… at the utter insanity of pugs.
I mean, I don’t even have words to express my dismay at the ridiculousness of some people.
In the last, oh, two days, the following things have happened:
– I was tanking a Heroic Violet Hold on my druid and the healer left after the first boss. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ABOUT?! Oddly, we managed to get to the second boss without a healer (holy crap, do I love being able to heal myself after combat), but then we wiped. But… SERIOUSLY. If you are a healer or a tank and you leave your group in an instance with timed portions, like Violet Hold or Halls of Reflection, YOU HAVE SIGNED A DEATH WARRANT FOR YOUR WHOLE GROUP.
– Speaking of Halls of Reflection, I was healing on my druid, with my brother on his hunter, and we queued for regular HoR, to finish off the quest chain. We did the first boss. The tank leaves. Just… leaves. No one had died, there hadn’t been a wipe, I was keeping everyone alive and it was going smoothly! And he just LEFT.
Thinking quickly, I instruct the ret paladin to cast DI on the DPS warrior, tell my brother to feign and I shadowmeld.
Does the paladin cast DI? No. Does he even know what a DI is? My guess is no. So the three of us died (because the Phantom Mage’s Flamestrike broke my shadowmeld). The warrior and paladin left the group after the wipe, leaving my brother and I agog at the stupidity.
– I was tanking a Heroic Halls of Lightning, in the middle of the first boss, when I realize that the priest is almost oom. It was shortly after the first boss went down that I saw the priest was in shadowform. Not a big deal, right? Well, my group consisted of me, two rogues and a hunter. So the priest was ostensibly the healer. Now, I’m not geared. I know I’m not geared. My swipe can’t out-threat a geared DK’s D&D or a geared warrior’s Whirlwind. And I’m a little squishy, to be honest. I don’t have a crapton of health, my dodge rating is kind of low and my armor is only awesome because I bought Glyph of Indomitability. So I was like “uh. Why are you in shadowform?”
“healing is boring, ima dps and heal at the same time”
… so I left. True, he kept us up during the first boss and he COULD have been leet enough to pull it off and keep us all alive, but I really, REALLY didn’t want to find out.
– So I went and queued for a random heroic again, this time with my brother on his hunter and my RL friend on her priest. We got Heroic Violet Hold. First portal opens up.
Warie, of Kil’jaeden, I reason, is either a victim of the stupid dual spec bug, which will not update spell/ability ranks on your inactive spec when you train, or he has not trained. I usually have RankWatch active ever since someone whispered me saying that my shaman was using Chain Heal 4 instead of 6. At which point I realized I had been doing so for about two months. I was ashamed but I was seriously grateful for RankWatch’s notification. So I keep RW on, most of the time. (My 5 channel is a channel for RL friends to chat in, so my RL friend the priest and my brother and I were all in it and chatting.)
I mean, really, train. 19g per spell on a druid is not cheap, let me tell you. But if you’re not trained and using max-rank abilities (there are some exceptions, but I don’t believe DKs have any of them), then you’re being a moron. Or a dick.
So the guy just got his epic flight. Good for him. I’m not sure how he made his money, but certainly it would have been easier for him to grind mobs (if he did that at all) or instances if he was using max rank spells, no? My RL friend wisely puts him on ignore. Apart from anything else, this guy’s English hurts my eyes. “i no”. Gah.
This is what damage looked like after two portals. My brother, who dinged 80 a week ago, is right up there with a fairly geared shadow priest. And I’m almost putting out another 50% of the damage done by the idiot DK. And I’m a scrubby TANK.
So what does my RL friend do? She does exactly what I left the HHoL group for; she swaps to shadow spec to help out on DPS while still healing me, because we were going to be behind on portals. It was actually close for a couple of pulls there. But at least she was doing it because the fail DK wasn’t doing any real damage. My brother was putting out 1k DPS when he was 75. This guy is using abilities from level 67 (Obliterate 2, D&D 2).
– Then today, I got Oculus as my daily random on Madrana. As a tank. Of course. :P I had, bar none, the weirdest person in my group. Ever. His name was Xamot and he was from Sen’jin. How weird? Allow me to pull out the screenshots.
So I left. I put them both on ignore, too. It’s a shame, because I was going to talk about how I’m invested in my character, in my skills, how I’ve practiced to hone those skills and THAT is why I don’t like vehicle fights. Vehicle fights just rob you of your class abilities, they render all knowledge about your class useless, they just mean that you need to know what your vehicle can do and how you should do so most efficiently.
– Then, I saw a VOA going on. Since I’d missed my guild running it on Wednesday, I thought hey, I’ll go. They’re looking for a holy paladin, after all. Now, I do have the GearScore addon. I use it on Kurn and my other toons, but not on Madrana. Madrana raids with the guild, does one daily every day and that’s about it. I don’t care about GS in general, so I don’t care what Madrana’s GS is. So I don’t have it enabled on her.
And I get no response. Nothing. At all. I’m like… seriously? So I think a minute and decide to link the Toravon 25 achievement and then figure that my Plagueworks achievement ought to be enough.
