There are lots of wild eyed posts all over the various WoW forums and blogs that Blizzard “hates” 25 man raids and is trying to “kill them”.  This is insane.  Blizzard doesn’t hate anything that makes them money, and raid content makes them money.  The change in question, namely that 10 and 25 man raids share a lockout, 25 man raids will be convertible to up to 3 separate 10 man raids, and both will drop the same loot, is designed to allow people to play the way they like, which was the stated goal of the Wrath system of having every raid be available in 10 and 25 man format to begin with.

In Wrath, 10 man content was generally heavily nerfed compared to 25 man content – not just assuming less damage to to missing buff/debuff synergy but also assuming a lower gear level.  Because of this, 10 man raids dropped gear that was less powerful, and this meant that it dropped different gear than the 25 man did.

The first result of this is that no one took 10 man raids seriously in terms of progression.  People in full Uld 25 gear with hard mode gear could go into ToC 10 and practically outgear it, and the change to heroic versions of all items in ToC made this even worse – any well-progressed 25 man guild could put a 10 man together for ICC 10 that likely wouldn’t see any major upgraded gear until they got to heroic content, with the exception of the 258 gear on Lich King himself, which would be the same power as the weapons they got in Heroic ToC 25.

The second result is that, because 10 man raids dropped different gear than 25 man raids, every boss had to have two seperate loot tables, before counting the extra heroic items.  Because some items (especially trinkets) are so hard to come by, there was usually one or two of the better trinkets in the game burried in 10 man raids that 25 man guilds who were pushing progression would feel they had to farm.  Adding this to the badge requirements for some of the strongest gear available early in the tier, and the Tier armor pieces, and 10 mans became something that 25 man raiders felt they had to do.

On the flip side, 25 man gear was just better than 10 man gear.  For people who preferred 10 man raids but wanted to feel like they had the best gear they could, they were forced into 25 man raids.

This means that anyone who wanted to optimize their character’s gear had to raid every tier twice per lockout instead of just once.  Needless to say, this is a recipe for burning out on content much faster.

Blizzard has said that they want people to play the game they enjoy and not feel like they have to do too many things that they don’t enjoy.  The Rep grinds of Vanilla are gone, the imbalance between PvE gear and PvP gear and the hurdle that was the jump from 10 man Kara to 25 man Gruul’s and Mag’s are gone.  Or at least made more optional.  Now, they are removing the raid grind, the need to do 2 full raids every week to “keep up” with the badge and gear demands.

Many people are saying things along the lines of  “10 man raids are always easier, so why would anyone every do 25 man raids?”  I think people forget a few things.  First, that OS3D was harder in 10 than 25 when it was current, and second, that Blizzard deliberately undertuned 10 man raiding in Cataclysm.  The devs are already givingthemselves better tools for balancing the two raid sizes – check out this list of mandatory buffs and debuffs in Cata.  It’s much more simplified.  Any reasonably built 10 man raid should be able to achieve all of the buffs and most of the debuffs.  That just isn’t true right now.  And if they can assume that all 10 man raids and all 25 man raids will have roughly the same buffs and debuffs, it’s much easier to make the content similarly difficult.  Some fights will probably work out to be harder for 10 man groups, and some for 25, especially when hard modes are factored in, but that’s fine, as long as the balance is roughly similar.

Beyond that, 25 man raiding is going to be significantly more efficient in terms of gearing up a character.  25 man raids will drop as many as 5 items instead of the current 3, and will reward more Honor/Valor points as well (the Honor and Valor point system is replacing the current Emblem system and will work similarly to the Arena point/Honor system, tho with some important changes).  There will be a weekly cap on Honor and Valor points earned, and they’ve suggested that fully clearing all 25 man content in a week might equate to the maximum week’s value, meaning that players can avoid things like daily heroics, something that heavily geared players often find more tedious than enjoyable.  And if you want to do it, you’re still able to.

