I had a pretty good comment today on an earlier post, and it’s one that I’ve heard echoes of before, so I thought I’d open the floor to discussion on it.
From Avid Lurker;
BBB always seems to find the asshats. Perhaps it is a server thing, perhaps it is an Alliance thing, but for whatever reason, BBB always has outrageous examples of idiocracy and selfishness that I manage to avoid.
I run a lot of PUG heroics. I just (this weekend) got the achievement for 250 stonekeeper shards and 100 Badges of Heroism on my holy priest. I have spent almost no time in Naxx (PUGs only) and I would guess that I have run fewer than 5 heroics with guildies, since I am the third-string healer in our guild — and the other two generally get asked to run heroics/Naxx ahead of me. But… I have seldom run into the annoying behaviour that BBB seems to find on a consistent basis. Sometimes a heroic group is tainted with one bad apple, but never the two/three/four-somes that BBB manages to find.
Thank goodness too. With a-holes like those around every corner I would sell my (few) epics to spec shadow in a second! Horde on BWR FTW!
You know Avid, I’ve heard this sense of surprise at my PUG encounter retellings before.
I wonder if that means I accentuate the negative too much when I choose what story to relate. Do I only tell a story or recap when things go terribly wrong, as opposed to when things go well?
I bet I do. After all, there is little newsworthy about posting a story about another successful 22 minute Heroic Violet Hold run, is there?
Another thing, of course, is I rarely screen my pugs. If I happen to feel like doing a pug simply because I don’t want to compete with guildies for drops on my alt, I’ll grab the first pug that is asking for more… and I give bonus consideration to a group that sounds like underdogs, newer 80s looking to take on a heroic.
Let me elaborate that statement. I have a few alts. Other people in the guild have the same class as mains. I’d prefer, if doing a heroic, to NOT take loot I know someone else could use as an upgrade. But I’d also like some specific upgrades on MY character. So, if I go with a pug, then I know I can roll on a drop with a clear conscience. Okay? That’s all I meant there.
Maybe some of you that have consistently smooth runs are pre-screening your groups? Like, are only going after Heroics like Nexus or Utgardt Keep or Violet Hold, but passing on Azjol-Nerub, Old Kingdom, and Halls of Lightning.
Or maybe you prefer going for pugs that say “Looking for one more DPS for Heroic Occ, have Naxx geared healer and tank, pst.”
What I’m asking is, are some of you being a little picky as to what groups you join? Or is it just grab a group for anywhere, with anyone?
A group can have some asshats in it… but if your group is geared well enough, coordinates well, and never faces adversity in the run, you probably would never know. Aside from childish chatter, anyway.
I do have plenty of great groups. The groups where the asshats reveal themselves are the ones where we face adversity. Challenges. A difficult run, probably with a few wipes. And most often, a run where someone decides that they are better than the rest of the group, and that the problems are all someone else’s fault, and throw blame accordingly.
But not every run I am on that faces adversity or difficulty falls apart. Sometimes I am on runs that are horrible wipefests… but there are no asshats there to make it miserable.
Case in point.
I did a pug in Gundrak on my Hunter yesterday. We wiped, on the first snake boss, AT LEAST 11 times.
No, I’m not kidding. It wasn’t even a real pug, the other four players were all from the same guild… and within seconds of accepting an invitation to their pug, they shared their vent info with me. So we had voice communication, presumably they all knew each other, it wasn’t your normal pug.
But we wiped on the first Snake boss. Over and over and over.
I used two repair bots, okay?
We tried him and wiped. Then they wanted to take down the second boss, having heard that there was a bug, and if you kite the snake boss to the location of boss two, he doesn’t wrap people.
So we did boss two just fine, then I ran back and Misdirected Snake boss onto the tank and we fought him clear back at boss two’s location. Wipe.
Then we tried going back to the snake boss. Then we tried up the ramps. Then the main room, and back and forth and on and on.
