Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Follow the Jumping Bikini.

I have a habit of jumping around, even more so when moving as a hunter.  Guess a little comes from it being a hard habit to break from when you needed to do the jump shot to kite.  Now we have such a wide range we can shoot sideways and everything, well almost everything, can be shot while we are moving.  Hasn't changed me from my old habits.  I like to jump around.

In one of my LFR runs yesterday I got a very understanding, even if not skilled, group were we were wiping on the first boss of the 3rd section of throne.  The people in the know were trying to explain to people what to do so I did not need to chime in.  I only mentioned that I turn particle density down to low and it helped me.

After the first wipe and seeing as I was the only person to survive the maze someone put a marker on me, the bikini if you will.  It was after another of the DPS so proudly explained to everyone how to run the maze and told them to follow him.

I will give him credit for stepping up and offering to lead the mad mad dash through the maze of death.  He explained it perfectly too.  He told people to look for the beam and then head to the side of the beam where the shadows begin and that will be the direction we will be running in.  Perfect explanation, not so perfect implementation.  He quickly lead everyone to their death.

While the marker was put on my head for the second attempt nothing was mentioned in raid and honestly I did not even notice it was on me.  I enter the "zone" when I am on a boss and sometimes don't notice little things like that.  I am thinking about where I am going to position myself, when I am going to use cooldowns to maximize what I get out of them, where I am in relation of the healers, all those little things that I would like to think are what make me a good raider.  Yes, even if it is only the LFR I still try to be prepared.  I might not use a flask there or care if I eat but I will be damned if I am not going to at least hit my buttons in the right order as best I can and move to where I need to move as quickly as I can.

After the second wipe I noticed the tank and two healers had been following me on the outside ring with one other hunter.  Amazingly enough, that one tank, two healers and us two hunters where the only ones that survived as the helpful DPS that explained everything to everyone promptly lead everyone to their death once more.

On the third attempt the tank said to follow the dancing bikini as I stood there jumping in place.  That is when I noticed I was said bikini.  It was also when I noticed that there are some people that really want to learn and just have a hard time understanding things.

Why I say this is that I saw people run to me like lightning.  I mean they dropped everything and in no time I had a pile of 12 people on top of me, maybe more.  They actually were trying.  There was one issue however.  I position myself, being I do not know what side the fog will spawn on, in the middle or off center a little bit more precisely.  When the fog did spawn, I moved, most of the others did not.  A few that followed me tried to do what I did and keep with their rotation while moving.  The hunter did just fine, but the non hunters fell behind and died.  At least they tried.  I will give them credit for that.  Need to teach them, damn the DPS, move, survive, that is all that matters.  Once you know how to do it like I do you can DPS, but while learning, stop DPSing and learn.

On the forth attempt I explained that I do not know which way I will need to go until the fog starts, so if you are running to me and see me running... follow.  Don't just go to where I was and stop there.  We did a little better that time around, might have had a shot at getting it too if only we had two tanks.  Only one survived and no one that could revive the other did.  But we were getting close.

Before the fifth attempt someone asked me why I am always jumping while we are running around the circle.  I said, because it is partly habit from doing jump shots and partly to avoid the purple junk on the ground.  I also like to do the jump, twist, disengage, turn back trick so I can basically blink.  Which on this attempt I had decided not to do because I could see it was confusing the shit out of some people seeing me turn around but still go in the direction I was originally headed.  Someone said in raid, stop jumping around, you are confusing me.  We got a chuckle out of it.  I said I would try.  Old habits are hard to break.

We wiped again on the first attempt but more people made it through.  Lost too many to finish it however.  Sixth attempt was that much better, we wiped at less than 10%.  On the seventh attempt however we nailed it.

Both tanks followed me, the healers and a few DPS did as well.  Between one DPS joining the group on that attempt that kicked some major butt and destroyed me on damage done and DPS, and enough people including both tanks making it through it was enough to get the job done.

I did not want to be the person everyone follows, it makes me change how I act.  I become a little uncomfortable with it when people I don't know are depending on me because I do not want to let them down and it reflected with my output. 

