Comments on: Grumpy Old Bear!

By: Bo

Bo — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:10:42 +0000

TBH that sounds a lot like the Heroic Old Kingdom I ran last night, nab Hunter couldn’t survive 5 seconds of the first Insanity on final boss, although I do spare him some consideration as that boss is just insane (pardon the pun) anyway.

By: Naissa

Naissa — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:38:24 +0000

I must say, this is one of the best blog posts I’ve ever read, because I can relate to it. Just…AGH. PUGs make me want to pull my hair out, but I run them anyway and sometimes they’re really not so bad. Sometimes I’ll find DPS/Healers that are just great at what they do and I tell them “You’re great at what you do.” and they’ll say “Thanks! You too!” or something along those lines and we’ll friendlist each other and just yay happy fun times! Other times though they’re stupid and frustrating and outright liars. I did a heroic Gundrak pug the other week, and I was perfectly fine with inviting anyone that could put out some damage. They didn’t have to be epic, they didn’t have to be great, I’d have settled for slightly below average even. I got a tell from a Death Knight “I can put out 2500 DPS. Invite me!” – Ok, this could be good. /invite.

Yeah so we summon him and discover that he’s in all blues and incredibly dumb. Why dumb? Because he’s in blues, he has a low health pool, and he’s not the tank but he still would taunt (whatever the DK version of it’s called) trash mobs and die horribly. There was not a single large pull or boss fight that he didn’t die on. I should have kicked him. I just suffered through it though because for all my anger and rage and “Rwar Naissa SMASH!” I still feel bad about kicking people.

By: Bludgeoness

Bludgeoness — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:56:05 +0000

I was in an awful VoA 25 pug the other day. We only had about 15 minutes or so before WG switched. So it was rushed. Well when we finally got everyone in there it was a mess. We ended up wiping because we didn’t kill him before the enrage timer. Also, the RL didn’t bother giving out any vent info, so when things started to bad it was hard to fix it. During the first try I was about 11-12 on dps. I’m a bear spec so in kitty I can usually only pull about the same dps as I do in bear (around 1400). Some of the mages and rogues were about 800 on dps. Anyways, at one point the RL says that someone should brez a healer who went down. There were 3 other druids in the raid, but after about 30 seconds I saw that they weren’t doing it so I brezed him and then later innervated him. While still pulling my weight in dps. On the second attempt, we had less than 5 minutes to kill him before WG switched over, one of the tanks went to Dal to repair (why he couldn’t wait I dont know). Anyways, he wasn’t back yet and the RL said to pull. So I decided to go bear and tank when the MT got snatched because the OT wasn’t around. Well he did get back and the RL was yelling for me to stop tanking. He must have accepted the warlock summon like a second before the pull. Anyways, I notice that I was getting yelled at so I went kitty. Since I do roughly the same dps in bear tanking as I do in kitty, I figured that it wasn’t a big deal. The OT took over, I still dpsed. Needless to say we didn’t kill him, he reset at 3 minutes like we knew he would. At the end of it, after I quit the fail pug, a friend of mine hung around and told me later how the RL and others were bitching that the second attempt failed because of me. Should I have gone bear that time? Probably not, but it didn’t really hurt anything. If they want to blame me to help themselves sleep at night, then fine, but there was so much more that was wrong with that raid than a druid who went bear.

By: Matheo

Matheo — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:03:24 +0000

Amen, and amen BBB.

Believe it or not, this very issue is just what my wife was talking about last night, when we were pugging a few DPS slots for Naxx. She has a theory: one can tell the caliber of personality–not player, personality–from the response in LFG. Just the word “invite” does not bode well. Another bad one is “invite” followed by a stream of stats. E-peen strokers need not apply. We’re a guild of nice folks, and I would rather wipe with good people, with puggers who want to have fun, than blaze through a raid with douches. Ultimately, this game is about fun. It’s not my job, Heaven forbid, and it’s not some form of athletics; therefore, I should not have to put up with douchebaggery and pay a monthly fee for the privilege.

By: Merell

Merell — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:18:55 +0000

It’s got nothing to do with age, only an increasing inability to deal with stupidity of others. :) I’ve been fantasizing about sitting on a porch with a loaded shotgun cursing ‘stupid kids these days’ for as long as I can remember – and I’m not yet 30.

By: Stobnor

Stobnor — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:41:31 +0000

Amusingly, I was an undergeared Kitty on Heroic Violet Hold last night…

I was just about to go to bed when I saw a plea for a DPS… I asked whether my paltry 4000 AP was good enough for them and was invited – and explained that I’d not been in Violet Hold before…

The group was great – we had Erekem and Zuramat as the bosses – wiped once on Zuramat as I’d not had the chance to read up on him and didn’t adjust my play accordinly when de-buffed.

My DPS was just about 1000 – not really enough – but the group was great about it… After the wipe I volunteered to leave, but the group didn’t take me up on it.

That’s the opposite side of the story, I think – and from a 40 year old “getting crankier by the week” Feral!

Have fun,

Stobs

By: Danshir

Danshir — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:40:16 +0000

I’ve had quite a few scenarios where the “silent one” was present and either was a horrible player or tried to ninja loot. While there should be some consideration toward people just being shy or just not really feeling like talking, there is some merit(sadly) to keeping an eye on those that refuse to speak in group chat.

You had every right to respond the way you did, so don’t worry about it eh?

By: Unglar

Unglar — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 08:14:11 +0000

Something else that may have contributed to the hunter not talking in the group a lot – and I do see this quite often being on a European realm – is that English may not have been the hunter’s first language. I imagine it would be really intimidating trying to communicate in an unfamiliar language when the rest of the group is quite articulate.

Doesn’t really excuse the other stuff though.

I enjoy the blog and opinions Bear, keep ‘em coming.

By: Taeraresh

Taeraresh — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:07:00 +0000

Great post, as they always are. Great comments, too.
Samuel, I second that. I’ve been lucky enough to get into a guild that has several extremely good tanks (and is training a few more), and besides really good healing (which we also have), there’s nothing that makes a run go smoother. I ran five heroics yesterday with the same group of guildmates, and had not more than three wipes the entire time. We managed to do the gauntlet in Utgarde Pinnacle without wiping or even breathing hard, thanks to a well-geared tank who knew how to manage the boss, and one of the best healers I’ve ever grouped with.
I’ve done a fair amount of PuGs, and I’ve been lucky enough to avoid most of the people like you described, but not all. I had the (actually quite skilled) tank quit in the middle of a heroic VH run, and tell me “this DPS $%@$ing sucks” when I asked him what was going on.

-Adam (Allesa@Korialstrasz US)

By: Nighthawque

Nighthawque — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:54:31 +0000

I have never ever seen something like that before. As you know I was hunter for many years prior to seeing the light and NEVER in all the pugs I have run have I ever misdirected the tank (or seen anyone else do it) when he/she was obviously (Druid in caster form) not ready for it. That blatantly seemed like an attempt to wipe the group. The only thing worse would have been misdirecting to me.

I am still a new healer but I have healed that on heroic before without problems and I knew for a fact you wouldn’t have a problem tanking it. Those first pulls and the first boss were the messiest I have seen in a long time. Anyway, the rest of the run was very smooth after that thanks to great dps who didn’t pull aggro or try tanking stuff by themselves.

BTW after years living in the field with Rangers, SF, marine’s and the like there is nothing that will make my ears bleed anymore. I find that I have to be really careful with my language around regular folk.