Confessions of a Magi

Even we, the elite of the arcane, masters of fire, have our dirty little secrets.

And where better to admit them then here?

We only drop Refreshment Tables in battlegrounds because we're too lazy to summon our own food and water.
Then, we click them as fast as possible, to empty the table in seconds. Then, we delete all the manna biscuits, besides the ~100 we need, and then blame the hunter next to us for draining the table.
At this point, we tell everyone else that its on cooldown, sorry they missed the biscuits.

The only reason we spec frost to level is because frostbolt makes a really cool noise when you shoot it.

We cast Blizzard on the melee in the Shade of Aran fight, and see how many panic and run out.

We go an entire raid casting only Scorch, because we're playing on a laptop and watching a Zombie movie with our friends.

We always spellsteal a Paladin's "Wings" because, quite frankly, they look better on a mage.

We all secretly wish we had rolled gnome mages.

We all have an inexplicable loathing of retribution Paladins.

If anyone gets mind controlled in a raid, we will do our utmost to kill that person as fast as possible.

If we see a warrior pop Spell Reflect, we cast Polymorph to get a free heal.

We ninja killing blows in battlegrounds with Fireblast.

We will gladly cast Pyroblast on level 1 critters to pad our WWS damage reports.

We all secretly lust for female dranei.

We all have warlock alts.

We love to ride at about 110-120% threat to make the tanks sweat.

We secretly love to be turned into Little Red Riding Hood.

When blizzard stopped letting us summon Portals to Capital Cities in battlegrounds, we mages wept.

Dropping somebody to 1% in a battleground, then casting slow on them and melee'ing them turns us on.

Wehn we meet hunters in a battleground, we take pleasure in killing the pet then running away. Ice blocking, jumping off a cliff, whatever, so the hunter cannot kill us. Then we do it again a few minutes later.

We heal the other side in battlegrounds.

We break our own sheeps and blame someone else. After all, what kind of mage breaks their own sheep? Right?

Restoration druids make us cry.

We use Ice Block at 1% just to be a prick.

We keep polymorph right next to the Arcane Power + Trinket + Presence of Mind + Frostbolt + Icy Veins macro, so people will know how awesome I am... by accident.

We spec to get Imp. Flame Ward, and then run around FRAPSing ourselves reflecting Fire spells.

We all break out into a cold sweat when we're low on Teleportation Runes.

We love to sheep sheep.

I'm Tired

I'm tired. I'm sick. I cannot take another minute of this madness.

I am talking about Subtlety rogues, obviously.

Am I sick if losing to them? No, that is not the case. As class versus class, the dynamics haven't really changed.

What I'm sick of, what I'm tired of, is these subtlety rogues taking themselves seriously. I am sick of these rogues who run around battlegrounds pretending they have a real spec. I am sick of them using these... gimmicks.

I won't say I'm sorry for these somewhat harsh words, because I'm not.

These.... rogues... these so called Subtlety rogues, are annoying me to death.

In all honesty, the subtlety tree doesn't make sense. It seems to be an incoherent mishmash of stuff, that is better off as a collection of engineering trinkets.

Criticize me if you want, but it doesn't feel like I'm playing against an actual spec... it doesn't feel like an actual talent tree to me. Most talent trees in the game have a built in synergy to them.
Like the mages fire tree for example. Crit enhancing talents, and then talents that feed of crits.
Or, say, the arcane tree. Increases the mana cost and damage of abilities, and has an ability that does more damage the more mana you spend. It also has talents that increase intellect, and then a talent that increases spell damage based on intellect.
Y'see how this works?

And then we have the subtlety tree, which is like... people taped abilities to a dart, blindfolded themselves, spun around, then hurled the dart in a random direction.

I guess thats a little too harsh. After all, the talents do kinda make sense... I mean, it is a PvP tree for the rogues. I mean, it has to be. Look at all those survivability talents in there.

But, see, it's supposed to develop into something. Something awesome, something powerful and sexy. But the subtlety tree never actually... gets there.