While I had usually done full DPS while running the circle I did not.  I paid a lot more attention on where I was and where everyone that was following me was so I did not lead them to their death.  But I still did the spinning jump shot here and there, because lets face it, I am a hunter and that is what I do.

That one kick ass DPS that joined had done 14% of the damage and I did 11%, like I said, he destroyed me.  But between us we did 25% of all damage done that fight.  It goes to show you that all you really need to do that fight is have the right people survive.   We had two tanks, three healers and a few DPS including the top two and we did it.

Not a great run, but only one person called anyone names and they did that when the left so them being gone was really all that mattered.  Even if it was not a great run, it was not a bad run either because people were understanding that not everyone has done this before.  It took me a wipe before I understood what to do and three wipes before I could basically say I knew exactly where the spot would be every single time.  I would never insult someone else for having their time learning.  As long as they are willing to learn and this group was.  Not a great run like I said, but not a bad one at all.  People explained, people learned, people tried.  That is all I ever ask, is that people try. 

I dropped after that boss, I was just there for another shot at the ranged weapon but I hope the rest of their run went well.  They were a good group of people, even if not the best players, and they deserve smoother runs.  They do not deserve to be put into random content like this, where they need to be lucky enough to get an understanding group willing to wipe.  Now all these people, hopefully, know how to do the boss and there are more players that will do it better next week out there and maybe some that will take up the mantle and dance around with a bikini on their head while leading people around.

Becasue, at least on this one day, the secret to success was to follow the jumping bikini.

18 comments:

  1. Blamo!!

    http://i.imgur.com/YltD2hl.gif

    Daniel
    nee BRK

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    1. Reminds me of the old safety dance gif that was so horrible but I stared at it for ages while learning how to do it.

      Now if only there were a way to get that to show on the screen so everyone in the LFR can see it.

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  2. I still need to do Durumu... "Skipped" him last week and didn't sign in last night. I'll give it a shot tonight.

    Did you notice the hotfix? Did that make it easier to see?

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    1. Still took 5 pulls before we had most of the group survive the maze. Usually people just died even before we needed to start following the maze.

      I got caught on the wrong side once and died and the beam caught up to me somehow another time. On another pull, the maze just didn't show up; the path was always partially obscured so you couldn't really tell what was clear and what wasn't.

      We didn't have a "follow the jumping bikini" though. May have required less pulls if we had assigned that to someone.

      One shot Primordius.

      But took 3 attempts on Dark Animus.

      Didn't win any loot though.

      Hardly anybody uploads LFR logs to WoL...
      It's funny that for BM hunters, I have:
      100 Horridon
      144 Council
      80 Durumu
      76 Primordius
      52 Dark Animus

      They won't last of course and it's just LFR so there aren't that many logs up (and x-realm doesn't rank, not sure why...), but it still feels cool.

      However, just did normal Jin'rokh and won a thunderforged ring in raid roll. I'm up to 504 now.

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    2. Yeah, my run last night still took 4 or 5 attempts to get it but we were losing half the toons on the maze rather than the previous 80% or so. I didn't get a chance to try the maze until the second attempt (died to the life beam thingie prior to that), I died on the second attempt by being a bit dumb (it was going to be a wipe anyway, but still), next few attempts went smoothly for me although I kept moving back to the boss too quickly, I wasn't aware that they'd tweaked the beam to disappear earlier... by the kill attempt I was actually waiting for the maze to disappear first.

      I like the changes, doesn't really make it any easier, just seems to take some of the RNG out of it.

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    3. @Jaegar

      I like looking at the WoLs for LFR. Makes me feel good about myself. Last patch I looked and I would have top 3 on all fights. Great for the ego. lol

      The change was nice, makes it easier to see. Still lost lots and lots of people every attempt.

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  3. Bikini lol. I usually use the green triangle on myself and the orange circle on my offtank. He often complains that he doesn't want to be 'the nipple' but now I'm starting to think green triangle isn't any better.

    I think I'm gonna do LFR this weekend. Just for fun.

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    1. We call the circle the condom.

