WoD: 20 people it is.

The biggest news for the raiding community is the new raid-size of course. Blizzard just killed of 10's and 25's, and made one size: TWENTY

Yes, yes, they actually renamed some difficulties, and made the flex-system the standard with 3 difficulties, but for every guild who knows they are going to do hero..rrr...mythical, their default size should be 20.

First up, I should mention that, Yes, I see a problem for 10-man guilds. They are really screwed over after most of them gone down from 25 the last 3-4 years. The fact that Innovation during Firelands had a real problem getting 3-4 people,  makes recruiting 10 people at least, a horrific thing. BUT, I do not raid 10s, I actually like 25s. So my reaction to the 10-guild problem is basically; I don't care, maybe a little harsh, but that's the way it is.

For 25s the drop is not that big of a problem.Everyone who has raided in the past, knows that at the end of expansions, people disappear, so going down a notch is not that bad. And with the flex system, you can actually go 25 if more people sign up. But here comes the first problem. Apparantly every difficulty will have their own lock-out...

Innovation doing Firelands with 22 people.

That means you can go out and kill the same boss 4 times a week, and get loot 4 times. That really worked well during Wrath....if you want burn-out. The problem here is the tier-pieces and the trinkets. Getting that trinket, even if lower Ilvl, maybe an upgrade, and everyone knows how much an upgrade 4pTier can be, even if one or two are considerable lower Ilvl.

For a guild like Innovation, that would mean, normal on wednesday/saturday  (current flex-runs for fun), and one of the three raid-evenings should be reserved to try Mythical....  My mind has to do some more work on that, but I don't like the separate heroic/mythical lockout.

An other thing I read somewhere, and heard (fatboss), is that the new fixed 20-man will actually allow Blizzard to bring back some gimmick fights with, for example, mind control. The reasoning behind this is, that with 10s, you cannot expect every class to be present (even impossible), but with 20 you can.....wait...wut?  Innovation is 25, and there are some days we don't have a hunter or a mage, because they are doing something else.

In my experience, the number here is three. If you have three of every class, then you can actually expect to have a certain class present....  anyone for 40man raids? So, unless mind control also becomes a mage-ability or something, I don't think you can actually expect every class to be present. Although being Mythical, you can say that would be the guild's problem,  which I am actually content with...

Innovation taking down Sha with 25

So, basically, the current raiding-guilds should focus their size on 20, instead of 25. This does not seem that big of a problem. Even the social aspect with 5 raiders less is probably barely noticeable. You still want to have a decent raid group. Actually, with 3 raids/week, that makes 60 raidslots. And if you have a 66% attendance rule, that means 30 raiders, instead of the current...37-40...oh.

Ok... I didn't see the 7-10 difference number coming up for the current 25-man guilds....

Back to the hard calculations. I expect a standard-raid seize of 2 tanks, 5 healers and 13 DPS (6 melee/7ranged). So doing the same maths I did in August and September, that leads to a standard guild-size of:

3 tanks, 8 healers, 9 melee, 10 ranged.

So, some changes will be coming....but not yet.