Cataclysm Raid Progression Refinements - Page 4

Tinwhisker · 04/27/10, 9:57 AM

Here's a thought I had about design intents. Let's assume that Blizzard is currently balancing 10man raiding in WotLK for 10man gear (they say they do). Obviously 25man raid groups can muscle their way through the majority of a 10man ICC raid with little problem. Besides that though, even the 10man raid groups have a fair amount of 25man gear among them unless you're in the minority of "strict" raid groups. This means that the majority of 10man groups also have it a bit easier than intended as well whether they know it or not.

In WotLK, 25man raid groups have never had the benefit of raiding with gear from a higher level so this next part doesn't directly apply but 10man groups have always had gear from a higher level to help them and the next part is very much applicable.

Do you honestly think Blizzard will tune Cataclysm instances the same way they have in WotLK, thus making normal modes comparatively harder for the 10man raid groups because they will no longer have the benefit of gear from a higher level? No, they won't. Blizzard will not make it harder for those groups and by extension to achieve some semblance of parity between the difficulty of 10man and 25man they will have to tune down 25man quite a bit making 25man even easier than it is now.

Exemplar · 04/27/10, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by Ukerric

I expect a much larger valor cost. Much, much larger. In the thousands/ten of thousands range...

Noticed the little paragraph about converting PvE and PvP points to each other at a loss? I expect the heroism and valor points to have about exactly the same kind of scale that honor and arena points have currently. Meaning bosses will award you something like a hundred valor points, not 3 frost emblems...

In theory, I wouldn't be surprised to see PvE stuff having exactly the same costs as the PvP stuff - except in PvE points instead of honor.

You misinterpret. A single daily random gets you 2 Frost Badges. This is 1/30th of the requirement for tier gloves.

30 dailies = 1 item. But so does a clear of ICC on 10 and 25, their internal weekly quests, the weekly raid boss, and a week of dailies. One week vs one month. Blizzard prices based on the maximum model.

Expect the maximum earnings to net an item every week to two weeks. This maximum Valor earning should be possible through some combination of dailies and raiding 10 or 25.

This is inflation. 2 badges to hundreds/thousands of Valor Points. However, costs for items should inflate at a lesser rate. Thus the value of one random daily is greater than at present.

If you get paid $10/hr and an item costs $1000, that's 100 hours. If you're suddenly paid 10,000 foozle/hr and an item costs 500,000 foozle, it's suddenly 50 hours.

The weekly Valor Cap to cost-of-item comparison will be smaller than at present. Effective cost goes down.

Lucitron · 04/27/10, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by Grogzor

What I want to know in regards to the difficulty of 10 mans, are they going to assume that you have the maximum assortment of buffs that you can for 10 man? Or are they going to assume some lesser number? Because if it is the maximum, the raid is essential pigeonholed into bringing these certain classes/specs and if it is some lesser number, then the content can be made less difficult by stacking the raid. Something Blizzard has tried to minimize drastically.

One big difference between 25 mans and 10 mans now are the number of things that can temporarily remove somebody from the fight. 25 man Marrowgar you have 3 Bone Spikes, 10 man you have 1. The reason behind this is if both of your healers got it, you would wipe pretty fashionably. Maybe they can make them more on par by creating some game logic where only one healer at a time could get affected by these?

One way to solve the buff-problem for 10-man raids is that they share even more buffs around among classes and/or specs. Another solution is that they nerf the buffs so that it will not be seen as a mandatory buff to have. Further, it is possible that this scenario could even touch upon utility abilities that has no direct impact on the raid encounters.

In short, class/spec homogenization could be a result with this move.

kharen · 04/27/10, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by Blutelf

I think some posters here are absolutely missing the main point: There needs to be a unifying goal for 25 man raiders and with this change there is not going to be one. Differently colored mounts? Tabards? Titles? These are merely cosmetic issues.

Right now it is the fact that 25 man instances are the hardest and that they drop the best loot ingame.

Remove both of these things and there will be no incentive, no reason to raid 25 man instances. Unless you "feel like it". But you shouldn't have to invent a reason to do so, or else what is the point of doing it in the first place? Why have 25 man raids in the game at all now unless the only reason is to gently fade out the 25 man raids during Cata?

