We had our first mag kill last week, and hopefully will have an easy time of it this week. Yes, it took a while to understand the encounter, and get everyone on the same page, but our first kill had the entire raid alive and kicking, so I really think its just a matter of execution.

That being said, I'm very careful about who I assign to cubes. Those 10 people are 10 people that I know I can count on, that will keep themselves alive, and that will get to the cube well ahead of time. One thing I found that helped was to pull out individual raid frames (shift + drag on the default UI) and arrange them based on location, so I can see at all time the health of my clickers. This also serves as a visual reminder of who is at the far position that was late to click that round. This makes it easy to troubleshoot the people that maybe shouldn't have that responsibility.

Personally I think its a great mechanic that stresses to people the importance of each raid member. Yes, it sucks that a DC/lag spike can wipe the entire raid, but theres planty of space in the center of the room for people with flaky connections.

Another option is something like Hakkar, except that he drops better loot if you kill him with one or more of the priests still alive. So you can do it easy-mode by killing all the aspects (and get easy mode loot), or hard mode (and get hard mode loot). Trouble is, that's a lot more work for the tuning and itemisation teams.

yea that’s a good idea as well.

I think blizzard have to start think in this pattern to get more people in to se all the cool content. And still have some "hard core" aspects of encounters that you can choose to do when you feel the raid is ready for it.

While its more work for the people doing the tuning, the itemisation team will just bump the ilevel for the drops and you get a few more stats on the hard mode loot so not much more effort required on their part.

Hopefully the tuning people will go for something slightly more inventive than the option chosen for most heroic mobs where stuff just hits harder.

Are you serious? Having backup clickers on Magtheridon would be the smart thing to do and it's not hard at all. Both the clicker and the backup go to the cube and if the clicker screws up, he just says something on vent and the backup picks up. Not hard at all. It's not a dps race, so having 2 people go to the cube before a Blast Nova will not ruin your chance at a kill. And Magtheridon is no way a "one can fuck up 24" kind of fight. I have to agree with what Clandestine said.

One thing that would make 25-mans more accessible is to modify it so that it's not locked in for exactly 25. If you're new to an encounter you need the full 25, if only 24 show up you're going to make it way harder on yourself. If you have an extra person show up, they get to sit on the bench which is not exactly a fun gaming experience.

The more hardcore guilds have mandatory attendance and members who are a bit more willing to put up with being benched for some fights (progress > fun), but to force a more casual guild to cancel a raid because they were 1 or 2 people short is pretty discouraging, and if someone gets much bench time they may just decide to just hop to a guild where they play more, or not bother logging in on raid nights since they're just going to end up sitting there.

I don't think it's realistic to have a huge swing in the number of players on an encounter, but shifting the enrage timer or boss HP for slight differences in the number of players doesn't seem like it would be that hard. If you expect 3 tanks, 7 healers, 15 DPS for a given fight, shifting the enrage timer or HP of mobs down by 6.4% with 24, or up by 7% with 26 would not really fundamentally change the fight, but would make it possible to include the extra guy or reasonable to get a first kill with one person visiting their aunt.

You can't do that Karamoon, because many fights can be done with only a few people, especially the less add intensive ones. If health scaled with numbers in just say Kara, I can see many bosses there easily 5 mannable. Aran, Prince, etc. Gruul would be another one, and the advantage of having less people leading to less clumping and thus less shatters would be pretty handy. Why do one 25 man gruul when you can do two 15 man gruuls?

In a very general sense I see WoW raiding deviloping along 3 paths.

10man zones - aka Casual Raider friendly
Like Karazhan and ZA these zones would still progress (ie Kara -> ZA) and would still offer rewards that might replace some gear from 25mans of similar level but essenially this would be there casual raiding outlet. Allow guilds that can't effectively compete in the 25 mans to get access to raiding. It is essential that Blizzard develop this content to keep the larger player base in game. Without such entry zones and smaller guild content WoW will likely die quickly. Subsequent 10 mans should increase in difficulty and require farming of the previous zone before success in the following (need Kara epics to do ZA for example)

Entry and Low End 25man zones - The middle ground
Here is HKM/Gruul, Mag, SSC and TK. This level of content is developed to be beaten by pretty much all 25 man capable guilds and it should be relatively on farm status by the end of the expansion cycle. There might be some crossover between here and the 10 man zones and this both acceptable and desired. An entry 25 man (HKM/Gruul) might likely be inferior to a high end 10 man by the end of the expansion cycle (ZA?).

High End 25man zones - aka Hardcore Raider Content
This is where you get BT, Hyjal, Sunwell etc. These zones are meant to keep the player base that wants to "beat the game" playing. They will be beyond the reach of most of the pepple in the 10 man conent, but will probably be seen by some in the entry 25man level. The idea is to make these zones the tantalizing yet out of reach carrot on the stick for most players.

I hope that made sense to everyone. This is how I see WoW raiding now and I don't really expect Blizzard to change course dramatically on this. I would be nice to create more crossover from the Low to High 25mans, but I realistically think that is impossible given the requirements high end raiders require (tight tuning is notoriously bad for more casual guilds).

Kasi, I'm not really sure how you went from me saying "I don't think it's realistic to have a huge swing in the number of players on an encounter, but shifting the enrage timer or boss HP for slight differences in the number of players..." to talking about showing up to a fight with 40-50% of the 'regular' group missing. That would certainly qualify as a "huge swing" rather than a "slight difference" in my book.

Perhaps my comments were too oblique, but the idea I like is to be able to bring 24-26 (maybe 23-27, but that's pushing it) to Gruul or a similar encounter instead of needing exactly 25. Not to come in with half of the 'expected' size, but to be able to show up with 96-104% of the 'expected' size and still have basically the same chance of finishing the fight.

I definitely agree with this and would say that Blizzard really dropped the ball on the first one when developing this expansion. A small puggable ten man dungeon (UBRS-like) before kara would have been excellent. And ZA appearing after BT shows blizz is spending far too much time pleasing the hardcore minority.


I would also add that 5 mans should also have some form of progression that is more than "Heroic--hey look things hit harder now". Heroics definitely were a step in the right direction, however.

I think its the amount of crossover that needs to be a bit greater really, in the next expansion blizzard should be aiming for as high a percentage of 25 man raids to be clearing the expansion's version of bt/hyjal with only the naxx/sunwell level being for the truly hardcore otherwise its just a waste of resources to be designing for so few.

There is plenty of room for things to be tuned at a higher level to start with and then nerfed later as long as there is sufficient content for the entry level to be getting on with while the hardcore push on with the tougher stuff.