The language of pugs

I read an article on Cracked.com once (no really, bear with me), in which the author explained that road rage is caused by us perceiving other drivers as disproportionally rude due to a lack of visible body language during their maneuvers. Now, I don't know how much of that is actually based on fact, but I do have to say that the basic idea that a lack of subtle signals can lead to a lot of miscommunication between people sounds very logical to me. I also can't help thinking that this is what must be happening in a lot of pugs gone bad, especially as I've observed a lot of surprising reactions to things that I've said and done in my own random groups over time. Keep in mind that I'm someone who tries to be mindful of these things, so how much worse must it be when people don't even think about it?

For example, I was healing a normal Drak'tharon Keep run the other night. The tank's health hardly moved while we made our way through the first hallway, and I settled in for a fairly relaxed run. Then we came to Trollgore's room, the tank pulled, I saw the dps taking some damage from the abominations' aura, healed them as well... and suddenly the tank's health plummeted like a rock, as apparently we had got the entire room or something close to it. I wasn't fast enough to get him back up and we wiped. As we ran back the tank said that I should just spam him, and I responded with "sorry, I was trying to heal the dps as well". This was my attempt to summarise in a nutshell what I just spent a whole paragraph explaining on here: that there was some AoE going around, I hadn't anticipated such a damage spike on him etc.

However, I quickly realised that these words could also be interpreted in a completely different way, for example: "It's not my fault, I had to split my healing because you weren't soaking up all the damage like a good tank should be doing." It's not what I meant at all, but it soon became clear that this or something similar was what the tank had actually read. We didn't fight about it and just moved on, but it sure made me think. At first it seemed silly to me that the tank had interpreted my words that way, but after some thinking I had to admit that I might have done the same in his position. Who hasn't been burned by a pugger who criticised them mercilessly for the smallest of things? Who isn't prepared for a certain extent of bad play and mean behaviour when grouping up with strangers? Assuming the worst as soon as someone speaks is almost natural, and so is getting defensive.

If we want to do everything we can to be on good terms with our fellow puggers, we have to try to communicate more clearly, instead of trying to make the run a few precious seconds shorter by only typing a couple of words. We have to think about how our words and actions could be interpreted from a different point of view and try to make our intent as clear as possible, more so than we would usually do in real life that is. Add smilies! I know many people look down on them, but a simple ":)" at the end of a sentence can add so much to your message. The people in your group can't hear or see you, and continuing with the conclusion from above that people will always assume the worst, they'll probably think that you're grouchy and aggressive. Adding a smiley can instantly defuse that tension, showing everyone that you're friendly and not out to ninja their loot or insult their play style.

I have seen how much of a difference these little things can make as well. For example I keep getting hugely positive reactions to something as simple as announcing that I'm about to make an off-spec roll. I always wait to see if someone needs the item for their main spec first and only roll need if nobody else did, so some people might say that my intent should be obvious anyway and that talking about it is just overexplaining. But it's not, and the fact that I waited to see other people's rolls first is easily overlooked. By stating explicitly that I only want the item for my off-spec I'm putting possible main spec competitors at ease. It says, "I respect giving main specs priority over off-specs, don't worry. I won't be that dps death knight who ninjas your tanking trinket from the last boss." Those who just roll need on everything won't care, but those who still care about main vs. off-specs will, and they'll immediately have a much more positive attitude towards you than before.

Hell, even the little "hi" at the beginning of a dungeon helps. I have to admit, I had given up on it for a while some time ago because it felt pointless. Nobody talked for the rest of the dungeon anyway. But then I read a discussion about the quality of pugs somewhere (I forgot where) and one of the people defending them as not all that bad said something like, "I always make sure to say hello at the start of the dungeon and most of my groups are pretty polite. Maybe that makes all the difference?" It seemed silly, but I did pay more attention to it afterwards, and I actually always feel better when the majority of the group says hello at the instance. It's a last concession to the fact that we're still playing with other people instead of random NPCs, and it always gives me hope that the other players will be more likely to remember that there is a real person behind the avatar if anything goes wrong and tempts them to lash out.

