When Do You Call It A Night?
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Monday, February 23, 2009 - 37 Comments Tags: calling it a night, fail, grobbulus, naxxramas, pugs, raiding, wiping
iTZKooPA on Monday, February 23, 2009 - 37 Comments Tags: calling it a night, fail, grobbulus, naxxramas, pugs, raiding, wiping 
PUGing can be a brutal experience. The lack of coordination, responsibility and inability to read a player's worth is a soul-draining experience. A few bad Heroics or 10-man Naxx's can force even the most patient and understanding player to swear them off for good.
What happens when even your guild fails? What do you do then? QQ, abandon the "newbs" and find another guild? Hold out for the next raid and see if the situation is repeated? Go on a tirade in Ventrilo about how the tanks can't generate enough threat-per-second and that the healers don't know how to heal out of group? Sit there and cry? Or, do as I do, blog about it.
This past week, SolidSamm's new guild failed to down even one boss in 10-man Naxxramas one night. Yes, the same dungeon that is done by PUGs on a daily basis and that we fully cleared the week before, held us up. In all fairness, we did not have the normal group together. The raid was initially delayed an hour due to scheduling conflicts. At 8:30 PM we decided to go with the 10 we had online. The ragtag bunch included only two healers, one of which was our main tank on his fresh level 80 alt. Thus, the off tank became the main tank, and a feral druid had to take over the off tanking duties. We knew the night would be a tough one, but we all figured it was worth a shot.
Our first boss of the night was to be the poison spewing mob known as Grobbulus. Attempt one was a mess. I'll be honest and admit that I did not notice how poorly we were doing until only the tank and myself remained alive. From what I was told after I asked wtf happened, someone dropped a poison on the casters. The wipe was caused by an easily correctable mistake, so we ressed and went at the abomination a second time. While the second attempt got us to 8%, we still failed to drop the fat ass, causing the raid to be canceled for the night.
Eight percent. Grobbulus had less than a quarter million HP at that point and the raid was called. I hate repair bills as much as the next guy, but I hate leaving a boss up when he is killable even more. I voiced my opinion politely, but it was decided that due to the raid's composition, the undergeared healer, and the replacement off tank, things just weren't going to go our way. Yea, we may have been able to kill Grobb, but could we have gone any farther? Doubt it.
Two hours, 20 something gold, a collection of consumables, some additional gray hairs and I have nothing to show for half a nights work. I did get to play the sweet boyfriend and pretend I left the raid to hang out with the girlfriend. Brownie points for sure. How does your guild decide to call it a night, and under what circumstances?
Reader Comments (37)
when setting up my raid, im always sure to add "dont bother me if you're too much of a dope to finish it" so they know leaving/calling isnt an option
thaddius... hc... 1 person is doing something wrong... WIPE...
@ Alayea
I was just trying to say that the people whining about how bad pugs are should maybe up their standerts for who they invite. Sure its no guarantee but it helps alot. And also try starting your own pug with a friend or 2 so you can decide who joins instead of joining a pug with alreadfy 8 people in it.
I know those 2 things helped me avoid alot of the very bad pugs
In our guild we have only progressed through OS, VOA, and 10 man naxx because we are a relatively new raiding guild. We are still trying to get all the newer people geared by doing 10 man naxx. At the moment we have 2 groups going through naxx because some of us are in different time zones and it conflicts with schedules. Mainly we try to aim for getting 2 wings done in one night and depending on how people feel at the end of those wings we decide if we want to press on and do the other 2, also depending on what time it is. We have had to call it on Grobbulus before though, because we couldn't get the newer people to understand that you can't drop clouds in the middle of the room!!!
Exact same thing happened with my guild last night got Grobb to 400k HP and yet we did not finish him and called it a night :/
NEVER RETREAT, NEVER SURENDER!
simple fact is my guild out n out refuses to quit!
dedication ftw...
Might I just say that I dont understand the people that only want to take pugs that have the achievement. How are people going to learn the fights if you only ever take people in who already know the fights? I am decent geared hunter with 5 purples and the rest blues, but my guild hasent got enuf lvl 80's to do Naxx. We do heroics to get geared and help out our guildies to get to 80.
I find alot of people too impatient. Go go go is the motto instead of taking a minute to explain the fight. People are too much into 'what he drop?' instead of 'good fight everyone, that was fun!'
My name is Hardcor and I dont know the fights! There, I said it. But I know my class, love the game and am willing to learn. Like the book says,
'"A noob player can improve, but a nasty player is going to be nasty no matter what they learn."
I wish you all patience, fun, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two players.
For everyone that has cleared Naxx and beat Sarth3D, congratulations. However, I am certain you were not pro's your first time in and I am certain you had your struggles until you were able to experience each of the fights. Having good leadership in the raid will help you minimize this, but please, for those of you that have cleared the current content, leave the arrogance somewhere else, I really get sick of it. My guild has cleared all of the current content and our more senior folks are working with the rest of us to teach us all there is to know about raiding. Being somewhat new to WoW, I did not raid in pre-BC or BC, so this is new to me and to a lot of others. So instead of complaining about noobs in your guild, please help them progress, as my guild is doing.
Diplomatic Immunity
Thunderhorn US
Unfortunately.... i have to PuG =[
We call it a night after the fights start. When the raid starts to complain about poor healer/dps/tanks. I remeber even now in BC when we ended up in staying 5 hours at Gurtogg Bloodboil and we failed to kill him. We wiped 20 times or more. At the final 2-3 rounds i was out of elixirs, everyone was on the edge of "open war" with every player in the raid. It was brutal. We were learning from the last wipe and we were geting killed at stuff we passed before. Engi robots were everywere. I ended up spending (as a druid tank with 2/5 t6, at that time) about 150g.
We call it a night when we feel we have done enough. If we have had 3 or 4 good attempts at a boss without any sort of improvement we usually call it, but generally, we say we will do these bosses and then, unless there is quite a bit of time left, call it after that.
Everything Alayea said on February 24th regarding the guild is correct. Jaythekilla is an inbred retard, just like all of his little 4chan-quoting followers.
They make Malfurion a crappy place to be.