Teron Gorefiend Simulator

[Bolty]

I found this flash simulator amusing and kind of fun in a weird sort of way. It simulates getting marked in the Teron Gorefiend encounter of Black Temple and having to kill the constructs as a ghost, teaching players how to use the correct abilities and tab target so that the constructs don't get to the raid and murder the healers. This way you avoid being called a nub and publically shunned by your peers, who will secretly loathe you.

*plays some more* Oh wait, everyone already secretly loathes me.

Anyway, someone should make a Shartuul simulator - now that would be really impressive. Or a use-the-Tears-right-on-Archimonde simulator! The possibilities are endless. :) You could go all the way back to a don't-move-during-Flame-Wreath simulator. It plays the chant when you lose.

Okay, now I'm expanding the post. Name every single solo-effort thing you need to do in a raid, besides the standard raid activities such as tanking, healing, dps'ing, that will wipe a raid if you don't do it. It has to be something that you personally have to do that's special, and nobody can ever cover for you if you fail. So that rules out things like "stand in the right beam on Netherspite" because technically, someone else can stand in the beam too. "Don't die to Spout" doesn't count because it only affects you and doesn't necessarily wipe the raid.

Offhand, I can think of the following:
Shade of Aran: don't move during Flame Wreath, or the raid blows up
Leotheras the Blind: kill your Inner Demon or get mind controlled forever
Lady Vashj: pass or deposit a Tainted Core if you get one
Solarian: move away from the raid if you have Wrath of the Astromancer, or the raid blows up
Archimonde: use the Tears right or have fun cratering, giving Archimonde a Soul Charge
Teron Gorefiend: kill the constructs if you're a Ghost

-Bolty

[Pantalaimon]

For the love of god and all things holy, CLICK THE CUBES! Someone can cover it... but usually not in time if you double click or something. Not sure it qualifies, hrm.

Also, not sure Leo counts by your own criteria, Bolty! Getting MCed usually just gets you killed, sorta like spout... not an auto-raid-wipe.

Wasn't there something in naxx where if you kited into slime you were screwed... forget the name of the boss offhand.

[LochnarITB]

you are the bomb

[Lissa]

I found this flash simulator amusing and kind of fun in a weird sort of way. It simulates getting marked in the Teron Gorefiend encounter of Black Temple and having to kill the constructs as a ghost, teaching players how to use the correct abilities and tab target so that the constructs don't get to the raid and murder the healers. This way you avoid being called a nub and publically shunned by your peers, who will secretly loathe you.

*plays some more* Oh wait, everyone already secretly loathes me.

Anyway, someone should make a Shartuul simulator - now that would be really impressive. Or a use-the-Tears-right-on-Archimonde simulator! The possibilities are endless. :) You could go all the way back to a don't-move-during-Flame-Wreath simulator. It plays the chant when you lose.

Okay, now I'm expanding the post. Name every single solo-effort thing you need to do in a raid, besides the standard raid activities such as tanking, healing, dps'ing, that will wipe a raid if you don't do it. It has to be something that you personally have to do that's special, and nobody can ever cover for you if you fail. So that rules out things like "stand in the right beam on Netherspite" because technically, someone else can stand in the beam too. "Don't die to Spout" doesn't count because it only affects you and doesn't necessarily wipe the raid.

Offhand, I can think of the following:
Shade of Aran: don't move during Flame Wreath, or the raid blows up
Leotheras the Blind: kill your Inner Demon or get mind controlled forever
Lady Vashj: pass or deposit a Tainted Core if you get one
Solarian: move away from the raid if you have Wrath of the Astromancer, or the raid blows up
Archimonde: use the Tears right or have fun cratering, giving Archimonde a Soul Charge
Teron Gorefiend: kill the constructs if you're a Ghost

-Bolty

[Lissa]

Okay, now I'm expanding the post. Name every single solo-effort thing you need to do in a raid, besides the standard raid activities such as tanking, healing, dps'ing, that will wipe a raid if you don't do it. It has to be something that you personally have to do that's special, and nobody can ever cover for you if you fail. So that rules out things like "stand in the right beam on Netherspite" because technically, someone else can stand in the beam too. "Don't die to Spout" doesn't count because it only affects you and doesn't necessarily wipe the raid.

