Sometimes, when you deal with people, especially strangers, you can encounter thinking that would make you angry… if you weren’t too busy laughing your ass off at the massive blunder they made.
Take, just as an example, this morning.
A nice, pleasant day in Dalaran.
A guild group was busy doing the regular 5 man daily, The Culling of Stratholme, an instance that Cassie and I are a teeny bit burnt out on, considering how many instances we haven’t seen yet.
We wanted to run regular Halls of Lightning, or Utgarde Pinnacle, or some heroics.
Since the guild was tied up having fun (for shame!), we figured, maybe we could find a group for a Heroic Violet Hold in the LFG channel.
Every day, we try and get a group for it, and every day we do and beat it’s butt… and I learn to handle the mobs smoother and tackle the bosses better each time. As BRK had told me, it’s a great instance to consider as your ‘must do’ daily.
We checked out ‘looking for more’, and found two Hunters, both from the same guild, Northwind (of the Kael’thas server of course), grouped together and waiting for HVH.
I suggested they could join our group, and then we’d be able to advertise that we just needed a healer, and we’d be good to go. They agreed.
You’ll notice I didn’t say I inspected them on Armory, or whatever. I just saw two Hunters at 80 wanting to do the same instance, so why not?
So I invited them both, and we quickly got a healer, a Priest we’ve had volunteer to join Sidhe Devils heroics from LFG in the past that’s done a solid job. Excellent. The Priest was a very very strong healer, so I felt pretty confident about the run. At least, so long as I kept aggro.
We had to summon one of the Hunters using the ghetto hearth of BGs in Dalaran, but we all quickly got together and went in.
I explained what to do on the trash before we started, that I wanted the Hunters to use Misdirect and a single Multi-Shot on the incoming runners when the trash was a group, so that I could gather them all up on me a bit easier.
I did notice that my kill marks of Skull were pretty much ignored, but we went on through okay, and aside from the inevitable aggro problems from someone that doesn’t bother to follow kill orders, quickly overcome with ranged Growls, we went through and one shot the run for easy Emblems.
Leaving the instance, one of the Hunters asked if we as a group wanted to go do one more.
Well, Cassie and I were rather ambivalent about the idea, since any Heroic we do with a pug is one that we can’t do that day with guildies. But I say that I wouldn’t mind trying out Heroic Gundrak, at the same time the Hunter, Arackan, suggests Nexus.
I say that Nexus is fine with me, ask the Priest if he’s up for that, and he says he’d like to do Drak’theron Keep.
I say I’m okay with that too, but we need to pick one, and Arackan then insists out of nowhere that we do Utgarde Keep because he wants the epic Crossbow. He reiterates at least 4 times that he really, really wants to do Heroic Utgarde Keep for the crossbow.
We all say okay, sure, whatever, it’s Emblems, and I get on the flight to head out to Howling.
Out of nowhere, Arackan whispers me to tell me “Hey, if you remove the rogue from the group, I can get a mage to replace the rogue that does more dps.”
I just stare at this for a moment. My mind analysizes all the different social situations surrounding someone, at this point in time, making that kind of suggestion.
This is a joke, right?
I reply back, saying, “You’re saying you have a mage that puts out more DPS than the rogue, and you want me to remove the rogue from the group so we can take your mage?”
The whispered answer is “yes.”
And I’m laughing in my office… but underneath it, I’m really, really pissed.
You get invited into a group… in the group, you do, and I’ll be totally honest here, a very poor job at playing your class, very poor DPS, especially for a Hunter (and I have an 80 Hunter thank you, I know wtf I’m talking about here), your gear is shit, you should be grateful you were allowed into a Heroic group in the first place, it’s like your first ever day at 80…
And after a successful run in a Heroic, with two players from another guild, who have agreed to run the instance you have thrown a hissy about wanting to do, you are going to whisper the group leader and tell them you want them to boot their guildie who did more DPS than you from the run so your mage can go?
And you’re dead serious?
And your justification is, the mage I’ve never heard of before does more DPS than the rogue from my guild? The rogue that just beat the shit out of YOUR dps?
If someone was going to buy that justification for booting someone in the first place, wouldn’t they say sure, ask for the name of the mage, and then boot the lowest DPS instead? Which would have been Arackan?
Pretty much makes it clear the argument about replacing low DPS was absolute bullshit, yes?
So I replied back, in party chat for everyone to see, to tell everyone what Arackan had just whispered to me to do.
And then to tell the group that there were two little reasons I wasn’t going to boot the rogue from the run.
