I’ve been quite busy raiding Dragon Soul and dungeoning with my army of alts. I really enjoy the new 5 mans because the atmosphere is so amazingly beautiful there. One night after completing a dungeon, I took a stroll around the dungeon taking screenshots and wandering around in awe. I would like to eventually set up an album page for all different kinds of screenshots in different places in categorized galleries. But for now, I’ve been busy enjoying Dragon Soul.
I killed Deathwing in LFR last night, and I disagree it’s facerollable. I found it challenging healing it but I’m glad I went because it gives me a better idea of what to expect when I face Deathwing this week. I’ll be honest with you that I am surprised we’ve been able to clear everything to the very end in Dragonsoul on normal quickly. I remember when we first started raiding Firelands, it was much more challenging making the jump from t11 to t12, having to two heal most of it. I had never two-healed ten mans until Firelands, and I believe I am a better healer now because of my experiences in Firelands.
It opened my eyes that raids are more flexible now with the number of roles required in the raids. Some have complained that it’s a pain because 10 man raid teams are now forced to maintain a roster of more than 10 people, having to swap in or out healers/dps. You can’t have a “strict 10″ raid team nowadays, it seems. I even know a 10 man team with at least 15 people on their roster doing active rotations for Dragon Soul. I understand that not everyone wants to be benched so someone else can play, but most people I have played with have been okay with it in the name of progression.
This has gotten me interested in game play design and have been a frequent visitor to Endgame Farming. It’s a great blog concerning universal design approaches in MMORPGs. What I am about to write concerns how people approach raiding in WoW, and what methods they use to succeed as a group. Everyone have different perspectives on what raiding should be about. You hear arguments all the time whether it’s fair to sit someone out so the raid can add what it needs to defeat the encounter, ie: an additional healer or dps in 10 mans.
I don’t think people should be concerned whether it’s fair, but that they should appreciate the flexibility it brings to raid groups. Firelands were designed with this in mind. If you have two exceptional healers, you could two-heal everything in Firelands. If your raid group is struggling because you don’t have enough healers, you can swap a dps out for another healer and have three healers for an encounter. This is why some raid groups have more people on their 10 man roster, so that they can adjust as they progress. For a raid group operating using this method, everyone must be on the same page. Everyone must agree to ‘taking turns’ in every raid for the raid to succeed in the long term.
On the other hand, you have raid groups with a limited roster of 10 with maybe a couple of back ups who only come in if a raider is absent. A couple players may have a healer or tank offspec so that they are able to swap, but everyone gets to raid in their main spec for the most part. Everyone gets to go every raid night and this is certainly a positive thing. But if you run into problems like if you still can’t three heal an encounter because your third healer’s offspec healing gear isn’t that great. This brings up the argument of the value of using someone’s offspec over bringing a pure main spec in that ultimately brings us back to my point about having a flexible roster for 10 man raids.
Beru at Falling Leaves and Wings made a post discussing 25 man rosters, describing her experiences in managing her 25 man raiders in Firelands. Check it out, it has more details on the argument of using off specs and main specs in raids and is a good read if you’re interested! I can imagine this is a much bigger headache for 25 mans when you apply all the problems I’ve identified in having a limited roster versus a flexible roster.
Back to my point, I am a believer that having a flexible roster will allow the group to progress quicker. For instance, on Zon’ozz, we had trouble two-healing it because of the amount of dispels shared between myself and another healer. After a few wipes, we decided to bring in a third healer and the first try went without incidence, and we were able to move on to the next encounter. We are successful in this because we make sure everyone gets equal ‘turns’, and have made a loot spreadsheet to evaluate who wants to go to a boss for a specific loot drop. People who want something gets priority over someone who doesn’t need anything and my raid leader tries to make sure everyone is happy. As far as I know, everyone is having fun and enjoying LFR’ing or dungeoning on standby until it’s their turn to step in for an encounter.
So far, my raid group have been able to continue rotating all of our raiders into Dragon Soul from Firelands. It’s been nice sitting out for a boss I don’t care to heal for sometimes, like Baleroc in Firelands. I spent my time envying my holy paladin and priest healers’ stacks of vital sparks compared to the meager amount I could muster as a resto Druid 
Baleroc was my least favorite encounter in Firelands but Firelands brought a new dimension where certain roles were stressed upon in some encounters and putting more emphasis on “GTFO THE FIRE.” It was interesting seeing my raid group adapt to the changes in Firelands as a whole and I look forward to progressing with them in Dragon Soul.
