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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 6 of 21)
Lode Mar 31st 2009 10:45PM
Bod:
I'm not flaming you, and I apologise if that was the perceptoin you got, this was not my intention.
Now, that is interesting that this is said:
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.
10 friends, each have $25, that's $250. 15 friends, that's $375. Now, let's say each person has spent 10 hours for $25, that's 100 hours spent for $250, 15, 150 hours for $375.
Clearly, as a group, 10 people spent less time, for less money. 15 people had so spend more time, but at the same token, received a higher reward.
And this translates back to 10 vs 25. You now have 10 people doing an encounter vs 25 people doing the same encounter. On a per hour basis for easy reference, 10 hours vs 25 hours.
Should your group of 15 friends that spent more time together get a the same package as your 10 friends?
bod Mar 31st 2009 10:49PM
oh come on, now you're being picky - the amount of loot you get in 25 mans is more in quality and QUANTITY. So my 10 friends get a single mini and my 25 friends get 3 ferraris....
The point still stands.
Same or easier effort on 25, better rewards. No wonder this argument is being made. And I'm sympathetic to it - 25s should be made harder, or the rewards should be equalised.
You know you can reply to a post right?
Lode Mar 31st 2009 11:08PM
Yep, apologies, first time poster ;-) Didn't release the reply button replies to the replies...figured it's only for the OP.
That I would totally agree with, since that doesn't apply with current content. 25 as a whole is not harder than 10 and as a previous poster also pointed out, loosing one person in 10 is detrimental to raids ability to complete an encounter (few exceptions of course, such as having 3 healers, and loosing one, or a DPS).
As it stands now, the only viable point why you get better loot from 25 vs 10 is that organising the said 25 is harder (harder is perhaps the wrong word here, "having to spend more time" is better), not the actual content. Now you have a loop again, you now have 25 people who need to organise themselves vs 10 people having to be organised for the group.
You have more people doing more things to ensure the encounter is completed, surely one can see that there must be a better reward for the GROUP, not the individual (although, the reward in essence is for the individual, it is there for the guild so that you can do more DPS come the next encounter, or do more TPS, bigger heals when needed, et cetera. All of which have a direct effect on the groups' ability).
Caelis Mar 31st 2009 10:45PM
I personally think 10s and 25s should drop the same gear and, as you say, let you pick which one you enjoy the most.
I realize however that 25s are harder to organize (but not run) due to the number of players involved, and so I think there should be a slight reward for running 25s.
However instead of rewarding higher levels of gear, why not just reward more items? Instead of bosses dropping 2.5 times the items, drop 3 times as many items. Ie if the 10 man boss drops 2 items, drop 6 items from 25.
That way your incentive for running 25 (and investing more time and frustration) is a better return on items. You gear faster and progress quicker.
I wouldn't be adverse to 10s and 25s sharing a lockout timer to prevent double farming of gear.
Rusham Mar 31st 2009 10:49PM
I think that to keep 25s still running with equal gear in both 10s and 25s you would need to make more achievements and cosmetic items for 25s
Decrusher Mar 31st 2009 10:47PM
The reason that 25's would stay alive is blindingly obvious. If you do 10 man and your gear dosn't drop, just do 25 and you get a second chance at it. this would lead to a continuation of 25 man raiding.
Jacklifear Mar 31st 2009 10:51PM
I disagree with the post and think that there should be different gearsets for each as it is. The ultimate flaw IMHO is that using current content as a basis is only a slight amount of the total data. It's just hard to remember that we're on phase 1 of a 4 phase project. You have to consider arguments that hold water for all 4 phases on a decision like this which is what it will be.
Blues have admitted:
- They overtuned Sarth3D 10 man and it should have been easier or 25 should have been harder. Design flaw by blizzard.
- Naxx 10/25 currently rewards low skill level. The current environmental hazards can be healed through so low skill existing can allow for good results anyway.
- Ulduar and later will allow for less error again and will require persons to manage mana again. These are two VERY DISTINCT flaws in the current design that makes both modes incredibly easier than they should be.
- They had to do what they could to redesign Naxx to the 10/25 man model and people have had years to learn/master the content. This created a instance that was easily puggable from day 1. Ulduar will not be the same as the further raid instances.
I'll agree, if the rest of WOTLK was designed as it is today, then this argument holds 110% water. The problem is as the dungeons evolve and key elements that have been removed are restored (Mana management, error punishment increased, Positioning Complexity, self-awareness, increased chaos control) then 25 man content will start to quickly show complexity again.