- The rogue did more DPS than Arackan.
- The rogue is my wife.
Then I told them that I didn’t roll with the backstabbing playstyle, and left the group.
Arackan can get someone else to carry his ass in Heroic Utgarde Keep to get his crossbow.
Apparently, today was my day for giving someone a lesson in what greed gets ya in this world.
Edit for clarification: This came across sounding like an intentional slam against the guild the hunter belongs to, Northwind. And it wasn’t supposed to be meant to. Arackan certainly doesn’t represent the entire guild, not by a long shot. The other Hunter in our group was from the same guild, and kicked ass. Better DPS overall than Cassie, solid pet control, fast positioning. Not any kind of issue at all. And really, neither was Arackan while on the run. He was low DPS, and his gear was new… but aside from some minor targeting issues and aggro, I really had no qualms about going into another Heroic with him. When have I ever cared who had what DPS? Did we win, yes or no? Pretty much ends the discussion for me as to whether they are suitable for an instance.
No, it was the gall that got me, not his ability to play.
I would have clarified this better before posting, but as I was checking my spelling Cassie came downstairs and ordered me back online to tank regular Halls of Lightning.
Which we just finished, and she got a nice helm upgrade from Loken to wear. And Falromord dinged 80! A good time was had by all.
My apologies to the guild Northwind if my post is annoying… but that was classic.
” 2. The rogue is my wife.”
I’ll admit, I was chuckling imagining the look on the guys face. I mean, seriously, what a foot in mouth moment.
Good for you Bear! I’ve had a few runs like that myself, sad to say. Hopefully others on your server who read your blog will learn to stay away from players like him.
Wow….
Just… wow.
how rude. i hope he never gets the crossbow.
Well frikkin’ done!
That needed to happen to that ignorant, low-life, flourflushing, hopeless…
Overall annoying person.
Thumbs up!
I hope your job search is going well!
Ah the joys of random meetings on the web. You gotta remember you’re playing with all age ranges. We had some kids on our guild who left recently, then proceeded to bad mouth people in different ways. Its a kids world; its not like an adult’s world. I notice when someone behaves like that, I have no emotional involvement. Its like a fly buzzing or something, but I never get pissed. That’s how I know it must be a kid (or an adult with a VERY different life to mine). When I try to explain something to a kid, I wont use rational adult arguments. I’ll just tell them how they need to behave.
That is actually quite hilarious at the end (the foot in mouth part)… keep on posting those stories… it might not change the idiots, but it’ll at least give us fair warning about problem players. Exposure like that is the faceless internet idiot’s kryptonite.
On a random tangent… a fun composition that you might appreciate was a culling of strat with 4 druids and a token ret pali. Two bears swiping up a storm with a kitty targeting single big mobs and a healer. Worked out pretty good since as a tank I’m still a little squishy on heroics, it spread out the pain a little to the other bear while the hots kept us both active. That and 4 battle rezes and 3 tranquilities can be a heafty arsinal to throw at any situation.
Hehe. I think my Goldenknight of Ravenholdt story just about rivals that. Myself and three guildies decide we wanted to try an heroic UtK. We figure it’s easy badges. But, there were no tanks on at the time. After spending over a half hour in LFG we finally pick up a tank. Hoorah! Awesome! Let’s summon him!
Summon once…summon twice…summon thrice…”Oh, I didn’t get it.” Summon a fourth time. Awesome! And it’s a pally to boot, cool! Should be easy goings. First mob, no marks, he almost dies despite myself (main healing) and our shaman tossing out some heals on him. Okay, so maybe it’s a fluke. Our lock (who has played an end-game pally) checks out his gear. It’s decent, still some lvl 70 stuff, but this is a starter heroic to get gear, shouldn’t be too bad. We’ll give him a chance.
Next mob. Same deal. And it continues. He at one point goes on to criticize my healing (not to brag, but after solo-healing a 10 man guild Archavon, I think I’m a damn decent healer). He does not watch healer mana, and pulls the first boss before any of us is ready. Uh-oh. But we manage to pull through thanks to awesome guild team effort on our part, and our fury warrior tanking the boss at one point. We ask him if he’s ever tanked this place before. “No, but it’s easy.” Oh, great. We ask him to slow down a bit, and we’re nice about it.
We get to a mining node and without asking if there are other miners he hits it. “I’m sorry, but there are some other miners in the group, can you ask next time?” “Oh, I only hit it once, go ahead.” After a quick discussion between the other two miners on vent, one passes on it to the other for the benefit of the guild. “I left that for the other person, you don’t have to be greedy.” Uhh, okay? Let’s just continue. The shaman asks very nicely for him to slow down again so that I can mana up after every fight (wait, a resto druid mana-ing up after every fight? Whaaa?). And that’s where shit hit the fan.
