What Is Worth Fighting For? Part 1 of 2

“The true question, for my kind, is 'what is worth fighting for'?”

Part I: As A Raid Team

Three times a week, for three hours at a shot, ten people from the GoF come together to take on internet dragons and monsters. Three times a week, for three hours at a shot, we hurl ourselves time and again at these dragons, sometimes completing the same fight dozens of times or sometimes wiping dozens of times on the same fight. Why do we do it? Why do we not just say “oh well, I'm going to just go pick stuff from my farm in the Valley of the Four Winds”? What comes out of those dragons and monsters that is worth sinking nine hours a week – thirty six hours or more a month – that we feel is worth the time spent, the frustration, and worth fighting for to stay together as a team?

Ask ten different people and you're likely to get ten different responses.

Small Server Blues

Imagine the crackle and click of a record player as it plays a classic Blues vinyl. Pull up a rocking chair and a dewy glass of iced tea with an old friend and look around 'town' (your server). Does it look like it used to? Do you look around and see the shadows of people you used to enjoy playing with? Is it the lively party town it used to be or has it become, like mine, a ghost town?

Names of people I used to play with, see in trade chat, undercut on the auction house or just see dancing on the fountain in Stormwind just aren't there any more. Georgebailey, a trade troll of the highest order, doesn't even spam his "If the Lich King's mount is Invincible, why can I still see it?" any more. Vannawhite's seemingly endless supply of vanity pets has dried up and quietly faded away. Awesome raiders like Floe and Culi have their pictures on the back of the pearl milk cartons. Heck, even Promade has stopped raiding Stormwind and making our RP server life generally miserable by camping the AH or the flight masters.

I have to wonder. Is this a case of memories being better than the times actually were, or is my server really going the way of the dodo?

Turning a Bane into a Boon

LFR.

Love it or hate it, you know it. For some, it's a loot piñata, where the worst part of it is the luck you have queuing with a group which may be filled with trolls, incompetents, elitists, or all of the above.  For others, it's the lone source of raiding and the only way they'll ever see end game content. Some also use it as an avenue for gearing an alt, perfecting rotations and trying out new roles. 

For me, I can't stand it. I'm not saying LFR is a bad thing, I just don't want to spend my somewhat limited gaming time in there. I may have even stated once or twice that it's the bane of my existence.  In my opinion, the content is less challenging than some heroic dungeons or scenarios. The jump between LFR and 10M normal is huge. Mechanics can be ignored in LFR, outgoing damage tickles, and OOMing is never an issue (so long as the others are pulling at least some of their weight). But, when I step back and think about it, there's far more you can get out of it than meets the eye. 

So how can you turn this bane into a boon?  Simple. Change your viewpoint and look at it with new eyes.

Rolling With the Punches

"In the face of great adversity, great heroism can shine through."  -Me

While burning through content, there's always the possibility that things can go sideways.  A thunderstorm knocks out the electric, the dog chews through your network cable, kids get sick - we've all been there.  If it hasn't happened to us personally, it has happened to our team. My team has the infamous Jasper Wipe of 2012, when at 3% on what would have been our first kill of Deathwing, our dog Jasper knocked the power cord out of our wireless router. You can imagine the uproar that ensued with the main tank and a healer disconnected there - and of course the ensuing wipe.

Unnatural Progression

My guild has been working on Tier 14 so hard for so long – specifically Heart of Fear. We moved through Mogushan Palace at a pretty typical clip, without getting too terribly hung up on any one fight. We started the progression race late, since we as a team decided to take our time and enjoy leveling through the new content and experiencing the new lore. Once we started raid, we ran in to the usual rockiness at the beginning of a new expansion's raiding content. People switched mains, those who kept the same mains adjusted to new talents and spells, and adjusted to mana starvation. It was slow going at first, but we got a good head of steam and started rolling through well enough to keep us happy.

We cleared through Mogushan reasonably well and continued in to Heart of Fear. As I would expect, the second raid in the tier was harder than the first...however it was a much steeper increase in difficulty than I believe I encountered previously.

Now I've been raiding since Naxx in Wrath Of The Lich King, and have been on the front line of my guild's progression teams since Ulduar. I didn't experience raids as intended in either Vanilla or The Burning Crusade, so I can't use raids like the original Ahn'Qiraj or the Sunwell as a basis of comparison.

So. What was I saying? Oh right.

The sharp increase in difficulty between Mogushan and Heart was staggering. I'm uncertain changing up our normal progression strategy in T14 had an impact as well. We struggled in Heart of Fear. We bled for our first kill of Garalon. We bled for our first kill of Amber Shaper. We bled for our first kill of the Empress. It was so hard for us, in fact, that we didn't even finish Heart of Fear until last week. That's right, the week after T15 was released. Since Ulduar, we have always at least dabbled in the Heroic versions of the raids before starting the next tier. It was a real kick in the gut to have no “H” kills on GuildOx.

What boggles my mind even further is that in the same night that we downed the Empress for the first time, we waltzed in to the Terrace of Endless Springs and wiped the floor with the first three bosses. We did no in-depth stratigising for any of those fights. We wiped a total of four times on the first three bosses. Not four times each. Four total. How is it that we wiped somewhere in the range of one hundred times on Garalon before finally getting a kill – Garalon, not the final boss in Heart of Fear, but one of the middle ones – and then just glided through the first 75% of the next raid like it was no more than a heroic dungeon we hadn't stepped foot in.

