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

I was just talking this over with my wife b/c we're probably going to have to stop raiding 25s with our guild. One of my favorite parts about raiding is getting gear; not because I want to show off or have the best stuff necessarily, but because I like to have the tools and options to get the job done. I think that's more of an issue for tanking than other roles, but I'm sure it's the case for everyone: things like hit vs expertise and haste vs crit vs mp5 etc. are very differently itemized sometimes between 10s and 25s. See Sabin's thread about gobs of expertise in Ulduar 10. See things like no DPS plate belt even existing in Ulduar10.

Would it be too boring for people who have the time to raid both 10s and 25s if the two item sets had the same stat allocations but just with different sizes? I know GC has said that they like upgrades to be choices and not just +3 to all stats, but that's between raid tiers. I support him in that aspect of giving people choices to make and tradeoffs to weigh.

I think my problem here is that it really seems like 10-man raiding is ... not necessarily an afterthought, but it still doesn't have the legitimacy of 25-man raiding in a lot of ways. If the tier sets are the same stats but slightly larger for the 25-man version, wouldn't that work with everything? Do you think they itemize 10s as a supplement to 25s, in the sense that they assume 25-man raiders will also have access to the 10-man gear so they don't duplicate it?

I don't want this to turn into a "haves vs have-nots" or "hardcores vs casuals" discussion of 25s deserving better loot, because that's not really what I'm getting at. Take a repelling charge for example. I'd love one to shore up my defense when I'm wearing resist gear or whatever, but I've only done naxx10 a handful of times since I started doing naxx25. I've killed Thaddius25 way more than Thaddius10, but Thad25 doesn't drop a def trinket, so I'm stuck using a sonic booster or a defender's code for my 2nd trinket.

I guess having less overall variance for a given role and slot might make things more bland. Either you have less niche gear (though a lot of it is kinda lame or redundant anyway), or you make loot pools deeper. I think the amount of loot added for 3.1 is overkill, though, with a lot of stuff that nobody really wants added just to fill all the loot tables of both Ulduar10 and Ulduar25 uniquely.

I like how there's a def/dodge/hit option for belts and bracers in both ulduar 10 and 25... bracers especially because they come from the same boss. That's the sort of thing that would make sense to build off to me, to provide a similar experience to both progression paths for each class and role.

Thoughts?

Yes, that would be too boring.

And it would make two classes of raiders. 25-man raiders would never touch 10-man raids. Mixing it up is good. And I like that 2 near BIS items come from 10-man hard modes (mace and shield).

halabar wrote:And it would make two classes of raiders. 25-man raiders would never touch 10-man raids. Mixing it up is good. And I like that 2 near BIS items come from 10-man hard modes (mace and shield).

Hey, a response with some thought.

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.

Assuming they kept everything else similar to now, the "next" tier of 10s would have the same or a half-step higher ilvl, which means a 25-man raider would still want to do the new 10-man version briefly to get more upgrades faster. If they never got a drop for slot X in the previous tier of 25s, they could more easily put together a 10 of the new tier and get something for that slot if they didn't want to wait for the 25.

Someone whose guild only does 10s now has much more limited access to not only power of gear, but also certain types of itemization of gear. I guess if 10s are only intended as a supplement to 25s this works fine. As it stands I really don't consider 10s only as a legitimate and well-supported raid progression option, either in Blizzard's eyes or the community's.

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. .

But currently, a 25-man raider has incentive to go do the 10-man raids, just as he/she did in Naxx. (Repelling Charge anyone?) The same is true in Ulduar, with both normal and hard-mode drops.

If 25-mans were always a "tier" above, and there was always an upgrade in the 25-mans, then you would skip the 10s and jump to the 25s. Only the really casuals would bother with 10-mans.

I like the fact that you need to do both to get an optimal gear set, except at the very highest level of progression.

It seems a strange assumption that non-identical itemization always means that the well-itemized pieces go in the 25 man version and the poorly itemized versions go to the 10 man version, thereby shafting the 10 man players. This isn't necessarily the case at all....just look at the Boreal Guard vs the Shield of Algalon (or whatever it's called). It's not the best example, but the Boreal Guard is itemized better due to having 2 sockets. If there all always going to be some pieces itemized very well and some pieces optimized not so well, what difference does it make to the 10 man players whether the distribution of those items among various slots is exactly the same in 10 mans as it is in 25?

On the one hand, identical loot tables would make it that much easier to farm the item you want. On the other hand, loot tables are too bloated as is. I wish they would tokenize, like, everything, so people aren't quite as annoyed when we get 4 guns in one run, without a single gun using class in the raid.

