Last night we went to Icecrown on our normal Thursday night raid, and as seems my tradition, here comes my “morning after” thread. We are not nearly as far along in the instance as I might have hoped at this point, but we continue to make constant forward motion. Problem is apparently I have been coming off as far more negative and downtrodden than I meant to be. Much like a parent, I have been focusing on the things that have been going wrong, and trying to figure out ways to overcome those obstacles.
However to the raid apparently I have been sounding like XT and his refrain of no No NO NO NO! One of my good friends in the raid told me that across the board we as officers have been very negative lately. In our serious focus on attempting to tweak and fix all that was wrong, we were not taking the time to point out all the various things that were going right. Stopping to think about it, the member was right. We have become so zeroed in on the obstacles in our path that we had allowed our demeanor to start bringing the raid down.
The Darkside
The danger of down, is that once you start the path, your whole raid begins to mirror your feelings. They stop noticing the little victories that are accomplished along the way. At its very worst, they stop believing they can do better; that they really can succeed. Negativity is like a feedback loop, the more there is of it the more it dominated the mood of any group. If the officers allow themselves to indulge in these feelings, it is only a matter of time before the raid as a whole is a bitter and spiteful place.
When you are in the middle of face planting on new content it is really hard to see the positive side. There will always be rough nights in raiding; nights when it seems like the fates themselves have conspired against you. During these times is when you as a leader need to reflect upon the little things going right in the raid. I am not an optimist by nature, and often times the optimism I have is hard fought to keep. However there will always be something going right during any fight.
The Cure
I’ve brought up the concept of Legos before, when it comes to raiding. If you approach a fight you can break it down into building blocks in your mind. Last night for example we were working on the Blood Queen encounter and as we got our feet wet I started to notice the moving parts. Breaking down the fight you can see it mostly falls into distinct categories that need to be handled:
- Tanking – Keeping two tanks sharing the blood mirror
- General Healing – dealing with the raid wide damage from vampires
- Vampiric Bite – Making sure players are biting who they should be
- Shadows – Making sure players are running the shadow trail to edge
- Pact – making sure linked players meet at predetermined point
- Fear – making sure priests fear ward to dispel/heal
- Proximity – making sure everyone is far enough apart as not to splash damage
As you work your way through the fight, you can start to see how each of those elements is being handled and whether or not it needs tweaking. While it is important to point out what is going wrong, it is every bit as important to point out the things that are going correctly. While we did not down Blood Queen, we were getting very close. Towards the end all of the elements were going extremely smoothly, except the biting. So we as the leaders gave some positive feedback on those elements that were going well after the attempts.
I have been stuck in the rut of only looking at the bad things, so after each fight in my little synopsis of what happened, it started to sound like: “Bad Bad Bad Bad Bad”. Where in truth, had I been more honest with myself and the raid the end result would have been a dialog that looked something like this: “Bad Bad Good Good Good” highlighting the elements that were going well after delivering the items that were still going horribly.
As a leader last night, at the beginning of the night I had to force myself to be positive. I fully admit it was a struggle for awhile. We came into Icecrown and wiped on some farmed content, which only made the struggle to keep a positive spin going that much harder. However as the night went on, the mood of the raid as a whole began to lift, and before long I myself was in a genuinely good mood. It was almost like the curtains parting to let in the sunlight… which is a cheesy metaphor I know.
I am not sure how much longer this new approach will last, as I am sure before long we will have an epically bad evening and my old patterns will begin to set in. However I honestly believe that if we can manage to keep a positive outlook our “wipe” time will be all the more productive. The cure I guess, is to change the attitude at the top of the raid. We are the voices the members hear in their headsets, and if we are excited and positive… it certainly can’t hurt things.