Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

-The Charge of the Light Brigade – Lord Alfred Tennyson

There are times that I have completely ignored/dismissed an instruction from the Raid Leader.

I don’t tell him I have dismissed him,  and no one seems to notice. Nor do you boast about it after. This isn’t a boast, its about that doing the right thing is not always what your told to do. ( without getting into the morals of blind allegiance)

Arguably you  should be following what they they say all the time, because as a raid leader they are supposed to know what they are doing, and your supposed to have faith in them to know what they are telling you to do is the best thing to do.  If they are missing vital information – Eg Sticking a Shadow Priest into the tanks group for high da mage fights for VE ( every bit of healing counts remember)  Tell them  if its important,

Raid leaders are human, and for example not all raid leaders are versed in the many languages that are the healer classes and strengths and weaknesss . In a 25 Pug raid recently, I told everyone to shut up – (Yes it got that) and let the healers speak for themselves. Seriously everyone including the raid leader were telling the healers how to play. I implored the healers ” You are the experts in your class. Your doing the healing, what difficulties are you facing.. are they taking too much damage? ect ect.. ” ( this was a patchwerk fight.. ) they got to use their expertise, and recommend group shuffling, and work out their own assignments, and we killed him next try. 

We can’t expect the raid leader to know every aspect of every class and spec,  I would hope that they would be well versed in all basic mechanics, but most importantly they should know the fight.  ( as should the rest of the raid.)

A recent example if my disobedience was when we were  wiping a million times on Sarth 3d  ( Ok 18 times)  – In the early wipes a few people were having issues dying in flamewalls. To combat this, the raid leader picked a person who he thought knew what they were doing and put a star on their head.  “Follow him.” We were told.

I didn’t follow him. I survived. It was funny because in the break down of who got hit the most by the flame wall , that person with the star was one of the highest on the list.

I’m sure there are people who will say that the fight is easy. It has been, and continues to be the biggest co-ordination challenge in wrath. I like it as a fight, It was a challenge to me,  and I found like in doing the dance on heigan, if you ignore what everyone else was doing, and concentrated on what you needed to do. You survive, and So I did.  I didn’t stand in a void once, and of those 18 attempts I got hit by the flame wall once. ( and that could have been during a wipe call. )

Some vocations require people to do things without question,  most of raiding would come under that. A  raid leader might want  you to do something odd. like Jump in slime for patchwerk.  You should already know why a Melee might need to jump into the slime to reduce their health on patchwerk – if you don’t.. re read the strats..    your disobedience could contribute to a raid wipe.  Ignoring requests to keep with the group,  Kill the add’s 1st, kill the webs, wait for the call to move to the next bubble, stack up, slow down dsp,  don’t heal a target.   All of these things sound minor – but just in the fights in Naxx disobeying any of the above could contribute to a wipe.

What I did in comparision on that particular fight would not have wiped the raid, but that thinking independantly  contrary to the majority is dangerous.  Do so  with caution.  Because if you do get caught  – you will need to explain yourself, especially if you caused the wipe. I knew what i was doing,   following someone was contrary to what I had already learnt.  I also knew I was disobeying instructions  Its bad practise – and Its certainly not something I intend on making a habit of doing.

If you do get told to do something and your not sure why ( within reason) approac the raid leader after the raid, to understand why they asked you to do something.   Key = After raid. Don’t challenge their authority right then and there, your undermining their position publicly.