I was just reading a bit of the 4Heals blog as part of my research into finding some cross-class links for alts and other lesser classes, and saw a line on there that I just loved to death:
If you ever say “the boss died, that’s all that matters” you’ve never carried a raid, and you may even be being carried. Anyone who says this while being dead for any portion of the fight due to their own negligence should be railed at.
This is very similar to the “Any pull you survive is a good pull” mentality. Both are completely, totally, and horribly wrong. It’s a virus-like mentality: it infects people, encouraging bad habits and making them reckless, and bad players.
We all know the kind of fight these quotes are referring to, where one guy stands in the void zone and dies, two people pull aggro and immediately run away from the tank, die, then the boss ping-pongs among the healers until the tank catches up, but then the healers are dead and the tank dies, but somehow the dps finish burning him down before everyone is dead. There’s always that guy, that asslark who says “the boss died, that’s all the matters.”
Like most of you, I have been in that fight more than once, and let me tell you every time it happens I feel ashamed. Then I feel a murderous rage that makes me want to kill the flaming sphincter who let loose the quip.
It’s Not Just About This Boss
Raiding is a skill. It’s a matter of knowing your class, your role, the boss fights, and then executing your role while being continuously aware of your surroundings. The good raiders do this, focused tightly on everything within the scope of their role and their surroundings. The best raiders are highly adaptable and can bring a screw-up back under control on the fly.
See, here’s the thing: it’s not just about the boss that you’re fighting. It’s about improving your performance, honing your skills so that you can beat the next boss, and the boss after that. Being lazy, even on farm bosses, will hurt your skills and your focus on progression fights. I see it all the time.
I used to do a lot of fencing, and I used to do a lot of martial arts. I then spent a lot of time sitting on my behind eating doritos. I promise you that while I still retain the knowledge, my skills have deteriorated and I’d get whooped if I entered a tournament today. Not just because I’m out of condition, which certainly I am, but because those skills have faded with years of neglect.
But when you have those sloppy pulls and just grin and chuckle and think of the fun story it makes… it’s worse than sitting on your backside stuffing pizza down your gullet – that’s just doing nothing. When you let your raid get sloppy and support that sloppiness, you’re actively training yourself in bad habits. It’s like every time someone throws a kick at your head, you throw your arms wide and step into it. It’s stupid and it becomes habit.
Then when you aren’t joking around and a foot comes flying at your face, you start to step into it when you meant to step away. It’s that habit kicking in. Or in your raid, you just dps all out ignoring your threat meter, or run away from the boss, or spend so much time staring at your cooldowns that you don’t see the void zone under your feet.
We are creatures of habit, so make your habits good ones.
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Dues Payer
its amazing how easy it is to get out of habit. when i raided regularly, i could keep myself and my pet alive (and on the dragons) in OS +d, never me nor my pet hit flame wave or voids. had the awareness to tranq adds and keep dps up. it was natural due to practice and honing skill.
its been over a month since i raided and i went into a OS 2d and i was certainly out of shape. for shame, i know. surviving a bad pull can show you the strength of a raid to adapt to unexpected situations, sure we all do something stupid from time to time, but excellence should always be a goal. seems like some folk think a pursuit of excellence isnt in keeping with the “game” part of the game. i guess it depends on ones personal goals: down the boss, or be a great player.
theres no excuse in raids being full of anal elitist pinheads that require constant perfection and demonizing some of the best players over a minor mishap, but theres a level of quality required in a raid. constantly failing to void zones in KT = failboat, im sorry lol.
*shrug* getting this across to a pug is… well its just impossible unless its a pug made of people from existing quality guilds.
Member
And here I thought I was the only one that thinks the same way you do. I’ve never been lax in a raid, at any point. The time spent is just too important. It’s like falling asleep on a post. Sure, we’ve all seen the 1 healer/tank combo take down Heigan and thought it was funny, but these days with Naxx so “below” everyone, it’s not funny anymore, not even in pugs. I’ve asked MT’s to wipe on things like that simply because it’s bad form to continue.
