Thursday 12 February 2009

Mistakes Happen

Nobody's perfect!

Right, now that the shock is out of your system let me put some perspective on this possible statement of the bleeding obvious.

Behind every tank, healer and dps character in your raid is a human being hopefully trying their best to complete the encounter, and because they are a human being occasionally they might make the odd mistake or two.

This in itself is not a problem but the key thing is to learn from it. There's nothing more frustrating than wiping on a boss because someone keeps standing in the fire, however this doesn't mean you can call them out on it unless you are 150% certain they are just carrying on with what fails without trying something else.

Conversely if you do make a mistake and realize it, nothing helps appease your raid members than admitting it and apologizing. Trying to make out it's not your fault or it was some random bug can have the complete opposite effect and set up resentment within the raid group, leading to more mistakes and a less pleasant night's raiding all round.

A couple of examples of the positive from our recent raids include:
The MT on Patchwerk successfully picks him up but forgets just how much damage the slime in that room does and proceeds to try and tank whilst standing in it. Within seconds all the melee and the OT are dead but whilst running back the apology allowed us to laugh about it and the next time the boss dies.

Whilst clearing trash I got a bit keen and failed to notice that Tricks of the Trade hadn't been cast on the MT properly. As I opened up with some big damage moves I quickly pulled aggro and died at the hands of the big nasty spider. Whilst the MT was trying to apologize for letting me die (assuming he'd made the mistake) I owned up. While this may have helped my Karma, it also kept confidence high with the tank knowing they had been doing everything right whilst learning the new raid zone.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post.

I appreciate someone who can front up and say, "Hey, sorry, I didn't see it".

It only becomes a problem when it's the seventh wipe and they're still standing in it :P.

miss elf
http://misself.wordpress.com

Rakhman said...

A negative example would be once when the tank pulled and was positioning the boss, meanwhile the warlock loaded it up with DOTs and it inevitably broke free and ran over and squashed the lock. When the raid was reminded to hold back a bit to let the tank build aggro, the lock's response was "but those DOTs I put up would have only ticked once, doing only a small bit of damage, I can't see how I can hold back any more!".

At which point the raid leader asked if the lock could possibly consider waiting before casting their DOTs. As the tank wasn't actually doing any damage whatsoever while positioning the boss (our tanks are special). The lock then repeated that they couldn't do anything, which only further cemeted their reputation as an overaggroing pillock.

Rakhman said...

The same player recently expressed their opinion that its the "tank's job to generate threat" and if the "tank doesn't out-threat me its their fault and they aren't doing their job". Now that's fine and dandy in the long run, but right at the start of the fight stuff can go wrong and splat! you're dead and the raid is mercilessly mocking you for pulling aggro again.

Of course not everyone has time to run heroics every day, and some people will have differing gear levels. It is intolerant to say I won't make any allowance for your difference of gear to mine and not frankly an attitude which is likely to make you friends. We've concluded that sort of thing may work in a hardcore nutter environment and pressure people to work harder, but our guild is not work, so it doesn't really fit in.

Sadly said player is stuck with us, and us with them, so we will have to bring them round to our relaxed way. Or kill them on every pull.

Anonymous said...

i love the use of the worde "whilst" in this post...