Firelands Raid 10 vs 25 Comparison, BlizzCon Site, European Bnet Invitational, Comics

[Deleted]

Someone on this very website did a comparison of Paragon's 10 man group and other 10 man heroic guilds who are currently working on Heroic Ragnaros. Guess what? Paragon's group had a whopping ONE item level advantage over the 10 man guilds.

Actually, it was a comparison between Paragon and Noxa's ALTS, so Paragon have one item level higher then some 10 man alt run.
The highest ranked 10 man only guild actually got 1 item level MORE than paragon ( And better geared tanks ).

[Mizpah]

25 t11 was faceroll? So you did all encounters in 25 mode on the first day and got world first?

lol first day. 10m sinestra is most definatley a jump in difficulty from 25m.

[Aowyn]

I am glad that Paragon posted this; I feel their assessment of the situation was fair without belittling 10M raiding too much. I have raided both 25M and 10M and prefer raiding in a 25M environment because I find it to be more challenging. Not just in terms of content but in guild organization as well. A previous poster stated that a lot of 10M guilds form because it was hard to maintain a 25M roster. This is a good point; it is not easy to maintain a successful 25M raiding guild. Many 25M guilds can easily take their top ten raiders and form a 10M guild and breeze through the content as well but they choose not to because of the challenge involved in holding a 25M guild together.

[Yibsu]

No shamans. Surprising.

[Deleted]

lol first day. 10m sinestra is most definatley a jump in difficulty from 25m.

I thought they were quite equal, if anything, 10m was slightly easier, however you could argue that we had shredded some "scrubs" from our 25 man roster when we did the 10 man version, so could just be that we had better players, but we got "Can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am" on our first 10 man pull ever, after killing it in 25 a few times though.

And while sinestra could possible have been a SMALL jump in difficulty ( personally I think they were on par. ), Chimaeron, Atramedes, Chimaeron, Omnitron, Maloriak, Cho'Gall, Al'Akir, Magmaw, Nefarian and Twins were all a jump down in difficulty, especially after the fixes. The only boss that I can actually give creds for being a step up would be conclave of winds, since it required a little special setup in 10 man.

[shimargh]

I am glad that Paragon posted this; I feel their assessment of the situation was fair without belittling 10M raiding too much. I have raided both 25M and 10M and prefer raiding in a 25M environment because I find it to be more challenging. Not just in terms of content but in guild organization as well. A previous poster stated that a lot of 10M guilds form because it was hard to maintain a 25M roster. This is a good point; it is not easy to maintain a successful 25M raiding guild. Many 25M guilds can easily take their top ten raiders and form a 10M guild and breeze through the content as well but they choose not to because of the challenge involved in holding a 25M guild together.

so they rather maintain a social enviroment of 25 ppl cuz it's more "hard" than playing the game in 10m...

[Groot]

Why doesn't Paragon go back and clear all the heroics with a less optimal raid comp? My guild raids with 2 Shaman (Ele, Resto or sometimes two Resto). Not a single one in any of their 10 man groups (and even most 25s). If they really want to help see the bottom, they'd consider this.

[dakalro]

Why doesn't Paragon go back and clear all the heroics with a less optimal raid comp? My guild raids with 2 Shaman (Ele, Resto or sometimes two Resto). Not a single one in any of their 10 man groups (and even most 25s). If they really want to help see the bottom, they'd consider this.

They actually said all they say is from the PoV of a HARDCORE 10 man guild, where one guild of around 15 players can field 20+ raid ready chars. It's not unthinkable, there's so much downtime between tiers that all you can do is level new chars and raid on them and still have 5 more days leftover.

[ganush]

From a purely analytical point of view, there is no way that Paragon can legitimately compare encounter difficulty after spending that many hours learning fights in 25m. You cannot remove the bias of knowing the encounters before ever trying them on 10m. Honestly, it should have felt that much easier to them and they should have rolled through the 10m versions with the knowledge and practice they had. I would be curious how many wipes they have on 25m rag-H next time they down it. Their means of comparison is flawed and unfortunately there is no way they can rate the difficulty levels from an unbiased point of view. That said, to me the real meat of the article, is that if you have a large pool of raiders and toons to draw from, you can class stack to make 10m encounters easier. I would agree that this makes sense, but is only an issue for the world first chase. What this boils down to for me is that Paragon didn't like the fact that there were 10m guilds in the world first chase, which was not the case in t11, and that they are already making excuses for the next tier should they be beaten by a 10m guild. God forbid the flame war we'd see if that happened.

