Wiping in WOW is never fun. Actually, I can't think of any time in real life where wiping is fun unless you're a cleaning freak or something. But on WOW, a wipe is never fun. Repeated wiping is even worse. I know what you're thinking now...why is Ninja going on about this? It's obvious. Well, I'm going to tell you about my recent experiences and then look to see if the wiping did me more good than harm. Now, gather around, it's time to tell you a story.
XXL (my guild) have decided to work their way towards raiding and therefore, heroics seem like a great idea to gear up (with badges and whatnot) as well as Trial Of The Champion. Three days ago, we were fine and we did Heroic Utgarde Keep, Nexus and Gundrak. We struggled a little with the Rhino boss at the end but generally, the runs were fine and I healed my first heroic by healing for Nexus! However, the next two days would be painful. Let me explain why.
Day One started off well by blitzing through Heroic UK in no time at all. I also got to heal it so yay for more healing experience. After that, we went to go do Heroic Gundrak and it all went horribly wrong. We just kept on dying at Slad'ran. For some reason, even though we had a better tank this time round, we just couldn't do Slad at all unlike the day before. The group had three of us from the day before and we were just amazingly puzzled at how we'd done this boss yesterday fine yet today, he was a horrible snake-infested monster. We called it a day and looked to tomorrow hoping it would be better. It wasn't.
Day Two was meant to be a day of Trial farming. It was only Normal difficulty so I figured it would all be fine even though Anun (our tank) didn't have much tank experience and his gear wasn't too brilliant. I didn't mind cause we all need to learn and it was a guild run (so a nice and supportive group). We did Faction Champs and Eadric fine and then it came to the Black Knight. The first two goes, we just couldn't get past Phase Two. Next two, we got to Phase Three but wiped without getting him down loads. Final try, we got him down to low health but couldn't seal the deal. With morale already low from the Gundrak failing, I think it was safe to say this dealt a crushing blow to us.
And that's my story but the article doesn't end here. I didn't do this just so I could tell you my woes. I could come up with logical reasons why we failed (gear, experience, tactics etc...) but I'm not going to go into that. Instead, I found that while wiping regularly was very depressing, it also helped me by making me determined to learn what went wrong, to look up boss tactics again and to memorise things. It made me want to improve and become a better player. So in the end, it might have cost me a lot of confidence (and gold...I'd hate to think what the tank repair bills were like) but it also gave me some more motivation and drive to do better and succeed. Wiping actually may have done some good for me and for all the other guild folk who went on the heroic runs with me.
Do you think wiping regularly can do some good? Or is it merely highlighting how bad a group are? Does it show you that you need to gear up or does it show you that you suck as a player? What are your thoughts on wiping?
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From my point of view as a pure dps - wiping is good, but wiping regularly is bad :D
ReplyDeleteThe thing is when I go smoothly through all heroics and easier raids, I get lazy. Also, I then fear that I'm being pulled through instead of cutting my way down (like there is a great tank and great healer, and some other dps that could basically 4-man the instance - I'm just an addition, an overdps, so to speak).
A wipe from time to time turns me away from getting lazy on hitting random buttons and forces me to look up some new tactics, improving rotations, better timing Red "I win" button and so on. So as long as I don't wipe all the time, it's more or less stimulating.
The problem is when I feel I am the one pulling the group through, with tank keeping aggro thanks to my constant misdirections, feign death/deterrence or healer being able to heal up on trash just because we dps fast enough that he doesn't run out of mana (unlikely, but happens when tank pulls too early;)
I think that a good group of friends or/and good players is the most important thing when running instances - it doesn't matter if you wipe or not with such a group - it's always a pleasure.
If it was a pug, then I would say that wiping is definitely bad. But when it comes to guild groups...I don't know what it is but us wiping just makes us more determined. I distinctly remember one time where we wiped 14 times in a heroic before we finally gave up.
ReplyDeleteIf we got stuck on something, we just went back to something that we knew we could do and got a little better gear and a little more experience. Then we would tackle the hard heroic with renewed determination. If we weren't called Bloodriver, we would be called Tenacity.
The key is to not give up. You may have to back track for a little while but you will do it.