Avellina

While I see your point that some 10 mans can sometimes get lumped in with 25 man guilds by virtue of them having surpassed the criteria, 20 people having the achievement in a 10 man guild does little else than create a bigger buffer for guilds who accidentally go over the line. At the end of the day, the issue is still whether x guild members or x% of the guild adhere to 10 man strict raiding. 20 just moves the line over, and offers smaller guilds immunity (or relative immunity) from pugging/guild alliances. The other criteria, checking between 10 and 25 versions (presumably if the guild is farther in 25 then they're 25, etc) wouldn't eliminate true 10 man groups from qualifying, but it might let more than a few 25 man groups sneak in. The case in point is that currently, many 25m guilds have completed the 10m hard mode, but only 1 at this time has thus far has finished it on 25m. A lot of guilds will finish content on 10 man before finishing it on 25 simply because the extra gear will enable them to do so (and because you can put together a much more skilled/dedicated group from a larger pool).

If a guild is raiding in current 25 man content (emphasis on 'current'), even with pugs, is it still fair to call them a strict 10 man guild? The whole point of strict rankings is that 25 man gear gives an unfair advantage to 10 man encounters. Even if ilvl 245 loot can be obtained through other means (albeit painfully slow), the extra lockout still gives an advantage, even if it is 3 measly Emblems per week or the odd piece of gear. The point can be made that Beasts isn't a fair criteria to use. The fact that it is puggable means that we have this very problem, but it still an advantage nonetheless even if the bar was moved to, say, faction champions instead. Perhaps one of the earlier encounters would suffice, but only after a significant time has elapsed. This way it becomes more 'help the guild catch up' rather than giving an advantage in the early rankings. I think this is the motivation behind the mantra that ToC 25m is off limits to strict 10m guilds, but Ulduar is ok.

 

Polar

I could not have expressed this better myself - it perfectly covers the intent of the GuildOx 10-man Strict rankings.

What this debate really boils down to is "What constitutes a strict 10-man guild"? Should they be allowed to pug 25 man content or not? Opinions are divided - I have received a mass of emails stating that guilds should be allowed to pug 25 man content and still be considered a 10-man guild; I have also had a mass of emails demanding that we remove a lot of guilds from the current 10-man strict rankings because a couple of their players have a few pieces of gear that have been obtained from 25-man pugs.

The whole ranking system and criteria, to me, is about striking the best balance that we can. We have chosen to exclude guilds that have 10 toons that have earned kills in 25man Coliseum runs.

This is where we have a differing of opinion. I don't believe a guild that runs 25m pugs can be called a 'strict' 10-man guild (note the emphasis on strict). [Just as an aside - if you created a second guild for your alts then it may have solved the problem]

Always happy to hear other opinions.

 

Areck

Prior to 3.2 I think sites like GuildOx were able to reasonably make this distinction. However, 3.2 severely blurred the line between players of all types (from casuals to hard-core raiders) which now makes it nearly impossible for sites like GuildOx to differentiate between 10 man and 25 man content guilds. While I applaud GuildOx for making at least some attempt to differentiate between the two, I believe it is an impossible task to reasonably make that distinction post 3.2.

 

Polar

Can you give us some more detail here? What changed in 3.2 to severely blur the line and make it now an "impossible task"?

 

Thorgrim

The only thing I can think of would be that it can't tell that I got, say, my breastplate by farming conquest tokens rather than getting a drop in Ulduar-25, except really it should still be able to tell that from my achievements, the check just has to be a little more complex.

 

Cosa

Strict 10 man should not have 25 man PVE achievements (Nax/Uld/ToC), which results in No BoP loot from 25 mans

Should tolerate: all BoE AH obtainable gear (crafted and random boss drops, no matter if they are from 10 or 25 man), all VoA 10/25 obtainable gear and all gear obtainable with badges.

