15 Minutes of Fame: Getting strict about 10-man content
by Lisa Poisso 
Feb 23rd 2010 at 9:00AM
Ten-man raids represent the easy mode of endgame raiding -- true or false? Answer: It depends. Savvy players recognize that 10-man content is easier as a whole only when undertaken by players decked out in 25-man raid gear. Even a few key 25-man pieces among several raiders can tip the power balance of a 10-man encounter. But in today's 25-man world, keeping 10-man gear and power pools pure is quite the challenge. Those who succeed see their efforts go unrewarded when 25-man groups snatch away progression achievements after overpowering the content with 25-man gear.
A growing number of small guilds are working out player-friendly solutions to these dilemma in the so-called "10-man strict" movement. Why bother? We visited with 10-man strict raider Ghengie of <Amicus> (transferred to EU Haomarush as of this weekend; Armory update pending) to examine the challenges and rewards of endgame raiding on the smallest scale.
Main character Ghengie
Guild Amicus
Server EU Haomarush-A
WoWstyle 10-man Strict
15 Minutes of Fame: Ghengie, can you explain to readers what "the deal" is with 10-man strict raiding? What makes 10-man strict remarkable?
Ghengie: Currently, most players look at 10-man raids as the practice zones for 25-man guilds on progression and their playground on off-days. What people tend to forget is that 10-man raids are balanced around 10-man gear.
The progression pathway in the current tier should be: TotC-10 > TotGC-10 > ICC-10 > ICC-10-HM. Almost everybody has PUGged TotC-25 since the release, and almost every serious 25-man guild has cleared at least part of TotGC-25. Therefore, almost every serious raider entering ICC-10 is wearing ilvl 245 and higher gear. During ICC-10 progress, these raiders are clearing ICC-25 bosses, too; therefore, their overgearing increases even further.
10-man strict means we are not raiding any 25-man content that will yield us gear with a higher ilvl than our current 10-man content. We progress through the 10-man raids at the level Blizzard balanced them, and therefore the content is a lot more challenging than most of the player base realizes.
The biggest chunk of the WoW raiding population is part of 25-man raiding guilds, which is pretty logical since this has been the way raiding has been for most of the existence of the game. There has not been that much 10-man content out before. Think about Karazhan, which was the entry-level raid at level 70. Every guild ran it as a step up to the 25-man content. Near the end of The Burning Crusade, Zul'Aman was released. I really loved that instance, and I actually joined a 10-man guild there. But with no content to move on to, that guild had to move on to 25-man raiding like everybody else.
As I understand, the success of Zul'Aman made Blizzard realize that 10-man raids are interesting. The concept is pretty new, and most players are "stuck" in their old 25-man guilds and raiding habits. Of course, there's also the drive for new epics. A lot of people would never want to leave 25-man raiding, purely because that is where the very best epics drop.
The general (low) opinion (of 10-man content) comes from the 25-man guilds. They are racing through in their gear, not realizing that some fights are (or were, before the hotfixes) nicely tuned for a 10-man guilds.
Tracking 10-man strict accomplishments seems to be problematic. What are the issues?
The site everybody uses to track progress is GuildOx. For 25-man raiding, the tracking is working fine, but Blizzard has not given them tools to read out 10-man progress. There are normal killing achievements like The Crimson Hall, but there is no way to see if that kill was performed while overgeared. That's why GuildOx inserted a requirement that is really giving us a hard time: in order to stay on the strict rankings, a guild is not allowed to have more than seven kills on any boss in ICC-25.
Unless people are in a 10-man strict guild, they are PUGging ICC-25. Almost every new recruit bumps up the number of kills. We also have a lot of social members and alts. They do not take part in our raiding group but are forced to follow that same rule, too. We have already had alts and socials leave the guild to be able to gear up further. That's really not desirable for the social aspect of the guild.
We've heard player wish lists for improving 10-man play with ideas such as automatically dropping 25-man gear stats to 10-man gear levels for anyone entering a 10-man instance. Is there anything Blizzard could implement that you believe could improve the 10-man experience?I have heard about that suggestion, but I really do not believe that is the solution. The most important thing about WoW is that everybody can enjoy it the way they want. That includes the 25-man guilds rushing through 10-man content and 10-man guilds gearing up in 25-man PUGs before they can down the 10-man content. For some, overgearing is the only way to get things done!
