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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria news25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear
by Eliah Hecht 
Mar 31st 2009 at 9:00PM
| 10-man | ilvl | 25-man |
| Naxx | 200 | |
| KT, EoE | 213 | Naxx |
| Ulduar | 219 | |
| Ulduar hard | 226 | Ulduar, KT/EoE |
| 232 | Ulduar weapons | |
| 239 | Ulduar hard |
So successful, in fact, that when Burning Crusade came along, there were no more 40-man raids - only 10 and 25. At the beginning, the only 10-man was BC's entry-level raid, Karazhan. Everything else, from the small T4 raids (Gruul, Magtheridon) on up through T6, was exclusively 25-man. Notably, Gruul and Mags returned the same quality of rewards as KZ. Eventually a second 10-man raid (Zul'Aman) was introduced, with roughly a T5 level of difficulty, and of rewards.
Blizzard noticed that people really liked these 10-man raids. And so it came to pass that in the current expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, every raid instance is available in both 10- and 25-man versions. However, in a departure from all previous tradition, the 10- and 25-man instances at the same tier (which is to say, T7, at the moment) reward different levels of gear: Naxx-10 gives you ilvl 200 epics, whereas Naxx-25 rewards you with ilvl 213.
Actually, saying that raids at the same tier reward different gear was slightly misleading of me. In actuality, the 10- and 25-man versions of raids in Wrath are tuned a tier (13 ilvls) apart. In the terminology of prior versions of WoW, if Naxx-10 is a T7 raid, we ought to call Naxx-25 T8. Ulduar-10 would then also be T8, and Uld-25 would be T9. We don't use names like this probably because the "tier" designation is related to tier sets that drop in raids, and the Naxx-25 T7.5 set is obviously more similar to the Naxx-10 T7.0 set than to the Uld-10 T8.0 set.
However, this is mostly a technicality. The take-away point is that in Wrath, the developers seem to have decided that 25-man raiding is better than 10-man raiding. It rewards better gear. And in Ulduar (which is of course the centerpiece of the upcoming 3.1 patch), this difference sharpens, since as far as I can tell there is no way to get the new legendary healer mace, Val'anyr, by doing 10-man raids.
The information thus far is that the Fragments of Val'anyr (of which you combine 30 to form the mace itself, reminiscent of Atiesh) drop mainly from hard-mode 25-man bosses, with a smaller chance to drop from non-hard-mode 25-man bosses. (Please correct me in the comments if you know this to be incorrect.) Which means if you're a healer in a 25-man raiding guild who's willing to put in some effort, you can probably get Val'anyr sooner or later. But if you're in a 10-man raiding guild, simply put, you're flat our of luck (unless you want to do a lot of pugs, I guess).
In my opinion, there is no justification for this. A common argument is that 25-mans are harder, and thus 25-man raiders "deserve" better gear. In my experience, this is absolutely false; the bits of 25-man Naxx that I've done I could practically have slept through, and 10-man Sarth with 3 drakes is generally accepted as the toughest fight in the game right now. This may be different in Ulduar (I haven't tried it on the PTR), but I doubt it - the more raiders you have, the more room for slack.
Another argument is that the 25-mans require more time investment. This is true to the extent that it's simply harder to wrangle 25 AFK-happy, incompatible-schedule-having raiders than 10 of them. But if that alone is enough to command better rewards, every guild leader who's ever held a guild meeting should get free epics. We should be rewarding skill, not suffering. This is related to the argument that 10-man raids are for "casuals", while 25-man raids are for "hardcore" players.
The third major argument in favor of the gear disparity between 10- and 25-mans, and a very telling one, is that if 10s had rewards equal to 25s, nobody would do the 25s. The only reason I can think of for this is that 25s are less fun to organize and/or to play that 10s. But should Blizzard really be using gear to incentivize players to do less fun content?
Note that I'm not advocating for free epics here. Reward should be proportional to effort. But reward should not necessarily be proportional to pain, which seems to be the idea behind the third argument.
I'll cut to the chase here: 25s are no harder than 10s, and not inherently better in any way that I can see. It's time to stop discriminating between the two. Let 10s and 25s reward the exact same quality of gear, and let the players' choice on which raid size to run be motivated by how many of their friends they want to play with, or the size of their guild, or what kind of a raiding environment they like, not the lure of better gear. And as an added bonus, you no longer have to itemize 10s and 25s separately if you don't want to.
If this leads to 25s being virtually abandoned, honestly, I see no problem with that. Let the most fun content win out. You don't see many people doing Heroic Oculus - should we make all drops in it 6 ilvls higher? To me, the answer is an obvious no. Instead, fix the content to make it more fun.
