raid 10 man content with more serious intent. I guess you could imagine how it feels..

The other problem was clearly visible during ICC progress raiding with the limited pulls on wing end bosses. EVERY 25 man guild on my server started training those bosses on 10 man "sand box" mode, giving them more than twice the amount of pulls intended and the first set of pulls overgearing the fight, allowing them to make more misstakes and get away with it while learning.

Strike three for me was the quest for the legendary sword in ICC. Not only is it impossible to get a cheap knockoff version of it (say, of epic quality instead of legendary), but to really rub it in, they had the quest giver in 10 man ICC.


So, basically, as an ambitious raider, who has been trying out the 10 man format, I was about to swap back to the 25 man format in the Cataclysm, simple because I wasn't given the opportunity to compete fairly for bragging rights. Now I'm not sure anymore which way to go, just happy that I will be given a fair choice between the 10 and 25 man formats. WotlK had one, and only one, 10 man achievement that was fair, and that is the Algalon 10 man only achievement. For those who keep saying how easy 10 man content is, I would challenge them to point out a large number of people who actually have that achievement

[Narkarma]

Ok first up, after I down LK hardmode I am quitting. So I don't have to worry about it to much.

I just want to point out, making 10 and 25 the same difficulty is going to be absolutely impossible, UNLESS there is a complete homogenization of classes, making it so you don't even need a raid composition. Blizzard looks like they're moving this way anyway.

Have fun with your dead game, casual or hardcore doesnt matter anymore, it's dead.

[Arean]

They will steal 50% of my raiding time.

Not a million words will change this fact. Again:

They will steal 50% of my raiding time. period.

No million words required. You don't own the game, they do, hence, this is not theft

[Styrka]

I see where you are coming from. However, badgegear and tier X.0 is good enough to do any 10 man to the end. So someone put it alot of work in 25 man to gain loot to then go steamroll your 10 man. But the difference there is that they did put the time into the 25 man raids first to gain that extra loot to beat you to it.

About the Legendary. Well so this game started out with stratholm raids, moving on to zg and then MC, back down to tbc raids. Any Legendary up til now had required the larger scale of things. MC ofc just had one mode, so did old Naxx and TBC raids, then in Ulduar the mace was tuned for 25 man and so is the new sword. A cheaper knock off version does however sound like a nice idea. Where you had to go through the same long quest chain but on 10 man I give you that but as the game looks like atm that legendary imo wouldnt have been balanced with 10 man content.

[Gilian]

My point was that if guilds are capable of clearing 11/12 HMs in 3 hours, then you should be able to faceroll your way through normal modes in the same time or less. And there are "casual" raiding guilds that raid 2 nights a week and have cleared 10-11/12 HMs at this point, so what's your excuse?

Not having enough time to raid is just an excuse for people who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. You can clear both ICC 10 and 25 in less than 5 hours now. If you can't find 5 hours a week to play this game, then why are you playing it? Sorry, but that excuse just doesn't cut it anymore. People who can't find more than 1-2 hours a week to raid have no business raiding.

Now I'm guessing you'll probably cry along the lines of, "I pay $15/month so I have the right to see HARD MODE content" when, in reality, that content was designed for the serious raider. Not the 1 hour a week casual superstar. Normal mode is their kingdom.

And the typical person plays this game more than your average casual apologist thinks.

Exactly.

I also don't understand there are people willing to pay $15 for 4 hours playing a game for years. Maybe they even bought a mount for $25 they can look at for those 4 hours .