No. It's not.

you left out the part about trash talking to every member of the PUG right before you go die to fire, that way they know you're good because you say you are.

From what you describe in the above blog, I get the feeling that PUG culture varies from server to server, as my experiences differ quite wildly from your own. On my server (US|Frostmourne|Alliance) we are still yet to be gripped by the reign of terror (in my opinion) of gearscore, and are happy with a simple achiev and stat whisper.

I PUG about half of my raids, and Naxx's, Ony's, VOA's and 1 drake Sarth's are fodder for the determined pick-up group, pulling off most of these less complex and less strategic raids in good (if not great) time. I had almost earnt the undying in a naxx 25 PUG run late on last week, before being brought down unceremoniously by a healer disconnect on Sapphiron. Disappointing, to say the least.

It seems that what almost constitutes a PUG core has started to develop, with a lot of faces popping up often, which leads me to feel a lot safer when organising who's going to have my back.

Before this Wall of Terror becomes any more bloated than it already is, i will leave you with the thought that although the player base in guildless/runless players may differ from server to server, maybe you yourself should try and orchestrate one of these simpler PUG's, and maybe if you show a little faith in your PUG'ers (while still being discerning) then they will show a little faith in you.

Idiots rarely organize pug raids. It's easy to memorize them and stay clear of them.
We only run 10s leaving the 25s mostly to PUGs so I know what I'm talking about.

Gearscore IS necessary. This weekend I healed thru a PUG Ony25. The raid leader kicked blue/green queststuff geared folks. Stupidity and insantity is a common trait.

Pugging raids is a little bit like gambling TBH.

But one thing is for sure. I don't want to tank 25man PUGs. The one time I did DPS decided to go full out on Onyxia before I even had her positioned.

> I guess the footnote I'm trying to add to the above is that just because someone is talking often, doesn't mean they're communicating well. <

This. Looking back up it didn't come out of my text that well. Thanks for adding to it! It is quite important and very true.

Power to the 10mans!

As for the 25m vs 10m debate, as a 10man raider the thing I hate most of all is the only 25man guild on our server looks down on us because we're only a 10man guild. Yet all of the players in my guild are equal or better then those in their guild.

Personally I've seen most of the 25man fights and I don't see too much of a difficulty increase. I see an increase in co-ordination, but actual skill, not really.

Well, with Ilevel 245 gear you outgear the place so ToC 10 should drop crafted Ilevel 232 patterns with runed orbs as orb. Then ToC 10 would reward the apprioriate patterns.

If being 'special' because you raid other than titles and achievements is what you're looking for, that ship left the dock a long time ago. The game has changed, and epeen <> items anymore.

Also, any of you who equated epics with skill in Vanilla aren't remembering things well. I remember carrying lots of 40-man filler in my raids I tanked.

My mage is a tailor and my warrior isn't a blacksmith. For either character, I'm not too bothered where the patterns drop. Unless I'm exceptionally lucky, I'm not going to see a pattern drop, win the roll, and then craft for myself an item that I need. In all likelihood I'd have to find someone else to craft the thing I need, and if that's an exclusive reward for 25-man raiders, yeah fine. It was that way in BC. I didn't raid BT or Sunwell, but I was able to get things crafted. In WLK both patterns (I think) and items are BoE, so this is easier.

What I am bothered about is the cost of the resources. Crafted items work well at the extremes of content, meaning upon release to get you started, or after the last raid of the expansion is released when there's nothing better coming. In the middle of WLK, at the rate content is coming out, crafting is not worth the time to farm gold. I made the mistake of carfting some Ulduar item at a total cost of over 4k, to have it replaced in a couple of weeks in TotC 10. I wouldn't pay more than about 2k to upgrade a 232 to a 245, since Icecrown seems to be round the corner.

What I think is missing is orbs dropping in 10-mans, not patterns. If we got some orbs from our 10-man clears we could upgrade to 245 craftables gradually without it feeling like a grind. I guess I'm just arguing for the price of orbs to be a little lower.

