Help with transitioning from a 3x10man teams to a 25man team

[ramp]

Next week my guild is going to transition from multiple 10 man teams to one 25 man team in preparation for WoD (and to help combat dwindling attendance), and I am looking for some tips on what has worked well (or not well) from others who have recently made this transition. Also from a raid leading point of view, which fights (if any) are significantly different?

For a bit of background on my guild:
- In terms of experience, about 2/3rds of our group are at 11/14H and the remaining 1/3 are at 2/14H.
- We raid twice a week for 7 hours total


Thanks in advance!

[Khorm]

- In terms of experience, about 2/3rds of our group are at 11/14H and the remaining 1/3 are at 2/14H.

This is going to tear your guild apart, you can't throw people of different skill levels together. The 11/14H people are going to get mighty pissed off that they then have to reprogress with less skilled players and if you do get up to Siegecrafter if the 11/14 people couldn't do it then the 2/14h people sure aren't going to be able to do it.

[Larynx]

Above poster is correct.

The 11/14s are gonna be pissed and probably leave if they have to raid with 2/14s. The best option really is to merge the two 11/14s into a 20m, and start recruiting from there. If you're not heartless, then you better hope the 2/14s get better, because that raid will never kill Siege. In the meantime, you can just do up to Spoils/Thok in 25m to get your 11/14s used to it, and have a 5 person bench if people want to sit out.

[Deja Thoris]

What the other 2 said^^

Fastest way to rip your teams apart is to put the less progressed / skilled ones with people 9 bosses ahead.

[Octa]

Just wanna echo what everyone here has said so far. Merging into 25m will likely destroy your guild, do not do it.....If you're absolutely dead set on doing this, open up recruitment THIS SECOND for more progressed people and be ready to get rid of the weak people ASAP.

[Unholyfap]

Id say combine your 2 11/14hm guilds and recruit 5 - 8 players and maybe if their are 1 or 2 exceptional players u notice carrying the 2/14hm group pick them up.

[Sonnillon]

Id say combine your 2 11/14hm guilds and recruit 5 - 8 players and maybe if their are 1 or 2 exceptional players u notice carrying the 2/14hm group pick them up.

This is a very good point on top of what other people have said.

As for your second question (I stopped raiding with my 10man HC guild and moved to leading to 25man HC PUG), I can say that (based on what I've killed):
On top of more HP and more dmg dealt to the raid there aren't that big differences between the sizes.
1) immerseus = still trash
2) protectors = ehm, your spread has to be good in order for not to get all the bad shit in one place, you need think on how you position you melee (by which boss you keep them on; if you have lot of melee) in lines of lessening the poison shit under Sun.
3) Norushen = you really need to control the people going down, pref. not more then 3-4 DPS at a time, or else you can get overwhelmed easely
4) Sha = you need split groups for soaking rifts and more/stronger CDs for the Swelling
5) Galakras = like normal, with everything having more hp
6) Jugger = like normal, though Siegemode is bit harder due to many people and tar-pools
7) Shamans = a good split with melee on top with 3 healers and 3/2 healers with rest down and it's like 10-man.
haven't managed to get more

[kamuimac]

- In terms of experience, about 2/3rds of our group are at 11/14H and the remaining 1/3 are at 2/14H.


Thanks in advance!

i know it will be mean thing to do but leave those 2/14 hc out of merge - if u dont ull start to loose those 11/14 hc very fast when suddenly u will be undable to kill bosses liek malkork/thok again - no matter how easy 25 man is u have limited space to how many people u can carry - there is a reason why they are stuck on 2/14 hc :/ it will destroy the merge - jsut join together those 2 11/14 hc team and recruit/pug missing people

[Andaja]

Don't just toss out all the group 3 right away. You firstly pick those that have potential and are good at there class, do not tunnel vision and other good raiders qualities. I find it very hard to believe that out of 10 people, all of them are shit.
So take what you can, then recruit the rest.

[Diegles]

I am not involved in my guilds politics much, but I always try to influence those that are with my views.

