The 10-man vs 25-man debate

[Epitok]

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Plain and simple, this is how most players need to look at it: If you are a 25 player group, you compare yourselves exclusively against other 25 player groups. If you are a 10, you compare exclusively against other 10s. If you are noxa or Hordlinge, comparing yourselves to Paragon or Premonition can't be done with any semblance of accuracy. If what you are interested in is to do the most difficult content, 25 player is going to be a safer bet. 10 player, while more random, simply does not require the same level of coordination and setup.

I agree mostly with everything Ashunera wrote.
I'd like to underline three simple facts :

- 10-man is easier to organize. 25-man is heavier in logistics, planning and coordination. Even something as simple as pulling a boss is a LOT harder on 25-man.

- Serious guilds and ALL of the top guilds go 25-man. This is where the true hardcore PVE competition resides. No offense but there is no point in comparing the skill and investment level of Paragon/Method with Hordlinge/noxa. This is just not the same standards.

- Giving a FoS for the first kill on 10-man Al'akir HM was the BIGGEST joke ever. I fear that the same will happen on Ragnaros...

[Dangerclose]

You said in article

"We picked a balanced (performance-wise) raid comp that could deal with the first six bosses, made a slightly modified comp for Ragnaros, and went to beat some pixels to the ground."

Can you expound more on why you chose to modify the comp? Was it primarily to get a more mobile raid group? Like changing the combat rogue to MM Hunter was it to have more ranged dps or was it partly logistical that the rogue was the guy swapping over to be 3rd healer?


I understand you were saying that "tuning-wise" there were 3 fights on 10 man that felt undertuned vs. 25 man, but it sounded like you were also saying that even on the fights where tactics were the same across both raid sizes that 10 man felt easier, is that true?

I've felt that before myself for some of the same reasons you alluded to since generally in 10 man you can 1) see things easier 2) Keep track better of what's going on 3) more clarity on tactics and just generally less complex tactics.

[sourcecode]

The paragons 10 players have a total combined item level of 3781, leading them to have an average of 378.1 per player.
PARAGON - 378.1 per player.

Hordlinges 9 players have a total combined item level of 3407, leading them to have an average of 378.6 ( Rounded up from 378.5555555555 ) per player.
Hordlinge - 378.6 per player.

Sorry there is a flow in that calculation as you use 9 players of Hordlinges to get the average instead of 10, you are just trying to make it look like 10man guilds can get as much geared as 25man easily. If you add that 10th player and if his ilvl is 378 only it would be better than Paragon.

I still believe if Paragon raided 3 groups of 10man and they geared those 3 groups "only" from 10man they won't kill Ragnaros with even 200 tries. Obviously you can faceroll those bosses that you know with Heroic Ragnaros gear.

I believe that 10man guilds need respect as much as 25man if they killed a boss unlike some people here. But yea some bosses can be hard on 25man and some can be hard on 10man (atleast thats how it was T11). Im sick and tired that some 25man raiding guilds doesnt respect 10man guilds on their server when they get a server 1st kill.

[Sun_Tzu]

The paragons 10 players have a total combined item level of 3781, leading them to have an average of 378.1 per player.
PARAGON - 378.1 per player.

Hordlinges 9 players have a total combined item level of 3407, leading them to have an average of 378.6 ( Rounded up from 378.5555555555 ) per player.
Hordlinge - 378.6 per player.

Sorry there is a flow in that calculation as you use 9 players of Hordlinges to get the average instead of 10, you are just trying to make it look like 10man guilds can get as much geared as 25man easily. If you add that 10th player and if his ilvl is 378 only it would be better than Paragon.

I still believe if Paragon raided 3 groups of 10man and they geared those 3 groups "only" from 10man they won't kill Ragnaros with even 200 tries. Obviously you can faceroll those bosses that you know with Heroic Ragnaros gear.

I believe that 10man guilds need respect as much as 25man if they killed a boss unlike some people here. But yea some bosses can be hard on 25man and some can be hard on 10man (atleast thats how it was T11). Im sick and tired that some 25man raiding guilds doesnt respect 10man guilds on their server when they get a server 1st kill.

The person who did said calculations, Firefly33 or something I think his name was, is not affiliated with Paragon in any way, just some random spectator on MMO-Champion. The reason there are only 9 people listed for Hordlinge is that he could not find the 10th person from the same kill as the other 9 he was looking at. However, even if this 10th person had gotten no firelands loot, not bought anything from AH, no valor loot, no rep cloak or belt, he's still be ~372 average ilvl, as every person in a top guild was at that average gear level, +-1 based on class/spec and loot available.

Assuming this 10th person is 372 average ilvl, the average for all 10 beore 379,9, or 0.2 less than Paragons average. Well within the margin that we can claim there was no substantial equipment advantage for the Paragon group.

[simrock]

First of all, nice write-up.
I liked this one a lot more than the statement before, but who am I to argue with that?

Back to the topic concerning 10-mans vs. 25-mans.
As you already stated, 10-mans currently aren't that much progress oriented as 25-mans are. From my personal perspective it seems that 10-man groups tend to be made up either by small guilds that couldn't enter the progress race anyway or by a couple of RL-friends. Sometimes it happens that these 10 IRL friends are really good at playing games and are (sometimes high) above the average.
But i don't think that there are fully progress oriented 10-man guilds. Hordlinge i.e. currently has about 4 raid groups (excluding alt runs) venturing into firelands. One of them is visible on the common progress sites and getting some attention, but they don't exist for as long as the more prominent 25 progress guilds/raids (i.e. Paragon, Vodka, ...) to be able to have a reasonable alt army ready/geared to form up an optimized comp for most of the encounters.

