And I’m not even remotely kidding.
You’re getting sloppy seconds… I actually talked about this on the Twisted Nether livecast two days ago. They got the exclusive! Don’t you wish you could’ve listened in now? :)
I’ve been doing 10 man Vault of Archavon in a pug each week… unless we had a guild raid scheduled.
We had one scheduled for Thursday, so I hadn’t done it yet, but we ended up not having enough folks sign up for it. So later that night, after Cassie and Alex were asleep in bed and I was doing yet another Wintergrasp to work towards the helm, we won and I had the opportunity to do it on 10 man. It went very smooth, and I got… Emblems. Cool, cool. Someday.
Friday rolls around… and Cassie tells me that she really wants to do VoA. With me.
Ah… crap.
She sees someone trying to form a 25 man pug, so we both whisper asking for invites and get in. I off tank, she DPSes, Rogue PvP chest drops, she loses the roll. Which is cool with her, she didn’t really know if she wanted it anyway.
Now, the 25 man pug was a perfect example of a pugged raid, in my opinion, and a stirling example of why we love our guild, even when we can’t get enough folks to run anything.
Seriously, folks.
Somebody, in the middle of forming the group, EVEN if the raid has only been together for 30 seconds, always has to say, “Let’s start clearing trash while we wait for more.”
I am about to create a macro that automatically responds, saying in Raid chat “STFU asshole, we’re going to wait because I’m tired of blowing 10g in repairs because you’re too Short Attention Span to deal with a 30 second delay in forming a 25 man raid.”
What is wrong with people? It’s five trash mobs!
Do you have any idea at this point how many times I’ve seen a pug wipe on trash because they couldn’t wait the 30 seconds for everyone to be actually THERE? This is really starting to piss me off, at this point, because someone says it EVERY TIME.
Allow me to share an example of this particular 25 man chat. I’d have a screenshot, but the yells in our Naxxramaus run later that night pushed it off my Elephant addon.
“Okay, we got a lot of folks here, let’s start pulling… hey, we wiped! Healers, you suck!”
“We only had one Healer in the instance at the time, dude…”
“Well, Healers need to stop sleeping!”
The one Healer that was there; “Lol, what?”
Raid Leader; “Yeah, Healer’s fault, Healer needs to stop sleeping and actually heal.”
The Healer; “Ur serious?”
Anyone with any sense in the Raid seeing the Raid Leader blame the one healer that was in the instance for not keeping the raid alive when the tank just decided to eat the damage boost debuff…
Yeah, a shining example of a pug.
Now, as soon as we get outside after the win, that same raid leader tries to get a 10 man going out of the dregs of the 25…
Amazingly enough most of the raid doesn’t want anything to do with it. People bail left and right until he is only left with 6 willing to carry on.
And no tanks, since I’m saved, and only one healer. No, not the one he called a sleeper.
I am saved on my druid, like I said, so I leave… but I whisper him that if they end up short DPS I could bring my Hunter. I figure that’s unlikely, they had penty of DPS there. But I make the offer.
After I leave, the Raid Leader, Ruste, apparently decides that getting the rest of a run together is too much work, dumps lead on Cassie without a word and bails.
Well, spiffy.
Cassie waits a few minutes and sees that one of the hunters (Snochalar) seems to be coordinating the run – asking who is available for tanks, heals, etc and organizing things, so she passes the lead to him since she has never run a raid before. I whisper him as well telling him that if he wants, I could bring my Hunter.
Since my Hunter is in Dalaran, I start advertising in General chat that the 10 man VoA raid is looking for a few more tanks and healers, and to whisper Snochalar.
Why?
Because I want to help Cassie get a full group without waiting around all day, and I think that asking in Dalaran chat is probably the fastest way to get more folks interested.
And oh yeah, it worked quite well.
I get one tank to whisper me right away, and send him on to Snochalar, and then ask if he needs my DPS, and asks what other classes they need.
