Hello friends, as the elemental
invasion has started we have some weeks ahead of us of despawning
capital city npcs and random mobs spawning, if you found being turned
into a ghoul/dying annoying in the WOTLK event then the Cataclysm one
should be right up your street. I've got some thoughts here because
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's sitting in a pretty good 25 man
guild that's very tempted to go to the 10 man side when Cataclysm's
released and needs to make a decision soon. Myself? I can't see the
downsides but maybe I'm missing something.
When TBC hit, there was an
uproar as raids went from the 30 people with 10 afk/slacking/dead to
something limit down to 25. Guilds didn't like the idea that they
would have to tell some of their players that they simply weren't
good enough as blizzard simply removed 40 man raids from the game in
an attempt to scale things down. Come Cataclysm we could well be
seeing the same issue though as with the ability to see all the same
content, with the same rewards with less people involved could only
be a good thing for most people that raid in some form. The current
raiding situation looks to be about 50/50 when it comes to the 25/10
man split with a huge majority of that being pugs (of which most now
disband simply because of the new raid lockout system confusing the
hell out of people), when Cataclysm comes out I could easily see it
moving on to a 95/5 split in favour of 10 man and this is why.
- Higher standard of play - That guy who spends most of the raid dead? You won't need to raid with him anymore. That guy with the BIS gear that's sitting at the bottom of the meter? Nor him. The overall standard of play should be much higher as it's far easier to bring 10 top tier players together and coordinate them than it is to fix the logistics of a 25 man raid group, especially when pugging. From a raid leader POV it's also far easier to manage 10 people.
- Logistics/More accessible - Getting 40 people together to raid was sometimes a nightmare, 25 people too to a lesser extent. Being able to raid with 10 people opens up all sorts of opportunities to raid to the early hours of the morning or raid in the afternoon if it fits peoples schedules better. This is far easier to organise than it is for 25 or 40 players which were only able to raid outside the usual evening raiding times in the highest tiers of guilds.
- The same quality of content - Now that 10 mans won't be a tier behind the 25 mans in gear it allows blizzard to assume the same level of gear for both areas and balance around that. This means 10 man won't be as easy as it is now with people overgearing it by an entire tier of gear. This should hopefully see less 25 man pugs setup by pvpers to attempt to get that DBW/DV equivilent and more 10 man raiding groups (Hydramist for example will be raiding 10 mans).
- Time consumption - Organising 25 players, running a dkp system, making sure you have enough of the right classes, all of this is far less of an issue in 10 man. While raid stacking has been something to look at in 10 man, with the bigger focus on keeping them equal and far more buffs being available to various classes (i.e. 3 heroism/bloodlust providers instead of 1 being available) this shouldn't be such an issue. The administration side of the 25 man raiding guilds is a large part of successfully running it though and can easily be compared to a full time job in progress times with the constant work required. With 10 man this won't be as much of an issue because a DKP system is pointless and managing 10 people is a tad easier, this also brings me onto my next point.
- More epix - wait more epix? Doesn't 10 man drop less? Yes it drops less, BUT; in 25 man when that 2h sword of epic drops you'll be competing vs 5~7 other people if not more, in 10 man this will far more likely be 3 people if not less. Even if there is less loot dropping you have a far higher chance of actually getting the item you want in a 10 man group because of less competition for it, this applies to pugs in particular which I honestly can't see anyone wanting to go to 25 man for at all.
The only real
downside of going to the 10 man side of things is the lack of
prestige that comes from it. Anyone who has PVE'd within a top 50
guild knows that there's a sense of satisfaction from getting those
kills before the large majority of the raiding population. But as the
large majority of players are not in that posistion I can see the
changes sending ripples through the guilds which are not playing for
high world rankings nor trying to do much more than be the best guild
on their server. Already guilds are reducing their rosters down to
half the size to prepare for going into the 10 man side now that it's
a perfectly valid option when Cataclysm hits. This raises concerns
for anyone who is still wanting to raid 25 man though as most people
including blizzard know that developing content for 5% of the
playerbase is not well spent money. See Sunwell, while still being
the best instance simply because it was exclusive
and
only saw good guilds getting past the first 3 bosses and only the top
tier guilds seeing Kil'Jaden while M'uru was in his prime which was
the main prompt for the 30% nerf. If a large majority of the player
base ends up in 10 mans then it will most likely see blizzard either
add more bonuses to 25 man or stop rebalancing stuff for them
altogether, phasing them out as they did with 40/20 man raids because
it simply isn't efficiant use of time for them to generate content
for so few players of their overall playerbase. Is there anyone else
who's raided 25 man in top end guilds for most of their WOW playing
time who's worried about this new direction/considering making the
change to 10 man? Because I certainly am in both aspects.
The 4.0 damage train of
brokenness
Ok we're several weeks into 4.0
now, while Cataclysm looks a little better this feels like 3.0.x in
TBC on steroids with resilience being far too effective at the high
end and useless at the lower ends, diminishing returns of some kind
is needed to address this so it doesn't become ridiculous if stacked
to the 1600 levels and doesn't feel like an average stat at the lower
levels. The ret paladins and arcane mages of 3.0.x though? That's
every class now!
Today I'm going to take a look
at RAT PALAS who've undergone a total redesign with the holy power
system. The large problem I'm finding at the moment with ret is, they
need to stay in melee range to inflict their damage and generate holy
power. This was bad enough before with classes that would just run
away and you would never catch up to them, this has been somewhat
looked at with the speed buff that comes from judging someone.
However the removal of magic dispel from cleanse is pretty much
taking one step forward and two steps back, I get that they're
balancing it around being able to get this from other classes but the
fact is even with instant dispels before you would lose a lot of
distance on classes and they could just run away due to the lack of a
snare. With the current situation you have your hand of freedom and
judgement to attempt to make up the distance, but no way to actually
get close to them or stop them resnaring you constantly. For example
a mage can just use his pet to get a FOF and deep freeze the freedom,
at which point you will not touch him again.
- It feels far too much like a warrior without charge/intercept/a snare, sure you can do absolutely retarded burst if you ever get to hit something, but anyone who realises that 10 yards of distance is their friend will destroy you.
- The damage is unreliable, this is probably due to resilience but HITTING 15k Templars Verdict (the new melee strike which does damage based on holy power) and then hitting one for 5k on someone else is far too huge a disparity. This can make it feel like you're doing no damage to practically globaling someone.
- To actually do any kind of damage at range (judgement does less damage than it used to) you now need to either; hit someone in melee range for an exorcism proc; have someone else get them to <20% for Hammer of Wrath; use wings and spam 20k hammers. When you can't spam cleanse yourself to catch up to things this becomes a problem as you don't even get the few autoattacks you used to be able to get.
- Lack of trash debuffs make you very vulnerable to spell steal/dispel spam, wings/hof etc. all feels like it gets stolen/dispelled instantly and without those major cooldowns you're pretty much screwed against the classes which can remove them.
Some of these issues aren't new
to ret but I honestly think the cleanse change has made them very one
dimensional, one thing I would of liked to see removed is perhaps
magic removal on allies and keeping it for themselves to avoid it
feeling like playing a gutted warrior with a bubble, you can see most
of these issues in action in the video below (still need to get out
of the habit of using divine storm randomly though from the good old
2P T10 bonus and remember to use my exorcism procs).
My mage sadly isn't geared
enough to mess around with so I'll leave you with these two videos I
found which emphasise the WOTLK spirit and show how stupidly easy it
is to do some disgusting damage with the class.
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