Offhand, I can think of the following:
Shade of Aran: don't move during Flame Wreath, or the raid blows up
Leotheras the Blind: kill your Inner Demon or get mind controlled forever
Lady Vashj: pass or deposit a Tainted Core if you get one
Solarian: move away from the raid if you have Wrath of the Astromancer, or the raid blows up
Archimonde: use the Tears right or have fun cratering, giving Archimonde a Soul Charge
Teron Gorefiend: kill the constructs if you're a Ghost

-Bolty

Not getting away from the raid when you have fatal attraction on Mother Shaz.
Old school is not getting away from the raid when the Bomb on Geddon (just like Solarian).

bet if I thought out it, probably could find examples in Naxx as well

[oldmandennis]

Killing your demon on Jin'do comes close. Getting in the poison on Hakkar. Not chaining beams vs C'thun.

[Lissa]

Killing your demon on Jin'do comes close. Getting in the poison on Hakkar. Not chaining beams vs C'thun.

Problem with those, anyone can do them. And one or two missing poison won't wipe you.

[Arethor]

I found that flash game to be harder than the real thing, but I have a good amount of practice in the other version.

[Xanthix]

Please move out of the cave ins when you have rocks falling on your head and please endeavor not to be standing next to crucial persons after a ground slam, when you are about to shatter and explode!

[Skandranon]

Hm, I don't know if Gruul shatters really qualify. Even if six or so people get thrown together and all die, you can still go ahead and kill him with whoever's left. Unless I misinterpret the original post, this is about situations where a failure means a raid wipe or a massive, massive obstacle to success; losing people to Shatter is detrimental to the raid, sure, but it doesn't necessarily kill it, and you don't need to play super well to kill Gruul with 15 or so.

Guaranteed raid wipes are basically Teron ghost failure, Magtheridon cube click failure, and an Illidan tank failing to catch a Shear or an Illidan fire tank failing to move correctly and dying early. Obviously tank deaths are guaranteed raid wipes wherever they occur, but Illidan is a particular case where tank deaths generally don't involve healer responsibility. It is the tank's responsibility and no one else's to catch Shear, and the phase 2 tanks' responsibility to move correctly to avoid lethal fire combinations. At any rate, there is no recovery from these events, you're finished, try again.

Serious-consequence failures are dying on Archimonde (to whatever reason), moving during Flame Wreath, Cores on Vashj, Wrath on Solarian, failing to interrupt a Spirit Shock on Essence of Desire, and not moving in the right direction on Shahraz (if your port is on the raid). I distinguish these because you can still win after these events, it just becomes very, very difficult. The biggest case of this is Archimonde; Soul Charges are nasty, but I've beaten Archimonde on a run where there were three deaths (and, consequently, three Soul Charges). It's possible to outplay Soul Charge, although you have to get a little lucky. Similarly, you can play through Flame Wreath, Wrath of the Astromancer, even a missed Core, but it gets a lot harder.

I'd classify Gruul shatters in the category of stuff that you can do that will cause your own death but doesn't set back the raid more than the inconvenience of not having you around. There are so many of those that I can't list them all: dying to Aran's Arcane Explosion, standing in Fel Acid Breath, standing in Arcing Smash, staying in fire on Azgalor or Al'ar, not avoiding Spout, etc. In all those cases you are primarily responsible for your own survival, but your death doesn't impact anyone else except indirectly.

[Icebird]

Does one person missing a ghost or ghosts on Teron Gorefiend automatically lead to a wipe however?

The short term consequence of missing ghosts is that the damage taken by the raid goes up. If a succession of people miss their ghosts, then the damage increases beyond the healers' ability to cope. However, if the following people can kill their ghosts perfectly, they should have enough spare time in spectre-form to clean up the constructs in the raid.

When everything goes well on Gorefiend, you don't have to do any cleaning-up and you can wait by the next spawn; having two people spawn ice lances in those first few seconds makes a world of difference.

[Xanthix]

In all those cases you are primarily responsible for your own survival, but your death doesn't impact anyone else except indirectly.

