The first time you raid with us isn’t a time for you to be evaluated, but your time to sit back and see if raiding with us is fun.

You may have questions: “What if they think I’m terrible?” or “Who’s really in charge here?” Set those aside and sit back and have a good time.

If you cause everyone to wipe, or your DPS is super low, or you’re slipping up with the tanking, well… pretty much absolutely nothing will happen to you. You’ll still get invited to come back if you’re friendly.

This may seem scary if you’re recovering from guilds that are more strict about performance. “NOBODY TOLD ME WHERE TO STAND,” you may think to yourself, as the readycheck goes out. “WHAT IF I STAND IN THE WRONG PLACE, AND WIPE EVERYONE!”

Sweat beads across your brow.

“I DON’T WANT TO BE BLAMED FOR THE RESULTING CHAOS!”

We expect a certain amount of chaos.

Our players function with a great deal more independence than you may be used to, and may use different fight strategies than you may be used to, if we have one at all (we may choose not to).

There’s a method to this madness, so here’s a few things NOT to do on a Hot Mess raid, but which you might be expected to do in other guilds:

1. Don’t feel embarrassed/apologize about mistakes.

We all have real jobs we’re coming home from at 7pm. We all miss DBM timers. We all walk into the fire. Fuck it. It’s wise to say, “oh, I stood in the fire,” because we at least will know what killed you. But we’re not going to judge you for it, and it’s a morale downer if you get all freaked out.

2. Never call a wipe.

We never deliberately wipe. Do not say “wipe it up,” or “it’s a wipe,” or similar, unless you are the raid leader. Our policy, in general, is to keep the fight going AS LONG AS POSSIBLE, even if the raid appears doomed.

Three reasons for this:

a) dead people can see the fight mechanics, and how the surviving players are avoiding them,

b) it’s great training for the surviving players to learn how to deal with a situation gone wrong,

c) we’ve killed progression bosses where half the raid and one tank died halfway through, and we’ve done it numerous times despite people calling it a wipe.

So don’t call for a wipe. It might seem a little ridiculous to see a priest kiting a boss and smiting them when they’re the sole survivor and the boss still has 43 million hitpoints. It’s not ridiculous when both tanks die with the boss at 2%, and the boss dies anyway because the healers know how to kite and smite. You don’t develop the muscle memory to hit all the panic buttons unless you practice, so we practice, even when things seem doomed.

3. Don’t call out underperforming players

If you’re pulling 18k dps, and someone else is pulling 13k, that’s your opportunity to bring yours up to 22k to try to make up for it. Same for tanking, same for healing. The 13k people are going to work on their gear and rotations later, after the raid is over. That’s the time and place for you and us to help them.

The raid leaders all have meters installed, and it’s our responsibility to address something if a player is having trouble keeping up.

Plus, if you expect to get through the harder difficulty fights, then you shouldn’t just know how to compensate for an underperforming player, you need to be able to compensate for a dead one.

If they’re in our guild, they should be receptive to help and advice, so long as you know the time and place for it, which is the day AFTER the raid, not during, when they’re stressed enough already.

4. Don’t stress over fight strategies (AKA “on learning to wing it”)

Sometimes, it may seem INCREDIBLY TEDIOUS to see a group of people repeatedly dying, particularly when the raid leads aren’t setting out what seems like a very specific strategy.

Part of what we enjoy about the fights is creating our own strategies with our own team, and everyone participating in the process.

All of the raiders are essentially getting their own eggs to make their own omelette. This can and often does result in a mess, but it means every player learns how to cook.

On the outside, this may look like a leadership vacuum, and you might want to step in and say “here’s how it’s supposed to be done” because you’re tired of the repair bill. Set that impulse aside.

When everyone learns mechanics the hard way, they learn to be better players, and negotiate things going wrong. Alternatively, if all anyone knows is the YouTube video, and some key player dies, no one will know how the fight works, and everyone will be doomed. They won’t know how to play the fight unless it’s the same composition of people.

In the short term, this may mean dying to Normal bosses when we “shouldn’t.” In the long term, it means downing Heroic bosses because everyone knows the mechanics.

It means that the raid lead doesn’t have to repeatedly mark which targets to CC, because people learn how to do it on the fly (the more important skill to have).

In the short term, this means dying to the easy stuff. In the long term, it means destroying the hard stuff.

Winning the progression fights means people need to know how to deliver a flawless execution even when the timing of everything doesn’t line up like you expect and even when key players die.

We want to learn those things now. This may come at the expense of downing the boss on any given day.

5. You don’t need to explain yourself when the raid lead tells you to do something

If we say “root the target this time,” you might be prompted to think, “WHY ARE YOU CRITICIZING ME, YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT BEFORE WE PULLED AND DIED THE FIRST TIME!”

It’s not a criticism. Given that so many other raid leads are assholes, it’s easy to think that the raid leader is being an asshole and is calling you out for not doing something you were supposed to. As raid leads, we’re the ones at fault for getting everyone killed, and we know this. We just don’t get upset about it. This is Warcraft. People die. And since we don’t believe in holding you to higher standards than we hold ourselves, you shouldn’t get upset about it either. So just say “OK cool I’ll root him this time!” and feel good about it.

6. Don’t feel shy about asking what you should be doing

As opposed to setting out the strategy for others, feel free to ask what the raid lead wants you to do. If this means acknowledging that you kind of have no idea what’s going on, it’s ok.

Our only direction may be: “Go! Fight! Win!”

Then work with it!

7. Be prepared to die simply to figure out fight mechanics

We might not know how long a debuff timer lasts, so we’ll start the fight to figure it out. We will not waste time pondering a back-up strategy in case we live longer than expected.