10 is more than 25

I mentioned the other day that my guild made the switch from 10-man to 25-man content.

A line that I wrote happened to catch my eye when I was proofing the post.

(Yes, I really do proof them from time to time. Not always well, but I try.)

This tells me that our ratio of people that should be there to people that should not be there is more tuned on 10 mans. It means that we’re filling raid spots in 25s with people that may want to be there, but don’t have the skill, or they have the skill but don’t want to be there.

And I started thinking about the numbers involved.

It seems like we have approximately 10-13 people that have the skill, the desire, and actually show up on time.

So we can run a 10 man and rotate the +/- 3 people that may have funky schedules that night and make good progress with 12-15 people being unhappy that they weren’t invited to raid – assuming that all 25 people showed up.

Since we’re having trouble getting 20 people to count as a guild run, we would really only piss of 7-10 people.

And of those 7-10, at least 1-2 don’t want to be there and 3-4 shouldn’t be there. (That whole skill versus desire thing.)

So really, we run a 10-man and about 4 people have the right to be annoyed.

If those 4 people have the desire and the skill, then hopefully they are also of the belief that sometimes we each have to step aside for an evening so the guild can run.

~OR~

We can run a 25-man raid.

An HOUR past raid start and we’re still trying to get enough people. We can’t get the 20 minimum required for it to count as a guild raid, so we have 19 max.

We fill the remainder with pugs. Some of whom are absolute scrubs. (I’m looking at the ones that say, “of course I know this fight,” and their actions immediately speak otherwise, like trying to keep people topped off on Chimaeron.)

So now EVERYONE is annoyed and irritated because we are starting far past our scheduled time.

The people that were actually logged on at the appropriate time feel like they’ve wasted half their evening. (Thank god we can do archaeology while in raids. Cooking, fishing, and JC dailies? Seriously, Blizzard, fix that shit, nao.)

The pugs are annoyed because we appear disorganized because half the raid hasn’t raided together yet and has no synergy and the other half is lying about their experience and the magically present third half is just annoyed and it’s affecting their attitude and performance.

I’ll admit that I am no mathematician. I’m passable in math.

But I’m pretty sure that 10 happy people is better than 25 annoyed and angry people.

Amirite?

…

So the other night, we’ve hit the hour mark past raid start.

I’m in Northrend, working on my Archaeology.

19 guildies and 1 pug so far, a friend of a guild member.

And so they decided to do 10s.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Zone in, buff up, start pulling trash.

Oh wait, this group doesn’t have an enchanter. Quick swap of warlock and mage.

Yay! We get cake!

Roll through Bastion of Twilight, with an epic wipe at <30k on the twins because someone was lighting up a cigarette (smoking kills, kids), even one shot the Council and put in a few attempts on Cho’gall.

At one point, we made it through a tricky pull and every one survived.

Someone piped up in vent, “wow, no one died.”

The raid leader said, “yeah, we’re missing 15 people.”

The other 10-man group did almost as well as we did. They struggled on the Council so returned to Blackwing Descent to pick up where the 25-man raid had left off the previous night.

Chimaeraon dropped my wand for that group. Bastard. Wands are so hard to come by and I feel dirty with my PvP wand. (That’s a whole ‘nother story… but I did get my wand last night so all is good)

But the evening was awesome.

We sharded almost everything (good thing we grabbed that enchanter!) and killed a boss that half our raid hadn’t seen before.

People all went potty at the same time. No one’s cat caught on fire, although the hunter claimed his pool was on fire after he heard about the Cho’gall fight and the adds.

We started an hour late and still ended just after our normal raid time and killed what I would have expected us to do on 25 if we had started on time.

People wanted to be there and we even considered extending the raid time, but a couple people had early mornings. So we agreed to log on early to get it done the next day. (That didn’t actually happen, but it was a nice gesture.)

Why won’t my guild just do 10s?