The following is a guest post by Briolante, one of Conquest’s main tanks, also sometimes known as Mr. Sydera. Brio is normally a man (ahem, night elf) of few words, but here he waxes poetic on what it means to be leet. We’ve all wondered this, right, as we struggle to define what makes a good player both for ourselves and for our guilds. Enjoy!
Montaigne’s meditation on glory states: “there is the name and the thing.” The same could be said about leetness, which is what passes for glory in the World of Warcraft. We all know the name. We all sometimes sprinkle the word in our conversations and boasting. We may even think we know what the thing is that our words refer to. However, we’re usually wrong. After a ridiculous night of stupid trash mishaps in Naxx, I heard that word thrown about in a context that puzzled me, and I began to wonder what it really means to be an elite player.
Leet or sloppy?
Any raiding team has had off nights, nights where the focus, drive, and attention to detail just aren’t there. Sometimes we even intentionally (gasp) horse around to have a little fun when the content is as stale as the current raid content has become for many of us. The other night in Naxx, we had all manner of bedlam happening around us. Tanks weren’t paying attention to patrols and pulling extra mobs, DPS was opening up AOE before the tanks had even arrived at the scene, and on and on. And guess which green-haired night elf was up there helping cause the problems? Yeah, that was me. Who was left to sort out this mess? The healers, of course, who were usually able to keep enough of us up to get through the pull. It was after pulls like this that some of us bandied about the world leet. But, is this really leet? No, it’s sloppy, it’s lol-1337. But sometimes players fall into the trap of thinking they’re so good that being able to survive the biggest SNAFU confirms the group’s collective leetness.
Early in the Wrath leveling process, I pugged a Nexus run with a group made up of four other players from a guild whose name I have since forgotten. When the priest and druid couldn’t figure out who was going to heal, I started to worry. When two of them decided they were going to jump off the platforms and die below for shits and giggles, I knew it was going to be a long evening. Over the course of our 2.5 hours together (yes I stayed), each one of them committed suicide at least 4 separate times. When we were actually fighting mobs, they died constantly because they weren’t paying attention. Most of the boss kills were lol-kills with one or no players left alive at the end. Any of my guildies who were on that night will remember how pissed off I was in guild chat. I’m usually pretty Zen in my virtual life, but those two just made me lose it. But do you know what? The members of this other guild I was playing with were proud that they could always pull it out, no matter how sloppy. They even described this as their guild ethos. This style of play, in their mind, confirmed their leetness. I could not disagree more.
Leetness is a state of mind
What might the thing called leetness be then? In my mind, the best example of leetness would be the old ZA bear run. Depending on your gear level, earning a bear required near perfect execution and play. Each player had to know every pull and what his/her role in those pulls was. Of course, as we got better, people could make mistakes and we could adjust. But in the early days, it really required minimal mishaps. Is that leetness? I can say that for me, nothing was more pleasurable from a raid leading perspective than those bear runs. When everyone comes together, experiences the synergy, and executes an encounter well, it feels good and everyone knows it.
I might say then that leetness is a state of mind and a precision of execution. In raiding anyway, this is not something that just one person can have, because the whole team has to be there mentally. Conquest’s recent three-drake kill is proof that we have the potential for that state of mind and that precision of execution. But have we suddenly become “leet”?
The importance of execution
One of my biggest disappointments in my former guild from a raid management and leadership perspective was that we only managed to get Illidan down once before the pre-Wrath nerf. The intial kill wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but he was definitely defeated. In the few weeks after that kill, we were never able to get it down again. We got close, but never quite hit that same focus and precision again. It was as if we had accomplished something once and that was enough. People just didn’t care anymore. I asked myself, had we really proved our leetness once and for all by defeating Illidan?