My guild is looking at the same dilemma, but for us we have 1 group (10man) who are about to start progressing Malkorok Heroic, and the other group (10man) about to start on Siegecrafter Normal. Now there is a 3rd team who's been formed, a 25man who pugs a lot of their raiders.

We hope to be able and capable of doing Mythic in WoD, and 6.0, but our only option as of today is to merge the groups.
I as a Raid assist don't want to bring the other 10 people in the 10man team, neither do I want to bring the people from the 25man.
Group 8/14H: struggling with a couple of people in the roster as it is.
Group 11/14N: varied roster, often people who don't show up, or show late, go afk, dont listen to raidleader or are underperforming.
Group 1/14H (25man): started by one of the guys from Group 11/14N because he didn't want to extend lockout to further progress. Group is too new for me to know a lot of details about it. They didn't bother going normal at all.

I personally would leave for another guild if we were to merge the groups, as I am frustrated enough at some of the things happening in 8/14H group, bringing more frustration won't solve things, it would create a vacuum.

While we might absorb a few people from the other teams to start in WoD, it would create guild drama because the raidleaders of the other 2 groups are very emotional about their groups. If we were to take key players from them they would create havoc on us and it would likely end up in sabotage or jealousy.

Our progress is too low for us to get applicants for WoD, and we are now scavenging old friends from previous servers/guilds to see if we can bring in people who we know can do what we expect, but it's not going too well either.

I hope we will rather run a flexible group of 10-16 people and recruit during our progression in WoD, to fill the roster up for Mythic level raiding as we go.
The change of 10/25man groups to 20 for Mythic is a bit of a problem for us, and I am sure we are not alone.

PS: Reason for our low progress is the mix of experienced and new people, change of roster and learning to work as a group. We spent 4-5 months clearing normal, and 4 weeks killing the 4 first bosses in heroic, then 2 week to kill the 4 next bosses. So I hope that means we are evolving as a group. Also our raidleaders are both mist babies, who started to raid in SoO. They have evolved a lot since the start of progression.

[kamuimac]

My guild is looking at the same dilemma, but for us we have 1 group (10man) who are about to start progressing Malkorok Heroic, and the other group (10man) about to start on Siegecrafter Normal. Now there is a 3rd team who's been formed, a 25man who pugs a lot of their raiders.

and im gonna sound like mean person again but if u are at 8/14 hc atm and cant get past malkorok with 4/4 upgrade mythic is not for u - dont merge dont do anything just enjoy the flex raid size of what currently is normal and slowly build up rooser in wod - there is huge chance u wont make it into mythic anyway in tier which doesnt last 10 months and was heavily nerfed from day 1 with cloaks and gear upgrades.

[Durandro]

Id say combine your 2 11/14hm guilds and recruit 5 - 8 players and maybe if their are 1 or 2 exceptional players u notice carrying the 2/14hm group pick them up.

Pretty much this. You'll have to figure out which two tanks are willing to DPS as well.

[ramp]

First off, thanks to everyone who has posted so far

The disparity between the three teams is a big point of concern for us before regarding this decision. But at the same time it is something that we feel is a least partially mitigated by our circumstances. Our guild (across all three teams) is pretty tight knit, at a guess about 75% of us have been in the same guild together for at least 3 years, some much longer than that and about half of us live in the same city and catch up pretty regularly. The team with 2/14H progression as a whole is most definitely a step behind the skill level of the other two teams, but the difference is probably(hopefully) at least a little bit compounded by this team having the most flux in its membership, especially in the tanking roles.

In regards to recruitment, we have been expending a lot of effort in this area for months now and will continue to do so, but each week it gets harder and harder to find people. Summer is here, Siege isn't getting any more exciting and the competition between guilds for new members is insane. Our current predicament is that on any given raid night (especially our second raid night when people are locked to heroic IDs) we will have 1 or 2 teams unable to run even though the guild has 28-29 people online ready to raid.

