Ugly Pug – 4th Edition

You’d think eventually I’d run into every bad player out there with my luck… but there are still more stories.

Had a group for Halls of Stone that agreed to do the quick way. The tank had never tanked the place before, and asked for direction. Our shaman healer tells him to just clear the round circle and we’ll take the last boss.

Me: “Um.. you can’t”.
Shaman Healer: “Yes, we’re going to do it the quick way and the tribunal is the other way.”
Randomperson: “You have to do the Brann event first”
Shaman Healer: “Oh. I’m wrong. I haven’t been here in forever.”

Which would have been fine… if the warrior and the tank didn’t stand in the aoe of the last boss and die. I go frost presence and try to finish it up and die and then get yelled at for being stupid and wiping the group. Shaman healer leaves, refusing to rez.

Nairbren of Draka felt that because he was in ICC gear and was uber awesome, he could queue as heals and then go boomchicken and never heal the tank.  So our tank hovered at 7-10k health most of the instance.  Her friend, Ceekay, was practicing her holy priest dps because “I’m not much of a healer”.  I came into this instance as In-Progress because they’d wiped after the first boss in Violet Hold.

Hubby and I popped into a random and got Occulus.  No big… we like it now.  Easy fast run.  We got 2 mouthy dps who wanted to pull for my hubby and then whine when they died.  Being complete jerks, rude, namecalling, abusive, etc… we get to the first boss and hubby pulls.  Warrior holds back and “We don’t need a tank for this”, after having told us to shut up.  So we took him literally and left.  We have no time for mouthy, abusive dps who want to pull for the tank and then QQ about it when they die.  We hopped to alts, waited out the debuff and then logged back and requeued… well worth it since we got a good run with some friendly folks 🙂

While the Ugly Pug was started to detail my tales of woe and QQ in instances, it’s also here to talk about the good side of the pug…  I got into a DTK run yesterday on my priest [disc/healer].  And I started getting abuse and namecalling from a dps [I haven’t the faintest idea why].  The tank stopped the run and whispered me asking if I wanted him to wait the 3 minutes till the debuff was off to kick the dps.  We were literally two pulls away from the last boss at this point.  I told the pallytank that it was fine, that I just wanted to get done and get out of here so I could get my frost emblems and ignore the moron so I’d never group with him again.  The pallytank wanted to give me the option because he doesn’t tolerate that sort of thing.  I did warn the pallytank though that I had no intention of healing the guy.  Sure enough, the guy taunted the boss off the tank [who let him tank it] and ran to stand IN the poison.  He managed not to die… probably all that pvp gear.  This is the best way to handle abusive situations toward tanks and healers!  We’ve got to stick together and stick up for each other!

Another DTK run later in the day, on my mage this time, have a couple of very low dps – an enhancement shaman who is used to healing and a rogue who dies if a mob runs his direction [healer friend and I have yet to figure out what really killed him all those times].  They are pulling threat left and right by snagging offtargets…  I’m doing 3k dps and only pulled once because I did a blizzard too soon… iceblock!  The tank’s average ilevel was 250.  He asked for a tremor totem on Dred to make it easier.  The mouthy shaman told him to mind his own business and play his own toon.  I replied that the tank is here to guide us through this as painlessly as possible…and that i didn’t fault him for wanting tools to make it easier.  And later thanked the tank in party for tanking for us.  As a tank, I can agree… it’s quite rare to find a shaman who will use tremor or cleansing totem when it’s called for and will make the fight easier…

Culling of Stratholme – I dusted my rogue out of the closet and decided to play her a bit… eh, might as well grind some primordial saronite for my tank to get the crafted tanking boots…  I was pulling 1500 on trash fights and 2500 on boss fights…  Tank was my hubby, healer was a guildie as well.  We had a 250 average gear score mage and a 170 average gear score hunter pulling 1100 overall.  Now the hunter is obviously a newb – as in it’s his first character to 80.  I guess we can’t be sure… but eh… seemed very much like it and very excited about being 80.  We proceed through the dungeon and suddenly a vote kick pops up to kick the hunter…  I ask on vent if hubby or the healer knew what was up with it?  Was the hunter being a problem I wasn’t seeing?  None of us had initiated it… so it was the mage… because of low gear/dps.  Now, had he been doing 300 dps… I would have agreed to it…  Had he been mouthy?  Absolutely.  I’ve kicked people pulling 6k dps because of mouth/abusiveness.  But he’s happily trundling along…  The healer and I even passed on the mount because we both have 3 plus other toons with it anyway…  And I will say… that was worth it…  He was “Thank you so much!  YAY Woot I got a mount!”  And of course, the mage needed the orb in retribution for not kicking the hunter…

Last night I had a bit of insomnia and was up late when a tank left a healer friend of mine high and dry in a h-FoS run…  Just left after a trash pull, no words, no clue why.  I offered to come in and help on my pallytank.  So it’s a me, a tree healer [my friend], a ret pally, a warrior, and a mage.  We get to the last boss and a plate dps chest drops.  I ask in party if anyone needed it, or if I could need it for my offset.  Both the pally and the warrior are like “sure! Go ahead!”.  I know some people would say I should have just needed on it… but I was tanking…  I don’t currently have a ret spec on her [2 tanking specs to play around with] but I’m also not going to pass on a piece to shard that I can use, despite the fact that I doubt I’ll use the ret spec other than in the few cases where my pally is running with hubby’s pally… so where’s the point in making an issue over it if the pally or warrior who were dpsing needed it.  Anywho, moral of the story – being nice and asking goes a long way 🙂

Finally, I’ve been so timid about taking my newbie warrior tank into heroics…  He’s decked out in the best 245/226 crafted items I could find, plus the black heart and a few other random pieces I managed to pick up.  Anyway, I went with a friend’s new level 80 druid healer last night and rather enjoyed myself.  The dps were about my level of gearing and were being nice… not giving me a hard time or anything.  I was impressed and surprised.  I thanked them at the end for being patient because I was still getting used to tanking on the warrior and was typically very timid with going into heroics.  Two of them replied that I had done a good job and thanked me 🙂  If more people would treat newbie tanks like this… I suspect we’d have more newbie tanks who would eventually grow into pretty darn good tanks!