I’ve been pondering over the last couple of days…

Yes.. I know.. hard to believe.  I do that a lot, but since the announcement of the new POTENTIAL raid structure, people have been all over the board.  So I thought I’d sit down and think about the implications from a 10 man perspective.

I hear you… OMG… not a 25 man player?  What’s WRONG WITH YOU!!!

Actually… we do raid usually once a week on 25 man, but to be honest, we do it because… we feel like we kind of have to.  As Blizzard said, it almost feels manditory.  For the people in our guild who are more loot centric, they want to see the 25 man gear, and to be honest they’d much rather do it with us and people they know then some random PUG which falls apart after the first damned wipe on Marrowgar.

However I wanted to take a moment to break down a few considerations that the sorry… “25 man whiners” haven’t thought about.  Sorry… I know you really think 10 man is EZ MODE, but lets be honest… some of the fights in 10 man ARE harder and when you’re using 25 man gear in 10 man instances?  Well… gee… Its a wee bit easier on you there….

Loot Table Size

Ok I’m picking a few of what I’m going to deem a “non special” boss to look at the loot tables. 

       BOSS    -> 10 man loot options / 25 man loot options

  1. Marrowgar  –> 12 Loot in 10 man, 15 loot in 25 man
  2. Lady Deathwhisper -> 12/15
  3. Gunship Battle -> 12 /15
  4. Festergut -> 12/15

Ok a very easy pattern.  Lets assume the loot tables are unified.  Its probably going to shrink those tables slightly, but maybe not.  So we’ll assume since some 10 man loot (which is arguably better than its 25 man counter part for best in slot) gets moved to 25 man and some pieces get shrunk down.  So now we’ll keep an average of 15 loot per boss.

Odds Are?

Simple math folks…. Ok we’ll assume blizzard goes truly bare minimum and only drops 6 loot per 25 man and 2 loot per 10 man.  (though I threw in 7 loot as well just for reference)

10 man Analysis.
2 loot out of 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop:  13.33%

25 man Analysis.
6 loot out of 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop:  40%

OR

7 loot out of a 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop: 46.7%

Ok.  So very simple numbers, but what does this mean?  In 25 man, I’ll concede that you are competing with a lot more people for gear than you were in 10 man.  In 10 man, its more likely we only have 2 melee dps.  In a 25 man, we’re going to have probably 5-6 or more.  So the first time a melee trinket drops in a 10 man, they’ll get up half their DPS right out of the gate.  That’s good, but look at the loot table.  With a much larger loot table, the likelyhood is that we’ll see that trinket a LOT less in 10 man than you would in 25 man. 

So the odds of actually getting it go down substantially.  Not only do you need to get it to drop in a much larger table.  The odds of someone getting something that someone can use goes up.  The table is larger, but to be honest, its going to take a lot longer to gear the entire group up.  There may be specific trinkets which are considered the “god trinkets” for certain classes that could take a 10 man team MONTHs to see, where a 25 man team may see the same drop twice a month.

Millions of Shards!!!

Sharding loot is not that uncommon of an event in 10 man or 25 man.  I’d actually anticipate that sharding of loot might become a bigger issue in 10 man than 25 man moving forward.

For the 25 man, its true you’ll see more drops more frequently.  So in theory, you’re going to see the same drop more often.  So once or twice a month you’ll see a set of ranged dps bracers for a cloth caster lets say.  But you probably have 3-4 casters who can use it. 

In 10 man, the problem might be… you have a single hunter and no casters wearing chain.  Lets assume you’re three healers are a pair of priests and a druid.  Now every single drop you get with plate healing or mail healing is more likely to get sharded or handed off for an off set.  Could gear up an off spec faster?  Possibly, but in a 10 man, you’re less likely to see all of the drops being useful to someone. 

With the additional consideration of the “mastery” bonuses for wearing armor in your proper type, I could see a lot of people prefering to avoid “downranking” to lower gear types unless the mastery bonuses are largely neglibile.  Sure.. people will probably do it for a couple of pieces, but would you as a plate wearing pally downgrade half your set to cloth knowing your losing a bunch of mastery bonus?

In 25 man, the amount and frequency of drops makes it much more likely that people will be matching their “class” type of armor along with the ability to get gear at a much more rapid pace.  With a much broader amount of classes available, the likelyhood of SOMEBODY being able to use a drop is much much higher than in a 10 man where the first time you’re lone pally gets their bracers, forever more, if that piece of loot drops, its a wasted drop.

For 10 mans, its  a lot more painful too if you have multiple of a class.  If you have two feral druids, you may find it incredibly difficult to gear them both up effectively over time.    In 25 man, having 3 feral druids and 2 rogues isn’t as big of a deal considering how much more frequently you’ll see the dps/tanking leather dropping.

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