That said we are aware that this will result in our guild's progression taking a significant step back initially and also increase the frustration level of our better players. Everyone seems ok with that right now, obviously that might change once the reality sets in, but at the same time the guild can also change it's structure again too if this isn't working out for us. Basically we are looking at ways to try and make this transition, as painless as I can which is why I came here to learn from the experience of others who have been through this.

Once again, thank you very much for your help so far. Keep it coming!

[Shtanky]

Hello and thanks all for the advice!

I am the raid leader of one of the 11/14h teams (and the guild GM). I know it sounds like there is a massive skill gap between the 11/14h teams and the 2/14h teams but this isn't anywhere near what it seems. The 2/14h team has had real trouble with tank stability for most of the tier, and has done well considering the struggles they've encountered.

While we would like to kill Heroic Garrosh pre 6.0 if possible, we know that our 7hr/week schedule isn't going to make that easy. We know we may not get there. Part of the purpose here is to re-invigorate the raiding environment. We know there will be challenges, but this transition is part of a big picture. We have ~35 active raiders, and want to give everyone the opportunity to earn their spot on our main Mythic team in WoD. We also want to take the time to adapt to a larger raid size, and deal with the challenges of that now, rather than lose time in WoD.

In terms of our guild, we're an adult community, so there isn't any raging. We're excited to raid together as a big group, as at the end of the day we are one guild. We tried the route of recruitment to fill the gaps in the various 10's, and that proved largely fruitless as most people in the skill range to be 11/14h are able to find 14/14h guild bloating up for WoD. On top of that, we are confident that we have the depth for a strong Mythic team in WoD, and don't want to bloat our roster when we already will have some hard decisions coming up.

Anyhoo, a little more about the guild.

That said, the purpose of the OP post was to find out which fights we should spend extra time looking into, vs utilizing similar strats from 10's. We have a week for our research so were hoping others who have made the transition could help us be more efficient in our research.

Many thanks again, and all replies are appreciated.

[Wilderness]

Good luck with the transition - its going to be difficult, but it is doable if you have the right sort of people. You obviously think you have those kind of people, and now you get to find out if you're right.

Read through this thread, I think that should give you a good starting point from doing 25 man heroics vs 10s: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...al-Differences

[Shtanky]

Good luck with the transition - its going to be difficult, but it is doable if you have the right sort of people. You obviously think you have those kind of people, and now you get to find out if you're right.

Read through this thread, I think that should give you a good starting point from doing 25 man heroics vs 10s: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...al-Differences

Thank you that thread is awesome!

[psyquest]

Hello and thanks all for the advice!

I am the raid leader of one of the 11/14h teams (and the guild GM). I know it sounds like there is a massive skill gap between the 11/14h teams and the 2/14h teams but this isn't anywhere near what it seems. The 2/14h team has had real trouble with tank stability for most of the tier, and has done well considering the struggles they've encountered.

While we would like to kill Heroic Garrosh pre 6.0 if possible, we know that our 7hr/week schedule isn't going to make that easy. We know we may not get there. Part of the purpose here is to re-invigorate the raiding environment. We know there will be challenges, but this transition is part of a big picture. We have ~35 active raiders, and want to give everyone the opportunity to earn their spot on our main Mythic team in WoD. We also want to take the time to adapt to a larger raid size, and deal with the challenges of that now, rather than lose time in WoD.

In terms of our guild, we're an adult community, so there isn't any raging. We're excited to raid together as a big group, as at the end of the day we are one guild. We tried the route of recruitment to fill the gaps in the various 10's, and that proved largely fruitless as most people in the skill range to be 11/14h are able to find 14/14h guild bloating up for WoD. On top of that, we are confident that we have the depth for a strong Mythic team in WoD, and don't want to bloat our roster when we already will have some hard decisions coming up.

Anyhoo, a little more about the guild.

That said, the purpose of the OP post was to find out which fights we should spend extra time looking into, vs utilizing similar strats from 10's. We have a week for our research so were hoping others who have made the transition could help us be more efficient in our research.

