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The Psychology of Raiding - LONG -
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Post by
MrFredII
Recently I was on line when one of my guildies popped up in vent and announced that he had slots for 5 us to join a 25 man for TK. As I've mentioned my guild is not yet able to reliably field a 25 man raid but many of our members have T5 experience. We are a "casual raiding guild" that farms Kara is in ZA and working on building enough raiders to start the 25 man progression.
I was a prolific raider pre-BC, raiding 4 or 5 nights a week and 4pm-whenever on Saturdays. Usually on Sundays we'd have a optional raid for fun, or help get people attuned. Due to a number or real life and in game issues, I was only able to raid occasionally after BC came out and have only recently returned to raiding on a new server.
We join the raid. 5 from my guild. 3 or 4 random friends of the raid leader. The rest from his guild. We start out clearing trash. It goes ok. People die a bit. We get a bad pull and a poorly time patrol and wipe. But nothing terrible. The raid leader knows his business. Clear instructions. Continually prodding people to move and stay focused. Not a lot of background chatter. Vent kept pretty clear. We try to bypass some mobs and end up wiping. So we go back and clear them and the next batch. Once again people die a fair amount. But the raid doesn't wipe. There is some chatter. Some "helpful" (or maybe not) suggestions to various raid members by others. Soon we are at the boss. Probably 10 people in the raid have never seen this boss before. RL briefly explains the fight. We go. We wipe with the boss at 80%. Not surprising to me. After all 2/5ths of the raid have never seen this guy. Various raid members start digging at the people who died early "How come you died?" " This guy is cake". The raid leader shuts that all down. Explains what we did wrong and suggests how to correct the problem. We go again. Wipe with the boss at 62%. The invective from some quarters becomes more pointed. A couple of people who had mentioned before the attempt that they wold have to leave do so. We grab another friend of the RL and make an attempt and wipe with the boss at around 40%. Now there are many comments about how people can't understand why people are dying. And counter statements that the instructions done reflect what they are experiencing during the fight. One of the raid become unresponsive and 2 more (one from my guild) leave. We replace the 2 that left.
At this point one of my other guild members whispers me "These guys are a**holes. I'm thinking of leaving". I'm shocked. First I'm have a great time. I'm focused on learning this fight and understanding how to time my casts and movements etc. Plus I've been lasting longer in each fight so I have clear evidence that we and I are doing better. I reply with something like "I'm enjoying this and besides we'll have a shot at some sweet gear if we drop this guy". My guildie, a RL friend, replys "maybe you should stay". I reply "well I have time for one or two more attempts". He replies "No maybe you should stay if you like them so much". Meaning I should change guilds. BTW he is a council member and the guy who invited me to the guild. Now I'm floored. He's only been a casual raider. Though he's raided more post BC than I have, I have hundreds of hours more raiding time than he does. What we are going through is the classic raid learning pattern. In a sense we are very lucky to have the opportunity for a group of our guild to experience this as a team. But I know that he isn't having a good time. He's upset with the chatter that seems normal to me. When you play with 20+ other people whether all from a guild or in a mix you get 20+ personalities. The raid leader, who is no shy guy, keeps order, but he also corrects and chews out
his guild members
for errors and what I take to be reoccurring issues with their play. Maybe his style is a little rough, but he knows his job and seems to do it pretty well.
We try with 24 because the unresponsive player is in the instance and we can't replace him. We wipe with the boss at 14%. We lose a player and the 25th guy DCs. We replace both of them and on the last try of the night we down the boss. No T5 tokens drop for me but I get to roll (poorly) on a sweet helm. My friend gets to roll (also poorly) on a T5 token.
For me a great evening. Yeah things could have gone smoother and we might have dropped the boss sooner and tried a 2nd, but still a reasonably well organized raid that did succeed, and the chance to learn the pulls and a new boss fight. That's what raiding is about.
For my friend (I suspect because I did not have a chance to chat with him yet), not so good a time. The long story and the background was to get to this point. My friend who is obsessed with the game and currently plays at least 40 hours a week and works full time, does not have a raider's psychology. As people got frustrated he took offense, while I know from long experience that when things get rocky some people get frustrated and talk a little trash. As long as the RL keeps it under control it doesn't bother me. In this case the trash was not directed at any individual. I understand that means (usually) that the trash talkers are venting not really trashing anyone. More than once pre-BC I've come out of long difficult (losing) boss fights and had people specifically ask me why I wasn't doing my job. Usually I reply with something like "I'm trying to follow the strat, but I'm always trying to get better. If you want to make time to help me learn how to do this I'm always ready to learn". I am 100% serious about this. But in every case where players would start to scapegoat a player, no matter who is the subject, the raid leader would say "Enough. This is a group effort. Its no single persons fault."
