4.46. When Being Wrong is Right

Hanzo announces guild promotions
on the DoD forums

Ignoring the Evidence

As guild leader, no responsibility caused me to second guess myself more than when changing leadership. I was more frequently successful than not, but damage left in the wake of a wrong decision was a tough mess to clean-up.

I was lucky. DoD's leadership spanned a historic list of gifted players: Graulm, Ater, Blain, Kadrok, Haribo, Klocker, Dalans, Breginna, Eacavissi, Neps, Jungard. I hoped that with each promotion, new leadership would follow in their footsteps. It wasn't always that way. Kurst. Dandrak. Cheeseus. And the most recent addition to the list, Lexxii. They weren't bad people, they just missed a piece of the puzzle necessary to keep DoD afloat. My software developer mind wished there was a way to algorithmically get to that missing piece, identify it, so I could look for it in others. What made some folks wildly successful at the head of a team? Is lacking it what caused the others to falter?

My recent change to leadership carried similar hesitancy. With limited resources, I felt strong-armed into promoting Fred, making allowances where I'd otherwise stand my ground. Jungard lobbied for his friend on more than one occasion, and while I trusted his judgement, Fred's actions behind the wheel measured only moderate success. True leaders had something to teach me. When given the opportunity, Fred stopped short.

By comparison, Goldenrod's promotion to ranged dps officer made sense: he'd demonstrated real change from within. You could see it in the meters, hear it in the calm confidence of his voice. A level of maturity emerged from Goldy that kept him calm under pressure while showing compassion for other players. His perspective had grown. He was no longer focused on the minutia of mages suffering in PvP. He saw the big picture.

A red flag flapped violently above Fred's name when I reached for the promotion button.

You're making a mistake. He doesn't have the tools to lead. He doesn't see the big picture.

Maybe not, but he valued the success of the guild. Fred demonstrated it consistently from week-to-week: raw, unbridled loyalty and a yearning to learn and grow.

Even barely noticeable forward growth is still a baby step in the right direction.

---

Raiders claimed Wrath of the Lich King's raids were too easy and that a return to World of Warcraft's earlier, more difficult raiding days would herald a new dawn for the game. We got what we asked for. Normal 25s were tuned to such a degree that a collective shudder rippled across the roster when contemplating Heroic counterparts. The team yearned for an opportunity to demonstrate their proficiency, feeding off the adrenaline of a kill in the last moments that could go either way.

Halfus was the wake-up call. The two-headed Ettin gating the dark recesses of Bastion of Twilight whet our appetite for those glory days, reminding us of the tenets that got us here. Steadfast resolve amid chaos and panic. Personal responsibility to survive a barrage of ambient collateral damage. And the expectation that every player min/max every last piece of equipment draped across their character. Spontaneity and impulsiveness had to take a back seat. From my raid team, I demanded strength and preparation. From the lowly Raider to my 2nd-in-command: nobody was above growth. We all had something to learn.

Blain's "Thoughts On
Progression" forum thread

Nearly Perpetual Motion

"That last 20% sucked."

"Your Mom sucked 100% last night, Klocker!"

I steered Mature toward twenty-four ghostly bodies bearing my guild's name as they ran back to Blackwing Descent. Six weeks had passed since our kill of Heroic: Halfus Wrymbreaker. Two days prior, Blain took to the DoD boards to get his own pulse from the guild:

As most of you know, I do not like to remain stagnate for long on any specific content, just to acquire gear for the sake of gear. There are some cases where this is unavoidable but there are also cases where we can plan to continue on past content in order to push ourselves. Changing our focus from normal modes to heroic modes is one of those delicate balancing acts. Eventually, we’ll have to say that normal modes are, for the most part, over with, so we can continue on with heroic content. Now I know some people will ask "Why can't we just do both and learn the heroic modes along the way?" To that specific question, I'll say that we will. Today's question is about the focus of both raid nights.

