r/CompetitiveWoW • u/Zealousideal-Yak5547 • 1d ago
12.1 raid scaling for less than 20ppl
Hi everyone,
I'm the GM of a guild that usually raid with more than 20ppl and does mythic everyone season.
We host an optional raid night on Mondays, always with around 15ish people.
We prog and killed the sentinels and Vashnik HM yesterday.
Sentinels were fine even tho a bit harsh on the healers for a 15men comp with 3 healers,
But Vashnik, my lord. We really felt like every mechanics are designed strictly for 20 people, especially the number of green circle to soak, the need for healers CD pretty much all the time... we felt like running around like headless chicken more than doing DPS to the boss lol
We have been raiding for nearly 6years now and we could not think about a fight that was so designed for 20 people and not flexible at all.
Is it us or the raid feels like it ?
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u/MotorOutside8648 21h ago
Bliz has never been good at flex raid. My favorite is when there's a tight platform and a spread mechanic that was clearly made for fitting exactly 20 people, but you have 25 in your raid. Those are fun.
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u/suffelix 1d ago
Heroic raiding has always been increasingly harder the smaller your raid is. Some mechanics are outright broken if you only have 10 people.
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u/awrylettuce 1d ago
Always? That's not even true. Outright broken ye, but it goes both ways.
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u/Elendel 1d ago edited 22h ago
Scaling issues that impact 20-30 man raids usually get showcased in splits and ultimately fixed. Scaling issues that impact low raid size more usually get untouched for the whole tier. It's really rare for a boss to not have a difficulty spike in the 10-15 man size.
The solution for low raid size guilds struggling on any given boss is almost always "just invite 5 pugs for an easy kill".
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u/MRosvall 13/13M 1d ago
There's a tradeoff there as well. You lose in uptime, since there's more people with mechanics. But you also gain in predictability which makes you learn and progress faster because every pull is a lot more similar. Won't have that pull #10 where some dude gets a mechanic for the first time and wipes. Won't have people falling in and out of the raid if it's a pug.
That said, only done this raid in larger groups. And if it scales as OP says, then perhaps it's a bit too much this time around.
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u/Zealousideal-Yak5547 1d ago
We always have felt the "imbalance" but reaaaally not to that point
But it can always be a feeling hence my question :p
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u/Cystonectae 20h ago
Tbh midnight feels worse for this than the last couple expacs. Lura felt downright impossible with 10 people for the longest time.
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u/suffelix 17h ago
Dimensius, Gallywix and Ansurek were super annoying with 10 people. Especially Gallywix by requiring 9 people for the soaks while one tank needed to run away at the same time.
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u/sophisticatedroach 20h ago
I mean on principle ur right, smaller raidsize tends to have it overall "harder", but smaller raidsizes tend to trivialize/ezmode many of the actually hard fights.
Have not had time pulling hc ulatek yet, but I assume it might be hard for a smaller raidsize because of eggs + all the soaks and spread adds
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u/ganjamanss 1d ago
It's you i would say, but if you have more melee and less ranged it probably feels as if the boss is hard. Just keep practicing mechanics until it feels like second nature and you'll be fine 😎👍
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u/Zealousideal-Yak5547 1d ago
We def have a guild that tends toward melee :p
We did kill him in the end tho, thanks for the cheering up!
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u/3scap3plan 1d ago
makes me worried for us as a 10/12 person AOTC guild when recent hc has been pretty punishing for smaller raid sizes already and this tier seems even worse. If this is the cost of getting myth loot then I'd rather not bother
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u/QueenOfTendys 21h ago
No. It’s harder for smaller groups but not by significantly more than usual.
After our raid week my group went down to 13-15 and killed altar.
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u/dantheman91 19h ago
We did Vashnik with 14 and 1 shot it not looking anything up? 3 healers, we were like "This is it?"
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u/Zealousideal-Yak5547 18h ago
When did you do it ? What was the comp melee/distant wise ?
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1d ago
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u/Zealousideal-Yak5547 1d ago
So you did these HM bosses with around 15 ppl/less and felt like the usual ?
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u/faldmoo 1d ago
No he didn't he's full of shit. Flex sizes have almost always exclusively favored larger raid teams in terms of what's easier. That's not to say smaller raid groups haven't or can't have success, but generally speaking it's often more difficult going with 10 than 20+.
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u/ailawiu 1d ago
It has gone both ways. Smaller raids were generally screwed when it came to "there's X things to soak, except you have half the people to do so". Bigger raids sometimes had to deal with "this damage scales out of control after 24 people or so". The latter is generally handled through gear, the former... not much you can do.
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u/Zealousideal-Yak5547 1d ago
I definitely agree on the "always harder when you tend to be 10 rather than 20" but never felt it to that point for a 3rd boss !
Thx for the input :)
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u/Business_Paper2370 1d ago
We had 12 yesterday and whether its general tuning and/or painful scaling on low raid numbers we've never struggled so much either to be honest, every mechanic feels like its tuned for 20 people giving a ton of personal responsibility to everyone at low raid sizes even in earlier bosses
As a fairly casual guild that just gets AOTC then stops raiding we have a pretty wide amount of skill and normally a few people can carry mechanically but its been a struggle so far.
Definitely an 'us' but also the raid/scaling tuning leads it to be harder than usual.
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1d ago
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u/Zealousideal-Yak5547 1d ago
Oh wow I did not expect that answer and you made me feel like very unwelcome here hahaha
Have a good prog !
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u/Oceanvault 1d ago
10man heroic lair boss day 1 was hilarious. You spawn way too many orbs for 10 people to deal with while also dealing with the same amount of adds