Let’s get the TLDR version out of the way here and I’ll let you interpret your own conclusions after reading the direct blue posts below.
- 10man raids are harder than 25man raids, whether the players are more casual or not has nothing to do with it and the reason the 10man hard modes aren’t solely done by 10man raid “guilds” is because you can rock 25man gear and make the encounter easier.
- Naxxramas was easy. Period. There were strategies already set from a few years ago that hold true that pretty much cut off the whole learning curve part of raiding. VOA is a loot piñata and so is Sartharion (minus the hard modes). About the only very challenging fight to learn was Malygos but once you know what to do in practice it’s no harder than anything else.
- We won’t see stacking classes for Ulduar raids, if a guild stacks a certain class then that guild has made a terrible and stupid decision.
- There’s A LOT of loot in Ulduar.
- Killing trash efficiently is important, not everything has to be a speed run.
“What’s the point of 10-Man Hard Mode? Almost all the serious raiders are in 25-Man”
We actually don’t know if this is true or not. Or more specifically, there were 40 player guilds in vanilla because that’s all we offered. Then there were 25 player guilds for BC because that’s all we offered. We had a lot of data and feedback that there are a lot of players who would prefer to run with a smaller group of friends even if the content was very challenging. As I said, we will see if 10 player guilds are more casual or if there are a lot of 10 player guilds who are up to hardcore challenges. (Source)
Naxxramas difficulty
Knowing what we know now, I’d hazard to guess that we would make Naxx 25 (and definitely Sarth 25) more difficult if we could do it over again, as well as dropping less loot per boss. But our model remains that the first tier of raiding should not be a brick wall for the majority of guilds who want to raid. Thaddius, 4H, Saph and KT are a lot more difficult for the average pug than the rest of Naxx. Maybe they should have been the model for all the bosses so that groups weren’t surprised when they killed Anub’Rekhan on the first or second attempt. But, again, if you like wiping and wiping before you finally manage the kill, there will be plenty of chances for that in Ulduar and Icecrown. (Source)
Raid composition in Ulduar
Nah, I think you are looking at two extremes: trivial content vs. raid stacking. The cutting-edge guilds who have tried Ulduar so far had a really good mix of classes. Will there be more complaints (legit and QQ) about Ulduar balance? Absolutely. But we think it is a lot closer than it was in BT or Sunwell. DPS, tanking and healing are all closer and the raid buff design doesn’t encourage stacking nearly to the BC degree. (Source)
Trash Mobs
Strong raiding guilds care about trash. Trash can still wipe you, especially in Ulduar. TK trash was harder than a couple of the bosses. If you clear trash slowly, you might fail a speed run or fail to get one more shot on a boss that night. I can understand how a character who sucks at bosses but excels at trash would not be attractive. But trash matters. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t include it. (Source)
800 pieces of gear in Ulduar!
Streamlining the gear was a necessary step. Ulduar has something like 800 pieces of gear, and that is with all of the streamlining. (Sunwell had something like 160.) There is just no way we could offer extra loot for hard modes and unique sets for specs like Holy paladins and Ele shamans if we didn’t homogenize elsewhere. (Source)
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