Fire Mage: Check me out. I got, like, all this awesome crit stuff. And check it, whenever I crit, I do even more damage!
Rogue: Oh yeah, well, I can get more combo points after resisting your spell!
Fire Mage: Uh... huh... yeah, well, listen, whenever I crit, I also get mana back! And check this out... an active spell that vastly improves my crit rate! Isn't that awesome?
Rogue: HA! When I'm almost dead, I'm not dead, 'cause I can cheat death, you see, see? And then I take, like, no damage ever and I keep living for like an eternity and awesome, and you'll crit me for, like, 4!!
Fire Mage: Uhhh... what... what are you even talking about? Was that even a sentence?
Rogue: I CAN TELEPORT!!
Fire Mage: K, I'm gonna go talk to this warrior over here...
Rogue: GHOSTLY STRIKE!!
Fire Mage: What the... did you... did you just... what the hell?
Rogue: Can't touch this I am dodgy! I am teh MASTAH of Decepshun!

Exaggerated? Not by much.

Seriously, these subtlety rogues are getting on my nerves.

They are.... annoying. Really, really annoying.

Cheat Death is a really cool idea, but as far as I can tell, it just makes me angry.

Look, you're already dead. Seriously, stop trying. Stop fucking around, just lay down, and die. You think an extra three seconds is going to do anything? C'mon, man, you're just wasting my time, and yours.

And why, oh why did these rogues steal my precious Blink? I mean, c'mon, I'm a bloody MASTER of the Arcane! I can shoot fire from my hands! I set a damn dragon on fire with MY MIND, and now some petty thief has the same skill I do? What. The hell.
Was it really necessary to let rogues teleport? Was this really needed?
Yeah, rogues have mobility issues, but seriously... just handing them an exclusive mage spell seems kinda... unimaginative.

It's not like I hate them. It's not like I get ganked by them.

But they piss me off. It's one of those senseless things that gets you riled up for no apparent reason.

Its similar to waking up, and realizing somebody moved your slippers, and you get entirely pissed off.

"WHO THE %$^@ MOVED MY GODDAMN SLIPPERS?!"

There's no real reason...

But BLOODY HELL man these rogues piss me off.

A History of Me

So I started off, a wee little troll mage running around, having played only one online RPG (it was a Neverwinter server, up to 20 people online at a time!), and never having played a spell casting character... properly, that is.

At Vox's suggestion, I attempted to level as arcane. Leveled to about 16 putting points into Arcane before I realized I always used fireball as my spell of choice, almost never touched Arcane Missiles.
So I respecced over to fire, and found it much more awesome. Impact was, like, the COOLEST THING EVAR.

At level 18, I wandered into one of those Warsong peoples on the vacation weekend. I thought to myself "What's PvP? I wonder if it's any good". So I tried it out. I was very sad.
My best ever attempt was dropping a rogue to 93% life before getting killed. I mostly got killed by everybody, couldn't get a spell cast off ever, and then got killed again. Ganked in seconds.

So I thought "this is stupid. Never doing this again", and went on my merry way, leveling up.

It was about here that I did my very first instance. Wailing Caverns, with a PuG group. We failed on the 6th pull in, wiping catastrophically. So I didn't do that again for a very long time.

Things changed at 29. Oh, how they changed. Namely, I got Burning Soul. Pushback resistance. Things changed a lot at 29. Those rogues who used to gank me? HAH! Eat fire, bitchez! And so it went. I was doing quite well at 29. I was never the best, but I was pretty good. Usually about 5-6 on the damage meters, about there.
I spent a good couple of weeks at 29, doing nothing but Arathi Basin over and over again. Vox was harassing the hell out of me. "Level up! Level up! Fuck, LEVEL UP!"

So I did. I leveled up. And at 36, gave PvP a try again. I discovered I was even BETTER now! All these new fire abilities was turning me into a god of damage. It took one and a half months to level from 36-40, because I spent so much time doing PvP.

Again with Vox harassing the shit out of me, I leveled up into the next bracket.

I have frost a try at level 44, and Blizzard promptly nerfed the tree into oblivion the next day. Went back to fire, and it has always been my favorite tree.

Lo and behold, 49 was the best bracket yet. At this point, I was glued to the whole idea of a glass cannon. I barely had over 1k hitpoints at this point, but had enough spell damage to consistently drop 6 or 7 enemies before I was killed, assuming nobody healed me ever, and I was always in the top 3 for damage dealt, and had a ton of killing blows (and as such as always gifted with heals every now and then). Almost 3 months were spent happily killing stuff at 49. Hell, the release of the Burning Crusade came and went in this time period, and I didn't even notice until I encountered a Dranei Shaman for the first time.

