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Learning from experience
4/9/09 9:47am
(repost: originally posted on Exodus site in September 2008)
Bismarck, the famous German Chancellor and the father of German unification, once stated "Only fools learn from experience; I learn from others'." In my three or four Kara adventures with our group so far, I learned some lessons from my own experiences and I would like to provide you the luxury of learning from my experience (now what does that make me?!).
This article will be in two parts. The first part will detail a rather traumatic (and hopefully funny) narrative of one boss fight from last Saturday and the second part will list a few lessons I learned and would like to propose to everyone to be practiced in the future.. Therefore, if you are the rare type of person who does not like reading about someone else's pain and suffering and stupidity, skip the first part. :-)
Part 1: The Fool
Whatever I do, I like doing it well. This unfortunately also reflects on the times I mess up. I don't just mess up a little bit; I mess up spectacularly!
This is what happened last Saturday. I had signed up for Kara as a late night alternate in case someone dropped out and I was beginning to think that it wasn't going to happen when the party invitation window popped up. After a few seconds of hesitation it took for the meaning to sink in, I accepted it. I was going to Kara, Baby!
I fired up Vent, said hi and asked for a summon. When I tried to accept the summon, though, an ugly message told me that I had entered too many instances and could not enter another one. That was a rude shock as I didn't expect Blizz to spank me so badly for trying to farm some Honor Hold rep by repeatedly soloing the first Shattered Hand Legionaire in Shattered Halls. Told that this was a per-hour limit, I was somewhat soothed by our highly knowledgable leader. After another ten minutes or so, the second summon was successful and I joined the happily chattering group running in the halls towards Maiden of Virtue.
The next disorienting event occurred right as we reached the room. A mysterious blood curdling scream on Vent caused almost everyone to either go deaf temporarily or throw off the headphones. As we stood outside and discussed what might have happened, someone mentioned that unless we hurried, the trash mobs leading to the Maiden would begin respawning. (Clearly this wasn't the first Maiden fight of the night.) I was told to cast Blessing of Sacrifice on the tank as I usually do and we all ran into the room along the walls to get in position.
Before I was able to find an empty spot between the columns, I was horrified to hear the Maiden's battle call! Thinking that we were all in place, our tank had already charged in... My first error in the long chain to follow occurred at this moment. Instead of calmly finding the empty spot in the octagon room, I rushed into the circle. Furthermore, since I was at an already occupied spot, I didn't stop at the first step as I should've, but walked farther into the combat zone in order to put some distance between myself and the other party member in that section of the room.
The fight started out OK. I had Blessing of Sacrifice on the tank and was keeping a good eye on its timer while healing others. As the timer ticked down to the last few seconds, I moved my cursor over the Blessing of Sacrifice button and started clicking. The timer ran out and .... Repentance! The Maiden had managed to get her Repentance in between my clicks right after my first Sacrifice ran out, but before my second one took effect. I was incapacitated together with all the other healers and our tank was on his own.
Here came the second error: Did I call out this rather critical development? No, of course not. This was yet another blow to my already confused thinking processes and I kept "mum" while trying to figure out what I should do next. Calling out the obvious danger was not in the list that scrolled out. And once the tank went down, "Wipe out! Let me disengage and try to rez everyone." was to what the thought process collapsed. Thus I made the next stupid mistake. As soon as I was out of repentance, instead of beginning to Bless of Sacrifice and heal the off-tank, I backed up towards the wall.
This is the point that reminds me of Red Badge of Courage and all other similar stories. The single moment of decision that can decide between heroism or cowardice; success and failure.
Thankfully I was quickly brought out of this act of stupidity by our leader's call that I was out of sight between the pillars. (Good heavens! How does she see everything? How does she know everything? Alien implants? Pure and simple omniscience? Is it time to repent and sin no more? :-)) I immediately rushed back and ....died.