I don't, as it happens, think that changing 10s and 25s to drop the same gear would lead to an abandonment of 25s. There are lots of players out there who like the environment and the action of a 25-man raid, and there are lots of guilds built around that size of group. I seriously doubt everyone will suddenly start doing 10s just because their stats are no longer better than everyone else's.
Incidentally, this provides a solution to a concern about achievements that is currently under debate in the PTR forums. The realm-first achievements for Ulduar-10 were removed under concerns that 25-man guilds would pop into Uld-25 to get a few epics and then go back and clobber Uld-10, reaping the achievements. This is not behavior that Blizz wants to promote, so they pulled the Uld-10 realm firsts. If Uld-10 and Uld-25 rewarded the same gear, this would no longer be a possible strategy.
They are apparently planning to implement an achievement for defeating Algalon without having any gear of greater ilvl than Uld-10 hard modes (226), but we still don't get any realm-firsts in 10-man raiding, while the 25-man raiders do. Yeah, I'm whining a bit, but it is a disparity, and it does give the chance of a greater reward (a realm first) for easier content.
When I was hashing out this argument with the WoW Insider team, Alex and Rossi were very passionate that awarding the same gear from 10s that you do from 25s would kill 25-man raiding, despite the fact that many players prefer 25s. The reason for this would be that 25s take more time (which I'm not disagreeing with), and that players will optimize their play for greatest character advancement per time. In other words, if you can raid Uld-10 in 3 hours for gear of ilvl X, nobody is going to take the 4 hours to raid Uld-25 for gear of the same ilvl, no matter how much more they may prefer the 25-man-raiding environment.
This argument is reasonable, and Ghostcrawler appears to agree with it (or at least agree that the death of 25-man raiding would result from gear parity). However, I just don't buy it. I think that as long as the reward rate disparity isn't huge (as it is with current arenas, leading to their unpopularity), people will play what they want - if they like 25-man raiding, they'll do it. I don't think raiders aren't motivated by gear - they clearly are - but I also don't think they're solely motivated by gear. Other factors are at play.
For my 25-man-raiding constituency, I have make a pair of polls to test my hypothesis. These are obviously very unconclusive and unscientific, but I would appreciate your responses nonetheless. 10-man raiders or non-raiders, please refrain from voting; I'd like to keep these polls as representative as I can.
| Yes | |
|---|---|
| No |
| Yes | |
|---|---|
| No |
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 21)
Kahlvihn Mar 31st 2009 9:47PM
Here's a way to make 25 mans still viable using the same loot table as 10-mans. Quantity, not quality. If a boss drops two items in a 10-man, 1 out of 5 players gets something, so up the drop rate, have 25 man bosses drop six items, slightly better than 1 in 5 players get something per boss. Simple, but fair.
thebitterfig Mar 31st 2009 9:32PM
simple solution: have 10-mans drop 25 gear... BUT only sometimes. maybe 20% of the time, a higher iLvL 25-man piece of gear would drop, and the other 80%, a weaker 10-man version of the item could drop. the chance could be tweaked, but it should be there. 25-man raids will still have better gear over time, thus providing a reason for people to scrape up the 15 extra players, but those who can't gather as many players but who still want to raid can eventually get access to the same loot, it will just take longer.
Sorrowind Apr 1st 2009 11:03AM
This is a great idea and I wish it would be implemented. This really would work best for trinkets, rings, necklaces, relics, idols, etc.
For these items its hard to make a "lower tier" version and that is one of the most significant reasons that 25 man gear is significantly better. A solution like this would make it possible for 10 man raiders to get the 25 man gear (AND make 10 mans more appealing to 25 man raiders).
I also think there needs to be some more incentive to run heroics. A tier of heroics like H MgT with all epics from bosses could be a step, also some better gear purchases with EoH would help greatly. Perhaps give 5 and 10 mans the route to accumulate a large number of badges, say 100 for a MH weapon and 50 for an OH weapon - where the weapons are equivalent to 25 man content. This worked well in BC...I don't know why the expensive badge gear for heroic badges was not continued.
Cantor Mar 31st 2009 9:33PM
I disagree entirely; 10-man players often cite Sarth10+3 as one of the reasons that 10-mans are "just as hard, if not harder" than 25-mans. While this is true, it is THE ONLY 10 MAN ACHIEVEMENT that is held by fewer people than it's 25-man equivalent. I don't have a link to where I read that, but I believe it was actually on WoW Insider a few weeks ago.