Thanks for validating, Frost. Thanks for making better hunters.
“But when you have those sloppy pulls and just grin and chuckle and think of the fun story it makes…”
But sometimes it does make a fun story. I agree completely with your ideas on not letting it become a habit and to practice good habits over bad, but there are times when it is simply a bad pull, etc that is immediately noticed and corrected; however you make it out regardless. Yes, it was sloppy. Yes, you should have wiped, but you didn’t.
As long as you recognize what you did, and you let your raid/group know, there is no reason a sigh of relief and a simple “Well, at least we got the boss down” is OK.
Again, don’t make it a habit, but no need to beat yourself up, turn all serious, and not see the fun in what just happened. Sure, you may have some people yelling at you, but those are typically 2-3 out of the 10 (or 4-5 out of the 25). The others…well, they are just thinking to themselves “WTF? We pulled that off? How did we pull that off? Yay! We pulled that off!”
I agree, sadly if you say something like “honestly, this vent like shit we should do much better than this because it’s NOT hard” you get flamed like an asshat. We jsut took down yogg this week, yes nice but way to late, no normal mode is hard so why are we not owning them like we should? well some people just never learn and sadly we are not a guild that will kick them…maybe it’s time to move on…
Contributor
One of our regulars recited that quote after we downed Mimiron the other day. It was the only time I’ve ever agreed with it being said. That boss is messed up.
Otherwise, I unequivocally agree. I sometimes get upset when I go multiple pulls without being first in dps with our regular 10-man group. And on bosses, I’m inconsolable if I die…I actually hope for non-hunter loot because I feel like I don’t deserve it. Anyone who goes into a raid without focus shouldn’t be there.
Member
Reading this it’s sort of just occurred to me that I do tend to spend a lot of time staring at my cooldowns.
I’ve never had a problem with it so far but I guess that’s besides the point. It’s a habit I need to pull myself out of.
Whoops!
I lucky my guild is very forgiving and understanding there is normally no yelling and we are there to have fun so we point out were people are going wrong and try to correct there mistakes to make them better players. I don’t like agro from players because you made a mistake much better to teach the player were he went wrong and add suggestions to help them better there game. Most people can see where they have gone wrong and instantly feel bad for making that mistake and yelling at tthem won’t help it can make them even play worse. We are only human and everyone makes mistakes just need to let people know where they went wrong and try and correct it making the person a better player and by that making your guild a better group and i can tell you if your the sort of guild that constantly yells at players you will soon have no players or not enjoy the wonderful world of warcraft. Also if a bad pull i agree you should not be bragging about it and that you survived thats not helping anyone.
this reminds me of the time when our tank got tunnel vision and walked off the edge of razorscale’s aire. so when that happened we md’ed onto the other hunter and he popped deturence and the rest of dps burned him.
It’s odd to think, but this gets said a lot in our 10man raid, and if it was from neglect I’d agree. But with the group I play with there are regularly large lag issues, and when it’s happening it’s usually to 3-4 people in the raid. It is not unusual that we get disconnects happening mid fight, so when the team works well enough together and overcomes this, it’s still a win, even if it ended messy. The first raid boss kill I video’d was our groups 2nd kill of curator, and it remains my favourite. Nobody was left standing in the room
One of our 2 healers DC’d early on, and everyone held it together just enough to get him down, with the healer reconnecting at about 15%.
Member
Here’s the problem. MOST people are thinking about what they don’t want,
and they’re wondering why it shows up over and over.
Admin
Yeah Stone — recovering from disconnects/lag spikes in a spectacular fashion is certainly an exception. It’s when screwups happen that the whole “boss died is all that matters” bugs me. Mistakes happen, Disconnects happen, and are forgiveable. It’s just that a lot more matters than just the boss dying — performance and execution, darnit!