[dakalro]

How is this Paragon peice newsworthy?

They complain the DPS requirement is lower in 10 and 25, yet they are USED to running 25s! so of course it will seem lower to them!

They also need to bear in mind that 10 Man content is not tuned for a specific setup because most 10 man guilds do not have multiples of classes waiting in the wings to class stack to beat the encounter.

Content is not tuned just for Paragon, they should remember that.

If you are used to running 10 or 25 you will output the exact same dps in 10 as in 25, there's no correlation here. The only reason why you'd even say that is that you think you shouldn't be as good as a player in 10 as in 25; otherwise your post makes no sense.

[Eme]

cleary - nerf druids

[rutiene]

That's not true. Your dps should lower on 10 because the probability of you being chosen by RNG elements of the fight is higher on average. Additionally, even hardcore 10mans (mine is one) have a hard time fielding 15-20 raiders. I don't even know how you'd do that. It's not like in 25, where you can rotate in 5 floaters and be OK. If you rotate in 2 people in a 10man, your strategy and execution will change dramatically. So to have the perfect raid comp with all buffs is hard to get for 10man. Usually you eat the loss of a buff for some class mechanic. Or you make the fight ridiculously hard on yourself (LOL V&T or Conclave without a rogue)

[Olmeck]

Why doesn't Paragon go back and clear all the heroics with a less optimal raid comp? My guild raids with 2 Shaman (Ele, Resto or sometimes two Resto). Not a single one in any of their 10 man groups (and even most 25s). If they really want to help see the bottom, they'd consider this.

Interesting. It would be kind of cool to see if Paragon could do these fights using a shammy healer, warrior tank and a rogue. Considering they are the best guild out there, wouldn't that go a long way in proving the whole, "bring the player not the class" theory?

Or if they can't/won't then does that mean they're just very good at stacking as some have said or are they really the best? I'm not trying to knock them and I'm not a fanboi but I think it'd be something a lot of people would like to see.

[Trisnic]

I thought the article was interesting and accurately pointed out the differences.

10 man raiders had a point in early tier 11 heroics where content was not tuned properly at first. With Firelands, tier 12 10 man normal is WIDELY known to be undertuned and from the sounds of this 10 man heroic is somewhat undertuned as well.

I am glad that Paragon posted this; I feel their assessment of the situation was fair without belittling 10M raiding too much. I have raided both 25M and 10M and prefer raiding in a 25M environment because I find it to be more challenging. Not just in terms of content but in guild organization as well. A previous poster stated that a lot of 10M guilds form because it was hard to maintain a 25M roster. This is a good point; it is not easy to maintain a successful 25M raiding guild. Many 25M guilds can easily take their top ten raiders and form a 10M guild and breeze through the content as well but they choose not to because of the challenge involved in holding a 25M guild together.

I'm a 25 man guild leader and I agree with this completely. We've fought hard to stay as 25 man despite the fact that it does take 2.5x as much work, for someone in the leadership position anyway. We could also take our 12-15 best and easily create a "super 10" which would allow us to progress through heroics faster. I won't do it for two reasons. 1) I would take 22 of our raiders anywhere and I hate the idea of splitting people up, we like raiding together and 2) I don't find 10 man kills thrilling. As a 40 man raider back in the day I still remember killing Rag 1.0, Nefarian 1.0 and C'thun. The energy from the was awesome. I find that 25 man kills still have a lot of thrill to them. 10 man literally feels like a 5 man boss kill to me and reminds me of clearing Strat 10 back in the day, I don't find 10 man first kills to be exciting at all.

The good thing is, as more 10 man guilds pop up and more 25 man guilds disappear, we get a lot of apps these days from people who prefer 25 man raiding. My concern is larger raid sizes no longer being an option in the future because I really don't enjoy smaller raids.

[Littleshashi]

Every now and then I catch the drivel coming out of a world-first guild like Paragon. It's so far removed from my reality of WoW (I was in a guild full of doctors and grad students who killed Lich King 10M normal in August of 2010 after working on it for 5 months), that I have to read their post a few times just to understand what they are trying to say.

"Unfortunate..."
"Hand you've been dealt..."
"Too easy..."