Speaking as someone with a Plagued Protodrake, and only The Immortal seperating me from a Black Proto (please armoury Cantor of Emerald Dream-EU for the doubters), yes I will agree that Sarth-10+3 was harder. However, 6-minute Malygos was significantly more difficult on 25-man - we've done it a couple of times with less than 5 seconds to spare, whereas the last time I did the 10-man version, we had over 30 seconds left on the timer.
Similarly, the Undying vs the Immortal, Shocking-25 vs Shocking-10 (we actually had to work at the 25 one, the 10-man just happened)...we can do 10-mans with freshly dinged level 80s. 25-mans take at least some level 80 dungeon and heroic gear. They ARE harder, both in terms of time investment and tuning (Razuvious anyone?)
The Claw Mar 31st 2009 10:53PM
Agree 100% Cantor.
And the reason Sarth+3D was harder on 10-man was that the 10-man basically had all of the requirements of the 25-man version, but with a lot less players to cover them.
If you don't have 3 tanks, it takes a lot of skill to handle adds plus drakes.
If you don't have 3 healers, it's extremely difficult to heal the hardest phase of the fight.
..but you need a HEAP of dps, and if you've got 3 tanks and 3 healers that only leaves 4 dps!?
Whichever way you slice it, it's bloody hard. Either you've got a tank tanking drakes plus adds, or you've got two incredibly stretched healers (maybe with a boomkin or ele shaman switching to heal during twilight torment), or you need to stack the dps to high heaven so it's either all melee or all casters, covering all their needed buffs.
That's it. It's a 25-man fight with only 10 available to handle it. Everything else is clearly nerfed in the 10-man version by comparison.
Lode Mar 31st 2009 9:34PM
No...no, and no.
What you are asking here is that if you are a janitor for a school you should be paid the same as the principal of the school.
You want to buy a Ferrari, but paying the same amount as a Mini.
There is absolutely no substance, no reasoning why you should get the same rewards, none, zero, zulch, bugger-all, for doing less effort and gaining the same rewards as those that do more of an effort.
The folks here that are complaining that 10 man is harder than 25 man (achievements, which are OPTIONAL, put aside) seriously just don't understand the mechanics of the game, or have a fail guild, or can't be bothered with the extra effort, simply suck, or whatever the reason is. 10 man is NOT harder than 25 man, not by a long stretch.
Seriously, get some logic and common sense (which I have to point out, both traits have certainly become a bit of a super-power among people) in your brain retard.
bod Mar 31st 2009 9:37PM
Come on, we've cleared everything and most cases 25 is easier, you may not want to admit it but it is.
That doesn't mean that I think rewards should be the same, if they were the same 25 man would die.
But making an argument that 25 deserves more rewards because it's harder is fail, you just lose credibility, esp when you say we don't understand game mechanics.
Moose Mar 31st 2009 11:24PM
I think it's the other way around, if you find the 25 more difficult than the 10 then you have a fail guild, or seriously just don't understand the mechanics of the game, most likely you simply suck, or whatever the reason is. 10 man is harder than 25 man, not by a long stretch.
Seriously, get some logic and common sense (which I have to point out, both traits have certainly become a bit of a super-power among people) in your brain retard.
Dionisia Mar 31st 2009 9:38PM
I feel that yes, 25 man raiding is a pain to get all of the people, but after i do my 10 mans for the week, as others said, its great to have that option of 25 mans so i can still do Heigans Safety dance 1 more time. Also i feel that since the 25 mans arnt that hard, i mean finding good groups on my server are easy, and with a good group Naxx becomes fun adn not stressful. SO in the end i feel that 25 mans are good to have, gives people some other stuff to do, and with the gear being Better its nice to get it when you do finally win some 25 man gear. Gear should not be SO much better from 25 mans, but since it requires more people it still should have some better quality gear. Oh and lastly 25 mans are awesome and essential to raiders everywhere i think.
Perrin Mar 31st 2009 9:38PM
Something both the blogger and most commenters missed here:
Naxx 25 and Sarth 3D 25 have been identified by Blizzard as "Too easy".
Everyone says that Sarth 3D 10man is harder than Sarth 3D 25 man, so it should give the same gear. The issue isn't that Sarth 3D 10 man is too hard, its that Sarth 3D 25 man is TOO EASY.
Comments from Blizzard posters imply that in Ulduar Hard Mode, 25 man raids WILL be harder on each player than 10-man equivalents, thus the gear discrepancy has merit.
