Well, this is new. Normal/Heroic 10/25 will now simply be Normal and Heroic with Flex scaling between 10 and 25 people. I’m not sure current Flex difficulty is staying yet but the wrench thrown in this is a new harder difficulty called “Mythic” that will strictly be 20 people. No multiple-size highest difficulty balancing anymore. The very hardest content is going to be 20-man and that’s it.
Very interesting. Thoughts?
If Mythic maintains its own set of significant rewards/achievements, then we will have successfully transitioned back to a WotLK model, and I am 100% for it.
We shall see! I see no reason why Mythic wouldn’t be a step above the rest, but as we discussed, you just never know. I find it interesting how the lesser raiding level would be Flex-size though. My assumption is that Normal and Heroic are easier than they are now while Mythic difficulty follows the current top-level endgame model with the best rewards.
It eliminates a few problems aside from the obvious, I think. Absences in 10-man are kind of harsh because the preference is to have a core group of 10 and carrying extra geared people on the roster with fewer spots is tricky. On the other hand, it’s a bitch to manage a 25-man roster as well so having that 10 <= Raid Size <= 25 flexibility can actually provide some help to those Normal mode raiders without letting the strict 20-man difficulty make their teams obsolete. I think this is an elegant solution and I hope it’s done right.
As for me, though, bring on the 20-man content!
GC clarified for people who were confused for some reason:
"Question: What the tuning will be with new raid comps? Will Normals be as easy as Flex? Will Mythic be harder than current Heroic?
Ghostcrawler: Just changing names, not difficulties. "
So the summary of this whole thing now is:
“LFR now is 25 man
In WoD it’s 25, but will use the flex tech to scale between 10-25 if people leave early
Flex now is 10-25
In WoD it’s now called normal and works as it does now
Normal now is 10 or 25
In WoD it’s called heroic and uses the flex technology to scale between 10-25
Heroic now is 10 or 25
In WoD it’s called Mythic and is locked at 20 people.”
This is a decently sized step in the right direction. This is done right with designing new raids with this new content, instead of trying to force Flex on raids that weren’t designed around it.
I’d like more info on Mythic, but I’m fine with downsizing the standard 25 man to 20 as the new top raid team standard. That extra 5 looks like its just going to be a Flex number for runner ups in the 20-Mythic.
Went browsing MMO champ looking at some of the initial complaints, ran across this gem in a “We want 10 man mythic raids!” thread:
10-man guilds! DIE DIE DIE
Woooohoooo
Death to 10-man raiding!
I fucking love people sometimes. Someone screaming about shit like a crazed fanatic? Check. Someone going equally crazed fanatic but for the opposite side in rebuttle? Check. Yeap, thread is golden.
This change has me interested, but we will see once it gets closer to launch how close they stay to this change.
I get 10-player raiding to some degree – I’ve been there myself! I’ve been in both ships at some points. However, I’m mostly excited because I think having one fixed size for cutting-edge content is going to produce better quality content. If X amount of time is spent balancing Heroic difficulty for both raid sizes right now, I feel like we will have better balance as a whole delivered for that level of raiding.
I like the Flex technology with respect to Normal/Heroic (which is basically equal to Flex and Normal respectively right now). The scaling technology is great and I thought this tier’s Flex difficulty was a lot of fun. It basically felt like LFR for good players. Now we can apply that to the current difficulty of Normal mode to give 10-player guilds leeway to carry a bigger roster than they need to protect themselves from attendance issues while being forgiving to 25-player guilds who might be missing some people on a given week.
Sure, the competitive 10-player Heroic guilds are going to have to change or go home. Seems like it’s necessary to achieve the end goal here though. Connected realms and all that is supposed to bring those lower-population servers together so they should be able to recruit and merge if they want to continue to be as successful. There’s going to be a smaller overflow of 25-man raiders who might not have a 20-man roster spot (since most guilds carry a roster > 25 as it is) so really this problem should even itself out if guilds are willing to adapt.
I think this is a good thing for WoW.
Concur. Let’s just make sure that they deliver on the rewards/achievements as well.
And boo fuckin’ hoo to all the 10-Man guilds that bitch about losing Mythic.
Well, we all know how you feel about those, hahaha.
It’s definitely an interesting decision on their part given they know how many people raid 10-man and they also could have guessed there would be backlash. I guess they’re feeling pretty bold about this choice.
So are we getting the band back together?
I’m afraid Turalyon is my home now /teardrop
Damnit jungard.
Fixed your typo.
Oh, like you wouldn’t switch in a heartbeat when the need arose.
Hey, I just took an officer spot! Getting rid of me is like getting rid of a bad rash.