I posted this in a thread over at General Discussion, but I wanted to see what the "Raid & Dungeons" community thought of the idea as well:
I miss PvE in Wrath (although I'm loving raiding right now), and I think we could adopt a similar model for future raid tiers.
10 man normal - slightly easier than 25 man, lower ilvl, few "TF" drops, low chance for 3 drops per boss
25 man normal - harder than 10 man, higher ilvl, more "TF" drops, 6 drops per boss
10 man heroic - similarly tuned as 25 man heroic, reduced ilvl gap between 25man heroic and 10man heroic gear
25 man heroic - slightly higher tuned than 10 man heroic, highest ilvl option
25 man LFR - faceroll, keep as is
I'm aware that people aren't happy with the current state of LFR, but I think it actually serves it's purpose as a way for people to experience content and catch up in gear.
As a 10m raider, it stings to suggest that we get the "downgraded" version of the gear, but I think adding an extra "difficulty" of raiding currently solves two issues:
1. It'll make normal raiding more accessible to family/friend/casual guilds. ToT is a great raid and our 10m team is progressing into heroics now, but I can see how more "casual" guilds may be getting stuck early in the raid. The fights (at least during normal progression) can be challenging for healers and our first few Iron Qon kills were DPS checks (~10-30 seconds from Enrage). Making 10m slightly easier, as they were in WoTLK, would help more guilds experience more content in normal difficulty - which is the difficulty that I believe Blizz wants the majority of the population to experience the content in (opposed to LFR as it is now).
2. Making 10m easier will allow people to pug successful normal raids. Unless you are on a High or active Medium population server with a pool of good raiders, I would imagine forming a successful ToT raid is extremely difficult. Apart from Jin'Rokh, the bosses in ToT require a lot of coordination (interrupts on Horridon, target swaps on Council, etc.) that will cause a raid to wipe if not performed accurately. Fights shouldn't be tuned down to LFR levels where fight mechanics aren't needed, but they shouldn't be to the point where one mistake can cause an entire raid to wipe.
10m progression guilds (like mine) shouldn't be neglected either, which is why I proposed a smaller gap between 10m heroic and 25m heroic gear. If the ilvl difference between 10 man normal vs 25 man normal gear is (hypothetically) 7 levels, as it was in WoTLK, the ilvl difference in heroic gear could be brought down to 3 or 4. The heroic fights in a 10m heroic raid would have to be easier to accomodate for a lower ilvl, but I'm sure the numbers can be tweaked to make sure neither raid size has an overall advantage.
One last note - I proposed a chance for a 3rd loot drop in 10 man raids because RNG can be cruel and sharding loot after loot can be a bigger hinderance for 10m guilds vs. 25m guilds (at least in my experience).
I believe these changes could address the decline in normal raiding that we've seen in addition to spurring on more community interaction.