It turns out that they had one of the other players in the 25 decide he can off tank, Asdjutdx. So they’re covered there. Just need a few healers.
My Hunter gets invited into the group… and I am fortunate enough to find three healers that want in… and that’s really fortunate because one of the ones that volunteered was still saved to a previous run, which we only found out when he arrived at Wintergrasp Fortress.
A moment here… can I just say that, in this day and age, it still amazes me when I see someone that seeks out a raid invite, for a pug… but has no idea how to check if they are saved to a raid instance… AND can’t remember if they did the raid sometime in the last three days?
We had one guy that even asked how to tell if he was saved, we TOLD him to either go to the Social tab and check under “Raid => Raid Info”, or to just type /raidinfo. He said “oh okay… I’m good”. Then he got there and announced he was saved after all. Just… sometimes I wonder.
I can understand, especially if you have lots of level 80 characters, and you play all of them actively in pugs, that it might be difficult to remember whether your current toon did VoA on Monday or Tuesday. Or, looking at Raid Info, that you can’t quite recall if that one VoA it lists was on normal or heroic mode.
But still, it happens ALL THE TIME.
“Oops, I’m saved.”
Sigh. Lol.
Let’s cut to the chase. We did, in fact, eventually get a full group. And of course they decided to pull and clear the trash early before everyone was there. Rush, rush, rush.
This did not go well.
After the wipe, hijinks ensued.
Can I just say that I would never, ever group with any raid leader or instance leader again who treated other, complete strangers like shit?
I don’t care if someone in the group of strangers formed to do a pug seemed amateurish or young or new or a little lost. You are the raid leader, you asked to be raid leader, so be patient. You be mature. You try and get things straightened out in a nice, friendly, professional manner.
If someone is being an asshat, then nail them for it. Offensive behavior is certainly a bootable action, and nobody else in the raid that is mature will complain about it.
But if people are just showing signs of uncertainty, nervousness, or a lack of experience, you do not blow up and be a full blown asshat.
In my opinion, that is exactly what Snochalar did.
Allow me to show a snippet of the conversation. I think you’ll see pretty quick what was going on.
Now, I’ll grant you that in a perfect world Tyriiel should have been fully repaired.
However, remember that this 10 man took place after the 25 man run… and the 25 man had a couple wipes. You know, because it’s fun to pull before there are any healers, or before anyone is ready.
So here we are, and why lookie, we rushed the trash and wiped again. And now, after three wipes total when a reasonable person counts the 25 man attempts, one of the people in the raid says he needs to repair, and asks where the nearest person who can repair is located at in Wintergrasp Fortress.
And right away a player named Asdjutdx wins the “I’m a flaming asshat” award for being a dick. I think I can let his chat comments speak for himself, yes?
If I had been the Raid Leader, I would have stepped on him like a cockroach. But I wasn’t, so it’s a moot point.
But what to my mind is worse, is that in the beginning the one and only true asshat in the run was Asdjutdx the Death Knight.. but Snochalar seemed to believe that Asdjutdx’s attitude was more appropriate than his own, and picked up on being a jerk afterwards. He seemed to start out reasonable about repairing, and then decide later that, hey, Asdjutdx was right.
Asdjutdx. What an asshat.
You gotta love the fact that when Äustin the tank dies on trash pulls, and the offtank Asdjutdx didn’t pull it off him after he got the damage debuff… Asdjutdx immediately blamed low DPS for letting the debuff happen in the first place.
What a loser.
And yeah, I’m being judgmental, but I don’t care. When Snochalar unleashed a capslock swearing fit at Tyriiel, I pretty much lost all interest in ever running anything with him again, ever. I’m not so freaking uber that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be trying to do your best in a raid with strangers… and I can pretty much imagine clearly how I’d feel if a raid leader talked that kind of shit to me.
Nobody who is TRYING to do their best and be prepared needs that kind of abuse in a video game.
