25 Semi-hardcore guilds are taking strain.

[Libertarian]

It's 10 man also. It's basically just the game. It's pretty much becoming go big, or stay small.

[Drummerboy]

10M Loot is a joke. Our group has seen 1 pal/priest/warlock token drop since the opening and half of the time we get int/mail gear and we don't even have a shaman.

It doesn't matter what your loot system is when nothing anyone needs drops or the same thing drops every single week.

[NeverStop]

Semi-hardcore 25-mans are probably the 25-man audience that is feeling the strain the most. Despite being competitive, the progression can be held back by a very small number of players. Cutting down to 10-man will become an increasingly attractive alternative. If it's not an attractive alternative to the guild, it will be for individual players.

It is not surprising to me that the 25-mans left are generally either very dedicated or casual. It doesn't help that there seems to be a lack of raiders.

As far as the other discussion goes, I wouldn't bother comparing Ji-kun on 25-man and 10-man. They're different fights.

H Jin'rokh on 25 man is a perfect example of personal responsibility. I was watching Midwinter's 25 man main raid stream a few weeks ago and they still wiped like 4 times on that boss. I think they wiped more on H Jin'rokh than they did on H Dark Animus.

I feel bad for the 25 mans carrying a few people who have 10+ wipes a week on H Jin'rokh because said people fail at Ionization or can't stay alive through Lightning Storm.

[Deleted]

H Jin'rokh on 25 man is a perfect example of personal responsibility. I was watching Midwinter's 25 man main raid stream a few weeks ago and they still wiped like 4 times on that boss. I think they wiped more on H Jin'rokh than they did on H Dark Animus.

I feel bad for the 25 mans carrying a few people who have 10+ wipes a week on H Jin'rokh because said people fail at Ionization or can't stay alive through Lightning Storm.

Its people/raiders like you who never will be justified. Man, I swear that I have a RL complaining that we need 4 hrs(!!!!!!!!!!) for 8-11 hc each reset... human error happens, doesnt mean that Midwinter is carrying bads (world top 20 or so guild, we're actually talking about!).

[Gliff]

Semi-Hardcore = 3/4 nights a week with mild progression(2-4 bosses HC at this point).

We have so far lost 3 raid nights due to holidays that have happened in Europe(Easter etc.), so my guild would probably be 3/13 25HC atm, but we are 2/13 25HC atm(Jin'Rokh and Tortos).

I disagree with this. The level of "hardcore" is not based on progression but on attitude. It has nothing to do with your progression.

Your progression is based on time/skill. The more skill you have the less time you need to devote. The less skill you have the more time you need to devote.

[Crushima]

The amount of false information on these forums is astonishing. People arguing that it's hard to gear up in a 25 man.

A 11/13 Heroic guild in my region required a warlock. One of their raiders power leveled a warlock. Within 2 resets, the warlock was ilevel 532. Armory

My main, also a warlock, who is 13/13 Heroic. Having cleared 8+ weeks and 2 additional Heroic bosses, is 532. Armory

On topic though, recruitment at the moment is hard regardless of which format you're raiding. Be it 10/25/Hardcore/Semi-hardcore. There simply aren't many quality players left who are interested in putting in that little extra time for raiding, regardless of how progressed you are already.

Don't post rubbish/lies.

That warlock dinged 90 in February. 3 months ago.

[Xploit]

Don't post rubbish/lies.

That warlock dinged 90 in February. 3 months ago.

... look at the kills. 2 resets. Use your eyes.

[Totaltotemic]

... look at the kills. 2 resets. Use your eyes.

That's either luck or being fed gear because no one else needs it, 6 pieces of cloth with no Spirit, plus a non-spirit weapon and a Wushoolay's... Yeah, fed gear as hell. Gearing up isn't hard when there's no loot competition, but you can do that when it's a simple reroll, but you don't feed new recruits gear, ever.

[underdogba]

We just recently recruited a player that was reluctant to join another 25 man guild because since the start of Throne of Thunder the 3 he's been in have either dropped to 10man or disbanded. The guild he was in for 2 years dropped to 10man because they were stuck on horridon hc for 2 weeks while other 10man guilds were facerolling ji-kun and getting ahead on progress.

I don't think you comprehend that heroic modes are not linear and the majority of people work on Ji-Kun heroic second anyway because it's easy. Beating Horridon heroic has no relationship to Ji-Kun heroic other than the fact that to do Ji-Kun you have to have killed Horridon in some difficulty.

[clevin]

A bunch of issues here:

1) LFR sucks away people, some of whom would have raided a couple nights a week. For varying reasons, they prefer a raid on demand model vs committing to a set schedule even if that model isn't 'real' raiding. Most of those people would have raided normals, but some would have moved to heroics. Also, some of the former more serious raiders who have less time and might have squeezed in some raiding now just LFR.

2) 25s really need 28-30 people to account for attrition, absences, etc. 10s need perhaps 12. So you can take a 25 man that is barely scraping together a viable raid and have 2x 10 person raids with a couple of extras. They can also raid different nights if that makes it easier for some of the raiders.

3) Semi-hardcore is a hard place to be regardless of raid size. People who really want to kill as many heroic bosses as possible move to one side of that spectrum and look for hardcore guilds who are deeper into heroics, good normal mode raiders who kind of like a harder challenge are on the other side. Raiding 3-4 nights a week also restricts people... if they're putting that much time in, they usually want to see the progression. If they aren't as driven by progression, that's probably too much time to put into raiding. Now add in that some of the people who were raiding a lot in TBC and LK aren't in college etc anymore but have jobs, families, etc...