Making these things quest rewards even makes more sense. Instead of, "hey Rag is wearing two pairs of pants," it becomes Quest Giver Guy X gives you [Weapon of Uberness] for bringing him [Yogg-Saron's Left Nut].

Pre-3.1 I think some of the 10 encounters (namely S3D) ended up being tuned to be harder than their 25 counterparts. Post-3.1 I'm finding 10m to be considerably easier than 25. Although that might be because I tend to hand pick the 10s group, and our 25s raid definitely has some ... er ... dead weight, as it were.

If you could get all the same loot from either 25s and 10s, I'm not certain you'd see as much abandonment of the 10s as you might imagine. People who are capable of doing both would continue to do so, but I think a lot of people who are in borderline 25s would give up that enterprise entirely.

Dorvan wrote:It seems a strange assumption that non-identical itemization always means that the well-itemized pieces go in the 25 man version and the poorly itemized versions go to the 10 man version, thereby shafting the 10 man players. This isn't necessarily the case at all....just look at the Boreal Guard vs the Shield of Algalon (or whatever it's called). It's not the best example, but the Boreal Guard is itemized better due to having 2 sockets.

Exactly. That's kind of what I was getting at with the Repelling Charge example. It's not that the 25s always have the better gear, it's that there are unique pieces in both size raids that are unmatched in the other size. It's not (just) about shafting 10s players from the good gear, because some of it is in the 10s. However while the 10s raiders *are* shafted out of the good 25s loot, the 25s players don't end up being shafted out of the good 10s loot as they can do both, time permitting. (Time permitting being important... again see my lack of a repelling charge.)
[item]If there all always going to be some pieces itemized very well and some pieces optimized not so well, what difference does it make to the 10 man players whether the distribution of those items among various slots is exactly the same in 10 mans as it is in 25?[/quote]
If it's the same quality/type of itemization per slot in both 10s and 25s, then it doesn't make a difference. If the "good" pieces for different slots are spread across both the 10 and the 25, then one group of raiders can collect all the "good" pieces, while the other can't (easily).

If you assume that a raider in one size doesn't do the other size, then imo both raid sizes are getting shafted. Why not shaft neither and give the same options to both sizes? Preferably the better-made stuff, but even if the "better" stuff just doesn't exist, then we're left with the other things as "better" anyway.

For tanking, it's not even just about better-made gear. It's about options. BV pieces, def-heavy pieces, an axe vs a sword vs a mace for a tanking weapon, etc. Trinkets especially. It means that a 25s raider has to also do 10s to fully build certain specialty sets, and a 10s raider just can't do it.

You're assuming that all 25 man raiders can or want to do 10 man raids, and that no 10 man raiders do 25s as well.

Unless you're proposing to inflate loot tables (Blizzard has stated repeatedly that this option isn't on the table) the solution you're proposing only serves to limit options, saying that if you don't like how the gear is itemized, you don't have the option of aiming for pieces at a different raid size.

As it is there is plenty of good loot to be had with both 10s and 25s, and while it is not necessary at all to progress well if you're not interested in it, there is incentive to do the other size of raid for some additional options if you so wish.

I don't have time to do both kinds of raiding in a given week (and rarely kill more than 1-3 bosses in any sort of ulduar in any given week), but I see no reason to make itemization bland and boring simply because I don't have time to take advantage of a richer set of gear options.

fuzzygeek wrote:On the one hand, identical loot tables would make it that much easier to farm the item you want. On the other hand, loot tables are too bloated as is. I wish they would tokenize, like, everything, so people aren't quite as annoyed when we get 4 guns in one run, without a single gun using class in the raid.

I'm with you on tokenizing heavily, but yeah that's a different topic.

If you could get all the same loot from either 25s and 10s, I'm not certain you'd see as much abandonment of the 10s as you might imagine. People who are capable of doing both would continue to do so, but I think a lot of people who are in borderline 25s would give up that enterprise entirely.

I think so too. Most of my guild seems like it would rather do 10s if 10s were a viable choice. They're not, though, at least not entirely.

Dorvan wrote:You're assuming that all 25 man raiders can or want to do 10 man raids, and that no 10 man raiders do 25s as well.

Unless you're proposing to inflate loot tables (Blizzard has stated repeatedly that this option isn't on the table) the solution you're proposing only serves to limit options, saying that if you don't like how the gear is itemized, you don't have the option of aiming for pieces at a different raid size.

As it is there is plenty of good loot to be had with both 10s and 25s, and while it is not necessary at all to progress well if you're not interested in it, there is incentive to do the other size of raid for some additional options if you so wish.

