The Scapegoat
Posted on May 26th, 2009 by Compy under Funny, Humor, Instances, Raiding, World of Warcraft, WotLK
Back in the day (pre-Wrath, pre-BC) it was always either the tank or the healer who was responsible for everything that went wrong during a raid. Just about the only way a party could wipe pre-BC was because the tank couldn’t hold aggro, or the healers couldn’t heal/dispel/cleanse quickly enough. I’d get pretty upset when some little Shadowbolt spammer would blame everything on my heals. Well now the tables have turned, and I for one am glad DPS are the noobs now.
Blizzard has changed boss fights with Wrath. Encounters now require everyone in the raid to be on the ball. Now DPS has to put out a little more effort than simply going through their rotation while they watch TV, or talk on the phone, or whatever it is DPS do while not paying attention to the fight. How many times has your DPS died to a void zone? Yeah, now you know why.
The fact is, the Raid Leader, and the raid as a whole, survives because of the Scapegoat. At the bottom of the blame chain, and probably the DPS charts, there is a Scapegoat for every raid. So, like my friend says, “let ye who has never been a noob cast the first noob…into a pit of fire.” It was something like that…
Becoming the Scapegoat:
If it’s your first time in a 25 man raid, then you will be the Scapegoat. It’s inevitable. When the first boss goes down, everyone will see your Emblem of Heroism achievement. The only way to deal with this is hope that you’re not the only one. If you are, prepare for a long, lonely raiding experience as the Scapegoat.
If you don’t have vent, or a mic, or you live in a tiny apartment with paper walls and your wife/girlfriend is sleeping right behind you, the likelihood you will be dubbed the Scapegoat goes up 100%. Some people refuse to get in vent even though they have it, have a mic, and live in a sound-proof room. These people are lazy and deserve to be Scapegoats. Get in vent, noobs!
The Scapegoat Experience:
Someone drops the Mutating Injection in the wrong spot and it wipes out all the healers and half of the ranged DPS. Guess what, my friend? It was you. It doesn’t matter that you’re melee DPS stabbing Grobbulus in the back. It doesn’t matter if you were off-tanking slimes halfway across the room.
Some positive idiot hung out on the negative side during Thaddius and the whole raid wipes. It doesn’t matter if you were stealthed and afk at the door. It’s your fault.
Because of your abysmal DPS, the Raid Leader gives you “web wrap duty” on Maexxna. The main healer gets webwrapped and dies…the Main Tank dies….the Off-Tank dies….melee and ranged DPS die…the other healers die…no soulstone is up…people release and run back. Everyone sits, drinks, buffs up, hearths for repairs and get summoned back, all while you slowly wriggle your way to death, wrapped in a corner. You failed on webwrap duty, and since you don’t have vent, noob, it’s your fault. Geez, you’re so freakin’ terrible even Maexxna forgot you were there.
Sure, you could wonder why the hunter with an idle dragonhawk pet standing 2 ft to the left of the webwrapped main healer was spamming raid chat for someone to post the DPS charts in the middle of the fight instead of getting you out of the web wrap, but you can’t. Even if you had vent, no one would listen to you. You’re the Scapegoat.
But, in case you’re wondering why you’re getting the bad end of a :Right Click–>uninvite:, realize you may be the Scapegoat.
The Others:
The Raid Leader will designate the Scapegoat right after the first wipe. He will say “Gosh darnit, , why didn’t you X?” If you are one of the lucky ones who is not the scapegoat, then thank the WoW gods and immediately jump in the blame game. Offer reasons why you think did or did not X, and what he did do instead of X. This is so much easier when the gotas is unable to defend his or her alleged X-ing over vent. Then you are free to postulate.
This is where general class knowledge comes in handy. Name one of goats class spells that would have been utterly useless in the fight. If is a druid, for example, tell everyone over vent that you saw him spamming Teleport: Moonglade over and over. If he is a Warlock, explain that you saw him creating firestones during the fight. Not only will you get a few chuckles, you’ll appear like an expert and be immune to the Scapegoat label for the remainder of the raid.
From there, you can report the DPS numbers. If the scapegoat is higher than you on the list, just say you lagged out during the fight. Say, “OMG! only did 900 DPS LAWL!” Be sure to give the Scapegoat advice on how to play his class. Do this so everyone can hear it. You don’t want to give him advice that’s necessarily good or that will help him be better, you just want to be giving advice so you look like you know more about the game.
Be careful, though, you don’t want to give so much advice that you become the Commentator. The Commentator we’ll save for next time.
Compy
That post just made my day … and it underscored why I prefer playing with people I know/get along with in real life. Granted, there’s fun times to be had with randoms or those-guildies-you-don’t-really-know but sometimes you run into dipshits who revel in that kind of guilt-assignment you described so eloquently.
A random example:
My druid just hit 80 and we were doing a supposedly routine run through Ulduar/HoL. I was healing and another druid, a random LFM draft, was tanking.
I had trouble keeping that guy alive from the get-go, owing to his level (78), average green gear and probably class (though he obviously had my sympathies on that one). A wipe or two in the nagging started, “Heal?!” popping up in chat all the time, “Rejuvenation alone won’t cut it!” after a failed boss encounter, shit like that.
The crowning moment was when he whispered me: “You have an unspent talent point.” I had to bite my tongue to just respond “I know.”, as opposed to “Yeah well, deciding whether to dump that point in Revitalize or Improved Tranquility won’t double your armor, so…”.
