About accidental death.

Every guild has one. That one guy, no matter how talented a player he is, no matter what his gear is like, you can count on him to die nine times out of ten, or your money back.

In our guild, that guy is Grimknight, who wishes to remain nameless.
Molten Core? He died there while 85.
Regular Cataclysm dungeons at a 380+ ilvl? Check.
Managing to fall off his mount and die in Stormwind while I'm writing this article? Oh yeah.

But do we bag him out for it? Of course we do, we wouldn't be a proper guild if we didn't.
Do we get shitty about it? Nah.
Do we stop him raiding with us because of it? Sweet Celestia no!
Do we try and help him? Sometimes, when it wouldn't be funnier just to watch him die.

But the best part about it?
He gets in on the joke, he knows that sometimes, bad things are gonna happen in a raid, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So I thought I'd take some time to talk about how you can improve your survivability, no matter what sort of hairy situations you get yourself in to.



One thing I want to stress before we begin, is that sometimes you've just gotta give people some slack. Bad things happen, this is a fact of WoW. Getting pissy and starting name calling helps no one, and just makes you look like a tool.

1. NEVER LEAVE HOME WITHOUT YOUR DEFENSIVE COOLDOWNS!
   These appear in many forms, from a Death Knights Anti-Magic shield, to a Mages Ice Block. Every class has some ability that causes them to take less damage over a certain period of time. Abilities like these are useful when you find yourself caught in the fire, when a tank goes down and you pull aggro before someone can brez him, or if you're taking a beating in PVP.
   Most tanks I know (myself included) have multiple abilities like these macro'd to what I like to call my "Oh Shit" button. As soon as you see yourself in trouble, spam it until a healer can get a grip on what is going on, or you can get out of whatever you just stood in.
   
   
   
   
2. BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS!Most boss abilities that drop a void zone have an animation that precedes them; take the swirley vortexes of doom on Warmaster Blackhorn. If you can notice these void zones before they become a problem, you'll save your healers a lot of mana. 
   These can become a problem in other fights, such as Morchok, when the longer you stand in the goop the more damage you take. If you somehow don't notice what's been happening and get stuck in the goop, it's best to hit your "Oh Shit" button and high-tail it out of there, hoping you have a healer who's kind to you.
   
   
   
   
3. KNOW THE FIGHT STRATEGY!Pretty straight forward, right? If you know what the boss is about to do, you may as well be a mind reader. You know he's gonna launch a salvo of crystals at you before it even happens and can dance out of the way singing a merry tune all the while. You may as well have super-powers.
   
   
   
   
4. DOWNLOAD SOME ADDONS!This one is without a doubt one of the most important ones. You can know the fight inside out and back to front, can have every cooldown available to you, but you're missing out on some very important tools and each and every other player probably has a leg-up over you.Most importantly, I would be telling you to download Deadly Boss Mods. This mod covers each and every fight in the game, giving you a warning about boss abilities that may not have a warning animation, gives you a time as to when the next big attack will be, and when the "Enrage" timer is set to go off.
   There's probably 42 different addons per class, and then even more for each spec. The possibilities are endless.
   
   

Follow those four easy steps, and you will find your repair bills are cheaper than a St Kilda streetwalker.