Blain was known for many things throughout his career in DoD, but seeking feedback from the roster was not one of them. This was Blain in rare form, and a perfect example of leadership going the extra mile in order to further DoD's cause. Even if that meant stepping out of a comfort zone.

Blain's new approach to tackling the dreaded Loot Paradox got the roster talking about what amount of time felt right, farming gear vs. pushing progression. And the roster responded well to it, soliciting responses from both the upper echelon of raiders, as well as from leadership itself. Seeing the guild actively engaged in raiding discourse gave me a feeling of quiet pride. The DoD machine was almost self-sustaining.

That same energy on the DoD forums translated to personal investment when it came time to slam our heads against the grueling difficulty of Heroic mode 25-Man raid bosses. Each member sunk their teeth in, knowing full well the harsh reality of repeated wipes -- something those of us from Vanilla knew intimately. We fostered the same emotions of personal investment in the newest players; if they felt they had a hand in deciding their own fate, they were even more likely to align their own goals with that of the guild's. No giving up. No whining. No bitching about missing an upgrade. 

Heroic boss death or bust.

---

Magmaw had more than enough to keep track of in a Normal kill. The enormous worm stood at the entrance to Blackwing Descent, and was to be tanked by two players -- when one tank was mangled, the other would take over. Magmaw Spit and Magmaw Spew were a constant threat to the lives of the team, keeping the healers fully occupied; Spit was frequent and targeted individuals, while Spew was less so, yet struck everyone in the raid. Pillar of Flame flung players into the air and spawned Lava Parasites that needed to be killed quickly. Ignoring the parasites meant death. The key to Magmaw's defeat was to tie him down during his thrashing with Constricting Chains, allowing players to straddle the worm, and tear into the shell protecting its head while it writhed and bucked.

For Heroic: Magmaw, the extreme became nightmarish, thanks to help from the big boss dragon in a neighboring room.

DoD pulls off a clutch kill, defeating Heroic: Magmaw,
Blackwing Descent

Heroic: Magmaw

Every 30 seconds, Nefarian would raise a blazing animated skeleton in Magmaw's room, spawning from a giant meteor that would stun anyone caught in its impact radius. Animated Skeletons hit hard, easily killing a non-plate wearer in a single hit, and needed to be off-tanked and killed. Killing them required concentrated burst because in their final 20%, the skeletons began an 8 second cast: Armageddon. Failing to commit the animated bones back to the earth resulted in an explosion potent enough to wipe the entire raid. Nefarian also accented the second phase of Magmaw, hurling bolts of Shadowflame Barrage at us, increasing our vulnerability to AoE damage. If we could make it to this point, animated skeletons would no longer plague us.

With all our attention on DPS directed toward Magmaw and Animated Blazing Skeletons, there was little time afforded for Lava Parasites. That meant in Heroic mode, they needed to be handled with a different tactic: kiting. For that assignment, Blain chose DoD's definitive frost death knight, Hellspectral. Utilizing Howling Blast spam, Hells caught each group of spawned parasites in his icy grasp, dragging them far to the outer reaches of the room to be dealt with.

Hells' timing had to be precise, as cross-over between Lava Parasites and Animated Skeletons could mean a rogue skeleton might come his way. To offset this, Littlebear and Jemb were assigned to alternate misdirecting skeletons to the melee group, so the offtank could hold it in place where it was cleaved to pieces. This, too, required timing, as the offtanks could no longer simply trade Magmaw back-and-forth each Mangle. Instead, Blain had one main tank hold Magmaw away from us, the off-tank only taunting prior to Mangle. This freed the off-tank to remain nearly perma-available, standing among melee and ready to pick-up and hold the incoming skeleton.

The last 20% of Heroic: Magmaw was truly the nightmare. Heroic: Magmaw demanded a consolidated final burn, withstanding a massive onslaught of fire and shadowflame. Every last cooldown was burnt, every last trinket was popped. Anything anyone could do to stay alive...they did. One attempt grew to be so frenetic that Sir Klocker side-stepped a Lava Burst, then dodged a Shadowflame...only to walk clear off the broken edges of the floor, plummeting into the lava below.

