The Best Way to Wipe a Raid

I thought about doing a list of the top 5 or so ways to wipe a raid, but I realized that one single behavior causes so many other problems which lead to raid wipes that I thought it best to just talk about the one. So, this post will be all about one thing, and one thing only: IMPATIENCE.

Imaptience wipes raids. Whether it is on the part of the raid leader, the tank, or the DPS, any time you try to rush a raid along, you are inevitably asking for a wipe. Let me list some common raid practices I’ve seen that are inevitably acts of impatience.

1.) “All of class x do job  y.”

This is not only extremely confusing, but often inaccurate. I was doing a run of Naxx 25 when the raid leader said this when we were about to fight Gluth. He said “All mages and hunters kite the Zombies in the back. PULLING!” First of all, there were 3 mages and 2 hunters, one mage who then said she was bad at kiting, and one hunter who had no idea what was going on. Naturally, this led to a lot of confusion, as not only was I the only one kiting, as the third mage had no frost spec and thus felt he couldn’t kit, but I also was not getting heals, and the other hunter was not dropping Frost Trap…ever.

The second time, he said “All druid healers heal the kiters. PULING!”  Again, impatience, as we had 3 druid healers, which is a lot for the number of kiters we had (I still don’t know how many of us were actually kiting). So of course, we wiped.

LESSON: Always say names when assigning raid duties, and make it very clear that individuals know exactly what their assignments are.

This situation, however, leads us to a second problem…

2.) Boss Fight Explanations

In the aforementioned example, I cited a hunter who didn’t know the fight, and thus didn’t know his responsibilities. In many raid situations, I’ve seen raid leaders tell the couple of people who don’t know the fight to “Just dps” or “just heal” and say “you’ll probably die even if I explained it.” Not only is that incredibly unhelpful, but that kind of attitude is extremely rude and demoralizing. Each raid member should feel as if they are an asset to the raid, and a good raid leader will explain the entire boss fight to them, even mechanics that they don’t/shouldn’t necessarily have to worry about. After all, it only takes one person to screw up Thaddius.

LESSON: Boss fights require explanations for the entire raid. Any raid leader that pulls the boss without first offering explanations of the boss fight to the entire raid should not be leading the raid. Even if everyone claims that they know the fight, a quick recap is always helpful. Any individual tasks, like kiting, should also be explained–for example, explaining to kiters that they need only hold aggro, not spend time trying to kill the zombies and wasting mana.

3.) Buffs

This is a classic one–pulling before everyone is buffed up. I can’t speak for all classes, but I know that when I have the opportunity to receive certain buffs and I don’t get them, I get pretty frustrated. Especially in a 25 man, where typically every class is represented, its not only expected, but often times it’s needed to survive boss encounters.

Paladins, I’m sorry to say, are the worst at buffing. Frankly, if I’m ever missing a buff, it’s usually a paladin buff. Paladins should stop griping and fucking get Pally Power–its incredibly light weight and helps the raid immensely. Whenever I’m in a raid on my paladin, I always just take over paladin buffs and tell the other paladins what exactly to buff. I happen to be specced into both Improved Wisdom and Improved Might, but for many paladins this is not the case. A good raid leader/other paladin should check in with the others to see what they do best, and then have them do it.

In any event, many classes do very well with additional buffs in raids, such as getting the extra mana regen from Wisdom, or the extra HP from Fortitude (which can be the difference of life or death in EoE), or the extra intellect from Arcane Brilliance.  Since only mana-using classes can cast these, it’s generally polite to make sure that all buffs are given out and mana is regained before starting the next pull.

LESSON: Buffs are very important to many classes and their ability to do their job, WAIT FOR BUFFS! Blizzard gave them to us for a reason. So we should use them all whenever possible, even before trash.

