Breakfast Topic: That little bit extra
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 21st 2010 at 8:00AM
You know what I'm talking about: you just see 1% wipe after 1% wipe and you don't know what else you can do to get over the edge. Do you need more DPS? Are the tanks dying? Are the healers going OOM, or people standing in stuff that's killing them? What's the important thing you're doing or not doing to get that last little bit of performance out and kill that big loot sack on legs in front of you? You tweak strats, and then tweak them back, you play with raid comp, you change positioning... sometimes you get that little click and it all falls into place and some times you don't, nothing seems to work. Whether it's a PuG wiping on Garfrost or a raid working on the Blood Queen, things don't always go our way.
So what do you do? Are you the 'stomach it out' type who won't leave until it's dead or someone else pulls the plug? Are you a tinkerer always coming up with new strats and new approaches? Are you the "this is what I read on Wowhead" guy? How do you move past failure to success?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Gamer am I Jan 21st 2010 8:06AM
Replace Wowhead with WoWWiki, and I am that guy. Anyways, since I mostly do 5-mans, where the strategies are not that complex, I usually just chalk wipes up to human error and go with the same strategy again. I usually go for the most careful, deliberate strategy, anyways, rather than a "heal and burn" strategy, so human error is usually what gets me, in which case practice makes perfect.
Knob Jan 21st 2010 9:31AM
Guild raid run? Stay till it's down or the raid-leader calls it. No point in throwing a fit because you're wiping on a progression boss. Just stick to what you're supposed to do.
Pug raid run? Stay till the raid-leader calls it. Putting a pug raid is a nightmare and I won't make it harder on the raid-leader by quitting just because we had a wipe. I will however leave if he/she acts like a retard or ninjas something to him or his friend.
Pug 5m dungeon? Leaving after a couple of wipes. If the group is capable of wiping consecutively on easy stuff like heroics, it means they're just bad and your time is better spent elsewhere.
Adoisin Jan 21st 2010 9:52AM
@ Knob
Come to my server. Please. We have pugs who leave because they die. Not because we wiped. Because they, in all their "super leet dps" glory, die. Because they can't dodge a void zone or move away from the fire. Or stand in front of a boss then whine when they get cleaved and the healer is too busy keeping the tanks (and smarter dps) alive. This isn't just one or two people on my server, this is the general attitude. If I wasn't in a guild with super people I'd transfer.
On topic:
When my guild gets the boss red lined and wipe, we discuss what happened. Usually it is just human error and we go back and finish. If something happens tho where we are doing this repeatedly, we take a break. Five minutes for people to watch a video, or look something up. Grab a drink and let the cobwebs clear, and come back to the situation with tempers cooled and attitudes refreshed. If that doesn't work, we either move on (if we can) or maybe call it for the time being. Usually a break works for whatever reason. We go back the next day, one shot it, and wonder what all the fuss was about.
Hoggersbud Jan 21st 2010 10:46AM
>If I wasn't in a guild with super people I'd transfer.<
Save your money, that attitude is everywhere.
juda Jan 21st 2010 8:12AM
pop blood lust and burn him down
Lemons Jan 21st 2010 8:11AM
Yea...I usually stay as long as I can on a boss. There's usually something that can be fixed. I try to watch and see what's happening around me and learn the source of the wipes. The only time I'll consider leaving is if the source of the wipes is that the raid is simply undergeared.
I also like coming up with my own strats too. In some past guilds the raid leaders have discounted my ideas and refused to even try them. Then I do the same instance with a different group of people and they use the exact strat I proposed and it works out awesome. I really don't see the harm in trying a new strat if you've already wiped 50 times with a certain strategy and you're expecting that it's going to somehow start working? Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
Reinhold Jan 21st 2010 9:42AM
I guess that... if life gives you Lemons, you put him in your Raid.