Please, dear god, don’t start asking me what I was doing or try to anticipate why you think we had trouble, or make assumptions as to what we should have done. If you’re going to assume I am a noob and don’t know what a Frost Trap is, then just take a /facepalm and go away. We were doing a solid job of tactics, everybody got their favorite technique tried at least twice, or more, but the core issues were simply a combination of low overall DPS, two of the three DPS being melee having a hard time running away from Poison Nova and back in, the snake wraps, and my having a nearly impossible time getting my pet to run out just before Poison Nova and then run back in without getting hit by it. And a BM Hunter without a pet is pretty low DPS.
The point is, we faced a LOT of adversity. You can go a long way in Gundrak, but if you don’t kill that first boss, you’ll never open the way to reach the end boss.
So we tried and tried and tried.
And we did, in fact, eventually get his butt dead. We never gave up, nobody ever gave up on it.
There was cheering, and yelling, and whoops of joy. And we went on and downed everything else nice and easy. Easy as pie.
Not once did anyone, anyone at all, start accusing other people of doing this, or that, or whatever to cause a problem. No, there was increasing frustration, hell yes, and people ready to tear their hair out… but everyone was frustrated that they just couldn’t seem to pull the trigger on that guy, when he’s NOT that hard. Everyone blamed themselves, and tried harder each and every time. Towards the end, after a solid hour on this guy, folks did start to say that they were getting ready to try somewhere else, because the repair bill was getting hilarious.
And we tried two more times past that point anyway.
I wasn’t going to mention that run… simply because, while we wiped many, many times… everyone there was cool. There was no drama. Nothing to get worked up about, or what I considered worth talking about. So we got frustrated at a difficult encounter. We learned from each try, we tried different tactics, we each did the best we could… and eventually we won.
Maybe that’s my mistake. Maybe I should spend more time talking about where folks met adversity… and triumphed.
I like to think I do celebrate the successes of others here, but clearly I have been talking about asshats a bit too much lately.
So, on that note, I’m going to end with a thank you and congrats to a handful of folks from Untold Darkness, who never gave up, and never surrendered. You are a credit to your guild, and should be an inspiration to anyone that plays the game.
Well done!
Yeah, that snake boss doesn’t bug anymore. He just takes longer to get him to.
I ran with a very similar bunch, all guildies besides me (tanking on my druid inspired by hmmmmm?) in vent. Wiped, and wiped, and realized he was changing so that it was a DPS race to get him down now as opposed to being a cakewalk.
Aaaaand… We didn’t have the DPS to down him in time.
After third wipe we did the only reasonable thing… and pulled him to the third boss chamber.
Problem solved. B-3
Thanks for the post – I had been wondering! Yeah, I’m not sure why I dont have pug horror stories. So far, I’ve tended to run on my main with at least a guild healer; a solid tank & healer kitted out in valorous could duo the heroics I’m sure, so there’s not a lot that could go wrong, no matter how bad the pugs.
On my 77 alt (also a tank), I pug instances entirely, and things tend to ok because I’m not dependent upon a bad tank :P I look forward to it a lot; meeting new people and playing the tank yet again, but with an entirely different mechanic.
Heh good ol’ snake man, there are few that haven’t spent hours just wiping there :P
Anyways, yeah there’s lots of tardheads and idiotic knowitalls in the game, basically only because most of them are a) l337ist bastarts who think they got the entire game in their piny-finger and b) kids who are barely old enough to type and fail to realise that there’s a living person on the behind the character he/she sees and shares goals with. Pointing fingers never got anyone anywhere, simply because it’s mostly done in a destructive manner. On the other hand the finger can be point constructively by saying stuff like “hey hunter guy, maybe you should put down explosive trap this time” or even “hey mage throw a few frost novas every now and then will ya?” It’s so easy to be nice while trying to motivate people to do better. Then again I’ve reduced puging to a complete minimum simply because I’ve lost my nerves too many times due to either losing items to idiots, ninjas and lootwhores and because the joy of wiping while on vent ^^
Red Branch lives for ever ;)
Mooster of the Maelstrom – EU
what I’ve noticed is that pugs that go bad(and i mean asshat pugs) generaly give you an idea whom NOT to play with. pugs that face advercity on the other hand netted me a few new friends, casue there’s nothing like triumphing over some serious obstacle to bring people together. although sometimes we give up and move on to a different instance. that has happened too. and sometimes we stick around, eat the repair bills and kill that stupid boss that was giving us so much headache. casue at that point – its personal :P
Snakes McJerkface, as we have taken to calling that boss, is my nemesis. He is the roughest boss for me of any I’ve faced so far.
