Cracking a 25 man raid roster is not the easiest thing to do in the world, especially when it’s been set in stone for a while. Every now and then, a slot or two will open up which could allow any other player in the guild to fill it. They just have to be given the opportunity to step into it. Benching a raider is a strong message to deliver and it should only be used sparingly if that player’s performance is not up to par. On the other hand, it allows another person the chance to replace them. But when do you determine who gets to sit and who gets to go? Surely the following will help you shape your opinion.
Stories
Every Guild has their AFK stories. Every Guild has their horror wipe stories. These are all true stories, I guarantee you. They’ve been collected from friends and colleagues of mine as well as my personal experience.
We clearing to Kael and as we enter the room, one of our mages appeared to be quite fidgety. So he starts strafing left and right because the raid leaders is going over trash or something. Before you know it, the mage goes from the raid group to the middle of a kael trash group and promptly dies. Turns out his blink key was bound to his “f” key. I can say with absolute confidence that he no longer has blink bound to a key.
We’re doing Al’ar and it’s phase 1. It’s right after a flame quill and one of our tanks goes rushing up the platform to pick up Al’ar. He grabs him and oversteps the platform and falls off the edge. Goodbye Charlie.
FPS problems are a plague for some players because it drastically affects their ability to perform. During the Pre TBC era, there was a boss called Baron. He’s essentially like Solarian. Every now and then, a person gets a debuff and he explodes taking out people around him within a certain radius. There was this player who raided with about 3 FPS. Now at the time, it’s a 1 in 40 chance of who gets the debuff. Sure enough, he gets chosen. His bomb warning is processed too slow which leads to a slow reaction time which leads to him literally taking out half the raid. Does anyone believe in lightning striking twice? Yup, minutes later he gets debuffed again and blows up another half of the raid. The policy now was that this 1 player gets his OWN position without anyone around him. You can’t make this stuff. You just can’t.
There’s this Gruul’s run. The Guild’s in the ready position. Out of no where, this Paladin darts straight ahead right into Gruul. Over vent you hear cries of “WTF” and “OMG”! And then there was silence. The Paladin sheepishly says “Sorry guys, that was my kid on my lap and he was just smashing the keyboard!”
Players who alt tab back in the game when they hear “Shatter” over vent during Gruul.
There was this Gruul’s run. While the main tank was on High King, one of the Paladins DI’d the main tank! Naturally you can kind of guess what happened.
Opportunity
For the GM’s
There’s going to be players in Guild’s that display similar behavior or rationality like the ones I mentioned above. This is a GREAT time for you to try out that new guy in your Guild. You know, the one that joined a few days ago. He’s shown up on time and ready to go. He expects to get shot down but he waits outside the instance logged off in the event hes needed.
Give them that opportunity.
For the new guy
This is your chance to show of your ability and skills. Don’t squander it. If you’re ever unsure of anything, ask. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Work hard and you’ll get your shot soon enough. Turn over in Guilds can be low but they are by no means non-existent. There’s always a player that has to leave at some point and there are always going to be players to take their spot.
Here’s a brilliant example right here. Ryan Shannon is hockey player with the Canucks. He hasn’t fully transitioned to the big club. He’s usually on the farm team (minor leagues). Whenever there’s an injury on the Canucks or if there’s a hole in the lineup for some reason, players are called up from the farm team to help fill their positions. Sometimes, you just never know what they’re going to do. You just have to pray that they’re going to do their job and do it well.
In this case, Shannon not only does the job well, he looks good doing it. Remember, minor leaguer called up to play in the big leagues.
By the way, I know I can’t be the only raider with some stories to share. I’d love to hear your funniest wipes (or most stupidest). So how about it GMW, Karthis, Phaelia, or Galadria?
Baron in MC
Early on when we were fairly new. I am healing, Zej is the MT.
*Zej Dies*
Razorbax Battle Rezzing Zej.
Razorbax is the Bomb.
Zej Rezzed.
*Zej Dies*
And one more for same Boss. New Mage in the Guild.
Gets whisper from Boss Mod, “You are the Bomb”
Says in TS “Yeah baby, I am da Bomb”
Boom
Half the raid down.
I won’t mention the time I stood a bit far back and pulled a pather, even though we killed the boss but the last person died on the pather and we had respawns while rushing back to get the loot before it despawned…..
I’ve still yet to do a real raid, but I’ve been in five-mans where we’ll forget somebody is AFK and start a boss or something, and then spectacularly wipe.
Oh, oh, me!
Prince attempt. Tank’s in position, DPS and healers standing by in a group. Tank rifle-pulls Prince, Prince is charging in!
Mage pops Ice Barrier.
Prince swerves around like Chris Neil spotting a small defenseman and promptly two-shots the mage. Then one of the rogues attacks him and, uh, frontal arc, so he gets parried…
Much panic, grinding of teeth and/or hysterical laughter ensues as he proceeds to mow the rest of us down.