4.) Trash Pulls and Deaths

People sometimes die on trash pulls. It happens. Either an aggro mistake, or the mob exploded, or they were the target of an unfortunate ability. Whatever. Get over it. However, it’s extremely irresponsible to begin the next pull before they have been rezzed and rebuffed. As stated before, buffs cost mana, but rezzes cost even more. If you pull before healers have enough mana to heal you, and then the tanks die, it’s possible that your impatience just caused a wipe.

LESSON: Rez before looting, rez before pulling. Simple as that. It may seem like it takes a bit of time, but in reality, you’re saving yourself much more time than you think you’re “wasting.” I’ve seen many groups wipe more on trash because they are fighting with half their dps, tanks, and healers up and most of them are low on/out of mana.

5.)  Because 5 is a number that fits nicely into people’s heads, I had to figure out a fifth. It didn’t take long. LOOT and LOOT RULES!

Far too often, especially when you have a few PuGs in an otherwise guild/friend run, loot rules aren’t explained when new members come in, especially if the run has already started. So many runs I’ve been on, I lost the chance to roll on something because no one bothered to explain the rules and they were in a rush to get to the next boss. Loot rules vary from guild to guild, run to run, and it’s worse when you ask about them, but they continue with the countdown anyway or give a very short, incoherent/incomplete answer. It’s quite irritating when you miss out on a chance at loot or you roll too early and then your awesome roll is discounted.

LESSON: NEVER pass out loot before explaining, in every detail, the loot rules. It ensures that PuGs want to run with you again, and keeps your guild from getting a bad rep. Happy raiders = better raiders, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and energy from not having to deal with irritated whispers, etc.

The bottom line: Raiding requires time. Rushing wastes time in the form of wipes and rebuffing. Incomplete explanations are just as much a form of rushing as pulling before everyone is done eating/drinking. If you’re going to raid, realize the time commitment and be ready to invest in it. I’m not saying you need to spend 7 hours trying to clear Naxx, but I guarantee that assuming everyone is always constantly alive and buffed, assuming everyone knows all the mechanics of every fight, and assuming that everyone psychically knows exactly what their assignments will be on every fight and what the loot rules are is asking for a wipe.

Take the time to prevent unnecessary wipes, and you’ll see your raid times drop.

I’m a Loot Ninja

So last night I got invited to a Naxx 25 group.  Naxx happens all the time. Nothing new. I come in right before Gluth. We one shot him. I use my need roll on a plate belt. I use a greed roll on some gloves. 2 pieces of loot off of one boss, and I’m feeling happy. It’s already a successful run…or so I thought. We move on. We wipe once on Thaddius, kill him, then proceed to the next quarter.  Everything seems normal, right? Nothing out of the ordinary. Until we start pulling trash.

The next 2 quarters were filled with cacophony. I have never, EVER, wiped so much on trash, yet one-shot every single other boss (except for KT, who we two-shot, which, in a PuG, isn’t bad at all.) We had some hunter Thumbus who thought it would be fun to continually Misdirect pulls onto our tank before everyone was rezzed and buffed up. Multiple times. The most fun was on the Gargoyles, where people had upwards of 20 stacks of the poison. It took us over a half-hour to kill 6 gargoyles and 10 slimes. We killed the next 2 bosses within 10 minutes of each other.

Did I mention I got loot off of both of them? Item total: 4. Bosses down: 4. Hm. Interesting.  And some of it was mail/leather/cloth too. Whatever, it’s fine, no one else needed them…

We struggle to get to Loatheb because our lock failed at running and not dpsing, thus he died. Took us about 20 minutes to do the gauntlet. One-shot Loatheb. Whatever, we’re a special group.

Then the spider quarter. This is the quarter that made me wtb Circle of Healing. Seriously, the priest was outhealing me by almost 50% of my outgoing heals. But whatever, they also are already healing Ulduar. And I was beating another pally healer and priest healer who both had better gear than me. But seriously, between Poison Bitch and Loatheb, I was pretty jealous.

