Typhoon Struggle claims world first strict 10-man heroic Lich King kill
by Mathew McCurley 
Aug 11th 2010 at 8:00PM
What are the 10-man strict rankings, you ask? GuildOx ranks the progression of guilds all across the different realms. The strict 10-man rankings are, essentially, 10-man raid groups that never have access to the 25-man versions of the instance. This means that a strict 10-man raiding group will never have gear or drops obtained through 25-man raiding.
To be considered and ranked on the GuildOx strict 10-man rankings, members of the 10-man raiding group can never earn an ICC-25 or ToGC-25 kill. Even though ICC-25 drops the same iLevel gear as ICC-10 heroic, GuildOx discourages the practice, as this allows strict 10-man raiding groups to gear up twice as fast. "Strict" means "strict." In addition, strict 10-man guilds usually only have a limited roster of between 10 to 12 people, since most others go on to the 25-man versions of the encounters.
According to Sheeana, the toughest phase was the first, as the Lich King's minions on heroic scale in power exponentially. These are raiders using, at the most, iLevel 264 gear.
For the full interview and announcement, including the criteria for the strict 10-man rankings, visit GuildOx. You can learn more about the criteria surrounding the strict 10-man rules here. Again, big congratulations to Typhoon Struggle!
Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
prenden2 Aug 11th 2010 8:12PM
Guildox: "So Sheeana, now that you've become the first 10-strict guild to beat the Lich King on 10 man heroic, what do you plan to do?"
Sheeana: "Well, Guildox, now we can finally start playing the game."
Wild Colors Aug 11th 2010 8:21PM
Right....b/c Heroic Lich King 10-man strict is such an easy encounter?
Avan Aug 11th 2010 8:24PM
Wild Colors fails at references.
prenden2 Aug 11th 2010 8:35PM
Yeah, I was going for a 'Make Love, Not Warcraft' reference! =D
Wild Colors Aug 11th 2010 8:47PM
Ahhh...sorry, I'm used to anti-10-man rhetoric.
blizzardsprules Aug 11th 2010 8:21PM
I'm on defias brotherhood EU, in fact I was on the night they downed him, and I didn't understand the hype, people were saying 'omg Typhoon Struggle have just downed HC LK 10!!!!' and I was like.....right so? 'They're a 10 man guild only!' Soooo??? but now that I've read what they ACTUALLY do, I'm very impressed, and honored that it happened on my server.
kooda Aug 11th 2010 8:57PM
I recently rolled an alliance mage on there i think Monday, and i must say im impressed to see this so soon after i joined the realm :D Congrats to them and keep on rockin'
AltairAntares Aug 11th 2010 8:22PM
I really think it says something about the game that it's managed to let so many kill an endgame boss, yet also provide a challenge to those really looking to turn the difficulty up 4 or 5 notches.
QQinsider Aug 11th 2010 9:11PM
I couldn't agree more, I think Blizzard have got the balance much, much better in this expansion.
Some of the "wowistooeasynow" brigade ought to try this. Or even getting a non-strict HC 10-man LK kill come to that. No chance. They all think killing him in 10-man normal with the 30% buff means they've beaten the game and know everything there is to know about it.
PlatedPriest Aug 11th 2010 9:28PM
@qqinsider
I know...i get so sick of my friends who whine that lich king is easymode...but i have yet to see them at least attempt heroic without a buff
theRaptor Aug 12th 2010 3:07AM
No, the balance is terrible. You either do easy mode or you do hard mode. I want a return to Ulduar non-binary hardmodes where there was an escalating difficulty curve.
Currently Blizzard are catering to the bottom 40% and the top >5%. It will be even worse in Cata if 10 and 25 are the same difficulty (currently about ~43% of raiders have done LK-10, ~15% have done LK-25).
Michael Aug 12th 2010 8:57AM
@theRaptor
While I shrug off at least 98% of your statistics, I support the idea of returning to Ulduar-style hard modes. Activating hard modes via some action we take during the encounter is 185% more fun than flipping a UI switch.
wutsconflag Aug 11th 2010 8:24PM
There are people who look down upon 10-man raiding as not being on the same level as 25s. "It's easier to get 10 people together than it is to get 25" and all that jazz.
The problem will go away in Cataclysm (hopefully), but I know my guild lost our #1 10-man strict position because people started doing 25s due to the perception that, somehow, that was the next step (due to higher ilvl gear).
jam Aug 11th 2010 8:32PM
Well, it's the next step in the sense that 25mans are a lot harder (yes, even if you're a "strict-10man raider").
It'll be interesting to see if they'll make 10mans harder in Cata since the gear drops will be of same ilvl. I expect 25mans will remain as the most challenging raid content that the top guilds are interested in, but hopefully 10mans will get closer in terms of difficulty.
Sleutel Aug 11th 2010 8:59PM
@jam:
"Well, it's the next step in the sense that 25mans are a lot harder (yes, even if you're a "strict-10man raider")."
Not necessarily accurate. Some mechanics are easier on 10-man than on 25, just because of the mechanics involved and the class balance that can be expected in a larger raid. But some fights are MUCH harder in a smaller group--Sarth+3D being a classic WotLK example of this.
Goodk4t Aug 12th 2010 11:55AM
Ghostcrawler himself said that 10-man in general were designed to be easier than their 25-man respective versions, with exception of a very few encounters that ended up being harder due to design flaw, like OS10 +3D, but that was not intented at all.
Now, I am not trying to say that a 25-man guild is better than a 10-man strict guild. What I am saying is that the discussion "Omg, 10-man are as hard as 25-man" is pretty much over by now.
Cantor Aug 12th 2010 11:59AM
@Sleutel
Everyone brings up Sarth3D when comparing 10 to 25 hardmodes. That was ONE FIGHT in the whole expansion. I did both the 10 and 25-man versions, and yes, the 10-man was harder. But that's the ONLY fight anyone ever quotes; I have yet to see anyone claim that Alone in the Darkness is easier in 25s...or Anub-arak in TotGC, or any of the ICC fights. Fact is, by-and-large, 10 man hardmodes ARE easier, for the reasons you mentioned - there's simply more space to spread out, and so AoE effects aren't as devastating because they're going to hit fewer people (think of Thorim's Chain Lightning here as an example - it increases damage per jump, and on 10-man it's easy to have it never hit more than 1 person, but in 25 it's almost always going to hit 2-3 people, depending on how you deal with spreading and how ranged-heavy your raid runs.
This, however, is an incredible achievement. Even with 277 gear, The Light of Dawn 10 is still of a bugger of an encounter. I have to pass on massive congratulations to Typhoon Struggle from Omen of Emerald Dream EU
Arann Aug 12th 2010 12:44PM
@jam: Some of the mechanics are more difficult in 25s (particularly on fights like Rotface and LK), but 10s are, IMO, a lot less forgiving in general.
While you might be able to lose a couple DPS or a healer in a 25, losing a healer or even one DPS can mean the difference between a win or a wipe. Our small-ish guild started off doing 10-man strict, and we progressed at a pretty decent rate, but it was when many of our guild members started pugging 25's for easy upgrades that we started demolishing the content (along with our 10-strict standing.)
Honestly, if you try both 10-strict and 25 content, I think you'll find that generally speaking, the challenge is fairly comparable, and the current disparity in loot quality is unnecessary.
IMO, tuning 10s upward a bit and equalizing the loot will be a welcome change to the game.
Avan Aug 11th 2010 8:26PM
Did they do it with or without the 30% buff?
jam Aug 11th 2010 8:41PM
Nope.
I believe Paragon was the first to kill it with 5% buff, with mixed 264/277 gear.