When I think about it the self destruction of the three guilds that I was in prior to this one were all due to arguments erupting over raid trash talk. A couple of the people involved in one of those debacles, were in this raid. When the trash talk started, the raid leader kept control. Tamped it down and got us back to raiding, before things got out of hand.
So raiding is more than having enough geared players who show up. Its more than knowing the strats. Its also about herding people and dealing with their frustrations. It really is about psychology.
Post by
161859
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95537
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Post by
k0rr
ahh yes, pre-BC raiding did feel like a job. however pre-BC raids rewarded the serious raiders and filtered out all the non raiders. (running around BGs with your ashkandi 2 shotting clothies :D)
MC was often called molten snore, because after you acquire some bwl gear, MC was a cakewalk, trash could be done with 20-30 people. so people slacked. often leading to longer clears and frustration/fatigue.
however when you really started progressing (into AQ40, naxx), all 40 players literally had to be on the balls of their feet. if any of you have done fights like the 3 bugs in aq40 and the four horsemen in naxx you know what i mean.
all this coupled with the fact that we had *NO KTM/OMEN* pre-BC made everyone who took PvE seriously sit and read up indepthly on threat mechanics.
i think the lack of knowledge on how threat works and how raiding is a "group effort", are the two main reasons on why people fail in PvE. when one person is dying over and over from the same boss ability, the person just doesn't belong in a raid setting.
one final point, i think damage meters and the like really screw up peoples' mentality in raiding. everyone who plays as a dps class thinks "i must be #1 on the charts" and everyone who plays a healing class thinks "i must be #1 on the charts".
no. absolutely not. if you are a mage and you are asked to decurse, it is probably because the curse is something very major (i.e. 75% reduction to healing effects). the raid depends on you to decurse. dont do anything but decurse.
ultimately, any dps class has the chance to "top charts", when given the opportunity. you just have to know your opportunity and jump on it, but until then, do as your raid leader asks, even if you're a dps class and do 0 damage the whole fight, its for good reason.
same as when you're a holy paladin assigned to MT healing, you probably wont beat the priest who's raid healing aoe damage. so don't try. instead, focus on what your RL told you to do: whatever it takes to keep your MT alive.
once people acquire the mentality that they are part of a "team of 25 people" instead of a dps class in a 25 man raid. they will start being a bit more successful in PvE content. You can't do anything by yourself. you're a mere 4% of the raid. (and pre-BC, a mere 2.5%)
overall, raiding does require a certain mindset to be successful at.
in the most basic terms, you must do all you can to contribute towards the overall raid effort. if you can dispel, you may be asked to. if you can OT, you may be asked to, if you can CC, you may be asked to. do as you are told, as, in my experience, MOST raid leaders know exactly what they're talking about and the only reason for fails are simply people not listening.
this post coming from a long-time wow player and raider (warrior/priest pre-BC; druid/mage/warlock post-BC) who's been a guild class officer for druids, priests, and mages, and GM for a few months.
Post by
MrFredII
Now I'm not here to argue, but there is another side to this.
Often in SSC/TK pugs more experienced/geared players are dragged into the instance to help their friends.
They dont need any gear, and have obviously killed this boss easily (void reaver ofc) many times.
T6 repair for a plate wearer cost a lot... Wiping for no gain obviously causes frustration.
And for the record, if you are unable to learn strats prior to starting that pug by watching a video or reading it on wowhead, you have failed the first step to raiding, and you are absolutely entitled to being flamed by frustrated players who see you as a lazy man getting pushed through content by them.
In general I agree, however in this case the time between the invite and entering the instance was less than 5 minutes. Barely time to provision, check repairs, and gather pots. In the typical PUG I usually have 30+ minutes before things get off the ground. Plenty of time to study up on the strats. This was more like a joint guild effort where we brought enough to start the raid immediately, with little time for strat study.
Post by
Celdhyrean
@Korr : yes there were threatmeters. Not from the start of course and much less prevalent.
Re : bitching. People don't have the same level of experience and don't learn at the same pace. It's sometimes a bit sad (dying several times to whatever boss ability that you should have learned the first time, like Lurker's spout or Archimonde's airburst. The result is that of course people will bitch when things don't work well.
As long as they don't try to find a scapegoat and flame him in public it's not that bad and people should try to build at least a certain tolerance for it : raids won't progress if people don't recognize and point out their mistakes (the good thing being pointing out your own ones and not just the others). People should also take into account comments and advice (or even critiques) coming not only from the raid leader/officers/class officers but also from other raid members. Listen to what they say, think about it and act accordingly: it might be a good suggestion even if the person has no "authority", or a bad one (which you can then explain to them why), but listen to it and don't flame them back.
If it gets personal then it's bad.
And that's as MrFredll said is part of the raid leading role : keeping things working not only in terms of game techniques and strategy but also in terms of raiding ambience. People won't come if it isn't fun but won't come if there's no progress either.
