Ready Check: Catacysm raid changes a tier later
by Tyler Caraway 
Jun 17th 2011 at 4:00PM
When Cataclysm was being developed, Blizzard announced a lot of changes that they would be making to the raiding scene. Specifically, 10- and 25-man raids would now essentially be considered one and the same. They would share the same lockout, reward the same loot, and generally be considered as equal.
The community, in their grand resistance to change, called foul on many of these changes. Certainly, WotLK created an embitterment towards 10-man raiding as being "easier" or a "lower class" of raiding that simply wasn't on the same scope as 25-man raiding. In their defense, they had every right to think this because that is exactly how Blizzard had made raids at the time.
Now that we've been through a whole tier of raiding under these changes, and as we move onto the next tier, it is time to reflect back on all of the arguments that sprouted and see how realistic they really were.
Rant 1: 10-man content is easier
Shooting right at the heart of the fight, there largest concern regarding having both 10- and 25-man content provide the same rewards was that 10-man raiders wouldn't face nearly the same challenge as 25-man raiders. Way back to what seems like forever ago, 10-man content was easier. In fact, raiding first at the 10-man level in order to advance into the 25-man level was considered to be a common trend. Although the gear rewards weren't the same, they still provided that extra boost that could help a struggling guild progress.
In Cataclysm, I feel that Blizzard has actually done a rather good job in terms of balancing the difficulty of encounters across the two raid sizes. That being said, there are certainly some very obvious discrepancies between the two that can cause a little bit of friction.
The first is one of cooldowns. The entire raiding scene this expansion has been all about cooldowns, no one cares how much you can actually heal for, it's all about how much damage you can mitigate. In this respect, 10-man content certainly has an easier go of the matter. This is because there are several abilities that have artificial caps on them. Anti-Magic Zone is a clear example of this.
Dropping an Anti-Magic Zone in a 25-man raid and a 10-man raid will probably result in the same amount of damage being mitigated due to the cap, yet in the 10-man raid there's significantly less damage going out. Nefarian is a prime example of this with his Electrocute ability. While AMZ will clearly break early in both situations, it would reduce a larger percentage of the overall damage in a 10-man raid.
The off-set of this is numbers. While such cooldowns are more effective in 10-man content, one would expect more of them in 25-man content. This dichotomy that exists between the two creates a natural balance, but is it balanced? Certainly healing in 10-man content is less intensive, but at the same time one can easily make the argument that each healer has more pressure on them because there is a disproportionate amount of healers. A 10-man with two healers has 1/5 of the raid healing, which equates to five healers in 25-man, yet six is a more common number to see.
I've seen nearly all 10-man content healed by a single healer once the raid is on farm. Though the accounts of 25-man content using two and half healers are fewer, it's possible that such occurrences simply aren't talked about as much.
Balancing encounter mechanics
For what it is worth, most content has been pretty evenly balanced at this point, but there are still some rather obvious outliers that deal exclusively with encounter mechanics themselves. It's a fact that we have to face: Certain mechanics will always be easier to handle in 10-man content, while others will always be easier in 25.
The Twilight Ascendant Council, as an example, is far easier in 10-man instead of 25-man. This is because the spreading mechanic that players have to deal with is simpler with fewer players. Further, DPS control is easier to do with fewer DPS, particularly fewer DOT effects ticking off on a boss. Perhaps the most grievous case of this offense was Al'akir, who was ridiculously easier to defeat in 10-man content than 25-man. So much easier, in fact, that many 25-man guilds broke down into 10-man raids just to tackle this encounter.
To be fair, not everything is rosy for 10-man raiders either. Encounters which rely heavier on certain class mechanics are far more difficult for them to handle. Cho'gall proved this rather effectively. 10-man guilds had a lot more composition trouble in having to deal with slowing adds and breaking mind controls. There are a plethora of abilities that can break Worship, but it's easier to do in 25 than 10.
The same is also true for encounters which require the use of a player to perform a secondary task. Having a death knight kite adds for Magmaw or Conclave of Winds is trivial for a 25-man group whom have plenty of players to spare. It's a bit harder to do this in a 10-man, though, where you don't have the player capital to go around.
With pros and cons on either side, it's difficult to say that either holds less value than the other. The reality is that both offer their own, unique challenges that have different ways of over coming them.
Rant 2: 10-mans require less logistical planning
Getting 25 different people together and running in a smooth raiding guild is tough work -- any guild or raid leader can attest to this. If it isn't one problem, then it's another. 25-man content requires more coordination, period. You need more time to set up player roles, more time recruiting, more supplies, more everything. It isn't easy, and for that 25-man raiding guilds felt they should be rewarded for the additional effort.
