Trash pulls can often be very complicated, and sometimes just a shorter version of a boss in complexity. I've also often experienced being in a few raiding guilds, as well as gleaming experience for the anecdotes of other raiders, that when a guild has an area of a raid (or the entire raid, doesn't matter) on farm, they will most often wipe on trash than they do on bosses. Why? People don't seem to care about trash.

Boss focus is often good unless you've hit a long wall, then some form of motivation must hit the table. But once pulls are successful on trash, the majority attending a raid seem to be content with subpar performance, as long as no one dies (which in turn, ends up causing more casualties because of this thinking). It's hard to get buffs refreshed, healers let you get dangerously low even with your stones/pots on CD, tanks get sluggish on aggro gen, dps takes a dump, etc. I don't expect people to flask up for trash, but considering the ease of gold with dailies and other methods, using cheap elixers and oil shouldn't come as off-putting.

There is trash that requires fast reactions and burst damage before things get hairy. Also, who doesn't like a fast raid clear time? Don't forget that there are such things as trash respawns, and a fast clear to the next boss gives more times for attempts. So trash performance can also affect boss progression as well.

I believe raids full of people who are always serious about trash could improve their raid clear times by 20% (based on clear times for farmed instances and other runs where we made some sort of "contest" to stay focused the entire raid) and suffer fewer casualties on trash.

Surely I'm not the only one who sees a decline in effort on trash between pulls. For every person who tells me that trash performance does not matter, I'll tell them that I'll CC and chat instead of casting any damage spells. Personally, if I were trialing someone for guild admission, I'd be looking at their trash performance. Anyone who performs well on trash amonst their peers in a raid is going to perform just as well on bosses from an attitude perspective (specs are not on topic here).

Anyone else have an issue with raiders that only have situational focus?

I think it's only natural that people focus more on bosses - there's a direct risk-to-reward ratio. Most people can't remove themselves far enough to rationalize that quicker trash = boss sooner = more loot (which is evidently the sum-total goal for most people).

Part of it is also the lack of sincere difficulty - pulls might be complicated or require a fair amount of planning, but they tend to boil down to "Kill this, CC that, heal as necessary." Granted, that's as much as some boss fights require, but I think it would be reasonably fair to suggest that the average boss fight is more difficult, more time-consuming, and more rewarding than the average trash pull.

I think incentivizing effective use of time (ZA timed event) is the only way to really promote that level of focus. Even then, you're unlikely to get that level of attentiveness for any sustained period of time - if in a 4-hour raid night, I'm only going to get 2 hours of 110% out of my raiders, I'd rather get it on bosses than trash. Not everyone can perform at or near capacity consistently.

Apparently any raider who skimps on trash performance does not value their time. Less time spent raiding after a clear is more time available to do anything else. Why would I want to spend 2 hours on trash when I could be spending 1.5?

It's the attitude that it's understandable that allows this behaviour to permeate. If you expect people to be equally diligent with raid preparation, then why not expect people to be equally diligent with raid performance? I personally hope that every guild with a suffering degradation of interest in all things pertaining to raid performance, hit some drama patches on trash pulls because people don't give two squirts of piss anymore about the "equally interesting non-epic dropping [except they do, actually] non-bosses".

And have we not forgotten patches of areas where the trash is harder than the boss itself once you have the boss on farm? I think people dread "tough" trash more often because they're tackling them with 80% of a raid.

And it better be; it's a boss! But that doesn't suddenly mean that performing well (this game doesn't require that much brainpower people) on trash doesn't benefit you as a whole.

Anytime you or another guild wipes on trash but one-shots a boss, I want them to remember what I said.

I think that Blizzard in a few areas has actually endeavored to make the trash educate you on the bosses later in the instance. SSC has a few like that where some of the abilities on the mobs are pretty similar to the boss you clearing to. If all trash mobs were somehow like that, I don't think I'd mind so much. It'd be like a primer for your first attempts. "Oh hey fire is bad, I should avoid it!"