It's all relative. Many TBC fights are DPS races or at least DPS checks. If you are not at the point where you overgear the fights, then someone dying in an avoidable manner does mean a serious problem, and someone dying and wiping out a few others (via a bad shatter, for example) does mean a raid wipe. Especially if they take out a crucial person or two with them. I think these are the checks that make TBC raiding truly a team sport; they are what was missing from MC.

I think it's natural that the severity of a some bad action is inversely proportional to how much a given fight is considered "on farm." For you, 4 DPS dying to shatters may be a joke, but for guild working on Gruul, it means a guaranteed wipe due to Gruul being allowed to grow too large.

On the other hand, when current BT guilds are running around in Sunwell gear, perhaps constructs in the raid will be a joke, and they'll just laugh at those who crater on Archimonde, instead of them being wipe-inducers as they are now. I think it's all tied to perspective.

[Taelas]

The gear curve really doesn't let that happen. You're overestimating the impact of gear. While it is important, skill and experience is more so.

While there are "gear checks", they are few and far between. Curator in KZ. Nalorakk in ZA.

I can't comment on SSC and above, but I'm told the tendency is the same.

[Skandranon]

Does one person missing a ghost or ghosts on Teron Gorefiend automatically lead to a wipe however?

Near enough to such that it doesn't matter in my view. Shadowy Constructs do massive melee damage and pulse shadow damage that combines in a nasty way with Teron's Crushing Shadows debuff. Perhaps one construct escaping at low health might be survivable, barely, but keep in mind it's near a full thirty seconds before a follow-up competent ghost handler can get back there to polish it off, since they have to handle their own constructs without assistance, first. It's an awful lot of damage and Doom Blossoms plus even one Construct is multiple unavoidable deaths, usually of healers.

Obviously, if your first ghost handler nails their ghosts, the task becomes exponentially easier for people following up. In that sense, you could even say that Teron only has a single point of failure.

[Xanthix]

You're overestimating the impact of gear.

In a game where progression is defined by gear, I don't know if it's possible to overestimate it. Of course skill and experience are vital too. But at any gear level, there must be a cap on how much DPS you can do, what boss you can tank, and so on.

Naturally more skill/experience lets you get by with worse gear, but the reverse is also true. And on the flip side, if you don't have great gear, your margin for error and mistakes is more slim.

What I am getting at is, there is a sliding scale between gear, skill, experience, raid composition, execution, and luck. This is part of what makes the game fun and dynamic. Instead of there being absolute standards of what is required for each fight, you can cover for a lack of one with an excess of another. And depending on how a given raid stacks up in gear/experience/skill, different things may qualify as "guaranteed wipe inducer," "really bad," "inconvenience," or "hilarious mistake."

[Skandranon]

It's all relative. Many TBC fights are DPS races or at least DPS checks. If you are not at the point where you overgear the fights, then someone dying in an avoidable manner does mean a serious problem, and someone dying and wiping out a few others (via a bad shatter, for example) does mean a raid wipe. Especially if they take out a crucial person or two with them. I think these are the checks that make TBC raiding truly a team sport; they are what was missing from MC.

I think it really devalues the nature of the check required on Teron or Archimonde to call them in any way similar to avoiding Spout on Lurker or Shatter on Gruul. The DPS check on neither fight is particularly onerous, no matter your level of gear, and we know this because a lot of people kill those bosses. The reason they're widely killed by a variety of raiding groups isn't because they're easy to execute perfectly. Those two (along with Void Reaver) are common kills around the world because those fights sustain a very high level of screwing up without compromising the eventual outcome. People approaching them in Karazhan gear already significantly surpass the DPS check so long as not too many people die.

Let me re-emphasize that - not too many people. You can lose huge numbers of people on Gruul/Lurker/VR and still win. Furthermore, other people can cover for your failures to stay alive there - as a matter of fact, they are basically starting to cover for failure from the moment you go down. Healers have to heal over a missed assignment, DPS players need to do a bit more damage each, but it's hardly inconceivable that a missing person's job can be covered for in that way. Especially since the initial post includes the phrase "no one can ever cover for you" in the definition of things asked for, I find discussion of fights like that somewhat out of place.