Blizzard agreed with this sentiment and offered superior loot gains for raiding in a 25-man setting, allowing you to gear up players faster (at least in the theoretical sense). While this wasn't entirely enough for some players, I frankly think that it is overly generous.
While there is no denying that it is more difficult to organize a 25-man raid, 10-man raiders certainly face tough logistical problems of their own. Raid composition matters far more in a 10-man raid than it does to a 25-man raid. This can actually result in recruitment problems just as difficult as those seen by 25-man guilds.
A 25-man raid doesn't need to stack any particular class nor spec. They need a few bare essentials, but after that, a vast majority of players are pretty much filler. Have two or three balance druids? Whatever, sucks for them to fight over the gear. Four hunters? Who cares? Having a surplus of any particular class or spec isn't really prohibitive in that setting.
This simply isn't the case for a 10-man raiding guild. You have far fewer options in the type of spec or class that you can take, and every one of those choices matters far more. For example, a 10-man raid with a fury warrior, retribution paladin, shadow priest, elemental shaman, and arcane mage as their primary raiding DPS is going to be in a really sore spot for AOE and slows.
Who you takes matters far more in a 10-man raid. There, your composition can literally make or break you for certain encounters. There's buff stacking to worry about, cooldown disparity, and a slew of other concerns that you have to juggle, too. 25-man raids aren't easy to organize by any means, but anyone who claims that 10-man players can just pick up nearly anyone and go is fooling themselves. Ten-man raids take their fair share of planning.
Rant 3: 25-man raids won't matter, guilds will die!
OMG RUN! RUN! RUN! It's the guild-pocalypse! Guilds all across the WoW-verse are suddenly going to implode and no one anywhere is going to be raiding 25-man content ever! Hide your children! Hide your wives! Hide your cute, fluffy teddy bears!
There was a lot of hubbub that every single raiding guild in the game was suddenly just going to disappear and that the days of the 25-man raider were numbered. Why would you bother running 25-man content if it was harder, more logistically challenged, and didn't actually offer anything tangible in return?
On the personal side of things, back then, somewhere deep down, I probably shared this fear. The guild that I had spent all of TBC and Wrath with died due to this very specific change. We were a struggling 25-man guild that was always recruiting people, and constantly looking for people. All in all, we were average. When it came about that we could do 10-man raids in Cataclysm and get the same rewards, that was that. We became a 10-man guild.
I prefer my 25-man raids and wanted to keep that, so I set off. It left me wondering how many other people had the same experience that I did. In all honesty, there's probably a large number. And yet, 25-man raiding didn't die in the least.
Twenty-five-man raiding still happens all over Azeroth. New 25-man guilds crop up all the time, and there just isn't any real sense that it's a waste of time to work towards 25-man raiding. It is clearly a matter of preference, and you'll gravitate to the one you like the most. If you want a 25-man raid group, you can easily find one, just as it was before.
Where will we go from here?
This has only been the first Cataclysm tier. The changes are still just settling in and no one can ever really predict what the future is going to hold. The player base changes as the demographic changes, and with that comes different needs. It is unlikely that we will ever return to the previous days of 40-man raiding, and I will honestly say that any new MMO out there which tries such a thing will only be able to reach a niche level of success that simply won't compare to what WoW has grown into.
MMOs themselves are changing, because those that play MMOs are changing. The original player base is getting older; their wants and desires morph with their age. The new young guns hold different ideas and values when it comes to gaming. Further, the "older" generation is becoming more and move involved in the gaming community. As time changes all things, so will games adjust. This has been one raiding adjustment; so far I believe it has worked out rather well.
What shall the future hold for the raid setting as a whole?
Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. Be sure to look up our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric advice, visit Raid Rx.
Filed under: Raiding, Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
cyanea85 Jun 17th 2011 4:10PM
"Way back to what seems like forever ago, 10-man content was easier."
Sarth 3D 10man, pre 3.1 says hello. Lose one or two out of 25, and you can probably push on. Lose one out of ten, and you might as well wipe it up.
"In fact, raiding first at the 10-man level in order to advance into the 25-man level was considered to be a common trend."
Actually, the common trend seemed to be "take previous tier's 25-heroic gear and roflstomp both 10 and 25m normals, using the former as practice to claim your 25m world/realm first.
When you were a strict 10-man guild, using only 10-man gear...10mans were plenty difficult. Ridiculously so when I pugged into 25-mans and saw a third of a raid standing around picking their nose.
Tarragon Jun 17th 2011 4:43PM
I will never understand why people think 10s are easier because there are less people. There is a reason all the cataclysm world firsts were done in 25 man. And that's because 25s are balanced around having dead weight. But if you're Paragon or Ensidia or whoever, every one of your raiders is a tip top player, so you don't have dead weight, and are thereby overpowered for the content.
