Reaping Rewards

So, at this point, I feel a little better about blogging things, because I have some quasi-cutting edge raiding under my belt. In BC, I didn't ding 70 until after 2.4, the second to last major content patch (the last being 3.0 which heralded WotLK). The most I ever saw was Karazhan, Zul'Aman, Magtheridon, and Gruul's Lair. Now, however, I'm actually doing things that a lot of people are working on! I'm not the only one. In fact, I hit 80 before one of my favorite fellow-bloggers (to be fair, I remember reading she was working on her rogue first). While I suppose I'm still slightly behind the rest of the pack, I'm not too far behind. So, my post today is a response to one that I just read by Sydera over at World of Matticus.

TLDR; She says that 10-man versions of raids are actually harder than 25-man versions and should offer equal gear.

While I haven't exactly felt the difference between the 10-man and 25-man versions of anything (I have merely about half of Naxx 10-man under my belt), it seems natural to say that the margin of error makes all the difference. A 10-man raid cannot handle the three, four, or five deaths that sometime naturally happen during the course of a 25-man fight. Since the encounters are basically same (most being "Be here, or you take massive amounts of damage"), the room for error in a 10-man is amazingly smaller.

The problem then is, for the added stress, what does a 10-man runner have to show for it? Well, not much. I like the idea that was falsely spread around Wowinsider the other day. The idea was that someone thought they saw in the patch notes that you could exchange one Emblem of Valor for 10 Emblems of Heroism. While the exchange rate is a little ridiculous, I think it offers a good solution even though it turned out to be a mistake and not like that at all. It allows for 10-man raiders to eventually get that gear that they probably deserve.

Something I always liked about Zul'Aman was the fact that it was difficult. Not as difficult as Sunwell Plateau, but it was difficult, and the thing about it that made it almost as difficult as, say, Tempest Keep (just a guess really) was the fact that it had such a small margin of error. While trying to get that bear mount, you couldn't die. Not only couldn't you die, but you also just couldn't pad along. You had to run nonstop throughout the entire instance. The only thing raiders ever got to show for their achievement which by and far was simply one of the hardest things to do in the game was that nice looking bear mount.

This, however, seems to be a losing battle, because the hardcore 25-man raiders already raised enough hell about the simple fact that Blizzard allows raiders to put a raid on easy mode and 10-man it. This idea probably would not go over very well, but here's to hoping that something gets done about the fact that 10-man raiders have to work just as hard, if not harder, as 25-man raiders.