Firelands 10 v.s. 25 tuning / performance

[Skye1013]

I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption to say that you can expect each of the dps to have 1 stun each.

Unless spec'd into it (which probably isn't likely for a PvE spec) a shadow priest doesn't have a stun/root, and given the amount of hp these guys have, aren't likely to use their dot/mind flay rotation for snares over mind spike/mind blast. I can't really speak to the other classes.

Disclaimer: I've never done the fight (or any of the boss fights in FL) so I don't know what is standard for shadow priests, but I'm basing my information on what I know of the spec as a shadow priest main.

[Senador]

I keep seeing everyone mention rooting and snaring the Sons, am I missing something here, because I was under the impression the only ‘snaring’ effect that worked was DPSing them down.

I know our DK mentioned that Chilblains didn’t seem to work, and our Shadow Priests mentioned Paralysis wasn’t either, and I'm fairly certain I've never seen entangling roots on a son. I know that they can be stunned, and they can be knocked back, and you can Death Grip them around, but is this something I’m completely missing?

We had a similar situation where 10 man the Sons were pretty trivial, but for 25 man we finally had so many issues we just assigned people to every Son spawn, and if someone had died early, that they had to call for a replacement so we knew which son was going to need help. Second transition was worse, because we didn’t have the tanks initially in there as well, since they were picking up Scions, and there was a much better chance someone died after the Seed lag fest.

[Hrobertgar]

If you think about it, a Paly tank can store up 3 Holy Power before Rag goes down and get a Son to 50% with just a few GCD's. Hell, any tank could do that and better than a Paladin tank. 165k HP is nothing for a DPS, practically any DPS can do 165k damage with a few burst abilities in 1-3 GCD's.

For those people that are so stuck on the sons, let me offer a suggestion.

Put 3 dps on each of the 6 inner sons and obliterate them. 3 dps using their burst abilities, can down a son as quick as a single 10m dps with burst abilities. Then the two tanks can team up on one of the remaining sons, and the healers can stun the last one, just like a scaled up version of 10m.

The key difference of course being that despite the scale of output, the 25m raid is almost assured of having knockbacks and probably deathgrips.

I mean yes, a 10m raider pumping out ~30k dps or so with burst, can take out 165k in like 5-7 seconds. But 3 dps putting out ~95k dps (3 * 30k + 5% for 25m buffs) can also take out 665k in 6-7 seconds so its even. Its just how you choose to distribute your dps. If you choose to have 2 dps per add and let the tanks be available for whatever, that is your choice and other choices are available. 4x may be overtuned dps wise, but alternate dps distributions and the assurance of knockbacks should alleviate this.

There are always going to be differences between 10m and 25m but health is rarely the driving issue for 25m raids where flexibility to raid stack encounters can trivialize them.

[Skye1013]

I keep seeing everyone mention rooting and snaring the Sons, am I missing something here, because I was under the impression the only ‘snaring’ effect that worked was DPSing them down.

I know our DK mentioned that Chilblains didn’t seem to work, and our Shadow Priests mentioned Paralysis wasn’t either, and I'm fairly certain I've never seen entangling roots on a son. I know that they can be stunned, and they can be knocked back, and you can Death Grip them around, but is this something I’m completely missing?

As I mentioned, I haven't done the fight, but if what you say is true about the snares/roots (I wasn't sure if Paralysis counted as a root or a stun) then Shadow Priests definitely bring nothing to the table to slow them other than just dps.

[fafhrd]

They can't be snared or rooted at least on normal, so hardly any ranged DPS bring anything to the table for slowing them other than just DPS. DPSing them is how you're expected to slow them, with knockbacks and stuns from the minority of classes that can do them helping out.

[Meloree]

Heroic Rag I don't know if the disparity will still exist, or the lack of # of raid cooldowns and roles will screw 10 mans more than 25 like it did on Sinestra (not having a CD for every P3 breath sucked, not having room for an extra tank or a pally tank to reset spit stacks sucked).

Did anyone actually run a raidwide cooldown for every breath? That's a ridiculous number of raid cooldowns that you'ld need, considering Barrier and Spirit Link (post 4.1) were too short range to be all that useful for it, at least in 25s. I think it's a myth that 25mans cooldowned every breath, and I think people vastly underestimate the requirement for doing so. I know my raid cooldowned for exactly 4 breaths - the first one at transition (raidwall), the one where we were AoEing whelps (AM), and the first two breaths after the buff dropped (Raidwall/AM again). That was the sum total of our available useful cooldowns for breaths.