The other reason 10s are harder is because of personal responsibility. If you're a healer in 25, you have people to cover for you if you screw up and die. In 10 man, there are 3 healers, each one has a different responsibility, and they cannot cover each other very much at all, because each one is stretched already.
Tyler Caraway Jun 17th 2011 4:44PM
Ahh Sarth 3D, the one and only 10-man content that was difficult, until you could zerg it of course, then it was just plain silly.
Mechanics can make certain encounters more difficult depending on raid size, that's just how it goes. Sarth 3D just happened to be one of those. Using a single instance where mechanic design played against a particular raid size as evidence against the truth isn't a solid argument.
10-mans were easier than 25-mans in Wrath. They were this way because Blizzard made them that way.
"When you were a strict 10-man guild, using only 10-man gear...10mans were plenty difficult."
Indeed they were, because that was the design intent. Yet, there was little reason to do this other than if you were a strict 10-man guild.
Although it's nice to appreciate and respect those guilds that were strict 10's back in Wrath, there simply isn't any means by which they can be legitimized. 10-man content was designed to be easier than 25-man content. It was easier than 25-man content, even for pure 10-man guilds.
The Dewd Jun 17th 2011 4:45PM
I couldn't agree with you more.
sullyXXX Jun 17th 2011 4:49PM
I agree, I always preferred 10-mans, just because it felt like more of a well-oiled machine, with each component doing it's job to the best of its ability, as opposed to a zergfest with some dead weight.
Personally, the only reason I found 25 man harder, was that there were more people to make raid-wiping mistakes.
Arrohon Jun 17th 2011 4:52PM
There is a simple reason why all world firsts are done in 25-man. Top guilds were 25-man in Wrath so they already had the players to do 25 in Cata. If you have 25+ good players that have experience working together you're not going to split them up.
cyanea85 Jun 17th 2011 5:01PM
@Tyler
I did not mean to imply that Sarth 3D was the only difficult 10man fight. The two sentences of that rebuttal are intended to be different ideas. My lack of sleep and coffee made that unclear, and I apologize.
The fact of the matter is true: 10mans are harder than 25s because of logistics. When one person drops in a 10man, a full tenth of your raiding output is now tanking the floor. In 25-man, it's 4%. If a DPS dies, he will likely be covered by the remaining DPS. I've been in countless 25-man fights where we had a tank die, and one of the other tanks moved in to cover the gap. It was hard, the healers had to work at keeping them up, but we made it. That would be impossible in most 10man fights.
Neither 10 nor 25 man is easy, but 10-man raids rely much more heavily on personal responsibility and each lost person is a major blow to the raid's chance to get the boss down. I think that makes 10-mans much more difficult than people assume, just because it has smaller numbers.
Murdertime Jun 17th 2011 10:40PM
Naxx 10 was far harder than Naxx 25. A single mistake could wipe your raid and on the fights where it wouldn't, you were trying to perform complex actions that would be made massively easier with more people using just one person.
For most of the rest of the raids, it was about even, provided you weren't overgearing by running 25 mans, coming back to 10's and then proclaiming how easy the raids were.
Goodk4t Jun 18th 2011 2:14AM
@cyanea85: Ghostcrawler himself said at start of Cataclysm that the Devs always designed the Wrath 10-man to be easier than 25-man, save for a few raids that were not working as intended (Sartharion + 3 Drakes). I understand that 10-man could be challenging for strict 10-man guilds that had no 25-man gear, but you are fooling yourself if you actually think 10-man were harder than 25-man.
cyanea85 Jun 18th 2011 3:15AM
As has happened multiple times in the game, what the developers intend doesn't always work. DKs were intended to be a class with three tank specs. That ended up not working. Paladins were designed at the beginning of Cata to be weaker tank heals in exchange for greater AoE flexibility. It's taking until 4.2 to make most of that happen.
From a strict design standpoint (mechanics and numbers), 10-mans are easier. From a gameplay stand point (you need 10 solid players, not 10-15 with room for slackers; you can't afford to lose people in 10-man while you can in 25, etc), 10-mans are harder.
Naryn Jun 17th 2011 4:16PM
i agree on most points but the number of 25 man guilds has been reduced significantly, on my realm there were once 4-5 very strong and fairly old 25 man raiding guilds, at least 2 of them stretching back to Vanilla.
At the start of Cataclysm my realm actually had 6 25 man guilds, this has now gone down to a mere 2, both on the Alliance side.
DarkWalker Jun 17th 2011 5:22PM
The rest of the question, though, is: what about the 10-man raiding guilds?
If they indeed increased, this would mean players are migrating from 25-mans to 10-mans in your realm.
