In any scripted encounter, there exists a process or order of events that must be accomplished or followed in order to achieve completion. Some fudging or maneuvering can be done, but certain things still have to happen in order for the boss to die before the enrage timer. There are encounters where things have to be done on an individual basis by several members of the group at the same time, such as Magtheridon cube-clicking.
Group WTF was a study in what happens when multiple someones fail to click the cubes when they’re supposed to.
If you’re not familiar with the Magtheridon encounter, it basically amounts to killing five Channelers within a certain amount of time, as the remaining Channelers receive a stacking buff when one dies. This is followed by Mag himself, who casts an AOE damage ability periodically, which can only be interrupted by clicking five cubes spread throughout the chamber at the same time. If all five aren’t clicked simultaneously, it’s a wipe.
Now, let’s imagine that only half of the cubes need to be clicked in order to survive the encounter, but clicking all the cubes would ensure a successful one-shot kill with no casualties. Group WTF consisted of people who were all capable of cube-clicking, but only half of the members clicked. The other half promised to be near a cube and click when needed, but somehow always managed to avoid the duty, needlessly prolonging the encounter and requiring the actual clickers to be more on point than they would have had to be otherwise.
As someone who isn’t a fan of handing in a project that’s less than excellent, myself and the other clicker took on the bulk of the responsibility for organizing our group’s tasks. I’ll fully admit I have very high standards for things such as papers and presentations. However, the difference between this and Group OMG was that we (individually and anonymously) selected from a list of available project topics and were grouped according to our preferred topic. One would think this implies that all group members have an interest in said topic, and as such are more willing to work well toward a common goal than, say, a group working on a project nobody is interested in.
I think the key word there is “work.” We all want Mag dead, so we all need to click the cubes. An active clicker may or may not want Mag dead more than a non-clicker, but clicking the cubes simultaneously before the raid wipes isn’t a stroll through the park. It should be, but I spent enough time corpse-running to know it isn’t, unless everyone is on point. Regardless, Mag still has to die.
To that end, we identify and play to our strengths. I’m good with organization and numbers, so my job is the initial setup of the project, compilation of the data, and translating that data into layman’s terms and graphic illustrations. The other clicker is an excellent writer, and takes on the task of editing all our individual parts into a cohesive paper. The two non-clickers appear to be less academically-inclined and more sociable, so their responsibilities are geared toward the “fluff” aspects of the project and paper. Not necessarily less important than other aspects, but certainly less mentally taxing.
However, the one strength, or in this case weakness, we failed to take into consideration is punctuality. To kill Mag, the Channelers have to be killed within a certain amount of time, and the cubes must be clicked at specific times. Click as we might, there is still an enrage timer. In real life terms, this is known as a deadline. A certain amount of personal responsibility is expected from everyone in a group, and having someone with the ability to pick up another’s slack is a luxury.
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