The answer to both of those questions, I would argue, is no. Execution is important at every stage of the game, on progression and farm content alike. Leetness is not something that can be earned definitively. It’s not something that can be possessed, like the many titles that now commodify it for all to see. Leetness is something that we demonstrate, each time we raid. It’s a state of mind and play that we arrive at together, maybe not all the time, but most of the time. It’s our intention, our goal.
Leetness and teamwork
So Brio, you might ask, I top the dps/healing/threat charts. My dps is world ranked! Am I not leet? My answer would be no. From a raiding perspective, leetness is not something that just one person can earn. Raiding is about team play, period. While worrying about topping the meters or beating someone else in your class can sometimes force you to improve yourself, taken to extremes it becomes a hollow form of narcissism. Yes, you topped the meter, but did you get out of the fire? Or, on the contrary, did you overtax the healers who needed to be focusing on the tank? Yes, you topped the healing meter, but did you do your job and do it to the best of your ability? Did you try to “cover” for other people in order to eke out more effective heals? Yes, you did 3000 tps, but did you properly manage your buffs/debuffs in order to make yourself as easy to heal as possible?
As I see it, excellence in raiding difficult content cannot be about egos and winning personal performance meters. You have to do your job first and foremost. On three-drake Sarth, some players didn’t get the message until we obsessively repeated that a player’s first priority is to get out of the void zones. The second priority is to not get hit by the fire walls. The third priority is to dps/heal/etc. As one of the officers in my former guild liked to say, the dead don’t dps.
Raiding is about synergy and teamwork. Difficult content demands it. Difficult content cannot be completed without it. When the desire is there, when the focus is there, when the precise execution is there, when everyone does his/her job, the kill is, quite simply, beautiful. A well-executed kill is breathtaking to watch and experience. This is why sometimes the leet kill isn’t necessarily the first one, but rather the one where the kill looks effortless, like simplicity itself. We’ve all felt this, whether in 5-man dungeons or in 25-man hard mode raids. When Conquest finally downed Sarth 3D after many wipes, we found this state of mind and executed the fight almost flawlessly. Does that mean we’re now leet?
No. Leetness is not something you earn once and for all. It’s something that you work for, every raid, week in, and week out. It starts with desire and then requires the trust that the rest of your team is there to do the same thing.
Can we be leet in the current content?
Naxx is ridiculously easy. You don’t need to mark, you don’t need to CC, and yes, you can slop your way through there, survive, and still get it all done in under three hours. But that’s not leet, that’s lol-1337. Running in with an immediate seed, blade flurry, arcane explosion, hurricane, whirlwind, or whatever and pulling everything on yourself and the healers is not leet, it’s lol-1337. Pulling 18 mobs at once, allowing 10 players to die, and still managing to kill them all is not leet, it’s lol-1337 (and yes, that one was my fault–sorry).
Playing sloppy can be fun, loose, relaxed. Sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered after some really hard work on a difficult encounter. Even I can’t help myself from laughing when a hunter misdirects the next pull onto the resto shammy. But make no mistake, that’s not leet, that’s Leroy Jenkins.
Leetness is focus, precision, synergy, teamwork, execution, and above all else, control. It’s an individual and collective intention, something that we arrive at together with varying degrees of frequency. Due to the easiness of the current content, we’ve forgotten what some of those things are. Let me ask a scandalous question – do our dps players even have their crowd control abilities on the main bars anymore? This is symptomatic of the problem. But if all blue indications hold true, Ulduar will be a different story. Thank heavens, because I was getting frustrated with just how forgiving many of these encounters are, including the trash. I raid for the challenge and for the beauty that results when a team of players meets that challenge with precision. Does that turn the beautiful, effortless kill into a work of art? Maybe, but perhaps that should be the subject for another post.
To return to the matter at hand, dear readers, after this long rant, do you still think you’re so leet? Then show your guild mates how truly leet you are by executing every fight like you mean it.
An absolutely stellar post!
Well thought out, well executed, like a raid should be. Thank you very much for putting this up. It was a refreshing read that resonated with what I’ve been feeling for some time now.
