I recently posted this on my realm forums as a response to someone who made a comment about how "25-man raiding is the only real form of progression". While I'm not bent out of shape about this issue, his response sort of rubbed me the wrong way, and I decided to do a little bit of research. I figured I'd go ahead and share my findings, and also try to get some feedback on the issue.
My goal here is not to start any sort of flame war or trollfest. There is some very interesting data to interpret here, and I'm looking for people to approach it with a calm, reasonable mentality. It's okay to be biased (I am), as long as you're not being a belligerent ass about it.
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You have been warned: this thread is written by a biased individual.
So I was messing around on World of Logs when I discover something... unexpected. Go take a look for yourself:
http://worldoflogs.com/zones/Blackwing_Descent/
Toggle between "10-man" and "25-man" modes. Do you notice any trends?
How about these two?
http://worldoflogs.com/zones/Bastion_of_Twilight/
http://worldoflogs.com/zones/Throne_of_the_4_Winds/
See it now?
According to the wipe rates represented by these statistics, it appears that wiping is more common in 10-man raids than 25-man raids.
There are a number of ways to interpret this data, and while my immediate bias is to say "10-mans are balanced to be as difficult, or perhaps more difficult, than 25-mans," I'm a reasonable enough person to admit there are other factors at play here.
For instance, since 10-man raids are easier to form, it's possible that there are a number of terrible pick-up groups being represented here, artificially inflating the wipe count while real guilds are actually having an easier time.
It's important to realize, however, that this theory loses value as you get deeper and deeper into each raid. A pick-up group that is wiping on Magmaw and ODS is certainly not going to make it to Nefarion, and yet the success rate for Nefarion25 (2.6%) is more than DOUBLE the success rate for Nefarion10 (1.2%). And go take a look at Cho'gall. Notice anything strange? The success rate for CG25 (17.9%) is 267% higher than the success rate for CG10 (6.7%). And this is all assuming that pug groups are actually running World of Logs. Last time I checked, a lot of guilds aren't even running it.
Another reasonable theory is that some fights are simply tuned to be easier on 25-man than 10-man, but others are easier on 10-man. There is obviously an element of truth to this, and it is very apparent that complex fights with a lot of movement and positioning elements become easier on 10-man.
The statistics do show two fights where 10-mans have a lower wipe rate: the Ascendant Council and Conclave of Winds (and, to give the benefit of doubt, Al'akir is currently tied at 4.4% in both modes). This is nothing unexpected: these are both fights involving a lot of positioning and movement, which is almost unarguably more difficult when more players are added to the mix. But do these two fights really outweigh the 10 others where 10-mans have markedly lower success rates?
A third potential interpretation of the data is that 25-man guilds are simply better than 10-man groups. While I find this notion to be elitist and ridiculous, I begrudgingly admit that there is probably a sliver of truth to it.
This notion is also difficult to quantify, but let's give it a shot. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the players in an average 25-man guild are 10% better than the players in an average 10-man guild. Some may argue that this is a low estimation, and others may argue it to be high, but hear me out: we'll tweak the numbers in a second.
If we knock the success rates for all of our 10-man groups up by 10%, the scales tip on Al'akir, pushing the number of fights that are easier on 10-man mode up from 2 to 3.
With a 25% handicap, two more fights are tipped in favor of 10-man groups, leaving us with a 5:7 ratio.
With a 60% handicap, we reach our equilibrium: 6 fights are easier on 10-man, and 6 fights are easier on 25-man.
With a 100% handicap (which, as a reminder, assumes that the average 25-man guild is TWICE as skilled as the average 10-man guild), three fights are still easier on 25-man mode than 10-man mode: Maloriak, Nefarion, and Cho'gall.
It isn't until until we give 10-man raids a 170% handicap that all 12 fights become easier on 10-man than 25-man mode. While I'm inclined to believe that the average 25-man guild might be slighter better than the average 10-man guild, a 170% difference is not what I had in mind.
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Anyway, that's my rant for the day. I'd love to hear how other people interpret this data, and I'm all ears if you can offer a better way of mathing things out to come up with a reasonable conclusion.
The only point I'm trying to get across here is that we should not be throwing around statements like "10-mans are obviously easier than 25-mans" or "25-mans are the only real progression in the game" without considering the facts available to us, first.