Jeff Jan 21st 2010 12:33PM
@Reinhold.. I see what you did there... you funny man!
hpavc Jan 21st 2010 8:15AM
Its truly remarkable the number of 1% wipes there are.
I think its human nature to cheer on when they get into the last percentages and goof up.
Steven Santerre Jan 21st 2010 10:09AM
I always shout down whoever is saying "Good job guys, we got this one" when the boss is still alive. Apparently they haven't seen a 1% wipe.
As for what my guild does, we usually do the first attempt blind, or with minimal research on the strats. Then we evaluate what happened, see if we can come up with a strat on our own. If too much is going on, and we don't understand the mechanics based on our logs, then we'll alt+tab out and look at vids.
Pam Jan 21st 2010 10:32AM
I think the funniest boss kill we had in recent memory was everyone but a single hunter was dead, and they got the last shot in that killed the boss. (Marrowgar)
In all intents and purposes, it was a 1% wipe, but somehow the dots and the last shot killed him....
(I give props to the healers tho, with all tanks down they kept enough people alive and even popped a few of their own dots before they died that contributed to the kill)
kvanje Jan 21st 2010 8:19AM
Generally, I'll stay and wipe until the raid is scheduled to finish. However, if some people just aren't getting it, seem distracted or for some other reason simply can't perform that night, I'll give up earlier.
I'll usually suggest strategy changes after a couple handfuls of wipes, when I'm sure that it isn't just someone screwing up their part (or if I think a different approach will give them less opportunity to fail, especially if it's myself :).
msh005 Jan 21st 2010 8:23AM
My guild wiped on Hardmode Anubrak at 1% 2 times in a row that knocked out first kill below 45 attempts.
Also danm near 5 wipes on Putridcide under 5%
Every signal times its a new boss around 20% I have to yell out on vent for people to stop talking at once and shut up and focus, and its not dead until your out of combat. But we still have those 1% wipes alot.
As the MT I sit there trying to watch everything at once and usually tweak strat. For example, a prot pally on the caster in the blood prince encounter makes it super easy.
WoWie Zowie Jan 21st 2010 8:35AM
why does paly make it easier?
Mortiseraphim Jan 21st 2010 9:27AM
@Wowie
If its a reference to the shadow prince; A crap ton more health to burn through if there is a goofup with the dark nuclei. Caster tanks just don't have the health pool if they aren't on the ball, or their DPS is just too valuable to lose to tanking a boss whose damage is inconsequential so long as his tank has the appropriate buffs through the duration of the fight. Also, my raid team usually goes into ICC25 with three tanks these days, so it would give that third tank something to do on that fight :)
WoWie Zowie Jan 21st 2010 2:44PM
i'm presenting some theory here so don't get mad. we killed blood council last night with a warrior tank on keleseth and he did fine. now, with that said:
i don't see the benefit of having a melee tank on keleseth due to the fact that health pools for the empowered shadow lance are negligible after getting dark nuclei stacks.
i do, however, see the benefit of having a ranged dps sit apart from the raid and aggro the dark nuclei at range, while building up threat on boss simultaneously.
i'm not saying melee tank can't do it here, but i AM saying there is more to take advantage of by reducing RNG for the keleseth tank.
between the 3 tanks there's probably at least one of you that has dual specced into dps. that's an assumption though.
STARF Jan 21st 2010 8:25AM
Its the way it goes sometimes. Even more frustrating than the boss getting lucky is people leaving a raid via the ninja-log.
Pam Jan 21st 2010 8:29AM
Our motto after a wipe below 10% is "You gave 100%, now give 10% more".
Darkseid Jan 21st 2010 8:34AM
I'm the read it on WoWWiki, read it wowhead, watch it on tankspot...then not say a word cause everyone else always knows everything anyway guy. Seriously, unless your tank or healz, no body really listens to your raid strats anyway. All they care about is that as dps, you know not to stand in fire. >_
Sky Jan 21st 2010 8:40AM
do you stand in the fire?