~Akk
I AM biased, but I really liked this post too. I think Blizzard realizes the temptation to raid sloppy in farm content. The Immortal and Undying achievements both recognize and reward a high level of focus on the old stuff. Man, I wish there had been an equivalent for Karazhan.
Can we be l33t in the current content? I think so. Like you said it’s a state of mind. It doesn’t come to it’s full right in easy fights, but it’s still there.
Usually I seek to train my abilities regardless of the run or group. Not all content may require this, but it’s the only way to properly prepare for tougher fights. Training this is more important than 10 itemlevel points.
Also, I found some (fun) training techniques:
– PUGs: the awesome collection of lower geared players and the occasional idiot make an excellent training ground for healers. Healing a newly dinged druid tank through VH Hc, or DK through Nexus, really require you to be on your best.
– Lowering the amount of healers: 2 healer Naxx is quite a challenge, even for experienced healers.
– Lowering your gear: yeah.. sounds terrible but I’m really considering dusting off one of my awesome looking TBC armor sets and have a “themed” run. Let’s see if we can still perform so nicely with half resources.
– And last but not least… in TBC I cooperated with a new raiding guild that just started Kara. Why? Problems that cannot be solved with gear become problems once more and you reacquire a group with a focussed team spirit. You can play your role to your best, again.
I think training is very different depending on your role. Healers require more ‘trouble’ to train their healing reflexes. I have no clue how tanks could train best.
Excellent post, and I couldn’t agree more.
In my mind, “leet” corresponds to what musicians would call ‘tight.” When a set is “tight,” the group is in a groove together, playing at the top of their ability and almost telepathic in their connection to the other band members.
I play with a talented group in a small guild – we don’t get to those 25-player heroics very often, but when we are ‘on’, in 10-player or heroics, it’s like sparks fly.
I think the “leetest” moment I’ve had in WOW was a heroic Blood Furnace run with some of this group – not even a raid. We lost 2 dps in a pull that went bad and were suddenly facing seven mobs in the gauntlet with three players up.
And it was awesome – our hunter FD, MDed, trapped his heart out. Our tank somehow kept taunting and slamming. And I flipped from healing to cycloning mobs off the hunter til the tank got aggro back . . . and we did it. We just hit every ability perfectly and coordinated as a group perfectly when things were happening too fast to even talk. It was the most tremendous rush, and an experience I’m still proud of – even if I can’t explain it to anyone outside WOW.
And trying to recreate that moment of pure expertise – that’s what I’m striving for every time I step into an instance, raid or not.
And that’s my pursuit of leet.
The Pursuit of L33tness. Didja know Will Smith’s starring in that one as well? ^^
Applause for Brio’s debut post!
Leetness is such an over used term nowadays. It probably means alot more in single player games or Quake Type FPS games then anything but its has joined our everyday language now.
Leetness in a group game is more about what you can accomplish as a whole
3D Sarth right now is too me a great accomplishment and a baseline for what a quality guild can do
After a troubling PUG on Friday night that lead to me not logging back in for the entire weekend, this post was an excellent tonic. I live for the instances that the group can dial in and tighten up. Wipes should be viewed as learning exercises, but when they are not, things get ugly very, very, fast. My progression is pretty slow, on purpose, as pugging to learn is not a path that works.
Thanks for the reminder that leetness is about execution and quality of the encounter, not about pew pew and quantity.
Haha, you wouldn’t have had to tell me you were a tank, I’d have just known.
It seems that it is only among us tank folks that we attribute greatness (leet-ness) with execution and most importantly, order. You’ll see among dpsers and often healers as well that being able to survive chaos is some kind of achievement. (…and creating additional chaos to survive :/ ) As tanks, our goal is to always take that chaos and create order.
Greatness is about creating order as fast as possible. You’ll know a great tank when you have a boring as hell run. So, what you’re saying here really resonates with me, but it’s not going to work for everyone b/c I think it has A LOT to do with what role you play in a raid.
