RNG is not an excuse
I'm going to rant here a bit because every time I see someone mention bad luck (or RNG) it makes me angry. I'm pretty sure most raiders hear "bad luck, couldn't have done anything about it" multiple times in a single raid and I just want tell you that almost every single player who blames bad luck for wiping is a fucking idiot.I hate when people blame luck and that's the end of it. Somehow the general attitude seems to be that shit happens and there is nothing you can do about it when the players' attitudes should be "FUCK! That's not supposed to happen! How can we survive this? Could this have been prevented?".
For example pre nerf 25 heroic Al'Akir phase 1 which by far was the most skill intensive thing in this tier. You had to work with timers that aren't 100% certain: AA might be casting Electrocute on tank when AA was supposed to do Wind Burst which messed up everyones plans. You had to work with randomness: tank had to turn the boss which then made tornadoes spawn in a certain way that in 30 seconds they would collide at the same spot, which at the same time had a lightning strike spawn while wind burst is being cast. And add on top of that the general difficulties even without those special situations. Half of the platform was unusable, the players had to think themselves about their positions and the position of others so they don't get everyone killed.
All in all, it was a fucking nightmare. We wiped there for days without significant progress. We would pull and 3 guys died within the first 30 seconds. Rarely we would make it to p2 with only a couple of deaths. We did this again and again for days. Other guilds weren't even trying this "RNG shit boss" (a quote from a world top 10 raid leader).
And then suddenly on the fourth day everything clicked. Now we were getting to p2 with 80% of our pulls and still had everything under control (not too many deaths etc). Players were surviving things easily that were killing them a day before. These were the things that most people would claim "bad luck" ("bad" timings with tornadoes, lighting strike and wind burst). Do you think it was because of bad luck we wiped there for days and then suddenly we have a day with incredible luck where everything goes as planned? Hell no. We learned to play properly and we learned to avoid getting in to situations that are unsurvivable.
My favourite example in ICC was getting green fixate + Malleable Goos on top of you on Putricide and then claiming that was bad luck and nothing could have been done. The guy died because the raid played badly. I'm 100% sure there was someone who didn't use their guardian spirit, pain suppression, sacrifice or whatever. If they were all used, guess what? That's why you have combat resses. A raid can survive those kinds of things if they play well enough. But after spending your combat resses on players who died on stupid shit and then the above mentioned situation happens and you wipe because of it, it's once again bad luck in most people's minds. They just don't seem to get that bad playing was the reason they didn't have that combat ress. They are just too fixated to that one particular thing that just happened.
Just to emphasize: bad luck does exist. But you don't wipe because of bad luck, you wipe because you couldn't handle it. I realize I'm not the average raider and I raid with a pretty incredible group of players. But the point I'm trying to make is that don't blame bad luck and just end it at that. Try to learn how to avoid getting in to situtions you just were in.
We encourage our players to point out how they saved the day after something unexpected happened and the raid survived. It's not uncommon to hear "Saw that sick move I just did? Saw how I saved the raid there when you fucked up (or as most people would say "had bad luck") because I'm just better than you?!?" in our Teamspeak. Adapting well to changing situations is what makes a good player great and guilds/raid leaders should encourage that.
Of course sometimes there are things you just couldn't avoid even if everyone was playing perfectly. Those situations are very rare and you can just shrug them off but you are very wrong if those kinds of situations happen more than couple of times a week.
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Comments
RNG is CHANCE for an item to drop, trinket to proc, spell to crit, etc., nothing common with a boss, which is just a script/code, on which must be found a way to be countered, and there are timers.
RNG is that with my prot pala im running Grim Batol for the shoulders and SFK for the boots ~90 times each and any of them still don't drop.
RNG is the chance of SW: P up and after 9 Mind Flays still to not have a Shadow Orb up. With average gear level of 354, fully raid buffed.
So yep, you're absolutely right in everything, but i don't think the "RNG" term has place anywhere in the text. Its about good or bad playing.
Fri, 25/02/2011 - 00:56
NPC chooses a target randomly.