But as our health bars dipped to 20%, then 10%, then 5%, then 2%, Magmaw slowly picking us off one by one...the worm twitched and buckled in the spasms of death. I looked up from the red madness sloshing across the screen, burning into my eyes, instantly idling at the encounter's end. A few health bars remained. Dewgyd. Neps. Rainaterror. And my own. Four of us had lived. Barely.

After a progression drought of six weeks, Heroic: Magmaw fell on May 6th.

---

I'd just finished uploading one of the kill screenshots to the "Accomplishments" board, when a whisper came into chat. It was Blackangus.

[From: Blackangus] Just wanted to say thanks again for letting us be a part of DoD. Raiding is actually fun again!

I smiled.

[To: Blackangus] Glad to hear it. We're really lucky to have both you and Amatsu. You two showed up right when we needed you the most.

I glanced down at /trade chat, a nearly endless stream of guild advertisements, forever macro'd to the keyboards of the naive and the damned. I typed a response back to Black.

[To: Blackangus] You never did tell me how you came across DoD. How did you find us, exactly?

[From: Blackangus] Fred recruited us. We joined a Baradin Hold pug with him. He convinced us to check you out. Must have been at least an hour long chat.

Perhaps I'd been wrong about Fred. Perhaps he did have the big picture. For once as a guild leader, I was perfectly happy being wrong. Fred had something to teach me after all.

4.24. Fat Man and Little Boy

The 25-Man progression team claims
its first victim, Magmaw,
Blackwing Descent

Welcome Back, Fodder

Magmaw thrashed about as we struggled to gain control. The enormous faceless worm emerged from its molten tomb, towering above the raid, white hot blood vessels like bolts of burning lightning painted across its body. A pillar of flame burst out of the floor leaving parasites in its wake, wandering, hungry for warm flesh. Lava Parasites. They carried an infection which caused unsuspecting victims to projectile vomit onto the raid. More damage to have to heal through. Damage everywhere.

With parasites spreading disease, Magmaw continued to flail, impaling the tanks, slamming its entire body down onto the platform, stunning all in its path. If we could somehow manage to get two players to leap onto Magmaw, wrestling with it like something out of a Frank Herbert novel, we could trick it into impaling itself on a large spike in the middle of the floor. Do it, and we could be rid of this first boss, officially cutting the ribbon on 25-Man raiding in Cataclysm.

It was taking longer than expected. Exactly where things fell apart was hard to say. The parasites were biting too many people, spreading nausea, turning our strengths into liabilities. Getting people up onto Magmaw was a chore. It wasn't always working: UIs were glitching out, unable to target the spike on the floor with constricting chains -- the ability that would pull Magmaw down onto the spike for a burst of damage from the raid. And it was a challenge to keep the tanks up. The damage we took felt as if it got worse as the fight progressed. Insayno had graciously filled the second tanking position, after Drecca was unable to attend the kick-off of the 25-Man. It was just Insayno and I for the first attempts on Magmaw. And it was rough.

[To: Blain] Welcome back to raiding. :\

DoD's raids were split into two nights a week, four hours per night -- since as far back as Serpentshrine Cavern. Each night began precisely at the top of the hour; invites started thirty minutes prior, fillers came in fifteen minutes till. We made our attempts for two hours, granted the raid a 5-10 minute bio break at the halfway mark, then reconvened for the remaining two hours.

It was the entire first hour, on Friday, January 7th, 2011, that we worked on Magmaw. It was no Razorgore-style brick wall, but it was certainly no Naxxramas-25 pushover, either. Roughly eight attempts was all it took to send the worm into a twitching spasm of death. A glance up at the raid frames confirmed our suspicions: of a 25-Man raid, 9 of us lived. In a normal mode, this was evidence that the difficulty had indeed increased since the days of Wrath.

[From: Blain] I like these odds.

