You are a God Damn Idiot (Part I)

Being The Best
It takes no grand intellect to discern the difference between a really shitty raider, and a good raider. Most people can tell the difference after just a few moments with said person, or a quick look at the persons talent spec, gearing, and especially the persons choice in gems/enchants. The same goes for telling the difference between a really shitty app and a good app. Further, a well informed and experienced raider, with at least an ounce of tact, can "reform" a terrible raider to be at least slightly above brain dead. That is to say, train the monkey to mash these spells in this order, and avoid standing in the majority of the fire.

But what does it take to be more than just mediocre? Being the poster child for medicracy is hardly the grand aspirations of the teaming masses of wow raiders, all eager to prove themselves, and twice as eager to announce that they are gods gift to raiding. Being the best of the best, the Michael Jordan of your raid group takes more than just a near 100% attendance rate, and a gear collection policy akin to a spoiled child in a toy store (aka Gimey Gimey!). Below is what I feel separates the great from the good, the legends from the mere mortals, and the back bones of a successful raid team from the people just along for the ride.


-- Like the Fingers on Your Hand --
Awareness. Ask your average raider to describe a fight and he will probably tell you a very detailed, very accurate, description from his position in the encounter. Ask him what another person does, say the OT healer, or the OT himself, and you'll get back silence. Most raiders have no clue what the other 24 people are doing, much less why they are doing it, or how they are accomplishing their tasks. This is utterly unacceptable. The 24 raid members you share a raid with are not just 24 random assholes that are doing "something" while you do your oh-so-terribly important job. These are 24 extensions of yourself, and your actions impact each and every one of them just as theirs impact you.

The subtle changes in position can cause ripple effects through a carefully choreographed group positioned specifically to avoid a bosses ability. The great raider will understand not why he is standing in a specific position, but why the entire raid is standing where they are. Slight changes in position because of unforeseen complications will not throw the great raider, he will know where to move, how, and when. The mediocre raider will remain glued to his initial position, not realizing the danger, nor having the intellect to know how to adjust on the fly.

Panic situations in a raid that require split second reaction will reveal those that understand the encounter from every positions point of view. One of KF's worst warriors in all its years was played by a fellow that was always on the ball when it came to unforeseen complications. A greedy loot whore that never enchanted his gear and pulled terrible dps, he was hardly the hall mark of a good raider. However, he understood each encounter from more than just the mindless position of melee dps. When a tank died, and he was next up on KTM, there was no need to call out for a clutch shield wall to save a low percent wipe; he was already doing it. The number of times that specific warrior saved a KF boss kill can be counted on one hand, and it was far from enough to overcome a shit heap of poor performance and irresponsible use of loot.

True awareness of what is going on in a raid is almost never needed by the average raider, and thus almost never given. Most raid leadership, and I was really no different, demands that each individual takes care of their own shit, and let the all stars of the raid take care of everything else. The attitude is to let the MT, Raid Leader, and the handful of truly capable raiders take care of anything difficult. Should anything go wrong, these few will try and save the raid, and if not, wipe.

Fear not, teeming mass of average joes, this dynamic is unlikely to ever change and thus there is no need to quake in your limited edition Sponge Bob boxer shorts that your aunt gave you for Christmas. However, should you want to prove that you are everything man in the raiding universe of WoW it is required for you to be a master of encounters, not just a brainless cog in someone else's machine.


-- Do More with Less --
Loot, the cause and solution to all of wows problems. With the exception of server lag, I dont think there is a single wow issue that cant be solved with "more loot," Or for our southern friends "mas looto." That being said, if you want to be the best of the best than loot can be a sticky situation. On one hand you want loot to be able to perform your best. On the other, you dont want to be a greedy son of a bitch that takes loot like a soul-less-purple-text-eating-son-of-bastard. Loot is kinda like religion: everyone has their own theories, and will look down on everyone else's ideas with false thoughts of being "enlightened" and above everyone else.

Here's my religion:

Know everything about the loot. Know what will drop before it drops. Know what is your best gear, know what is an upgrade. Know what is the best gear of anyone that could possibly share loot with you. Know what every person of every class has and what they need for best in slot gear. If knowledge is power than you want enough to drop a Tsar Bomba on whomever needed to defend any loot you make a bid for. The great raider not only knows what he needs, and will never go for something that is better in the hands of another raider, but he will also pass loot. Often. The best raiders are never the best equipped. I will repeat that, as it bears repeating:

The best raiders are often not the best geared.

"But Tagdoodle, my friend BuckStabber has like 97 epics with perfect triple-humper daggers and he pulls like 1900 dps!"

