Four Newbies Walk Into An LFR and...

The title of this post is actually a little misleading, the four people I am talking about are not exactly what you would call newbies but they were new to what they were doing, so I guess it sort of fits.  I think a more appropriate title for this post would be "It is not hard to not be bad."

The four newbies were as follows.

Me, on my druid healing with a total of one days healing experience on a druid in the last 5 years.  Our resident DPS beast attempting his hand at a hunter that he hit 90 on a month ago because he liked the idea of me saying I had so many key binds for PvP and he wanted a challenge.  An extremely dedicated player who saw what our resident DPS beast could do as a feral druid and wanted to see if he could ever be that good on his druid that was a boomkin up until two weeks ago when he decided to try feral and started to gear for it.  And last but not least a player who was well versed as a ranged DPS and healer but had never played on a melee class who used his boost to 90 on a warrior less than a week ago in his first raiding experience as a melee.

So we were four experienced player all in roles we were experienced in.  If we were to do poorly it would not be that surprising.

We started in ToT even if we could all get into SoO because, lets face it, with our experience on those respective classes we might as well start on something we were a little better suited for.  A place where we could learn a bit about how to get better at the roles we played.  Even if we were geared enough for SoO there are already too many players doing poorly there that should be in lesser LFRs learning how to play their class and/or roles, why compound the problem.

In the end none of us ended up being LFR heroes, we did not carry the group, this is no story about how awesome we were, but it is a story about the fact were were not horrible.  None of us did anything you would consider well above and beyond our ability.  None of us will be looking to steal a slot in a real raid team on these characters any time soon, heck, we might not even be ready to steal a slot in a flex on them yet.  None of us excelled at playing in a role we were not used to.  But all of us did decently.

I was number 1 or 2 in healing done, while never being higher than third in over healing (which is weird for a druid), on all the bosses we managed to do except for one where I was 4.  The new hunter who was a month old that had never played one before was top 5 in every fight.  The druid that just switched from boomkin to feral two weeks ago was also top 5 in every fight and the warrior that was a boost to 90, while finishing a little lower, was never less than 10th in damage done despite having never once played a melee class and only having timeless island pieces mixed with the instant 90 green pieces.

We might not have been great, but we were not bad.  Not even by a long shot.  But looking around us showed that most people were exactly that.  Bad.

There is no reason to be that bad.  Sure, we all start off not knowing how to play, but there is a difference between doing badly and being bad.  It is not hard to not be bad.

Each of us could have had someone that knew how to play the classes well look at us and say we were doing badly, they could pick out that I was letting lifebloom fall off, or I was not using wild growth on cooldown, or one of a million mistakes I made, but they would not say we were bad.  We might have not been doing as well as we could have, but that is different from being bad.

The 4 week old hunter spent some time asking me questions and I answered them.  He spent some time on the timeless island killing things, in battle grounds killing things, and even doing the LFR a little in the last few weeks.  He might not be ready to challenge me on the charts, but he is already starting to shape up to be a damn good hunter because he spent some time playing with his character, learning his abilities, figuring out how they interact, and asking questions.

The 2 week old feral druid asked a million and one questions, spent some serious time on the target dummy, and showed that he is willing not only to learn from people that know how to play the class but he listened to them, he did not just ask the questions and then still do his own thing.  When weak auras were mentioned to him by me and another he stopped what he was doing instantly and downloaded it and spent a while trying to get it set up to his liking.

The boosted to 90 warrior went to noxxic and read about the priority system, visited some other web sites for tips and tricks, even contacted an old friend that does not play warcraft any longer but used to play a warrior.  But not only that.  Having never played a melee before he spoke to a few people about how to play in melee so he would have a better understanding of what he would need to do and what he would have to expect.

Then there is myself, and I already said in another post about what I did on my druid.  I went to the proving grounds to practice some, asked a lot of questions and spent some special alone time with my healing addon so we could get to know each other better in terms of druid healing as well as visiting more than a few how to heal as a druid web sites and forum posts.

We might not have been great, we did not bring anything to the group that anyone else couldn't have, but we were one thing for sure, and that was not bad.  We were most definitely not bad.

All it takes is a desire to do well and a little bit of time to attempt to learn and while you might not become a great player you surely will not be a bad one.  There is no reason anyone should be bad, even more so when in group content.  Nobody is asking for everyone you run into in the LFR to be a great player, not even the elitist jerks, they just want everyone to try, to at least not be bad.

Moral of the story.  If you want to play solo, who cares if you are a beast mastery hunter that never uses bestial wrath, you are not hurting anyone but yourself and you are not even hurting yourself as long as you are having fun.  But if you are going to play in group content you owe it to everyone else to at least seek out a basic understanding of what it is you are doing there.  Not just for the group, but for yourself as well.  You do not need to be bad because it is not hard to not be bad.