25 Man raids

[Alvah]

I have heard little birds chirping. I know we are still really just starting to get back into the flow of raiding, well at least I am. So I wanted to see how many people would be interested in running a 25 man. This is just out of curiousity and I am not saying this is what I want. I do like the idea of seeing a 10 man grp succeed first, but keep in mind with the 25 man you get 6 drops instead of 2, and a lot more Valor points. I'm just not entirely sure how big we are or if we even have the number of players to take on such a task at this time, so this is just to see whats up.

[Draken_crovax]

the officers have ackowleged that this is a possiblity, esp with us getting so many extra peeps the idea goes as follows

tuesday 25 man= farm content YAY

friday lokaas ten man

sunday jacks ten man


basicly we can split the 25 man down into 2 10s and continue (which is pretty neato imo)

this is just a rough idea thrown around so we shall see how it pans out

HOPE FOR THE BEST FOLKS

[Irenke]

It's something that we've discussed in Mumble, both with officers and without. If we did end up with a twenty-five man raid, it would most likely be early in the raid week (Tuesday or Wednesday or something along those lines) and in the evening. The goal would be to down a handful of bosses in that raid and then eventually split into the two 10-man raids, who would then be able to proceed on their own at their own pace.

Anything else would undermine our ability to do 10-mans later in the week, which are currently set up for Friday and Sunday due to people's availability.

My concern, as always, is about getting the bodies together to successfully down content and also managing those 25-man people.

We have had a lot of problems with attendance in the past when it came to the 25-man raids and each week the officers would need to find potential people to fill raid slots, only to have to find more people when regulars had accepted but didn't show up. This was a repeated problem throughout the entire Wrath of the Lich King expansion and one we'd like to avoid this expansion.

My second concern is the general readiness of players and making sure they're coordinated properly. 25-man raids are generally easier in terms of minimum DPS and HPS requirements. It's harder ensuring that twenty-five people do the right thing, much less take the effort out of their week to research a boss fight and know the mechanics. We have difficulties just getting people to watch the videos ahead of time, not having to explain the fights twice consecutively, and also reiterating boss mechanics with each attempt; it pains me to consider the equivalent problems we'd have in a 25-man setting.

I know that we're definitely discussing the potential of doing a 25-man raid. We're also aware of the benefits of having a 25-man in addition to the 10-man. I'd like to make sure that we have the bodies to proceed first (and that includes having subs in the wings).

We're still in the process of setting up consistent 10-man rosters for our two raids; I'd like to focus on successfully achieving one goal before moving to the next!

[LokaasLH]

I agree with both Irenke and Jack. A 25 man raid early in the week COULD be a good thing, however, I want it to be accessible. I can think of at least 2 players off the top of my head that cannot be online until later in the night server time.

Irenke makes a very good point about getting 10 mans set and running very smoothly before we step into 25's. This will also make getting the mechanics of fights down something of a formality. Since we will be doing the majority of the fights in 10 man that we would be seeing in 25.

Again however, lets not jump ahead of ourselves. For now, 25's look to be a good possibility in the future, but for now, lets get our 10 mans running solidly.

[Irenke]

It's important to note that we're definitely not saying no to the idea of 25-man raiding. We want to eventually move into a 25-man raid since it's the natural progression of a guild -- especially one gaining as many members as we have as of late. However, we want it to be successful!

A lot of time and effort goes into leading progression raids, far more than many people expect. The difficulties experienced are compounded in a 25-man, especially when it comes down to a fairly casual guild consistently filling slots every week and ensuring that everyone is performing as expected. It's hard getting people prepared, whether it's in terms of knowledge of their class and spec, knowledge of the fights, being appropriately geared and specced and enchanted and gemmed and glyphed, and even having consumables for the duration of the entire raid.

We definitely don't want to be in the situation where we were last expansion, spending an hour on raid day trying to fix a dozen or more slots, having people underperforming in raids in ways that actually hurt progression, and in general having a bunch of cranky people wasting a Sunday afternoon trying to see if raid was actually going to happen. It's not fair to the raid to be in that situation. We want the raid to be successful so that everyone can be successful.

That said, we'll most likely be continuing with our use of EPGP when we progress into 25-man raiding. We had fairly positive feedback last expansion regarding the loot system and it's something with which our officers and raid assistants are familiar. Happiness and joy!

[Blackshae]

Just my 2 cents, but if we go to a 25 man group, I will not be joining it (maybe). Sorry but I hated the 25 man raids. Hated the most that it had the better gear over 10s. I just really dislike trying to get 25 people to work together. I prefer small close groups that work well together.

[Draken_crovax]

honestly shae your not alone in feeling this way, there are many others who also agree with you


it just a matter of gauging what the guild wants and how best to support that

[Blackshae]

I know, I understand the benefits to doing 25's, I'd love to see many more drops and more valor, just getting 25 people to mesh was never my favorite. And for those of you who missed out on the joys of 40 man raiding :P lucky S.O.Bs

[Maedea]

After a very long discussion last night about this, we decided to give this a test run. Or more importantly to see if we had the man power to actually do a 25 man.

On your in-game calendars there is a sign-up for next Wednesday, the 23rd of February at 5pm server. If you can make this time to raid, please sign-up. If you cannot make this day/time, please do NOT sign-up.