This is how it seems to me right now, and I am fairly confident that this is what most people have in mind when they are talking about "destroying 25 man raids".

The point of having 25s in Cata is that a significant enough segment of the playerbase claims to enjoy running raids with larger groups, and the intent of the new design is to allow people who like 10s and people who like 25s to enjoy the game equally.

If it turns out that most people are only running 25s now because they're bribed into doing so with a large carrot (better gear), and removal of the carrot leads the gradual demise in 25s during Cata, I'm not sure i really see how that's a bad thing for the game as a whole.

It is a game, after all. The goal should be for the largest number of people to have the most fun they can. If the players decide that 25s aren't fun, and they're having more fun by running 10s, then that's a good thing overall from Blizzard's perspective.

Camaris · 04/27/10, 10:50 AM

One of the best changes, IMO, is the reintroduction of heroics and blues into the progression. In WotLK, heroics were largely ignored until they started dropping proper badges in a later patch (by which time they had become 'trivial mode' instead of 'heroic mode'), because you just wander into Naxx without any real gear requirements. This new change seems a step in the direction of TBC, where heroics were quite a decent accomplishment early on.

From the looks of it, it seems the main draw of 25 mans will be increased Valor Points and more loot dropped per raider. I'd be happy if doing 25 mans and some weeklies would put you at the VP limit, and 10 mans would require daily heroics and perhaps more weeklies to max out.

I don't know if that is 'enough' to keep 25m alive. In fact, I'd be quite happy to just focus on one or the other, instead of the annoyances of 'required off-night raiding' where you run 10-mans just to get that extra trinket/title/badges.

Tinwhisker · 04/27/10, 10:50 AM

I've been trying to wrap my head around how the new PvE point system will work.

First off, Hero points are infinite and worthless to raiders. Presumably, just as I don't care about Triumph in 3.3, I won't care about Hero in 4.0. I might spend them on gems but I may also let them cap out and rot. It just depends on whether or not Blizzard gives us something worthwhile to spend them on.

Let's assume that the number of Valor points you can earn in PvE is similar to what you can get now in PvP (it makes trading between the two easier) and let's set the cap at 500 points per week which is probably a good maximum for PvP at this point as well. If Blizzard want's the greater number of points for 25mans to be attractive they'll have to set the maximum amount you can earn very close to that of a single wing of the current progression instance; that means somewhere around 100 points per boss with another 100 coming from the weekly raid quest (assuming there still is one) to cap out a 25man raider.

So how many points should a 10man raider get from 10man bosses and heroic "dailies" in that scenario? They'll already get 100 from the raid weekly. Since the number of valor you can get per week is capped there's no point in making random heroics a "daily" which means the number doesn't have to be divisible by 7. If the total is 12 needed to cap out after bosses, those 10man raiders can do 6 heroics on each of two days and be done. (And a 25man raider can do a daily or two one day if he sat out a boss.)

It could work but there's a major pitfall here. As was said earlier, in 4.0, the heroics introduced will be time consuming. A number like 12 per week might be too many but in 4.3 those same heroics will be total facerolls and 12 may not be high enough. So what then, set it to a 4.0 level and introduce new 5mans with each tier and only make those count? That's really punitive to people trying to level alts though; imagine if right now only the ICC 5mans counted towards the daily. If on the other hand, any 5man heroic counts, that means it becomes progressively easier to earn Valor Points on the 10man route to the point we're at now where I can grab 5 guildies and hit the instance cap very easily.

Exemplar · 04/27/10, 10:55 AM

I'm somewhat surprised that Blizzard continues to run with arbitrary raid sizes of 10 and 25. They've proven in the past they're not adverse from stealing a good idea from a competitor, or even an entirely different genre (FPS, etc) or format (tabletop, etc).

Before I played WoW, I played City of Heroes. One inherent concept was difficulty scaling. Do content solo, only so many enemies present. Do it with 2 people and enemy difficulty increased - more numerous and more difficult. This increase was non-linear (2 was more than twice as "hard" as one). This functioned both on the solo-questing level (which was mostly instanced) or at the group/raid level (called Task Force).