“the snake boss is so easy i dont know what everybody goes on about downed him first try ” is what i said the first time there in mainly crafted gear . went there on sunday on a guild run with everybody wearing naxx epics and wiped 4 times :P that boss is a NIGHTMARE reminds me of the wife 1 day nice and easy next day impossible !!!!!! love the blogs mate
A few weeks ago I was tanking a naxx pug and we just couldn’t seem to kill anything. The pally off tank just died so fast any boss that required off tanking was not doable. After chatting with the raid about what was going on, we found out that he was not def capped, which brought down a hail of nasty comments from several of the people.
And yeah, I was thinking to myself “who in their right mind comes into Naxx not def capped and thinks it will be ok?”. I whispered him some suggested some gear upgrades that he could get off the ah to increase his def cap. That was two or three weeks ago.
Yesterday, some pally I vaguely recall whispered me and told me he was tanking heroics successfully now because he was def capped, and he owed it all to my advice. Just was really really thankful for the advice, and for how nice I was when everybody else started flaming him so quickly. I was shocked he remembered me, not to mention took the time to tell me thanks.
I generally don’t do many heroics anymore with out having myself be either the healer or tank and then having a trusted person I have grouped with before fill the other roll. Basically because for every feel good story I have I have at least double the amount of nasty pugs ruined by one or two people that automatically blame the healer or the tank for what ever fail fest the group is having. I love being a druid because I can tank or heal everything in the game with my gear now, and, as I always tell them “If I’m not good enough for you I’ll leave. Good luck finding a replacement.”
Because DPS is pretty easy to come by.
I run maybe 1-2 5-man pugs a week. Though I typically have my own healer, which means just the DPS are pug. I have only had 1 bad pug. It was another bear tank that just blamed everything on everyone else. He finally left the group. More often than not, my pugs are “better” than a full guild run.
Based on my own experience, I think BBB right on the money on this one: bad behavior is definitely magnified as player frustrations rise. Not only do the asshats get more vocal but the victim(s) and everybody else in the group get more sensitive too.
How I roll:
* UK, Nexus, VH, and DTK are done with no questions asked. Any trouble is met with more aggressive healing and more drinking between pulls. Wipes are caused by an accident that hopefully won’t be repeated.
* I start running UP, HoS, and CoS without looking at anyone’s gear and will push through an hour of chain wiping provided that we don’t have too many complaints or insults and we don’t have an obvious problem in gearing/specs for the tank and all of the dps.
* I am admittedly picky about who I run with for GD, AN, OK and HoL (/rude gestures @ Loken). I have and will continue to PUG them, but with people (or people from guilds) that I am familiar with. I do check the tank’s gear before we start. I have bailed on groups in these instances before, often telling them, without any sarcasm, that it is my fault that they are wiping and that they should get a better geared healer. I guess on some level this is true. Nevertheless, I have also stuck it out with PUG groups, overcoming the adversity and finishing the wretched thing. The resulting sense of pride and achievement definitely makes the repair bill worth while.
* I vehemently pass on Oculus. No. Thank. You.
I think what I’ve found with pugs… is that it’s all about the attitude. Mine, that is. For example, if I go into a run saying “you do this, you do that, this’ll get done,” people rarely listen. I guess people don’t like to be bossed around. That’s cool.
But on the other hand, I got dragged into a H UK run on my bear alt (she’d hit 80 the day before, I was poorly geared, I was stressing UK). They’d been ditched at the first boss by their tank and had wiped a number of times on it. I noticed that there was no easy aoe like a consecrate or DK magic to pick up the skeles as they run in. And silly me had not discovered the glory of challenging roar quite yet. Either way, the adds were splitting and the healer was getting sacked. So one of the dps was screaming at the healer to move. Just that, “MOVE!!!” So I whispered the healer and asked him/her/it something along the lines of “Hey, it’s kinda difficult to pick up those adds immediately when they’re running across the other side of the room. If you pile up on us in melee, we’ll have an easier time getting rid of iceblock AND the skeles. It would help a lot.” Same information, same kind of tone… asking with a reason. It worked fine, boss went down.
