Following as a Skill

In a game where "skill" is often measured by putting in the most time and having the most hardcore net of accomplishments, I have always worried that I am on a lower skill bracket than others in my guild. After all, I spend the majority of my time obsessing over cute pets, pretty dresses, and holidays instead of pwning the hardest heroics for emblems and giggles.

Saturday, my family got a guild first: the Impossible Achievement that made a noob DK trash-talk a tank friend. After jubilant cheering (and a 10 minute afk where I baked a few celebratory cookies), we finished the other achievements for Azjol-Nerub and moved straight to Zombiefest.

I had never done Heroic AN and had never done Culling of Stratholme in any form. In fact, my shadow priest wore level 71 green boots and mostly 70 epics except for a holy tier 7 chest, 80 rings, and some Naxx 10 gloves.

Anyone with any sense will know that I couldn't have been carried through the Impossible Achievement (aka Watch Him Die). We had only two working dps, me and Jon's wife, while my husband tanked, his best friend off-tanked, and Jon healed.

I have always regretfully thought of myself on a lower skill bracket than certain others in my guild -- people who had grouped together to try that very same achievement and failed.

But the reason we got that achievement and they didn't isn't extra practice (those guys wiped for hours) or better gear (they regularly top the dps charts).

My theory is that we succeeded because my family group is a team.

We leveled to 70 together. We've met to do instances every Sunday since we started playing WoW. We know how to move together, how to coordinate, how each of us will react in a certain situation, how to give out assignments for each person's strengths and weaknesses.

Our family group has two officers and two former officers, and nobody steps on anyone else's toes. The theorycrafters in our group contribute to boss strategy, reading and tweaking and making suggestions. Whenever one person speaks, everyone listens. The non-theorycrafters tend to limit suggestions to our own roles, the occasional tweak, and just ask that someone tell us where to stand and what to kill; however, I also think we have one of the most important skills any player can possess -- the ability to follow.

A leader can communicate orders to a team with forethought and detail, but the entire effort is wasted if no one can execute those orders accurately. If everyone in a group wants to lead, nothing will ever get done. A good raid -- a good guild! -- must have people willing and able to follow to be successful, just as it must have those willing and able to lead.

Individual skill becomes pointless in a group effort if the individual cannot find synergy with everyone else. Like the worldwide arena tournament, where the US teams had been slapped together using excellent individual players, but the (Korean) winners had been playing together for years. It makes a difference.

And I think that while there are admirable players in my guild who could beat me in PVP and on the dps meters every single time, their 5-mans could never beat my family group for sheer teamliness.

Not that that's a word. But it makes me happy to finally know -- I'm not a scrub. :D And with the right environment, I might even be called . . . skilled.

---------------------------

Beth Blevins is a former officer of In Vino Veritas.
She is a writer and avid blogger.
Beth plays WoW primarily for her Sunday Family Time.