Our goal in setting up this 25-man is to have it earlier in the week so it can be split up for two/three different raids later in the week.

Also, we will be bring back EP/GP for the 25-man raid, it is currently being discussed IF it will also be used in the 10-mans.

[Irenke]

Just taking the opportunity to get my opinions down on record regarding the possibility of EPGP in 10-man raiding.

I'm not partial to overly complicating loot in 10-mans. The patented "Don't be a Greedy Bastard" has worked well for us in the past. Furthermore, use of EPGP requires that people within each raid know how to use the addon and then that that person consistently shows up to the raid (or shares the list with a surrogate).

Furthermore, I feel that the 10-mans should be given the autonomy to choose a loot system that suits them best. We can encourage use of EPGP, but I don't want to feel like people should utilize a system in 10-mans that may be overly detailed.

That said, if we did use EPGP in both tiers of raid I'd like to ensure that we keep separate lists for the 25-man and 10-man raids. We'll have people who favor one raid size over the other and may choose not to participate in the latter (for example, Shae). I wouldn't want a system that punishes people for this.

[Semerkhet]

I have a few opinions on the matter:

10-man
Much more intimate setting. There is a less loot drama and less drama overall. However, leaves the need to potentially manage multiple raid groups, though, because it's harder for a guildie to earn their way into a group of 10 rather than a group of 25.

25-man
Much more epic, albeit not as much now that the gear is identical. Nothing beats marching a small army into Icecrown. Larger groups of people can bring more drama with them, though. Can work well for a guild that can draw a 35+ headcount on raid nights.

Overall
Personally, I'm down for destroying anything with any number of people. I know Cho'Gal is being kind of a bitch, but Whale Shark is also wantonly killing strangers. I would endorse a raiding policy that leans towards one of these sizes (sounds like probably 10), but flexible and open to incorporating the other at times when it makes sense.

[Tyin]

I definitely see the value in doing a 25 man raid for farm content. More loot and valor, 10 mans get to work on progression, more people actually get to raid.

The problems I have with it are mostly related to how I felt in wrath, not being part of the 25 man raid. Now, I signed up for the guild knowing I wouldn't be raiding in the 25 as there wasn't a need for another tank. However, that still didn't stop me from feeling like I wasn't really part of the group. I see there being a similar problem now as the 25 man raids still only take 2 tanks and we are going to be using 4, I assume, for the 10 mans. This means that either 2 of those people won't be in the 25 or will be running in their off-spec. I know if I am not part of the 25 man raid, working solely on progression and possibly not seeing kills for weeks at a time would not be fun.

I do still think we really need 2 nights of raiding a week if we want to see any real progression. If we are unable to field a 25, we could look into just running each 10 man twice a week. We have done it the past 2 weeks in a row with Friday then Saturday night. If we plan it like that it might be a bit easier to pull off.

[Draken_crovax]

also as can be evidenced by the pug 25 man BH run on friday if the vast majority of people are not guildies it turns into a wipe fest you get all sorts of tards and it just leads to hurt feelings all around.

IF we are to do 25s I will expect nothing less than to get 22 people accepted on the agreed too day, If I am to lead this group I will say this;

That I WILL NOT be pugging over half the raid just so 5-9 of our guildies can get an extra 70 VP, its just not viable or praticial

[Alvah]

I do enjoy a 25 man raid. That is why I was curious to see what interest there was in it; however, I just dont think we are big enough yet to pull it off. That 25 man yesterday in BH was awful and I wouldnt want that. Also I think we should progress further in our 10 mans and continue recruiting. As of now in my opinion we may as well stick to the 10 man raiding. Everything is so much smoother. We know what are guildies are capable of and as much as I like 25 man raids I dislike pugging 15 people. If a 25 man is to happen I say we are months away.

[Irenke]

Tyin wrote:

I see there being a similar problem now as the 25 man raids still only take 2 tanks and we are going to be using 4, I assume, for the 10 mans. This means that either 2 of those people won't be in the 25 or will be running in their off-spec.

If it helps (it probably doesn't, but one can hope!), 25-mans are really 2.5 tanks. There are a handful of pulls where three tanks are optimal at this point of the content and I think some of the latter bosses actually are downed with two tanks. That said, it still means that this third tank is serving a predominately DPS role for the vast majority of the raid and a second tank may even be doing DPS during specific one-tank fights (Valiona & Theralion come to mind).

You bring up a good point, Tyin, and it's something that has always been a problem for us in 25-man raiding content. We usually have lots of tanks and few healers, and 25-man raids scale down in the number of tanks while increasing the number of healers (my other raid sometimes goes with seven healers, depending on the fight). In Wrath alone I think at one point we had almost a dozen main spec tanks and we could only consistently bring three -- one of which was performing a DPS role in most fights.

Blizzard has done something good this expansion in allowing 10-mans to be a viable form of progression. It allows us to make multiple raids that fits more people's schedules while allowing us to get all of those tanks slots in raids. I feel that it was a good decision on their part and one that favors small, casual non-progression raids who are raiding more with the idea of experiencing content and having fun than a driving need to compete in downing content.