10-man raids are not merely 2 5-man groups

(Extra bonus post since I promised to post this on yesterday's entry and then got distracted by the herbs)

My guild has had its share of drama over Karazhan. We started running it sometime in late April. Unfortunately, at the time, our raid leader wasn't really in tune with what we felt the guild was about. The vast majority of the guild was very much casual. We'd run together if we could, if not we'd find something that the rag-tag collection of folks on could do. He was a hard(ish)-core raider.

When we had 22 people (or so) sign up for raids, he was very much about making the very best, most cohesive, effective, blood-chilling group he could to take on Karazhan. But that left those not picked for this elite bad feeling chopped liverish. And the secondaries had approximately zero chance of doing anything worthwhile in there.

The guild leadership tried to moderate this by choosing groups such that both groups had decent make-up and moderate chance of success past the opera. This went, bluntly, not so well. About 15 /gquits later, we were a shell of ourselves and not able to attack Karazhan at all (even though we'd previously cleared through the Maiden).

The next thing the guild tried was an alliance with a more powerful guild who was routinely moving beyond the Curator. Unfortunately, our bad luck continued and this "alliance" wasn't interested in anything but them absorbing our guild. Strike two.

We made a few halfhearted attempts at Kara, eventually getting ourselves into position to routinely challenge the Curator. Then about a third of the raid group quit for reasons of their own. Still in guild but not logged in for about 6 days at a time. One of the tanks respecced arms.

Now we're at the present. Woefully short on tanks and healers, but having an adequate group to give it a shot. On our most recent excursions we've reliably cleared Attumen but Moroes has evaded us. Unfortunately, many of the attendees are recent eager 70s. But not the kind of gear you'd expect to be downing Attumen. They lack..badly. However, a string of Moroes at under 20% shows we've got the spunk and guts to try it, I'm afraid the gearcheck thing is going to beat us for a while.

This brings me to the most recent development in the guild. Several of the guys who are new to the raid are suggesting we put Karazhan on a back burner and instead do some 5-man heroics. They go on to say that getting folks together for Karazhan is hard, and the experience we gain as a constantly changing group of heroic instancers should more than make up for our lack of gear.

Having done heroics, I'm not so sure. In most heroics I've been in there's only a single healer (maybe a backup for tough fights) and clothies die pretty much arbitrarily. And maybe it's just me but I find Attumen and crew (up through the Opera) to be somewhat easier than most of the 5-man heroics. Granted I haven't been on all of them and made the mistake of doing Mana Tombs as my first heroic, but it just doesn't seem like its worth it to do heroics at the cost of not doing Karazhan. And the elite drops that I'm sure are enticing lots of folks drop from bosses that are WAY harder in heroic than anything I've seen (in my limited experience) in Karazhan.

I dunno.