25 Man Raiding - Are we ready?

Now I know my guildmates are going to read this, and some may agree or disagree, that's fine. This is just my opinion. The question I am trying to answer today is:

When is a guild ready for the 25-man raids?

I am going to use Gruul's as an example 25-man raid since it is the first intended 25-man encounter from what I understand. I am going to split this up into two sections. First we'll go over the group makeup and then gear requirements.

Check out the full post to read my complete ramblings on this topic



Group Makeup

In general you are going to need something close to the following group makeup:

3 - 4 Tanks
6 - 7 Healers
15 DPS

Just a note on tanks... Warrior, Pallies, and Druids are all viable tanks for 25 man raids. In some cases, such as the High King Mulgar fight other people will be tanking other than the usual tanking classes. A Mage will need to be tanking the caster, and 2 Hunters will be tanking the Shaman. Plan ahead and put together a set of high Stamina gear for tanking these fights and you will be doing your guild a big favor. It is the tanks responsibility to be aware of the encounters the guild is planning on tackling and gearing accordingly.

Having a good healing team for 25 man raids is imperative. Ideally you will have a healing team consisting of Druid, Shaman, 2 Pallies, and 2 Priests. If you feel you need a 7th healer shoot for a 2nd Resto Druid. More importantly than what classes you bring is how well your healers can coordinate their healing. There is a major difference in healing in 25 man raids. Its a switch between reactive healing and preemptive healing. When the bosses hit hard enough to one shot a tank who is at 75% health you need to make sure they always have a heal incoming that will top him off before the next attack. There are all kinds of addons that can facilitate this kind of coordination.


Now as far as the DPS goes you will want both melee and ranged DPS. Although I would lean heavilly on more ranged DPS. Maybe 4 or 5 melee DPS to 10 Ranged DPS. The important thing for the DPSers is to learn to maximize your DPS. Do some research, tweak your spec, try different DPS cycles, whatever it is you need to do to increase your DPS. If your attempts are failing due to Healers running out of mana (given sufficient gear), or you are hitting the Enrage timer, then those are big indicators that your DPS is lacking.

Gear Requirements

So what are the gear requirements for beginning 25-man raiding? I don't think there is any hard and fast answer to this question because I have seen under geared players far outperform people who were geared to the teeth. There are some guidelines though for tanks to make sure you are able to sufficiently handle the punishment you will take. The following is what I would consider minimum for doing Gruul for a Warrior, I don't know much about Pally or Druid tanks but I imagine the stats are not that far off (note these are all unbuffed stats):

14,000 Health
15,000 Armor
17% Dodge
17% Parry
25% Block
490+ Defense

For a Warrior fully raid buffed this will land you over 19,000 Health which is plenty for Gruul's. These stats are easily hit with gear out of Kara + Badge reward gear.

As for Healers I think you will be wanting to shoot for a +healing of 1300+ and 100+ MP/5. This should give you enough healing power and mana regen to last the duration of these fights.

Your measure for weather or not your DPS is sufficient or not will be if you can bring down the boss before you healers run out of mana. If your healers have sufficient gear and you are struggling to complete the encounter before they run out of mana then your DPS needs to go and get some better gear or improve their DPS through respecs, changing their DPS cycle, etc...


How do we progress into the 25 man content?

If you look at the group breakdown for a 25-man raid it is basically 2 well balanced 10 man raids + extra DPS classes and a healer or two. What this means to me is that if you guild can field 2 Karazhan groups each week that can both clear to at least the Prince in Karazhan then you are ready to make the jump to 25 man raiding.

IMO a guild that is trying to make the transition to 25 man raids should have two Raid Leaders, each responsible for leading their own Kara group each week. IMO the 10 man raid teams should be static, no switching of rosters each week. This way you can tailor each 10 man raid's schedules to be optimal for those on that team. Maybe an early crew and a late crew, or a T, Th, F team and a W, F, Sat. team. In any case the Guild Leadership should take steps to set it up so that both teams will prosper in Karazhan. Another good reason for having static teams is that it doesn't hurt to have a little friendly competition within the guild. Which team cleared it the fastest this week? Fewest amount of wipes? Most amount of loot awarded to a single person? It's all in fun after all...

It is difficult to gear up 25 people in one 10-man raid a week and it will leave a lot of people on the sidelines, by having 2 teams you keep everyone involved and gearing up each week. If your guild is short a few people and are having trouble fielding a second team for Karazhan don't be afraid to recruit some new players to help close the gap. There are a lot of great people our there in small guilds looking to move ahead in the game and would be willing to make a move into a fun and friendly guild trying to make the switch into 25 man content.