I have accepted my lot in life as a PUGger. Until my guild mates reach 80, I’m going to be PUGging and I’m okay with it. In fact I’ve met many cool people! But this weekend, the number of PUGs that fail or leave increased again, I’ll now have to use both hands to count them. There’s a fine line between a PUG that is just disappointing, and one that is fail.
I blame a few things for fail groups. And now that I think of it, much has to do with the change in instances. It’s pretty well accepted that BC to LK switch made CC classes less required. AOE tanking is now for everyone, and AOE burning the mobs. BC was not that way, you needed to have CC classes available. Remember Magister’s Terrace? *shudder* So I wonder if because there’s this new mentality of CC is useless that certain classes forget they have CC or never learn how to use it?? Also people forget that to run heroics you actually need gear. Yes, the gear requirement for heroics is not as rough as is was for BC, but still, take some time at 80 to get a little bit of gear before you’re ready.
Fail #1). Know Your Class
Last night I healed Sethekk Halls on my druid–well, I almost healed it. We had a DK tank who was level 66, another DK at 70, a mage and rogue somewhere in the mid to upper 60s and me level 66 druid healer. I do pretty well at healer if I can say so. And we were doing pretty well considering the tank had never been there. We actually managed better than I thought a few times. But the tank disconnected a few times and we asked the other DK to take over tanking. I said, “Switch to frost presence and drop death and decay when you pull and we’ll be fine.” It doesn’t seem that hard. But he doesn’t drop death and decay and aggro is all over the place. Mobs come for me, I use nature’s grasp and root one, the mage freezes one in place, the “tank” doesn’t turn. So it’s really sloppy, but we manage. The mobs that fear send the rogue and DK into other groups. I keep wondering why the DK isn’t using “Every Man for Himself” since he’s a human. We make it to the final pull before the final boss. It goes badly and I am feared and then stunned by the bird charge. We wipe. Mind you the original DK tank is still DC’d. The 70 DK says, that’s why we have to kill the fearing one first. I say, well we have two people with CC, rogue and mage, maybe we should use them. The rogue says, what will that do against fear? As I’m corpse running back and no one else is and I see. “What will CC do against the fear?” I zone in and hearth out. Leaving party when I land in Shattrath and just log out. If the CC classes don’t understand how CC’ing the mobs would mean less to deal with and possibly removing the guy who fears from battle, via CC, then I’m done. What will it do?!? Damn. I was done. I’ll finish up Setthek later.
Disappointment, not quite fail #2). Just Admit You’ve Never Been Here
I was on my mage and finally got a group to finish Nexus. He’s level 75 already, but still had the quests not completed. Though he had done Nexus once already it was pre-quests. So I was happy to get a group to finish it up. It actually was going really well although I was a bit curious…we went right at the start instead of left, which is usually the way I am used to going. It was a little backwards, but it worked out just fine. But everytime we got to a boss, the tank would say, it’s been awhile, can someone remind me what this guy does? EVERY BOSS. I understand there are many boss fights in the game and remembering them all might be a challenge. But this guy asked on every fight! I was pretty sure he had never been there before. So we get to the final boss and explain that you need to jump around. I’m not sure if he didn’t or what, but the tank went down and we had to try again. It went much smoother the next time. The disappointment really was rather a “Really? You’ve forgotten every fight in this instance? Are you sure you just haven’t been here before?” I have no trouble with someone saying “Hey, this is my first time here.” But I have more beef if you pretend you have been but then ask everything to be explained. I’m pretty sure you don’t forget every fight. Shrug, not so much a fail, but kinda weird.
Disappointing Success #3.) Blame the Healer
In this case we finished the goals, but the abilities of the healer, me, were called into question. Elgar has healed, always, his entire life. So I think I do pretty well at it. I see a group LF Heroic VH, they need a healer. I’m in Dalaran already, sure, I’ll go. We head in. The tank looks to have less health than what I’m used to, but the DPS seems okay. We head in, and in my opinion we get lucky with the bosses, we get the bird dude and the eye thing. We are pretty much cruising right along. On the final boss, I lag bad and the tank dies but she’s so close to death that we finish her off. I explain and apologize. I kept spamming buttons during lag hoping something would register. I noticed that on the first boss kill the tank got the achievement for Emblem of Heroism. He was excited and stated he just dinged 80, 30 minutes ago. I was pretty nervous at that point. And then we headed to roic CoS. They thought about a timed run, but I suggested lets just go slower since this is some peoples first time here. Apparently they thought that meant it was my first time there. We go along, it’s going well, but we’re not going to make the timed run. We get up to the I guess, third boss, the dragonkin thing. And we start the fight, but the tank is taking so much damage, I’m spamming heals on him as fast as my cooldowns can go. But I just couldn’t keep him up, it looked as though he took a few crits in a row just before death as his health dropped fast. We run back, it’s not really a big deal. But then the Shaman says, “do you want me to heal this?” I was pretty offended. I know that gear isn’t the best way to judge people, but I outgeared the group easily. I should have checked the combat log, but I’m almost certain the tank took some big hits since he just hit level 80 a few moments ago and probably didn’t have rockin gear. I ask the shaman what I’d do if I didn’t heal? No, I don’t have dual spec. So we go again, and this time we finish it up. We continue on the way and the rest is a breeze, they ask me to go on to something else and I decline. Sometimes it’s a little more than “tank dies it’s healers fault”.
Raid drama fail #4.) Trouble with Loot
The last fail is drama. I joined a Naxx-10 PUG. I want my shoulders. I’m the only priest in the group and actually one of two cloth wearers, the other is a frost mage, the only one providing replenishment. Thank you sir. The loot rules were clearly laid out at the beginning of the PUG. You get to roll on one main spec item, and one off spec item. If no one rolls on either, it’s an open roll or to be DE’d. It wasn’t my ideal rolling situation, but whatever. There shouldn’t be much competition for loot for me anyways, possibly other healers. But as it was, it didn’t matter. Only one cloth piece dropped and it was damage set (+hit) so I just passed all around, since I don’t have an off spec. I was assigned to main tank heal and we had a great main tank. It was all going great. Three wings down, military left. We’re about to start and the offtank leaves raid. And apparently the guild of the PUG host. The shoulder token that dropped from that last boss didn’t go to him and he apparently though he deserved it, or should have gotten it, something like that. But he had already main spec rolled and won something, so it went to #2 per loot rules, though he had a higher roll. So the dude up and bails. Then the main tank leaves too since their guild burst into drama apparently and we’re just standing there. I am of course laughing that the dude left and /gquit over something so silly. I didn’t get a single piece of loot nor did cloth even drop, yet I’m not up and quitting over it. Before starting military wing the PUG disbanded. All because some tank didn’t get his shoulders. I can’t stand that. I guess I feel like, hey, we’re all in this together, I didn’t get so much as a trashy green that night, but I still stuck with it, because I was important to the group and it was a team effort. Apparently not everyone else was in that same spirit.
I’ll be more satisfied when the guild gets people up to 80 and we can start running together. They are great people, and I think we’re going to do great together. The raids we’ve done on old world stuff have always been fun and awesome times.
These groups weren’t all total fail, but they weren’t fun PUGs either. Maybe I’ve always been really lucky that < 5% of the PUGs I do are sour, most are awesome, people know their jobs, they know the fights, and they are respectful and polite about loot. Who knows? I won’t stop PUGging, it’s my fate, but still. I’m a bit disappointed with this weekends groups.
/rant off
Crits and Giggles 