I am by no means saying that the game has been oversimplified, or that Heart of Fear was overtuned. I'm neither an elitist nor a carebear. What I wonder about is how it is considered progression to move from a raid where the fights were so challenging that we sat and poured over logs, blogs, strategies, virtually anything we could get our hands on, to get a foot up and keep moving and once in the very next raid have that “Is that it?” moment.

It felt so unnatural to me. I anticipate moving from one raid to the next that the first boss will be easier than the final boss of the previous one, but from there I expect them to get harder. It felt like somewhere the designers sneezed when putting together the roadmap for T14 progression and accidentally put Heart before Terrace. Drag and drop error perhaps? I'm honestly baffled. I enjoy a good challenge and I don't beg for nerfs or reminisce about the good old days when fights were harder. I'm just not quite sure what the point of having Heart before Terrace was.

I can remember one other time that the road of progression felt as awkward as T14 did. Back in WOTLK, Ulduar was a solid challenge. We were working our tails off to get through Heroic Ulduar and enjoying every minute of it when they released Trial of the Champions. I felt then – and I still think – that TOC was filler, something that someone felt was necessary to fill the gap between Ulduar and Ice Crown Citadel. It didn't fit. It really wasn't all that challenging, especially considering fights like Mimiron. The only fight in TOC that proved any real challenge was the Faction Champions. Anub'Arak was appropriately challenging also, but overall the raid felt like a real dud, and didn't feel like it was a step up from Ulduar.

The biggest difference for T14 is that Terrace didn't feel like filler. It didn't feel like it was stuck in there unnecessarily. It didn't feel like an interlude between big chunks of lore to digest. It just felt out of place.

Did any of you feel the same way? How did you feel about the overall push through T14?

Lessons Learned

The boss is dead, the loot is passed out, and doesn't that feel sweet?  Until, scant minutes later, you're faced with the next boss.  When a boss dies, of course you should try to hold on to the muscle memory you developed, one wipe at a time, as you worked on him.  But as you face down the next boss, you should try to also keep in mind the lessons you learned on the previous boss.  While each boss does have its unique ability set and strategy for defeat, you can take bits and pieces from one to another.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

It seems Tier 14 (Heart of Fear especially)has really been beating home the idea that, as players, we need to keep ourselves alive with whatever tricks we have and not be so dependent on our healers to do so.  Many of the fights in this raid  have really pressed that point time and time again. The Blade Lord with his oh so wonderful Tornado Alley, Garalon, with his massive damage during Crush alternating with Pheromones, Mal'Jarak with the Kor'Thik strike, and of course Ambershaper with the Parasitic Growth. All are instances where you may have to save your own life.  As result, our team has remembered that every class has at least one or two survival buttons they can use.  Barkskin, Deterrence, Ice Block, Dispersion, Die By the Sword, and so many more. Sitting back and reflecting, it makes me wonder how far we've come from mindless spamming heals like there was no tomorrow in Wrath to being capped at mana and having to heal “smart”.

The Life You Save May Kill Your Team

Take a look at some past bosses – regardless of tier or expansion even – and you can find things you've learned from them apply to current challenges. A good example of this is Yor'sahj from Dragon Soul.  In Yor'sahj, we had to throttle back on our heals, even when we didn't want to.  Especially when we didn't want to.  Too many heals on a player and BOOM.  You haven't actually helped them, you've killed them.  Literally. This forced many healers to have to change the way they did things. I see this lesson echoing with similar affect on the Amber Shaper.  The damage done by Parasitic Growth during the Amber Shaper fight increases proportionally to the amount of healing taken by the person who has it.  Which means, in this fight, healing can be even more lethal to someone than the initial DOT damage that is ticking.

Another similarity you can draw on from the past to apply to current content is Valithria Dreamwalker in ICC.   For this fight (which is a personal favorite of mine), the fight was won by successfully healing Valithria.  The DPS were playing a deadly version of keep-away with adds throughout the fight, who would injure Valithria and hinder your ability to complete it.  There is an echo of this type of mechanic on Tsulong.  During the light phase of Tsulong, again the healers try desperately to heal the boss while the DPS play keep-away with adds.  Recalling the delicate balance of pouring as much healing into the boss as possible while keeping tanks and DPS alive very much brings to mind the struggle we initially had with Valithria.

Throughout the history of raiding in Azeroth, how many fights have you seen?  How many lessons have you learned that you have since forgotten?  How many mechanics are you currently facing that echo of the past?  When you hear that echo, when you feel like there's dejavu in play, think back.  Think back to the first time you ran in to it.  And try to recall how you dealt with it.  It's so much easier to learn something that is similar to something you already know.  Then it's just an adjustment rather than something as overwhelming as a “completely new” mechanic.

We learn our classes and their abilities, as well as how to keep ourselves alive and deal with “new” mechanics as we work our way through Azeroth.  Remember when you're struggling with a fight that you may have encountered a similar mechanic before.  Also, always always recall that much more is taken away from a fight that you've wiped on over and over again than from a cake walk.  Take heart from the difficulties.  They are what help you to develop as a raider.

What mechanics or fights have you encountered in the current tier that remind you of things you've conquered in the past?  Do you feel that you had an easier time dealing with them this time around than the first time?  Your feedback is always appreciated!

Until next time, long days, pleasant nights & happy Raiding.