Would itemizing 10s and 25s the same be too boring?

I think you're glossing over the differences, Dorvan. But, I guess whatever Blizzard decides to do is the best way to do it...

Faro I think they were referring to 10s and 25s giving the *same* loot, ilvl and all, not just loot with the same relative stat allocations. You can get your TX.0 and TX.5 set pieces in the same week, after all.

Rasmfrackn wrote:Things like runed orbs, patterns, val'anyr, a plate dps belt, BV gear, trinkets, tanking weapon types, etc.

Just to point out, factually this is almost 100% wrong. Runed orbs and patterns drop off 10 man bosses (thus making Belt of the titans available, a plate dps belt), Shiver (almost BiS tank weapon, only pipped by Sorthalis) drops in 10 man, Royal Seal of King Llane & Furance Stone both drop in 10 man (and are both excellent trinkets), etc... there really isn't any large gap in gear options between the two (the glaring exception being the Legendary, and given how hard they've always been to obtain I really don't see that as a horribly unbalancing issue).

Rasmfrackn wrote:Aren't there already 2 classes? Those who can field 25 and those who cannot. Should a 25-man raider touch 10-man raids? A 10-man raider can't necessarily do the inverse.

It helps a lot with guild alliances.

We run 25-man raids as part of a guild alliance. There are four guilds plus a selection of individuals (most of which used to be in one of those four guilds). We have about 31 core raiders that rotate to make up the 25-man raids, plus about 15 "alternates" that only raid when a spot is available.

Of the core raiders, there are five from my guild (guild A), four from guild B, three from guild C, 12 from guild D, and seven from other guilds.

We also run 10 man raids. In these, we can get more of our guild members raiding. Getting a spot on the 25-man raid roster takes a long time, but we can guarantee a 10-man raid spot immediately. Of our four guilds:
Guilds A and B join up, add a few members that are 25-man alts, and run weekly.
Guild C brings in a few 25-man alts and a few that never do 25s, and runs their own 10s.
Guild D fields two 10-man groups
Many of the individuals run 10-mans with their own guilds.

So the same group that fields one 25-man raid can field four+ 10-man raids, allowing more guild members a chance to see the content. A lot of the core raiders that go (and make the 10s easier/possible) do so because they want to learn the content and because there are loot benefits.

I think there could be some improvement in gear itemization and ilevels, but I'm not convinced this is one of them. The thing I'm not happy about is that Ulduar10 (Hard) gear is roughly equal to Ulduar25 (Normal). A lot of the bosses in Ulduar25 normal are quite easy, bordering on puggable (especially within a few weeks). It's not too surprising that it's tough to find people for Ulduar10 hard modes, and it's nigh impossible to have an actual 10 man guild. Why push and push doing hard stuff in Ulduar10 (and it is hard in the appropriate gear) when you could probably PuG Ulduar25's first several bosses?

I guess I'd rather see four distinct tiers, rather than three. Right now it's:

1. Naxx25/Ulduar10
2. Ulduar10 Hard / Ulduar25
3. Ulduar25 Hard

I'd much rather see:
1. Naxx25/Ulduar10
2. Ulduar25
3. Ulduar10 (Hard)
4. Ulduar25 (Hard)

25 man raiders would still have a reason to do 25s, but then there's much more reason to do hard modes in 10.

Ugh, that's kind of derailing your thread. Let me address the issue:

I think it would make it too boring. I think it's fun to see that X boss on 25 has something that's not itemized as well for me, but something in 10 (Hard) has fewer stats, but is itemized better. It also would make the loot tiers (that I just showed I don't like) even more pronounced because there'd be absolutely no point in doing 10 man hard modes for 25 man guilds that do them.

Sahiel wrote:

Rasmfrackn wrote:Things like runed orbs, patterns, val'anyr, a plate dps belt, BV gear, trinkets, tanking weapon types, etc.

Just to point out, factually this is almost 100% wrong. Runed orbs and patterns drop off 10 man bosses (thus making Belt of the titans available, a plate dps belt), Shiver (almost BiS tank weapon, only pipped by Sorthalis) drops in 10 man, Royal Seal of King Llane & Furance Stone both drop in 10 man (and are both excellent trinkets), etc... there really isn't any large gap in gear options between the two (the glaring exception being the Legendary, and given how hard they've always been to obtain I really don't see that as a horribly unbalancing issue).