That's pretty much drawing a line between "strict" 10 man guild and guilds that are raiding 10 man because they cannot get more then 10 people to work together. They pug 25man content, believing that they will be able to raid it as a guild once. I would really want to know who are "strict" 10 man guilds, because those achievements really deserve big salute.

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

It's fairly easy to 10-man OS-25 and FL-25 though.

I'd argue (partly from self-interest) that 25-man content that is well behind cutting edge shouldn't affect a guild's status; does the fact that people have pugged Naxx-25 really make a difference to their Grand Crusader progress?

 

Utumno

As a member of what I'd consider a strict 10-man guild (and was considered one of the top 3 until recently on guildox), I would have to say I'm against penalizing for doing any past raid content 25m after a new one has come out. ToC does not offer enough challenge to keep a guild busy for more than a day or two, and I don't think 10m guilds should be punished for going back and doing Ulduar, Naxx, and other raids for the achievements. Five days of nothing to do simply because you want to remain a 10m strict guild would get quite boring. I'm fine with the "don't do current 25m content" even though that keeps us off the list for joining a pug, but I think the restrictions should be taken off of past content so they can be enjoyed.

 

Thorgrim

That would require GMs to strictly forbid their members from doing PUG content on their own time, though. That seems a bit silly.

 

mhenrique85

I am a member of a very good ranked 10 Man Strict Guild. My Guild just have 11 raiders, but when Naxx 25 was a good way to get items, we pugged it, it's an easy instance, any pug can clean the entire instance in NO time. Your rules to be in a 10 man strict guild are broken... First, If my 10 man strict guild want to recruit a player that were from a 25 man raiding guild??? He will have 25 man items, so my guild would be kicked from the 10 man strict rank???

Just because we raided Naxx 25 a couple of times, in a PUG, we want to be a 25 man raiding guild??? Of Course NOT. Most of our raiders are from the same City IRL, and very good friends, all of us have very nice gear and are enough skilled to be in the best 25man guilds, But we don´t want to. Period. We just raided Naxx 25 to take better items.

I think the current updated rules on Guildox to be a 10 man strict guild are fine, of course there will be always players and guilds that want to cheat their way to the top of the rank, no matter rule you put on it, there will be always a way to cheat trough it. If you restrict to much, there willl be no guilds on the rank, OS25 is 10 mannable, our guild 10 manned it 4,5 weeks in a roll to take Illustration to our Warlock, for example. Flame Leviathan 25 is 10 mannable too.

Guildox is doing a very good work on 10 man strict ranks. To keep the good work, is a matter to just define what bosses are pugable, how many guildies are in the raid to consider it a pug and to restrict the access to the current content tier instance and restrict access to Hard Mode bosses, they cannot be pugable, if a pug does it, its too organized to be called a pug and probably its an Unofficial guild or an Alts run from players that already did it with their mains. BIG salute to us!!!

 

rbbrdckybk

My two cents: Guildox's system seems about as close to perfect as is possible, given the author's definition of what a strict 10-man guild should be (and I happen to agree 100% with him).

You're kidding yourself if you consider yourself part of a "strict" 10-man guild, but you also PUG 25-man content. You have the same 25-man gear & achievements as you would if your "10-man guild" just ran the 25-man content together as a guild. Just because you did the content "in a PUG" doesn't mean that it somehow shouldn't count.

There are people that simply have no interest at all in ever being part of a raid that contains more than 10 people. Those are the people that Guildox's strict 10-man rankings should apply to.

 

mhenrique85

I'm fine that to be consider a 10 man strict guild you don't have 25 man achievements, but Naxx 25 is an exception. I didn't like to raid Naxx 25, we raided it because of the items and when we did it, we even didn't know the existence of a 10 man strict rank, and Guildox changed the rules when ToC was launched to avoid guilds that were cheating trough the top of the ranks, so my point is that rules cannot be retroactive changed in relation to Naxx 25 pugs, since most of 10 man strict guilds pugged Naxx 25 and Malygos 25.