Another suggestion I have heard is removing the separate 10- and 25-man lock-out. I would not like to see this being implemented either, as this would kill off a lot of the PUGging community.
The solution we have proposed was adding a "strict" requirement to the progress achievements. Blizzard has already implemented this in earlier content, such as Dedicated Insanity in TotGC-10 and Herald of the Titans in Ulduar-10. This would solve all our problems. We could recruit players with an ICC-25 kill, and every character in our guild would be able to enjoy a PUG on their off-days, too, without worrying about the rankings -- as long as we are wearing 10-man gear the moment we score a new kill.
To take it one step further, the strict requirement could be added to all the achievements with a reward. This would stop the overgearing guilds from scoring the first Frostbrood Vanquisher and the title The Kingslayer (though it is too late for this tier already). This would greatly increase the regard towards 10-man guilds that have obtained these vanity rewards.
But these changes would influence a major part of the game, and I'm unsure how far Blizzard is willing to go with 10-man raiding. I don't want to push it. The easiest solution I can think of is one big meta-achievement that collects all boss kills in an instance while wearing only 10-man raid gear. This would create a tool to track progress. If that made it into the game, I'd be really happy.
How did you get involved in 10-man strict?
I have been raiding since The Burning Crusade, starting off in Karazhan and then on to 25-man guilds. Due to time constraints, I have never been able to join a top guild. Therefore, I have had my share of guild drama and /gdisbands. When another guild fell apart, I really had enough of it. That was when I founded Amicus, together with the friend who got me started in WoW. It turned out we had around 10 players on the server that were all connected through real-life bonds. We started out in Karazhan again and did some Zul'Aman, but it always stayed really casual.
When the news got out about a 10-man progression pathway in WotLK, we got really excited. We brought some more friends into the game, and we had a raiding team ready for when the expansion hit. When it was time to start on the Ulduar hard modes, we soon realized that a guild is more than a bunch of friends. Our roster was lacking, and not everybody was up to the performance we'd like to see. We reworked our rules, went international (we were a Dutch guild) and recruited some players that have really added to the team since then. In this setting we have cleared TotGC-10, including Insanity. But up to that point, we were not strict.
We decided to go for the rankings when ICC hit. We hoped that this new raid would not be as PUGgable as the previous TotC so that we could actually convince all our raiders to follow us in the new format. We had some struggle to convince our altaholics who enjoyed running every raid on every alt, every week. But we got the whole group together, and we have really been enjoying ICC-10 since the release.
During raids, there is no need for a military regime on Ventrilo. We are only 10 players; there is always room to comment, for everybody. Because the roster in a 10 man guild is a lot smaller, we are growing into a group of real friends. We try to promote this by always using real-life names -- this, to the extent that I can't remember the in-game name and have tried to /w "real life name"! I've had friendships in 25-man guilds, but I've never experienced a more tight-knit community before. We don't have any anonymous raiders who ride along and are forgotten the moment they leave the guild.
How's Amicus doing in Icecrown Citadel?
I am rather pleased with our ICC progress. So far we have gotten everything down but Sindragosa and the Lich King. For Putricide, we had to come back a second night; we cleared the Crimson Halls on the release day, before the hotfixes made it to live. The only boss that is putting up some resistance is Sindragosa, but with wipes around 1%, that issue should have been cleared by the time this interview is out.
The most challenging part of our progress so far has been the lag during peak times. Frostmane is a crowded server, and that really has a big impact on our raiding, since we only raid around 7 hours each week. We ended up moving to EU Haomarush this weekend; we were able to keep our guild name, Amicus. I'm really happy the whole guild, including all socials, decided to follow us.
Due to the transfer, our raid IDs got randomized. Therefore, we can't enter ICC-10 tonight, so we will be stuck at Sindragosa until Wednesday. But on the positive side, I have not noticed any lag since the transfer. Even Wintergrasp was lag-free last night! The Armory is behind on updating, as it still shows all our members on Frostmane. Due to the same issue, we have not been able to add the new Amicus to guildOx.com, either.
Best of luck to Amicus this week as they climb back into the progression saddle to tackle Sindragosa on their new, lag-free home realm.