I think people forget that our attitude can affect things just as much as other people. When I’m in a bad mood, I have more bad pugs. I probably am not as nice to them as I would be in a good mood. I notice more negatives, I’m more likely to get annoyed, etc.
And yes, Horde has asshats too.
Maybe some of you that have consistently smooth runs are pre-screening your groups?
Sometimes yes, but not quite the same kind of screening you might be thinking of. As a general rule, I PuG the ‘easier’ heroics (those without tricky bosses) pretty much blind. Ditto for Vault of Archavon, although I start to worry if I see too many people standing in the rock shower during the trash pulls.
If I’m joining a random PuG group for some of the more difficult heroics, I tend not to bother if the “LFM” announcement contains more abbreviations after the obligatory “LFM”. “Plz b geared”, or “Plz no fites” are also huge warning bells for me (despite the fact that I am, and I do), and will make me flee for the hills, or at least play an alt for a bit. Ditto for whispers I might get while lurking in the LFG tool. I am not “Deeps”, and I do not know “ne1″ who can heal for you, thank you very much.
I also make a point of not Pugging heroic anything I haven’t run with guildies or friends yet, which means no heroic Occulus or Culling of Stratholme for me just yet.
I’ve still run into both flavors of PuG though. I make a point of not letting the bad ones get me down, or I’ll wind up like some of my friends and never PuG ever again. Given that I’ve also met some awesome people in PuG’s too, that doesn’t seem like a good idea. :)
I generally have good luck with pugs, but get a few face palming incidents such as joining a heroic VH being put together by some mage, i was the first person he invited as i was loitering in LFG on my hunter while getting ebon blade rep.
From the start i was sus, as well, personally when i put together a grp, i like to have at least a tank or healer before i get any more DPS.
Anywho, we get the one more DPS and a healer, and eventually the tank, start heading there, healer bails…. one of the dudes screams madly “pass lead, Pass lead” give him lead and provides us with a healer, then tank bails…. same dude perks up with “pas lead, Passlead”. And he finds us a solid healer, was slightly impressedd (note, this was not the original mage).
Anywho, get in there and instant problem, mage is in dif instance…. wtf is going on. first thought was cause lead was passed while some were in and some were out, all zone, make leader (tank) zone in first. No luck so instantly i say “dude, you saved? do /raidinfo to find out”, i get no answer from that and we continue to try swapping from norm to heroic and resetting. “srsly man, you sure you not saved, heroics only reset every 24 hours, do /raidinfo to see if you are saved”. Eventually the inevitable answer comes “o yeah, im saved”. Much loling and facepalming. I ask “are any bosses dead?” he says no, last group wiped on first boss…
So i say, “no worries, we can do this, give lead back to mage, he zone in first, then we do and we will use his RaidID”
so huzzah, we all get in the same instance. We start her up and instantly me and the DK notice something is a tad wrong. Me and him are both pumping out about 2kDPS and mage is doin 700ish. He perks up politly and says “hey mage, um, your DPS is a bit low, what you doin”. mage “sorry, i only dinged 80 today”
/facepalm
srsly, now this shit annoys me and makes me wanna rage at them. You can’t just step into a heroic pug the day you hit 80. Sure, if you have willing guildies who can carry you, do it with them. But putting your lack of gear/experience on a pug and leaving them to pick up the slack is just rude. I geared up my hunter as well as i could solo and off the AH before i tried my first heroic on him, and my DPS was pretty miserable, so back to the drawing board, i went did some normal lv 78/80 instnaces, got some rep gear, enchanted, gemmed, crafted, researched, respeced, made macros. Then tried again, and what yah know, I could hold my own.
Now i know I can’t expect that from everyone, but you should not be in heroics in greens or pre TBC gear (bar sunwell pieces…)
All that said, we perservered and downed all bosses with little issues and mage walked away with new epic bracers and a couple of blues, which he welll, got carried for.