See, at 49, I had never, not even once fought against a dranei shaman. I had no idea what to do about them at first. It was like, this thing is running at me, holy crap Earth Shock, what the hell is that? Holy crap! What was that? Stormstrike? I got one-shotted! Holy crap! HOLY CRAP! They can heal themselves too? Fucking overpowered!

For about a week I got raped by shamans before I figured out how to kill them. After that, everything settled down back to normal. One of my PvP buddies turned into a blood elf, but other than that things went smoothly. I ganked, got ganked, and so on.

So, yeah, almost three months at 49 doing nothing but PvP. I had this little tight knit group of people I always PvP'd with. People like Nismofreak, Olintharg, and a bunch of others. PvP is what we did. It's just what we did. And we were hard core.
We even reached a point where we would all spec around each other, to get to the best possible fighting unit we could get.

As such, I found myself in the dreaded PoM Pyro spec. Well, it was at 49, so I was basically a one trick pony. Well, except for the fact that I had a ton of spell damage (for my level) and as such I could easily three shot most people.

Oh, yeah, and I did Uldaman a few times around here. Oddly enough, I was quite good at it, and I don't know why. I had done... like, Wailing Caverns once before, but for some reason I was good at instances. My sheeps were good, my DPS was good, and aggro was never pulled. Sorry, guys, I was never an instance noob.

I could go on and on here, I mean, me and these people played together for nearly three months. I kinda have a lot to say on the matter, given the chance. But this post isn't about 49 PvP, its about me.

So. I go on a band trip for a week and a half, get back, and discover all my friends had moved on. Every one of them was between level 53-58.

Was I disappointed? Yep, yep I was. I was very sad.

PvP just wasn't the same without them.

So, off I went, back to the whole leveling thing.

Meandered around WPL, and ended up at 51. Then I tried out the fabled Alterac Valley.

One month later... I had gained 2 levels from doing nothing but AV. So, yeah, level 53, and I thought "Ehh, better go back and do some real stuff".

Vox had hit 70, like, 3 months ago, I think.

Anyways, so, gradually leveled from 53-58. Took bloody forever. Then hit up Outlands, and leveled from 58-59 in the same amount of time it took to get to the Outlands from STV. No, seriously. That bloody fast.

So I picked up all these Outland greens and quest rewards, leveled as close to 60 as I dared, and went back to PvP.

Oh, it was glorious. I discovered the use of stamina for the first time. I was still very much a cannon, except I had fitted myself as an iron cannon. I was still able to 2-3 shot most people, and consistently was in the top 1-3 for health in the entire battlegrounds. This included Alterac Valley.

I mean, I had 4 items that were 59 greens "of stamina", so I was far ahead of the competition.

Ridiculously high stamina + ridiculously high damage output = WARLOCK MODE ON.

Averaged 1 death per BG versus ~50 kills. It was damn good times.

Oddly enough, I never actually did some serious PvE until halfway through my 60's. Before running Underbog with my guild at the time, I had almost never run actual instances. Zul'Furak (?) once, Wailing Caverns, and Uldaman a few times. That was the extent of that.

And then all of a sudden, all this Outland stuff. Instances up the wazoo.

Good times, really. Wiping in Underbog, wiping in Sethekk Halls, wiping in Mechanar, wiping on Murmur for 3 hours straight, yeah. It was fun.

Needless to say, thats why I am extremely jaded towards PuGs, even though not ALL of my experiences were terribad.

Well, whatever. Played plenty of battlegrounds on my way up from 60-69, and as was usual for me, dominated them all. What can I say? I was designed for slaughtering the innocent. It's just what I did.
At 64, I respecced for frost, fully expecting my beloved fire spec to be next to ruined by resilience, until my gear came up to par, and even then...
Needless to say, I was proven right. Fire is sad, and is largely self-defeated by resilience. A loss of ~12% (I forget what the exact cap is) ruins a lot of the damage fire depends on to be competitive. And entering 70 arenas with barely 7k hitpoints, and not even 100 resilience, its ruinous unless you max out your spec to try and cover it.

