The good, the bad and the puggee

Let's talk about a couple of pugs I had as of late. None of them were interesting enough to deserve a whole post of their own really, but there were still a couple of noteworthy occurrences.

Heroic Pit of Saron on my night elf priest

I had been running this repeatedly in hopes of getting the Surgeon's Needle to drop. And it did! A warlock rolled against me and I won. As we made our way to the next pull he whispered me to suggest that I should give the weapon to him because I "already had an epic". I compared our old weapons: I had the staff from normal Forge of Souls; he had an ilevel 200 blue heroic drop, I think it was this staff from heroic UP; so item name colour aside, the difference in quality wasn't really that massive. I'm all for treating your fellow puggers fairly, giving main spec priority over off spec, taking into consideration whether certain items might be more suited for some classes/specs than others and so on, but nonetheless there is a point where it simply comes down to straight rolling. The dagger was a considerable upgrade for both of us, we rolled off and I won. I wouldn't have said anything if he had won it... and I didn't respond to his whisper either, because I was afraid of getting into an argument no matter what I said. I still felt vaguely guilty however because I'm easily manipulated like that. Is it so hard to sometimes just let someone else enjoy their good luck?

Normal Gundrak on my draenei mage

The second we zoned in, our druid tank hit a macro to inform us that her computer overheated sometimes but that she would be back within a few minutes and asked us to not kick her please. As it turned out she was fairly new to tanking and completely new to the instance, taking it all in with great interest. "Are they fighting to the death?" she wondered about a couple of Drakkari Earthshakers, and on the last boss she squealed with delight as I got impaled, wanting to ride the rhino too. I thought it was absolutely adorable - there's nothing quite like the wide-eyed amazement of a newbie.

Her threat generation was a bit dodgy however, and I and all the other dps bit the dust repeatedly before we even made it through the second room. I didn't complain though - I'm old-school enough to consider my threat my own responsibility, so even if I feel that a tank isn't putting out as much as she should, I should still be able to adjust. I felt nothing but vague embarrassment about my own noobishness as the resto shaman scraped me off the floor for the third time.

In the second room we accidentally ended up getting three groups of mobs at once and only survived barely, at which point the healer sat down and declared that she was going to leave because the tank couldn't hold aggro and took too much damage. No shit, she just tanked nine mobs at once while being on the lower end of the level range for the instance, of course she's taking lots of damage! I didn't actually say that though, because I hadn't really been watching the tank's health myself and wasn't entirely sure whether the healer didn't have a point. Still, I couldn't help feeling that leaving like that was a bit of a dickish move, especially as the other two dps dropped group as well just as our tank begged people not to leave. It felt like watching people kick a puppy.

Fortunately we got replacements really quickly, one of them a female dwarf rogue. With an eye patch! I expressed massive amazement at the sight of such a rare creature, and she was very amused.

The rest of the instance continued to be amusingly bizarre. Our tank ordered people to give her more time to get aggro, "or I'll be a fail tank!" I've never seen anyone refer to themselves as a fail tank before while managing to make it sound like a threat. Do as I say... or I'll be a fail tank! Dun dun dun! One of the dps claimed that we didn't have time to wait for three swipes... erm, why not? We had a wipe on the Drakkari Colossus and the other dps told our tank that she had to work a bit harder, use taunt and so on. She took it gracefully and did great on the next try, and people commented positively on that too. Constructive criticism and some patience to teach do so much more than just saying "you fail" and dropping the group.

Heroic Pit of Saron on my tauren druid

Inspired by my night elf's luck I decided to try for the Surgeon's Needle on my druid as well (it had been eluding me for months) and it finally dropped for her too. Hurrah! The rest of the run wasn't as fun though, as it never ceases to amaze me to what lengths people will go to avoid one more trash pull, even if it frequently leads to wipes. Pit of Saron is already infamous in that regard, with people riding up the ramp before the first two packs on it have fully spawned and hugging the wall to skip the group right after that too.

What I got to see last night however was new to me, as our tank left several Geist Ambushers alive and then snuck along the edge of the ramp to pull Ick and Krick without having killed any of his trash. We got two of them as adds, and as I frantically tried to find a piece of ground to stand on that wasn't covered in exploding orbs or toxic waste spewed by Ick and the trash adds, I apparently stumbled too close to the remaining geists and we wiped. (I'm still not entirely sure about that as everyone was all over the place and one of the hunters said it was his fault, but the tank blamed it on me.)

Why is there never enough time to kill that extra trash pack but always enough time to wipe and run back?

Normal Pit of Saron on my night elf priest

Are you tired of Pit of Saron yet? I know I am, but it's got some amazing loot drops and some of the most interesting pug oddities. In this case we had a death knight tank and a draenei shaman who, even though they clearly didn't know each other and weren't on the same server, had somehow figured out within the first few seconds of the run that they were both Dutch. The shaman was of the "gogogo" variety, the tank was annoyed by people pulling for him, and within minutes they started to argue both in Dutch and in English. It got worse when the tank rolled need on some dps plate and the shaman disapproved. They kept calling each other juvenile and dumb throughout the entire run - and yet... we never broke our stride and at no point did either of them try to vote-kick the other. I'm not sure whether to consider the ability to patiently run a whole instance while trading insults impressive or stupid.