Originally Posted by Mr. Crow
I'd like to start by saying that this is a very interesting idea, but I have a few issues with it.
1) It's already been brought up that tuning a 25-man encounter down to a 5-man fight would be immensely difficult. Implementing a system like this would, I think, stifle the creativity of the designers when they want to push the envelope in new raid encounters. This system would force them to consider, as early as the initial development stages, how they'd implement the encounter for 5-man, 10-man, and 25-man groups. The development time that would be theoretically saved by not forcing the creation of new art and assets would likely be spent completely reinventing a given encounter to suit a 5-man run.
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I think going down to 10 man is far enough. With a 5 man dungeon, I think people will expect to be able to clear it on the first try...are there any 5 man dungeons that can't be finished with a few wipes? Timed events (like heroic SH) might take multiple attempts to complete successfully, but actually finishing the dungeon is doable in a single attempt, probably with a few wipes on the first go through.
With a 10 man raid, people will expect to learn the encounter. And 10 man raids are can be done in a pug...kara is. I think more than 10 is just hard to fill out for a pug and small guilds, but 10 has turned out to be a very good number given the success of kara. There should still be new 5 man content, but I can definitely understand that tuning down a 25 man encounter to be doable with 5 would destroy all of the original flavor of the fight.
I wonder how much retuning would have to be done. For example, I know that kara can be cleared in 3-4 hours with a well-geared 5 man group. So it's just a matter of having the gear to do it...so in theory if you toned down the mobs hps/damage (to simulate the gear advantage those who 5 man it now have), you could make it a 5 man instance. I wonder how many 25 man fights could be toned down to 10 man just by reducing stats on mobs. Obviously more tuning would be needed for complex fights like Vash and Kael, but it seems like that would be enough for many bosses. Having never seen any 25 man content I couldn't say, but from reading about fights like Void Reaver or Gruul I'd say retuning many fights is really just a numbers game.