My issue with trash is this. Bosses you can ramp up for. You kill them, you're buffed for them. If you lose it is because well either you didn't perform properly or you just died to the RNG. Your times on boss kills will be about the same, you will go up slightly from more dps as gear progresses, but the boss part of the instance will be pretty static in time taken to kill.

What I feel the most time that can be sped up from a run is on the trash. Wiping on trash is a massive waste of time, although thankfully BT trash is actually easier than T5 trash and takes less time. But still there are things that annoy me constantly as a dps'er on trash, and I'm sure it pisses off rogues, dps warriors and hunters as well. I disagree with the original poster that it has that much to do with focus. I feel more that it has to do with strategy.

Things that annoy me most?

1) CC'd targets in the middle of a bunch of tanked mobs.
2) Mobs that have no AoE affects being tanked all seperately.

As an elemental shaman CL on a group of tanked mobs is a massive dps upgrade. Similarly having played a dps warrior I know how much it sucks being not able to use SS and whirlwind. Hunters have multi shot, rogues have blade flurry. Even enhancement shamans can do stuff like fire nova/magma totem. I believe that fast efficient clears of trash in both 25s (and in ZA too for making timed runs) is really important with how you use CC and positioning to either speed up clears or slow them down. I know that in ZA when we just have all 3 mobs tanked on top of eachother by the time the first mob is dead the second is at 2/3 health already. We're not going to kill the bosses much faster than we already do. But killing trash is what takes the most time, so yeah my pet peeve is inefficient trash clearing that isn't tailored to the strength of your group. It just makes me want to pull my hair out when I see a pull of 4 mobs with one mob being CC'd smack in the middle of the 4 mobs and I can't use multi target abilities because of that.

Doesn't bother me as I tend to entertain myself watching people mess up on trash. Slack off too much and you will slip up and possibly die. Normally people are ridiculed for such fundamental misdeeds, and such an outlook helps the raid leader not get so distressed over such mistakes. Then again, I do have feign death so I see a wipe differently than most classes.

An idea to lessen trash slack is to have rewards or buffs for speeding through pulls. ZA does the former, but the boss could have a preparation timer and if you beat it they are not at full capacity. Of course this would likely be 'abused', but making the trash difficult enough (a la TK trash on the way to Kael) would alleviate that.

Then again, that would propose full clearing raid zones in one night.

Even if there was, what good would it do you? To honestly believe that every person on your raiding roster is always 100% mentally present and prepared to push themselves to their personal ceiling on every pull is to be either a) totally delusional; or, more likely, b) punishing perfectly good players to the point of burn-out.

I don't like the fact that people don't work hard all the time - goodness knows I have to, as a GM/RL/MT - but I am not in a position to sacrifice good raiders over less-than-perfect trash clears.

Gee, then why are there meters? Clear times? Wipes? What the **** is WWS? Yeah, it's there. Obviously you can't read emotions, but you can certainly read performance. I've often seen (and been with) people who vastly outperform their peers on trash (which you can verify with numbers) and then suddenly become competitive as the slackers ramp back up to 100% for the boss. If you want to be a world-first guild, or have a world-first drop, or simply whittle down that 4 hour clear into a 3 or 3.5 one, you need to be working on motivation as often for trash as you do for bosses. They all take time. A minute is a minute if you are spending it on trash or a boss. The effort made on trash before impacts how soon and how often you can kill bosses for the lucrative rewards.

EDIT: Burnout comes from wipes. Comes from crappy clear times. Want to fight burn out? Everyone does well and you have a kick ass raid with one-shots and record time. That makes you walk out more energized as when you walk in. I always give 100% on everything and the only thing that drains me is other people dicking around. There are people like me out there who always try their best. What's sad is the lack of guilds even trying to find those people because they themselves don't give 100% on everything.

This isn't a marathon. You're not going to over-exert yourself pushing performance. No one should be getting short of breath. Things will only wear you out mentally if they become too frustratingly difficult. Constant performance improves your situational awareness by keeping you constantly alert which is imperative for bosses.

double post, my apologies

We often joke about one shotting bosses and wiping on trash, for the reasons already discussed. People become complacent when 'farm mode' has been hit on certain bosses.

