Friday - February 01, 2008

Bad Karma and the PUG 

A quick discourse in World of Warcraft Lexicon for those of you not in the know:

Pug (n) : Short for "Pick-up Group," any group consisting of people previously unknown to you. Usually this group is for a dungeon full of elite monsters, resulting in epic failure. ex. - "I'm running Shattered Halls with a pug right now."

Pug (v) : The act of entering a dungeon or quest line with a group of people previously unknown to you. Also pugged, pugging. ex. - "I've decided never to ever pug this dungeon again."

Now, a lot of people really really get down on Pugs. Mostly, because by sheer law of averages, the people who will randomly group up with you for a dungeon as such are horrible players. The assertion being - and I believe rightly so - that any of the good players will have guild members to go with and won't have to pug in the first place... leaving only the dregs to get a group with if you don't have the luxury of a sizable guild.

For the longest time, though, I refused to join pugs for dungeons... and my last two characters were a Feral Druid (tank) and a Holy Priest (healer), which are, for the un-initiated, the two "vital" rolls of a group. The Tank keeps the monsters from randomly killing the wizard and priest, and the healer makes sure the tank (and everyone else) doesn't die while getting beaten on by a dragon. So, when I say that I used to play a tank and a healer, you should know that I had NO trouble finding groups. I was always "mission critical." I had my fair share of offers. Oh yes. But most were turned down unless I was desperate.

Just about everyone has "silly pug stories" to share - groups that were so horribly inexperienced ("n00bish," as the term goes) that you simply cannot believe what they are attempting to do. Plans and group arrangements that seem to defy logic that even someone with a cursory, passing knowledge of the game and it's mechanics would understand to be a fool's errand. 

The unfortunate thing about silly pug stories, is that some of them ARE so outlandish, that you tend to register them in your brain under "urban legend" rather than "Big red flag warning label." And after a certain time of not doing pugs, you forget why, and tell yourself, "Those are just urban legend. Most pugs aren't that bad. I'll give it a try again." This, of course, works as well as saying, "I don't remember the stove being that hot when I turned it on high and touched it. Lemmy give it another whirl."

I now have a slew of new "silly pug stories" to relate over the last 2 weeks. So, to help retain my own sanity, I'll relate some of them to you here:

Gabby, the Dual-Purpose Paladin

So, I'm out hunting in the Un'Goro crater, doing my protection pally AOE thing, when I get a whisper - "Do you want to run BRD?" I look at the clock, I look at my level, and I think of testing my meddle against a dungeon - I am tank spec, after all - and I said "yes. I'm a tank, is that cool?" There's a long pause, after which he finally replies, "You're in."

Now, there's an OLD rule about pugs that sets off red flags if you're watching. If you're ever the last person invited, but the first person to the dungeon (especially if you had to cross whole countries to get there) it's going to be bad. So, I ignored this, and waited in front of the dungeon for almost a half hour for the rest of the group to catch up. The group was myself (paladin), a druid, a rogue, warlock, and hunter. Of all of us, only the Druid could heal. I could as well, of course, but I told you earlier, the tank and healer are two separate people.

Or so I thought. We get two pulls in, and I die mid-pull with no heals. I ask the druid, "Umm... Heals?" and he replies, "I'm Feral spec. I was DPSing." I asked, "Well, then who's healing me?" to which the rogue replies, "The guy who started the group said you could handle it." "... Handle WHAT?!" "Tanking and healing."

Right... /leavegroup

A valiant effort at Tanking

I'm rolling around the Zangarmarsh on Ironhyde, my warrior. He's level 63 at the time, and I only had a little bit of actual "tanking gear." None the less, I was looking to get into the Slave Pens, and got a random whisper asking if I could tank. I said yes, and a little while later, we were ready to roll. I was the second to last one invited, and still waited a good 20 minutes for everyone else to show up. Should have been a red flag, yet again.