Basically from down here in our perspective, we would have to ruin our lives as we know them, and our guild, just to approach a level of mediocrity that a world-first guild feels kind of sorry for. That might even sound offensive or demeaning, except that it's so far removed from our reality that it's totally irrelevant.

It's like I play football, and Paragon/Dream plays football on flying unicorns, and periodically report on their experiences.

[Aowyn]

so they rather maintain a social enviroment of 25 ppl cuz it's more "hard" than playing the game in 10m...

Your statement doesn't make much sense? I said it is hard to maintain a consistent 25M roster hence a lot of 10M guilds form because of that. If you want to talk terms of social environment then technically that is more easily achievable in a 10M raiding guild where the environment is more tight–knit and personal. Individuals can communicate easier among one another and play off each other better in groups that are smaller as oppose to groups that are larger.

[Brandar]

Why would Paragon use an Unholy DK instead of a Frost DK on Baleroc ? It actually diminishes the buffs/debuffs, and I can't imagine what special ability an Unholy DK could bring on this fight.

[Kortiah]

Why would Paragon use an Unholy DK instead of a Frost DK on Baleroc ? It actually diminishes the buffs/debuffs, and I can't imagine what special ability an Unholy DK could bring on this fight.

Imp AMS and AMZ.

Also, lol @ "10man raiding is easier than 25man".

Of course it is when you have such a perfect raid-comp ...
10m is about getting the perfect raidcomp, not being more difficult than 25m when you have yours ...

They pretty much have ALL the buffs/debuffs On on EACH boss. Anyone with these compos would think 10m is easier ...

[Deleted]

No melee haste on Baleroc?

[Deleted]

The whole argument about 25man is harder to maintain is completely pointless. It’s entirely subjective to each guild. I’ve lead a 25 man guild for 4 years and now a 10 man guild and it’s been much harder to maintain our 10 man guild for heroic raids than it’s ever been for 25 mans over the years. But that’s our guild issue not everyone’s. If we have 1 person sic or on holiday we can be screwed for a week if they're a healer or tank.

The 10 man vs 25 is a very tiring argument. Especially as most of it is hurp a durp arguments from people just enjoying a good troll with no heroic raiding experience, 25 man heroic raiders defending their preference and others just jumping to assumptions they can't back up. Saying that as a 10 man heroic raider I do believe this current tier 12 content has been made slightly in favour of 10 mans IF those 10 mans have a perfect setup for every fight. The problem is it's completely un realistic for a 10 man guild to have a perfect setup for every fight. Gearing up is still a very big issue for 10 man heroic guilds and just to gear up well you want a roster between 12-14 players. 10 man gets 2 epics and a tier if that boss drops one, we're only 2 of 7 heroic at the moment and already our 2nd kill of Shannox we're sharding 1 item, first kill on Rhyolith sharding 1 item. Even with this 10 man content more forgiving in dps burn fights, getting the gear needed is hard work and rng for 10 mans. This reason alone is why 10 man heroic raiding can't compete with 25 man. You also can't realistically have spare alts geared up if you miss that important healer or tank class.

Looking back to previous tier, there was quite a big gap in 10 man and 25 man heroic difficulties. First the heroic content was broken for some fights. We had 25 mans kiting adds on Magmaw to the Omnitron room and back again, Atramades being tanked in the doorway and everyone running out the room on the phase change. None of this was possible on 10 man. 10 man Maloriak with the adds having 500% more health than 25man, Valiona and Theralion where there was more incoming damage than 3 healers can mathematically heal. This was all fixed but it took a long time to be fixed which gave 25 man the only viable option for world firsts. There were still badly designed fights if 25 man to 10 man was meant to be close to the same. Al akir heroic was much easier on 10 man, Neff heroic had some really unfair setup requirements on 10 man. Neff p1 has more kiting options on 25 man but is fairly minor issue, p2 requires 2 interrupts per pillar, 1 main 1 backup. Very easy to have on 25 very strict setup for 10 man, this was made easier later when interrupts couldn’t miss so at least tanks were a reliable interrupt. Then p3 requires CD rotating roughly every 30 seconds (TB trinket then healer CD). Easier if you don't have a druid healing on 10 man but not impossible. Still a good fight but not balanced.

In the end they finally balanced it for t11. Arguments and fan boys aside the statistics show the heroic kills favour the 25 mans. But I’m sure that really comes down to the easier gearing than the difficulty. Just to vent some frustration, in nearly 7 months of heroic tier11 never once did Chimaron drop a wand....nor the trash.