It doesn’t matter if you’re Method, Blood Legion, Death Jesters, or Cobra Kai Dojo. You will have bad raid nights. I can guarantee that much.

You will have nights where everything goes according to plan, and you clear your farm content with ease. The loots will be plentiful and everyone will be in a good mood, joking around, having fun. Everything clicks! This is what raiding should be like all the time!

Unfortunately that isn’t the case and your guild will have bad raid nights. People are going to show up late or not at all. You’ll have a short roster, some people in a crappy mood, and the bosses will not die. You’ll be wiping multiple times to Operator Thogar despite people having a raid leader that is announcing trains and an ADDON that is showing you. The urge to play with Thomas the Train Engine will just be too great for some people. You’ll be wiping to Gruul because people are insisting on standing in the cave-ins. Players will be tunneling their heals or dps and just not be making the best decisions. You’ll be playing like crap as well. You’ll be dying to things you normally don’t ever get hit by. You’ll be getting pinned down on Beastlord Darmac you’ll run into Slag mines on Blackhand.

Well guess what, you’re human. You’re not perfect. You will not be the best player in the raid every single raid at every moment. You will make mistakes. You will wipe the raid. Don’t you think some of the best players in the world have made similar mistakes?

Tiger Woods recently had the worst round of his career. Bettman doesn’t rig the LA Kings to win the Stanley Cup every single year. Sometimes you play like the Toronto Maple Leafs and your shitty fans throw jerseys on the ice. Sometimes you are right about to win a Superbowl but decide to be the Seahawks.

Your dog died, your girlfriend left you, Steel Panther broke up and you got a flat tire on the way home. These types of things will affect the state of your mind when you play and are distractions.

You, as raiders and players, need to realize this happens to everyone. You can’t have the best game of your life, every game. What is important is that you know how to recover from these bad nights. That applies to both the guild as well as the player.

Making Mistakes:

I know I could go on this topic forever. If you make a mistake, own it, you’re human. Know what you did and how you died. Every small mistake, positional change, miss in a rotation, can make a huge difference. You need to realize that.

When I ask someone how they died, I already know how they died. I could look at logs or Skada and check for myself. I don’t ask for my own benefit. I want to be certain this player knows why they died. What led to the set of circumstances that caused you to die? How could it have been avoided? Every single death is avoidable. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Each mistake is preventable. Things don’t randomly Death Touch you like they did in Everquest.

Example: By being out of position, you caused uncessary movement to yourself or the raid. By spawning a Massive Demolition(Blackhand) in the wrong spot, you cause silly damage to the rest of the raid as well as more potential movement for them.  By moving more, they are healing less and dpsing less. With less dps, the phase is extended longer, causing more impales, and potentially more demolitions or bombs. For every second that any boss fight is going on, there is a potential for catastrophe – Tank Deaths, mine explosions, disconnects, mistakes. So naturally you want to play as efficiently as you can, and make the fight easier for the rest of your teammates.

So what could you have done better? Could it have been better positioning? Could we have used better cooldowns to survive? Did you use your Health Potions? Your raid leader is not here to babysit you and tell you what you need to do to not repeat mistakes. You as good players are capable of that.

I’ve said this many times, a good raider will make a mistake, realize it, and know what they need to do next time to make sure it doesn’t happen again. A great raider will see someone else make a mistake and know what they need to do themselves to not repeat that mistake. That’s progression.

So you had your crappy raid night where everything went wrong and even you, the awesome player you are, were dying to silly things. You need to know how you can improve for the next day. Look through logs, look through your videos and see where to improve. Because that is what progression raiding is about – making mistakes and seeing those constant and small improvements.

You’re not a bad player, you just had a bad night. Tomorrow will be a better raid night and tomorrow you’ll be a better player.