An Analysis of Wiping
Edit: We’re getting some email asking for the “Wipe-Fight between TJ and BRK” to continue. Folks, TJ has her own blog and writes her own stuff. She has very kindly volunteered to post stuff for us, that we write, on our blog when we are unable to. There will be not TJ/BRK Wars as we don’t write on each other blog unless we’re Very Explicit. We both want to avoid confusion. If you see a post here, “written” by TJ, it was just her “posting” it, unless she states at the beginning, “Hey, this is TJ.” Vice-versa on her site.
/apologize for the confusion
Wipe #1: The Stoner Wipe. Welcome to the raid, all you people staring out the window and watching television. Yes, there is a boss fight now; please pay attention.
Frequently heard comments: “Which way is north?” “Is it my job to do that?” “Ha! I had my tanking/DPS/healing gear on.” “I’m supposed to be on the other side? I’m always on this side… aren’t I?”
Wipe #2: The Early-Epeen Wipe. DPS rushes ahead of the tank and blows up the raid before anything actually gets started.
Frequently heard comments: “Stay behind the tank, you cannot beat him to the boss.” “Wait for the tank to get aggro; don’t open with your highest-threat attack right away.” “D@mn, sorry guys, I always grab aggro when I chain-crit.” “I was just trying to get in position.” “I used my trinket/talent macro and overtook the tank; can we get a Misdirect on the tank this time?”
Wipe #3: The Bad-Position Wipe. You must stand in a certain position and move when things happen, but people forget they can move and end up dying in-place when the action starts.
Frequently heard comments: “Why are you standing in front of a mob that Cleaves?” “Why are you not at max-range?” Why are you not moving when you know you have to? See the debuff on your screen? That means you have to move!” “I guess my boss-timer was off.” “I never get that debuff when I stand here.” “Nobody healed me when I got hit for 10K!”
Wipe #4: The Unlucky Wipe. You’ll destroy the boss as long as X doesn’t happen, and X happens.
Frequently heard comments: “Nothing you can do when the Infernals land like that.” “The murlocs just went crazy.” “I got hit with three of those blasts in a row!” “I was mind-controlled the whole time.” “All the spawns came from my area and I was overwhelmed.” “If the boss keeps doing that to me, I’m going to call the police and report sexual harassment.”
Wipe #5: The Competent-Guy Wipe. The most solid person in your raid sneezes and smashes his head on his keyboard, wiping the raid. He falls or turns or does something really stupidly simple that wreaks utter destruction and neither he nor the rest of the raid knows why.
Frequently heard comments: “What happened X? You’ve never done that before? Are you feeling OK?” “Well, let’s try again, but this time X won’t pretend to be Y.” (Y being the guy from the Stoner Wipe).
Wipe #6: The “Healers Get Lost in Another Dimension” Wipe. The main tank dies for no apparent reason. His healers start cursing into Vent, not knowing how the tank died, yet knowing it had something to do with him taking a lot of damage.
Frequently heard comments: “You were at full health, and then you were dead.” “I was just in the middle of casting a huge heal, and then it was too late.” “My heal got interrupted by a silence/mind-control/cool commercial on TV.”
Wipe #7: The Weak-Tank Wipe. Squishy-DPS classes are just crushing the boss without regard to the tank’s inability to maintain aggro, and they don’t care. The tank gets all the blame while the mages and warlocks are not watching the threat meter and getting one-shot.
Frequently heard comments: “I’m Frost-spec; I shouldn’t be grabbing aggro!” “I die on every pull, why should the boss be any different.” “That curse always gets me killed.” “Someone needs to teach that guy to generate threat; I never pull aggro when X is tanking.”
Wipe #8: The Hunter is a ‘Tard Wipe. One hunter refuses to prematurely Feign Death, and once he does grab aggro, waits for the boss to get in his grill and THEN Feign’s Death. The boss then runs amok and smashes the healers like whack-a-mole.
Frequently heard comments: “Feign Death you b@stard!” “He must have resisted my FD.” “Run TO the tank if FD is resisted, don’t just stand there.” “Would you please FD before you grab aggro? Do you need a definition of the word, ‘Before’?”
Wipe #9: The Late-Epeen Wipe. Things are going fine, until the rogues and hunters decide to play Riding the Aggro Wave, trying to match the main tank’s threat without going over it. But then someone does something silly, grabs aggro, and the boss smashes the melee classes into dust as the hunters FD and laugh quietly to themselves.
“Rogues are down, ferlols are down, the fury warrior is down, can we just call it a wipe now?” “I can’t wait to see my DPS on that wipe; I was crushing him!” “If I could have a Feign Death talent, I’d die a happy girl. You hunters totally suck.”
Wipe #10: The “Raid Doesn’t Give an F” Wipe. Eight wipes into the night, it’s late and nobody has the patience to perform up to standards. They want to log off and get a snack. Wiping is the fastest way to accomplish this.
“If we get him down on this try, guild bank pays for repairs!” “Next week, can we do X, Y, and Z instead of this boss?” “I’m going to level my (other class) all week; I hate this guy right now.”
