Safety Dance

We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
'Cause your friends don't dance, and if they don't dance
Well they're no friends of mine

I am a Wrath baby.  My first raiding was Nax (back when everyone else was starting trial of the crusader).  I have only ever raided in 10 man.

My first recollection of a safety dance was Heigan.  No enrage timer; the only important thing was dancing.  Admitidly a single tank and healer could duo the run, so it didn't matter if 80% of the raid failed. 

Tobold had a article back in 2009 talking about 3 types of raids:

• Type A : Challenge the strongest;
• Type B : Challenge the average;
• Type C : Challenge the weakest.  ... As the debuff is random, the raid group cannot afford to bring anyone not likely to react fast enough, as that would cause a wipe for everyone. ... AKA dancing.
  

Note that players generally consider that the overall challenge of a raid encounter goes up from type A to type B to type C. But in fact the difference is mainly affecting the weakest players in the raid group. For the strongest players there is no inherent difference in the degree of individual challenge in the three types.

A certain goblin (and others) is tired of dancing; claiming that it is something new for firelands raids.

Umm. No.

Any fight (or part thereof) that is a simple gear/ability to hit best buttons check is nerfed into triviality by new gear (maths test in Gevlon's article)
Any part of a fight that is a 'dance' is not trivialised by the same degree (though gear can change insta fail into a healable problem).

Any boss that is simply a dps/hps/mitigation fight is only Challenge the average at first and easily become nerfed into Challenge the strongest.

Any boss that incorporates dancing provides challenges according to the number of dancers required.

Previous dancing bosses?

• 4 Horseman in Nax, requiring 4 dancers 
• Heigan (though it could be completed by the strongest)
• Thaddius
• Hodir
• Freya
• Vezax
• Yogg Saron (Definitely Type C)
• Sindragosa
• Lich King

Even many bosses not mentioned had a lot of dancing for someone; less for DPS. 

What has changed is that previous raids had more type 'A' encounters, and less Type 'C'.  ICC had a lot of Type A bosses; at least by the time I got to them.  Cataclysm initally had Magmaw challenging the adds kiter or tank (generally a hunter or frost DK) and those that applied chains (dancing by the strongest).  Naxx had Patchwerk (least geared tank had to be 'main' tank).  Also the Firelands dances appear to be a little harder, with an extra 'step' in the dance.

Firelands is currently missing a 'Challenge the strongest' boss. 

• Shannox is at most a challenge the average raid; and with further nerfs will become a challenge the strongest. It was not particularly challenging DPS-wise, even pre-nerf.
• Ryolith appears again to be a challenge the average raid; challenging a tank; the healers and the drivers.  Our DPS appear to have forgotten how to AOE.

There are no bosses here where we can carry.  To make things even more difficult for Gevlon; even Shannox and Ryolith seem to work better with communication.

Our casuals don't mind the challenge of tier 12.  Organisation is a nightmare for us; I can see the advantage of a fixed roster, but meh; I'm not always available either.  We don't mind wiping (at least not in public).  A fortnight ago we got Shannox down (pre nerf woo hoo).  Since then we have spent two nights wiping (approx 10 attempts on Beth; 25-30 attempts on Ryolith).  There is no question that Ryolith is a dance boss; The difficulty is that DPS have to conduct it.  We are putting one of our tanks into DPS gear; which should help a lot. 

So, we took time out from firelands and had a training/gearing run in Tier 11 raids.  If your looking for an easy kill with forgiving dancing; do Tier 11; where the nerfs have made many dancing failures healable. However even in these raids, in Tier 11; when we wiped, it was due to dancing failures.

We will get Ryolith down; either next week or the week after (I'm the last of the progression players - the line that says no progression is just behind me).

A challenge to the non-raiding gold bloggers out there;  Take one evening off a week from gold making and get Defender of a Shattered Realm; followed by the Firelands bosses.  You have the gold for gear and the patients to pick it up.

We can dance if we want to
We've got all your life and mine
As long as we abuse it, never going to lose it
Everything will work out right

Its a Safety dance
Oh well its safe to dance
Yes it safe to dance