The guy didn’t want to run a raid with broken gear after three wipes. The last of which happened while you were raid leader, and was your fault for starting before anyone was ready and before everyone was present. So shut the hell up, you dick.
Such is the expected behavior in a pug, as far as I can see. All I can do is note what players from which guilds exhibit that kind of behavior, remember it, and move on.
I think it can go without saying that Asdjutdx can kiss my ass if I ever see him in WoW, life’s too short to deal with that kind of idiot.
We took a shot at Archavon, and with everyone present and actually ready, we took him down handily. No problems.
Imagine that!
And now the FUN begins!
What, you thought all the rest of that was the post? That was just the pregame show!
Because he drops the Rogue Tier 7 Chest piece!
Cassie is the ONLY Rogue on the run! Whahoo!!!!!
And now read this delightful piece of chat…
That’s right.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, there was another player with the name “Cassie” in the run. A MAGE.
And Snochalar passed the Rogue Tier 7 Chest piece to Cassieopia the Mage.
Well, damn.
I particularly like the “… lol” comment.
Sigh. Just… sigh.
Do you have any idea how careful I am as Raid Leader when I pass out loot? Because I am incredibly paranoid about anything like this ever happening on my watch.
I check like three times to make sure I’ve got the right person.
Just, wow.
So yeah, I’m all the way playing in my office downstairs and I hear this SHRIEK from upstairs when this happens.
Oh yeah, my wife is three kinds of pissed.
Now, Cassie did put a ticket in and talked to a GM, and the GM said that IF the Mage Cassieopia put in a ticket asking for the loot to be turned over to Cassieann, that they would investigate. But they do nothing on behalf of someone that claims they were supposed to receive it.
And I saw the chat log, he was kind of pissy about it, like how dare she even think that a GM would respond to her about loot issues.
One would think that a GM would be a little more compassionate about an item taht is for Rogues only that got passed to a Mage and can’t even be equipped by the Mage, but whatever. I think it was just that kind of day.
Cassieopia seemed very nice, said they would open a ticket, and even responded to an in-game mail to say that they’d talked to a GM who claimed it would be investigated. So we have very good hopes Cassie will eventually get the chest item back.
So far, this has all been about the worst of times, right? I suppose I could make a claim that the moment Cassie saw that chest item drop, she felt pretty good. Especially with no competition for it. Right?
I think watching some dumbass hand it to a Mage with a similar name qualifies as a ‘worst of times’ moment, though.
No, when I said “best of times” in the title, I was referring to that other item that dropped, that you could see displayed in the chat window.
I am referring to the Reins of the Grand Black War Mammoth, of course, which dropped for us in 10 man mode.
I could tell you the result of the roll, but…
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that this one run had it’s share of highs and lows.
Still… as Smashing Pumpkins said in Zero…
“Wanna go for a ride!”
Hah! That was great… your experience makes me scared to EVER do a PUG raid. Every time I see one and think about going now I’ll refer back to this story…
Poor Cassie. Hopefully she’ll get her loot :)
Nice yarn! And grats on the loot.
I have to confess, though, that I do think it’s it’s a good idea to clear the trash before everyone is there, as long as you have enough people to do this. It just requires a decent raid leader to make this call, I guess. I’ve been through GM ticket loot drama before and it had a happy ending.
Personally, I pug quite a lot (because I can’t really commit to a set time every week – too much on in RL) and I find by far most people have their heads screwed on right. It really helps to play as a tank in a PUG though, because if you get a bad tank, it’s misery.
Please keep up these kinds of posts, they are very entertaining!
Ugh, a collective facepalm from mages everywhere. You could hear the smacks from Dalaran all the way to Stranglethorn.
You know, it’s not the Mage’s fault.. Mage didn’t say a peep. Poor Mage just ended up with loot dropped in her lap. Please, Krizzly, don’t think I’m being mean to Mages. :)
And I do agree that the trash CAN be killed without everyone there. Of course I do!