The orders by now in my guild is to not pug any 25 man content, except for VoA 25, since Guildox said clearly that they can change the rules any time they want. But we cannot change what we already done retroactively. To prove my point of view, the only items that i have that were taken in 25 man content is my bracer and my off-hand, that are the lowest ilvl items that i have on my gear. I don't have any item with higher ilvl that i should have. What 10 man strict guild didn't pug VoA 25 or OS25 or Malygos 25 or Naxx25... If you restrict all these instances, almost all 10 man strict guilds will be kicked from the 10 man strict rank.

Guildox:
"Special tip: If you wish to remain on the 10-man strict list over the long term then be sure to have your guild stay within the criteria - we are unable to remove earned achievements once they are in the GuildOx database. Also note that the criteria will change as new content is released. The safest approach to future-proof your strict ranking is to advise your guild members not to run any 25-man content that features higher iLevel gear when compared to the current 10-man normal content. We reserve the right to change the criteria at any time if we judge that guilds are 'gaming' the strict rankings."

 

burghy

And you don't see a problem with using items 13 levels higher in strict 10 man progress?
It's a ranking site and they try to make sure there aren't "exploits" using the limited info they have access to.

I would change their system on an achievement basis though. Have a tab for each guild that shows strict 10 man achievements. A strict 10 man achievement being defined as a 10 man achievement done before any 25 man achievement from previous tier of content. (ex: all 10 man Ulduar achievements done before any Nax/Malygos/Sarth 25 man; all 10 man Coliseum done before any 25 man Ulduar achievement etc). Then make the ranking from that tab.

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that "10-man strict" didn't even exist on guildox when Naxx was (first) out. From what I can remember it was added some time during Ulduar; achievements first, and pure progress later, and by that stage Naxx was easily puggable and not even remotely cutting edge. There wasn't much else to do (pre 3.1), short of work on a few specific achievements. Applying restrictions retrospectively is a tricky thing to manage.

---

I'm not too happy about Ony being included either; from what I've seen it feels like an easily puggable free-loot / fun boss, similar to VoA. There are no hard modes and no significantly challenging achievements for her.

Otherwise I'm going to have to ask the social players in guild to not PuG.

EDIT: Blizzard says it's not about progression
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Why was the new Ony killed so fast?

 

Polar

I totally agree that Ony is not about progression, but the argument here is about iLvl 245 gear that drops from 25 man content and not whether an encounter is progression or not.

Also, as stated earlier, if you feel that your guild must pug 25 man content then the 10man strict rankings are really not for you.

That being said, Ony 25 will be one of the first encounters to be relaxed as new content is released (but not just yet).

 

Tenzian

Surely by that logic anyone who PUGs Vault of Archavon 25 should be excluded as well, as Koralon drops iLvl 245 and iLvl 251 gear?

In our case, it's not so much about "must be able to PUG 25 man content" as it is that we can't stop the rest of the guild pugging 25 man content just to preserve our ranking if that's what they want to do.

We're a primarily social guild (I don't need to explain ToG to you :P) and while we have a small raiding "core" that does the 10-man progression (on the 25-man front we're only just now making the first tentative forays into Ulduar 25 & won't likely be in ToC 25 before the 10-man group's in Icecrown) we can't place a moratorium on PUGing VOA25 or Onyxia25 on the rest of the guild. Therefore all our hard work gets blown out of the water.

 

rbbrdckybk

I'm still not sure that I understand what the people that are complaining about being removed from the strict 10 rankings are asking for.

If you have people in your "10-man" guild that are running 25-man content, then you have an advantage over 10-man guilds that strictly stick to 10-mans - period (however minor you'd like to argue that the advantage is).

The entire point of the strict-10 rankings list is to compare guilds that are doing 10-man content without any gear that can be obtained outside 10-man raids. You're not competing on a level playing field if some of your members are gearing up in 25-mans - so why should you be included?

Yes, it is unfortunate if the rankings are important to you, and half of your "10-man" guild went and joined a PUG for 25-man ToC one night, thereby disqualifying your guild from the strict-10 list. But that isn't Guildox's fault. If you're really that serious about being in a strict 10-man guild, make sure that your guildmates are like-minded.