Other thing i have run into randomly on my hunter is huntard type abuse. My main is a feral druid, so I am used to setting the pace of a instance. So on my hunter, i can get a bit frustrated when people are dawdling around. Now, was in H. DTK a bit ago, just killed king dred, i was doin a quick bit of skinning and heal/tank/1dps had done up stairs and other DPS i think was well, not up top. They decide to pull, and manage to get the pat and first pack or something. When i see they have pulled, i madly run up the stairs and start shooting, i managed to kite one of the pats and kill it and be last man standing (<3 FD) and well, nothing was said, tank messed up pull, no matter, people screw up ocasionally.
Anywho, everyone gets back, we buff up, then nothing is happening, so /cast MD and toss a explosive into the pat. He comes at tank, i turn and run a bit to get my 30 yards, turn around and the pack has come aswell…. anywho, so we kill them all, noone dies, then the healer just starts going fucking apeshit at me “fuckign huntard, you stupid fucking idiot” etc.
Then for the entire rest of the run the healer was a total dick to me shit like “if you pull agro, im not healing you” and whatnot. Should be noted, i was #1 DPS btw… Get to final boss and the healer is going “NOONE TAUNT EXCEPT THE TANK” so of course i have my snarky comment of “Well, you know, me being such a fucking idiot and all i just might”. Didnt get a response from that one :D
So yeah, why is a tank aloud to fuck up and everyone is happy, but what, hunters can’t ocasionally fuck up? I’ve fucked up on my druid tanking as bear and DPSing as kitty and NEVER got so badly paid out as i do on my hunter, now if i was some hunter do less DPS then the tank and constantly fuckign up then sure, pay me out. But is 99% on the ball and doing #1 DPS…. Even the group i did my first heroic with was cool with my DPS, I apologised, they like, it is kinda low, but dont worry. But some people…..
Befre, I got to say I’ve had hunters do that same thing to me. I had a real life friend of mine’s son (12 years old) ask me to tank reg HOL for him. So, sure man, I hate loken, but it’s regular, and I’m tanking naxx with my gear so no big. He JUST dinged 80 that day, and was the healer. So 3 pulls in, I’m sitting there in bear form while my rage burns down to nothing while he drinks up so he can go another couple of pulls.
All of a sudden the hunter misdirect pulls to me. I’m not ready, zero rage, healer was drinking, and the hunter pulls. I’m not claiming that’s what you did, but man, seriously. We finish up that pull, and I tell them with out swearing that “I’ll lead, I’ll make the pulls, if I’m not going fast enough for you, then I’ll hearth.”
The ONLY reason I stayed is to help my friend’s son. I absolutly do not put up with that bullshit from a pug. I’ll hearth right out of a heroic if DPS wants do do the pulling with out notifying anybody. I have very little patience when it comes to somebody that thinks they know it all, and my little hunter friend whispered to me (right before I put him on ignore) “the more shit attacks you the more rage builds up, we have to keep up a fast pace here.”
I responded with a very basic truth of the game. “There are 4 DPS in LFG right now, and zero tanks or healers. If you don’t want me leading this instance, then good luck finding both a tank, AND a healer because we will leave and pick up 3 DPS instantly.”
Not a word for the rest of the instance, and we one shot every boss. I’m not the best tank out there, but I am good. I have worked hard on my gear, and I have lots of experience leading most heroics. I am obviously looking at this from a tank/healer point of view, but seriously, how come DPS can’t just stop being ass hats?
I always try to remain civil, but after working so hard on my gear and researching so hard on how to perform my roll I guess have very little tolerance for people that act like they are god’s gift to warcraft. Hence the reason I very seldom do any pug with out being the healer and having the tank be one of my friends. Just look at the class’s avalible, tanks and healers are few and far between, especially healers now that DKs are so abundant. Why you would want to piss off a tank or a healer is beyond me. And by the way, I could care less about who is 1st on DPS and who is last if all the bosses die. Instances are about team work, not about measuring your manhood with a DPS meter.
/endrant
I mainly PuG – I’m Social in my guild and they’re often in Naxx for much of my playtime, so not available to come play…
I get mostly good ones – with the very occasional person being sufficiently annoying as to remember them… My general tactic is to chat to another person in the group about how annoying the other is – it lets both of us have a laugh without escalating the situation.