@Llanion
Funny story! Our guild had something similar happen when we first started doing Prince. Since we had a lot less +healing back then, this priest we had used to toss a PW:Shield on the tank prior to the pull to give us a tiny bit more time to get into position before we start laying down the heals.
Our priest happened to be especially laggy this night, so by the time he cast his PW:S, the tank had already fired his weapon to pull Prince. Like you said, Prince looked as nimble as Allen Iverson taking our tank to the hole when he ran straight past the warrior and 1 shot Mr. Lag.
Needless to say, we all were laughing and having a good time about it on Vent.
Last night on Al’ar, right after Flame Quill we had our 3rd tank fall off the platform, and never make it to Position 2. So the tank at position 4 kept running over, a pally healer stuck with him and the two of them tanked the boss while the rest of the raid sprinted to the door to get out of the instance.
We got about 9 people outside without dying, the rest of us died firey deaths and the tank who fell off the platform had a nice story to tell the kids, as he was the FIRST ONE out the door…
Our tanks have a terribly bad habit of dying on Phase 1 of Al’ar. It gets annoying sometimes.
I know I have my own horror stories to share, but I can’t think of any right now… 😛
Pre-BC when Scholomance was still a difficult, 20-man instance, my guild was standing outside one of the final rooms with the buttload of skeletons that Paladins always used to pad their showing on the damage meters. I was drinking a cosmopolitan and accidentally knocked it over. I jumped up from my desk, hitting my keyboard tray with my hip and causing it to slide back into my desk, thus pressing the NumLock key and autorunning into the room. Alone. But my raid didn’t stay alone for long. ^_^
I’ll have you know that I DI’d Lang to make the wipe go faster…
Dumbass dps who die in the first 15 seconds ruining the attempt.
The movie was really impressive Matt. He handled it very well, and was extremely composed when that fella smacked him in the back of the head, he even yelled and punched the air to help it sink in to the keeper… haha gold
One time, while learning Maexxna in Naxx, we were getting her to the last phase where she goes apeshit for the last 20 or 30% of her life, and the tank has to shield wall to survive the damage during the webbing.
We were still running into a second webbing during the enrage, so our plan was to have one of our pallies get soulstoned and DI one of the other healers. Both would then be free to heal the tank during the webbing.
Except the pally DIed the MT.
He hasn’t lived it down yet.
I’m looking for the screenshots of this incident back in the day, when we were attempting Vael and I can’t find it!
But basically some tard let his girlfriend play for him while he made a beer run or something, and she aggro’d vael and wiped us all.
I was an officer at the time and bitched him out, not knowing it was his gf, then he came back, yelled at me for being mean to her. Then I /gkicked him 😉
I have lots of raid stories (including our shadow priest who thought Maiden wouldn’t aggro until we attacked) but the funniest story was back Pre TBC when we were doing a DM Tribute run.
One of my guildies had bet me a long time before that I wouldn’t DI him (a rogue) so I decided to do just that. He went and pp’d the key right there near the front of the place and I DI’d him not realizing he had been seen and pulled a group of ogres. So here my group is 1 tank and 2 dps with no healer and a rogue DI’d and laughing too hard to talk over Vent.
Come to find out DI’ing the rogue was a good thing, he decided to break DI and help the guys out but when you die and zone back into DM, you lose the key you worked so hard to pp and have to reset the instance to get it again.
About this same time my husband was playing horde side and having his first experiences in MC and just like in Razor’s story thought that “being the bomb” was a good thing. I laughed until I cried when I saw what he had done.
So we’re burning through Prince. It’s phase 1, so he’s doing his enfeebles and shadow novas. Our shadow priest pulls aggro for a split second. A split second in which Prince takes two steps toward the priest, enfeebles, and is reaggroed onto the mt, who is himself enfeebled. Needless to say, the priest has paid a lot more attention to the threat meters ever since…
Not so much horror as amusing (atleast it was at the time)
The place: AQ20
The Boss: Giant Earwig (aka Kurinnaxx)
Earwig on 5% tanks go down, most dps/heals start dps like crazy, rest sprint for exit. People dropping like flies, boss decides to take down sprinters first.
Down to 1% raiders down to a Moonkin and a pally (myself). Moonkin attempting to kite gets taken down, me sprint for exit only to be teleported back to boss. Do the thing pallys do best, Bubble and in my hamfisted attempt to hit my heartstone manage to hit Hammer of Wrath, close eye await death *bam*, silence in Vent. Open a eye see suprised looking boss curl up and die.
we decided to call it after highking mulgar and i decided to pull on of the adds going twards gruul just for fun kk so i get a holy fire goin it ges of bam just standing there
i keep dpsing eventualy goes down i had to use soo many mana pots and wand for about 40% i continued this and decided it was going to happen with gruul now first i holy fire to my amazement grull just chellen there stoming his foot now the rock falls came they did hurt but i got out of them okay i got him down to 13% myself then a gm contacted me telling my that i was hacing or some shit and boom gruul down to 8% dc BANED