Behavior in raids – progressing or regressing as a group

There are two side to this take on group dynamics, one positive and one negative. One set the stage for increased performance of the group members. As the result of internal competition and performance tracking or just that the presence of others help facilitate their own ability to perform. The other involves ‘hiding in plain sight’ while letting the rest of the team do the job. Positive tracking seems to be the key to make sure that all pull their weight with emphasis on the positive. Its ok to have a bad day, just not every day there is a raid planned.

Personally I subscribe to the Pareto Principle (80/20) for analyzing raid performances, and in more ways than one. Lets look at some examples of how this might be useful;

1. No matter how awesome your raid group is you will always have a someone that is having a less than perfect day. Or you can turn it around and saying that there will always be a few that are having a great day and performing above and beyond what they normally would. No matter which version of the Pareto Principle you make use of its all about expecting the balance of your group to be different from raid to raid. The number one DPS might always top the DPS trackers, but gap to the number two is likely to be different, and sometimes this has nothing to do with the game itself. Being able to identify variations like this will help you adjust strategies accordingly.

2. When given the choice for multiple strategies it is always difficult to decide if one should spend five wipes on the most promising of them or try out five different strategies and see how they pan out and then chose the one that worked best. Or test two strategies two times. There are three parts to this way of deciding on strategies. First is researching and analyzing different strategies, both the ones you can find online and those you draw up yourself. Second is about knowing your team and understanding which of these strategies are likely to work or fail. And finally how many wipes before you change strategy. The combination of these will ensure that wiping does not feel like you are running constantly into a wall hoping it will fall over due to some miracle of random luck…

3. The final example that I find important to mention is when everything is going wrong. Often when things seem to be failing all over the place there are a very few reasons for it; 20% of the errors being made are resulting in 80% of what is going wrong. The trick is to identify and fixing those key errors or if this is not an option its time to change the chosen strategy itself.

In an earlier post we touched on the topic of conformation in groups, and so far it seems that high performance creates better players as much as a low performance results in massive slacking and crappy performances. I have to admit to being a ‘victim’ of both; if a raid has set my mood on a negative curve I am more likely to be counter productive and at the same time I see that high performance encourages me to push myself harder and increase my game awareness.

So to make some conclusions; raiding is rarely WYSIWYG, and as much as there are no real clear black and white there is no pure gray either. The Pareto Principle mainly tries to focus on the fact that there is always a balance, but that it is rarely 1:1. Some things you can track with addOns, some can be tracked by just knowing your players, but some things are left open to pure intuition or even clairvoyance if you are a believer in such. And the more present something good or bad is in any given raid the more likely it is to breed more of the same.