Synopsis
Yesterday I joined a guild 10 man hardmodes try. To my surprise, I liked it a lot.
I haven't played a lot of 10 man. The days that there is no guild raid scheduled I tend to want to spent otherwise. Invest some time in real life and not play 50+ hours wow anymore. Also 10 man didn't appeal to me. There is nothing to get there. Most of the loot I want is in 25 man.
Since we are struggling with getting 25 man runs going, and some kills (Yogg) are very sucky without 25. So we yesterday (for Europeans last day of the raiding week) skipped 25 man. Left it for what it was and continued the 10 man hardmode run some of us had already started.
2 weeks ago a lot of hardmodes for unlocking Agalon were done already. So this week there were 2 left basically. Freya 3 watchers + Mimiron. How much as I hate Freya 25 man I really loved playing Freya 10 man. The raid consisted of a lot of the top notch best players from our guild. The discipline was amazing! All knew what to do, nobody making much mistakes. A little bit learning there was involved and we killed her.
Now I must say Freya 10 man is quite a bit easier then 25 man. But still.
We went on to try Mimiron. That fight is incredibly hard. I liked to really progress raid here. After 10 tries we managed to get to phase 2 with 10 people alive. We got him to about 40% when only our DK tank was still alive. He actually managed to get him to 33% before he himself died. Which was fun to see. Mimiron vs a DK for 2 minutes long!
Having some bosses left we decided not to wipe there endlessly and killed him normal mode. Nobody touched a mine... but me :( Achievement gone. It was phase 4 and I had seen the gap, went for it but the damn middle and top part obstructed my view. The thing above him there also doesn't count for a wall so you can (not) see right through. I hate the way this fight is in that manner. Next Time I better strafe out.
We then went for Vezax. We did his hardmode really close a few times but it ended up with the MT dying. Not because of mana problems, but because he wasn't healed enough. Sad to not have gotten him, but still amused by the enjoyment we had gotten from the fight, we killed him normal mode and moved to Yogg Saron. After a accidental wipe we then were well adjusted and did him hard mode (within 7 minutes) which wasn't really a chalenge and then went to finish off council, ending up oneshotting them hardmode with the big guy killed last.
Now you are thinking; "Ok. What is this post about?"
In reference to my previous post I am a bit confused. I liked 10 man hardmodes. I don't feel for 25 man hardmodes. Should I stop doing 25 man and only do 10 man? Why did I like 10 man so much? Because it was easy? Because it was attainable?
I think it is the following; We were a group of 10 very good players. If I have to name 6 of the top players in my guild they were all in that group.
So I think the conclusion in respect to my previous post, next to what was said in there (which was true), also the following is contributing to the fact that I dislike Ulduar (or Blizzards way of implementing instances now);
Blizzard made it "easy" for all to clear naxx. A lot of people joined in good raiding guilds, replacing some excellent players that just stop (it happens too), but aren't really that good. My guild tries to have only the best players but since they are spread too thin on my server we have the problem that we don't have the luxury to do it anymore. There simply aren't that many good players.
The one thing to hope for is that my guild holds out and some other top guild doesn't. Hoping a guild will fail is not really nice, but it is the only thing that is a real solution. There are 4 other horde guilds having the same problems we do. Not enough (skilled) raiders. If one of them tumbles we would get a couple of their players and get a full group of good players. I think that is one of the things that would make my joy in 25 man raiding come back.
Still next to the summer and people having vacation time Blizzard is to blame for this too. There is less skill required to play, making "bad" players go unnoticed. Rather then blame the players, I blame Blizzard's current implementation. The players don't have to improve themselves. It is simply not needed. Pre WotLK when we got a new player we knew we had to put some extra time in him/her. You would see him underperform. Currently you don't, meaning the whole group of players performs not as good as they should/could.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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Reading this makes me all the more glad that my cluster of "hard core raiders" decided to swap to strict ten-man progression for WotLK. Fewer people in the guild means we're pickier about who fills in slots and can more closely pay attention to one who needs improvement, and work with them closely to get better.
ReplyDeleteDownside is that we don't see U25 and get that better gear that would make U10 hardmodes easier, and there are relatively few players who are willing to put that sort of work into raiding for the "lesser rewards" (iLevel) compared to being able to sit back in the crowds of a 25man, where their mistakes are more likely to go unnoticed. We do get applications from those who view us as a "stepping stone" guild to gear up for apping to some bigger guild, but those are weeded out and denied fairly quickly :)
Just food for thought on the pure ten-man route!
This sounds all very familiar :( The part about too few people and such, hope it doesn't go the way it did with 'Shafted'.
ReplyDeleteOh we still raid though. We keep recruiting ;)
ReplyDeleteYesterday we had one non-guildy and 20 guildies. 21 in total. We did sarth 3d, leviathan 2 towers, xt002, kologarn, auriaya, hodir, freya, mimiron, and VoA both bosses.
So we can still kill em though there were only a few achievements done.
My favorite moto always is:"It doesn't matter what you do,it matters with whom you do it".This seems to be the problem with Ulduar for you i think.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong I like my guild and all my guildies. The problem is that WoW is dying somehow and about 10+ really good talented raiders of whom I can't ever remember them joining (so long have they been in the guild) stopped since the release of WotLK. That is a huge experience and skill loss.
ReplyDeleteI am having more fun doing the 10man hardmodes in a group that I assembled then running the 25man normal modes with my guild. I think that is due to the players that I brought in to run the 10man, ie best healers, dps and tanks (well all our tanks are great :p).
ReplyDeleteI can wait until we start doing 25man hards. I feel that the good players are carrying the others and this won't translate well when we start doing the hardmodes. So the hardmodes are going to be wipefest and maybe that the guild will always be chasing our tails with recruitment and gearing new players as other players leave due to no progress or finding the hardmodes too hard.