Regardless, spent a good month at 69 as well, so there. I had fun. Killed stuff, and had actually gotten 4 pieces of my 70 honor gear before getting that last level.

And at 70, promptly hopped onto some arena teams, and we generally had our asses kicked all over the place. But oh well, thats kinda where this blog started off, at the tail end of arena ass kicking. After that, my teams dried up, and some major changes occurred.

For one, I joined an excellent raiding guild (Hydross went down tonight, Grats to us!), and as such, a raiding spec was needed. I have used all 3 major specs now, and am happiest with fire. Go figure, huh?
Anyways, took my arena'ing to PTRs, and here I am. Raiding and PvP.

And doing a blog, because I'm that lame.

Why Polymorph Is So Damn Good

1) Able to be used on both Beasts and Humanoids, it is an extremely effective crowd control spell, used everywhere from Wailing Caverns to Serpentshrine Cavern to Sunken Temple to Black Temple. So many mobs are susceptible to Polymorph, it is almost a universally good crowd control device.

2) It is spammable. Some crowd control abilities, like a hunter's freezing trap, come with cooldowns attached. Polymorph does not have a cooldown.

3) Polymorph is a crowd control spell that is brought to the mob in question. Again comparing to a hunter's freezing trap, polymorph has a 30 yard range, and as such can be casted at a mob that is still yards away. Freezing trap requires the mob to come to the trap, which requires a lot more precision and skill to use properly. Any dumbass can use Polymorph correctly.

4) The mob barely moves once controlled. A warlock's fear "controls" the mob, but it is still running about like an idiot. There is serious danger that other mobs will be pulled. A sheep doesn't leave the same 4 yard zone, and most importantly, if other mobs path over it, they do not aggro. Apparently, there is nothing suspicious about a cute piggy named "Incredibly Powerful Naga".

5) It lasts a very long time. Max ranked Polymorph lasts a hefty 50 seconds, which means in your average instance, you can sheep it, and then forget about it for almost a minute.

Raiding as a Mage

The leap from solo WoW to group WoW can be a tough one. As you probably know by now, group play demands that you excel at what your class is good at, and completely ignore everything else.
When you, mage, go off to kill some mobs, you are providing the pulling, the tanking, the DPS, and the heals, all by yourself. Pull a second mob by mistake, and now you're doing the crowd control as well. You have to fill all of the classic group roles with you and only you.
This all changes when you group up with other people. Grouped up, you no longer have to tank, heal, pull. That stuff is not your responsibility, and you can safely ignore them and leave those tasks to the classes who excel at them.
You will never tank an instance. There are a couple bosses where you tank, but that is far out from the norm.
You will never heal an instance. It just won't happen. K?

For we mages are here for two things: dealing damage to the bad guys, and turning the bad guys into cute farm animals. Thats what we do.
You don't need to kite a mob, because someone else will be tanking it for you. You don't need to worry about people's health bars, someone else is taking care of that.
So what do you, the grouping/instancing/raiding mage need to know?

Synopsis of the 3 main specs in a raid.

Arcane, essentially, specs the mage into a balls-to-the-wall Burst DPS spec, mana be damned. Going full bore Arcane Blast with cooldowns blown will put the mage OOM in a matter of seconds, but his DPS will be insane. Utterly insane. Until his mana bar goes limp.
Think of it like the spec designed to kill the trash in raids as fast as possible.
Picture it like a Drag Racer, designed to reach speeds of excess of 240 mph, but can only maintain this for a half mile.

Fire is the opposite. It specs the mage as far away from burst DPS as possible from mage, and essentially specializes the mage for boss fights. Thats why it's so popular, "the" raid spec if you will. Any fight thats under 10 seconds is a waste of a fire mages time. This spec is designed for the long haul.
Think of it like the spec designed to fight the boss mobs in raids efficiently.
Picture it like a massive trucking... truck... designed to reach speeds of no more than 80, 90 mph, but can maintain it for almost a thousand miles.

Frost is the middle ground here. It does not have the same amount of burst damage arcane is capable of, and it does not have the long haul power that fire does. It has better burst damage than fire, and has far greater longevity than arcane.
Think of it like the spec that tries to find a comfortable middle ground between boss fights and trash killing.
Think of it like a wee little Toyota sports car that can go 140 mph, and keep it up for a couple hundred miles.