You shouldn't stop all bitching and comments as long as they are constructive (else it's going to be tiring for everyone), but if it goes overboard you have to step in and calm things down. One good way to do that is to do the debrief yourself after each wipe, find out the errors and explain how to avoid them, so as to take the wind out of the sails of the bitchers.
Having a person you can trust amongst each of healers/tanks/melee dps and caster dps can help work things out too, as you can leave it to them to work out a solution with their colleagues once the mistake is pointed out.
That being said, after the Nth time someone runs away from the boss after taking agro/doesn't click the cube at the right time/dies in air burst/takes spout/breaks cc with wihirlwind-deep wound-... , i'd start calling out harshly too. There's a difference between learining curve and not learning from your mistakes.
And if people aren't ready to accept that, then indeed they won't find any fun in raiding.
Post by
166779
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Post by
k0rr
EDIT: berelain just summed up my whole post with less words.
and i would've gladly accepted a person like you in my guild
warning: huge wall of text
there just seems to be a lot of people who expect bosses to be downed as if they were heroics, without realizing that a lot of raid bosses require much more advanced tactics than simple heroic tank and spanks.
they need to understand that wipes are progress. god knows how many repair bills even a guild like nihilum suffers paying, but they are one of the top progressing guilds. why? they learn from each wipe. 1st wipe, boss is at 90%, they learn about something that happens in phase 2, they adjust, 2nd wipe, boss is down to 60%, the boss used an unexpected move and wiped the raid. again, they readjust their tactics and talk things out. now 3rd wipe, boss enraged at 10% and kills the raid. they learn of the enrage timer and look to speed things up. 4th attempt, boss is down, world first. it takes perseverence and a will to learn to be successful in PvE
as a former GM and raid leader, i try to address any and all issues through priv tells as to not single anyone out, but, i do expect certain things out of people like having a basic understanding of their role in a raid (not because im a %^&*!@ or anything but i declared my guild to be a progressive PvE guild, meaning, if you are a casual raider and are looking to just get some tier loot, you can find a place elsewhere. i believe that i've done a good job on my part of being fair, but when people are showing up to raids that arent the latest content without knowing the strats, it kind of strikes me cold, as if we're there to carry them through raids.
i believe theres guilds for every wow player. the casual raiders, the hardcore raiders, the arena folks, the heroic runners. i disbanded my guild due to time constraints on my part (many people dont realize how much a GM sacrifices in terms of time and effort), so hats off, seriously, to all GMs of successful raiding guilds.
i tried my best to recruit only experienced raiders, people who knew that they had to bring 110% to raids, but you know that usually fails. still, i take people who are willing to learn the fights and accept tips about their role and class under my wing, but if you dont show the dedication needed to progress, then i just can't keep you in my guild.
@Korr : yes there were threatmeters. Not from the start of course and much less prevalent.
yea, but the first threat meter i remember using was a very buggy and early version of KTM. it was released like a year before BC was coming out (which by that time my guild was already doing AQ40 so we all had a great understanding of threat already). and the early versions of KTM didnt take a lot of factors into account. things like wing buffet and stuff that dropped aggro didnt register properly in KTM, so i think that even if you had perfectly working threat meters, understanding threat mechanics is still the best thing you could do to help your guild progress. threat mechanics understanding is crucial to putting up high dps on sensitive boss fights.
all i can say for the people who dont have as much raiding experience as vanilla WoW raiders, just listen to your RL, he USUALLY knows what hes talking about, and if he doesnt, he doesnt deserve to be leading. thats not to say blindly follow his every command, as not all RLs have perfect understanding of every class and spec, so if he says something wrong, be human and talk things out. very rarely will you come across an omega guru of wow (though i try my best to learn about all classes and specs). many times having good class leaders who thoroughly understand every mechanic of their class can make or break a raid.
one of the best things about my pre-BC guild was just simply the people who were in it, they all didnt start out as nihilum-level pros, but we gave advice to one another, we rarely had flame wars, we helped our GM farm the eternium bars needed for his thunderfury, though the garr half never dropped =(, and we addressed the mistakes made in wipes and adjustments needed like human beings. if you're in a great environment with dedicated people who are raiding to see and experience the content, instead of just being loot %^&*!s, then you may be in good hands.
to me, raiding was the core of wow, i just wish they would bring those 40 mans back. 40 people screaming and shouting over vent was one of the best feelings ever because it takes HUGE amounts of effort from every individual to down a boss in AQ40 and naxx. it was very rewarding. the loot was just a bonus to me. i knew i would be rewarded for simply focusing and doing my job.
and to everyone who's struggling with BC raids who didnt play pre-BC. add 15 more people to your raid, imagine how hectic that could be. especially over loot. 15 more people moaning over deaths and repair bills, 15 more people rolling over loots (bosses pre-BC dropped 4-5 pieces of loot per kill). 15 more people who can wipe the raid by not listening, etc.
Post by
76158
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