Aside from that, there's simply an objective measurement to distinguish the fights. Dying to spout does not harm anyone else in a way that they wouldn't have been harmed had you not been there at all. Archimonde and Teron punish you with significant extra consequences to every other player in the raid, above and beyond just not having a player there. That, at least, I think is beyond perspective.

[Bolty]

Obviously, if your first ghost handler nails their ghosts, the task becomes exponentially easier for people following up. In that sense, you could even say that Teron only has a single point of failure.

This is your perspective creeping in again. The only time I've ever been ghosted by Teron, sans some times when a wipe was already in progress, was my very first try at him. I was also the first person in the raid ghosted that attempt. I nailed my constructs and even had time to volley and chain the next pack (this would not have been possible without that simulator, I will readily admit). Using my soulstone, I got right back into the fight and figured "gee, that was easy, this should be a kill."

We still wiped that attempt a few minutes later when the healers, myself included, got annihilated by constructs that others failed to kill. This is not something that occurs in a guild like the one you run in, Skan. It's all perspective. *Every* person who is ghosted is a point of failure, because it's very difficult (impossible?) for the person ghosted before them and the person ghosted after them to make up for their failure in time to save the raid.

Even still, compared to Magtheridon, Teron has fewer points of failure and by my definition is easier. Funny how in both fights, the player with the easiest job by far is the main tank. :) Times sure have changed from BWL, when the tank(s) always had the great majority of the pressure.

-Bolty

[Taelas]

In a game where progression is defined by gear, I don't know if it's possible to overestimate it. Of course skill and experience are vital too. But at any gear level, there must be a cap on how much DPS you can do, what boss you can tank, and so on.

Not necessarily. You can tank every boss in BT and MH with T5 gear... or so I've been told. Naturally it's harder, but that goes without saying.

And progress in WoW is defined by what boss you can kill. *shrug*

What I am getting at is, there is a sliding scale between gear, skill, experience, raid composition, execution, and luck. This is part of what makes the game fun and dynamic. Instead of there being absolute standards of what is required for each fight, you can cover for a lack of one with an excess of another. And depending on how a given raid stacks up in gear/experience/skill, different things may qualify as "guaranteed wipe inducer," "really bad," "inconvenience," or "hilarious mistake."

I know this, but you're weighing gear too high. Progression guilds who focus on nothing but progression will have people in a mix of T6, T5, T4 by the time they kill Illidan. Once they have a guaranteed kill, they move on -- regardless of how many might still need gear. A Chinese guild killed Illidan with a few members wearing T3 and 70 blues, 7 weeks after TBC release in China.

Gear is important, but skill and experience is more so. As I said, there are gear checks... mostly for tanks and healers, but also for DPS. They are not hard to overcome, however.

[oldmandennis]

I think it's more of a sliding scale. Gear covers the minor mistakes the most normal guilds make, when they are geared enough. When they aren't geared enough, minor mistakes snowball into wipes.

To take an example which probably most people have seen, Hydross. Last week, we had a hunter have a FD resisted... but he kept autoshooting ("I stopped using specials!!"). He pulled her back across, then the tank pulled her back across again - 12 elementals loose. The elemental tanks rounded them up for the most part (in gear that hasn't improved much), but only pro heals, dropped by people with tons of +heal, and a lot of mana in the tank because their regen is totally outgearing the encounter kept the tanks up through a lot of damage. The DPS out gearing the encounter meant that when called to do it, they could burst down the last 12% or so of Hydross before we completely lost control of it. When we were learning the fight, healers were running dry 2/3 through the fight and begging for innervates. There's no way they could have recovered from the extra elementals if they didn't have tons of mana on hand.

It's obviously technically possible to do this game without a lot of gear, the chinese have proved it. Gear helps compensate for the mistakes. If everybody only makes one real mistake per hour (sounds like pretty good playing), you have less then a 10% chance of getting through a fight without a major mistake. That's when your 40hr/week raid schedule kicks in - more attempts means more chances at hitting the lucky 10%.