The incentive to group is that buff scaling (or greater class composition) tends to slightly beat difficulty scaling - it feels easier. In WoW it could easily be a bit more Valor Points and some extra Guild Points. Often WoW seems to reverse this - more bodies required to spread out/avoid something in a room of the same size - it feels harder.

Why not set a minimum and maximum number on a raid (such as 10 and 25). Bring 10 people it is difficulty A. Bring 25 and it is difficulty Z. Bring some number between 10 and 25 and difficulty is from B through Y.

Too much work for developers? Then make thresholds of 10, 15, 20, 25. You can run with 13, but you're "undermanning" 15man mode slightly. I.e. Marrowgar 10 has 1 spike. 15 has 2 spikes (of slightly greater health). 20 has 3 spikes (again more HP). 25 still has only 3 spikes, but with yet more HP. Edit: Or increase frequency at which spikes occur.

This is feasible because as raid size increases a larger percentage of the entire raid becomes DPS. 10man has 2 tanks (20%), 2 healers (20%), 5 DPS (50%) and 1 DPS/Healer (10%). 25man has 2 tanks (8%), 5 healers (20%), 16 DPS (64%), 1 DPS/Tank (4%), 1 DPS/Healer (4%). Increasing DPS requirements functions fine - greater boss/add health, tying up more of the raid with movement or similar (reference Marrowgar bone spikes once again).

The only toggle is normal/heroic - the rest accommodates by size of the raid. Simple interface, and it's easy for even a new player to understand the concept of "bring more people, boss is a bit harder to compensate."

Cost: Bit more work on the design end.
Benefit: Guilds/PuGs can raid with as many/few as they have available without meeting some precise magic number or magic composition.

shatter · 04/27/10, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

Do you honestly think Blizzard will tune Cataclysm instances the same way they have in WotLK, thus making normal modes comparatively harder for the 10man raid groups because they will no longer have the benefit of gear from a higher level? No, they won't. Blizzard will not make it harder for those groups and by extension to achieve some semblance of parity between the difficulty of 10man and 25man they will have to tune down 25man quite a bit making 25man even easier than it is now.

Yes I do, but anyway it's not really a matter of beliefs. Wrath raiding history so far demonstrates that they can tune 10m very tightly with respective gear. The fact that most get a boost by raiding 10m content with 25m gear causes dissatisfaction among 10m guilds. In fact, if anything I hope 10m difficulty will get more respect when it suddendly can't be beaten as easily by people in 25m gear, thus increasing their perceived challenge level and consequently the fun derived from doing it.

klüger · 04/27/10, 11:16 AM

Exemplar: That sounds really good, and that is what I'd label a "perfect" fix to what they are trying to do. The question then is if they will do it, which is doubtful since it is such a radical shift from status quo. That said there is no better chance to bring this in then before a new expansion, so we might be able to hope.

Though realistically it doesn't really have to be hard. You can get a fair conception of how much more healing/dps one extra person will do, scale the hp/dmg-output to match that and you have your scaling encounters.

rbbrdckybk · 04/27/10, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by krilz

This might be a guild breaker for my guild. We clear everything in 10-man, we've done Sarth+3, Algalon, Insanity and everything except LK on HC in ICC, but in 25-man we've been struggling getting about 50-60% of all "hard modes" done. Why should people in our guild struggle in 25-man when they can clear everything in 10-man and get everything they want that way?

You're falling into the same mentality trap that many 25-man guilds do. You think that 10-mans are inherently easier than 25-mans, because your guild has no problem clearing 10-man hard modes, while you struggle with 25-man hard modes.

You're missing the fact that you're doing the 10-mans while wearing gear that is up to 2 full tiers higher than Blizzard intended. ICC10 heroic is not supposed to be a challenge if you're already wearing gear from ICC25 hard modes.

Blizzard is basically fixing the system, which has been broken since the introduction of 10/25 man raiding. The proposed changes would no longer allow you to cheese 10-mans while wearing the superior gear that you earned in the 25-man version of the same instance (all the while earning extra badges, "achievements", and vanity items/titles).