Member
I read this post right before I logged in tonight and was thinking that I hope we don’t have too much of this in H Uld tonight. So, we run through FL, get XT and the 3rd try, and then go wipe some more on Razorscale. Right as raid leader calls last try, I realize i never popped a flask or switched to my good arrows. /facepalm
Member
I totally agree with this post. Yeah, we get the boss down but if everyone that I raid with were able to stay out of where they need to and go to where they need to while maintaining a reasonable amount of DPS, we would be soaring. Our guild can pretty easily get 7 of the bosses down in Ulduar now, but I feel like if everyone did their part and paid more attention to these little things, we would be able to get farther in a day and would be able to take more bosses down quickly, as well as achieve the hard mode kills.
For many of these things, common addons like Bigwigs and DBM say “GTFO” for you- sometimes I don’t understand why people decide to just stand there.
~When we get to the Vezax fight, this is going to be sooo important. From what I can see the only damage that should be done in that fight is the tanks damage and the damage recieved when regenning mana in the vapors- other than that everything could/should be avoided.
I have mixed feelings about this post. On the one hand, it can be incredibly irritating when people aren’t paying attention and repeatedly making easily-avoidable mistakes. (Just don’t stand in the runes, people!) I agree wholeheartedly. However…
I’ve played in a few different types of guilds in my time. I’ve been in the completely casual, “easy-breezy, mistakes happen, we still won, lets go laugh about it and have pie” guilds and the “RAWWR lets go kill some bosses in that raid tonight, bring your A-Game or GTFO” guilds and I have to say that the most successful weren’t always the most fun to play with. And sure we’re all here to succeed but isn’t the point of a game also “fun”?
When I screw up and others pay for it, I’ll be the first person to apologize. But I’m not big on letting other’s asinine mistakes ruin the fight for me or anyone else, either. I’d much rather offer suggestions (privately) on how I avoid those mistakes and hope to help someone figure things out than to humiliate them over something they likely already realize was incredibly stupid.
At the risk of sounding a bit like a Polyanna, I’ll easily offer an: “at least we got the boss down” over: “WTF just happened in there? You guys suck!” any day.
The best…BEST…”at least the boss died” story in my experience was against Razorscale in Ulduar-10. We got her down to about 100k health before we wiped. But as we lay there, not releasing because Razorscale hadn’t despawned, the NPCs took her on.
Slowly but surely, those plucky little folks whittled her down to nothing. Once she was dead, we all released, ran back in, and picked up our loot. We must have spent close to five minutes lying dead on the ground.
I don’t even know why we ended up wiping (undoubtedly one of the tanks or one of the healers bought the farm), but watching her die after all 10 of us were dead, and still getting credit, was hilarious.
Embarrassing, but hilarious.
*I’d much rather offer suggestions (privately) on how I avoid those mistakes and hope to help someone figure things out than to humiliate them over something they likely already realize was incredibly stupid.*
But what do you do if they don’t know it was stupid? How do you give someone gentle advice when they don’t know what they are doing is wrong?
And, by the way, altough those questions sound like I am arguing with you troublewithtribbles I do agree. Just have no idea on how to give gentle advice without annoying the whole group!
Well MrJackdaw, even if they don’t know what went wrong you can tell them what the fight is about. Let’s just say if they die on safety dance, you could tell them
If they are melee, “Just follow the tank and don’t lag behind. Try to use only instant casts”
If they are ranged, “Stay on platform, and when you have to run don’t attack”
Just because they don’t know the fight doesn’t mean they won’t get it when you explain it.
Mr. Jackdaw, you put that so delicately, I find it very hard to believe you would have any trouble giving someone gentle advice. But what I’ve done in the past is simply asked what the problem is that keeps them from doing what needs to be done, and work from there.
I’m certainly no expert on diplomacy, but here’s an example, “I noticed you were having a lot of trouble staying out of the green stuff on that fight. Are you watching your cooldowns too much? Maybe you could memorize your hot keys so you don’t have to watch so intently, or maybe you could utilize scrolling combat text so you can keep your eyes on the fight…” etc
My main issue is with seeing people berated in front of the entire raid. Just rubs me the wrong way and I never want to humiliate anyone.
