25-man-raiding
Latest
Loot, rationality, and the Sunwell effect
Here at WoW Insider we don't always agree with each other. Whether it's debating the merits of various tanks on different encounters, the damage difference between pure and hybrid DPS classes, the ideal function of a particular healing class in raids, or the superiority of cake over pie, our back-channel discussion tends to be pretty interesting.Eliah Hecht's article "25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear" sparked a lot of great discussion with our readers and, I think, some illuminating poll results as well. The majority of responders believed that giving 10-man and 25-man raids the same loot table would result in a significant drop in popularity for 25-man raiding. Overall, I tend to agree with this, but I also think that Eliah touched on something that speaks to Blizzard's evolving sense of game design, much of which is evident in the transition between late Burning Crusade and Wrath. I would like to call this the Sunwell effect, or "ingame rationality." To wit: don't incentivize players to behave in a manner contrary to your actual design interests. I believe this played a huge role in the differences between BC and Wrath raiding, and that it underlies why the 25-man loot table has to remain superior to its 10-man counterpart.
Top Ulduar achievements earned thus far
The folks over at GuildOx, a guild progress and achievement ranking site, were kind enough to email us some interesting new statistics about Ulduar's achievements. As it stands a large portion of the raids are, of course, not getting encounter specific achievements the first time they go into the zone. However there are some that are getting them nonetheless.People may wonder if guilds are getting the achievements this quickly because Ulduar is too easy. My opinion on the matter is that Ulduar itself sans hard modes won't be abnormally challenging, however when you put in the hard modes and various twists to the encounter in order to earn the achievements, Ulduar is going to become quite challenging.The achievements that have made the list so far, like A Quick Shave where you have to kill Razorscale with her only flying into the air once, just requires a lot of DPS. That's not too hard for most geared out groups to muster.Take a look after the break for GuildOx's list of the top five Ulduar 10 and 25 man achievements, and head over there to take a look at things overall.
Blizzard did the wrong thing with Ulduar-10 emblems
As we posted yesterday, it has been made very clear at this point that Emblems of Valor are the emblems that are going to drop in the 10-man version of Ulduar, while the 25-man version will drop the entirely new Emblems of Conquest. Nothing is being added to the EoV vendors aside from the relics that drop in Naxx-25. In other words, 10-man raids are basically getting glossed over, and 25-man raiders are getting all the new shinies. Where 25-man raiders get an entirely new quartermaster with access to gear on par with normal-mode Uld-25 drops (ilvl 226), as well as two of their tier 8.5 tokens, we get recycled EoV gear that was originally meant for Naxx-25 raiders. This is gear that is half a tier worse than the gear that drops in Uld-10 normal mode (ilvl 213 vs 219), and there is no way for us to buy our tier 8.0 gear with emblems, at all.
25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear
10-man ilvl 25-man Naxx 200 KT, EoE 213 Naxx Ulduar 219 Ulduar hard 226 Ulduar, KT/EoE 232 Ulduar weapons 239 Ulduar hard Once upon a time, the only raiding in WoW was 40-man raiding, and we did it uphill, both ways, and flasks went away when you died. And we liked it. Later on in Classic WoW, some 20-man raids were introduced in the form of Zul'gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, and they were generally seen as successful. So successful, in fact, that when Burning Crusade came along, there were no more 40-man raids - only 10 and 25. At the beginning, the only 10-man was BC's entry-level raid, Karazhan. Everything else, from the small T4 raids (Gruul, Magtheridon) on up through T6, was exclusively 25-man. Notably, Gruul and Mags returned the same quality of rewards as KZ. Eventually a second 10-man raid (Zul'Aman) was introduced, with roughly a T5 level of difficulty, and of rewards. Blizzard noticed that people really liked these 10-man raids. And so it came to pass that in the current expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, every raid instance is available in both 10- and 25-man versions. However, in a departure from all previous tradition, the 10- and 25-man instances at the same tier (which is to say, T7, at the moment) reward different levels of gear: Naxx-10 gives you ilvl 200 epics, whereas Naxx-25 rewards you with ilvl 213.
Breakfast Topic: Raiding: How easy is too easy?