I just have never seen it happen where the RL has actually made sure we, like, had the tank pull… or make sure the offtank was there… or that there were a couple healers… or that half the raid was actually there… sigh.
You know, I was on the same server as you for a bit, and I think you just have the worst luck ever.
Grats to Cassie, and grats on the Mammoth.
Grats on the mount!!! And yeah, your experience with vault seems typical of vault pugs. Vault, to me, seems like the worst raid for pugs because most of the time you end up with half-pvp and half-pve type players. In my experience, it’s the people who are “hardcore” pvp that are all “zomg let’s goggogogogo” and the people who appreciate pve content more tend to want to sit back and do it right. But that’s obviously a broad generalization. I’ve just had the worst pug experiences in that particular instance.
On an aside, an easy way to keep instances you’re saved to clear is to use the in-game calendar. If you open it and have “Active Raid Lockouts” checked under filters, if you go to Tuesday, it’ll tell you everything you’re saved to along with “(Heroic)” if it’s heroic.
Gratz on the mount.
If the person who got the loot by mistake opens a ticket, a GM will set it straight. I’ve seen numerous incidents of it over the years and every time, the item has been moved. Blizzard is really very good about that. They even refunded the tier token when one of our noob guildies traded their T4 token for the PVP stuff on the Isle instead of the real tier pieces… because he had no idea there was a vendor in Shatt…
I’ll admit to there being a portion of the population that seems dedicated to asshattery, but your views on pugs really soiled me for some time.
I pug arch weekly and never have a problem. Weird.
Remember folks, try it out and network on your server. Lots of good folks out there. Friend your favourite tanks, healers and DPS for future runs. They won’t always be available, but it’s nice to have a list when a certain member of a pug is useless.
Congratulations on the mount, and hopefully also on the armour…
But whilst your raid leader may not have been the best, I will point out that it could have been worse. I get the impression he had master looter, so what stopped him, if he was a total asshat, just ninjaing the mammoth?
I imagine you’d have had an interesting post to write then ;-)
Best wishes!
If someone is too dumb enough to not know how to check if they are saved to a raid or noth then they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a raid.
GZ on the mount though! :-)
PUGS are certainly…eventful.
Yeah if the person who got the loot opens the ticket it will get straightened out. I accidentally rolled need back in TBC on a staff that dropped in Auch (for my boomkin set) . As soon as I hit need I started apologizing and immediately opened a ticket to a GM explaining what had happened. It took a couple of days but eventually it got to the right person.
If the mage puts in a ticket, Cassie should have her chestpiece in the space of a week I’d guess. This happened to me with some T7 legs that dropped from Gluth. Mage won the token roll for offspec, but then he actually decided he didn’t want them and opened a ticket on my behalf, about a week after the Gluth death I had a T7 token in my mailbox.
You seem to have such bad luck on your server! Mind you, I understand you’re need to pug if you dont have enough raiders in guild. VoA is the worst for bad pugging culture (in case you didnt know that already, hehe).
I was reminded of your pug stories last night when I pugged about 5 people for a bit of naxx10 fun. All my guildies outgear the place so it was just to play around & meet some new people. Well, it was atrocious. After 2 wipes on our first attempted boss (one of the easiest bosses in the joint) my people and I bailed. I wont go into the details… just to say that if you need to pug, its better the build up a list of reliable friends – maybe in 5 mans first – and try to arrange things with them, rather than taking random strangers into a raid instance you thought was super easy!!!
Pretty much all I do is PUG now a days because of my late start time. Heroics go fine because I have the gear to easily do it, and since I’m either tanking or healing I can always say “sorry boys, I’m not a good enough than/healer for this group” and just leave. I can always find another since I’m not “DPS LF ANY HEROIC”.