Lets wait till the first actually developed Endgame content for Wrath comes out, rather than bitching about the current "Overclocked 5-man instance" we call Naxx.
Brambt Mar 31st 2009 9:44PM
It should also be noted that Naxx is recycled content, and in being so is going to be a bit boring after running it 20 or 30 times in Northrend after doing it countless times pre-bc.
Also, the mere mention of achievements to justify this argument is really infuriating. Getting points and titles for a (mostly) pointless list is absolutely no reason to adjust the current loot system.
keeoto Mar 31st 2009 9:46PM
Strongly disagree, the only content available right now is much much easier than any entry lvl content in WoW before, it's simple and the logistics difference between 10 man and 25 man aren't even very relevant on these entry lvl encounters.
Anyone that has experienced Sunwell before 3.0 hit can very well tell you the reasons why most if not all the encounters there would lose a lot of it's difficulty when translated into the 10 man version. Having a group rotation for Kalecgos portal would be extremely simplified by only rotating 2 groups instead of 5. Brutallus and Felmyst positioning would be much simpler. Eredar twins would be much more forgiving because there's less of a chance ppl would be caught unaware of a conflag. M'uru and KJ would be almost a completely different encounter if it was balanced for 10 man.
My point is (at the risk of sounding all elitist and crap), the great majority of new raiders really have little idea how fast difficulty can ramp up for certain encounters. I know people talk about how losing one man in a 10 man is a much more significant loss, but they don't realize that at it's hardest (Sunwell), losing one man in a 25 man raid was also just as significant and logistically much more likely to happen.
Wurzmychiken Mar 31st 2009 9:45PM
I really don't think making gear in 10 man of similar quality to 25 man gear would kill 25 man raiding. All Blizzard has to do is create some new gear models, or maybe different types of gear that you can throw into 10s and 25s (Lets say 10 and 25 both have a similar caster trinket, same proc, one carries crit and the other carries hit. Same iLvl). Make it so that there are achievements that are separate for both 10 and 25, titles, mounts, tabards, things like that, because that's what I feel keeps the core interested in continuing this game. That and seeing content, and as being raider in both 10s and 25 mans, I'd say 25 is way more fun. 10s I feel are a bit harder (less room to mess up), while 25s are plain calm, and since you have so many people there's a lot more socializing going on and what not.
Dave Mar 31st 2009 9:47PM
Honestly, the difference in the gear is very very minimal.
my hunter is almost entirely ilvl200 with a couple of 213's. I can top the DPS charts every time with minimal effort even in a group of people with full 213+ gear, because the small difference in 200 to 213 just isn't enough to make things matter. I'm in a guild that struggles to get a reliable 10 people to show up for Naxx clears, so we mostly pug a 25-man on the weekends just to get a little bit of the gear...
And overall I'm disappointed the difference in the gear isn't THAT great.
Which leads to the further disappointment that SHOULD be the focus of people's complaints, and that's the fact that if you're a 10-man raider who occasionally pugs a 25-man, you're basically raiding Ulduar for kicks. You're not going to get a lot of mileage out of the loot, since you're going to basically be looking at sidegrades until your guild can master hard modes and/or whatever final boss drops the extra bump in ilvl. (sorry, I haven't paid enough attention).
It's difficult enough getting 10 people together when most people only want loot from a single boss right now... I imagine that the motivation to get these people in Ulduar past a couple of raids will basically run the same way when most of the people get their 2-3 upgrades from the first 12 bosses and nail a single kill of the last boss. At that point we'll be back on the alt train with half of them while the rest of the guild struggles to finish gearing up their players with a handful of half-geared alts shoving along.
That's the real problem with the loot levels to me. They needed to have made a bigger gap between Naxx10 and Ulduar10 to make it really worth people raiding it. After all, are most people really staying entirely away from Naxx 25 pugs?
maketu Mar 31st 2009 9:48PM
I will never run a 25 man - organising a 10 man is hard enough!
That said - i like the idea of there being a higher level of gear available for more effort, which is the heart of any reward system. The harder you work and the more time you commit should lead to bigger rewards surely.
If the hardest raid in the game currently is a 10-man, then that is an oversight or an abberation - any one who expect a 10 man raid to be slightly easier than the 25 man version?
angrypants Mar 31st 2009 9:48PM
"the bits of 25-man Naxx that I've done"
I might as well have quit reading here...
dost Mar 31st 2009 10:15PM
I agree. Huge flag went up when I read that. What have you done? How experienced are you with Naxx25, Maly25, and Sarth25+3?