Many thanks again, and all replies are appreciated.

I am a RL of my guild. We used to have 2 ten man raids with 13 to 14 people in each raid. We were at 13/14HC SOO when we decided to move to 25 man.

The reasoning was that we needed to recruit people good enough to make a proper 25 man raid and be ready. With hindsight it would have been easier to recruit if we had waited one week and killed garosh heroic 10 man. Anyhow we transitioned to 25 man.

First issue: you need only 2 tanks and one extra in case one is not present.
Second issue: you need 5 healers with one offspec that can take over in case one is absent
Third: most difficult issue is you need a balanced group of very good dps.

We managed to do what is required and killed garrosh heroic about 1 month ago in 25.

Difference with 10 man raiding:

the raid leader will need help to spot the players that are dead weight and understand why people die.
Bosses are very easy, first one to be careful is malkorok: people must soak and not wait for the other guy to do it.
Dispelling: watch out for healers/classes that just do not dispell when required.
Engineer, klaxxi and garrosh are the hard bosses. Engineer is way way easier if you have hunters. We killed it with and without. This is the first boss where you will see who are the dumb guys in your raid that do not know how to move.

Klaxxi: will show you if your raid can deal with multiple abilities and dps properly. although dps is not an issue currently with the gear level.
Garrosh: much easier that klaxxi. You do it with 3 healers. The first room is about making the correct group to cc the adds, the rest of the fight can be brute forced to avoid going to the second room and avoid more than 1 pop of adds in the final phase before going to stormwind. What is really left of this fight is learning when to use raid CDs and learning how to deal with malice. you will still need 100+ trys.

Hope you make it. I think you will as long as everyone has the same goal as the raid leader/GM.

[Deleted]

Decide on a good raider rotation system asap as people who were raiding every week and are suddenly benched are probably going to get upset about it.

[chazus]

Correct me if I'm wrong...

But you want to merge 30 people, 3x 10m, into a 25m team in prep for WoD... But there are no 25H (Mythic) raids in WoD, only 10/20, yes? So... You'd either be making a 25 team and further paring it down to 20 once you hit the heroic (Mythic) level...

Or just stick to 3x 10 teams, or do a 1x 10 for non-mythic and 1x20 mythic team. Chances are, you'll just have one team for the Mythic (as 20 of your 30 are well into Heroic now) and one for Normal (Heroic in WoD).

Basically I guess what I'm saying is.. Don't do anything. Just let your teams raid as normal in the "Flex Heroic" level, and when you have 20 people geared enough, move onto a 20 Mythic team, and the rest stay in Heroic.

[Shtanky]

Decide on a good raider rotation system asap as people who were raiding every week and are suddenly benched are probably going to get upset about it.

After 10 months in SoO I don't think anyone is going to lose any sleep on this one

- - - Updated - - -

Correct me if I'm wrong...

But you want to merge 30 people, 3x 10m, into a 25m team in prep for WoD... But there are no 25H (Mythic) raids in WoD, only 10/20, yes? So... You'd either be making a 25 team and further paring it down to 20 once you hit the heroic (Mythic) level...

Or just stick to 3x 10 teams, or do a 1x 10 for non-mythic and 1x20 mythic team. Chances are, you'll just have one team for the Mythic (as 20 of your 30 are well into Heroic now) and one for Normal (Heroic in WoD).

Basically I guess what I'm saying is.. Don't do anything. Just let your teams raid as normal in the "Flex Heroic" level, and when you have 20 people geared enough, move onto a 20 Mythic team, and the rest stay in Heroic.

A side benefit to doing this now is that people can essentially audition for a Mythic spot in WoD, as yes we'd be paring from 33 to ~26 for Mythic. We intend on having a 2nd Flex Normal/Heroic team in WoD, as we'll most likely have 5-10 players returning in WoD.

We can't "do nothing". Teams are cancelling raids due to summer/attrition and recruitment isn't able to keep pace.