Oh yeah, more pretty gear for me. Thanks Sinister. Total new gear pieces: 6. Bosses down: 8

One shot Sapphiron. How the hell did we wipe on fucking GARGOYLES but one shot Sapph, when NO ONE had frost resistance gear? And only one death by a shaman who got ON NOM NOMed at the very beginning because he stood in front of the claws of doom. While standing in a Blizzard. Smart.

At this point, I don’t even remember if I got loot from him or not. I think I did. We two-shot KT, but I got nothing. Do I care? No. Final tally: 7 pieces of gear, 10 bosses. Do I feel like a loot whore/ninja? Yes. Am I thankful to Sinister? Indefinitely. My spellpower went up by over 100 and I definitely got an extra 5% crit, if not more.

Not to mention I am no longer wearing more cloth/leather/mail than plate. In fact, I think I only have to replace wrist binders (cloth) and I’ll be in all mail or plate. Therefore not as squishy as before. Plus, I now have tons of badges, and can buy more gear if I need it. Perhaps I’ll start trying to get tier pieces…

Until then, “I R PALADIN! I CAN HAZ ANY ARMOR!” Screw you DKs/Huntards.

P.S. Did I mention that this was for main-spec gear only? I don’t even want to talk about the new pieces of off-spec gear, including the fact that I wasted a 95 roll when the RL said “roll for greed” and didn’t specificy that it was for main-spec greed. Oh well. I wasn’t going to complain. Even though I REALLY wanted to.

Joo Can Haz No Mana! Die Now Pl0x!

Imagine Naxx 25. Most of us have done it/despise it/love it. I was in a run with Dark Guard, another guild that houses many of my WoW friends (Zephoes, who was a pet tank/healbot for a while, and Chestter,  who was in Rising Phoenix with me, both of whom I have known for over a year, Chestter ).  We glide though with ease the first night, with my only complaint being they didn’t explain loot rules after the first boss I was there to kill (Loatheb) and passed up a chance to win an upgrade for my helm. But whatever, I’m sure I’ll be back–it was an accident and nothing more.  It wasn’t my ideal helm anyway, just an epic to replace a blue (achievement wut?)

Then we hit Thaddius. And someone mentions that Thaddius is the Achille’s Heel for Dark Guard. I’m thinking “We’ve all seen this boss before…Mechanar, hello?” And I’m sure there were other bosses like this.  And it’s easy: don’t be an idiot, move when your charge changes. Right? Right? …Wrong. The first time, healers just…didn’t heal their tanks. And a tank died. So we had to reset. The second time?

Let me put it this way: I thought Failbot was going to explode. The first time we made it to Thaddius, we lost about 6 dps within the first charge switch, from people who didn’t make the jump and didn’t know how to re-enter the fight to people who just couldn’t switch.

After a couple more attempts, we gave up and called it a night.  Because some people had failed many, many times. We’re talking double digits here. People, when your charge switches, the most important thing you can do is move. You do not finish casting/channeling your spell. You do not keep attacking to try to make the most of your CDs. You do not pass Go. You do not collect $200. Or I will cut your face off.

So  last night we went back. We ‘re on Thaddius, of course. Everything is going fine. We dps down the minions. We jump. I stand in the center. I realize that I blew through a decent amount of mana, so I think “Why not use Evocation? Then it’ll be ready for use later on!”

So I pop Evocation. The boss comes alive. I’m still Evocating.

In about 1.5 seconds, my screen flashes “AGGRO!” then BOOM 24351 damage hit. I’m dead. It’s not worth even mentioning the overkill.

I stared at my screen, dumbfounded. How could I possibly forget that Evocation causes more aggro than the Consecration + Taunt that the pally tank cast as soon as Thaddius came alive? How could I possibly think that Evocation, a spell that is already broken and easily interruptable, would actually allow me to successfully regain my mana? How could I possibly imagine Thaddius being so curteous and kind as to allow my pitiful clothie self a chance to even survive his glare?

Lesson Learned: Evocate before jumping so you don’t cause aggro and don’t suffer from the AoE and thus have no mana (and, therefore, no dps) or else you will die (and, therefore, have no dps).