There’s no rush- we have a few months ahead until the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria.
Good luck to everyone and happy raiding
Having played since late BC, Aidrana enjoys raiding in her spare time. When she’s not busy raiding, she either geeks out in other games or devotes her time to making awesome pictures in Photoshop. She also loves to paint in traditional mediums and writing about her work even as it progresses. She thinks she’s caught the writing bug, and hopes to get better at it
Meet Miriamerle, my brand new priest!
With the off-season happening while we await the release of Mists of Pandaria, I’ve been levelling Miriamerle. My desire to learn more about priests and their styles of healing is why I decided to roll one! It’s been so much fun just logging in for a couple of hours once in a while and heal dungeons. I’m really liking playing the Discipline spec… .. Continue reading >>
Thanks for the plug, Aidrana, albeit scheduled to move soon =P
I’ve been meaning to comment on this, and surprised no one else had jumped at the opportunity.
You bring up a very good question as to the overflow required to achieve a given group size’s goals. Overflow is, undoubtedly, required. As I can see it, because of three reasons: the content, the people, and the size.
The content
Poor game design would take a 10 man group and require they shuffle 15 people (or specs etc) to achieve an aim for TEN. Content can and should be offered that challenges the limits of any given combination of ten (within a certain gamut, obviously). If perhaps content is designed to be optimally tackled one second with HoT healers, and next with AoE healers, I’d vote for ‘bad design’. Concepts that are birthed by designers but burdened by players would be a mark of this. What makes it all possible, is the fast porting, multi-speccing which takes what might have otherwise been a luxury and makes it commonplace. These exasperate the issue by making it so very accessible.
The people
People need people. Look at any business and the evidence is too obvious. But people have their days, as well as people have their fortes. It is the responsibility of people to organize themselves. One must account for schedules, timezones, emergencies, gear/playstyle discrepancies etc. A little overflow in raid numbers is needed to ensure the group as a whole can plug away at consistent pace.
The size
The overflow required does not grow linearly with the size of the raid. One of my referred to forum posts: http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t11708-raid_sizes_future_wow_raiding/
This thread dates me, sure =P So many takeaways in this thread, but the one of interest here is comment #9 (the whole thread is worthy of a meditated read): http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t11708-raid_sizes_future_wow_raiding/#post347917
Takeaway
First, a great thought-provoking post. Flexible rosters are a requirement, but woe to which end stems the requirement. How any given team tackles it, will clearly be on a team-by-team basis.
I would have probably been able to expand my thoughts better by using charts like you do in your blog. Truly the inspiration
I may very well re-edit this post, or make an entirely new one expanding on what I’ve talked about here.
Well, there are a lot of factors why people have more than 10 people on their active raid roster for 10 mans. It isn’t necessarily because the raids have encounters that a select few classes work well with the content as you’ve pointed out. But it does happen, raid groups stack druids and the like, or bench some classes because of mechanics clashing with their skills, so you do have a point there.
For instance, on Deathwing, the DPS recieve a haste buff that can increase their dps significantly. However, haste works poorly for Enhancement Shamans, therefore that class do not benefit much with the haste buff in the Deathwing Encounter and is behind other dps classes in terms of dps numbers. I’m not sure if Blizzard foresaw this, or if this was a failure on their part in designing the encounter. Either way, many raid teams must consider benching their enh shammies for a dps class that works with the haste buff, or try to make do with dropping an healer for an extra dps to make up for the shammy’s dps. It’s a crappy situation all around that my raid team is also facing with our enh shammy. (hint, a post coming up on that!)
That is the benefit of having a flexible roster, and thus, on a team by team basis as you’ve said. But before hitting the final nail in the coffin, we both know that encounters COULD have been designed for a group with a strict roster. I’m inclined to say that encounters would feel less dynamic and well.. boring, if everything always needed just one tank, two healers and a set group of dps. And nobody would ever get the chance to try their offspecs out too! I appreciate that raids nowadays can change things around as needed, and I think people should recognize that having a little overflow isn’t a bad thing.
It’s not to say a strict 10 man rosters are a thing of the past now, but strict 10 man raid groups would certainly have more difficulties progressing in current end game content compared to those with flexible rosters.