Wipe #11: The 1% Wipe. You got him, he’s going down. But something small starts a trickle of raid members dying, and it’s a matter of keeping just enough DPS alive to kill the boss, but there’s just no way it’s going to happen.
Frequently heard comments: “Aww (bleep!)” “(BLEEP)!” “(BLEEP) (BLEEP) (BLEEPITY) (BLEEPING) (BLEEP)!!”
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42 Responses to “An Analysis of Wiping”
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You have to admit, wiping is funny stuff.
ROFL! Soo true! My favorite is when the someone (usually tank) gets hit by a huge spike and dies. The comment is “Damn! He hit you like you stole his bike!”
So very, very true.
you forgot the
“lets have all 3 hunters md to the spriest” wipes.
LOL thats a great list because sadly its true
Simply fantastic. I hope I don’t get sued for copyright, but I’ve had to copy this and put it on my guild forum.
My favourite was the “aggro wave” - the rogues and hunters trying to stay as close as possible to the MT’s threat without going over. LOL
Thanks BRK
every boss fight is like that movie Endless Summer, and i’m mike hynson.
sadly, i have seen all versions first hand.
LMAO! I needed that this morning … We called our raid team “1% to wipe” for a long time. Basically if there was trash respawing and this was the last possible attempt on the first week of a boss, we would 1% wipe without fail.
Thanks BRK!
I like how we waited until #8 to get the Huntard one. There actually have been quite a few times that after a resist that I am either running up to the tank and standing next to him for 30 seconds until I can get another FD off or I am sitting at range with my thumb up my bum not DPSing as I hadn’t yet pulled aggro.
My very first PUG Karazhan (and first raid ever), I pulled a #8 on Prince. The group was not happy with me after that.
I’ve abused my FD key in raids ever since.
I like to alternate between #7 and #10. If I have to spend more time sitting still than DPSing, then I’ll start wanding. Although I admit that riding the Aggro Wave is funny as well. There’s nothing like pulling aggro with the last Ignite tick, use Ice Block, go Invisible and laugh.
Regarding the “Wipe #3: The Bad-Position Wipe”, my priest’s raid group refers to that as “not your friend”. That Rain of Fire you see falling around you? It’s not your friend. Pounding in Void Reaver? Not your friend. Fire under your feet? Not your friend. The person exploding next to you? Definitely not your friend.
Hell, most things tend to degenerate into that simple description! Piss off your healers? Oh, we’re definitely not your friends right now.
Wipe #12: The Giddy Wipe: Somebody says/does something funny, it snowballs, and everybody is laughing too hard to do anything and then you look up, realized you’ve wiped, and laugh some more. May or may not involve gratuitous amounts of innuendo.
I can honestly say that most of them have happened (especially the last one) with the one exception being the Hunter is a ‘Tard wipe, never done that one. And Im soooo glad about it
For #6 (the healer getting lost), I’ve definitely been part of a wipe where the healer on the tank later says “Oh, I had the wrong person targeted.”
Having only participated on one Raid, I fully recognize #8, as I was the Tank that bought it! I now have a perspective on other results I might expect in the future as raids get tougher. Great insights! Thx!
1% wipe on supremus. tanks are down. I FD as Supremus gets in my grill (on the kite phase, tank phase inc) only me a mage and a healing priest are up. I fire a few shots, ooops, he decides I am now the tank. Detterance, AotM and dodge three of his attacks. Just so you know the fourth attack is still draining my health. In vent the tanks are screaming Tank him Dot him up. I die. The mage tries and even iceblocks, which made everyone laugh. Apparently a mage (in Kara gear) holy priest and survival hunter cannot get the last 1% down on him. Or we failed on that try.
Wipe #13
The “Technology wipe”
1-2 raiders with key roles in the fight can’t seem to to avoid the dreaded Offline moniker. Usually heard as..
“Am I the only one running in place?”
“Is anyone else having their game crash every 5 minutes since the last patch”
“I think X just went offline again”
“Have you restarted your router, will your mom let you touch it?”
“Squeaky priest screams of “%#@$% again?”
“I will have my new PC next week hopefully”
“*&^+%&*^% Comcast &^%*&(%^”ers”
I am thoroughly convinced that blizz has it set up so that the one percent mark is actually more like ten percent… how else can we ALWAYS wipe there?
lol, epic.
BRK you just made my day
The Incompetent Warrior
I think you meant “preemptively feign death” instead of “prematurely” - the latter meaning “before it was supposed to” more or less, the former meaning something more positive
Wipe # 14: The Victorious Enrage
You did it! 6/10/15 minutes into the fight, and everyones up! Healers got out of fires and didn’t go OOM! The tank stopped getting crushed! DPS didn’t pull aggro! (of course, they were just wanding/autoattacking/etc… More on that in a second) You feel the giddy rush of victory!
And yet… the boss is only at 75%… And oh yeah, he just turned Red. And got bigger. And One-shot the tank. And the OT. And all the Melee. And now he’s going for healers and the pallies are bubble-hearthing.