You're misunderstanding what I was saying. They're all at the very least different than the 25-man.

Runed orbs. Drop off easy modes in 25s, hard modes only in 10s.
Patterns. Not at all... head to the AH. Do they drop off hardmodes? I can't tell from anything I've looked at. If so, see above.
Val'anyr. Obviously not.
BV gear: Different slots between 10s and 25s.
Plate dps belt: no such thing in 10-man ulduar unless you want to count cash or runed orbs.
Shiver is a mace... find me an axe? Last laugh was an axe... find me a mace in T7?
Ulduar trinkets are actually ok... there's a stamina trinket and a dodge trinket in each size (even though the general's heart is icky compared to the furnace stone... hey the 10-man version got the better itemization! who would've thought). Trinkets in Naxx had a lot less parity.

I'm surprised you guys are only picking up the pieces that sound like 10-man QQ.
Are the Ulduar trinkets boring because they've got parity? There are examples of equivalent itemization between the two sized zones... it's just that it's a coincidence instead of a design choice. Are tier sets boring because they're the same stats between the two sizes? Would you prefer if T8 had BV on gloves/shoulders in the 25-man but dodge in the 10-man, and maybe vice-versa for chest and hat? I'd want to get both types of gear, but I don't think I'd prefer it from a design standpoint.

Both Ulduar10 tanking rings have no defense on them, but both have armor. Only 1 ring in Ulduar25 has armor on it. Auri25's ring and Thorim25-hard's ring have the exact same stats in nearly identical amounts other than the socket... isn't that boring? Chop out Auri's ring and put an armor ring there or something. There's already bloat and redundancy in the tables that could be removed at the same time as offering more variety in each raid size. It would be part expansion and part reduction to do this, not pure expansion.

I'll certainly agree that they could have done a better job with rings, and the non-Stam trinkets.

EDIT: I'm having difficulty understanding the post above this one.

If I'm reading Rasmfrackn's posts correctly he is complaint is largely in the disparity of the slot itemization between 10s and 25s. That is if you want X stats in Y slot you generally have to kill Z boss in one specific raid (Normal or Heroic).

As a raider who does 25s and 10s you basically have the luxury of sifting through loot tables and say well all "I" really want out of 10s is these items here and other than that "I" don't really care as "I" can get better from the 25s. Someone who doesn't run 25s doesn't have the option of using the 25s loot tables to fill in the "gaps" that exist in the 10s loot tables.

Maddok wrote: Someone who doesn't run 25s doesn't have the option of using the 25s loot tables to fill in the "gaps" that exist in the 10s loot tables.

And vice versa.

It's that the "entirety" of the raid game (in terms of loot) is the sum of both 10s and 25s, instead of them each being their own self-contained progression path. What I'm proposing would mean all the 25-man gear was strictly better than the 10-man gear, but it would also mean that raiding one or the other would give you all the same gearing options, just with slightly different numbers.

It wouldn't be "too boring" per se, but there's a handful of issues that need to be overcome, and they're not particularly easy to deal with:

#1: Getting together 10 people is easier than getting together 25 people. If 25mans and 10mans dropped the same loot, I'm not positive you'd see anyone doing 25mans. This is the biggest issue really. The only real viable way of dealing with this, in my opinion, would be to make 25mans the "easier" method of getting gear, making the 10mans the "hardcore" version and the 25's "just grab people and go". You run the risk of making it so no one wants to do the 10mans that way though.

#2: If the instances have the same loot table, you need to lock a player into one or the other, not both. Otherwise you're just encouraging people to run both instances every week. There's an argument to be made that that's already the case (I'm pretty sure almost every class has one or two best in slot items dropping from 10man at the moment), but it would be pretty boring I think to kill, say, Hodir hard mode twice in a week and get the wrong shield both times. Locking players out from one version also takes a whole bunch of game time away from the people who are already doing both every week.

I'm not sure the end result would really be better.

Lore wrote:It wouldn't be "too boring" per se, but there's a handful of issues that need to be overcome, and they're not particularly easy to deal with:

#1: Getting together 10 people is easier than getting together 25 people. If 25mans and 10mans dropped the same loot, I'm not positive you'd see anyone doing 25mans. This is the biggest issue really. The only real viable way of dealing with this, in my opinion, would be to make 25mans the "easier" method of getting gear, making the 10mans the "hardcore" version and the 25's "just grab people and go". You run the risk of making it so no one wants to do the 10mans that way though.