Karthis, a feral Druid from the Garona-US server, wrote a thought-provoking treatise on the current end-game on his blog a few days ago. Of course, he's hardly the first to declare the current end-game far too easy, but he brings a very interesting angle to the discussion -- namely that of the casual.He interviews various casual raid guild leaders in his piece. These are guild leaders who, back in Burning Crusade, mostly ran Karazhan and maybe dabbled a bit in Zul'aman. They certainly were far behind the curve. But they had a dedicated core of 10 raiders who got together, faced the challenges, and overcame them. But now, even these casuals are saying that the end-game is just too easy. One guild leader interviewed is finding that some of their raiders have gotten all the loot they need from Naxxramas and maxed out Northrend Achievements and Reputations, and, for lack of anything to do, are not logging on for days or simply letting their subscriptions lapse altogether, leaving their guild leader to make the painful decision once Ulduar comes to either refuse to give them their raid slots back or kick out their replacements.
25-man Razuvious mage tanked
Instructor Razuvious is the first boss of the Military Quarter in Naxxramas. The typical strategy on the 25-man version of the the fight is to have a priest mind control one of his four adds and use that add to tank the boss, because Razuvious hits far too hard for normal tanks (hundreds of thousands on plate). But who needs a traditional strategy, right? A Team, of Stonemaul, decided they would do this fight with no priests. The trick was to have a mage constantly spellsteal Bone Armor off of the trash leading up to Razuvious. The mage then tanked the fight, the healers kept the mage up, and all went well. The mage that had been tanking did die around 40%, but another mage hit the spellsteal, picked up the boss, and the fight went smoothly from there. There's a WWS available, if you're curious. The reason the mages don't come out on top for damage in is that it's all absorbed by Bone Armor (otherwise you'd have some very dead mages). Let's hear it for creative methods!
Shifting Perspectives: So. Um, do bears suck?
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we shelve the column we originally intended to run due to a rather pressing matter.OK, folks. I have a confession to make. This week's Shifting Perspectives was originally meant to be a full guide to gearing your Restoration Druid at 80, and I'm still going to post that, either this week or next. A lot of people have (correctly, I think) observed that this column has historically paid more attention to Feral than to Restoration or Balance, and it's my aim to balance (har!) that out a bit. Part of it is just that the people who play Druids on staff here at WoW Insider are usually feral, and part of it is that -- at least as of the last numbers we had on it -- most people playing Druids are also feral. I confess I would love to see the demographics on Druids post-Wrath, because I get the sense that Balance in particular has become markedly more popular.But the Resto post is going to have to wait a few days, not least because my eyes are swimming from so much Wowhead. We found out today that Swipe's threat is getting a significant buff, but over the course of reading the pertinent forum thread and some back-channel discussion here, I ran across a few things concerning bear tanking that really made me sit up after the hell of tanking last night's heroic Old Kingdom and go, "Wait. It's not just me?"Personally whenever I encounter serious problems in a dungeon I tend to chalk it up to the fact that I suck. I find this to be an efficient and typically accurate means of pinpointing the source of an issue. However, my fellow Druids, our problems may actually be more wide-ranging than that.
WoW Insider speaks with Nymh, world first level 80
Wrath of the Lich King has only been live for a little under a week, and already players are tearing through its many challenges. Blizzard once said that players have a voracious appetite for new content, as soon as something is released they need to start on something else. Wrath has really driven that point home.The first of many firsts was Nymh, world first player to level 80. WoW Insider had an opportunity to talk to him directly about his journey to level 80, and just what inspired it. Read on to see what he (and we) had to say!
Ask A Beta Tester: Spirit, AoE, and raid loot
I'm going to start off this AABT by stealing a question that Alex actually took last time, mostly because I started laughing when I read it yesterday. I have, oh, conservatively, billions of Wrath screenshots on my hard drive at this point, but there's one I remember all too well.Marathan asks... Some time ago, there was a talk about new player character models for Wrath - and even some bugged pictures. So the question is, are they going live? Are we finally going to get improved graphics on our characters?As Alex wrote, Blizzard used one beta build to test the ease of implementing new skins and some of them...didn't turn out too well. Imagine you're me and you get a beta key. Budget a few hours of anticipatory excitement while your main copies over. She's a 70 Tauren Druid who has been with you since day one, your sole 70, and you think she's the most beautiful thing in the game even if to everyone else she's an ungainly 8-foot heifer. Now imagine booting up the Wrath beta for the first time and being horrified to see your beloved character with a Glasgow smile, like the developers had seen the Joker in The Dark Knight and thought, "Hey! We could make that work!"Holy water did nothing. Neither did crucifixes, garlic, a wooden stake, waving the Bible in the direction of the laptop, or sobbing quietly in a corner.On the plus side, here was finally something in the game to which Tauren cat form was an actual graphical improvement.
