The above statement is wrong. But it is a lot more right than we care to admit. The truth elements in that statement are darn uncomfortable to think about or admit. We humans are really freaking good at coming up with ways that it is someone else’s fault. The more we know the better at it we get. The better we know every class in the game the better we are at seeing what that idiot in the fire is doing wrong. Doing that gives is some nice distractions to keep us from looking at ourselves.
Before attempting to remove the spec from someone’s eye it helps to remove the plank from our own. But dag-nab-it that guy was clearly an idiot!
-He could not hold agro and kept letting me die! Did you iceblock? No, but…
-He could not keep me healed. Did you blow every cooldown and use every damage mitigation trick you know? No, but…
-They ran past me and picked up adds! Did you tell them you were stopping to kill the ones you were on? No, but…
A wipe is like a car accident. Sure that guy who ran the stop sign was dumb, but if you had not been on the cell-phone texting you might have avoided him.
My point is not that you are more at fault than him. My point is that we get so caught up in blaming others we fail to grow and advance as a character. In WOW it is SO easy because we can just armory them, or check up in recount. PRESTO! We instantly can measure that that person is 76.2% dumber than we are. Now we can be satisfied that they were at fault and go away smugly self righteous.
The first trick to improving something is identifying the problems. Since we can only reliably change ourselves we have to start there. At some point we are obligated to point out that spec in the other person’s eye. However even when we hit that point we should still be checking the mirror for planks.
My example of failing at this is Analogue’s L2P post. There were two wipes in that run and they were both MY fault. The first time she blatantly rode into some ambushers. My fault. I did not mention to her I was skirting the edge of the quarry so as to only presence pull one target. The second time those idiots ran past me to the end of the tunnel. It should have been obvious that I was stopping… but EVERYONE knows you never stop. Did I say I was stopping to kill some? No. It is not my fault they were texting instead of driving but it is my fault that I deviated from the ‘rules’ of that road.
I disagree with you a bit, it can also be a lot of Did they…
Did they pay attention to their surroundings
Did they notice your health
Did they see someone stop
Did they attempt to come back
Did they assume
**Did they get ahead of the tank** and healer
Most ppl worth their salt at least look around instead of just running off a cliff, yes the blame game can be partially yours but don’t take too much of it on, you cant play other ppls toons for them and you cant hold their hands at all times.
I don’t know about you but when I am tanking I don’t have time to type to someone in the middle of a pull most times, and on the gauntlet its worse things are always coming.
Could you have killed everyone faster or died faster your self if you typed it out at the time.
If you were sarcastic on this post I totally missed the mark, but anyway its a team effort and you cant play every role of the team all at the same time, the others need to recognise their faults as well to improve and hopefully (fingers crossed) learn from it.
Certainly what you say is true. There is usually a list as long as your arm of things they could do better or need to do. When a wipe happens there are almost certainly things the other people did wrong.
My point is there are almost always things WE could have done better, big or small. Usually an emotional reaction to what others screwed up blinds us to what we could have done differently. It is very easy to hope online and blast out a rant, or just log off and stew, without seriously looking at anything we can do different or better. And whenever we do that we hamper our own improvement.
There have been several times I have received sharp and partly undeserved criticism in game that I was able to grow from despite myself. One time I was venting about DPS that did not watch their agro and our guild leader, a hard core raider with zero tolerance for QQ simply retorted that if I could not hold agro ALL the time not matter what should just delete now. Being not one to shrink from that I challenged him to tank a few for me and then delete his account if even one thing was pulled off him. He did not reply and I went away smug that my point was made. I almost missed his point. But anytime I run up against a tanking challenge I remembered it and pushed myself harder and harder to never let meter happy over geared types be an excuse for me to not hold agro. And doing that made me better as a tank. I still think DPS need to be more responsible for their own agro but every time I run now I challenge myself to hold all agro all the time and to get things back on me the instance they fall off.
My point is not about soaking up the blame that is due other people my point is to ignore their blame when we are focusing on our own blame. Not all the time. But when it is time we should be introspective we owe it to ourselves and everyone we run with to do it with a whole hearted frankness.
It’s not the first time I mention this but you and your spouse should really try 3-manning level appropriate instances.
Try it with a total stranger who is willing to join you on Ventrilo.
However much you will plan, some pulls – and 4-, 5- or 6-mob need to be planned depending on their relative level to you – will go awry but you will have to react to unexpected events as a group and sometimes the emergency is so pressing you won’t be able to communicate over Vent for the first 3 to 5 seconds of the emergency.
Try it next with a player both of you know well.
The same thing will happen but because the player is familiar with your playstyle, his or her reasponse is likely to be faster and more appropriate to the evolving situation.
What’s my point, if any?
Both teams will experience the same crisis and will not be able to communicate for short periods of time no matter what. Results will vary upon the skill of the extra player and how well he or she understands your playing style.
Don’t be too harsh on yourself or others when pugging a heroic. Almost no one wants to “waste time” communicating and very few will figure out how you react to crisis when the standard is to zerg the content.
The wife and I 3-manned Shadowfang Keep with a total stranger Sunday (late teen, early twenties female from the voice). All were level 18 and no one was wearing any heirloom items. We spend some time planning specific encounters but still suffered one wipe and two deaths (the healer correctly assessed the situation imo and decided one player had to die for the group to survive). But we won and cleared the instance, and the stranger said she never had as much fun in an instance since Burning Crusade heroic, pre 2.4.
Just. Try. It.
Back in vanilla wow I use to do that sort of thing all the time. Only the group was a hunter, mage and warlock. With the dual druids we two manned plenty of situations meant for a full party including some instances. More recently we did 3 and 4 man pretty often with the warrior and priest combo. Only it was almost never with vent. Personally I am really looking forward to the return of CC in Cata because I always loved really complicated pulls using crowd control of verious kinds. I absolutely love doing content that I can only pull off with a complex and well executed pull combo.
The point of my post was not to be hard on myself. Both of those were situations were I should not have had to communicate for people to do things. My point was more that I had a non-zero portion of the blame for the wipe. Yeah, typing in that tunnel was right out. But telling my wife, in the same room, that I was flanking was certainly something I could have done. But like I said, it was not about that. It was about trying to find ways to improve in a wipe instead of simply assigning the blame and then ignoring it. It is the same reason I like complex pulls and doing content that we should not be able to handle with our group size or makeup. I like figuring out what we can do and how we can make it work. The essence of getting better as a player is focuing on those things instead of what others did wrong. EXCEPT when identifying where others went wrong is making you better too. Which is the case when you are working with a team and planning a fight. or when you are finding ways you can change your play to compensate for someone’s failings.