“Oh, I’m sorry, is this slow enough for you? *Character proceeds to -walk- up the stairs and sit two minutes at the mob before even marking.*” Well, after a comment like that, and being sick of ridiculed for healing, I tell the guildies on vent to run down the stairs, I’m wiping it up. “Wait, what?” I’m wiping it up. I got a soul stone, s’all good. I run into the mobs and sit there as they whack on me, and heal myself until sir paladin realizes his healer just agg’d the entire room. Over runs sir paladin as two guildmates run down the stairs. Our lock pretends to help as he gets another SS ready just in case. Paladin dies. I die. Mobs run down the stairs after the rest of the group. I pop my soul stone and dash my furry little kitty behind outta that instance.
It may have been childish to do so, but we were not happy with said tank’s antics. He proceeded to badmouth our shaman saying that his dps was “too low”. Our shaman patiently answers that he was also doing healing so that I would not /oom and could take care of the rest of the party. Paladin then turns on me, tries to lay a smack down, only to be given one back (now, when you tell a woman to grow some cajones, you’ve a flawed argument to begin with. When she answers back that she has more than you, as a man, ever will…well).
I’ve rambled on enough, Sir Bear, but there are, sadly, plenty of people just like your Aracken. And sometimes, the only way to get through to them, is to be somewhat dickish, as it’s the only thing they understand.
I had a similar experience myself, only a bit turned around.
Setting the stage: It was me (on-the-fly Boomkin in Resto gear), a guild tank (Warrior), guild healer (Resto Druid), guild Hunter, and PuG Fury Warrior heading into Heroic Azjol-Nerub. Now, I’ve known this instance to be a bitch to complete on a good day, especially with me healing, but this time takes the cake.
We make the first few pulls, get to the room with the first boss and his watchers, and we start the watchers with the simple directions of “Kill Skirmisher First, then Shadow Caster, etc, etc” We always start with the middle pull. Anyway, we continue to wipe and wipe and wipe on the timed pulls before the first boss, always something going wrong on the second watcher, transitioning to the third.
After about the 4th wipe, we start looking into what’s going wrong with the group and what we can do to fix it. I know that my guildies know what they’re doing, and the recount shows that as well, but what the recount also shows, is that the fury warrior is below my measly ~750 DPS. I armory the warrior, and knowing a small amount about them (I’ve got a high 30s DW fury warrior myself) and notice that he’s missing some key talents for his build (which is a Titan’s grip build). Those key talents are Dual Wield Specialization, and Precision… of which, this warrior had no points in…
We make a few more pulls, and continue to wipe, and then out of the blue he says to drop me, right in party chat (albeit, we were talking smack about him in officer chat). This made my mouth literally drop. He said that I wasn’t doing enough DPS. My reply to that was to post the DPS meters from Recount.
That kind of shut him up.
I then offered to go feral, as my dps is much higher in feral then balance. He’s fine with that, and I ask for 10 minutes to do the respec and regear myself from the bank.
While I’m flying to the bank and Moonglade and whatnot, I take a look up on my guild’s forums in the blacklist, a list of people that are known ninjas, douche bags, etc, and I notice that I had put him on the list because he was an annoying douche bag in a kara run back in 3.0.
So, while I was away respeccing feral, he had stepped out to summon me back… why he did it that early, I don’t know… Anyway, the Tank promptly took the opportunity to drop his ass and pick up another guildie for DPS.
After that, we proceeded to wipe a few more times, then down the rest of the instance without his sorry ass.
Moral of the story, is Damage Meters are a great way of telling other people to shove it, when they think others aren’t carrying their weight.
I just don’t understand 1 thing. Why did you not took the opportunity to take a good mage to the place of the weakest DPS: him?
That is just brilliant. The rogue is my wife! Oh the shame.
He really does have a cheek to tell you to replace anyone when he’s the crapper in the group. Good for you BBB in naming and shaming :-)
I couldn’t help but chuckle at this post, some people are truly amazing, eh? I guess the ‘tards came out of the woodworks this weekend. I had a few experience this weekend myself while playing my lowbie druid. In both cases, they were priests. I just shook my head. They were both priests and obviously missed the class on playing nicely with others. ;-) In both cases, they were screaming at others in the group. I was in a group with people who had never run instances before so part of my time was explaining what they should do. They picked up well. I have a priest myself, level 80 I think these priests forget just because there is a shortage it does not give you a reason to act the way you want. A few members in both of my groups told me they would group with me again, but they would never run an instance with those two. I tanked two instances with my lowbie druid, Wailing Caverns and Black Fathom Deeps.