There are measures and means though to see this, "attention and effort" are easy enough, simply compare the WebStats, SWStats, and combatlogs for those during boss fights to those during trash. If you are wiping on trash and that mage is only putting out CC and 500 DPS and then at the boss fight they've gotten CC, 900 DPS, and are using other abilities - you know they are slacking.

Each boss is dependent on a lot of factors. For Magtheridon I wouldn't expect to see my locks who are doing banish, fear to rock the DPS charts - but if they are low on DPS and don't cast banish or fear, you know they aren't doing their job. If on Void Reaver you got a few who are taking obscene amounts of damage from the arcane orbs, they need to learn to move, etc.

How to remedy it...a few thoughts.
1) If your guild is big enough, make it clear, there is no secure spot. You have two weeks in a row where you aren't doing your job. Replace them with a sub. Even if just for a week. If that doesn't motivate them, they shouldn't be in the RAID.
2) Emphasize that they are letting down the team. Similar to those who don't consumables, "+55 shadow damage isn't enough for me to spend 100G on those elixirs". Those attitudes are RAID killers. Same goes for not paying attention and getting your guildie killed, adding to their repair bill or enjoyment of the instance. You didn't heal that tank, you didn't DoT that mob, you caused your fellow guildies undo problems - not cool.
3) As all noted above, show them the time difference. You wipe, reset can be 10+ minutes. You pwn the trash you can save a lot of time.
4) Give DKP awards. If no deaths occurs give all a +2 DKP, if you are top of charts for your class +5 DKP, maybe little incentives that can add up over the long haul for doing a job well - that you should be doing anyhow.
5) Make sure the officers are setting the example...nothing will turn a bunch of raiders into the lethargic trash wipe machines more than watching their officers not care, fumble around, not take consumables, etc. Lead by example. You want all your guildies to be on their toes, make sure it starts with you.

Depends on the trash. Much like bosses they aren't all equal.

You really can let your focus down and chat (or whatever) on most trash pulls and it won't matter. I hear that some of our druid healers are so bored they are wrathing during trash, for example. As long as you focus on the parts that matter I don't have an issue. However, doing stupid shit and getting yourself or others killed on parts that need more focus isn't acceptable to me. Depending on the expected focus of your raid, this should be addressed by the raid leader (with a sub / suggestion / berating / whatever you use).

Yes, having 100% focus will clear things faster if you can really pull it off. I know I still try hard on trash, but I'm a freak generated from 23 years of solid video game playing. In my experience the type of focus you are suggesting also increases burn out, frustration, and general hostility in your raid. Most people simply can't focus for 4-6 hours solidly. Humans simply aren't built to do that (physically or mentally). Realistically, you need to have moments of reduced focus to work at your peak when it really counts.

Don't get me wrong, doing stupid shit and getting yourself or raid members killed is simply not acceptable. There is some minimum focus that is required at all times while raiding. But I think even the most hardcore of us would agree that you get worn out quickly in a 100% focus environment.

Be careful about adding incentives for things that require everyone's good performance to be successful. Tangible things like loot, consumables, DKP, gold, whatever you might hand out as a reward will cause people to turn on each other. People will argue about whom caused a death, why the clear took 15 mins longer than the reward goal, etc.

I think simply having the right attitude about performance as you mentioned in #5 is the key factor in improving overall raid performance. When your guild walks out of farmed areas noticing that for "some cool unknown reason" they're done 1/2-1hr early, they're gonna be psyched. When the only wipes are on new bosses, they're gonna be psyched. I believe if leadership just has the right attitude about complete raid performance, those other raiders will already be made a joke about being the peon left behind because he/she isn't that great.

Given similar spec and gear, the only people that could ever compete with me on bosses are the ones that compete with me on trash.