We're just revisiting the core of the game... MC40 could allow 1/3rd of the raid to be sloppy to succeed, Naxx40 eventually could require no one to be sloppy for success.
*plink plink* 2 cents
miko Mar 31st 2009 10:48PM
this was quoted a while back as the progression Blizzard are actually aiming for by Bornakk: Naxx 10 < Naxx 25 = Ulduar 10 < Ulduar 25
here is the thread: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/14990758982-emblem-of-conquest--t725-in-10-man-ulduar.html
i'll extend it swap it around a little for clarity
Naxx 10 < Naxx 25 = Ulduar 10 < Ulduar 25 = 3.2 Raid 10 < 3.2 Raid 25 = Icecrown 10 < Icecrown 25
as you can see the 10 and 25 mans are not supposed to be equal but one 'teir' behind (and this is why you will receive Emblem of Valor in 10 man Ulduar)
so the question the article is based on is moot because the stated aim of Blizzard (parallel progression through 10s and 25s) is already well stated in the public domain and even has a 'flow chart' *sigh*
as for the rest of the points raised organisation and dissemination of information do no affect the standing difficulty of an encounter.
some encounters in 10s can be harder simply because they require more out of the individuals concerned than in 25s and drakes in OS is not the only example of this dispite the fact that it is spun out as such (Sapphiron is another for example)
if you are progressing as a unit through the game (a 10 man guild or a 25 man guild) personally experienced encounter difficulty actually shifts back and forth between the two depending on the encounter.
if you are going into 10 mans wearing 25 man gear and outgearing the encounters then yes ofc everything in 10s is going to be easy.
Melak Mar 31st 2009 10:51PM
I'd have to say that 25 men content should deserve better loot.
As the raid leader of my guild, doing both 10 and 25 men content, I would say that 25 men content deserves better loot. Even though technically the 10 men version is harder, from the execution point of view, in my guild it's easy to find 10 good players to do the 10 men version. However when it comes to 25 men version, its usually 19 or so good players and 6 people needing to be carried. The only reason people can be carried in 25 men version means the raid is less difficult. I know for a fact that if 25 men raid becomes like that of archimonde, where one person dying would wipe the raid, it would sure be more difficult than a 10 men version of that boss.
In addition, its much more fustrating for the raid leaders to coordinate 25 people than 10 people, especially when content is new, e.g going into naxx 25 men for the first time. Compared to naxx 10 men for the first time.
So yeh, hope blizzard does not make the same mistakes as they did with naxx 25 men.
PS: on a side note..I really like to see trash being so much more difficult. I know a lot of mages already forgot what polymorph is, and taken it out of their keybinds >_
Draim Mar 31st 2009 10:50PM
Well thought out article, though I totally disagree. I'll say my piece but you can also look at
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/16019602132-gc-quote-clarification.html
which shows alot of ghostcrawlers responses on this issue a couple days ago (which I'm assuming may have sparked the article?).
You are correct, right now 25 mans are not harder then 10 mans, they may be easier. HOWEVER, that is not how they want it to be. This is just because they are undertuned not because they 10 mans are inherently harder. If they are going to make the loot the same they should just cut out 25 mans all together, the majority of people are in it for the loot its a loot run game and it is alot easier to get 10 people together to do a raid. Yes part of the difficulty in a larger raid is wrangling 25 people to do it. Is that a problem? I honestly wish we went back to more 40 man raids though I know we won't, i think 10 man raids are a great idea but they are not a replacement for a good large raid and should not be on par with those raids if you want to keep them viable in any way at all.
Soteria Mar 31st 2009 11:17PM
No.
Currently, 25-man is not inherently harder than 10-man, but it can be, should be, and will be in Ulduar.
Let's look at the High King fight in Gruul's Lair. Let's make a 10-man version with scaled-down hp.
Ok, we have 5 mobs to tank. We need a two regular ol' tanks for the king and the priest. We need a mage and a warlock to tank the mage and warlock, respectively, and we need another to tank the crazed dude, preferably a hunter. We'll say for the sake of argument that they nerf his abilities so a single hunter can tank him effectively. Now we're probably going to need three healers to take care of all these tanks, especially considering how spread out everyone is. Even so, you have to nerf incoming damage some more just because some of these healers are going to be healing multiple tanks that are again spread out.