I’ve been reading your blog for some time; however, this is my first time commenting.
Lomasi aka Noob Druid tank :-)
LOL I’ve seen this happen as well. Good for you posting it into regular party chat. I bet that created some tension in their guild for a bit.
As a tip to Heroic VH. My wife will misdirect a volley onto the tank when the dragonflight squad appears. It works very well. If you run with a hunter, always have him/her just volley misdirect for those. It words very well in CoS for virtually every fight.
^ typo city. Sorry, it’s still early here and it’s a Monday at work lol
Not sure what that hunter was thinking would happen. He would have had better luck simply asking right in the open if someone would mind switching out for his mage friend, who has decent DPS and would like to come along. Perhaps his guildy would sit if he was feeling magnanimous and didn’t need a drop there, or something. At least then you have a chance for getting what you want, even if it is slim to none. Instead he chose the, “On Jeff’s Ignore List,” route.
lol you have to love it when someone bad just tries to comandeer the entire group and run things for you. Yesterday must’ve been PITA day, I had a similar incident yesterday with a Heroic HoL pug on Sisters of Elune. I was pugging around, saw a group in LFG heroic Nexus so I joined it, was told that we’re going to HoL…as you know with H-Nexus, it’s pretty much a joke you can kinda chainpull the whole thing…so I was like darn…actually have to work a little now. But whatever, 2 guildies were in this pug also, so I didn’t mind.
But we had a DK, Bigrips, who started the group and goes on and on about how he needs this axe from Loken. So basically we’re doing it for him, and I don’t mind that much either since we’ve all got those instances where the RNG just works against us and our item just NEVER drops! So…we’re going through the instance and he’s continually, annoyingly, telling me how the pulls and encounters go (all the while I ignore him and just pull). This one DK just can’t get over himself about how he claims to have saved us from every wipe etc etc etc, meanwhile tbh really it was this amazing priest we had that pulled us through it. On top of things, his dps was way below mine…tanking I was at around 1300dps or so, he was just barely peaking 1000. I asked him if he was tank spec (which would explain it) and he says no. All I can do is dot dot dot. (I think “L2PLAY” to myself and dont scream it at him).
At the end of the day, the 4 of us pretty much carry this DK thru HoL to get his heroic axe, along the way we got the new guys 3 accomplishments, killed bjarnim with his lightning buff, we got volkan’s achievement (shatter proof?), and downed loken in under 2 minutes…still..this DK continues to pat himself on the back.
Any one of these things, wouldn’t be so much a big deal, but when you compound like that many annoying qualities into one person into 1 run AND underperform while patting yourself on the back for being a rockstar, UGH! I needed a beer and some tylenol afterwards.
Needless to say, after heroic HoL we all dropped group, reformed without him and ran a few more xD
…OH! and one other thing, later the DK whispers me that their DPS was low because they were wearing their tanking shoulders. mmhm. I’m sure you were 200 DPS below the tank and like 600 dps below the rest of the DPS because of shoulders…unless they’re grey level 10 shoulders, I REALLY doubt that.
I think i’m going to give up on PUGs. At least I should know better when every single person in the group a) can’t spell, b) “I hope/need this from boss X”. I’ve done probably half a dozen daily heroics as healer to groups that simply are bad. And one that was a great effort but was just slightly undergeared (i mean we wiped 5x on hHOS with 5-10 seconds to go). The last one was a Nexus run where the melee didn’t move out of the melee, the tank didn’t pull the heroic boss back nearly far enough, and yeah, was bad.
As another story, I’m the raid leader in a casual guild, trying to get a Gruul/Mag run together. We were way short on people, so I posted one notice in /trade that we were looking for more for Gruul. Instantly we got 7 or so 80s, very high geared. They then proceeded to rip through the instance, going so far as to pulling gruul before people were even in the door. My wife was left outside and didn’t get the loot, or the achievement. So not only did I piss her off, but also the rest of the guild. Props to RLs of casual guilds that can pull it off every week. I’m having a hard time from week to week (although we did the first two bosses in BT on Sat!)
Lol, it’s sad when you, as a bear tank, do more dps than a dps on your group.
And my wife is a rogue too, in my guild.