Breakfast Topic: Dialing back your game
Ever since the whole 10-man/25-raiding split for Wrath was announced, there's been murmurs of fear from many raiders that the large scale raid will become a thing of the past, as people decide that they can see content just fine in 10-man groups. I noticed the subject come up again today over on Lume the Mad's blog (not to be confused with the awesomer Lum the Mad's blog): A guild on Proudmoore, Renaissance, has decided to scale back to 10 man raiding for Wrath of the Lich King. They have why, but Lume opines a bit on why: easier bosses, less hassle herding 10 people than 25 people, and stuff such as that. The reminder of the debate actually sort of got me thinking in a less controversial vein. I myself scaled back my game a bit from original WoW to the Burning Crusade expansion. In the original game, I was a relatively dedicated raider. Not the most uber, and probably still more casual than most, but I did regularly participate in 40-mans and tried to bring my consumables and my resist gear and be on time most nights. However, with Burning Crusade, I decided to retire from the raid game. I felt I was just spending too much time farming stuff to raid, I had more real world obligations to deal with, and I felt that spending 2-3 hours in Ahn'Qiraj or Blackwing Lair 2-3 days a week just wasn't how I wanted to spend my playtime. So, come BC, I decided to stick to 10-mans. Not that there were many, but I figured Karazhan would be about the pinnacle of my game for BC, and that was just fine. So, anyway, here's my question: Are you or your guild planning to scale back your game for Wrath? Are you dropping 25-mans for 10-mans? Retiring from Arena play? Dropping out of raiding altogether? What reasons have made you decide to try a new slower paced playstyle in Northrend?
WWI '08 Panel: Death Knight
Understandably, everyone is begging to know more about the Death Knight class. At WWI, the Blizzard developers discussed the class in depth at both the main Development panel as well as at the Q&A panel. So you don't have to go fishing everywhere to find what you want to know, here's a roundup of new information about Death Knights from WWI so far.Starting AreaThe Death Knight starting area will be an extended area in Northern Plaguelands. The developers feel strongly about keeping people interested in playing in the Old World so they are creating this new zone. I personally hate every zone that has the word "plague" associated with it. Admittedly, I didn't reach either of the current Plaguelands until after I'd upgraded to The Burning Crusade, which meant I really had no time for grinding there since Outland awaited alluringly. However, it will be interesting to see if they make changes to the existing Western and Eastern Plaguelands along with adding content to the North to make these areas more interesting to players -- be they Death Knights or not.
I welcome our 10 and 25 man raid instance overlords
First, go read Alex's post, because he makes some good points about recruiting for 25 man raids in Wrath of the Lich King. We now know that in the expansion, all raids will come with a 10 man and 25 man setting, effectively a 'normal' and 'heroic' mode for raiding. While I personally believe this to be awesome, I can understand the idea that this will adversely affect (not effect, I'm reminded) recruitment for 25 mans if people can see the exact same content by just running a 10 man. Sure, the gear won't be as good, but if the starter 10 man gear allows you to run the next stage 10 man, and so on until you finally reach a 10 man version of Arthas, guilds that run 25 man raid content might have a harder time recruiting people to run what is essentially the 'same' content with 24 other folks instead of 9 other folks.The reason I don't think it will be a real issue (I do think it's worth considering, though, and I do believe it will have some effect on 25 man recruitment) is threefold. Unrelated to those reasons (which are coming up after the jump) I have to admit that this may vary by server: on Norgannon, if anything I'm seeing more new 25 man guilds recruiting and starting up the crawl through Gruul's and Magtheridon, so I may just be working from a glass half full through rose colored glasses state of ludicrous (and heavily over-metaphoric) optimism here.
