The 25th Person
Groups of Words used a term about a month ago, the 25th person:
The Nth person is someone the rest of the raid plays around in order to make sure the common jobs get done. Good healers cover for the bad healer, strong dps makes up for weak dps, everyone covers for the tank who can’t remember to use their cooldowns, etc. This person, for whatever reason, just doesn’t help in raids that much.
And a lot of people have been writing about issues with progression, problems recruiting, guilds falling apart or going back to struggling on farm content. None of these issues are new or limited only to World of Warcraft.
While perusing the items in my feed reader today, I ended up reading a post on the TankSpot forums about meters and some perspective on them. A snippet from Horacio:
There can only be one best in any subset or group. Sometimes the players are evenly matched and compete head to head. Sometimes one is a clear leader. There are things that go into playing each class that are somewhat impossible to explain …. The point is, do your best but if you do not equal the elite player you know or hear of, don’t get down on yourself. The only meter that really counts is the “Boss Dead” meter.
I think there is a lot to be said for that view: that at the end of the day, the Boss Dead meter is the one that counts. Did you, as a raid, get the job done? If yes, can you get the next one? If no, why? Other tools for analysis need to be used at that point.
Sometimes, it’s an issue of gear. Perhaps more farm raiding needs to be done for newer members. Sometimes it’s an issues of skill and training needs to be done.
But sometimes, it comes down to the 25th person.
Every raid has to accomplish a certain number of tasks within a certain time limit to get that Boss Dead meter to tick. Sometimes the constraint is a hard enrage timer, sometimes it is when the healers are out of mana and the tank drops. Sometimes it comes down to how hard the tank is going to get hit (as on Gruul or trying to eat Netherspite’s red beam).
To use Gruul as an example (as that is something the StormSeeker’s are trying to overcome), the mechanics of the fight mean that any normal tank is going to get killed in one blow at some point. The damage output will become larger than can be mitigated. Most guilds aim for 13-17 growths, as I understand things. A number that I have both seen and done the math on, is needing average raid dps for a typical raid setup to be about 500 dps. Note, this is average. Average means for everyone in the raid doing even one point over that, someone else can do less. This basically is the secret to the 25th person, someone else does their work for them and picks up the slack.
This is perhaps okay on farm content, when the average is considerably below what you can do. But on progression content, there isn’t necessarily room for someone to be that far below the average for the raid. In the realm of wishful thinking, your lowest dps, constrained by class and specific mechanics of the encounter, is above the needed average and not far below the group’s real average.
This is why I like to use tools like Recount or WWS. Where am I on the needed and actual averages? Am I carrying or being carried? Who in my raids is falling into those categories? For the people being carried (with regards to needed averages, not actual), is improvement possible or are they incapable or unwilling to move out of the 25th person spot. Given the choice, I would never invite the 25th person, but so many times we are bound by factors of attendance or the nature of the guild to make choices that can almost inevitably lead to failure.
Casual raiding, to me, is the notion that this is okay, that you carry people as much as you can, and then no one gets farther because you are tied more to the 25th person than the Boss Dead meter. Hardcore raiding is saying getting the job done is more important than the 25th person. One being better than the other is a personal choice and tied to what you value.
What really matters is, when you make that commitment to raid, to using 24 other people’s time to accomplish a common goal, are you helping keep the actual average above the needed average. Are you helping get the Boss Dead meter up.
I think the 25th person is the reason so many people and guilds are having problems these days. The edge of progression has cut away the cream of raiders, and as you move down the tiers of raiding, the 25th persons get shuffled down. At some point there is no room for anyone to be carried, so they get dropped, picked up somewhere below and maybe they can function at that level. But then you get out of the hardcore raiding mentality and into the casual mentality and those people don’t get dropped anymore.
Lassirra of The Hunter’s Mark has written two pieces recently about that situation: Casual by Circumstance and a follow-up, More Casual / Hardcore Musings. Both address that issue where personal and guild progression cannot keep ahead of the 25th person and how you should handle those situations.
Know what you want, and know how far you’re willing to go to get it. Always make sure that “the juice is worth the squeeze”. - Lassirra
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