#0 - March 11, 2009, 6:34 p.m.
I found the idea of 10/25 man versions of each raid instance to be somewhat questionable from the outset. My personal belief, before WOTLK was launched, was that doing so would force the majority of raiding guilds to clear the 10 man versions of the dungeons, before they attempted to the 25 man. This would lead to a lot of mindless repetition of the same content, and for the first time, progression through bosses you’d already killed before, just with an ability or two and a few million hp tacked on.
As to whether or not that’s happened is debatable. One can argue that while that’s probably what would have happened had the content been challenging enough to warrant it, in reality, guilds were able to pick and choose since there was very little difference in difficulty between Naxx10 and Naxx25. VoA and Malygos also have similar difficulty levels, with only Sartharion+drakes being a more challenging encounter in 10 man than in 25. The difficulty was sufficiently low as to not require 10 man raid gear to beat 25 man content, though it certainly helped a lot and most guilds resorted to it anyway, to ease the process of progress.
The issue I am currently seeing with Blizzard’s decision to take the 10 and 25 man route, is a lack of consistency and an unclear design philosophy. There are two paths you can potentially take when dealing with 10/25 man content.
Route 1 – Separate but Equal – Attempt to balance 10/25 content to be equally difficult and provide similar rewards (only in the case of 10 man, fewer of them).
Route 2 – 10 man = standard 25 man = heroic – Deliberately tune 10 man content to a lower difficulty than 25 man, and provide rewards that are less powerful.
There is something of a debate as to which is the current route, and that’s what I’d like to happen today. The issue I have is that Blizzard doesn’t seem have chosen either yet.
Consider some of the following facts.
I personally lean towards the opinion that 10 man raiding should be a separate, but equal path. I do not subscribe to the theory, particularly with current content, that merely because getting 9 other people can potentially be easier than getting 24, that 10 man should naturally be viewed as easier as a result. My concern at this point is that this is not what’s happening. I refer to the Sarth+3 drakes encounter hard-mode. I asked this question on my show, as to whether or not anyone knew any 10-man exclusive guild, that had been able to kill Sarth 3-drakes using only 10 man gear. Out of 50,000+ listeners, nobody knew a single guild that had managed it. Having been involved in attempts on S3D-10, I can see why. The dps requirements are astronomical and 10-man gear players could not accomplish that level of damage output. It seems to me that this is nothing to do with group skill, but simply a gear check that 10 man raid guilds cannot pass.
With this in mind, how many other hard-mode 10 mans can we expect to be unbeatable without 25 man gear? I am not part of a 10 man guild, nor do I wish to be, but I accept that some players prefer to raid in smaller groups. An ex-hardcore raider that I used to live with is now part of a 10 man guild and says that he prefers the environment, with less drama, less competition over loot and the opportunity to raid with his friends, and only his friends, in a streamlined guild with less administration required. I’d imagine he’s not the only one and to me, that seems like a perfectly valid choice of playstyle. It’s a big change from pre-Wrath, in which there were very few smaller raid dungeons, most of which were only introduced later on and in response to the demanding nature of the larger raids at the time.
It seems unlikely that Blizzard could successfully balance 10 and 25 man raid encounters perfectly, but then, is there any need to? Some encounters will naturally be easier with smaller raids, some will naturally be harder, that we’ve already seen. Would a mix of the two give a broad balance, as opposed to an encounter by encounter comparison?
And what of gear? 10 man raiding guilds only need 25 man gear if they are going to be doing 25 mans. This is a general rule, which falls flat when you look at Sarth 3D, and the possibility that similar gear-check encounters might occur in Ulduar. Exclusively 10-man guilds can deal with having less powerful gear, but only if that gear allows them to beat everything their particular size of raid has to offer, on their own merits as a raid, as opposed to whether or not they also have some 25 man gear.
So what’s it to be? Separate but equal? Or Standard and Heroic? Should exclusively 10-man guilds really have to go to 25 man content in order to beat 10-man hard-modes, or was Sarth 3D merely an example of a prototype for a much larger system, which when it comes into play, will be more refined and better tuned to the gear that Blizzard now know these guilds should have?
Discuss.