I cannot believe that someone wouldn’t invite me to VOA on my PALADIN, who likely has a better gearscore than 90% of the server, until I linked the Toravon achievement and the Plagueworks achievement. It’s just mind-boggling to me.
– Then, the universe clearly decided to make it up to me, as my mage failed to complete Heroic Halls of Reflection yet again.
Booya.
They’re going for 12.5k on the AH on my server. So I don’t know if I should sell it or give it to Kurn or give it to Madrana or give it to my brother. My mage, shammy and druid do not need such an epic weapon. I should probably sell it, give it to Kurn or to my brother. Madrana will get a better weapon eventually. Kurn likely will not. My brother likely will not. But I could definitely use 10k+ gold to help offset the cost of outfitting my brother and I in non-sucky gear. Decisions, decisions!
You still missed another option for that hilt. ;-)
GTFT80, scrub. Then maybe we’ll talk. ;)
heh, If I wasn’t on a different BG from you that first one would have made me panic as I actually ditched on a H:VH groups that I was healing. Admittedly it was due to an emergency in the room I HAD to deal with, but I still felt fairly bad for leaving them like that :P
Well, obviously if it’s an emergency, RL is greater than WoW. :P But when the dude /waved and /farewelled and danced as he vanished… that’s a dude being a dick. IMHO. :P
Oh, totally agree, I made it obvious to the guys I just killed that I was sorry but HAD to bolt.
also, serious amounts of “woot” for that hilt drop :)
Then you, Thansal, are not a dick. ;)
I KNOW, right? That’s the second hilt I’ve seen on the mage — both times in HHoR — in less than a week. I lost the first one with a roll of 88. :P
That tank left after the first boss in HoR because he wants the tanking shield from reg HoR, and because he didnt get it to drop, he dropped group and prob requeued to try again. jerk stores … the whole lot of them.
Lol kurnie, I don’t understand pugs either. I’ve stopped doing randoms completely for like the last week, it just hasn’t been worth the headache, but I finally decided to hop in the queue last night on my shammy. Of course it’s hor. And of course, the mage decides to dps every single mob that the ret hit with repentance, and continued to dps these mobs even though the tank had zero threat on them, as they were cc’d. He just didn’t understand he was in cloth. Or that I was getting heal aggro from healing his dumb cloth mage tank ass. THEN, we make it to the second set of mobs, and he starts dpsing the cc’d priest, because otherwise it would “heal” so it had to be “dps’d down”….while cc’d.
And I’m the “nub.” I must have missed in the last patch notes that mobs can now heal while cc’d.
And regarding the healing in dps spec thing, I’ll heal as enhancement on my shammy, generally a mix of resto/enh gear for bosses. But never icc heroics, and never with a pug. It’s really not hard if you have a decent group, mobs die so fast now they hardly have time to do any damage. I’ve pugged with a few decent resto/enh shammies on my tank who did the same, no wipes so far :)
Vailladin – wow. I guess I should have seen that coming. That’s awful! Then again, in a regular, what incentive does one have to finish the instance if you’re the kind of jerk to do that to people? :(
Fad – a) You are leet and you know it. b) Maelstrom weapon is hax. c) The key is not with a pug. ;)
As to you being a nub, if it makes you feel any better, that mage will be a dumbass for the rest of his life, whereas you know you’re the least nubby of any resto shammy out there. :D
Ye gods – you got some doozies didn’t you?
My brain is still boggling.
Thank God I’ve been off the Sanity Tap for a while… I think a run of pugs like this would have me gurgling and drooling in the corner.
With regards the heal/DPS thing, if the tank is over-geared and the run is going well I might entertain myself with some lol!smiting but I’d never actually heal in my shadow spec. It’s just totally irresponsible – no matter how experienced the players or how ‘easy’ the heroic there’s always the chance something will go wrong and you’ll need to pull your finger out and actually earn your badges and save the group (rather than standing at the back in the a sissy robe).
And on heroic HoR?! Hell no! I don’t have a 5k gearscore but I’m rocking some ICC-25 stuff and that place still hurts.
I’m telling you, the US-Bloodlust battlegroup is full of epic-level fail, ticking sometimes up to legendary. Be thankful you’re not on it! haha! :)
What makes it tolerable for me at the moment is running with my brother and our buddy, because we’re on my small Vent server at the same time, mocking people. Unfortunately, they got to miss out on the insanity that was Xamot… I might get two different toons running with the brother and friend, but for the other three a day, I’m basically on my own. :/
I completely agree with regards to an overgeared tank and the healer amusing oneself with offensive abilities — while in their healing spec and gear. On Madrana, I’ll run up, melee, judge, Consecrate, exorcism, all kinds of stuff. on my shammy, I’ll chain lightning, flame shock, lava burst, etc. But I wouldn’t stand there in, say, a ret spec, and rely on Sheath of Light and Art of War procs to heal people. :P
I only just completed Heroic HoR on my resto shammy for the second time. My mage still can’t get through it because the groups are always fail. I shudder to think about healing it as a tree with no Cleansing Totem and no magic dispelling. :(