On the European English speaking servers there’s a slightly different thing to deal with, though – the Language barrier. Many of the players on Chamber of Aspects don’t speak English as a first language – there are a large proportion of Dutch and Norwegian speakers. That leads to some interesting phraseology that can be mis-interpreted at times!
However, in general, I’m only running the easier Heroics and am still working on my gearing more than anything – UK, Nexus and VH are my friends at the moment! There’s often a better geared Tank than I around – so I end up DPSing – but that’s no bad thing, as it means I’m seeing the fights more and more often AND get a chance at the gear my Bear needs…
Quite a few people over the last couple of weeks have taken the time to put up with my lower gearing and haven’t blamed me for any problems – I’m more likely to blame myself than people generally are…
Cheers,
Stobs
I won’t pug Gundrak because of that snake boss. I hate him with a passion. I love Drak’Theron now that they’ve fixed the de-fleshing issue that caused my poor hairy butt to get gibbed during the change. I’ve had pally healers and fury warriors taunt him just before the switch to buy me the 2 seconds to get my bear on again. Thank god Blizz fixed that one. I generally have had decent luck with pugs. I have one that shatters my confidence then two more that almost make me want to change guilds they’re so good. H-HoL is a cakewalk with my pocket Shaman healer. Nothing like eating the novas while he spams the jesus beam.
Befre,
Hunters can occasionally mess up. Heck, ANYONE can occasionally mess up, but the reason that mistakes by the tank tend to be overlooked is because tanks aren’t always easy to find, and people like you, with attitudes like yours, are definetely a contributing factor.
Every tank has their own style of pulling. Some like to chain pull, either to keep up rage or because they know their healer. Some, like myself, prefer to take pulls a little more slowly so I have time to figure out what needs to die first. When you step up and start a pull without any warning whatsoever, you put everyone in the group off their stride, and rather than keep things moving, you just turn them into a mess.
More than that, though, you put what you want ahead of the rest of the group, and take the fun out of the instance. For people like me, it’s not about the loot or the achievements, although those are nice, it’s all about having fun, and helping others to have fun as well. If you aren’t having fun….all you’re doing is wasting time.
TJGypsy
On a similar theme. I wandered into Conquest Hold on my mage(lvl74) and saw what I thought was a group trying to do the Conquest Pit quest. So I wandered down into the pit and stood in the corner to assist with dps on the chain of bosses. There was a lvl74 DK who kept pulling aggro off of the tank and kiting the boss out of the pit, making the boss reset. The tank, a lvl80 pally, snapped at me to stop after I died helping. I did not run out after the boss grabbed me I stayed and took my lumps hoping the tank could regain aggro.
What I realized is that I had wandered into 2 groups and one of them, the one with the DK would not let the other do their turn. So I think that the Horde has their share of asshats and they are not that hard to find. The DK group finally finished their chain and left. The pally realized I wasn’t part of the asshat factor and apologized. I stayed and helped him and his friend complete the chain.
Hmmm. I do prescreen some stuff, it’s true. I also have much less paitience with asshats than you do, and basically if I get a bad feeling about a group (something as simple as not using correct spellings in LFG will be enough) I’ll say ‘No, sorry, I’ll pass on this’ and look elsewhere. I’ve also got a habit of asking for the MTs name or the healers name depending on the character I’m playing and checking both gear and relevant achivements – if someones trying to run a Naxx PUG who’s never seen a single wing down, or tank a heroic UP in blues, I’m probably going to assume it’s not worth my time.
However, it’s worth noting that a good healer or tank can turn a mediocre group into a superb one. Oh, sure, excellent DPS is nice. But in the smaller instances – an overgeared healer can keep a bad group alive, and a overgeared tank can do the same whereas an overgeared DPSer is merely a speed bump waiting to happen. Hence, because I’m either playing a healer or a tank and I’m above average* on both… I’ve always got the luxury of bring able to compensate for a lot if I have to.
* This is not saying a lot. A chimp who’s just come off her ritalin medication and is throwing poop at the keyboard in an agitated state is better than the average player.