I believe I gave a bunch of reasons why 25 mans are easier, pertaining to the amount of people in the raid. Yes, the DPS requirement per person is higher. If it wasn't, 25 mans would be the biggest joke WoW has ever seen. You get better gear, you should do more DPS! Doing the regular modes (what the majority of people do) 25 mans are far easier than 10s due to simple raid composition (every buff covered, lots of battle resses, ahnks, etc).

I have always said that the only thing more difficult in a 25 man than a 10 man is making the raid up; getting 25 people with the correct amount of chromosomes together at a certain time to raid. Proportionately (gear dropping vs. raw output requirement), 25 mans are very equal to 10 mans. Some 10 man fights are more difficult due to the number of NPCs against the number of players (most notably S3D and Faction Champions). Some 25 man fights are more difficult because most guilds carry 1-6 people.

Edit to respond to the above comment: I have said many times that 25 man raiders find 10s trivial because they outgear the place. On Firefighter 25, people can die (assuming appropriate gear level). Firefighter 10, nobody can die until P4 (assuming appropriate gear level). Thaddius 25 is a good example of retards %(&@ing up the raid. As for the other fights; read above about outgearing things and making things trivial.

@marklar: If they shouldn't drop in ez mode 10s, should they drop in ez mode 25s?

@Ferag: Yes, a few fights are harder in 10s, but certainly not all. Faction Champions we found much easier in 10 man. Yogg certainly was far easier 10 man. Thaddius, Patchwerk and Kel'thuzad. Hodir, Mimiron and especially Thorim are all way easier in 10s. The list goes on.

10s are less forgiving of mistakes at times, but the situations are also easier to deal with on average. And even the unforgiving situations can be trivialize at times by a Druid heavy group or just a group with disgusting dps.

I can't tell from your comment whether you've done Ulduar HMs or not. But if you haven't try comparing the 10s and 25s for those, I think you'll find that there's a dramatic difference between the 10s and 25s.

they absolutely do drop in 10-man... you have a chance to get them starting with the very first boss you down on heroic, just like 10-man ulduar hardmodes dropped the patterns.

10-man 245 content gives you 245 patterns, and that makes sense to me. i can't see any good arguement why they should drop in ez mode.

@Farag:
What do you really mean by 25 mans being easier?

From a single player standpoint, you will perform (press buttons) the same way in a 10man as you would in a 25. Encounters have mechanics that require certain amounts of damage from each member of the raid. Average DPS required to down Beasts in 10 man is far lower, per player, than 25 [talkin' heroic here]. Forcing players to perform better (or wipe) sounds like a different level of difficulty to me. Surely there are exceptions to the rule, like S3D, but thats hardly grounds to say that 25-man raiding is easier than 10.

Granted - pressing buttons in 10 man is the same as pressing buttons in 25... but creating a stable 25 man raid with optimal synergy multiple nights per week with players who are focused is much more challenging than 10-man content. If you tried - you'd know.

@veneretio:
Sorry to focus on something off-topic - but I agree with you.

Exactly why should there be a reward for doing 25 mans? It's not more difficult. A prime example of this is the Faction Champions fight. Sarth 3D is another example. Just about everything about 25 mans is easier. You have more people - meaning a couple people die... No problem. You have more buffs, more battle rezzes, more ahnks; the list goes on.

And yes, I have raided (with the exception of ToGC 25) every raid in WotLK so far on 10 and 25. The 25 mans have mostly been semi-pugs.

I don't talk on vent, I know it's a hinderance, but people say they know me and what I'm going to do better then any other tank because I do extra work on the preparation. I communicate more through the game then most of my guild does on ventrilo, and they will admit it:

- I co-ordinate with the other tank. I take some extra time in pugs, and watch what they do on trash to see their style. I test their threat (and my own) and see what happens when I do stuff like taunt a mobb or move it to another location. Are they passive? Are they pushy? I try to alter my playstyle effectively. (I don't like pushy tanks, but hey, I think a successful run is paramount to petty differences. If they want to tank everything, fine. Their repair bill.) I state what my limitations are and when I'm a good or poor suited tank for a job by comparison (e.g. a warrior tank is the last one you'd want on whelp duty, but if their stats are good enough, the first ones you'd want on ony herself (for fear breaking.) Sometimes I have to correct a raid leader that isn't paying attention when I say (multiple times) we have the tank assignments sorted before we get to the boss and they're just doing it on the fly.

