Normally I’d advocate fighting to the last man, but have you ever considered just throwing in the towel? Today’s post is inspired by Kregath’s topic on the Plusheal forums asking a tell-all of a question:
Have you ever been a bad Priest on purpose?
This got me thinking. What is the worse thing that a Priest can do?
The answer: they can not heal the raid and a wipe will happen as a result.
When working on a difficult boss that requires everyone alive, there may be attempts where you lose one or even two key players. Let’s assume for the moment that these key players are healers. They are the only ones tasked with the job of maintaining the raid. The other healers are too busy watching specific players.
As such, it would be difficult for your tank healers to transition over to raid healing because you’ve gone from 7 healers to 5. This increases the strain to the point where it becomes possible to lose a tank or lose the rest of the raid 1 by 1. With key players dead, the odds of a wipe continue to increase.
If you have an indecisive raid leader, why not force the wipe? You know in your hearts it can’t be done.
“But Matt”, I hear you say, “This goes against everything you have ever taught us!”
Rules are made only to be broken, young Padawan. If your leaders aren’t willing to accept defeat and try it again with a raid that’s all alive, then sometime a quiet nudge in the form of a wipe might be all that’s needed.
After all, wouldn’t you rather wipe at 95% then at 25% especially on a 10+ minute encounter?
Things to remember
- If you’re going to force a wipe, then you’ll want to do it discreetly.
- It’s best to be a healer with tenure so if you get called for it, you can play it off as an innocent mistake.
- Have an arsenal of excuses ready. With the Olympics on, Women’s Beach Volleyball is an excellent reason (I <3 Misty May).
Have I ever intentionally wiped a raid before? Nope. I’ve never had to, thankfully. I would definitely consider doing it if the circumstances were extremely dire enough. Although I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend doing this at all, your Guild may not be willing or perceptive enough to call a wipe even though it may be in their best interests.
On that note, what would Brian Boitano do?
Thankfully never had to, as our raid leaders are fairly quick about calling wipes. Then again, we did do a 13 min Supremus fight last week, which proves that sometimes it’s better just to hang on.
Avonars last blog post..Little Teapot
I do something simular, our healers are very stuborn and don’t stop healing when a wipe is called. I find its harder to keep me alive in caster form…;)
Razorbaxs last blog post..Expectations
I find it interesting at which point to call it. Being a Tank and knowing a boss and the damage it will do I know at times if we loose certain essential players early it Dosent look good to getting the boss down.
Then again though I have reagent as a Paladin to cast Devine Intervention if I had to I’m glad it not on any hot key either so I can’t ever remember to use it. Sometimes you may or you may not wipe, just depends on allot of things happening all at once I would say.
In ZA last week on Eagle boss we had a few new raiders in group learning fight. We had 3 Healers. One our best Priest, a new Holy Paladin and a new Resto Druid who was slightly undergeared who we too on raid because we had no other of our usual other Priests or Healers on. We wiped the first two times to people learning the fight. On the 3rd try for some reason we lost our Priest the senior and best geared healer early in the fight. We also loss a DPS on the boss around same time as the priest. I was Tanking the Eagle Boss and saw that and though dosent look too good and possible may wipe. Afterall we just wiped 2 times already with new folks in the raid.
The Priest even though was dead still called out movements on the boss to help as she usually always did. We downed the boss with the 2 remaining healers one as said before was new and the other Druid slightly undergeared, plus we had a DPS down. We didn’t wipe that time though it looked like we should have. I guess sometimes you just don’t know.
As the tank I thought about this after… We had our best healer down and given the 2 healers we had we still downed the boss. People seem to make less mistake knowing the healer was down. Why dunno, but that seemed to have happened as well. But what I really thought was this: what good practice it was for those 2 healers to heal the entire rest of fight when it really counted and all the pressure was now on their shoulders to help pull out a win. That’s learning experience for then. It helped no one gave up either.
Such may not always be the case especially in more complex raids as in 25 mans. But I guess sometime you just never know.
Almost without exception my attitude is: Never Quit. You should keep at it, fight on, and see what you can achieve.
My prot pally has downed bosses after everyone else has died, usually that happens when the boss is already really badly hurt, and its just the last 7%-5%. Thats a fight worth fighting. Last night a hunter took the boss from 5% to Dead solo, after we all died. Great job, and if we had a less gutsy group they would have called for a reset.