On the other hand, in 10man Sinestra both Spirit Link and Barrier are potentially useful raidwide cooldowns, given that you can compress the raid more.

I'm not arguing that 25man is harder by any stretch - I just don't know. I don't know that 10man is harder, either, although that seems to be "common knowledge", somehow. I'm just commenting that this, in particular, seems like a very flawed argument.

[Lieris]

One thing that makes 10 mans more difficult is the loot. We can barely gear up our main specs, let alone our off specs. With fights that require 1 tank and 2 healers in Firelands this is a huge handicap. Our second tank has to go DPS for 3 out of 7 fights but he is still mostly in 359 gear despite turning up to every raid (only being absent when it was his own wedding).

[Thrornir]

Well, the amount of loot is entirely proportional - bosses will have (potentially) a drop for 1 out of every 5 players.

Where it hurts badly in 10s is when two mail spellpower pieces drop, and there are no shamans in the raid. 25s give a far better chance that a loot piece you want will drop.

[Worldie]

I would rather say, 25 gives a much better chance that loots that drops will be used.
Cause amongst 25 players you generally have all classes, and between main and off, 1 of each spec, so about everything that drops should get its uses.

Except daggers. We haven't had a rogue in raid for 2 months, and it's raining daggers.

[Skye1013]

I would rather say, 25 gives a much better chance that loots that drops will be used.
Cause amongst 25 players you generally have all classes, and between main and off, 1 of each spec, so about everything that drops should get its uses.

Except daggers. We haven't had a rogue in raid for 2 months, and it's raining daggers.

Of course, the minute you recruit a rogue... all daggers will cease to drop. Maybe you should work on that?

[Worldie]

Of course, the minute you recruit a rogue... all daggers will cease to drop. Maybe you should work on that?

That's exactly what happened to us. We just had TWO daggers dropping off Alystrazor this week while he was out, actually.

[halabar]

I would rather say, 25 gives a much better chance that loots that drops will be used.
Cause amongst 25 players you generally have all classes, and between main and off, 1 of each spec, so about everything that drops should get its uses.

Except daggers. We haven't had a rogue in raid for 2 months, and it's raining daggers.

Blame Blizz for making them exclusive to rogues, and removing the DW option from hunters. Miss the days of DW the axes from Lootship I do.

[Worldie]

Blizzard should really give incentive to hunters (namely a agi 1h enchant) and possibly enha shamans to dual wield daggers, as daggers are the only item type in the game, toghether with spellpower plate, that can only be used by 1 class/spec.

Hell even the spellpower Axe (WTF????) from Firelands can be used by 3 specs!!!

[Levantine]

Hunters I can see the logic in, but Blizzard seems pretty keen on keeping Shaman as a slow/slow melee spec which tends to rule out daggers as an option. On the bright side they can always use spellpower weapons to great effect!

[Kitmajere]

I'm not arguing that 25man is harder by any stretch - I just don't know. I don't know that 10man is harder, either, although that seems to be "common knowledge", somehow. I'm just commenting that this, in particular, seems like a very flawed argument.

The difficulty in 10 man Sinestra was not breath cds, but the need to 2 heal the encounter (at least the earlier kills). That plus the same number of orbs in 10 and 25 made the repercussions of a healer getting orbed MUCH more difficult in 10 (1/2 of your healers vs. 1/6 or 1/5).

Re: the loot difficulties- it is noticeably harder to gear up people in a 10 man situation. Not only are drops much more likely to be wasted (we specifically have altered our roster to have fewer doubles of an armor type, but those damn sp mail pieces...). Also the fact that heroic tier bosses drop 9 pieces of loot in 25 (3 tier, 6 regular) while 10 man drop 3 (1 tier, 2 regular) is just silly. Finally, tank gearing is WAY harder in 10 since you run ~2 tanks in 25, and ~2 tanks in 10 man, with 1/2 to 1/3 of the drops.

Sorry to sort of derail the topic, just frustrated at the 10 man loot situation.