Omnotron Defense System wasn't nearly as difficult. When the four automatons finally toppled over, we had fifteen minutes remaining before the break. The learning curve was flat on these robots; most of the challenge was simply in transitioning from the two trons being tanked to the ones preparing to animate. Other challenges, such as dealing with each tron's shield -- two of which happened to cause massive raid wide damage if accidentally burned through -- were handled with relative ease. The days of hammering nails with bare hands were distant memories. DeadlyBossMods gave us the visuals, and precise calls from a veteran raid leader filled in any gaps.

Mature stands down while the raid
unleashes hell into Maloriak,
Blackwing Descent

Bang the Gong Quickly

After the bio break, we returned to Blackwing Descent to face our next challenge: Maloriak. This boss took us the remaining two hours of the raid. Maloriak kept changing things on us, tossing red potions into his cauldron, followed by blue ones -- or was it blue, then red? Each attempt was different, so understanding each vial's ramifications and learning how to adapt simply took time and practice. Blain controlled the abberation spawns with extreme precision, letting certain casts through while interrupting others. I had enough on my plate as it stood, without having to worry about which interrupt strategy was best for us. Thank God for Blain doing the math.

The 25-Man progression team triumphed, killing Maloriak in DoD's infamous last pull of the evening. We were 50% through Blackwing Descent by the end of the first night of raid progression, and well on our way to wrapping up the normal modes by the end of the weekend.

Or so I thought.

Atramedes brought our progression to a sharp halt the following Sunday. The entire four hours was spent wiping to a blind dragon.

He lay sleeping at the far end of a keyhole shaped room: a large circular arena at the base of a thin outer foyer -- at its tip, the smooth edges of the walkway dropped off sharply into smoldering lava. We entered the main arena from a southern doorway, and were treated to a cinematic explaining the dragon's pitiful state. Maloriak was responsible, the self-proclaimed mad scientist of Blackwing Descent headed all of Nefarion's gruesome experiments in manufacturing augmented dragonflight. His ineptitude promised all-encompassing sight, resulting instead in total blindness. The dragon quickly proved it was no worse off.

During the fight, Atramedes sent out sonically charged discs, attempting to locate us by sound. Any player struck by the discs caused a thermometer-like gauge to slowly fill. Top the gauge off completely after being hit enough times, and Atramedes would issue a killing blow, having fully detected the player.

It's funny how a simple command like "dodge the rings" becomes a four hour nightmare of explanation, coordination and subsequently failed attempts. Even after being instructed which direction to move, players panicked and ran in random directions. Sporadic movement seeded the next set of discs in an unpredictable direction, and the attempt would spiral downward into tragedy. Blain insisted on a tight group and a single direction to move to. The discs would not control us, we'd control them. Getting players to think and act uniformly with precision took much longer than expected.

In flight, Atramedes posed another risk, targeting people at random and blanketing the room with fire until either they were burned to a crisp...or one of several gongs was struck. The sound from the gong counteracted his echolocation, stunning him in the process -- our window of opportunity to grant him another burst of damage. But there were a fixed amount of gongs, so those being chased had to do everything in their power to avoid the incoming flame, striking the gong at the last possible moment.

The grueling four hours finally came to an end with five minutes to spare. Once again, DoD ended victoriously in our famous last pull of the night. After the first weekend, we were 2/3rds through Blackwing Descent. Chimaeron and Nefarion would have to wait.

Atramedes is defeated in the final pull of the 2nd night,
Blackwing Descent

You Dropped a Bomb on Me

The raid dispersed amid congratulations on a job well done and reminders to get signed-up for next week's run. As the raid dismantled, a whisper caught my attention.

[From: Bheer] You and the officers have a few moments to chat in vent?

[To: Bheer] Of course! Will ping them and drag you in.

I shot a message into officer chat, calling whomever was available. Blain, Sir Klocker, Neps, and Jungard answered the call, joining us in the private vent channel.

"Go ahead and grab Drecca, too," said Bheer.