But almost every time I’ve been in Naxx it’s a clustered wipe fest. AOV isn’t too bad, because it seems most of the tanks I run it with know the fights, and everybody else just nukes stuff down and collects loot. The team work required to run even the easiest of Naxx bosses pretty much has me doing my 15 min Jewel Crafting daily, and then going to see what’s on TV. I am so discouraged about it I’m about ready to hang it up. Not much left in the game for me that I’m interested in now a days. Not that I can do with a pug anyway.
I’ve had some OK PUG runs, and did my first VoA run in a 25 man PUG right after winning WG. I did OK, no Lock gear dropped, and I did pretty well on my damage output, ranking 9th. I still need some work on keeping my DoTs up enough, but that should come with practice. I know I’m doing better than before.
My wife had a really bad experience in a partial PUG last night. We’ve only been playing a year and don’t have a lot of instance experience. She’s a prot warrior, and has, via crafting, AH buys, and some instance runs, put together a good tanking set. She meets the NAXX10 requirements for health, defense, is uncrittable, etc. Last month we changed guilds from a small guild or RL friends to a big, casual guild (over 500 members) a friend is a member of. It’s gone pretty well so far. We’re trying to help others on quests and low-level dungeon runs and have gotten to know a few members in chat.
A guildie announced a Heroic UK run in chat, another guildie joined, and they asked for a while in guild chat for a tank. My wife had tanked Drak’Theron in a PUG for the elder, then we did UK on a guild run to help train herself and a Priest that just respecced from Shadow to Holy, and the runs went well with no wipes and only a few deaths. (I got popped in UK when I drew aggro on the dual boss fight when back-to-back SBs critted.) With the guildies we tried Heroic UP after UK, but had problems on the big trash pulls due to slow healing. We discussed the situation and everyone decided to call it a night. The healer agreed she needed more practice before doing heroic runs and there were no bad feelings. So the wife was feeling that she could do the heroic run if the others would help her.
My wife whispered the guildie organizing the run, told him she was a tank-in-training, and hadn’t done heroics before. No problem, she got an invite. Turns out one of the DPS and the healer, a shaman, are not guildies. Early in the run there was a wipe when one of the DPSers pulled adds onto the shammie in the middle of a fight. The shammie blamed the tank for not holding aggro. They went on to the drake area. She pulls the first drake and handler, marking the drake for first kill. She makes sure they are positioned correctly, but the shammie and one DPS open up on the handler, who kills the shammie, and the party wipes. The shammie is upset and starts talking about getting a new tank. They go back, start the fight again and wipe. Because the shammie didn’t heal my wife once. Then he calls for a vote to kick the tank. My wife replies that you obviously don’t want me, fine, bye, and leaves the group.
She’s really, really upset. She’s a shy person and has laser-like OCD about any job she does, because in her RL job as a physician a screwup could cause a death. Then the shammie whispers her that she should: 1 – quit tanking, 2 – quit the Horde because real Horde know how to fight, 3 – reroll as one of the wimpy Alliance, and 4 – be a Hunter so all you need to do is push one button. This gets her more upset.
There is a mention about a “bad run” by one of the guildies in guild chat. I whisper him with the detail that the Shammie didn’t heal my wife once. They then mention that he had been being a waste elimination orifice (your choice, both euphemistically used) before the run and decide that he should be avoided in the future. I had a discussion with one of the guild healers in private chat and he offered to heal on future runs, as the guild needs more tanks. (We have 3 lvl80 Prot Warriors and she is the best geared, don’t know about bear tanks – yet.)
At least you only had to find new members because someone was saved. It’s happened to me 3 or 4 times now that the RAID LEADER has been saved, and I get locked to a cleared vault for the rest of the week. Of course, they swear up and down that they weren’t saved, but I don’t know any other way that will get the group saved. I have a theory of how it goes:
Player A clears Vault on Heroic
Player A forms raid for Normal Vault
Player B joins Player A’s raid
Player B zones in before Player A changes the difficulty to Normal
Player B is saved to Player A’s Heroic Vault
Later, Player B forms a raid for Heroic Vault
Player B, even though he “hasn’t done it this week”, gets 24 people locked out of Heroic Vault
It’s an easy mistake to make, but still B’s fault for not checking /raidinfo.