I dont particularly agree with point 1. While it is probably easier to PUG 10 people for an Ulduar run, in my experience 25man guilds will have a *much* easier time recruiting and filling raid spots due to the better gear in terms of ilevels and prestige. People want the conquerors, not the valorous and the better dps weapons, larger numbers and heroic cheevs.

I'd go so far as to say that most people that raid and focus solely on 10man content do it to hang with their friends and enjoy the closer knit guilds. In otherwords, they aren't doing it for the truly "uber" loot but simply the experience without some of the drama larger guilds bring.

However, I think with as much work as Blizzard has put into making 10mans a viable path, they might as well show a little more parity in terms of slots (plate dps belt please?) and some 10man equivalent tradeskill drops. 25man loot should always be better sure, but a little more parity isn't "boring" least to me and my guild.

Smite-Turalyon wrote:I dont particularly agree with point 1. While it is probably easier to PUG 10 people for an Ulduar run, in my experience 25man guilds will have a *much* easier time recruiting and filling raid spots due to the better gear in terms of ilevels and prestige. People want the conquerors, not the valorous and the better dps weapons, larger numbers and heroic cheevs.

I'd go so far as to say that most people that raid and focus solely on 10man content do it to hang with their friends and enjoy the closer knit guilds. In otherwords, they aren't doing it for the truly "uber" loot but simply the experience without some of the drama larger guilds bring.

You've just described my guild to a tee. We only run 10 mans and do it to keep the guild small and avoid the drama of a larger guild. It works great. We were the 2nd guild on the server to kill Yogg-10. The guild that got him first was the top 25 man guild on the server.

We have a very difficult time with recruitment. "You mean, you ONLY do 10 mans?" Most people want to at least do the occasional 25 man. It's much harder to recruit.

Smite-Turalyon wrote:

Lore wrote:It wouldn't be "too boring" per se, but there's a handful of issues that need to be overcome, and they're not particularly easy to deal with:

#1: Getting together 10 people is easier than getting together 25 people. If 25mans and 10mans dropped the same loot, I'm not positive you'd see anyone doing 25mans. This is the biggest issue really. The only real viable way of dealing with this, in my opinion, would be to make 25mans the "easier" method of getting gear, making the 10mans the "hardcore" version and the 25's "just grab people and go". You run the risk of making it so no one wants to do the 10mans that way though.

I dont particularly agree with point 1. While it is probably easier to PUG 10 people for an Ulduar run, in my experience 25man guilds will have a *much* easier time recruiting and filling raid spots due to the better gear in terms of ilevels and prestige. People want the conquerors, not the valorous and the better dps weapons, larger numbers and heroic cheevs.

... yes... but the question was "what if the gear wasn't better".

Lore wrote:... yes... but the question was "what if the gear wasn't better".

Not exactly. The question was more like "what if the gear had its budget spent on the same types of stats". Basically what if everything worked like the tier gear, where it was different ilvl with more budget/stats on the 25-man gear but the types of options available were the same. (E.g. def/dodge/hit bracers on flame leviathan. That's an example of them doing what I'm discussing.)

Both of your points hold true if the gear in 10s and 25s was exactly the same, where doing 10-mans could get you the exact same stats as 25-man. I think GC discussed that option and said basically the same thing. I don't necessarily agree that 2 shots at a certain piece of loot per week would be horrendously different than 1 shot at it per week, but that's neither here nor there. Right now you can go for TX.10 and TX.25 tier set pieces in the same week... it would be like that for all slots.

So if we pretend for a moment that 10s and 25s have the "same" loot table but the item levels are different, and by "same" we really mean they drop items that are from the same slot and are of like stat distribution.

Example:
Razorscale Avoidance Tank Belt [10]: X Armor Y Stamina Z Strength A Dodge B Hit C Defense
Razorscale Avoidance Tank Belt[25]: X+ Armor Y+ Stamina Z+ Strength A+ Dodge B+ Hit C+ Defense

Where the [25] belt is "stronger" as it has a higher item level and has more stat points in its budget? This makes the [25] belt the "better" choice if you have a chance at both but also allows people who only do either 25s or 10s a chance at an avoidance belt in this case (assuming no other avoidance belts exist in this mythical version of Ulduar).