10-mans are already usually no easier than their 25-man counterpart, assuming you're wearing the intended gear (that is, no 25-man gear). Sometimes the 10-man version is slightly harder (and sometimes vice-versa - but they're usually not too out of line with each other).

In a nutshell, assuming Blizzard correctly does what they've proposed, and doesn't reduce the overall difficulty of raiding, then any guild that is struggling with 25-man hard modes today should struggle with 10-man hard modes after the changes are implemented (if the choose the 10-man raiding path).

I think it's a great change. You'll simply pick your preferred raiding size based on the number of WoW friends that you want to play with. There will be no pressure to run 25s for superior gear, or run 10s for extra badges/etc.

Kirth · 04/27/10, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by Exemplar

I'm somewhat surprised that Blizzard continues to run with arbitrary raid sizes of 10 and 25. They've proven in the past they're not adverse from stealing a good idea from a competitor, or even an entirely different genre (FPS, etc) or format (tabletop, etc).

Before I played WoW, I played City of Heroes. One inherent concept was difficulty scaling. Do content solo, only so many enemies present. Do it with 2 people and enemy difficulty increased - more numerous and more difficult. This increase was non-linear (2 was more than twice as "hard" as one). This functioned both on the solo-questing level (which was mostly instanced) or at the group/raid level (called Task Force).

The incentive to group is that buff scaling (or greater class composition) tends to slightly beat difficulty scaling - it feels easier. In WoW it could easily be a bit more Valor Points and some extra Guild Points. Often WoW seems to reverse this - more bodies required to spread out/avoid something in a room of the same size - it feels harder.

Why not set a minimum and maximum number on a raid (such as 10 and 25). Bring 10 people it is difficulty A. Bring 25 and it is difficulty Z. Bring some number between 10 and 25 and difficulty is from B through Y.

Too much work for developers? Then make thresholds of 10, 15, 20, 25. You can run with 13, but you're "undermanning" 15man mode slightly. I.e. Marrowgar 10 has 1 spike. 15 has 2 spikes (of slightly greater health). 20 has 3 spikes (again more HP). 25 still has only 3 spikes, but with yet more HP. Edit: Or increase frequency at which spikes occur.

This is feasible because as raid size increases a larger percentage of the entire raid becomes DPS. 10man has 2 tanks (20%), 2 healers (20%), 5 DPS (50%) and 1 DPS/Healer (10%). 25man has 2 tanks (8%), 5 healers (20%), 16 DPS (64%), 1 DPS/Tank (4%), 1 DPS/Healer (4%). Increasing DPS requirements functions fine - greater boss/add health, tying up more of the raid with movement or similar (reference Marrowgar bone spikes once again).

The only toggle is normal/heroic - the rest accommodates by size of the raid. Simple interface, and it's easy for even a new player to understand the concept of "bring more people, boss is a bit harder to compensate."

Cost: Bit more work on the design end.
Benefit: Guilds/PuGs can raid with as many/few as they have available without meeting some precise magic number or magic composition.

I wouldn't be surprised if this very thing isn't on the drawing board at blizzard, the concept exists primitively in Diablo 2 already. The difficultly level scales with the number of players in a multiplayer game (1 to 8) as well as the rewards.

Madlax · 04/27/10, 11:33 AM

The initial reaction was: WOAH.
I loathe the days of TotC/TotGC where, even only for a few weeks, any raider had to run/should run 4 instances of the same encounters each week to get their needed badges. It was awful, really.
This change will simplify raiding for casuals and hardcore people quite a bit - it might be kind of boring for the hardcore type of player though.
It also is a huge boost to PvP - so much free time at hand now.

Putting 10 and 25 on the same lockout however puts a strange taste of glory into the mouth for a server first? world first? 10/25 first?

I think it's a fair idea they have in minds, even the increased loot drops are very fine and I'm already looking forward to it.

Doroteasenjk · 04/27/10, 11:34 AM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

Except that all those things aren't true.