@Ech
Oh, man. I absolutely HATE to hear when stuff like that happens! There is absolutely NO excuse for acting like that to anyone. Ever!
My worst experience in this game was a partial guild run very similar to what you’re describing. I felt horrible for days afterwords and stopped having any fun in the game for a long time after that. Then I found out later (I was very new to the game) that it wasn’t my fault at all, only that the people I was grouped with were complete jerks and knew nothing about my class (“Druid, if the healer DCs again, stop tanking immediately and start healing”……Huh?). The problem was that I didn’t know any better and thought that it was all my fault. This was not your wife’s fault either and she should not feel bad at ALL about what happened.
I’m still just sitting here with my jaw on the floor thinking about how horrible that shaman was.
Complete waste elimination orifice. Definitely.
Two times loot that would/should of been handed out to me got given out to the wrong person.. one time a rogue rolled on leather gear (need) not seeing that in bright red letters it says DRUID at the the bottom and the other time a druid said “I meant to greed roll for offset” but naturally need rolled. Both times tickets were put in (by the person who got the item) and both times, after 5-7 days, I got the item returned to me.. so her chances are good she will get it back.
And..
Just yesterday I had broken gear in a 25 man voa after one wipe (I should of repaired before and would of if I would of noticed it). I calmly said “guys sorry some gear is broke can I get a summon after I hearth real quick?” (I dont think there is a repair guy outside of it but I only looked for a moment trying to be speedy). The reply I got was “there is 24 people waiting on you asshole”.. wow ok then.. I should of just left and would of if there wasnt 2 guildies in the run with me but I sucked it up and just replied with a “no shit”.
Something tells me that the problem was the 2-3 ppl doing 700dps and the other 4-5 (so total of 6-8) that were under me – the tank- doing 1300. And the kicker — the guy calling me an asshole for having to repair was at 1k. So there you go. Im not staring at a dps meter the whole fight but when you go in to HVOA its simply – kill him before he enrages or you die -
Not defending this raid (as it appears to have been full of fail), but the “just start clearing trash” can also come from the healers. I tend to want to move quickly because my guild is almost up to a full heroic naxx clear in one session; and a nice chain pulling, mage food slurping, dash through the trash would help us get naxx clears down to one day. On the other hand, this requires tanks who are geared, players who are alert, and multiple healers who are ready to rock which is a hallmark of a decent guild raid.
Part of the issue is that without someone pushing people to start the next pull raids tend to end up waiting. This usually results in some of those who can get ready for a pull in ten seconds to start navelgazing (or alt-tab to read this blog). Thus a cycle is born that slows the whole raid. Perhaps I am just impatient, but when we have 14 more bosses to clear I want to start moving as soon as mana has been regen’ed by the healers. This also is why I am in a raid focused guild, because I want my time to be spent playing with others of a similar mindset.
I play a warrior, and I’m *not* the warrior in this story.
Arch-10 PuG, I OT it with a druid. Druid is sole leather-wearer in the group. Druid Leather drops, with mage, I think. Leader doesn’t master-loot, it’s all class-labeled loot, I guess he’s thinking. Stupid DPS warrior (who did less DPS than the tanks) rolls on druid leather, wins it. What?
Hey, I found this googling my name at school today :). First off, I would like to apologize to Cassieann for the mishap, it was my first pug/raid leading experience and mistakes can be made, but you learn from them. Second of all, I dont remember letting people pull trash, I am pretty sure I was trying to stop people from pulling because we only had 5-7 members of the group in the instance, but im not to sure, you are probably right. And lastly, I apologize to Tyriiel for the outburst, I am sometimes someone with little patience for people who dont know basic things about a game, but that really wasnt the way to handle it.
Peace.
Snochalar.