Survival of the fittest – Don’t tank if you’re tired
Because sometimes it’s the most obvious things we overlook, and then we wonder why the hell this was such an awful tanking experience. Enlighten yourselves and read this post.
It occured to me on one of those late-night runs where we’d want to collect a few more badges as fast as possible, because we all would already be tired but still: Those five easy Bota-badges are just so irresistible.
Sleepy tanks suck
Actually, it probably was one of my worst tanking performances. We had an overgeared group and still would wipe three times. Because I forgot about that patrol, I pulled the wrong group, stupid mistakes really. The combination of being tired and wanting to get through fast just didn’t work that well.
Remember that while raiding
Our small guild just started doing Karazhan. Some of us are new and didn’t see a lot of content yet, plus had no raiding experience whatsoever. We decided to try to clear Kara and then with the patch we’ll do our best to get a glance at Zul Aman – because content is what we play the game for.
Hm, I digress. Yesterday we had our 2nd Kara-Run and made it through until Aran’s Shade quite clean. We then had two attempts on Aran that really looked promising (his life went down about 10% faster than his mana – which for a non-overgeared group I think is quite good), but wiped because someone would move during flame wreath.
I lead the run and blaimed people for not paying enough attention. Then, on the 3rd try, we were already raiding for about 4 hours. We would wipe once again, this time his arcane explosion killed four of us, including me. Now that made it difficult to blame people for not paying attention, because I would blame myself, which I do not consider a viable option at all.
But what I learned is: Don’t push it. Don’t try another time after two wipes and four hours straight raiding. We all were tired and no one could concentrate as good as you need to when doing Aran with an average-geared group. Our priest forgot to mass-dispell the slows, people didn’t realize they stand in the middle of blizzard and try for try more people started to blame others – another side effect of getting tired.
Short: Don’t tank, or raid, if you’re tired. You’ll not be 100% there. And if a raid of 10 is only 80% concentrated that’s as difficult as trying the same fight with 8 people. Don’t do it.
Recommended Reading
Well, I couldn’t find any resource on how being tired affects concentration. Weird, isn’t it?