It's been said on MMO that Hordlinge has 240+ lv85 characters to make up a comp, but you have to consider, that most 10-man guilds don't only tend to raiding. These 240 lv85 are basically somewhere about 70players with different interests in WOW, ranging from just playing for fun with their friends, PvP oriented players and a couple PvE focused players. So let's say there are about 20 players / 30 chars which have the "skill" and gear required to take on an encounter as complex/hard as Ragnaros heroic. So now let's assume these 20 players are spread over 4 raid groups for reasons as wanting to raid with friends and so on. That leaves the progress oriented group likely nothing to pick from, so they have to resort to taking their alts, which might be non existent in some cases or don't happen to be the right class/spec...

So overall, picking a specific comp for a fight is rather hard to do, but this might change as 10-mans get more popular from a progress perspective and large enough pools form to switch some chars around. Who knows what lies in the future?

As far as Noxa is concerned, i happen to know, that their main-raid still is 25-man, but that's more like casual raiding. Their progress 10-man is kind of sealed.

The gear topic has been discussed to death by now as far as i'm concerned. But what I've noticed is the gear distribution in the different guilds/raids. After checking Noxa/Hordlinge vs. Paragon/Vodka it seems that 10-man groups tend to gear their tanks and healers faster than 25-man groups, which seem to distribute more loot to dps players. Just a little something i found interesting, but this might come up because (as said in this thread) the dps requirements for 25-man seem to be a bit higher.

Greetz sim

[zYN]

simrock:

Good post. However, that is kind of the point I'm atleast trying to get at. Even if you're not quite as hardcore and don't feel like putting much effort into raiding, you can still score world firsts in the 10-man heroics. They share the same title/loot/achievement as the 25-man heroics. Yet, I feel like they are significantly easier if you put even the slightest bit of effort into optimizing your raid setups.

Heroics _should_ require equal effort between the different brackets if they award same everything.

[euripidesoutdps]

I notice that the only 10 man comp without a hunter was Rag- can you maybe go into that decision a little?

[Vlaidlol]

simrock:

Good post. However, that is kind of the point I'm atleast trying to get at. Even if you're not quite as hardcore and don't feel like putting much effort into raiding, you can still score world firsts in the 10-man heroics. They share the same title/loot/achievement as the 25-man heroics. Yet, I feel like they are significantly easier if you put even the slightest bit of effort into optimizing your raid setups.

Heroics _should_ require equal effort between the different brackets if they award same everything.

just wondering, why all of the sudden with this patch u rant about how easy 10mans are? why didnt u do it last tier?

to me, this is just being an asshole to 10 man raiders, disrespecting them for no reason
i have no complains about 10/25 right now, cause its perfectly balanced in my opinion, but why didnt u post about 10 vs 25 last tier? instead of suddenly having interest on how easy or hard 10mans are

10 mans have enough with getting fucked over with loot, legendaries, not being able to have full buffs... do we really need this kind of shit? this makes me really sad

and also, i found the review about baleroc 10 vs 25 funny, (I agree that 10 was easier than 25 before nerfs), but really? you 3 healed it, no 10 man guild in the world can 3 heal baleroc heroic, the only reason u did this is cause u went in there with fucking ragnaros heroic loot and 3 farms of 25 heroic loot, its not such a joke of a fight as u make it out to be when its 2 healers

[Hermanni]

to me, this is just being an asshole to 10 man raiders, disrespecting them for no reason

No-one is being particularly disrespectful in here, apart from you. You repeat same opinion-driven arguments without taking into account anything that has been posted before, and act like everyone else (who have made respectful, logically argued posts) are doing some kind of personal wrong against you by arguing a point you don't like. You twist words and instead of trying to come up with some convincing counter-argument you act like everyone else is an incompetent asshole. And stop trolling this and other topics or you probably won't be posting much more.

[themaan]

simrock:

Good post. However, that is kind of the point I'm atleast trying to get at. Even if you're not quite as hardcore and don't feel like putting much effort into raiding, you can still score world firsts in the 10-man heroics. They share the same title/loot/achievement as the 25-man heroics. Yet, I feel like they are significantly easier if you put even the slightest bit of effort into optimizing your raid setups.

Heroics _should_ require equal effort between the different brackets if they award same everything.

just wondering, why all of the sudden with this patch u rant about how easy 10mans are? why didnt u do it last tier?

to me, this is just being an asshole to 10 man raiders, disrespecting them for no reason
i have no complains about 10/25 right now, cause its perfectly balanced in my opinion, but why didnt u post about 10 vs 25 last tier? instead of suddenly having interest on how easy or hard 10mans are

10 mans have enough with getting fucked over with loot, legendaries, not being able to have full buffs... do we really need this kind of shit? this makes me really sad

and also, i found the review about baleroc 10 vs 25 funny, (I agree that 10 was easier than 25 before nerfs), but really? you 3 healed it, no 10 man guild in the world can 3 heal baleroc heroic, the only reason u did this is cause u went in there with fucking ragnaros heroic loot and 3 farms of 25 heroic loot, its not such a joke of a fight as u make it out to be when its 2 healers

I can tell on what your saying that you are doin 10 mans. Everyone doing 10 mans say that 25 man is easier because you manage to gear up faster. And its true you do gear up faster but the facts is that 10 man is easier because it needs less dps, less tanking, less gear, you have more space etc etc etc. Its really no doubt that firelands 10 man is very easy compared to 25 man.