Setting expectations: the difference between a great night and a shit night

I see quite a few raiders get burned out on wipe nights. I truly think this is a lack of understanding and possibly experience. Wipe nights for us are fun. (well, mostly at least  ) It seems many call a wipe night a failure and a boss kill a success when in fact both can easily be the inverse.

I loath comments like “hey whatever man.. we did great, see the boss is dead.” One does not mean the other in this case. Your team can be playing horribly on all levels and the boss still dies. This is not a win in my eyes but positive reinforcement to crappy game play that just bites you in the ass later.

Boss encounters are a series of mini-games that, when mastered, will result in a kill.

With the above methodology, wipe nights can be fun AND highly successful. When attacking such complex puzzles it makes sense to tackle each variable one at a time. It doesn’t make sense to say your goal for the pull is to kill the boss. It’s our job to break large complex encounters into smaller achievable goals. Lets take Beth’tilac for an example.

Beth’tilac mini goals:

1. Downstairs tank taunting spinners efficiently
2. Downstairs tank picking up drones and properly pointing him
3. Spiderlings DPS able to properly locate, call out, and slow them
4. Spiderlings DPS able to kill spiderlings and call for a drone move if they don’t in time
5. Collapsing back to a central point for group heals during transitions
6. Upstairs tank properly taunting down spinner and getting upstairs quickly
7. Upstairs tank properly rotating CDs waiting for healer/
8. Upstairs healer properly taunting (if poss) and getting up asap to keep tank up
9. Upstairs DPS taunting (if poss) and heading up 3rd in the rotation
10. All upstairs players properly timing the jump down for transitions
11. All upstairs players avoiding meteors and the holes they leave (derp)
12. RL properly assigning the best DPS to the best adds. This takes experimenting
13. P3 – making sure all spiderlings are dead before Beth comes down and absorbs them
14. Tanks properly alternating kiss CDs and not blowing each other up or raid
15. Properly timing a lust
16. Healers properly timing raid walls

You can see, for a 359 progression team attempting #2 boss in Firelands there are quite a lot of steps to complete before you see a kill and each one, when mastered, should be applauded as a success. When all 16 fall into line the boss dies. Expectations should be more realistic for a first night (depending on skill, gear, and goals)

“Ok guys, lets keep all the dps downstairs until we can succesfully get the spinners down and spiderlings down. The overall goal tonight is to solidify who’s class is best suited for what role and consistently see P3.”