Anyway, we have this Restoration Shaman in our group healing us. That's nice, because without a "true" tank, it's nice to have a "true" healer. However, first pull, he starts telling me, "Use thunderclap." Um... okay. Thanks, bro. Then, second pull (a 4-pull) he pulls aggro on one of the guys I hadn't gotten around to sundering yet. No big deal, I trot over and taunt, drop a sunder on him, and everything was peachy. He types, "Aggro" as soon as the mob heads his way... and again on the next pull, and the next, and the next... So I politely informed him that I'm not looking at my chat window. Typing that does no good, because I can either watch the monsters or watch my text box, but not both. He replies with, "If I die, you die." "That's fine! I don't want you to die. I want all of us to live. But the fact remains, that you have a choice between me watching monsters or reading your chat box." Well, this crap goes on for a little while longer, the whole while him making bitchy comments about my tanking. I realize my tanking isn't the greatest, but seriously, it wasn't that bad. We had a few chaotic pulls and one or two wipes that weren't my fault at all.

We get about half way in, and we're trying to handle a 3-pull. Things are going well until another 3 patrolled into us. It was a little much to handle for all of us, so we wiped. As we're running back, the shaman makes some comment about how we wouldn't have wiped "if the tank could hold aggro." I said, "No, we wiped because there were 3 monsters tossed in the middle of the fight. But that's cool. If you don't like my tanking, I can leave."

He says, "No, I'll leave." and quits the group.

The rest of the party is left going, "What the hell? Don't worry, Ironhyde, your tanking was fine and that guy just earned a spot on my /ignore list... he ditched out of our group yesterday for exactly the same reason. You were doing great, and if we can get another healer, would you like to continue tanking for us?" I said sure, but we never really got the group going again, and were left half way through the instance high and dry.

LOL WUT IZ D.I.?????/

Mana tombs, last night. I had just respec'd to Protection, and was loving it. I also make a hella good tank now. We have a shadow priest healing for us, which is a little iffy, but hey, it's only Mana Tombs, so I'm not too worried about it.

However, we all get there, and this guy's been chatting a lot in party chat. That's fine, except almost NONE of it is spelled correctly or is in any way articulate. Another red flag. We all get to the instance (which has taken PLENTY of time, because it took us forever to get a full group) and we're about ready to start killing our way to glory, when he shouts, "F***, GUYS. GO SUMMON ME. I FORGOT WATER!"

*headdesk*

So we do, and he FINALLY gets back, and we pull. Heals go mediocre, and I'm on the verge of death the whole time, but I did live, so meh... and there he is with no mana, jumping around. Not even just standing there... actually, physically jumping around the hallway. I'm standing there waiting because I know he's not going to be able to keep up with the next 2 monsters... until I finally had to say, "Elanth? Drink?" and he goes, "Oh, lol sorry i wanst lookgni lolol"

Red flag #2.

So we get to the first boss, who's basically just around the corner of the inside. Heals, again, are mediocre, he runs out of mana almost immediately, and I die. Then the rest of the party starts dying one after another, so the paladin uses Divine Intervention on the healer.

An aside, for those of you who don't know what Divine Intervention does : D.I. kills the paladin instantly, but removes the friendly target from combat (as in, the monsters ignore him and go back to what they were doing, like playing Euchre or whatever) and prevents all damage to him for 3 minutes. However, the person can't move. Divine Intervention is a friendly spell, meaning you can cancel it - and it's movement impairing effects - at any time. It is clear you have been D.I.'d whenever you stop moving, you're the last one alive, and you've got a HUGE GLOWING BUBBLE around you.

The healer, however, knows none of this. He starts spouting off about, "zomg gusy i catn moov, wth?" Now, I'm thinking, "Can't move? Why would he... OOooooh. We've got a paladin in the group. Must have D.I.'d. ..... wait.... this guy doesn't know what D.I. is?!"

I start having that internal conversation of the devil and angel on my shoulder. 

[Good Angel] : "Scott! Be a good person! Tell him what D.I. is, tell him to click the buff off of his list, and get back to playing the game! We were all newbies at some point!"

[Bad Angel] : "LOLOLOLOL THIS N00B DOSNT NO WUT DI IS ROFLMAO DUDE SRSLY STAY QUIET AND SEE WUT HE DOZ" (because I fully believe that if the Devil exists, he's a Huntard)

So I listened to the bad guy, because frankly, I wanted this guy to suffer for being a terrible healer.

He follows up with this solid-gold comment : "Gusy i gotta log i cant move brb"

This had all of us ROLLING with laughter, especially the paladin who inadvertently caused him to leave in the first place. It was the running joke all night. He logs off, drops group, and we invited Carl's priest, Heathen in to fill our healing needs. Also, Carl is an AWESOME healer. We finished the rest of the instance with only a few minor hickups.