"I never thought of playing WoW like that!" -- neither did we, until we talked with these players. From an Oscar-winning 3-D effects director to a rising pop singer ... from a quadriplegic player to a bunch of guys who get together for dinner and group raiding in person every week ... Catch our 2009 year-end retrospective for a year's worth of WoW personalities.Filed under: Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
EK Feb 23rd 2010 9:18AM
I also participate in a 10-man strict guild. Running 10-man stricts is much more difficult than 25-man. The instances are so tightly tuned that losing one player is likely to result in a wipe. Give me a 25-man filled with players of 10-man strict quality and I will give you a top 10 server guild.
Those who think 10-mans are easy are most likely equipped with 25-man gear.
We do 10-mans because we're 10 real-life friends who just like to hang out. We make compensations for real life situations and are generally just more relaxed with no drama. I did large guilds in classic and BC. Not for me.
We also use Skype to chat instead of Ventrilo. It's open mic with much higher quality. The open mic is nice because it enhances the "hang out" experience. No way Skype would work in 25-mans.
It's not Blizzard's fault that people regard 10-man players as inferior. It's part of the elitist attitude in the age of Gearscore. I'm perfectly okay with this. My crew probably has more fun on raid night anyway.
Nice post Lisa, thanks.
Aracknight (and Arack, Asinine, Alivar)
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Medivh&cn=Aracknight
nyctef Feb 23rd 2010 9:40AM
I do a lot of 25- and 10-mans, and while I do use 25man gear the mechanics of a 10-man fight are always a lot simpler to account for the fact that you have fewer people. Take Deathbringer, for example. You have a lot more space to spread out since there are fewer people on the platform, and there are only two blood beasts instead of four. Those are differences independent of gear. More generally, fights that involve coordinating 10 people to work together become very many times harder when done with 25.
Although it's a great way of raiding, I have to suspect that a lot of 10-man strict guilds haven't tried 25man encounters. I don't think the gear differences is as big as people make out.
trogdor7 Feb 23rd 2010 10:00AM
The other side of your comment, nyctef, is that with only 10 people in 10 man gear, no one is expendable. On Festergut, if someone dies, it's more than likely a wipe. That's just one example, the same applies to other bosses (Putricide or BQL for example). I raid 10 mans myself with a "strict" mentality, but we don't keep it THAT strict; I've pugged up to Rotface on 25 man (without getting any gear drops :( ) and cleared everything but Sindragosa and the LK on 10 man. Rotface in particular took much longer for my static 10 man guild to learn and perfect (with our gear we can't afford deaths) than it did for a 25 man PUG to learn and down (not perfectly, there were at least 3 or 4 deaths and it didn't make a difference).
A perfect example is Saurfang. On 25 man, a common strategy is to just let the first marked target die. It makes the fight easy as anything. On 10 man, at least when he was the hardest fight in the instance (i.e. before Plagueworks came out) you couldn't afford any deaths.
I'm not saying that 10 mans are harder, I'm just saying they're different. As a healer (holy paladin), I enjoy 10 mans VASTLY more than 25 mans. In 25 mans, I feel like I just get lost in the mix, and when someone dies (which I hate as a 10 man raider where everyone is essential to success) I feel like there was nothing I could have done about it. On 10 man, I feel like there's always something I could have done to avoid that death. I can take that and learn from it. It's just one step on the way to perfecting the encounter.
TL:DR - 10 mans aren't harder or easier than 25 mans; they're different.
ZMES_Matt Feb 23rd 2010 10:07AM
@nyctef
That's why when asked if 10-man is easier, the answer was "It depends"
Fights where spreading out is important will make 25-man harder since they have a smaller ratio to do so. However, fights like Rotface, where you have the -exact- amount of slimes active at one time as 25-man makes the 10-man version much more difficult, as they have 1/3 healers, and 33% of their DPS is kiting where as 25-man only has 11% of their DPS kiting. Stabilizing is usually a much easier task in 25-man content since there are many more people to back up a tank or healer that may be struggling. There's generally a lot more room for error in 25-man content, since if a member dies mid-fight you lose around 4% of the raid and keep going, where as 10-man loses 10% of the raid anytime anyone dies.
nyctef Feb 23rd 2010 10:13AM
@trogdor That's a good point :) I'll just say, though, that when we first downed 10man Deathbringer he never had a *chance* to cast a mark on someone - since noone was getting hit by the blood nova or the blood beasts :P. 25man gear probably gave us a little edge on dps there, but still, it was a much simpler fight. Really, noone is expendable on 25man Festergut either, though you are more likely to have combat resses or ankhs available.