- I make macros for the fight in question well in advance (i.e. Gluth/Thorim/Gormok tank swaps.) As well as ones that state my current target. I have ones left over from PvP that have found their way into pve, such as shattering throw.

- I finally fenagled macros and mods that will /rw on successful cast of a cooldown (rather then my usual habit of slamming a button 5-6 times hoping it fires, or hitting it before realizing it's on cooldown, thus filling the screen with spam that sometimes isn't true.)

- DoTimers states cooldowns with one click, healbot lets people know who I'm scraping up (when I heal.)

All in all, I find that people talk alot in ventrilo, but take so long to say what needs to be said that often it's too late. In fact, one of the worst offenses is the word "me." Some are unable to talk about their character in third person which doesn't help at all. Old example, but Frost Tombs from K'T were notorious for this. When I wasn't tanking, I had a macro (naturally) but the people that often lived were the ones that said "tomb -character" (though it was more for the other healers benefits that weren't modded to the hilt like me to see their bar turn purple on healbot).

I guess the footnote I'm trying to add to the above is that just because someone is talking often, doesn't mean they're communicating well.

And this is where the conversation decends into elitsim and spirals until Godwin's Law is observed. I was hoping to get this in before the mad rush, but I agree with Vene. Something should (have) be(en) done.

Getting back to the roots of this conversation, I don't think 232 patterns of bracers and chestpieces would be too much to ask that have similar allocated stats on smaller budgets with slightly less orb costs (or heck, make them obscure, I lost some players when I mentioned "un'goro power crystals" the other day.)

P.S. and when is engineering going to get more then simply a nut tightened here and there and something worth being a warrior-tank-engineer in pve content for??? (any arguement that mentions jeeves is null due to the proximity of repairs nowadays compared to classic raid)

There should be some kind of reward for doing 25 mans. This should remain as one of those few differences

Heroic stamp is only good if people stop to examine you in detail. But when even someone who hasnt stepped foot into a single raid has exactly the same looking shoulders as someone who's skinned 25-man heroic Anubarak, nobody cares anymore.

All the alliance look like they've come out of a mold, even the colors are identical. Hell you can hardly tell if that dude is a shaman or a hunter even.

LOOKS matter. It's not about just having epics. When me & my friends were stuck on Gnomeregan, a lvl 60 dude in full T1 came to help us out. We were in awe at how cool his gear looked. I worked my ass off to get myself a set too. And i got it. And i got T2 too, poked around in AQ40 too. Before i got awed by that gear, i was thinking "raids are too much trouble, i wont raid". Same thing with TBC. Black Temple loot made you drool even with the looks.

Now i'm sitting around in Dalaran with Starcaller as my title and 80% of the server doesnt even know what it means. The looks on my gear is the same as that dude who farmed heroics and never set foot in a raid. I'm a nobody.

Yup, had the same problem while we were trying Algalon. Thankfully the brickwall there has neon lighting on it. Once we started going past the first bang with everybody alive but wiping seconds later, we did spare 10 minutes of extremely precious time to redo the strategy. The kill came in next lockout.

@Bovinity: That is such a flawed argument, that the patterns are BoE. Why should I pay thousands of gold for a blacksmithing plan that any 25-man raider can just get as a drop? Also, would you still say 'Pfft, just pug 25-man heroics' if those plans only dropped in heroic/hardmodes for 25-man raiders?

I strictly raid 10-mans. I don't want identical progression. None of my raiders want identical progression. I just want some fairness and some use for my chosen profession as blacksmith.