Raiding as Arcane

Raiding as Fire

Raiding as Frost

Dealing Damage

This will be your primary role in a grouping scenario. You're a mage, you're a purist DPS (damage per second) class.
Depending on your spec, you will have what is called a "spell rotation", a series of spell casts you use to do as much damage as possible. What spells you use depends entirely on what spec you use.
The goal of DPS is to continue casting, to continue dealing as much damage as possible for as long as possible.

Step 1: The Mana Pool

In order to cast spells, you must have mana to cast said spell. You should start each confrontation at full mana, so you will be able to continue casting for quite some time before going OOM (out of mana). During most "trash" (i.e. non-boss fights) your default mana bar will be enough to last you the entire fight.
However, during boss fights, this will almost never be the case. Your mana bar will run out, and it is your responsibility to keep your mana bar replenished, to keep you casting spells as long as possible.
You have the following options avaliable to restore mana: Mana Gems, Mana Potions, and Evocation.
What limits you fro having an eternal mana bar is the fact that these mana restoratives have cooldowns attached to them. Both mana gems and pots have 2 minute cooldowns, and Evocation can only be used every 8 minutes.
You have to be a little smart about when to use your mana restoratives, or you will find yourself with an empty mana bar rather frequently, especially if you are specced arcane. As a general rule, never, ever wait until your low on mana to use a consumable.
Let's say you have 3 mana potions, and no gems for some reason, and 9000 mp.
Now, these mana potions restore 2.5k mana per potion.
As the fight goes on, you want to use the first mana potion right when your mana bar hits the line where it will be almost completely filled.
In this example, you are going to want to drink the first mana potion at 6500 mp. Don't drink it any sooner, or you will have wasted mana. If you drink it at 8000 mp, you just wasted 1500 mana points. Don't do that.
Let's compare a mage who drinks intelligently, and one who drinks only when his mana is almost gone. (These numbers were picked arbitrarily).

Let's say each of these mages use 3k mana every minute. They each have 9000 mana to go through. Without using consumables, they will each be able to cast for 3 minutes before going OOM. Now, these mages are using Super Mana Potions, which for some odd reason, always restore the maximum 3000 mana.
The first mage will use his mana potions intelligently, using it whenever he can make use of it.
The second mage will only use it when he's OOM.
So. Here we go.

Minute One - Each mage has used 3k mana. Mage 1 uses his mana potion at this mark, restoring him to full mana. Mage 1 = 9000 mana. Mage 2 = 6000 mana.

Minute Two - Each mage has now used 6k mana total. Mage 1 has 1 minute left on his potion cooldown. Mage 1 = 6000 mana. Mage 2 = 3000 mana.

Minute Three - Each mage has now used 9k mana total. Mage 1 drinks another potion, the second the cooldown is up. Mage 2, being OOM, now uses his first potion. Mage 1 = 6000 mana. Mage 2 = 3000 mana.

Minute Four - Each mage has now used 12k mana total. Both mages have 1 minute left on their potion cooldown. Mage 2 is now OOM, and spends the next minute scuffing his shoes. Mage 1 = 3000 mana. Mage 2 = 0.

So you see the difference using the mana restoratives does. Use 'em smart.

Step 2: Threat

When you hurt a mob by setting it on fire or whatever, this causes the mob to start to get angry at you, and eventually, hate you so much it wants to rape your children then force-feed their corpses to you.
Now, in a group, there a multiple targets for the mob to choose from, and ideally the mob will choose the tank (the tank here defined as "Not You"). So, once the tank has "aggro" on the mob, meaning the mob is hitting the tank and not anyone else, you can feel free to open up on the mob in question.

How to Not Pull Aggro

And that's all there is to it! Keep your mana bar up, keep your threat bar low, and your DPS will soar.


Crowd Control

We're going to talk about the Almighty Polymorph here. While some disagree, polymorph is the best crowd control effect in the game. There. I said it. End of story. Able to be used on humanoids and beasts, the mobs it can crowd control far outnumber those it cannot. Why is polymorph so good?

