10m vs 25m

I think I posted sometime before saying that 25mans were actually easier than 10mans. I'd like to officially retract that post.

My evidence for such a preposterous claim came from a very limited experience of end-game raids, particularly in 25mans. I think my observation was from the simple reasoning that it's impossible for anyone to die when 7 people are simultaneously casting heals on you! Oh how naive. It is very much possible to die despite 7 HoTs and flash heals going off on you. When the boss can cleave for 70k, there's just no hope for non-tanks.

Anyways, ICC raiding has changed that outlook drastically. 25man raids are much more difficult, not due to the increased damage or HP, but from the number of adds (which usually TRIPLE), limited space to spread out in, and the sheer difficulty of trying to assign 25 people to do different things at once.

Don't get me wrong, I still think there are certain fights where it's actually easier in 25man. Sometimes when the raid has to split up into groups for more than one boss, the fight does get easier with more people. For example I've done the assembly of iron in both 10 and 25man version - the 25man run went much smoother because we had 3 dedicated tanks, who each had a dedicated healer (whereas in 10man you'd have someone be a "makeshift" tank receiving some heals once in a while, or a risky range/interrupt tank). But this is probably one of the very few examples.

In ICC particularly 25mans are very challenging. No wonder it took our server's top guild over a month between the 10man heroic and 25man heroic kill.

The problems of spreading people out to avoid splash damage become exponentially hard going from 10 to 25 man. Because while you can make up for increased boss hp and damage with your increased DPS and healing, there is nothing you can do about the size of the playing field.

Take the blood queen fight for instance. In my opinion one of the hardest fights to execute well in 25man. Spreading out that many people in that tiny little room, in addition to working out the bite order amongst ~20 dps characters becomes a nightmare very quickly. Oh no I have swarming shadows! Run in a circle! Oh wait no there are people EVERYWHERE and no matter where I go I will kill someone. Bite this guy! Oh wait he's dead from getting hit by 6 bloodbolts because people didn't spread out in the air phase.

Last night the guild attempted 25man lich king, which was really really tough. We didn't down him obviously (but we got close!) after repeated attempts, whereas 10man lich king took two tries. I remember everyone complaining about how much defile sucks and then seeing it for myself on 10man and thinking, "this is a piece of cake". Well, I think everyone was talking about 25man, because defile really does suck. When one of them unluckily drops on someone in the middle of the raid...there's just no way to run out of this thing. The longer you stay in it, the larger it gets, and by the time you realize it the entire platform is covered in that disgusting gray ooze. And your raid has either died or committed suicide off the platform.

Oh well, we're tyring again tonight. Maybe we'll get super lucky and get it this time.