The Anecdote:

Last night, after a fairly speedy BWL clear, my guild decided to rush to AQ40 to kill C'Thun. We have just downed the Old God the previous week, and had suffered a demoralizing night of wipes this past Thursday night. Going into AQ40, we knew we had about 3 to 4 pulls before calling the raid.

The first pull was horrendous. Our puller was unmounted early and some unsuspecting raid member ran to close to him. By the first dark clare, we had 11 dead.

The second pull was not much better. Claw Tentacles and eye beams orchestrated a cacophony of frustration. Many died to the ground rupture into eye beam chain combo. By the beginning of phase 2, 14 were dead.

Our raid leader decided to make the third pull the last pull of the night, since we already ran over our normal raid time and people needed to get up for school or work. Ever the pessimist, I pot up and expect much the same to occur. First dark glare comes - 0 deaths. Second and third dark glares - 0 death! Forth and final dark glare - clean transition into phase 2. We proceeded to drop C'Thun shortly thereafter.


The Speculations:

While the anecdote features a boss encounter that is somewhat based on dumb luck, the tradition of "last pull progress" has been with my guild since the days of Molten Core. Why did we get such drastic improvements in performance when it came to the last thing of the night? Unfortunately, I have no special insights regarding the topic, but permit me the audacity to ramble and dwell on this all too common occurrence.

Maybe it's desperation. Maybe people want to see the purples so badly that they finally up their games and push for a kill. However, if this is the case, then one must beg the question of why do people not put forth their best effort from the very beginning?

Delving into the area of psychology, in which I am no expert: what is it in the finale and ultimatum that drive us to better performance? Perhaps it is subconscious and we have no direct control over it; because if we do, then can we not condition our minds to function at optimum capacity irregardless of conditions?


The Discussion:

Do your guilds have similar experiences of overcoming obstacles during the last pull?

If so, why do you think it happens?

If not, would you please offer some insight regarding the mental state of your guild during raids?


Thank you. :)

Almost every major boss kill my guild has had, from nefarian to c'thun to thaddius, has been on the "last pull" of the night. It's gotten so ridiculous that I often say it's the last pull at 8pm as a joke. Concentration is a really funny thing.

Yes. The first and last pulls frequently are good, and it has a lot to do with the mental state of the raid.

Good raid leaders never forget--the mental state of the raid means everything. This is something I've thought about a lot; will try to expound more soon.

Raids are like tyres. They start off cold and tend to slip around a fair bit.

Around the halfway mark they tend to be warmed up, hold the track, and perform well.

Near the end of the night, they are either torn to shreds, or performing at peak efficiency, albeit for a short period.

In my experience, the way the tires perform at the end of the night all depends on how you use them during the middle of the evening. If you run off-road, or push them too hard, they will be worn out by the end of the evening, and generally incapable of performing a trip to the mailbox.

If you keep the tempo right, while keeping tension down, then by the end of the evening they are generally performing at peak efficiency and can take some pretty intense maneuvers like it was nothing at all. For me at least, this is true of the vast majority of our best raid performances. Easy start, focused middle, and clinical finish.

Very few minds can maintain a high level of concentration/focus for hours on end. When given a certain finite timeframe wherein they are expected to perform at an increased rate, most if not all can do so.

In addition, the most demoralizing break to focus occurs with silly wipes and downtime - particularly waiting for that 40th member to a raid. By reducing the former, you can develop your raid members into a higher sustained level of focus.

This doesn't really seem to be the case with my guild. When we're working on a progress boss, each pull usually just gets consistently better and better until everyone has it down and the boss dies. Last night, that just happened to culminate in our first emps kill on what would've probably been the last pull of the night, but just as often as not, we end up getting new kills after 2-3 pulls on a fresh raid night as we do later into the night.

Last night, I don't think we declared "Last Pull" but we had the mentality that we knew we were running out of time on the Thaddius First Kill. Second pull of the night, we get him to 31%, third pull, 16% at enrage. 2-3 pulls later, we get him down to 9%. However, something demoralizing nearly happened when we regressed from wiping on the first polarity change to not even making it out of phase one alive on back to back pulls. Then we're about an hour from the time where we usually stop (would had gone longer, but regardless, we were running out of time and pots). Finally, we get a flawless pull until 50% when two people simulanteously go LD with no one dead and well on pace to kill him and wiping the raid. Next pull, two more people go LD midattempt with 2 dead and again, clearly on pace to kill him.

Next pull, even though we had brought in someone who never did the fight that nuked the raid at the first polarity charge, that nuke only hit everyone's NR pots so no one died. Well, Thaddius dropped my hat. :)

Over half of our Naxxramas kills, including our first five bosses, have been after 1AM server time, when we're grinding it out for that kill. There's really no better feeling than to finally break through a barrier on the Monday night before the reset.

Since theorycraft is bad for the soul, it's time for an anecdote.

Our first night of wiping to the Twin Emps, we made 13 attempts, with the best effort being about 67% around the 7th or 8th try. The main problem was tanks dying (getting "2-shotted" or so it seemed.) We spent a week debating how to fix that. Next week we came back and had a full night of attempts. We clocked 17 tries with the best being around 30% before a random screwup nailed a tank. We called the 18th attempt our last and proceeded to down them in a blisteringly fast (for a guild new to them) 12 minutes. There was much rejoicing.

I find this happens a lot as well. We tend to get into 'stupid mode' in AQ40 before/after Twin Emps on the trash pulls. We'll wipe 2-3 times on things we have no business wiping on. Guild Leader will say "ok that's it, enough of this crap, one last pull. If we screw up we're done for the night." Every time he does that, the raid finally pulls their act together and starts to perform.

We tend to have mini progression leaps where well start a fight fresh and being struggling with the basics then a bit in well see a noticeable improvement and then a few /meh ones and then another improvement and so on. Great example of this is our C'thun last night. This is perhaps our 3rd night on C'thun each of which have had varying degrees of sucess. After various strange attempts this night we eventually got out first weakening and then 2 weakenings in a go. It just seems to be with fights you are learning/relearning that suddenly it seems to click for people and you improve. The differing time frames people need for things to click tend to explain the jumps in progress of tries.

The last try of a night thing imo opinion is put down to the mentality that by this time people 'have' the tactic down and are most likely getting frustrated by being careful about cd's etc as they dont want to jepordise fruther tries etc by burning them. Last try=(for us atleast) go out with a bang hit him with all the energy/concentration and CD's you have left and go out on some type of a high whether you kill him or not. Often this will result in a kill but even if it doesnt you go out with the positive memory that you really put everything into that try. Ending a night on a positive is super important imo especially if your on a fight your going to be wiping on for a while.

My guilds first Loatheb kill was a "last pull" as well, it was late and most of us were down to our last 3 GSPPs. As Fellwraith said, people tend to blow all their long timers and use their better consumables if it's the last pull anyways. It's interesting how much morale seems to play a part in raid performance. If it's been a night where progress seems to have been made, people will often put that little bit of extra effort during the last pull that can make the difference between a kill and a wipe. I know I myself have been guilty of not giving my all if I sense we're not making progress.

I just know I wouldn't want to be a raid leader. I find it difficult to gage how much you can push people and I would probably throw in the towel much sooner than necessary.