That said, I agree with you, though I think just saying 'it's different' is a bit of an oversimplification.
Nirva Feb 23rd 2010 10:14AM
Actually the gear difference really does make a difference. I've recently moved from my 10man strict guild to a 25man raiding guild (to play with RL mates who've just transfered), I still haven't raided 25man content myself, as to keep my options open.
However when I raided ICC10 with these 25man geared people it was instantly a different raid to the one I'd been doing for a few months. I can see why 25man raiders don't understand 10man strict, because it's so easy for them, the average DPS is far higher and higher raid heals ensured no one died.
I know it's not because these guys were better raiders or anything, my 10man strict guild got ToGC10 before most 25man guilds on the realm could. Defiantly the gear makes a differencel, and honestly it's not so fun when you're storming through with that kind of DPS.
pnm326 Feb 23rd 2010 10:26AM
I completely respect Amicus and other strictly 10 man progression guilds....but....
Just my personal opinion, so don't bash it...
25 man raids just FEEL more epic to me. I suppose it is just the shear number of people cooperating, it feels like a greater, harder battle, even if it technically isn't.
Hoggersbud Feb 23rd 2010 11:08AM
Quantity can trump quality. That's why displays in stores are often over-driven and over-saturated.
Kay Feb 23rd 2010 11:32AM
I'm right there with you on this. When I first heard of the 10 man path, I set to work right away getting together a group of raiders to make a purist 10man approach our goal. Blizzard blew a lot of smoke in the direction of "an alternative, separate path", but we soon came to realize that their decisions going forward in Wrath post-Naxx painted a very different picture. Complete absence of things such as Legendary quests, "cool" items (by "cool", I don't mean powerful), rare dropped mounts etc. have made us feel like 2nd class players in the eyes of Blizzard development. Recently even blue posters have when pressed stated that 25man players were "the best of the best", showing even they haven't been raiding 10mans with only 10man gear.
I've felt very bait-and-switched on this whole mess for awhile now. Either 10mans are an alternative raiding path, or they're what you do to boost your gear and get practice for 25mans. Blizzard seems as though they're trying to use the former to market the game, while using the latter to stroke 25man epeens.
Cyanea Feb 23rd 2010 1:59PM
The philosophy of 25-man guilds using 10-man raids as a "training ground" also has its own problems aside from people running in and roflstomping the place in the single night and getting 10-man achievements. It poisons the idea of 10-mans in the WoW metagame. Because 25-man guilds X, Y, and Z can clear 10-man content in a single night, it leads to the perception that 10-mans are "easymode". As any person who plays in a strict 10-man guild can tell you...they're really not. I'm in such a guild because of sheer happenstance, and a couple of us have the occasional piece of 25-man gear from lucky VoA drops or ICC-25 pugs, but we're mostly in 10-man gear, and the fights are pretty challenging, but we're making progress: just went 6/12 for the first time last week.
But sometimes we have to pug a DPS or two, and this attitude to 10-mans being loot pinatas just because Guilds X, Y, and Z can do it in their 25-man gear without breaking a sweat carries over. We've had pugs who call us scrubs for not having the place cleared yet. We've had pugs who don't have any ICC achievements past Storming the Citadel claiming fights like Putricide, Rotface, and Valithria are "easy", and drop group when we wipe ONCE.
There needs to be something to change the attitude of people towards 10-mans. Sure, the bosses don't spawn as many adds or don't have higher healthbars, but more numbers doesn't always mean more difficulty. 10-man raids are hard for 10-man guilds.
jrizutko Feb 23rd 2010 4:08PM
Beyond the difficulty issue (as a primarily 10-man raider, I've always been struck by how mind numbingly simple the few 25 man raids I have been on were) I always feel so much more epic raiding in a group of 10 instead of 25.
It feels like the difference between being on of 10 protoss zealots or 1 of 25 zerglings.