I’m a huge fan of pugs, if only for the variety of personalities you tend to encounter. In fact, the current group of “WoW friends” that I run just about everything with I met in a Heroic Steam Vaults pug way back in the day. Of course, with the good comes the bad, and nothing is worse than joining a pug with four people who are just a train wreck. Overall when I pug 80% of the time I don’t have any issues, 18% are train wrecks (but manageable), and 2% are truly awful displays of inhumanity dredged from the depths of pug hell.
@ people commenting on me
I totally understand. Ive also had groups where the tank is happy to have me pull as a hunter. It was the first time i had done it in the instance and a simple “Please let the tank pull Befre” would have sufficed.
Its just the agro that some people generate so quickly which amazes me, its a game in the end and not something to get so angry about that you are bashing your head into a desk (note, frustrated and annoyed are entirely different from angry :P)
Also, holy shit that was long, didnt realise it till just now, i really need my own blog to vent on…
For pure research purposes, I tried to find a lousy pug yesterday. I thought I found a promising one for Violet Hold: very spammy in the LFM channel, requests for a “summinz” to Dalaran, arguments about what the levers on the VH wall do, a desire to tank on the steps by the VH entrance, and finally, the tank announcing a refusal to explicitly generate threat on “the lil’ guys ’cause they weak” despite them frequently pounding on my helpless clothie face and interupting heals.
So I was hoping for a real doozy group, but I’ll be darned if they weren’t pretty good. The tank wasn’t perfect, but did a reasonable job of holding aggro. The “lil’ guys” approach notwithstanding, he struggled on the final boss because the dps was a bit too powerful / reckless for him to handle. So the dragon kept changing positions as the tank and dps wrestled on the threat meters, but we made it through without any deaths… straight through the voidy and the waterboy. Not a bad effort.
Sorry Befre, I didn’t mean to blow my stack towards you or anything. I have had truly great players that played hunters misdirect pull to me all instance long. And hey, I got no probs with it, but because that was the plan. I knew it was coming, the healer knew it was coming, it was a team effort.
I just get cheesed when a person who will get one shot if he gets hit pulls mobs on purpose with out the group being ready. And just assumes that I’ll bust my hump to come save the day. That’s not playing a game, that’s panic management. I’ve seen it happen many times, and sometimes I’m cool and collected enough to calmly sit and watch that person die and then go ahead and blow all cool downs and prevent a wipe.
My favorite part of those tales of triumph over adversity is where the group pushes past the frustration and moves into slap happy.
Usually some good comedy in there somewhere. The failures can be just as fun as the wins as long as you don’t take things personally.
Some people seem to think that pugs are instant flaming death… because of the hours and days I work, I rarely get to do anything that isn’t a pug, so I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing is they is, or is they ain’t. I never look anyone up on the Armory; I will occasionally inspect someone if they have an odd weapon or something, but I’m generally willing to take a swing at anything at least once. Provided they seem intelligent, of course. If you say “hay u tnk plz” because it’s shorter than “Would you tank (An Instance) for us?”, I’m going to say ‘no’ because it’s shorter than ‘yes’. I guess that’s the closest I come to screening… if you can ‘talk’ like an actual person than the fallout of an exploded bowl of alphabet soup, I’ll figure that you’re likely the best you can be/do/get at the moment, and even if it doesn’t go well, it should be amusing.
I’ve had pugs where I knew everyone involved, we were all good gear and skilled, and wiped like an incontinent overeater at an all you can eat prune chili bar. But we had fun with it, and the game is supposed to be fun… and I’ve been in groups where a couple of huntards were competing to see whether they could pull aggro off me (Bear tank, although the name I used up there is my hunter)… so I let them, told the healer not to heal them, sat down and watched them die. Then finished the fight with just me, the healer and an undergeared but very skilled rogue who knew his stuff. I explained to the ‘tards that it’s funny once, and now once is over. Did they want to continue the instance, or did they want to run back to their bodies wherever they were teleported when I booted them out of the group. One started whining and was punted, the other apologized and offered to pay repair bills, and from then on was a reasonably good party member.
I like pugs, as long as they remember it’s a game, and a game should be fun. People who think it’s all Serious Business aren’t much fun.
The Wall of Text crits you for 69,105! You die…
Ok, that went kind of stream of consciousness, but I just got off work and haven’t slept yet, so sorry.