10 man vs 25 man - Which one is the hardest?

[Deleted]

25 man is significantly easier than 10man in many ways tbh....

For starters, you have all the people you need, tanking is less of an issue since you can afford to have that third tank.

Healing is WAY easier on 25 than 10 - tank dmg isn't that much higher, raid dmg isn't that much higher either - unless, ofc, half of your raid is filled with retards. That however, shouldn't happen in proper guilds...

Also DPS - seems to me - to be less of an issue - especially if you choose to go with 6 healers.


So alltogether; More buffs, easier healing, an affordable 3rd(maybe even 4th) tank - DPS seeming, to me, as less of an problem.... Well if you have 25 players that play well together and who think with their OWN brains instead of waiting for every single of the RL's commands... I'll probably go as far as to say that 10man by far beats 25 on difficulty.

Of course this is different from encounter to encounter, but alltogether this is my impression (Did you try Cho'gall on 25? - My lord he's easy!!)

[FattGuy]

Don't know why everyone is just comparing 10 and 25 man using statistics.

Yesterday, it was our first guild 25 man because of the new years and other activities. And Guess what, We ended up killing 5 bosses on the yesterdays night easily. Halfus 2 shot, Valiona and T 4 shot, Omnitron 1 shot, Magmaw 1 shot, and Maloriak 3 shot. We could've done Conclave after but raid time ended. And you know something, I wiped a lot more on 10 man than I did on 25 man. Not only that, we were trying new initiates out as well. I am certain we're gonna be downing bosses that we couldn't down in 10 man.

Yes 10 man is harder, everything is limited. If 1 person dies as like everyone else says, it can go wrong badly.

[Eduardo]

I raid in a 10 man guild and my guy feeling is 25 mans are harder. On the other hand, a technical glitch like a healer DCing for 30 seconds in a 10 man is probably less recoverable. Overall though, 25 mans are probably harder for numerous reasons.

[Rosham]

Of course this is different from encounter to encounter, but alltogether this is my impression (Did you try Cho'gall on 25? - My lord he's easy!!)

I haven't tried Cho'gall on 25man myself, but on 10man I would hardly call him difficult by any strech of the imagination.

So far I would say 10man normals (taken a break over Christmas/New Year so not looked at hardmodes yet) seem as easy as they did in LK, all this chatter about loosing one person is more damaging in 10man than 25man, well I wouldn't say thats true either, if its a key player then yes, but the same could be said for 25mans if you loose a tank and its a two tank encounter, or your running reduced healers for more DPS and you go down from 5 to 4 healers and keeping everyone alive becomes issue. Personally I have been on 10man kills were 2/3 people have died from an initial brainfail then a knock on effect and the boss has still died, that doesn't sound very tightly tuned to me.

Given that a lot of the top guilds have been quoted in saying that 25mans still provide the greater challenge (and thus glory which is probably why most still do them (apart from having 25+ very competent players as well)) and that my experience so far has pointed that way, I would say 25mans are looking to be more difficult. Heck I'm pretty sure I've read some blogs where the big guilds have claimed that 25mans are more punishing on mistakes than 10man is, which wouldn't be worrying indeed - of course not being able to do both 10 and 25man hardmodes in the same week makes comparison harder.

Thats my opinion of it from experience, but also from experience, I have seen that whatever format people do, be that 10 or 25man they claim that to be the hardest without having tried the other, there was even some rather heated discussions on vent with a few guildies that Blizzard could never make 10mans harder than 25 - at the time they were saying it blindly, in a rage about 10mans getting the same loot as 25 but seems they have been proved right.

[Hunternation]

pointless argument really, alot of the fights are defintly designed for 25 like Heroic halfus for example. Generally25 man is harder but there are alot of fights in this tier that are way harder in 10 man due to fight mechanics

[Titan]

You can tell that 90 percent of people commentating A) have not raided or B) only raid 10 man and say it's harder to make themselves feel more "1337"

The fact is, 25 man is harder right now on almost all fights, and from all accounts is harder on all heroics (so far at least). Most of the high-end guilds in the world that switched to 10 man are switching back to 25. It's obvious in a few months 10 man world firsts won't count as overall world firsts anymore due to the difficulty difference in heroics. Instead, there will just end up being two sets of world firsts. The difference isn't as huge as it was in WOTLK, but there is a difference.

When people come on here and say things like "loose one person in 10 man and it's over" or "Healing tanks in 25 man isn't harder then 10 man" it's a bit hilarious. It's clear Blizzard has tuned the fights so losing four people in 25 man is as easy as losing one in 10 man. The amount of raid damage being taken in 25 man, especially heroic, is much more then double that in 10 man. And since taking damage versus healing damage isn't linear because the health of players stays the same; It innately makes 25 man harder to heal. Not to mention tanks spike far more on 25 man, and there is more raid damage, most of those extra healers aren't healing the tank, they are healing more then double the players 10 man has to, who have the same health they do in 10 man, for much more then twice the damage 10 man deals with. Which makes keeping everyone up a more difficult task.