Why Polymorph Is So Damn Good.

When you are assigned a mob to crowd control, it is your responsibility, and your responsibility alone, to make sure that mob stays sheeped and never, ever gets lose. Because of its incredible ease of use, usually you will be assigned to control a mob that is difficult for other forms of crowd control to handle. For example, that ranged caster than can wipe your entire party in 6 seconds if it was lose. Yeah, you gonna sheep that 'un.
Sheep your mob as soon as possible. Be on the safe side for the first few pulls to get a feel for the timing of how this particular group does their pulls. Sometimes the tank will pull with a ranged shot, sometimes a hunter will do the pulling, sometimes the tank will simply run into the mobs and face pull them. Get a feel for the timing, and get Polymorph to land no less than a second after the mobs get aggrod onto the tank.
For example, if your tank pulls with a crossbow, as soon as you see the shoot animation start, begin casting polymorph. If your tank is a Paladin, and pulls, start casting Polymorph as soon as the Avenger's Shield cast bar pops up. It will land shortly after the Shield hits.

Next, you need some way to keep track of your polymorphed target while doing other stuff.

Start of by setting up a focus. World of Warcraft let's you "save" a target, which is kept in a separate frame. When you type /focus, whatever you had targeted will show up in the focus frame and stay there no matter what you do with regular targeting.
If you are using UI replacement addons like pitbull, make sure you have a focus frame enabled.

Second, get a macro set up here. At the minimum, you need a macro that sets your focus, and one that targets your focus.

To set focus:

/focus target

That's all you need. It will put whatever your target is into the focus frame

To re-target focus:

/target focus

This will switch your current target to your focus.

Of course, you can make these macros as complicated as you like.
For example:

/target focus
/cast Polymorph

Or do something like this macro:

/clearfocus [modifier:shift]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus,exists,harm] Polymorph; Polymorph

When you press this one, assuming you haven't polymorphed something already, your current target will be thrown into the focus frame, and you will polymorph it. Any time you press it again after that, it will simply recast polymorph on your focus. Once the polymorph mob is dead, simply press the same button when targeting something else to focus and sheep it.
If you need to sheep a new target, and your old sheeping target is still alive, target the new mob, and clock the macro while holding down the shift button. That will clear your focus, reset it, and then cast Polymorph.

Snazzy, huh?

Third, you need a timer of some sort that will keep a little counter bar somewhere on your screen that keeps track of exactly how much longer you have on sheep. Whether you get something like Cryolisis2 or natur enemy castbar, it doesn't matter. So long as it keeps track of the time on your sheeps. Personally, I use natur enemy castbar, but what you use is strictly up to you.
The addon you get needs to have the following:
- Countdown in seconds until the sheep breaks
- Visual bar, that flashes when the countdown is almost up
- An audial warning, such as Cryolisis2's "Bah Ram Ewe" thing


Etiquette

Before going into any instance or raid, make sure you know the rules of the loot. Fights over loot is a very common problem, that can almost always be simply cleared up by letting everyone know what the loot rules are.
If you're going to have an argument over loot, make sure you have it before there is any loot to argue about.

If you want to call "dibs" on a specific drop, do so at the start of the run.

During a raid, make sure you know how the guild's DKP system works.

Know if the Karazhan runs go with DKP or simply rolling on whatever drops.

And for the love of everything purple, DON'T LOOT IN COMBAT. Wait for everyone to be up on their feet, recovering, drinking, whatever, before looting anything.
Every single time you loot in combat, a GM kills a cat in the blood elf starting area.

Generally, most standard instance runs have everybody roll "Greed" on the Bind on Equip items, and boss loot is either "Need" or "Pass", if someone can use it.
Like, if a caster robe drops that will be an upgrade to both the warlock and mage, they both roll Need on it, and the rest of the party simply passes. This is usually how boss loots are dealt with.

If you win the roll, do the standard "woot!" or whatever in party chat, and toss on your new duds and /dance.
If you lose the roll, do a /cheer on the 'lock or whatever, tell them "grats" and ask them to /dance for you.
If they win the roll and you complain or otherwise act like a prick, just stop, And never, ever run an instance again with anybody ever. They rightfully won the drop, so you can just shut it and move on, you selfish bastard.
Going with this same example, let's say on the second boss some caster gloves drop that, again, both you and the warlock can definitely use.
You just won the robe, didja? Well, guess what. Your passing on these gloves, the 'lock gets to have them. Why, you ask? Because your a nice person right? This warlock is putting in just as much time as you are here. You already got an upgrade, time to let the warlock snag something too. You're not a loot whore, right? Right?