First of all, there is nothing more pathetic than seeing someone in amazing gear pulling dps that a retarded monkey smacking his wig-wohm on the keyboard could beat. Good advice for all the bads out there (yes you, you, and you behind the purple chair): stick with your bad gear. Its a perfect scape goat. Sprinkle in some "sorry guys, bad lag" and people will figure you are pulling your weight. If you put on a couple hundred dkp worth of BiS epics, and do the same damage, your needlessly attracting attention to yourself. You can be bad at WoW, but there is no need to be stupid.

The Steve Prefontaine of raiding will have worse gear than his mediocre counter part. Why? The best raiders will know when to pass gear. Keeping teammates happy, especially those prone to frothy loot rage, is more important than perfect gear. Passing loot better in the hands of someone else, is more important than perfect gear. In all my years of raiding, I have never had a full Tier set of gear. Good players (and bad) seem to be obsessed with having full sets. Why? Is gathering that 8th piece that is going straight into your bank helping anyone? What about that team mate, your brother in arms, the person that is helping you beat new bosses and gather that very gear, what about him? You just stepped on his neck, to elevate yourself. His trakia is crushed! He cant fucking breath man. You just killed him. Why the fuck did you kill him, what kind of soul less mother fucker are you?! HES YOUR TEAM MATE AND YOU FUCKING MURDERED HIM!

Special attention should be brought to the change in peoples behavior around different types of loot. Let us examine:

Take a random internet-cool sounding item name: [Shadow Searing Blade of 1000 Screams]

Sounds like a pretty cool name, a blade that magically sears shadows, and there are a thousand screams involved... somehow. Hey, screams are always better than no screams right? Whos going to use [Shadow Searing Blade of 1000 Well Mannered Conversations]? No one, thats who. However, cool names arent enough these days. Fortunately, Blizzard has added a Pavlov-dog style trigger and reaction to all us WoW players: Text color. Progressing from gray to orange, player reaction transforms from expected to... irrational beyond reason.

[Shadow Searing Blade of 1000 Screams]
Gray Color triggers a repulsion. Players seem to dislike the color gray, and feel the items are below their use. A gray colored item that is an upgrade for players would likely go completely unused as the thought towards anything gray is so little.

[Shadow Searing Blade of 1000 Screams]
Similar to Grays, Green is hardly treated with much respect. Sometimes used by players to disenchant, these items are never worthy of lying, stealing, or other wrong doings to one another. In a world of just Green items, everyone would play nice.

[Shadow Searing Blade of 1000 Screams]
Once, in the yester-years of WoW, Blue items were revered above few others. Players were liable to steal from strangers, friends, and in rare cases, family to obtain that blue. Molten Core changed all that.

[Shadow Searing Blade of 1000 Screams]
Epic Purple for epic items. The source of all day-to-day loot issues. That tailoring recipe that spawned the 50 minute vent recording of some whiny-ass bitch talking about her alt being a tailor? That recipe was purple. That T2 helm some other priest took even though you were still wearing the blue helm off Princess... purple. Purple is the answer to all things evil. When a huge fucking meteor comes rocketing out of the heavens, the last thing we'll see after smugly announcing "I actually liked your roommate" is a huge ball of purple. Nothing is worse than purple.

[Shadow Searing Blade of 1000 Screams]
...Except Orange. Holy god. What the fuck is it about this color? I could understand if instead of an Orange text it was actually embroidered with the bank account numbers of Warren Buffet, or perhaps a looping animation of tits. But its not. Its the same thing as that gray item you passed up but fucking orange.

I like to put shoes on my head.
I like to put shoes on my head.

Did one of those sentences make any more sense? No, both were the senseless ramblings of a bad speller. The behavior perpetrated by raiders when an Orange items drops is beyond despicable. It is an audio visual presentation of the worst characteristics of humans. No raid group seems to be without a significant core of players that will do anything for that great orange text. I often considered Keen Formation a cut above that, and indeed our first Warglaive (and 2nd) went without a hitch. Much later in the future, we finally got our just dessert in the form of full on Legendary Weapon loot drama. Without question the most disappointing day to ever call myself a life long member of Keen Formation.







Stay tuned for more advice on how to become the best of the best in your small pool or most likely mediocre talent. But hey, dont feel bad, if you are looking for tips on how to be a good raider from a strange blog written by a stranger, chances are, you're pretty stupid. So you need all the fucking help you can get.






check out the wiki article on Tsar Bomba since you probably didnt get the reference.
I was originally going to go with [Badger Sword of the Snaaaake] but that meme is pretty annoying and I didnt want to invite a resurrection.
18 misspellings. One sentence had 5. Spell checker choked up the computer for ~30s.