Veneretios last blog post..At least, 41% of Tanks aren’t Heroic Striking enough.
Good Post!! Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Agronas last blog post..Rogues owed DPS!
@ Sydera:
You took the words right out of my post, lol. Achievements are the new progression standard now in Wrath. If you have Immortal title…that says everything about discipline and focus needed to master the content…not just get through it with a 50g repair bill.
If you have the 310% speed black proto-drake….everyone knows you have Mastered Heroic Raid Hero.
Progression guilds today base their worth on these achievements because the content has now been on farm for a couple of months now.
Great Post!!
This story hits close to home. We are the one of the highest ranked guilds on the server and yet I wouldn’t say we are 1337. Hell, we haven’t even been able to get the Heigan dance achievement. If it wasn’t for the server as a whole being underpopulated and no one taking PVE seriously we would be just another middle of the road guild.
Also, that Illidan story hits close to home. The guild downed 3 drakes (both 10 and 25 man) but every week since the first week it happened our attempts have gotten progressively worse. It’s just so easy to get discouraged after a few wipes and just say forget it, lets do the 2 drakes and get this over with.
The real question is “How”. How do we become teh 1337n355? I heard a rumor that if you died to a void zone in Death and Taxes (BlackrockUS-H) that you were instantly gkicked… guess thats one way to filter out the not-so-leets.
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and the kind comments!
@Matt — Hmm, not entirely sure if I’d want to see that movie.
@Zust — Totally agree, bad pugs are a great way to practice reactions and skills for all roles, including tanks. I think the reason why I stuck around in that bad pug was to get practice with the new tanking mechanics when I didn’t outgear the instance. Good gear can hide and compensate for sloppy play.
@Vene, Lol, I guess to be a tank is to be boring; we like our runs orderly and entirely uninteresting. 😛
@Cringer, your Death and Taxes story leaves me cringing too, I think that’s too 1337 even for my shorts. If we didn’t make mistakes, how would we learn?
Bravo!
The pursuit of leetness has never been some eloquently placed outside the realm of personal ego and into group accomplishment.
Encore!
Jays last blog post..Importance of consent in World Events
I actually just an experience similar…went to run H-UP with a bunch of guildies so I could get my final elder for the title.
It consisted of me (holy priest), an undergeared druid tank (used to healing on his holy priest and on the druid as well), an undergeared hunter, and two warriors who are usually tanks but were in a dps role for the time being.
Went down the Skadi gauntlet…somehow all the adds from the side room at the end didn’t get killed in time when Skadi came down and attacked, and were attacking me…one of the dps warriors kills them but gets low on health and takes a Skadi whirlwind and goes down, then I run run as fast as I can but take a Skadi whirlwind and go down. Druid continues tanking until Skadi is whirlwinding at people again, pops out and BR me, then the other dps warrior charges Skadi at just the wrong time before he whirlwinds again and dies…another lucky whirlwind and the druid pops out and innervates me just as I’m out of mana and all of my abilities, and he and I and the hunter manage to down Skadi. Crazy stuff.
Brio I would seed b4 you had aggro any day.
<3
Excellent post, 100% correct. There are days when you go in and execute everything perfectly, but no one says anything about being leet because they are all 100% focused on the task at hand. It’s when you get some nubs and they make things difficult that you hear the word ‘leet’ after finishing a boss with one person left, etc.
Good read and a good eye opener for people reading it too, very true post.
Great post! Now I really wish I had experienced some raid pride… but there is plenty of time for our guild to grow up to the big league.
Copra
Copras last blog post..Guildhoppers, DIE!
I’d say l33t is when you do the stupid stuff but still nobody dies. As long as people die they are just unskilled and/or stupid
Excellent post, and a very timely reminder to my guild at this time. Thank you. I’m borrowing a quote for my forum sig.
Atris, GM of Don’t Panic on Alleria