Anyway, I have no argument that Nightfall is the hardest to do. But I believe it's been mentioned that Twilight Vanq isn't as hard as it should have been, as stated by Blizzard. It's hard to justify equalizing loot over one overtuned (or undertuned I guess) encounter. And adding more loot to 25-mans would just flood the market with Abyss Crystals.
Lode Mar 31st 2009 9:51PM
No, most people didn't miss that point. It seems for the most part folks here understand that achievements are optional. you do achievements after you're bored and want to spice things up a bit. This is totally another debate beyond the point of discussion here.
bod said:
But making an argument that 25 deserves more rewards because it's harder is fail, you just lose credibility, esp when you say we don't understand game mechanics.
What? I never commented that 25 deserves more gear, unless you have broken english and meant to say, "25 doesn't deserve better quality gear".
Again, I bring back my previous analogy. Folks want to buy a Ferrari for the same price as a Mini, since that is all they can afford.
Forgetting about the fact that the person who can afford the Ferrari, has for the most part, worked for it. They wanted it, they put in the effort to make it happen.
What do you illogical people think the man with the Ferrari will do when he finds out you can now buy a Ferrari for the same price as a Mini?
Sure, the folks who can now afford a Ferrari will surely be stoked, but the man that bought the Ferrari at the original price becomes demotivated, they loose their oomph to do that extra bit that 99% of people don't do.
So what happens now? You start having a social imbalancement. The hard working folks get dumbed down since they can get the same rewards as before, without doing the extra effort.
By doing what the retarded original blogger is saying, you dumb down the people using the system (if that's even possible to get dumber).
The fact is simple, you get rewarded for effort. Not just in the game, but everything you do, everday, every minute of your life. You can slap a 10 man group together for any content at present, and do it with minimal effort. You can NOT just slap together a 25 man group and go with it.
Again:
Seriously, get some logic and common sense (which I have to point out, both traits have certainly become a bit of a super-power among people) in your brain retard.
Bod Mar 31st 2009 10:27PM
You said, to quote "The folks here that are complaining that 10 man is harder than 25 man (achievements, which are OPTIONAL, put aside) seriously just don't understand the mechanics of the game, or have a fail guild, or can't be bothered with the extra effort, simply suck, or whatever the reason is."
You also said "There is absolutely no substance, no reasoning why you should get the same rewards, none, zero, zulch, bugger-all, for doing less effort and gaining the same rewards as those that do more of an effort."
Since I'm one of the folks pointing out (not complaining) that 10 mans are generally harder, I assumed you were referring to me or my ilk and that you were linking rewards with instance participants?
I used the term "fail", because you did. I'll try to improve my grammar in this reply, I'll also refrain from grammatical cheap shots if you will too.
You then make an argument about a ferrari which seems to be restatement of your original contention, that you believe 25 mans to be deserving of the better rewards.
What you neglect to do, is justify this contention, or offer any evidence that 25 man raids are significantly harder than 10 man raids. Conversely I suggest to you that Grobbulus, Gluth, Kel'thuzad, Sapphiron amongst others are far more easily executed on 25 man, and that's without resorting to Sarth + xdrakes that others have mentioned.
Now, before you flame me again, let me point out that I have also said that I do not believe the 10 and 25 man rewards should be the same. If they were equalised many of us would never run a 25 man again. In your words, I do not want to buy a Ferarri for the same price as a mini, I think the idea would be the death of minis.
But I say again, the reason for that is logistics, not difficulty, 25 man raidss in general are currently easier since they allow a ton of room for slack. Maybe in the future with a sunwell level of difficulty that will change, but for now 25 man = easy.
To modify your analogy for a final time, it's as if I go into the ferrari showroom with 10 friends and get a mini, yet if I take another 15 friends I get a ferrari for the same price, or arguably, even cheaper.
Since there is every indication that bliz will not ramp up the future difficultly of instances, but only offer hard modes, enabling everyone to see all the content, I see no reason for this situation to change. In other words the end result will be bribing us to participate in 25 man raids over 10 mans.
That seems to be a deliberate decision to fly in the face of player preference and I imagine this argument will continue to be made.
Schadenfreude Mar 31st 2009 9:51PM
I pug 25-mans occasionally when I'm feeling masochistic, but I'd never join a 25-man guild. Wrangling 24 idiots and spending all night to just barely clear easy content is not my idea of a fun time. The most positive 25-man experience I've had is Vault/OS because they're SHORT.
I'd love if 10-man instances dropped the same level of gear as 25-mans. Then maybe I'd have a shot at all the achievements and progression that I currently can't access because it's tuned for people in 25-man gear.