Saturday 12 July 2008

It's kinda like, well, leading a pack of stray cats

I was playing GTA4 (almost finished it, just having too much fun goofing around) whilst my little brother was raiding on his druid next to me. As raidleader. After setting up vent on my PC, on which he played WoW, he began with the Karazhan raid. Apparently noone heard him over vent and noone listened via the chat. Awful to see a raidleader raid in silence. It went "well", they killed Attumen, Moroes and Maiden, only to grind to a halt at Opera.

Why? Their group consisted of 2 Resto Druids, 1 tanking pally, 1 healing pally, 1 dps warrior, 1 tanking warrior, 2 hunters, a rogue and a mage. And they got The Wizard of Oz as their boss. Without fear, only one mage for the frost and fire debuffs, they were doomed to fail. After a few good wipes, they traded in the mage for a lock, upon the mage's own request. After wiping again, they finally nailed it. But by this time, my little brother was down because he wasn't leading, he was just following the madness of unstructured fights and ninja pulls. I asked if I should take over.
Sadly, this raiding party is more structured than the one I was in.

So after Opera I found myself in a position in which I had only been once before and we didn't kill Attumen that day, since it was the first KZ raid ever for us. After a ready check asking if people could hear me on Vent, which 8/10 people voted yes on, I started. Once we got to the big sentry's near curator, the main tank suddenly said that he was red and that he had to repair. no biggie, exept for the fact that I told everyone to repair. So we went to repair. Or actually, me and one tank went downstairs to clear the blacksmith that can repair.

The first raidwarning was issued that they should come to Attumen's place to help. No response. The second was accompanied by an angry raidleader talking down the microphone. A gentle /rw Get to Attumen. Now! only got me a few extra people. Meanwhile, 2 of the idiots HSed to repair and needed to get a summon. Unluckily, our Warlock was dead at that time. With one one side a tank that was waiting to begin and a 9-year old hunter that was getting angry because he had to wait for his summon, I went to look at my mic again. Since people weren't listening.

I took the outbound slider and set it to +10 and yelled down my mic that I'm the one they should listen to as the raidleader. The first response was a "im deaf". Tactic worked. I got their attention. After rallying them to Attumen, we cleared the blacksmith with a tank breathing down my neck yelling that he needed to split in 30 mins. 30 mins to kill Curator.

I'm not used to being a raidleader, trying to lead the pack of stray cats and looting and keeping tabs on the health of the raid as a healer, so I gave the masterlooting to a reliable person (or, atleast, so I have been told by my brother). Luckily it went well now, exept for a mishap while going to the bathroom, resulting in my death (that of the druid, not the real me >.<) and the tank which actually is a 9-year old boy. Pull. Pull. Hurry. Hurry. Come on! More sounds weren't coming from him.

Nice that the tank is eager, but he wanted to plunge in another group while the pally healer was still OOM. "I'm going to pull!", he said. "No, you're not, you are waiting for the pally.", was my response. After firmly stating that he must wait over Vent he finally stopped being a little bitch and listened. Until he accidentally ninja-pulled the Curator because he wouldn't go back when I told him to. After finally killing Curator, with a few near-deaths because the adds weren't picked up properly upon evocation, I was done. I could go blog it.

1 comment:

Stephi said...

Part of the reason I'm pretty glad my guild has an 18+ requirement...

Don't get me wrong, there are some very well rounded, patient tikes out there. But their not so patient, thick headed counter parts out number them, and unfortunately, that's life.

Might as well get some of those life lessons done early: It ain't fair, no way no how.

Sucks that your bro had a bad first experience, but Raid leading is uber tough. You gotta be firm with knuckleheads, and usually if you pretend to know what you're talking about, things usually work out XD

Btw, HAI! I found you from BA forums... I's gonna keep reading >.>

~<3 Cay