 

Schnappi

The problem is that this isn't always true. It's very easy to have 10 characters (alts and non-progress-raiders included) in your guild with a 25 man Beasts kill without having any gear advantage for your 10 man progress.

 

Gotrage

I realise that according to GuildOx criteria, 6 person receiving an achievement on the same day counts as progress for that guild and I believe that with strict criteria the same number of people apply.

Wouldn't be possible to cheat the ranks if a guild runs with 4 people outside the guild fully decked out in 25man gear? Four people is a lot in 10man. Having a couple of tanks and DPS running with 258 gear on 10man content is just overkill.

I would suggest that the 10man strict rankings use a special criteria and award progress to 10man guilds that have 10 people eligible on the first kill for that achievement. 10man strict guilds should have those 10 people doing the progress anyway.

 

doogless

My guild got bumped from the 10 man strict definition recently, primarily because we're a large guild with a lot of alts. We have a core of about 15 "serious" raiders, but 90 accounts in the guild. One of our guys has 3 different characters he's taken to ToC25 PUGs.

This is pretty different than a guild that clears ToC25 on their own every week. I have a pair of boots and a shield, our Druid has a belt, and maybe there's 1 or 2 other pieces of ToC25 loot in the 160 item slots in one of our ToGC10 raids. I have a hard time believing that's giving us a significant advantage, especially considering that ToGC10 loot is the same ilevel.

I consider us a 10 man guild, but ultimately we're not going to plan rules for our members around a specific definition. It was neat showing up on GuildOx's world top 10 for a few weeks, but I can't say I care that we lost that distinction from some people doing 25 man PUGs. If we really cared about epeen ratings, we'd be in 25 man guilds - we raid as a 10 man group because that's what we want to do. I appreciate that GuildOx tries to rate 10 man guilds differently from the rest, and ultimately any definition will end up being argued over and in some way imperfect.

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

25-man Onyxia has been removed from the 10-man strict criteria on Guildox. A good change, I think.

 

Grymauch

For a long time our guild was World #1 in 10-man Strict. We were bumped off when the requirements changed a couple months ago.

Our guild was formed at the start of WotLK with the explicit purpose of being a Hardcore 10man guild. Our guild has only 11 raiders and all of us are competitive and highly skilled at our classes. The rest of our roster is alts/friends.

But, a couple of raiders filled off nights with some PUG 25man Ulduar normal-modes and some guild friends and alts PUGGED 25man ToC normal-mode with a couple raiders, and now we're off the list.

Our only current means for competition (and we like to compete) is against Hardcore 25man guilds in the "10man everyone" list.

This is not the end of the world, and we're doing OK (From Chaos of Suramar - GuildOx - WoW Guild Progress and Loot Rankings), but we'd really like to have a list for guilds like us.

I agree with those who say that having any 25man gear disqualifies you from a "10man Strict" ranking. However, I'd like to argue for a "10man Kind-of-Strict" ranking or "Hardcore 10man" or whatever you want to call it.

I'm biased, but I think that not many guilds care about a "10man Strict" list that excludes guilds because alts PUG 25man VoA & Ulduar or because a couple of players have an item or two from 25man normal-modes. I think more guilds would care about a "Hardcore 10man" ranking.

A couple ideas for removal from this alternative list might be (honestly I don't know if these can be tracked):
- Any 25man achievements (normal or hard) earned by 20+ guild members at the same time.
[this prevents progression focused 25man guilds from being on the list]

- No 25man hard-mode achievements or gear from current tier on any members
[this removes players who grossly out-gear 10man content hard-core 25man guilds]

I think these 2 requirements would allow players in 10man guilds to enjoy the game on their off-nights while still providing 10man guilds with a way to compete.

Currently, if you want to get 25man gear and compete with 25man guilds, there's a list for you. If you want to get only 10man gear and compete only with 10man guilds, there is a list for that too. There is no in-between, but I think there are a lot of us who are in between.