The minute you need specialized players you forfeit "Bring the player..."
Going outside the guild for crafting might be annoying but Blizzard has made alt'ing so easy that I've got enough alts that I rarely even have to ask in guild. I don't think I've gone outside the guild for anything in years.
I've found smaller guilds to be more social because everyone knows each other just that much more.
"Having 3 types of priests..." is all well and good until you remember that we can all dual spec and in Cataclysm, gear will be a non-issue across those specs.

As for PuGs running 25mans, you seem to have forgotten that running the 10man will lock you out of the 25man. If PuGs do happen, it will all be on alts. I do find your characterization that pure DPS specs will be a bit disadvantaged true, scaling down from 25 and 10 is not 1:1 and a lot of pures may find themselves relegated to PuGs. Now, that's probably a bit far-fetched and a bit of fear-mongering at this point but definitely within the realm of possibility if things go south.

I understand about the mutual lockout. I'm saying that if you are PuGing because you AREN'T in a guild, if you are a pure class, it will more likely be in a 25-man, because you can't fit as many pures into 10-man, proportionally. In fact, I'm willing to bet that if there is any softening of the hybrid tax, only warlocks and hunters will get into PuG 10-mans.

By "specialized", I meant "specialized" in the sense it's used in the English language. Our guild has several people who specialize in their role. One, for instance, is a priest that switches between holy and discipline as is required for the raid; he has no interest in any DPS role at the raiding level.

Having 3 types of priests is really useful -- shadow priest for misery, currently, and mad DPS, holy for big healing, and disc for shielding. Each bring different things to the table. Mind you, we haven't seen the homogenization plans for Cataclysm. I strongly doubt that a paladin/paladin/priest combination will bring as many different plates to the table in 10-man as priest/priest/shaman/shaman/druid/pally/pally does in 25. Dual-specing has nothing to do with anything.

Zarhym said in a later post that Blizzard has in the past and is willing to change raiding mid-expansion. But it's because of this right there that if they make a mistake and kill 25man raiding, it will probably never fully recover. Blizzard is playing with fire here but it's the 25man guilds that are in danger of getting burned.

Agreed.

thefool808 · 04/27/10, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

So what then, set it to a 4.0 level and introduce new 5mans with each tier and only make those count? That's really punitive to people trying to level alts though; imagine if right now only the ICC 5mans counted towards the daily.

Then you would be gearing alts with Hero points and not getting a piddly amount of Valor points a day (or week) with them until they are better geared. I don't see a problem with this.

I highly doubt you will be able to max out your Valor points weekly by not raiding. They could make it similar to how it is today, but with less of a time commitment and less running of the same instance over and over. The max amount you can get in a week should be equal to the max a 25 man raider can get from raiding (even possibly increasing that max as gates open). Then, make it so a 10 man raider would make less than that but possibly be able to hit the max by supplementing with heroics (or possibly not, to further incentivize 25 man). Finally make the max you can get from heroics to some lower number (through whatever mechanic they want).

Tinwhisker · 04/27/10, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by rbbrdckybk

In a nutshell, assuming Blizzard correctly does what they've proposed, and doesn't reduce the overall difficulty of raiding, then any guild that is struggling with 25-man hard modes today should struggle with 10-man hard modes after the changes are implemented (if the choose the 10-man raiding path).

There's a flaw in that logic. Let's just say that 10man and 25man are tuned to be of exactly the same difficulty in regards to all the various things that go into an encounter; things like spacing out in the available room, the spread of things like defile, the size of the bosses hit box, and a whole host of other considerations. For the sake of argument, Blizzard has overcome all of that with brilliant design work. There is complete parity in difficulty.

Then comes along <Band of Mothers> a 25man raiding guild. They're doing quite well but are stuck on heroic mode Firedragonator, they just can't get past him on heroic 25man. By your reasoning they would not be able to drop 15 members and complete it on 10man. But that's not how it works. What <Band of Mothers> does is drop their lowest 15 producers, raise the average skill level of the raid, and complete the encounter.

Now this 25man raiding guild which has been through two tiers of Cataclysm content already has just cut 15 members. Sure there's talk of going back to 25man once they're gotten everyone the kill but that won't happen every time. Those 15 people got cut and they know that the next roadblock will see them cut again and with each temporary cut down to 10man the change becomes more and more permanent.