      So which would you rather be. lol

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  4. After 6 or so wipes last week on this guy, I decided to do an early tuesday lfr this week. Thinking that's when the "hardcore" folk would be doing it, I logged on for my lunch hour. I would have rather wiped another ten times.

    We did wipe once, when only three or four of us made it through the maze, and of course that's when the /i chat started going crazy "this is so easy in lfr, you all suck" "the maze is so wide, I don't know how anyone could die on it" etc... It was only the third or fourth time I'd made it through, so I was feeling good, but the way everyone treated each other quickly ruined any good feelings. The second time ten or twelve people made it through the maze twice, which was enough people to down him. I wish I'd been in the group that had died. Cocky, unhelpful people can ruin a good run, just as much as they can ruin a bad run...

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    1. Yeah, doing a run on Tue or Wed tends to trade quicker kills for worse attitudes so it depends on where your priorities lie. I'll normally only run the latest content on those days in order to avoid 2hr+ runs, for anything older/easier I'll run them later in the week with the less intense crowd.

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    2. I would rather bad players that are good to each other than good players who make the run feel horrible even when it isn't. I so completely get where you are going there.

      I do tuesdays because I wanted to go with the better players too. Has not been working out that way lately however.

      Seems all the bad players have decided to go on tuesdays thinking it will be easier to get carried.

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    3. Yeah, at some point all of the tricks get picked up by the masses and ruin it for the early adopters. Even if the scrubs start running on Tue, though, the better players are still there, there'll just be fewer in each run. It really depends on how much time I'm willing to invest, though, if I don't have 2 hours, I pretty much HAVE to run current LFR content on Tue or Wed to have a chance to get it in.

      Speaking of masses picking up the tricks, I had a HoF LFR run recently on the tornado boss where we ran into issues because too many people did the 12% early switch and I think we were left with only a tank, maybe 1 or 2 dps and a healer (me - I saw it coming and stuck around) on the boss to get him down the 2% to force the transition... we got it, but it was hairy for a while.

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    4. lol I always do the wind riding, thankfully I never got in that situation. I think the most I have ever seen take the fast way back was one person with me. Just luck of the group I guess.

      The guild groups are the best if you pick up on one of them. While it can be a toss up, where if you get a guild of asshats your run sucks, but most of the time it will usually be a clean run because all the people communicate and are better which makes for a better run.

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  5. Did Durumu 25m yesterday, first time after the hotfix.

    While it's clearer now, there's no difference between the two clouds now. That took a bit of getting used to again. But mostly, I found it to be problematic the fact that the beam ends before the maze dissipates.
    Durumu hard startes and melees right after the beam goes away and also casts the regen beam while we're all forced there to stack. That means there's a greater risk of getting caught in the beam and that also means I'm pretty much on my own to survive till the healers remember they have a tank to heal.
    Not sure why they changed it like that.

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    1. There was a blue explanation for that, since the maze safe zones are showing up earlier now with the tweak they had to speed up the beam a bit to still give the feeling of mild "where the heck do I go OMGTHERESTHEBEAM" that they wanted it to have... the beam speed change meant they had to remove it a bit earlier than before or it ended up rotating too far. It's a bit awkward but we'll get used to it.

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    2. I think it was an unintended bug. I saw what you mean. Saw the beam went away and went to move and oh crap the stuff is still there. Odd, but the fix broke something else. Seems to always be like that. One thing fixed and another is broken in the process.

      As Anon said, they had to make the beam faster because of that. It was catching up now, to anyone without a speed boost.

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  6. LFR wipes can often be irritating.
    When a group that shows signs of progression, however, they become infinitely more bearable.

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    1. As long as the people are decent and not like the people I had in one group the other day.

      One of the damage dealers said to tank, I hope you get cancer and die.

      I reported him.

      Not sure why he was off on the tank anyway. Sure the tank has lame ass trinkets I would not be caught dead wearing as a tank, but he held aggro, moved at a decent pace and was easy to heal. I had not problem with him and I was the one that had to heal him. Some people, even with a smooth run for the most part, are just dicks.

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