Hopefully this wasn't too long-winded.

 

LittleHamster

The first rule will bump raiding alliances onto the strict 10man ladder. 20 is far too high a threshold. There is no magic number that will work, I believe. The second rule seems fairer on first glance. However, if a raiding alliance pass the first rule, they will probably pass the second one unless they do the heroic version together as well.

Everyone's definition of a 'strict' 10man guild is different. To me, you are only a 'strict' 10man raiding guild if you only run 10man content. Otherwise, there is still a 10man ladder you can compete in. Stop beating on this already.

 

Escape Hatch

As a decently-ranked 10-man strict raider, just wanted to chime in that I agree that Guildox is doing a very good job with a difficult situation.

My take is that guildox is on the right track. Though the core of the point of a strict list is to filter out guilds that have the advantage of 25-man gear, there has to be some wiggle-room because of the nature of the game. As others have pointed out, there is a huge difference between a 25-man guild that farms ToC 25 and Ony 25 weekly, and guild that ocassionally do an ony or voa 25 pug because they are so easy to do. If you look at my server, do you really think that my guild is in the same league gear-wise as, say Lexington or Subject to Change (the most advanced 25-man guilds). It's not even a contest, even though we - gasp! - pug ony 25 and voa 25 pretty often!

In the case of my guild, we find out the guildox rules, and then we stick to them. So we will never kill a toc 25 boss or an uld hard mode this patch cycle (even though we could assemble a pug to do so), but we do a weekly ony 25 clear (got my 245 weapon last night, which by the way is roughly equivalent to an item I can get from toc 10 hard mode that just hasn't dropped, so I don't see it as "cheating" the spirit of the list at all). Tier pieces dropped by Koralon 25 are also available from clearing toc 10 hard, so they are within the reach of 10-man hardcore raiders. However, desirable 25-man items like Death's Choice aren't available to us in any way. And we don't get 25-man quality gear at anywhere near the rate a 25-man guild gets it. We may not be exlcusively using 10-man gear, but I don't think we are getting a noticeable advantage either. As we've seen in this thread, it's a difficult balancing act, and I think guildox is handling it admirably even though there are some flaws.

 

Rhetorical

My guild is in the opposite situation of the previous poster. My guild got knocked off the GuildOx strict rankings for ToC25 pugs. And I also think the current system is okay. It seems you are closely monitoring the situation and making changes as necessary for the 10 man strict rankings to have meaning. You have to draw the line somewhere, and the only difference of opinions are going to be statements like "I think the line should be drawn HERE." If you make it so more than 15 people need an achievement, my 10 man guild would basically be immune to being kicked off the strict list, and we only have 10 or so raiding characters in the guild. It would also allow people to raid in a guild alliance with the same guild every week with access to better gear. The line where you have it now is good, even though we chose to go off the 10 man strict rankings. The 7-8 pieces of ToC25 man gear we've obtained over the past few weeks is probably not a huge advantage over the 245 gear available in ToGC10, but the whole point of the 10 man strict list is to keep the pure guilds separate from the 25 man guilds. I love the idea.

However, as the leader of the guild, it seems very lame to tell my raiders what pugs they can and cannot join, and I think having fun in the game should be more important than a rank on a website. With how puggable ToC25 is, we decided to go ahead and do it, knowing we'd lose our ranking. We would be around the top 20 achievement rank and somewhere in the top 100 10 man strict rank if we were still eligible. I'm looking forward to 3.3 so we can get our strict ranking again, and maybe even finish up Glory of the Raider for a few people for those extra points on the 10 Strict Achievement rank.

Our relatively low progressed server is starting to pug hard modes in 10 man mode, and the pug we ran tonight was contemplating giving ToGC25 a try after our anub kill, we were just a few seconds off the twins speed kill and had an especially geared group of people. I'll probably tell the guild to opt out of that, we have to draw the line somewhere too I guess.