If someone let's something simple as the lack of epicness (drops or lore) kill their performance, it tells you something about their character. Everyone can feel bad and lose interest, but it should come from bigger things like a progression cockblock, drama, RL issue, anything but simply Blizzard's current level of reward implemented for trash.

Yes, I do believe ideas like the ZA timer are great to support the interest, but those that belive that the problem sits sqaurely on Blizzard fall into the antagonist category.

Who said anything about not having breaks? I'm not talking about some rigid Nazi-like whip cracking on your raiders. I could careless about how much downtime your raid as a whole would like between pulls. I need breaks like everyone else. But when you're in combat, the cop-out that Blizzard didn't make it cool enough so I'm going to punish 9 or 24 other people because of it is the shittiest excuse I've heard.

Actually, you kind of suggested no breaks by implying faster clear times are a direct result of improved raid focus (which in general, it is). Most guilds that are speed-clearing will chain pull trash with a short rebuff peroid before a boss. This does not really give time to the raid for breaks.

I contend that a raid clears faster by having mental downtime during chain-pulled trash, rather than periodic breaks where no progress is made. Time spent setting stuff up the first time is time well spent. Setting it up week after week is a waste. There really should be zero time between trash pulls once you know what is coming. Hence the assumption that there are no breaks.

Quite frankly I really see this as a guild / personality issue. You can't expect everyone to play the same as you, or take the same attitude toward raiding. If the people you play with don't have the same play expectations as you, then you should find new playmates. I know, easier said than done, but it is possible.

Sounds like you're angry at your guild for performing poorly on trash and decided to make a thread and rant about it when people try to rationalize how or why it might be happening...

Yes, some people will be lazy on trash, it's up to you (or the raid leaders, GM, whoever) to make sure it doesn't become a chronic occurance so shit still gets done in a timely fashion. If Joeshmoe is constantly afk on trash but there to collect the purples on the boss, just start sitting him. That should be enough to get the picture across that you don't want people like that in the raid.

Edit: Yeah this thread just took a 'trashy' turn for the worst. What someone does in their day-to-day life and how it may have an effect on their raid performance is a pretty terrible argument. Even after an exhausting day both mentally and physically it's not hard for me to put forth 100% effort on trash clears and the bosses as well. People who consistently slack on trash are just not the 'ideal raider' you want. Everyone has their offdays or should be allowed periods of afk during trash to simplify things later in the night; "BRB getting dinner now so I don't have to afk during Illidan", but if it's like every single raid and obviously is a detriment to it, you stop it. Not exactly a complicated process.

Can I ask what you do for a living? I know we normally try to keep RL and WoW separate, but honestly it sounds like you're either a mental freak of nature, or whatever you do on a daily basis isn't nearly intellectually stimulating enough. Personally, I have a full-time job as a computer programmer. When I get home at night, and log on to raid, I'm looking to relax, enjoy the game and enjoy a social activity with a number of my peers. Once trash is on farm, it isn't exciting, it isn't interesting, and there's no way I'm going to put 100% of my effort into it. Hell, as a prot pally on Kael trash, my goal is to keep my murloc suit on as long as possible between the first pull and the boss. I downloaded an arcade add-on so I could play asteroids and still pick up a target if another tank died. If I had people bitching at me to put out that minuscule amount of prot pally dps that I could do in order to speed the raid along by 1% or so, I'd tell them to sod off in a heartbeat. I just can't keep focused for 4 hours straight, especially when wiping is involved, and I would rather quit raiding than be that intense all the time. And, given the conversations I've had as recently as last night in /ra, pally chat and tank chat, I'm not alone.

Now, when it comes to the bosses, or new trash, or difficult trash - I'm all business. Any time where the difference between me giving it my all or not could wipe the raid, I'm going to give it my all. But boring ass trash that I've done a thousand times, 950 of them successfully, it doesn't really matter. In fact, if something goes wrong, and people have to think on their feet and recover, it's actually more interesting. I'm not going to try to do that on purpose, but it's also not the end of the world if it does happen.