So when you quit: when it goes to shit so early that everyone is just kidding themselves.
eg. Karzhan – R&J fight: If your healers get killed before Romulo drops for the first time, you’re pooched. Anyone else not dying is just wasting everyone’s time.
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“our healers are very stuborn and don’t stop healing when a wipe is called”
As a healer, I will continue to heal even during a called raid wipe, until I’m certain everyone is close enough to the entrance so we can rez.
kyrileans last blog post..Level 70!!!
Oof, not sure I’d agree with that Ky. When a wipe is called, most of us have to run back anyway. Ergo, we stop healing to speed up the run back process. In fact, we even try to die by running into things like fires or getting within cleave range.
I’ve called a wipe when our raid leader wouldn’t. As MT, I just moved to a spot where I could be rezzed and sat down. I have only done this when it was very obvious it was a wipe and our raid leader didn’t realize how bad off we were. More often I ask if it is a wipe, if there’s doubt, and let the raid leader decide. In general, our raids are slow to recognize wipes and take too long to die and come back for another attempt, which is frustrating.
As a healer, not healing the tank would quickly accomplish the same thing.
Tankettes last blog post..ZA run and thoughts
I am with tankette, as MT I call the wipes. Its not over till the tank sits down and dies (how many times have I seen a kill with 1 paladin left standing, and not a tank :P).
Forcing the wipe can be bad, but sometimes its good, if its a long drawn out wipe just do it fast, res and try again, none of this lets fight till the enrage… because we might, if we get 12 more players make this a win!
I’m the Raid Leader/MT so I call out the wipes. If anyone else does, that’s one of the few things I’ll call someone out on. I’ll be honest, if a healer intentionally didn’t heal to force a wipe before I called it… well let’s just say they’d have a lot of trouble getting into the next raid.
It’s the Raid Leader’s job to call the wipe. No one else’s. Non-RL often don’t get that learning requires things to not always go as planned and that sometimes just b/c it looks like it’s not going according to plan doesn’t mean it’s not going according to the RL’s plan.
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Wow… This is one thing as a raid leader if I ever caught wind of I’d be pretty pissed about.
My 2 cents… If you wanna call the raid wipe… be the raid leader. Everyone in the raid has a specific job to do. The raid leader has his and the healers have thiers. Constructive Critisisim is valuable… AFTER THE WIPE.
One of us would have to find a new raid group if I was the raid leader where someone else intentionally decided that it was wipe time and caused the wipe as you described.
I believe I know a certain healer in the guild who did this last week on council…
When a wipe is called, yes stop healing and speed up the process of running back. As long as the wipe is not called do your very best to learn from the fight.
I guess you sort of have to trust your raid leaders to see when to call or when not to call. Though nudging them to communicate ‘Let’s learn as much as we can from this guys’ or something like it, can sometimes help 🙂
Just last night we had a bad pull and the raid leader called a wipe. I was tanking a mob and I sat down to die. After I died the OT picked up the mob and along with a few others wasted at least 2 minutes fighting a hopeless fight. Grrrrr.
Tankettes last blog post..Voidreaver, something different
I regularly have words with guildmembers who ‘give up’ when they perceive inevitable doom and I certainly plan to keep having them.
It’s not just the fact that most members invariably have a worse perspective on the health and viability of the raid than the raidleader or subleaders, and as such are far more liable to throw in the towel when a recovery is quite possible. I couldn’t even count on all my fingers and toes the number of great victories we’ve seen while some of our most awesome healers had been moaning in healerchat about ‘calling it already’ earlier in the fight.
No, it’s mainly the fact that learning most encounters, especially the very technical ones, is based on performing a number of tasks in exactly the right way and for most people mastery only comes from repetition. There will always be your brilliant members that ‘get it’ right away and are shining examples for the rest of the raid from day one, but most people will have to do something a number of times to get it right. Not to mention that often one player doesn’t get the chance to practice his part unless another player just got it right as well; someone who had to depend on the correct execution of yet another player’s task before that.
This is why you delay wipes on progression content, especially if the supposed reason to wipe isn’t something that would really start mattering unless you are going for a serious kill. Like dead DPS’ers that will eventually lead to failing a dps check, or dead healers that will eventually lead to failing a damage-on-the-tank check. If you will not get to those checks anyway and are currently still working on paying your dues on the encounter, wiping the raid is a huge waste of time.
Ai, looks like I replied to Matticus’ post instead of Joveta’s post :S