As an anecdote on this, my 10 man raid runs once a week and usually doesn’t full clear ICC because we’re focusing on hard modes and the mount achievement – we’re down to the last couple achievements so we expect to start heroic LK soon, which should be a small nightmare, but man I want that title.  One of the best in slot trinkets (well, prior to Ruby Sanctum) for every physical dps class was Whisper Fanged Skull.  In the many months we’ve been doing our ICC 10 man, that trinket has dropped exactly once for us – and that’s counting both normal and heroic versions. Lady D’s loot table is large and that’s one of the lower percentage items on it, and she only drops 2 items at a time.  Your odds are just bad.   In a  25 man raid, the chances of any given item dropping are going to be much higher because you’ve got a 1 in 5 (and rumored 1 in 6 in heroic) chance at each item.  Yeah, you’re probably rolling against more people, but the more often it drops the more likely you are to win said roll.

The people that like 25 man raiding and the people that want to chase world firsts will be doing 25 man raids.  You get geared up faster and that makes it more likely that you can progress faster.  Yes, 25 man raids will be less common.  10 man raids will likely be less common, too, because everyone will be doing only 1 of either per week.  And ideally, people will be doing the raid that they find preferable.  This is not the end of anything, except for early onset content burnout.

The first thing you should consider is what sort of raids you want to do.  10 man?  25 man?  Hard modes?  Pugs, guild run, or a mix?

To answer this question, you need to figure out who you’re likely to run with.  If you’ve got a big guild with lots of people to pick from (maybe a former leveling guild that’s gotten quite a few 80s now, or a social guild that wants to try raiding), you need to sort out who can do what jobs.  For a 10 man raid, you need 2 tanks and 3 healers, and it’s good if one of those 3 healers has a dps spec for some fights.  In 25, it’s 3 tanks, and 6 healers.  Ideally, 1 of each group has a solid dps spec, and you have a dps with a good healing offspec so you can go with 2 tanks or 3 tanks as needed and anywhere from 5 to 7 healers as needed. In addition, you’ll want to try to balance your dps (or dd, depending on your realm) so you have a mix of melee and ranged, and a mix of physical and magical damage.

This is, of course, the ideal situation.  If you can’t do that yet, that’s ok!  Just make sure you have the minimum requirements – if you try to do a 25 man with just 2 tanks, or just 5 healers, you’re going to have a very hard time (unless you’re shockingly overgearing the content, then maybe you could pull it off).

The next thing you need to do is determine what you want to raid.  Once you’ve got an idea of what sort of players your raid group is going to be made up of, you need to figure out the appropriate raid instance for your gear level.  Currently, between the ease of getting 245 gear with Emblems of Triumph, and the huge buff everyone gets in ICC, you can probably start straight in Icecrown Citadel.  If you’re not certain about your gear level, ToC is probably where you want to go.

Once you’ve got an idea of your group and an idea of where you want to go, you need to learn the fights.  The Raid Leader is going to be expected to know how every fight in the raid you’re doing is going to work, and what everyone’s job is going to be.  <a href=http://www.tankspot.com>Tankspot</a> and <a href=http://www.wowhead.com>WoWHead</a> are your best friends here.  Tankspot produces video guides to nearly every fight, and WoWHead catalogs every piece of gear, every spell, every quest…you get the idea.  Start at Tankspot and if you’re not sure how a specific spell works, WowHead is a good backup.

If you want to start a raid, this is the bare minimum – know where you’re going, what you need for tanks, healers, dps mix (ranged vs melee), and know the strats for what you want to down.

Next week we’ll cover some more basics for starting raids – necessary abilities and properly stacking buffs and debuffs.

A quick disclaimer, this site will be exclusively focused on World of Warcraft.  Many of the posts may be applicable to other MMO environments, but I make no promises.

A bit about me:  I’ve been either leading raids or helping lead raids for over 2 years in a moderately successful 9 hour a week raiding guild.  We are currently ranked in the top 15-20% of raiding guilds world wide in ICC 25 (according to wowprogress.com)  I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make my raid more successful, and I’m a big fan of blogs.  Having found that there are great class and role specific blogs out there, I thought I would fill a niche in the raid leading department, as I’ve not found many good blogs on the subject (though to be honest, my search has not been exhaustive).

I’m planning on doing a Raid Leader 101 series once a week to cover some of the basic ideas to help newer raid leaders hit the ground running, and I’m going to be digging into the debate between 10 and 25 man raids in Cataclysm.  I’ve got some other things in mind, but I don’t want to spoil everything.

That’s probably long enough for an intro.  Please don’t mind the site’s appearance for the next couple weeks as I get the layout, design, etc the way I want it, and happy Raiding!