Mistakes can be made with looting, however, just like anything else.

Don't worry if you make a mistake in looting, every one slips up now and then. Don't shrug it off, though, either. Apologize if you are responsible, say it won't ever happen again, and then make sure it never does happen again. Then move on. Don't do something stupid like apologizing over and over again for the next ten minutes. Once is enough. We get it. You're sorry, you'll never do it again. End of story.

Same thing applies to other mistakes, like pulling the boss early or breaking a sheep. Apologize and move on with it. Find out what you did wrong, and strive to never make the same mistake again.

If someone else had a little screw-up, if the tank accidentally rolled need on a caster wand, or the hunter forgot to dismiss their pet before jumping off that retarded ramp (y'all know the one I'm talking about), DO NOT immediately assume that person is a jerk/moron/idiot/huntard.
Again, everyone makes mistakes from time to time. Don't ignore the mistake, obviously, just point out what happened rationally. That is, of course, assuming the person who made the mistake doesn't acknowledge it themselves.
If a warlock accidentally puts a Curse of Agony on your sheep, and they apologize on the spot, accept it and move on. No need to QQ over cursed sheep.
If they don't, point it out like so:

/p Hey, [Warlock], you put a Curse of Agony on my sheep back there. Try to avoid that in the future; makes it reeeeal hard to keep it polymorphed

Something like that. Toss in some smiley face emotes or winky face emotes as they fit your personality.
Usually this is all it takes, and the problem never arises again.

Of course, if they blow you off, say something like "shut up i didnt break it" or something like that, whatever you do, DON'T blow up at them. Consider:

Mage: Yo, druid, you accidentally tossed a moonfire on my sheep. Try to avoid doing that again, ok? Makes it hard to keep the thing sheeped when its taking damage.
Druid: huh? what r u talking about? i didnt break it

We have two reactions we can go with here.

Mage: Ok, fair enough, but somebody had a DoT on the mob I was supposed to sheep. You break it, you tank it, fair? Leave ma lambchops alone!

Good job! Now you've not only informed, pointed out the mistake, but also made a joke and showed the rest of the party you're a perfectly mature and reasonable person. Not an easy feat.

Mage: Oh for fucks sake! What is wrong with you@! I clrealy saw that damn moonfire there! Are you retarded or something? God, what a noob

Guess who looks like a jerk now. Thats right, you do. Don't be this mage. I've been there, it isn't pretty. Play the game with hostility, you will only ever generate more hostility. Play the game with friendliness, and you will generate more friendliness.

Homework

Before going into any instance / raid, do your homework. Find out what the instance / raid will demand from your class. Find out about any threat resets, any special tricks the bosses have. Spend at least a little time reading up on strategies so you aren't a clueless moron walking in through the entrance.
Any knowledge you can get going into an instance / raid will serve you very well.

Listen

This right here is the most important thing to do while raiding. The raid leaders themselves have done a lot of work putting this raid together. They've gone online, they've done research. They know the fights, they know the strategies. They know the timings, they KNOW THEIR SHIT.
LISTEN to what they say. When the raid leader speaks, you shut your fucking mouth and listen to what he/she is saying. If the raid leader says "ranged DPS move to the left of the pole at the 2 minute mark", your little DPS heinie is moving to the left of that pole at the 2 minute mark.
If the raid leader says "Ok, stop DPS now" you begin to do nothing. Stand there until you get the go ahead to keep DPS'ing.

The raid leader's job is to know the fight. So they go off and learn the fight. Then they pass on the pertinent information to you. They're focus is raid wide, and they need the raid to follow their directions in order for anything to be successful.
Stuff like what your spec is, what spells you use, your threat levels, thats all you.
Where the raid is at the 4 minute mark, the positioning of the melee DPS group, that is what the raid leader is for.

Do what they say, when they say it, and your raids will be successful.

Working Far Too Much This Weekend