This is the Enrage Wipe. Most commonly seen learning T6 encounters with lots of AoE where survival is priority one, it’s a sign that you’ve learned the fight well enough to try again, this time with feeling (i.e. consumables, dps actually trying, etc.) and actually kill the boss.
No other wipe feels quite so GOOD.
“You were at full health, and then you were dead.”
As a tank do you know how much I HATE to hear that one? And then I go look at logs and no–it WASN’T that fast. I took a crushing a 2 thrashes in a 2 second period. That ISN’T instant gosh darn it! That’s when I send the entire healer party to some other healer blog that says “you should ALWAYS be casting a heal on MT on bosses. Interrupt it if it’s not needed.” Ahem. . .
I know all about #3 back in ZG bat boss(pre BC) you have to tell people stay out of fire or you will die. and than you get the #10 wipe since no one will stay out of fire and you wipe 6 times its 2am and the raid leader says lets try 1 more time so you just try and get to next wipe as quick as you can so you can go spend 18 to 20g for repair(thank you plate armor)and go to bed…..
and I know #6 way to well you have tank toped off and doing great and next he is dead the boss lands a good crit….
Hahahaha this is an awesome list!
I’ve actually been responsible for wipe #6 and I’m willing to laugh about it. /grin
Wipe #11a: A variation on the 1% wipe in which members of the raid with critical tasks see how close the boss is to death and forget what they’re supposed to be doing to help BURN IT DOWN, causing some unfortunate boss mechanic to get through and eventually resulting in a full Wipe #11.
See: Kicking heals on Illidari Council, throwing spines too soon on Naj’entus, blowing up the raid on Kaz’rogal, not killing spore bats on Vashj, etc.
With the great FD resist buff patch of 2008 (2.4), I find myself using FD way more often. In fact, resists have become so regular that I’ve thrown Disengage onto one of my action bars and will use that in a pinch when FD gets resisted and the fight permits (I’m sure it’s confusing the tanks to see me run in, whack the boss and run out again).
Yeah, it’s not very effective but it’s better than just sitting around doing absolutely nothing waiting for my cooldown to expire.
Brilliant.
Ahah excellent very funny
ROFL definately posting this link to the guild forum.
Although I agree with Jacemora, couple weeks ago my guild at the time had one of those technology wipes when 1/2 of our raid went offline.
The worst part was we were enaged with Gruul and came back during the fight, but outside the door =(
At least that wipe didn’t cost those who were kicked a repair bill since we were able to exit the instance.
Walking along the water in ZA to the Lynx boss for our first attempt and Oh, look at all the pretty non-aggressive crocs with the yellow letters above them! and why don’t we send Buster to one of them and pew-pew just to see what happens and … Holy S%^* where did they all come from!?! And the healers are dead, the other squishys are dead, tanks running back to see what can be saved and ‘Tard (Um, yeah, that’s me) standing there whackin’ a croc with his axe not looking at his health bar. Oops! Deadums.
So of course, now every time we go back someone has got to say “Hey, Zeno, don’t be a ‘Tard, leave the crocs alone.”
/sigh.
At first i thought you were just making a list… but this looks like a recap of our ssc run last night
[...] BRK: An Analysis of Wiping [...]
Wipe #16
This is the “Hey Major Domo looks cool standing by the pool of fire I am gonna go talk to him quick.” (Pre BC)
This is usually precided and followed by the raid leader screaming in Vent “Do NOT talk to Major Domo” “Who the %$#^ talked to Domo?”
ROFL
I’m going to reprint the list and hand it to all my guildies
hope you don’t mind
Epic Post…
On a second thought… Legendary Post.
BRK,
its stuff like this that makes me get up and read your blog EVERY MORNING!!! I lol’d so hard I cried…who need comics with their coffee?
Oh, BRK. This is beautiful. This is going on my guild board. And on any other guild boards until the end of time, I think.
I’ve seen first-hand many of these wipes. And I hate to admit it, but I’ve *been* a few of them.
“This is *Moroes*. Why did you Multishot?!”
“Damned pet pulled a Fleshbeast.”
“Do *not* aggro those mobs. They are Not Your Friends!”
“I *told* you we should’ve ressed him outside Aran’s room instead of inside it.”
Fortunately my second run went better….
But for me, the best ever wipe was one I screenshotted for posterity in Mag’s lair. A PUG gathering there (yeah, yeah, I know) and we’re summoning members as we had a few others flake out. A hunter gets pulled in. Next thing we know, his pet is lunging at one of the channelers. Pet on ‘aggressive’ because of a Battleground. Very few people survived that one. I say ‘very few’ because FD *is* my friend.
We had two 1% efforts this week - on our first crack at Aran and then our first crack at Illhoof ..
BRK …..man, you just come up way short on the BLEEPS there in frequently heard comments .. 0_0
or …. tank goes for moroes group while the rest of the raid starts banging away at the last mob …
“I never saw them”
Badly stifled laughter from rest of the raid ….