With the news hitting yesterday that DREAM Paragon were forced to go 10 man for Mists of Pandaria we decided to talk to their guild master, Seita and get some more details on this huge development for the hardcore raiding community.
Did you ever consider opening recruitment up for non-Finns? And why did you decide to rather go 10 man than open it up?
Going international wasn't an option in our mind, we never even talked about the idea. Our main desire was to play 25man, but if we can't get the roster which, in our minds, wouldn't be able to take world firsts we would rather play 10 mans. Having a small roster in a long drawn out progress, which I think this one will be, is not a good idea. I think we could have achieved around top 5 in 25 man with the current roster in the end.
Was it a really big letdown finding out you couldn't raid in 25 man anymore or more of an adjustment to the situation?
We tried everything we could to keep the guild 25man and as competitive as we would have liked, of course it was a hard decision to make in the end. Our only option was to go and see what happens in the first raid in 25hc and then make the decision to go 10 if it didn't go as planned, but we ended up going straight to 10.
Is it really just the 10 people listed, will you have some backups in the guild or is it a completely locked down setup?
We have 10 + 2-3 backups who we rely on if someone from the 10 can't make it, but I don't think other players will see much playtime, if any at all.
Everyone knows where we are at, everyone knows what to expect etc. I also don't think they will fix their own 10, there probably isn't enough interest to have a B-group and there's no one to organize/lead it etc.
Now that you're in a new "league" have you checked out your new competition on videos etc.?
Haven't done any research about our new competition. We've had some 10 man world firsts in the past like 10hc LK, 10hc Ragnaros so we are not completely new in the 10man scene.
Did you already know about the change when you were testing the encounters on beta (at least in heroic mode)?
Going 10 man wasn't ever the plan while we were testing the bosses on the beta. But since the first beta tests everyone has known the fact that if we can't get more players we will not be able to raid 25 mans. We could only get a full raid for 25 man tests on a good day. For reference, here's our beta attendance.
What are the biggest changes you forsee for the upcoming progress?
Well I feel relieved now that I don't need to take care of 35 players, it's easier to trust/monitor 10 players than its 35. We'd had pretty detailed plans etc. on how we split raids/gear alts/who has what alts etc and I have always done the work alone so its a large workload that I dont need to do now.
With the smaller amount of people, do you think you might be forced into having more alts per person than before?
I don't think this will affect our alt situation at all, we were prepared to go pretty hardcore with the 25 man alts as well.
Now that you're competing in 10 man, what are your thoughts on the whole 10 vs 25 man "what's harder" debate?
Encounter wise it pretty much depends on the boss numbers/mechanics, usually 25 man is harder just because it's harder to manage 25players.
It's also a lot harder to get 25 really skilled players than it is to get 10 really skilled players. That also makes 25 harder as the average skill of the players is probably lower.
As far as class stacking goes 25 man is easier to class stack in terms of utility (knockbacks etc), easier to remove or add healers too. But in most cases you need to stack single/aoe/multi dot/ranged/melee and that should be easier in 10man.
I don't think class stacking in 10 mans will be a big factor in the upcoming progress, if you have a good all around composition that should be enough, maybe on some encounters you might need some special utility or something.
What is the plan for the long run, after the first tier of MoP, are you planning to try to get enough people to go 25 man again or is this permanent?
We will have to see what the situation is after the first tier, I doubt that we will ever play 25 mans again with Paragon. I would like to play 25 mans but it's not realistic to recruit so many players and stay competitive. If for some reason we could get 25 mans going from our old roster/couple of new recruits I would like that, but it's not realistic.
