This is not the first time I have decided to write about this topic, but a number of things recently have sparked some frustration regarding the way ten man and twenty-five man raids are treated (and I’m not even talking about hard modes, just the standard raid content on normal). One thing I do want to emphasize before I begin is this: I do not envy Blizzard for being in the position to decide how to keep ten and twenty-five player content viable, but I sincerely believe they’re doing it wrong.

Ten Man Raids Are More Challenging. It really comes down to the simple fact that in a ten man there is far less room for error. Lose a tank when you need two? Wipe. Lose one healer of a two-healer team? Wipe. Lose one DPS when you don’t over-gear the content enough to make up for the lost damage (subsequently hitting the enrage timer, or running out of mana)? Wipe.

Have the same things happen in a twenty-five man raid and you can normally recover as long as your raid members can adapt to change. Lose one, two, even five DPS? It’s still possible to finish the fight. Lose a tank? In a twenty-five man there is normally a backup waiting who can pick up the fallen tank’s spot until (hopefully) a battle rez gets them back in the game. Lose a healer? You already had one or two who weren’t pulling their weight and can absorb the difference.

Before you flame me for the above paragraph really think about your performance in a ten man raid versus your performance in a twenty-five man raid (and again, this is normal, not hard/heroic/whatever they want to call it now).

Every single raid I have ever run has held up this statement: I work harder in ten man raids and have to perform at my best, whereas in twenty-five man raids I can make mistakes or just coast along.

So what, why bring this up again?

There has been talk of Invincible (image link), Arthas’ mount, dropping in the Icecrown twenty-five man raid. While I have not been able to confirm whether it will drop in the ten man version as well, this has rekindled a bit of a sore subject for me.

The perception that those who choose to do twenty-five man raids deserve access to certain special items, really irritates me. It is frustrating enough that the best gear is only available in a setting that poses no more challenge than its perceived lesser counterpart. With two sets of gear the issue was not as annoying (such as the tier seven and eight sets) because I have no qualms with a larger group managing to organize and complete content being rewarded somehow. Such rewards, within the scope of World of Warcraft, generally take the form of slightly better gear. With the tier nine sets things became mush more confusing, and drastically more irritating.

This is how the raiding experiences can best be summarized to understand my experiences:

Ten man raids are more challenging and require better performance, and twenty-five man raids require more patience and the ability to coordinate a group.

With ten mans posing more of a challenge, why is it they are always regarded as inferior in terms of gear obtainable? The answer is, simply, to keep twenty-five man raids viable. If the gear was identical then most guilds would most likely just run the ten man raids. This need for keeping the two different size raids going strong is fine, but it does serve to belittle those who dedicate time and energy in really working to clear the ten man content and not simply run with random groups to get twenty-five man gear. The solution, if the gear is going to remain skewed in favor of those who run twenty-five man raids, should be to make the twenty-five mans harder than the ten mans. Period. I’m happy to accept better gear or special items for more difficult content.

How do we fix this perceived issue?

I am so glad you asked. Within the scope of Blizzard’s currently defined raiding schema it should appear like this assuming the content is harder to complete in ten mans and more challenging to organize in twenty-five mans, as is the case currently:

• 10 man normal and 25 man normal raids should drop equivalent gear.
• 10 man heroic and 25 man heroic raids should drop the next item level higher gear.

Now, revamping the system to make twenty-five man raids harder than ten mans should revert us to what we currently know:

• 10 man normal drops the initial item level gear.
• 10 man heroic and 25 man normal drop the same item level.
• 25 man heroic drops the highest item level.

To take it further, however, a complete overhaul of the raiding system makes more sense.

Part of the issue is that there is very little difference between the ten man and twenty-five man versions of the same raid. Difficulty simply does not scale properly in order to justify a gear disparity. How can we truly resolve such an issue? We separate the raids. If ten man raiding is supposed to be easier than twenty-five man raiding, which would justify the gear disparity, then the best approach is to have a ten man raid “beginning” an area, the completion of which unlocks the twenty-five man raid in the same area. Let’s walk through an example:

If we were to convert the current Crusader’s Coliseum to this revamped system it would provide two distinct raids. The first would be the current Trial of the Crusader as we know it now, but only available as a ten man normal/heroic raid. Completion of the ten man (on either setting) would unlock the Trial of the Grand Crusader, which would be a twenty-five man raid. The encounters would not be the same, and the Trials of the Grand Crusader would be more difficult than the Trials of the Crusader. There would be two sets of tier gear in each raid, one from normal and one from heroic, with the ten man heroic gear matching the twenty-five man normal gear (for those keeping track that would mean three sets of tiered gear overall).

This seemingly simple change in the system would allow Blizzard to maintain the gear disparity as well as truly make the difficulty between ten and twenty-five man raids pronounced. Certainly it seems kind of selfish, but this would also finally allow me to place aside the rants and frustrations that I encounter as a ten man raider as a result of this single concept:

Ten man raiding is more challenging in difficulty and more exacting in performance, and twenty-five man raiding is more an exercise in patience and coordination of a large group.