Drecca?

"Sure thing," I said, noting that Drecca had joined vent. I moved him down into the officer channel. "So, what's this all about?"

"We've decided to step down from the 25-Man progression team."

What?

"...uh, may I ask why?"

"To be honest, it's really just more of the same stuff we've always had problems with. People fuckin' around in raid chat, lots of downtime between pulls, lot of wasted time on re-explanations...the usual stuff."

So, basically every raid we've ever been in, none of which is news.

Sir Klocker was the first to point out the obvious, "You do realize that this was our first weekend in raids. This is the first time we've seen any of these bosses."

I continued his thought, "Do you really think it's appropriate to make a judgement call on the 25 this early?"

"The inefficiency of the 25 is just one part of it. There's other reasons as well."

Inefficiency? I'm sure Blain loved hearing that.

"I'm all ears. Please, by all means."

Bheer took a deep breath, "Well, some of us aren't a big fan of Lexxii, so making her healing officer wasn't the best decision."

I skipped the part where I gave a shit about his opinion on who would've been a better choice and cut to the chase, "Is there any particular reason why you felt the need to string me along? I mean, here you both are, updating your position on the raid slot template, gearing up, maxing out reps, giving me every indication that you're loyal to the 25...I mean, Bheer, we're practically in constant communication every day over IM. I'm sorry but I have to ask: why even participate at all this weekend?"

"I did it as a courtesy to you."

Well, thank you very fucking much for gracing me with your presence. For future reference, it would've been a "courtesy" to let me know you planned to skip town, so that I could recruit in your absence.

I took a deep breath while my inner monologue vented like a steam pump bursting under pressure.

"If you insist on this, I'm sorry to see you go. I only hope that this doesn't cripple the 25-Man."

Drecca butted in, "I think there's certainly going to be some opportunities where we're able to help with the 25. Just not a week-to-week thing anymore."

"That was another one of the reasons," Bheer added, "we can't really be expected to demonstrate any loyalty to the 25-Man if you're unwilling to do the same."

You mean how I carved a spot out for your shaman in Wrath when your druid was on the verge of being squeezed out? You mean how I ensured that a loot whore like Crasian would never set foot in the guild again, making the guild a safe place for you? You mean how I didn't think twice to re-invite you after walking away from Elite, without explanation? No, I've never demonstrated loyalty to you. Ever.

"I don't follow, Bheer. Explain."

"The whole business about guaranteed spots in the 25-Man going away."

"Bheer, the whole purpose of re-writing that rule was to prevent players from getting up on their high horse and treating everyone like shit, remember? Remember how it wasn't that long ago that some folks with guaranteed spots started to become awful people? Besides, we've been over this. As long as you are a constant, reliable raider in the 25-Man, the end result remains exactly the same as it was in Wrath: you get every raid you sign up for."

"See, that's what I’m talking about. There are so many rules now. I hate to say it, Hanzo, but the guild is really losing its old-school family-oriented appeal. Everything is so rigid and structured now."

I wanted to scream at him.

YOU WERE ONE OF THE PEOPLE THAT DEMANDED MORE RULES!

But there was no point in yelling...or being civil. Their minds were made up long before the "courtesy" first weekend in raid progression.

Bheer left the 25-Man to join Drecca's newly created 10-Man team. And I had no choice but to put on a good face and support their decision, just as I committed to supporting all the 10-Man teams in DoD. But I didn't have to like it. The fact that I lost Bheer to a 10 wasn't what upset me the most...it was his delivery that left me gutted and used. Bheer had many weeks to approach me about his intentions, but left it until the absolute last possible moment, explaining it away with a myriad of excuses that hid the truth behind his motives. The truth, in turn, would slowly start to fall into place over the weeks and months to come -- pieces of the puzzle coalescing into a much clearer picture. For now, however, I was left only with his "reasons", and processed them as best I could: I deferred to my inner voice.

So, you want to leave the 25-Man progression team high and dry, eh?

Good for you.