*agree* It’s not acceptable to me to pull someone up like that; in a game or in life. There has to be a better way.
Thanks for the advice!
Admin
I agree that you can no tolerate erros without humiliating someone in front of the raid; however, this post is really about not tolerating the celebration of sloppiness.
Now Hrist may disagree with this. He’s fine with yelling at someone in front of the raid; however, he tends to only do it when they say something that provokes him (such as “lol I keep getting killed by the void zones lol”). But of course he’s the hate tank. And everyone loves him. I’m tellin’ ya, Stockholm Syndrome…
Raids scares the shit out of me. I am a noob who started to play wow 6 months ago when I used my sons account to roll a priest just to try it out. It was great fun and I got my own account just 4 months ago. I rolled a hunter (as in RL) and started leveling, my first instance was WC and a bit into the first boss fight my pet pulled some additional mobs and we wiped. I got 10 minutes of insults before they kicked me from the group. Next try with a new group same thing happened and some Hungarian kid who could not speak (write) English gave me a raw calling me a huntard and a noob (by all means he was right but ..) and other words that I will not use here. After this I spent my time solo leveling instead and now I am at lvl 80 and don’t have a clue on how to perform in Raids or Dungeons.
I gave Heroic Occulus a go the other day, it went fine until I screwed up and caused a wipe… To no surprise to me I received a heap of insults like “stupid, retard, huntard…” from the group leader. I left the party and hearted back to Dalaran where I received more insulting whispers from the group leader because I left the party.
Say that you are new to this game, you are a casual player who can play a couple of hours three to four days a week, how do you proceed to learn how to perform in Raids if you don’t like to get your head taken off every time you make a mistake?
I read a lot of blogs like this to improve my game but it want help me until I get a chance to try it out, is there any “Driving schools” out there for Raiding? Would gladly pay 100g or more to help with repairs just to get some good “In game advice” and “Raiding practice”.
I am sick and tired of getting insulted, spitted at and kicked out like yesterdays garbage.
(Sry for the long comment, it just hit a nerv…)
Admin
Three pieces of advice for a new hunter looking to learn to raid:
1.) Read our guide on threat and aggro: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/03/threat-and-aggro-dont-wipe-the-raid/
2.) Run as many 5-mans as you can. It’s good practice.
3.) Don’t PUG raids. Even if you do everything right, you have a 50% chance of getting yelled at. What you want is to find a nice entry level guild to join.
Member
I reserve public calling outs over vent for repeat offenders we’ve worked on. Some people are not motivated by the soft touch of a suggestion or the to the point conversation from the class lead. Pugs are/can be just nasty and I prefer to be polyanna in the public forum.
The public calling out of a guildy is reserved for the guy who has died 3/4 times to Void zones on KT, Sarth and eye beams on Kologarn. I just finished whipping our “Team 2″ Ulduar team into shape and I’m SOOOO proud of them! However, its called “whipping” for a reason, lol. Over confidence is a killer and has a good deal to do with the “LOL, at least the boss is dead” win. I personally hate the apparent need for strictness that comes with running succesful and expedient raids.
I believe fun comes from mutual respect, pride in ones achievements and a healthy enjoyment of the content itself. Sure the occasional laugh at someone elses (in-game) expense may occur, but who actually wants to spoil other peoples enjoyment of the game?
Thx for the advice, I’ll keep on going and try to improve my game. I am already in a guild with a few of my friends but the problem is that we have a hard time even get enough people for 5-mans and we have all been at different levels so I seek random groups instead which probably is the reason that I stumble upon all these nut cases.
I guess another of my problems originates in how easy it was to solo level a hunter, now I have to learn the end game and that is much harder and I dont get positve feed back in the same rate as I did leveling.
Sry about all the QQ i still think it’s a wonderful game and I will keep on enjoying it!
but first I’ll read your guide on threat and aggro