4) Some subset of hardercore raiders care about what other raids are doing and so freak out when some other raid is farther ahead than theirs is, even if it's a different raid size. This is kind of silly (firsts aside), but some folks are like this. That makes it tough on guilds with middling heroic progression and, for all of the 25s love that people express, I think it's a less tight social atmosphere in general (yes, of course there are exceptions).

[Mattachine]

25 vs 10 man's difficulty argument about why guilds falling apart is rather useless. Raiding guilds fall apart alot have to due to people's attitude and patience. If a guild is having issue with certain heroic boss, instead of rushing to it, why not spend a couple weeks to gear up? Got frustrated after 2 weeks of wiping? That's lame. If you can't handle wiping for 2 weeks, then you don't have the right attitude to do heroic raiding. Unfortunately it's a "no no" for alot of these people. They want to compete and not willing to slow down to gear up. The end result is a guild break apart, and then these same people will go to different guilds. After that, same shit happen again. A combination of people overestimate of what they can do, unwilling to slow down progression to achieve stability of a guild, immature and no patience are something alot of people forget to address.

[Deleted]

Funny enought, our 11/13H 10 man guild is going to fuse with a 10/13H guild with 5.4... because of the following reasons:

- more loot with different variations and TF is going to stay
- being less depended on the setup and on single people
- "25 man has more organization" was officially stated as bullshit by both guilds (both converted to 10 man at some point)
- recruitment situation is better as 25 man guild, because of reason #1 (we were looking for a disc priest for MONTHS)

[MrExcelion]

Difficulty in 25 is definitely higher this tier on the important tier bosses like Ji-Kun, Qon, and Consorts. Council and Megarea are easier on 25. Not sure about the others. Difficulty side, I see a lot of happy and content 7+ heroic 10 mans on my server, but there's still a lot of startup 25mans that seem to be growing too, and I think the Thunderforged/less loot RNG aspect is helping out a lot, even if they're killing less bosses.

As for my guild personally, this topic is sort of directed at one like mine I guess. As a 4 day/week 25-man usually around US50 25, our roster has shrunk this tier, but I think one problem is just due to a whole lot of poaching from the rank 5-30 guilds. We've lost several players to these guilds. Additionally, there's a sizable disparity in the number of boss kills this tier between us20 and us50. When it gets to be more than 2 or 3, players really want to jump ship to see more heroic content. It's not so much the long-time raiders that have left on us, but really flaky apps that end up transferring elsewhere. We haven't had to deal with 3 boss differential anytime in FL, DS, or even T14 because it was gated.

Going forward, we'll see ~12 boss tiers so I think this will inevitably be the strain on semi-hardcore guilds like ours. The boss kill disparity. Lot more room for variance in bigger tiers.

[Gliff]

Funny enought, our 11/13H 10 man guild is going to fuse with a 10/13H guild with 5.4... because of the following reasons:

- more loot with different variations and TF is going to stay
- being less depended on the setup and on single people
- "25 man has more organization" was officially stated as bullshit by both guilds (both converted to 10 man at some point)
- recruitment situation is better as 25 man guild, because of reason #1 (we were looking for a disc priest for MONTHS)

You honestly don't think 25 mans take more organization? Everything about 25 mans is harder to organize then 10 mans.

[Deleted]

You honestly don't think 25 mans take more organization? Everything about 25 mans is harder to organize then 10 mans.

See: Ji-kun, Dark Animus, cooldowns, roster management

[Deleted]

You honestly don't think 25 mans take more organization? Everything about 25 mans is harder to organize then 10 mans.

Yeah... no. You've to recruit more people, *if* you need them... which is usually an one man show by your guilds dps, healer or tank officiers. As a normal raider you just gain MORE benefits to be in a 25 man guild compared to a 10 man one. Beyond that, orginazation is still up to your GM and offiers and not to your usual raider.

Also, you dont have setup problems as 25 man guild, since every slot is more than enought filled with different classes (unless you're doing something horribly wrong, which you shouldnt as heroic raiding guild). Furthermore, it IS easier to get equip - taking myself as an example: I didnt get a single loot piece in 2 months and I'm at 10/13H, basically everything what drops is 50% useless to anybody in the raid.. and lets not talk about the 1-3 TF items in 10, compared to the 20+ TFs in 25 mans.

[PrairieChicken]

Just come to Asian realms where they revived little 25 mans at a cost of decimating 10 mans

[Kuruption]

Yeah... no. You've to recruit more people, *if* you need them... which is usually an one man show by your guilds dps, healer or tank officiers. As a normal raider you just gain MORE benefits to be in a 25 man guild compared to a 10 man one. Beyond that, orginazation is still up to your GM and offiers and not to your usual raider.

Also, you dont have setup problems as 25 man guild, since every slot is more than enought filled with different classes (unless you're doing something horribly wrong, which you shouldnt as heroic raiding guild). Furthermore, it IS easier to get equip - taking myself as an example: I didnt get a single loot piece in 2 months and I'm at 10/13H, basically everything what drops is 50% useless to anybody in the raid.. and lets not talk about the 1-3 TF items in 10, compared to the 20+ TFs in 25 mans.

Well good luck. I guess since it's so easy, I'm surprised more people aren't doing it.

[theWocky]

"Semi-hardcore". There is the problem.

What you mean? I ran a guild for three years or so TBC / WotLK and we cleared most of the content at a respectable pace raiding just 3.5 hours, two days a week (Tue + Sun)

[scelero]

so far i hear three teams and someone mention two others. so five. go to wow-progress. there are TONS of 25m clearing content. Stop thinking your little world makes up all of WoW because it doesn't.