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 Gets 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)!!”
Thu May 29, 2008 10:19 am