What is your raiding game?

A recent conversation in vent and a post on WoW.com has me thinking about this.

Echo of Fate is a 10 man guild.  We raid, but we are not a raiding guild.  I am immensely proud of our raiding achievements.  We have said that we want to be able to kill The Lich King, but until recently I never thought that we would actually do it.  We have always just been behind the curve.  When everyone was raiding in Ulduar we were still in heroics and pugging Naxx.  When people were ROFLstomping ToC we were just starting to test the waters in Ulduar.  When people were banging their heads in ICC, we were running heroics and Ulduar.  Yes, Ulduar.  We only fairly recently ventured into ToC and Ony.  Now we can go in and clear those out fairly quickly.

Our runs in ICC have been getting better each time we go in.  The last two times we have gone in we have one shot the first three bosses and two shot Saurfang.  Last week we managed to take down Festergut.  At least 10 other guilds on our server, who have been raiding ICC a lot longer than we have, still have yet to take him down.  We came up from no where and are slowly making progress.  I am hoping that we can keep our steady group of raiders and go on to take down the Lich King.  It is my goal.

The other guild I belong to is Shadow Rising.  They are a raiding guild.  They currently do 10 man progression and are trying out 25 man ICC.  In fact they were in there last night.  They aren’t fully fleshed out for 25 man ICC and still have to use PuGs but they will be raiding ICC fairly soon.  Their progression team (team peanut butter as I like to call them) is on the Blood Princes.  The other 10 man team (team chocolate ) has cleared up to Saurfang (I think).  When I finally hit 80 and get my gear going I will get to join team chocolate (assuming I am made a raider) and raid with them.  To this effort I have been spending most of my time leveling my baby lock.

No she does not need to wand faster either! >.>

While in SR’s vent the other day, several people (mostly Tir) were talking about the 25 man progression of the guild.  Tir comes from a high end raiding guild.  It is what he does.  I come from a lower end 10 man raiding guild (see above).  We have two very different views on the end game.  I want to raid with friends and have fun all while beating the ever living shit out of a boss.  I’ve been lucky because my friends I raid with know how to raid well.  I know there are a lot of people who don’t have that luxury.  Being in a guild similar to what Tir is used to is almost anathema to me.  I play to have fun, to escape, not to give myself more stress.

When I think of 25 man progression raiding I get a headache.  Ari called it herding kittens, but I think of it more like dealing with a ton of whiny, bratty 8-10 year olds.  If you have ever had to deal with kids at that age then you can see where I am going with this.  Fun just doesn’t seem to come into play with this set-up.

Now before someone chimes in about how I haven’t done 25 mans and therefore have no real bearing on how they work or how they don’t; know that I am keeping an open mind in regards to 25 mans with SR.  I knew going in that it was their goal.  I just need to wait and see what it really turns out to be like.

On to my other thoughts running around in my head.

The WoW.com article spotlighted a 10 man strict progression guild and it got me thinking about the disparity in raiding rewards.  All the special stuff drops in 25 man.  Legendary weapons, trophies and primordial saronite just to list a few.  You HAVE to be in a 25 man raid to see these things.  Sure you could pug them, but if you aren’t the guild that started the pug you can forget keeping the items or even getting a fair shot at them.  Very imbalanced to me.

Blizzard opened up 10 man raiding because of the high praise they got for Kara and ZA.  It also opened up a lot of the content to people who had problems creating 25 man raids.  Despite all of that, they still treat 10 mans as extra raid IDs for 25 man raiding guilds.  This leads people to think that 25 mans are where it is at and that 10 mans are just easy mode raiding.  I don’t know about you, but in the 25 mans I have pugged, I could have fallen asleep (even being a healer) and no one would notice.  In 10 mans, you can’t have someone sleeping.  As a result you become (hopefully) a much more reactive player and can pull kills instead of wipes.  One of the comments on WoW.com said that all 25 man raids have a core of 10-15 people who know what they are doing with the rest being essentially dead weight.  I tend to agree with that comment in theory.  This is further backed up by another comment Tir made about getting a few more people raid ready so that the others could be carried though.

Wait a moment here.  Why should you just carry people through?  Why should a raid be made around the idea that you will HAVE to carry people through?  That puts unfair stress on the people who know what they are doing.  It also ties in nicely with my ideas of 25 mans.  They aren’t “better” than 10 mans, they just allow more people to be carried.  Most of the people who are the most vocal about 25 mans being better are usually the ones being carried.  You put those same people in a 10 man and their obvious short comings are still there.  They still stand in the fire.  They don’t switch targets.  Their dps is sub par.  Yet you are the scrub because you are in a 10 man raid.  Yeah, uh huh, like I believe that load of crap.

Tir did make a comment that I agree with: 25 man ICC is not the place to learn to raid.  If you haven’t mastered the ability to not stand in the bad or how to switch targets correctly so that the RL and/or healers don’t yell at you to get off the boss or move.  Here is a tip: WHEN THERE ARE ADDS OR NASTY THINGS THAT ATTACK YOUR PARTY MEMBERS: KILL THEM/IT!  DO NOT ASSUME SOMEONE ELSE WILL DO IT.  SWITCH TARGETS!

>.>

Unless you have been specifically told to stand in something that is different than the regular floor, your best bet is to move and move fast.  Don’t wait for your channeled spell to finish.  GET THE FUCK AWAY.

It is really that simple.

Now I’ve gone and made myself pissy.  Note to self – Talking about stuff that gets you ranting is not a good idea when you have stopped drinking soda and haven’t taken your pills for 3 weeks.