Basically it comes down to this. If you take two equally skilled raids into 10 and 25 man. 25 will be slightly more challenging in normal and much more in heroic. You can't say 10 man is harder because you suck at this game and you play with a bunch of other people who suck at this game, yet you all had the dream of being the 10 man Paragon, and you wipe because Little Johnny has the reaction time of an ambien taking turtle.

[Red Thunda]

25 Man is easier
while 10 man is harder

I have no experience raiding in cata with a 25 man group and little experience with a 10 man group - but thats not the basis of my answer.

My answer comes from the world firsts and the top raiding guilds. Most were done in 25 man groups, why would they do it in a 25 man group when a 10 man is 'supposed' to be easier?
If a 10 man group is supposed to be easier and your only concern is to be the first guild to down a boss, why do it with a 25 man group?
Only logical answer is - 25 man groups are easier.
Also does make sense, more room for error.

[Firecrest]

The intent is that they are the same.

25 man is hard because some portion of the raid is composed of people who are not carrying their own weight. This is not to say that they are necessarily bad, just that they are not performing to the standards of the rest of the raid. They could be good players in a great raid or they could be sub-par players in an average raid. In my experience, this number is about 20%. This 20% is what will make the encounter "hard". They are the RNG of a random "oops, stood in fire" death that the rest of the raid has to make up for.

10 mans are difficult based on mechanics. Less people means that each person has to fill their role well, as there is no one else to lean on.

Loot distribution is a mixed bag. One piece of loot drops for every 5 people in raid. The theory being that you have a greater chance of seeing the loot you want in a 25 man, but you also have more competition to get it. If you're a specialized class that doesn't share very much (ie: you're the only Holy Pally or Resto Shaman in your guild), you might be thrilled with 25 man loot. On the other hand, being one of 9 cloth casters or plate DPS probably isn't so grand.

Overall, I believe 10 man to be the better option. The difficulty of it more aptly reflects how I think this game should be played. WoW should be a challenge because the encounter is hard - not because some numbskull in your raid is making it hard.

[Greshapa]

25 man is, and will always be far more difficult for 99% of the playerbase. Sure, in a huge guild or extremely skilled guild with several skilled people of every class of every spec, 25 may be slightly more easy because you can stack your raid like you can in 10 man. Most guilds cant do this with 25, but they can with 10. Your good players are spread more thin, things do much more damage/person, And you cant trivialize mechanics by stacking a certain class, for the most part. 10 man you can bring the 10 best people in your guild, and run with a stacked deck. And most of the mechanics in 10 man are watered down and simplified.

[MAGAmobile]

For normal modes, 10 and 25 have their own fights that are harder than the other setting. For example, Cho'gall and Magmaw are more difficult on 10 man, but fights like Al'Akir and Ascendent Council are harder on 25. While spreading out is a big deal and all, individual responsibility is higher in 10 man raids as opposed to 25. You can only use 1 brez on 10, but you can use 3 on 25. You also don't have as many raid cds available to the raid on 10 compared to 25.

For heroic modes, I've yet to see a single 10 man that is easier than 25 on Heroic. Maybe Ascendent Council, but raid damage is exactly the same on both difficulties, which means healers have to work harder on 10 then 25, not to mention less cds etc. Hell, Conclave of Wind on 10 heroic isn't even possible due to the logistics of the fight.

[Merite]

I've only killed a few raid bosses and not done 25 man at all. Unfortunately everyone's post keeps saying one thing, harder to find 25 good players, 10 good players > 25 bad players. Obviously.

If you're comparing 10 of the best vs 25 of the best, I'd say 25 would be easier, with proper communication. You can recover from a mistake, you have every buff, if one person fails, you would often have a few backups. But, if there's any encounters, where say if one person fails or dc's, etc, the raid wipes, like the last boss in Hyjal in TBC, then 25 man would most likely be harder for that specific encounter.

I just pve casually, in pvp gear pretty much, and in 10 man, if a single player fails, even if someone's excessively doing low dps, you can often wipe, but I see 25 man content easily 24/23/22 manned. Most kill videos I see have a player down from halfway in 25 man usually..and they're guides, lol.

tl;dr, 25 is forgiving, and I don't think the point of the post is "harder to get 25 good players".

[VladDraco]

We have worked on both 25 and 10 since Cata has been released and straight up 25 man is harder. The mechanics have ramped up this expanion and getting 25 people executing them vs 10, the curve is huge. Call it player vs mechanics, but that's the facts. Enough so that we are going to split into 10's and come back to 25's after.