Dave Feb 23rd 2010 9:21AM
The news about the dungeon finder allowing groups to queue for 10 man raids kind of distressed me. It feels like just another step in the line of "Blizzard doesn't care about 10 man raiding." Forgive me if I sound maudlin, but allowing people to PuG it across servers, where communication is basically non-existent, sounds like them saying "Yeah, this stuff is a joke, just run through it and get your gears," when some of us expect a real challenge out of 10 mans. Before Wrath I'd envisioned the split in 10 and 25 man raids as being two "real" tiers when really it's just like it always was. 25 man is real, 10 man is what the 25 man guilds do to fill out their gear spots. This seems evident by the lack of "cool" things in 10 mans. No neat weapon procs, no legendaries (thanks for taunting us by being able to pick up the quest in ICC-10, though!)
We're a 10 man guild. I was so proud when we got our Rusted Drakes. We have neither the need nor desire for the insanely over-regimented 25 man experience (as the interviewee states: militaristic discipline over vent? Gimme a break.) That doesn't mean we don't want our own real experience, and not feel like we're constantly being given the 25 mans hand me downs.
N-train Feb 23rd 2010 10:43AM
Absolutely. Putting aside the many, many logistical issues that I can hampering a cross-server 10 man raid (lockouts, loot system, variations of roles based on gear, no accountability), it does seem to be one more kick at the 10 man world.
As someone who has run plenty of 25s over the last three patches, I can say that I really enjoy 10 man more. Like the article said, you get a sense of unity and fellowship that 25s just don't have. And often the only people in a 25 that seem to have that same level of connection are the people who run in a ten man together.
I agree with the article in terms of separating achievements though, its really a morale buster in my ten mans when we move through slowly and with usually a good deal of facerolling because the room for error is so small, only to read about 25man geared raids who can burn through what we're struggling on with no problem cause they're all packing an extra 1,500dps and 9k health. All it does is lead people to think 10 mans are supposed to be testing and playgrounds for alts, scrubs, and for the extra badges.
Valt Feb 23rd 2010 1:19PM
Agree completely. We are 10man guild but not strict, we do some 25mans like toc now and then.
What really annoyed ME was how they announced that 5man ICC gear is same level as ToC10. I mean come on now. You are telling us that we grinded that hellhole for absolutely nothing now? Pretty much all loot you can get from ICC5s are on same level as offset loot from ToC and T9 is yours.
They did same with ToC5 heroic, 219 gear. Some were even better than "That thing that drops from Yogg-saron/vezax".
That made me really annoyed because it really felt slap to face with big letters calling "we dont care about 10man or its loot"
Ok fair enough there was HC version with 245 gear but if you didn't do those you might as well quit the game for time of 3.2 and come back in 3.3 and get same gear in week and 251 ICC10 gear sooner or later..
Dont get me wrong. Im not telling about "qq game is easy and easy loot", I disagree with those people.
But imagine if you are in guild that did ToC10 since August 2009 to December 2009..
yeaaah..
Hiwa Feb 23rd 2010 9:32AM
On my server (Arygos) there is a plethora of 10 man guilds who only do 10-man runs. For me it's perfect because running the game on a less-than-ideal computer means that I don't have to deal with horrible 25 man fps, nor do I have to deal with 24 other often-unknown factors.
Scott Feb 23rd 2010 10:36AM
I too am on Arygos in a strict 10-man raiding guild. We were all former raiders/leaders in the 25-man environment and grew tired of maintaining the schedule and formation that 25-mans require. Raiding any 10-man increases the requirement of keeping everyone up as the loss of one player can be detrimental to downing a boss. 25-man runs are much more lenient when it comes to losing a player.
While our progression is a bit slower than most guilds, we're having fun and making progress in Crimson Halls. Besides, not having either a priest or pally in our raid since day one has made ICC progression... interesting.
Syhn Feb 23rd 2010 9:57AM
Why don't just give the same ilvl in 10 men and 25 men content ?
Yes it can seems weird when we see suggestion like this but let's think few seconds about it.
Without ilvl differences the 10 men content could not be overgeared. The challenge remains intact.
No more vicious circle "10 men is too easy because I'm overgeared, so it is ok to have less ilvl in it"
And those people who says that they prefer 25 men content for epic fight should not be frightened by this. If their motivations is not just to have better loot.
If it the case, at least, they should not be forced to do content in a way they don't like, just to have a chance to be gear with the best loot in the game.