I don't have time to do both kinds of raiding in a given week (and rarely kill more than 1-3 bosses in any sort of ulduar in any given week), but I see no reason to make itemization bland and boring simply because I don't have time to take advantage of a richer set of gear options.

I'm not sure which side you're arguing for, Dorvan.
I'm assuming that 25-man raiders have more access to 10-man loot than 10-man raiders have access to 25-man loot, true. I don't think that's necessarily how it should be, though. In fact I'm assuming that there are 25-man raiders who don't want to have to spend time in 10s as well to get all their best gear. It's counter-intuitive but it's occasionally true thanks to varying itemization.

I'm not sure how bland or boring it would really be just by creating a truely parallel itemization between the two sizes, but it would certainly require either culling some chaff or expanding loot tables. Probably a little of both. Are they too bloated as it is? Maybe. Obviously this is where something like tokenization would come into play... Honestly I don't think that spreading the variation in loot across 10s and 25s is the right way to combat table bloat. It's unintuitive and potentially frustrating.

-- I'm also asking a philosophical question here... if Blizzard doesn't want to bloat item tables more to do something like this, and doesn't want to fix it in a better way ala tokenization, it doesn't mean it wouldn't be a good idea.

Rasmfrackn wrote:I think so too. Most of our guild seems like it would rather do 10s if 10s were a viable choice. They're not, though, at least not entirely.

By what definition are they "not a viable choice"?

Dorvan wrote:

Rasmfrackn wrote:I think so too. Most of our guild seems like it would rather do 10s if 10s were a viable choice. They're not, though, at least not entirely.

By what definition are they "not a viable choice"?

I'd say they're not "viable" in the Shield of the Templar sense. They work, they're self-contained, but parity is lacking if I may use the buzzword we're all familiar with.

Things like runed orbs, patterns, val'anyr, a plate dps belt, BV gear, trinkets, tanking weapon types, etc.
The means by which you acquire these things, and the options available, are very different between 10s and 25s. You don't get the full raiding experience doing 10s only. It feels a little tacked on, or an afterthought.

But again, it's not that I just want to see more attention given to 10s. I want my 25-man repelling charge. Or a 25-man Thane's helm. Or maybe more expertise options for warrior/DK tanks. I can't think of a lot of other examples of things that exist in 10-man but not 25-man raiding, but I'm sure there are some across other gear types and roles that I'm not as familiar with.

Stopped reading at Dorvan's third post because a blue post flashed in my mind. I think they said if they ended up doing what the OP is proposing (same stat allocation different ilevel across the board) then they'd end up locking you out of 10 and 25 by getting saved to one. I'm personally not a fan of that as the rusted proto drake looks really awesome : /.

Edit: I was also hoping Val'anyr would be better implemented. 100% drop off hard mode in 10s and 25s sounded better to me than what's currently going on. And real hard modes; XT, Keepers, Descent. Iron Council isn't a real hard mode in 10m >.>

Rasmfrackn wrote:Things like runed orbs, patterns, val'anyr, a plate dps belt, BV gear, trinkets, tanking weapon types, etc.
The means by which you acquire these things, and the options available, are very different between 10s and 25s. You don't get the full raiding experience doing 10s only. It feels a little tacked on, or an afterthought.

Everything except the legendary can be acquired through 10 man raiding. I'd just have to disagree with your assessment of 10 man raiding on the whole. If you do only 10 or only 25 man raiding, you're not going to to have every kind of itemization in every slot, it's true.

But again, it's not that I just want to see more attention given to 10s. I want my 25-man repelling charge. Or a 25-man Thane's helm. Or maybe more expertise options for warrior/DK tanks. I can't think of a lot of other examples of things that exist in 10-man but not 25-man raiding, but I'm sure there are some across other gear types and roles that I'm not as familiar with.

...but like I said, they already said they don't want to expand the loot tables, so by making 10 and 25 the same you're asking for fewer loot options, not more. You're entitled to your opinion of course, I just don't think that making everything the same makes it more fun or interesting. It's more like "because I don't have time to do 10s and 25s, I don't want there to be any possible benefit to doing both". I don't have time to do both either, not even close, but I don't begrudge those who do extra gearing options.

just to clarify, do you mean that item drops from 10s and 25s be almost similar in comparison? like say the similarities of tier 7 to 7.5 loot (albeit lower stat points) ?

on a personal note, itemizing 10s and 25s the same would be pretty boring. I guess 10s and 25s as it is is not really a huge difference in experience, and honestly I'd prefer 10s over 25s since I can just raid with the friends I enjoy running with, and not have to deal with other raider's personalities i dont really mesh with.