[Titan]

People are making the same terrible arguments. The fact is 10 man is not tuned properly right now and is fundamentally not as difficult as 25 man. All of the arguments you are making on why 10 man is harder could have been used in WOTLK, when 10 man was CLEARLY easier. Why was it easier? Because it wasn't tuned to be as hard or more difficult. Blizzard hasn't tuned the raids properly yet. THATS why they aren't the same difficulty. It has nothing to do with 10 and 25 people. All they did was tune it so 25 does way way more damage to the point where double the healers doesn't equal the damage that has scaled.

It's as simple as that. Stop with the awful arguments.

[Acrono]

in my opinion
10 man is more for 9 of your closest friends that you know is reliable
25 man is more for big guilds that have more people

difficulty depends on the encounter

[Torture]

Depends on the fight. The rooms don't get any bigger so any fight involving spreading out is going to be more space restricted on 25 man.

We've done both thus far in this expansion and I'd say they're pretty even, some we found easier on 25, some we found easier on 10, but the gap isn't really wide enough for me to catagorically state that 1 is harder than the other ad perpetium.

[thundercles]

Blizzard hasn't tuned the raids properly yet.

Do you have a source for this statement?

You are correct with the part about people making the same terrible arguments, and with the tone of your post which I think is that people are missing the point.

And that point is that Blizzard has stated that their goal is to make 10s and 25s equal. (Do I need to source that or is that common enough knowledge, I hope it is.)

Let's assume that 10s and 25s are not equal.
We should also assume that the devs will make changes to bring the game as close as possible to their design goals.

But for now which one is harder?
I think it may be impossible to definitively answer this question. Maybe that means there isn't enough data. Maybe it means that the Devs are succeeding in what they sought out to do.

But based on the things people are saying both on my realm and on these forums I would have to assume that there is certainly much more equality than we (in general) are giving credit.

[Rhyton]

Both are about the same difficulty, one isn't really harder than the other.

Although different aspects of each of easier/harder to do, such as getting the raid together... 10 man obviously is easier to do, you do need to pick and choose and get the right buffs from the right people as well as 3 healers compared to 2 or 2 tanks compared to 1. On the same side though I think 10 man is less forgiving when it comes to mechanics, you only get 1 battle rez and your raiders need to be on the ball. While 25 man is harder to get together and pull off, but a little more forgiving as far as mechanics and numbers go.

Again just personal opinions...

[Porra]

they are equally challenging, Halfus on 25m norm is a JOKE compared to 10 man. Just the sheer amount of extra heals make it easy, but I also find that on fights like Conclave of Wind and Omnotron, 25 is much harder. I think its a nice balance between the two, its a 25m v 10m OS 3D... 10 man was much harder to get pre zerg.

Also want to state that spreading out isnt much of a problem on 25m. On Valiona and Theralion we had 4-5 people within range to all get blasted for 22k on 25m but on 10m if we took too much extra damage, healers would oom and it would be over. It honestly just depends on the fight, its balanced very well at the moment.

[Disinvolto]

My thoughts would be that 10 (100%) players having to be top notch and on their game is a lot less forgiving than only 22-23 (90%) needing to be top notch and on their game... in 10 mans, you can't lose someone to fire or you'll lose. In 25s, you can lose one or two and as long as everyone else is on their game, you should be fine... these are my sentiments more towards hard-modes then normals.

[Deleted]

People are making the same terrible arguments. The fact is 10 man is not tuned properly right now and is fundamentally not as difficult as 25 man. All of the arguments you are making on why 10 man is harder could have been used in WOTLK, when 10 man was CLEARLY easier. Why was it easier? Because it wasn't tuned to be as hard or more difficult. Blizzard hasn't tuned the raids properly yet. THATS why they aren't the same difficulty. It has nothing to do with 10 and 25 people. All they did was tune it so 25 does way way more damage to the point where double the healers doesn't equal the damage that has scaled.

It's as simple as that. Stop with the awful arguments.

Do you have any reliable sources for this statements?

- We did nefarian 10 man - 3 healers, all putting out 12-14k hps... The week after we went nef 25 - 6 healers outputting 8-12k hps..
for the 10man, that's 13*3 = 39k hps or 3,9k hps pr. player.
For the 25man it's 10*6 = 60k hps or or 2,5k hps pr. player.

I dunno about you, but in my eyes, that's less healing needed on 25 compared to the players... And, tankhealing is also significantly easier, because u in many cases have 2 healers on one tank, making one badly timed heal less crucial...

+ The increased uptime of replenishment on 25, the greater chance of getting the hymn procs, the bigger chance for having a mana tide totem - or even two!