Rolling my gear…
…
I try to run H-VH daily, if only because I am a skinner. One trick your wife’s rogue can do it open this way : Garotte on the first target to kill, Slice and Dice, Trick on you followed by Fan of Knives (and Blade Flurry – Killing Spree if combat and the boss is not coming next wave). If everybody follows the kill order, you should be set with aggro.
I’ve been highly entertained by flat out TERRIBLE dps here lately. I guess I’m a little harsher… if we win, yay… but if it was painful to win, I’m still not happy. I know tank dps has been increased with xpac. But we’ve been running heroics where it’s not uncommon for the tank to be #2 on dps and damage done. Something just doesn’t sit right with me in that picture. And no, I know damage meters aren’t the be-all-end-all of everything, the bf and I started running them when we were having PAINFUL times in heroics and I suggested that maybe it wasn’t us sucking, but the dps. And sure enough, we’d go and have crap for dps. Dps that ignore raid icons (which were there for a reason because if you kill skull first, that means there’s only 3 other things beating on the tank, and you know… that hurts the tank less…) and generally just must be mashing their heads on keyboards to do as bad of dps as they are. One mage was pulling 600 dps. That’s ummm… not quite right.
Yay silly hunters >>
You should have apologised to cassie first with a ‘watch this’, kicked her, invited the mage, kicked the huntard, reinvited cassie
Then you can enjoy the deliscious QQ from the huntard, and still have the rest of the good group :p
OK i know I’m kinda late when it comes to posting up here but I got a nice story myself…
It was back in my ZF days, I, as BBB play a drood tank (Mooster of The Maelstrom EU if you want to know :P). Those were the days when i was still around 40 or something and did some 10th or something run of ZF for the head (that I never ever got on any of my chars). I had my girlfriend healing and a friend DPSign so it was only 2 dps left till we could go. So I go ok let’s pug it and we get a mage and a warrior…
Everything’s going fine up until the room packed with scarabs. We aoe down the scarabs since we needed some quest. And BAM a nice green head perfect for a tanking druid :P
So I go “yeeeey” and click Need on it, all happy and with a warm and fuzzy feeling around my heart I’m expecting it to get in my bags. And then all of a sudden I see the loot going to the warrior in the chat window. The entire group goes WTF?! So when we ask him why the heck did you take it he goes “A friend needs it”. So naturally everyone says give it to the tank but no, he won’t even think about it. So we’re all whispering each other on how do we take care of him, and come up with an eeeeevil plan >:D
We remembered that on the beginning of the run he said he needed the Big Bad Pauldrons off the last boss so we say if the drop EVERYONE needs on them :D
So we all keep going, pissed as hell and get to the last boss without any major problems. So we attack and kill the boss.
BIG BAD PAULDRONS drop… We’re all whispering each other “need?” :P
So we all click Need and the rolls go:
The warrior 92
Me 100!!!!
So the warrior asks
“Why did you need you noob?!?!?”
And I, with a feeling of justice being served, calmly reply:
“My friend needs it”
>:)
Nobody messes with the MooMan! :D
I recall during bc, a horrid, beyond horrid heroic Mech. We were wiping over and over on the lady fire boss (she was damn hard pre nerf -then again we were wiping well before her). But the sham in our group really wanted something off of her. And well badges are badges. This group was mind you my geared mage, a rogue guildie, a decent priesty healer friend from a different guild, a bear tank, and this ‘dps’ sham. I glanced at the meters. Hmm me and the rogue were doing awesome dps. The bear was….3rd. And the sham was barely doing half of what the tank was doing. The healer would go oom healing the tank due to fights taking too long. Add to the fact that the guy would say unsavory things, questionable jokes, and seemed to not know what to do with himself once I corrected him that both me and my rogue guildie were not guys (le sigh). The rogue, priesty, and I were debating and finally decided to get a different dps cause this was just not gunna work. I at least like to tell you what’s up before it happens. The sham just flips out, then -in a stunning move of epic fail- agros the boss to wipe us. Well, this was before blizz made the beam gate close off the lift during boss fights to prevent resetting her. The other 3 had been closest to the door and stepped in. I just clicked invis, dropping agro, ran to the lift and rode down. The sham…well went splat. So as he had to rez outside (cause our healer sure as anything wouldn’t) I ask, ‘Did you enjoy your repair bill? :) ‘. Then kicked him from group. PuGs are fun times indeed.
Hotaruchan of Kalegos (on vaca from WoW atm)
gurr ‘of Kalecgos’ (how I lothe misspelling my own server >.<)