So far we have two tanks, a mage, a lock, a hunter, and three healers. That leaves just two spots for you to bring whatever else you want (like a rogue). Also, that means you're only going to have 2 dps on the priest, so you have to nerf his shield accordingly. So basically in the end they have to tune the encounter bearing in mind that you're only going to have 2-3 dps on each of the first couple mobs, and they've already gone and required such a specific group makeup that a lot of "casual" guilds simply wouldn't be able to do the fight on many nights. It's possible, but it goes against the whole spirit of introducing the 10-man raid in the first place.
25-man raids can simply be made more complex and more difficult than 10-mans without putting unfair constraints on the raiders.
Samuel Varian Mar 31st 2009 10:52PM
I would definitely still do both; twice the change to get loot every week!!
Robert Mar 31st 2009 10:55PM
Lovely article, well thought out and articulate.
Here's my personal take: I am in a smaller guild, and there's just no way we have the people for 25-man raiding. We are a casual community type of guild, and if we progress in raiding that's great but it isn't the focus. There are those of us that take the time to grind rep and run as many heroics as possible and gem and enchant, and there are those that don't, which is fine. The consequence is that 10-mans are our limit unless we PuG (ew).
I don't think that 25mans should reward better gear, but perhaps proportionally MORE gear for the amount of time spent and number of players required. Correct me if I am wrong, but don't corresponding bosses in Naxx10 and Naxx25 drop the same number of pieces?
Now, perhaps make "hard mode" 25-man only with slightly better rewards? I dunno. It does suck though, that I can't ever get said mace simply because we have 10-15 very dedicated people instead of 25 mildly dedicated ones.
Charlie Mar 31st 2009 11:38PM
This is the most intersting thing and another change that hasn't quiet gone over well.
I think blizzard wanted and intended for smaller guilds to be happy with 10 man raiding. But the problem is that when naxx is so eazy, people are going to want to complete content that haven't completed yet.
Case in point. If people have enough 10 man content to do, they will be happy to do it, even if the loot isn't as good.
Thats the way i think at least.
Justin Mar 31st 2009 10:55PM
The bigger problem is dungeon difficulty. If they give the same rewards, the dungeons would have to be the same difficulty.
So, either the casuals would complain that everything was too hard, or the hardcore people would complain that everything was too easy. I don't think there is any middle ground here - except possibly making everything easy and leaving the hard modes to hardcore raiders.
I think Blizzard has realized that having content be so easy is a bad thing. With the 10/25 split they can make 10mans easy for casuals so they can see all the content, and they can make 25mans harder for the hardcore people.
The other problem with 10mans - particularly on difficult fights - is that group make up plays a large role, especially in your first few kills. And that goes against Blizzard's mantra of bring the player not the class. You have much more flexibility in 25mans.
Abraxxis Mar 31st 2009 10:56PM
"In my opinion, there is no justification for this."
Um, you've received a number of justifications for this and you chose to ignore them or discount them entirely. That is not the same as there being no justification. It's like a kid sticking his fingers in his ears and saying, "nyah, nyah. I can't hear you."
Your counterarguments very clearly show that you don't understand how 25-man raids are built and maintained, nor how you keep a crew of people able to run the 25-man content. You don't understand the interaction of buffing sets and the interplay of the classes.
And, because you don't understand, you discount any arguments based on what you don't understand.
camf1991 Mar 31st 2009 10:56PM
I have only done 25 man nax a couple of times, and I personally agree with the concept that it should be better (loot wise). As GC has said (correct me if I am wrong) players go where the loot is. While I agree Val'nyr should should drop in 10 man too (perhaps at a slower rate to compensate for having less competition in raid), i think that 25 mans need to continue having improved loot. Its simply a way to do raid progression.
Kara-> Mags/Gruul. Simple yes? Most people I see are also taking it as Nax 10-> Nax 25 and so forth.
Bonovox-Nagrand Mar 31st 2009 11:07PM
I wish they would have 10-man ONLY raids and 25-man ONLY raids. problem solved, and things go back to the way raiders enjoyed them in BC.
They could however improve the BC raid progression by having 2-3 10 man raids, and then at a higher level of difficulty have the 25-man raids.
Aigarius Mar 31st 2009 10:58PM
Current 25mans are too easy, Blizzard said so and they will fix it in Ulduar. They should be harder and that is exactly the reason why they give better loot.
kabshiel Mar 31st 2009 10:58PM
I think they should ditch this "two path" thing and just choose a number to make all raids. I'm a fan of 15-man raids myself.