Also, to wiping being frustrating, it's only frustrating if you're in a hurry, or you're trying( RNG wipes are frustrating as well ). Usually, if there's a trash wipe, it's usually laughed off, everyone's admonished to pay attention so "we can get through this shit" and nobody's really concerned unless it happens again. But if you're able to reach that comfortable median where you're not wiping, nobody's stressing, but you're not necessarily excelling, what exactly is the problem with that?

I think a lot of people forget that this is still fundamentally a game. Most people play to relax, socialize, and dare I say, escape. Concerted mental focus for 4 hours, on something that frankly is just boring, is not even close to fun for most of the people I know.

Meters are a good way to see how you can improve, but they're NOT a metric for attention nor effort. You cannot look at a WWS log and say "oh, person A only put in 80% effort tonight." DPS might have died due to the healers not healing quick enough, group makeup can skew numbers one way or the other, etc. Like damage meters, "winning" on WWS isn't the same as having the best performance in the raid.

Find a more hardcore guild. One that will boot players for under performing. One that has the luxury of a dozen people sitting outside to swap, or that has so many guild applicants that they can afford to be picky. For me, if someone has a headache, bad day at work, spouse aggro, or any other reason, I'm not going to make it worse by getting upset at them and tell them to focus more. That's where I draw the line of where the game becomes work and not play. You just need to find a guild that draws that line much further, or does treat it as work and not play.



Blizzard needs to put in more time-based incentives. ZA's timed event is a great idea. 45m Baron run was a great idea. The AQ gate quest to clear BWL with a timer was a great idea. I'd imagine the problem would be tuning. You'd have to do lots of testing to find an appropriate timer that's challenging and not impossible/trivial. Or they could just make it impossible then tune it after a couple months of people whining on the forums... err... data.

To play devil's advocate: If you beat the instance in 3.5 hours instead of four... so what? That doesn't give you time to start another instance or kill another boss. Depending on what a person does between 11:30 and midnight it can mean an extra half-hour of PvP, an extra half-hour of farming an extra half-hour of sleep, or an extra half-hour of masturbating to internet porn before going to sleep. Most people I know would rather have a more relaxed clear than a hellacious or intense clear followed by an extra half-hour of dead time. So what exactly is the point? The only time I ask people to pick up the pace is when we're trying to kill an extra boss before people's bed times, because that actually gives us more time for boss attempts the next day, or more boss kills before server reset or it means we don't need to raid on saturday. That doesn't seem to be what you're talking about though. I don't see the point in bearing down for a more difficult and less fun raiding experience for a negligable benefit.

If you want people to take the trash more seriously, the two best options for it are join a guild that takes trash more seriously, and kick people who don't take it seriously and replace them. It's systemic. People have different motivations for playing, and for raiding, and different attention spans and fatigue patterns, and guilds tend to accumulate people that share these characteristics in common. I can be totally fine raiding for 5 hours at a stretch but I know what it feels like to hit The Wall, and I completely understand that people hit it earlier than I do if they don't get a chance to take a break. And if we can clear trash while they're taking that break, I would much prefer that over afking for fifteen minutes and then pulling out a solid hour of trash+boss, because it's those same periods of downtime that wear on me.

TL;DR: People get tired or distracted differently. Account for the differences or find a bunch of people exactly like yourself.

Do you come home feeling mentally drained because of the amount of energy you put into work? I do. My first thought is to crack open a beer, sit back, and not really think for a while. You sound like you're coming home looking for something stimulating. It's not a system-wide failure that your guild doesn't focus on trash, it's a guild/personal failure that your guild's views don't match your own. I'd definitely agree with Kadaan that you should find a more hardcore guild.

I also find your arguments to be full of inconsistencies. You argue that you don't care how much down time you have between pulls, but that a main reason to do pulls efficiently and quickly is so you're at the boss faster and can accomplish more. How is dick around time waiting for the boss pull somehow more appealing than dick around time during the trash pulls? Honestly, my burn-out comes when we're waiting for some group of people to come back from their "quick" afk right before a boss. Or down-time between trash pulls where we're waiting on something, but no one is really sure what. That's what causes frustration for me. If we're moving, but enjoying ourselves while moving, who the hell cares? Why is slacking during the trash, as long as it gets done, such a bad thing?

