I was watching Asmongold answer some questions about TBC, and at one point he remembered someone wiping a raid. I laughed, because there's sometimes someone asleep at the wheel and won't move. Blizzard thinks fun mechanics are making you play Twister while you fight a boss. It's all good, and yeah sometimes people won't listen, or move, or their pizza fell on their lap, or something. .
In my case though, when I wiped our entire guild, it's because I was an idiot, straight up. Baron Geddon. I will NEVER forget my shame that day.
The usual strat that we used on Geddon was the "line". Somewhat. It's all a bit vague now but we'd have the MT (main tank) and the OT (off tank). Baron Geddon has a mechanic where he will turn someone in the raid into a "bomb", who can kill LOTS of people around them if they blow up near them. The idea is to get as far away from everyone else if you're the bomb so you don't hurt them. Anyhow, we had an OT always ready in case the MT was turned into the bomb (it happened occasionally), or Geddon's fire blasts killed the MT.
The "line" wasn't working as well, I think because people weren't spacing themselves far enough apart. So the new strat, which the guild came up with on Vent (WHILE I WAS AFK AND EVERYONE WAS TOLD I WAS AFK) was to have the healers "clump" and for people to run towards the priests to get shielded if they were the bomb, then run away a bit (yes, it's a convoluted strat anyhow).
I came back to the very end of the conversation and tried to get clarification, as I noticed the OT was in the middle of the room, but the GL was saying VERY CLEARLY in Vent that if you were the bomb you had to run to the center of the room. It made no Goddamn sense to me (it should make no sense to anyone) and I kept trying to ask "What?", but the chatter was high, and then pull was on. I figured that they'd sorted some new strat that involved a bomb running to the OT, because behind him on the wall was a priest hanging out. Ok. I guess?
Well, I became the bomb, I ran STRAIGHT to the OT, as I thought the strat was, blew him all to hell and killed him, I died also because the ceiling was silly high there, the priest was completely flabbergasted and screaming in Vent, the guild lost their composure entirely, and we died.
The day I killed 40 people. Yeah. Great memories ;) Thank GOD they were forgiving, but to this day I still remember that mistake. After that, I would always ALWAYS make sure everyone - every single person in guild - knew the strat before a pull.
Good times, good times.
Meanwhile, here's a photo of another strat we used on a boss in Zul'Gurub when it was new. :) I imagine that people have come up with FAR BETTER ways of doing this now. I hope. I'll check it out on YouTube - see what people on private servers are doing. We were successful using this so my husband wrote it down for a friend who was in an Alliance guild who was having trouble (remember, this place was absolutely brand new to us all at the time). Her guild had cleared BWL, but these mechanics for this new-fangled 20-man were still new to all of us at the time. That's something else that will be missing when Classic retuns. Anyhow, this is how we shared tactics in the olden days ;)
Ah, raiding. And why I will likely not bother this time around ;) That's not a definite thing, but yeah, I think I will give it a miss ;)