Blacksheep Feb 23rd 2010 11:45AM
Hear, hear, I agree with this completely. Once upon a time ago my guild ran 25 mans, but with people who guild hop, people who can't be on certain nights and people who have to leave in the middle of a run, it became far to much of a hassle, so we cut it down to 10 mans. Yes, this leaves a few people out some nights, but it's a lot easier to keep a group together.
What's not easier, however, is the raiding. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you are geared in 10 man (or slightly below gear) 10 man raiding is actually harder because as others have noted, every single person needs to do their job right or it's a wipe. Healer messes up and dies, wipe, there are only 2 healers, sometimes 3. DPS kites something into another DPS and those 2 die, wipe, losing 2 of your 5 DPS is not recoverable in ICC10 on many fights. Where as in 25 mans, when we ran them and when I pugged them, you can just kind of be an anonymous DPS, hide in the back and get an achievement. A healer dies? Big deal there are 4 or 5 other healers. Four DPS get knocked out? Who cares, there 14 other DPS to make up the difference. Bosses have more health but the margin for error is much larger. We hauled morons through 25 mans sometimes, I mean stand in fire, die in every fight types, and still cleared Naxx 25 (when it was still hard). 10 mans, they would wipe the raid.
I really think 10 man gear should be at least equal, but I've been known to be crazy and say it should be higher lvl, but that would cause overgeared people to storm through and snatch it all up.
MightyMuffin Feb 23rd 2010 1:15PM
The downside to giving the same ilvl gear in both 10-man and 25-man is that most players in WoW follow the rule of "whatever leads to the best/easiest way to getting to the end game." In other words, if you're a hunter who loves BM, but the highest dps spec is ArP MM, then you'll drop your love of BM for ArP MM for the maximum dps. If the easiest way to get epics is through PvP (going back to BC when I was on a non-PuGable server), then people will go for those epics.
I'm not saying ALL players follow this way of life. Its just how certain players seem to act. If 25-man guilds saw that they could get the same gear ilvl in 10-man, then they'd run 10-man and 25-man with the same level of focus. The only way 10-mans will be viewed in the community at large as a good thing would be if they made 10-mans have their own progression levels that are different than 25-mans. Make it so that 10-man progression has Tier with different bonuses than the 25-man.
Also, make it so that 10-man and 25-man share the same raid-lockout. No having separate raid lockouts for 10-man and 25-man. Think about it, if guilds were forced to decide whether that week they'd do 25-man or 10-man, they'd choose 25-man almost every single time, only doing 10-man the first few weeks. On top of that, make it so that 10-man and 25-man have attunements for the next level of progression, that way 25-only guilds have to do 10-man if they want to continue down that progression line, and if 10-man strict guilds want better 25-man gear, they'll have to go back.
The above is not all that I'd exactly use just some suggestions. But making 10-man and 25-man their own worlds would give 10-man a little bit more credibility. I am in a 10-man strict guild, although we did go into ToC-25 and I went once into ToGC-25. We don't have enough to do 25-man, and none of us really want to. We want to hang out and have fun playing the game. We see 25-man as no way too have fun, and will cause too much drama. Except...we don't think people who play 25-mans in a negative light. If they seem to be able to work together in such a way that they all have fun, then congrats to them. However, we wish to have that same respect from more than just the certain understanding types. We want a place in the community as "these are good players, not just laid-back people" (although my guild kinda can be that XD).
However, I remember reading through Blizz forums and coming across a lot of posts that were negative to 10-mans. Of course, there were positive things said to counter them. I don't remember if a blue came in or not, but I was somehow left with the impression that they like the system that they have it in. This means 10-mans will continue to not hold any special place except for those of us that practice 10-man strict. I suppose that'll have to do...maybe letting the 25-man guilds deal with the little kids and their moms might be the best way to go...oh wait, that was negative, I'm sorry...but its so funny hearing those nerdrage stories, lol.
KPB Feb 23rd 2010 1:30PM
If 10 and 25 man content gave the same level of gear what would be the draw to 25 man content?
As it is currently you get a lower ratio of loot in 25 man vs 10 man. You have 2.5 times as many people but don't have that much more loot. To some extent this is mitigated by the fact that a 10 man is more likely to DE something due to not having the right class/spec for an item. If they were the same item level you would loose this and it would swing things in favor of 10 mans instead of 25 mans.
The organizational aspect of a 25 man run/guild is always going to be higher than that of a 10 man