And here it comes! Wait for it... Wait for it.... Yep, you guessed it: I released. I was like a boxer up against the ropes for the whole round. There was no more thinking going on. Of course, I was surprised to find out that I couldn't get back into the instance - during the boss fight. Only after the complete wipe and everyone going in past me, my head cleared up enough to ask why I couldn't get in. Subsequently I did as I was told - like a good boy -, went back out again and came back in.
I wish the story ended at this point and everything was normal afterwards, but alas, my stupidity still had a coup de grace to deliver. Behind everyone else in the group, I rushed up the stairs, went down the corridor and came to a screeching halt in front of the Maiden. I was all alone!
When I asked the group (I was probably beginning to sound like a bleeting lamb by now), people told me that it wasn't worth trying the Maiden again. Aha. I had missed that they had moved onto the Opera. Furthermore, during this time the patrol in the hallway leading to the Maiden had respawned. One other detail that will become significant soon was that our leader said she would come get me. I started following the patrol from a distance and noticed that the first stationary group beside the door I needed to use had also respawned. I thought that maybe I could run it and ran along the far wall and swung around to the door.
What do you think? Of course, I aggroed them. With four elites spanking me in the rear as I rushed down the narrow hall, I turned the corner towards the opera and.... RAN SMACK INTO OUR RAID LEADER!
Just as we both swiftly died, her cry of anguish "Oh! You must be kidding." on vent made my face burn with embarrassment from ear to ear. She probably didn't target the words at me; in fact, she might not have even said anything out loud, but my feeling of shame was so intense by that time that my ears were ringing and my face was glowing red like a continuous air raid alarm. She had come to help me and my idiocy had gotten her killed.
That was it, though. I did not screw up anything else that evening and we downed the Crone before we called it a night. She didn't drop any of the healing gear that I needed, but I don't feel I deserved anything with that spectacularly foolish performance anyway.
All this stupidity should not go non-analyzed! :-)
Part 2: Bismarck
1) Warm up the new member! Whenever a member is added to a group in the middle of a raid or an instance, perform a few simple pulls with trash mobs just to warm that person up. Do NOT jump into the middle of a boss encounter. Especially if he is a healer or the tank. He might not be ready yet. Let him finish his fruit or ice cream. Allow some time to disassociate from the wife/husband or kids or Law And Order - Timbuktu. He needs some time and practice to get familiar with the order of toons on his healbot or GRID. Even ten minutes will integrate him into the group much better than going into a boss fight cold turkey.
2) Communicate, communicate, communicate! 'Nuff said. Let's move on to more detailed suggestions.
3) Repent immediately! During the fight with Maiden of Virtue, in order to handle the Repentance attack, one healer paladin repeatedly casts Blessing of Salvation on the tank. This takes some of the damage on the healer and brings him out of the incapacitance to continue to heal the tank. If the healer pally misses casting the Blessing and gets hit with repentance, he should IMMEDIATELY call out this event. In a situation like this, a pally tank can pop a bubble and ride out the 12 seconds of the repentance on the group.
4) Put out the healer! In the fight with Moroes, Baroness Dorothea Millstipe is the first target to kill due to her mana burn. All the healers in the group should be keeping a close eye on their mana until she goes down. If a healer becomes the target of the Baroness, he should immediately call for an innervate. This call has the possibility to make or break the fight. (If the group is not capable of innervate, they need to make sure Baroness never gets this spell off...)
5) Kiss and tell! Tell the group what the heck you are doing. If you are not in position yet, speak up. If you're lost, do tell. If you know the way, let them know. That will minimize the amount of members running around trying to help you, but get burned in the process because of your mistakes.
your faithful healer,
Bodur
Disclaimer: The events and characters in this story are purely fictional and fictitious. Any resemblances to real people (or WoW toons) are coincidental. The names are altered to protect the innocent - among these purely fictional people. The main character's appearance was modified to make him look even uglier than he already is and he will be locked up in Kara as a permanent trash mob in a later patch for Blizz's newly instituted Witless Protection Program. |
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