I'm not saying you're wrong, inefficient trash is obviously frustrating for you. But I don't think that it's something that everyone views as important, or even needing to be fixed.

Many classes/specs have very little keeping them occupied during trash and can get away with being afk or not paying attention. On most pulls, however, mages have to either CC, AoE, or both. It can get frustrating when a bunch of people aren't trying, and you are having to cover for them, and thus going oom every pull, only to have to squeeze in what little drinking you can before you have to CC on the next pull. While everyone else's idea of speeding up the trash is chain pulls, it just leaves those actually paying attention mana starved. Overall, it isn't usually too bad. When you start seeing stuff like: Healer X recieves loot: Mark of the Illidari followed by Person Y has died, it does become a little tiresome, however.

I can't run with a hardcore guild because they have a hardcore schedule. Only because of the lack of content are Illidan-done guilds on a 3-day schedule but they likely aren't recruiting (at least not till WotLK). But current progression guilds that are hardcore just demand too much time. I don't have a large quantity of time, but rightfully I feel like a jerk in a raid if I don't put in quality time. I don't have the right to put my enjoyment over other people's interest. I'd like to dick around on trash too, but eventually it gets out of hand and there are wipes and the drama becomes much worse than it would be with this mythical burn-out on not sucking on trash.

And that's what 100% on trash is. The easiest part of my job is harder than the hardest challenge in WoW. WoW is relaxation time. But just as much as someone doesn't like to sit at home and mess with his reception constantly to enjoy his television program, I don't like people who mess with the quality of my enjoyment by sucking hard on trash. You can still have a good time and play well. There's no rule that says you have to be some stone-cold jerk when it's time to enter combat. But a guild serious about progression should be serious about it's performance when it's time to pull. There's PLENTY of goof-off time between pulls. I'm not talking about hardcore world record raid clear times, I'm talking only wasting time on the fun stuff, not on the stuff that gets on people's nerves.

But please stop making this about me. It's not fair to pin this on me as if it's just a whine post about some single nitpick and narrow it down to a personal problem. I thought there were intellegent people on this forum. My post was about the overarcing problem of the lack of effort in something that actually DOES matter. If it didn't, then we could all just afk and the trash would just despawn. I feel bad for the tanks and the non-FFA healers, the ones that really hold the weight of the raid's success on trash pulls in their hands. They usually still put out decent performance on trash because they have to, but the tanks not assigned to adds, FFA healers, and dps slack horribly (in many guilds) so often on trash it boggles the mind.

EDIT: If someone really wants to veg out at it's utmost after getting home from a hard day of whatever, do something solo. Don't put your lack-of-effort in the face of other people, it's flat-out rude. If you signed up to progress with the guild, help them progress, don't be a dick and slow them down whenever you feel like it.

Some good tips for clearing trash quickly:

1) Pulling slightly too fast is important if you want to keep people awake and at their keyboards.
2) Never use ready checks. Make people move to your spot and stand on top of you. Give a speech about how the raid can continue when the stationary people decide to raid during raid hours.
3) Pull when healers have 75% mana and rising. If it's an easy pull where it won't cost mana pots, pull even earlier just to keep people awake and on their toes.
4) Replace anyone that disconnects for more than 5 minutes if at all possible. Replace anyone who goes afk for more than 5 minutes without a good reason.

You don't have to be a jerk about it, but doing these types of things will make the raid go much faster and increase the quality of everyones' experience. People realize very quickly that they need to at least put in marginal effort, or they lose their spot in the raid.

This is a topic pretty near and dear to me, since I raid in an expansion server guild. We have more than our usual share of difficulty dealing with non-raider types in raids. It sounds a bit twisted, but you really need to condition people if you want them to be good raiders. You need to set expectations, and if they aren't met, you need to replace the people.