If they stayed constant or even reduced in number, then this mostly means there are less raids forming overall.
Raiding in Cataclysm is less accessible than in WotLK, players are now prevented from raiding 10-man and 25-man with the same character on a single week, and WoW lost 5% of it's player base between December 2010 and May 2011. I would be actually surprised if raiding activity hadn't decreased compared with WotLK.
leggomymuoio Jun 18th 2011 8:14AM
Same happened on my realm. We persevered as long as we could, but with 10 mans be easier in most normal encounters, recruiting for 25s became fairly difficult. Going into 4.2, my guild has actually decided to split into 2 10-man groups simply because we can't fill a 25 person raid that isn't carrying at least 5 people.
The simple truth, whether 10s are harder or not, is that finding 9 other competent people is easier than finding 24 other competent people. Combine that with guild perks and recruit for 25 became a whole lot harder.
My server had many successful 25m guilds in WotLK but I'd say we're down to about 3-5 total now with only 1 truly pushing heroic content.
threesixteen Jun 20th 2011 2:59PM
^^^ on million billion times.
25 man raid guilds have dropped off the face of azeroth. perhaps the bleeding edge guilds managed to maintain their memberships; i'm sure high end guilds have no trouble recruiting from all the fallouts from the more casual raiding 25s... but it's so painfully obvious that the VAST majority of 25 man teams have folded in favour of the easier to maintain 10 mans.
and once again, why not? why bother trying to keep a roster of 30 'great' players for 25 man teams, when it's just soooo much easier to manage a 'great' roster of 12-15 players for a ten man team. what's the benefit to 25s again? more loot? hmm. eventually blizzard gives away the loot anyway, so just wait long enough and they'll nerf content and hand over epics so that's really not much of an incentive (again, for less-than-hardcore teams; ie: the vast majority of us)...
plus, the idea that some folks have that you can raid with 23 or 24 people if a few don't show up (that's the argument used by many people who claim that 10s are 'harder'. bah!. 10s are cake compared to 25s. everyone who has done both knows this as fact) is totally B.S. No raid have ever been tuned to work for less than the full complement.
anyway, would have been nice to have separate cheeves depending on the raid team size. too bad.
matticus Jun 17th 2011 4:37PM
10 man content healed by a single healer? What fight? We have had 6/12 at least on farm for awhile and I can think of a couple fights we do with 2 healers, but 1 healer? Damn that guy/gal is leetsauce. Even Magmaw would be really tough.
No, Argaloth does not count.
DragonFireKai Jun 17th 2011 4:50PM
I've never heard of magmaw being solo healed, even on normal. There's just a brutal amount of raid damage. With some specialized comps, I could see maloriak, omnitron, Atramedes, chimaeron, and Double Dragons being solo healed on normal. But it would be patently impossible for fights like conclave, Al'Akir, and nefarian. So I highly doubt mr. Caraway's claim that he's seen nearly all of the tier's fights single healed.
Tyler Caraway Jun 17th 2011 4:57PM
Maloriak and Atramedes are the easiest to solo heal so far as I know. I wouldn't think that Dragons would be all that difficult either provided you have a raid that's capable of actually avoiding Void Blasts.
It also matters on the tanks you bring. Having a paladin and warrior as your tanks would make things easier given that both have raid wide CDs they can use to help mitigate damage; plus paladins have really ridiculous self healing, even for raiding standards.
Having a shadow priest along helps as well. Come to think of it, a well geared shadow priest could rather easily handle a significant portion of the raid damage done in normal 10's for several encounters. Pair that with a few other hybrid DPS that have defensive or healing based cooldowns to use and it shouldn't be that bad really.
I'd think Omnotron would be rather trivial too.
Riari Jun 17th 2011 5:01PM
No kidding. I'm looking at that and going "What?!" For bosses we downed every week in a 10man only raiding guild, we still kept three healers going. Just two weeks ago on our last Magmaw run, my paladin healer was saying that he could easily go dps instead. I considered it, but I locked our raid to Nefarian the next night so we haven't tried it out.
Still trying to get Nef down.
matticus Jun 17th 2011 5:03PM
I said Magmaw because that is one we two heal. I wouldn't try it with one for sure!!
And a medal to the healer who can pull Chimaeron off by him/herself, unless the other 9 are DKs and Paladins.
mazca13 Jun 17th 2011 5:03PM
Yeah, I was wondering the same. We've *never* one-healered a single Cata raid boss, even Argaloth. Several we can comfortably do with 2 and generally do, but one? I'm sure there are some we could theoretically do it on (a well-executed Atramedes or Omnitron, maybe) but it just strikes me as an unnecessary risk in case some horrible RNG happens to that one healer.