Well, in the end we still managed to kick Loken’s ass, the tank walked away with something shiny and later that night I found it easier to heal a friend’s warlock all the way through a successful two-man attempt at the five-man Mal’Ganis quest in Icecrown. Now that was fun.
Ahhh, yes, the good ol’ days. I remember when I, too, was the scapegoat. Just suck it up and deal with it. Recruit a friend or two into the guild. The new guy always takes the blame, so make sure you are not the new guy.
Funny enough, there is a player that most of my guild or one of the other guilds we run with that always gets this. He’s the guy that can’t play any of his toons half as good as the 14 year old in the guild, comes once to a run, gets all the loots, then never comes again. Unless there was a glaring “WTF did you do that for?” he gets the blame. He doesn’t need to be in the run (cause he never is anymore) and he doesn’t even need to be in the game.
GREAT article!!! Haven’t laughed this hard for quite a while. Thanks.
True Story:
While learning to Tank on my DK and learning the new dungens of NR, I got picked up by a semi Guild run, I told the healer I was new to tanking (was Def caped but low on hp and all Items were AH bought).
So my first tanking lesson was Heroic HOL, about midway thru the asked me if I had vent and to get on it. I should have said no. after about 15 minutes of “conversation” I reminded them that I have Never tanked and this was my first attempt at tanking and at that dungen.
Apparently the Healer had failed to mention that to the rest of the party. cause they jumped off me and onto him. It was somewhat satisfying to hear…
Until I screwed up again…
moral of the story..sometimes it is the tank’s fault.
When my guild runs some 25’s and we pug in a few, right at the start (this example is if we are running OS) I say “OK, I am in the spider wing but don;t see any of you? Are you all saved to a different raid?”
Some of the reactions are worth it (my guild is used to it now). Right after the OMG or Are you serious. I drop the fish feast and surprisingly not everyone catches on that I am right beside them saying this, I have to /wave sometimes.
ahh the advantage of being in a guild with (geared) friends. i can tell them iv never done the run b4, or have a main spec feral and do the whole raid as boomkin, and still get the t8 healing gloves. or winge about how crap my gear is, blame myself for a wipe and get nothing but loving snickers over the vent. that 30 AUS dollars for a realm transfer to play with them has been the best descision i ever made. i love WoW all over again
Hilarious!!
lol ya thats so funny stuff there. I am prety sure I have done that more then once o ya im not the spacegoat now hehe as I look over my shoulder at all the noobs hehe
I was the scapegoat for sometime in my raid, but even though i raid as Fire mage, they somehow began to blame me for the lack of heals on MT. Don’t worry it didn’t make sense to me either, but I’m not the Scapegoat anymore!
a terrible truth, Its a good day when a raid just gets along… people are too happy to blame every1 else.
so THATS why they wanted me on web wrap duty!
I’m glad they don’t want me doing that anymore. Muaahaha
i found this Article to be pointless and too much ranting just cause some new person to a raid makes a mistake doesnt mean you need to be chewing them out help them out instead of ranting and raving about them and one last thing raids were done before with vent get a life u dont need vent to play
I think you missed the “sarcasm”. This was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, unless I am very mistaken.
yes, i believe bryan has very much missed the point of the article
yeah, it was so much easier when everyone was starting with heroic dungeons. You always had one person knowing the run and everyone else listening. Wipeout wasn’t fun, but nobody would blame any specific person. I went to level my DK for 3 weeks, come back to my main, everyone is with naxx and ulduar, so serious, unpolite, and it’s all a big thing if u forget a single element of the run.
i m switching to battleground…:(
My favorite line from a recent half-pug: “Stop using HoTs and use a real heal!” – directed at the tree-form druid.
Having played a healer and tank pre-BC, it’s nice to see other classes getting to share the blame now too.
Sometimes the scapegoat really is to blame. Then I just feel sorry for them. Especially if they just spent the last 20 minutes defending themselves for stuff they didn’t do only to have everyone ‘justifiably’ jump on them.
Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue.
Bryan I think you need to take a chill pill bro. It’s supposed to be FUNNY. Making fun of something that shouldn’t happen does not equate a rant or a rave. You don’t need vent to play, but it sure makes life easier for everyone involved if you do. That’s like saying you don’t need air conditioning. Maybe not, but it summers kinda suck without it. You can raid without vent, but Ulduar kinda sucks without it.
Funny stuff Compy. Loved it! I am the scapegoat so this was great to read. Spamming Teleport: Moonglade; I rofl on that one. Keep em coming. Oh, and what happened to Casual Corner or whatever it was called. I enjoyed the articles from Lawbringer’s fam the most. What gives?
What gets me is the 80s who still think yelling LEEEROY is funny. Somehow it lost its charm for me well before achievements were introduced, and yet it still happens. Another thing people like to complain about (when I play my shaman) is “hey you are putting up lame totems”. Doesn’t matter if they are melee or ranged, whatever I put down someone has a problem. And could we wait until I actually throw the totems before jumping in the fight? (I am convinced they do this so they can claim better dps/heal reports at the end of the fight, since they get a few seconds more while I am waiting for my totem macro to finish). Must add though that my guild is great…this only happens to me in PUGs.
lol i think the first couple lines are funny….beating your first 25man boss and getting an emblem of heroism…that’s when you know you are bad…you can’t even get your first emblem of valor off of a 25man boss