Questioning the fate of 25 mans in Wrath
With the barrage of Wrath of the Lich King news we've received recently, one little tidbit stuck out in the bad way. Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about quite a bit of it, this one thing in particular just struck me as odd. The mention of there being both 10 and 25 man versions of every raid zone is interesting, but makes me worry from a logistical point of view. I like the fact that it means more casual players can see the content, I like the fact that it means the content actually exists for the casual players.I wonder, though, what it will do to 25 man raiding. I can't speak for all servers, but on my server(or more specifically my raid group) the gear that comes out of boss fights is just a way of progressing to the next boss. It is largely unimportant to us until we come across something like Brutallus, in which the gear is absolutely necessary to have to progress. Seeing the characters, bosses and the encounters is far and away the most important part of raiding.
Legendary bow Thori'dal, the Star's Fury "nerfed" on live servers
World of Raids has discovered something that might give Hunters a momentary attack of Angina: Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury has been found in the current game files, and while it still looks pretty tasty, it's also look weaker than the last known stats from the Pre-PTR leak. Namely, it's lost about 10 base DPS, having dropped from 148.7 DPS to 138.8 DPS. Now, it's hard to call this a "nerf," perse, since the bow hasn't actually appeared on any live or test server yet as an actual item. It's possible that the pre-PTR leak was a hoax (not likely though, since it got the other stats spot on), or that Blizzard's internal testing made them think they needed to tone back the damage a bit. It's a bit of a blow to think what might have been with the old damage anyway, of course. That said, Kil'jaedan isn't even killable yet on live realms, so the stats could change again before it drops. Even if they don't, it's still an awesome bow that will make the Black Bow of the Betrayer look like a peashooter for damage, and comes with the added bonus of a free bag slot, so I'm sure there will be plenty of Hunters aiming for it, and good luck to them. My Hunter is still going to be holding out for a Legendary Gun out of Thor Modan.
Hybrid Theory: What can I do? part 2
Hybrid Theory comes to you yet again from blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart. You're in for thrills, chills, and quite possibly some useful information, but I doubt it. Last week on Hybrid Theory, I got into some of the basic details of what would make you and your spec desirable in a raid. I covered the DPS specs, and this week I'll be covering tanks and healers. Warriors, priests, I'll be leaving you out of this one. I love you, really, I do! But it's that conditional love, where I only love you if you're specced how I like. I hear Rossi, Knox and Harper still love you! Man, they sound way cooler when you refer to them by their last names, don't they? Like detectives, or super heroes....Right. Anyway! I'll be detailing the strong points of the tanking and healing specs of our beloved hybrids, and the utility you provide. Should you be looking for a new raid group anytime soon, these will be the things you'll want to keep in mind when asked what you can offer a raid. Having good gear and knowing how to play is also a plus, but this is a start.Never fear you QQasuals(just kidding!) out there, next week I'll take a step back from the raiding scene and cover some of the new toys in Patch 2.4 and what they mean to you. However, it isn't next week yet, so read on!
A year with no new 25-man content
Back in May 2007, when the Black Temple materialized in Patch 2.1, high end raiding guilds were drooling at the idea of taking down the infamous Illidan Stormrage, scourge of the Outland. Unfortunately for those guilds that achieved their lofty goal, there has been little else to challenge them. The telling fact is, when the Sunwell Plateau goes live in Patch 2.4 sometime this Spring, it will be the first new 25-man content to hit the game in a year!And this is where Lore, a level 70 Blood Elf Paladin whose guild has had Illidan on farm for the past three and half months, now sits. For 25-man raiders, clearing Black Temple hasn't been the real challenge. Finding a new goal worthy of their time, dedication and uber-gear has been the task just out of their reach. And Lore's guild has been suffering for it with attrition, disinterest and players leaving the game entirely.The news that new high end content is coming is great news, but it can't come fast enough for elite raiders who aren't quite the minority they used to be. WoW Jutsu shows that more than 6% of raiding guilds have entered Black Temple already.Has Blizzard made the right choice by ignoring this group of players in favor of cranking out PvP improvements, 10-man instances and Cooking Daily Quests? Or has Blizzard dropped the ball for a good chunk of its player base?