Fri, 25/02/2011 - 03:44
Sorry but I disagree. The boss encounters in WoW contain plenty of random elements even though they are scripted. There's randomness in ability timings (which can also lead into randomness in the order of abilities), randomness in damage done and randomness in targeting of the abilities.
RNG is not just "chance of something", RNG is anything containing randomness.
Fri, 25/02/2011 - 09:24
You're right in most of the things. However some boss' do have RNG that would screw the raid up. I.e LKHC25 getting your disc priest and 2 other healers picked up by the valkyr. Even with AM I would imagine it would be really hard to remove infest from every raid member.
RNG is RNG.
Offtopic; Gratz on all your worldsfirst kills, well done and waouw.. Al'akir and Nef tacs? Clever thinking ;)
Fri, 25/02/2011 - 08:33
Well if 3 healers gets picked then it's up to the rest of the raid to open their spellbook and see what they've got :) Healthstones, Divine Hymn, Tranquility, Shield Wall, AMS, Ice Block, barkskins and whatnot.
Sat, 26/02/2011 - 02:00
It was only an issue when it happened multiple times in a row or was combined with some other unfortunate event.
Sat, 26/02/2011 - 08:23
Often the ability to fix the problem doesnt lie within your own reach, which means you can either suck it up, call it "unlucky/RNG" and go again, or rage to a person that will never-ever grasp the fact that he/she actually did something wrong in the first place.
In a perfect world, you would be right.. But not all teams consist such extrordinary players and sometimes calling it RNG or Unlucky are a way of handling a situation, since not all have the ability to see how to handle it.
There's a difference between theory (your reasoning behind it) and practice.
Basically I think your blog is 100% correct for you (in your guild, in your circumstances) but the further you go down the ladder of the rankings (for instance), the more "only in theory" your blog becomes ^^
Fri, 25/02/2011 - 13:59
RNG definitely does exist on boss fights, whether your raid is able to handle them or not is a different matter. There might be rare occurrences where a certain RNG situation cannot be survived and you just need to hope it doesnt happen, but I would have to assume the Blizzard take into account these possibilities and make them survivable in some way, even if it's not easy.
Sat, 26/02/2011 - 14:15
Interesting points but is the vile language necessary?
Tue, 01/03/2011 - 01:00
How about during ascendant council when Quake is about to be cast, and the healer has a grounding field spawned right under him and seconds later the quake comes?
That is bad luck that cannot be fixed.
Tue, 01/03/2011 - 02:03
Bubble, GS, HoS shit even a PW:Shield.
Tue, 01/03/2011 - 04:28
There is a graphic on the ground before the grounding field spawns so if a healer dies because of that it's his own fault.
Tue, 01/03/2011 - 11:46
I think the main point of this article, is not that there are random circumstances/situations with bosses that all but guarantee a wipe (like 3 healers getting picked up during HM LK 25), but that RNG is not an excuse for not being able to down a boss, or that RNG is making a boss extremely difficult.
I think he is saying that some bosses just have a learning curve, that a lot of guilds are calling RNG. These guilds should recognize that if it was truly RNG, that even after having it on farm for months and most of the raid being in BiS, that they would still be wiping on most attempts. This is clearly not the case, and it just meant that there was a steep learning curve associated with that boss. I think ultimately he just wants to see less excuses about RNG and bugged bosses, and more ownership of mistakes, and a desire to fully understand an encounter and improve play.
Tue, 01/03/2011 - 19:54
Looks like half of these commenters didn't read/understand the post...
He didn't say RNG doesn't happen. He said RNG isn't an excuse. At least not a good one, and not one you should use as often as I'm sure most of you do.
Sat, 05/03/2011 - 02:11
Yes, vile language is necessary because shows how we feel to see same people always dying and coming up with lot of lame excuses for the death.
As healer i realized RNG have some personal enemies and it enjoys to kill always the same guys...
Oh no, maybe he's just wrong and Paragon is not the top world guild due do players skill, they just (always) have luck with the RNG, ROFL.
Thu, 17/03/2011 - 12:33
How about when ur in magmaws room and u blink but the blink sends u backwards then flame pillar smashes ur face in? pretty rng bullshit right there.
