Thursday, May 14, 2009

Black And White Indicators (B&WI)

Last night was Mirmiron. Best attempt was 2%/2%/2% in P4 - but that's not where I'm going.

Throughout raiding, there are wonderful/terrible fight mechanics that produce instant signs someone has or has not done something important. From more to less recent...

- Mirmiron's Missiles
- Mirmiron's Shock Blast
- Mirmiron's Laser Barrage
- Hodir's Flash Freeze
- KT's Void Zones
- Saphirion's Frost Bomb
- Thaddius's Charges
- Felmyst's Breath
- Eredar Twin's Conflag (Chaining it).
- Illidan's Shear
- Archimonde's Air Burst (Cratering).
- Lurker's Spout

All of these abilities spell instant death (or a clear debuff).

All of these abilities are 100% always avoidable with proper play.
No luck involved.
No passing off the blame to someone else.


If you haven't killed bosses on this list, or spent ungodly amounts of time on a listed boss, its most likely because of the above associated ability ability.

While there are dozens of abilities that require people to move out of things, run in a circle, or jump in place - the greater majority of them are not black and white. If you stand still on Hodir/Keristraza, you'll just take more and more damage. If you get hit by a lava wave in OS, your health only gradually goes down, and you can pop a HS / get healed. Short version: Most times you can heal through stupid.

Having things that can't be healed through is a good thing, despite where you think this may be going.

Without black and white indicators like the ones above, raid leaders can have a difficult time parsing through miscellaneous / "accidental" / "unlucky" (Oh how I hate that excuse/logic) deaths. What raid leaders do with the info gleaned from these mechanics, is a large part of how a guild is defined.

As an example...

LOKI was working on Mirmiron last night. The short version of the fight, is that you have three phases where he introduces some black/white indicators, along with other fun abilities - then uses them all together during the fourth phase, while requiring three sections of his body to be killed within ten seconds of each other.

When we started, we had people dying to B&WI. I started recording names, looking for trends, and making people knew they'd be held accountable. It was only about a half hour until we were solidly getting into phase four - people that knew they were under a microscope, and there were no excuses for the ways they were dying.

As the night went on, we pushed the mass-raid-failure back deeper and deeper into p4. We had some people who's occasional deaths in p1-3 flagged them as only moderately able to deal with the abilities that came in combination in p4 - and so they were sat. One veteran knew that they were having a rough time - and accepted their bench spot gracefully. Others (newer members) had to get pushed out the door. Our policy of having a set of players on standby let us quickly fill their spots.

What does your guild do?
Tolerance of occasional mistakes is one thing - and how far you go to train/teach/enlighten failing raid members is a defining quality of a guild. As far as holding on to people that consistently die - I'll quote the definition of insanity.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results. "

5 comments:

Darraxus said...

I agree, and unfortunately there are too many Raid and Guild Leaders who wont take people out who perform poorly. These Black and White indicators should help trim the fat. If they cant improve their play, they can go farm elementals or something. Shade of Aran was very much like this. Flame Wreath...DONT MOVE.

Bent said...

Your right in your statement

"What raid leaders do with the info gleaned from these mechanics, is a large part of how a guild is defined"

If you guild's raiding was always built around "don't die or sit," you shouldn't have much of a problem. However, if you guild used to raid more casually, or you have new members not use to being held accountable you can get drama.

I see many guilds spilt when the hit a "black and white" boss. Either the worse players leave or the better do.

I agree that people should be sat. Whether is it is skill, attention, or even lag. If they can't avoid the avoidable on that night, they are putting everyone else's time and repair gold at risk.

Once you "know" so and so is going to wipe the raid or seriously increase the odds or a wipe you HAVE to remove them from the attempt if you are a responsible Raid Leader. It is akin to stopping a friend from driving drunk on the interstate.

Crofe said...

My guild is currently facing this situation, although we're just now getting into it.

The fight is 25man Thaddius, and it was only our second night of tries on him. The guild leader (not the raid leader in this case) made the decision to give the dumb people a choice: Face up that they can't handle the polarity shift and stay on the ledges so they don't kill anyone, or keep blowing up the raid and get kicked. Two people stayed on the ledge (because of an ongoing lag issue that our guild is *very* accepting of) and we improved, getting him to 10% on our official "last attempt". I'm hoping we can get him down next week.

7echno7im said...

Hey Yakra, it's Tsuyo. Just wanted to stop by and say congrats on your accomplishments and your blogs are still awesome. Heading out to Japan this week. I'll be sure and post some pics in the loki forums. Hope all is well with you and Aert, I am sure they are. Tell everyone I said what's up.

Unknown said...

Crofe - Sounds like your moving in the right direction. The only issue with Thaddius, is that you have the dps requirement / enrage timer to worry about. Sit too many people (without replacing) - and you'll still get hung up. Keep us posted on how he goes this comming week.

Tsuyo - Great to hear from you! Looking forward to pictures. Any idea when/if you may be able to raid again?