Also boss mods are for noobs. Play without them and fights are so much easier since u have to adapt instantly instead of knowning what will happen jk alakir fucks with the timers OH NO YOU WIPED fucking timers are off qq rage some.
The amount of coordination required to counter rng is completely impossible for any 25man guild. look how hard it is coordinating 3 people in arena and thats all reaction based. PvE'ers will always fail at a random event or sumthing that feels like "rng" cos they are too used to their addons playing the game for em.
Srsly try playin without a boss mod. WoW becomes slightly challenging then.
Tue, 22/03/2011 - 12:14
sir, you are an idiot.
Thank you and have a good day.
Wed, 23/03/2011 - 08:41
What changed on the fourth day was the tactic (which was already brought up weeks earlier as the only sensible way of going around the zoning issue). It was still just as shit with the old tactic, there still were situations where you could simply have NOT avoided getting killed. The first part of the day when we went with the old tactic it was still horrible - we didn't even make it to P2 more than once in a blue moon.
Obviously, it helped to practice against the randomness of everything happening. But you're completely ignoring the part which enabled us to get the actual kill.
Thu, 24/03/2011 - 14:01
If nothing else, thank you for the discussion that this generated in the wow community. I think the thing that is being overlooked, is that people are reading in to this and trying to find some antagonistic point to be made. It is simple statement of the fact that the root of RNG is the word random. Therefore, having the same "bad luck" every attempt is random odds in of itself. Groups still have to ask themselves if they are going to blame the fight and its mechanics or find a way to beat them. RNG IS PART OF THE FIGHT. Failing to beat the RNG has the same end result to unwanted deaths to any other mechanic that may or may not be as random. A group that gets past the statements of what went wrong, how did this happen, why did this happen, is able to come to the conclusion of how can this be beaten, stands to argue that the group would always have a better chance of downing an encounter. They do not allow themselves to be put in those bad situations to begin with. RNG will always be different from attempt to attempt, but players that know what to do ahead of time, when something happens, or how to react in the event of, is part of what makes someone a better player to begin with.
If you are sitting there saying to yourself, wow I hope that doesn't hit this guy or we are screwed, "that guy" is exactly what the community refers to this player as.
The best advice I can give to groups that see this happening is, get those players to understand that its not about expecting the game to work the way you expect it to, its about recognizing the existing game mechanics and overcoming obstacles along the way, or adjusting strategy to tilt the odds more in your favor. In a world based on Random Numbers, its a fair argument to say that those numbers matter.
Just because something is a lot more random, and hence viewed as more difficult in its current state, does not mean there isn't a way to use existing game mechanics to beat it. Groups are supposed to experience this, and have to figure out what needs to be done to get around it and win. Without that aspect of the game entirely, a group of trained monkeys in a lab with a boss mod, would eventually down certain bosses, just based entirely off trial and error if the encounter was simple enough rinse and repeat. Beating a fight with "Bad RNG" just feels that much more rewarding after, knowing that things didn't go perfectly as planned, but you as as player did what was required to beat an encounter. Isn't that more fun and rewarding to the individual player, than to have just had everything go your way. If thats true, the opposite perspective could be offered, and groups will start saying, oh well you just got lucky when you beat that just then. Hell no, the attempts were put in, until the group as a whole dealt with mechanics correctly.
Mon, 04/04/2011 - 04:19
The only RNG that this tier had was the pre-fix Maloriak's Flash Freeze that could freeze the Aberrations tank and that could be avoided if you were a paladin.
My guild is progressing in Al'akir 25 heroic to end this tier at least and the plan was that I (Prot pally) tanked stormlings and a Dk tanked Al'akir but he was dying on tornados/wb/ice patch/lightning every try before 90% so I had to tank the boss in p1 and not died every single time, he always claimed that was "shit rng" but I saw him eatin a wind burst when going through the tornados so they got him. I'm even using swiftness potions in p1 to dodge tornados properly without having strafe a lot so the lightning doesn't kill everyone, I find this boss the funniest in this tier (Tanking wise)
I agree pretty much with Lazeil that UNAVOIDABLE RNG is almost non existant and can be fixed always in some way.
Sat, 09/04/2011 - 13:19