In conclusion, don't be that guy who never says anything. In theory there is such a thing as talking too much in an instance, but it's been a long time since I've seen anyone who came even close to deserving such a description. Talking in a friendly manner is so valuable these days, as it reminds everyone that you're a person and want to deal with them on the same level. I'll admit that in a run where everything goes smoothly it doesn't matter as much, but if anything goes wrong at all, I know that I'm not happy when all the other avatars just stare back at me silently, pretending that they didn't see the question I just asked in chat. And I don't want to give others that kind of treatment either. I think it would make a lot of runs a lot better if more people kept that in mind.

Scary statistics

After following a link somewhere else and then browsing another blog's archives I stumbled upon this post at Bubblespec today, in which the writer talks about how she thinks that she ran way too many dungeons this expansion. To illustrate her point, she included a screenshot of an armoury statistics page that shows that two of her characters combined killed Cyanigosa an impressive sixty-nine times.

"Oh, that's neat," I thought, "I never thought of looking at all of my level eighties like that. I wonder how many instances I've run in WOTLK." So I looked at my statistics page. And, um. I almost wish I hadn't, because it was slightly scary.

Now, I know for a fact that a lot of the numbers on the statistics page are wonky at best. For example it claims that my paladin never killed the Black Knight on normal mode, even though she wore the Black Heart for a long time, or that my night elf priest has acquired less emblems of triumph than she already spent on gear. I still think that they have at least some basis in reality though; I guess at worst some of them need a little rounding up. Which is not really good thing when you have huge numbers to begin with, but there you go.

So, according to my armoury statistics page, I've entered 1456 WOTLK five-mans across my seven level eighties (yikes), but only completed 885 of them. Now, this is another number that I have a lot of trouble believing, because no way did I abandon 571 instance runs halfway through. Maybe it counts twice if you leave and re-enter an instance in progress while alive. I don't know. Still, close to nine hundred full dungeon runs is still a pretty damn impressive number. A lot of them were pugs too.

Curious as I was, I wasn't satisfied with those numbers however, and wanted to know which instances I did the most often. Somewhat to my surprise, the clear winner turned out to be Drak'tharon Keep, with a whopping 197 Prophet Tharon'ja kills (151 of them on heroic). To be fair, it does seem to come up as a random dungeon fairly often for me, and I also remember intentionally running it every day for a while early in the expansion, because it was considered one of the easiest heroics; and coming fresh from the Burning Crusade, we didn't dare to jump into something as scary as, say, heroic Utgarde Pinnacle right away.

In second place but already very far behind is Azjol-Nerub with 106 Anub'arak kills (seventy-three on heroic). Again I was slightly surprised at first, but then realised that this matched my habit of running this instance on multiple characters a day if it came up as the daily heroic pre dungeon finder.

My third most-visited dungeon of this expansion turned out to be the Violet Hold with one hundred Cyanigosa kills (eighty on heroic). I don't remember ever making a point of running this one more frequently, but it does seem to come up as my random reasonabily often.

Fourth place goes to the Culling of Stratholme and Mal'Ganis, whose butt I helped kick eighty-five times (seventy-five on heroic). I remember running this instance a lot early in the expansion while we were trying to make it to the Infinite Curroptor in time. (Yes, kids, once upon a time that was actually a difficult feat to achieve.) I never really got tired of it either, and stubbornly stuck it out even when pug members dropped group right at the start because they couldn't stand all the talking (before you could skip the dialogue, obviously).

Fifth place goes to the Black Knight, which, again, I found somewhat surprising considering that Trial of the Champion was released fairly late in the expansion. I didn't assist that many people with Black Heart farming either. I did run the instance on normal mode a lot with those of my characters that hit eighty after its release though, as it's a great way of getting geared up quickly. My paladin spent a lot of time in heroic mode as well, farming for the Peacekeeper Blade for a fairly long time.

Now, I'm not going to continue listing the numbers for every single boss. Let it just be said that the average for most of them seems to be around seventy.

The ones that I visited the least often are also interesting, however. For example I only escaped the Lich King in Halls of Reflection thirty-nine times (thirty-one on heroic). I suppose this is in part because the instance is one of the newest ones, in part because it has a high gear requirement on the dungeon finder, and in part because the few times that I went there intentionally for a gear drop, I got it almost immediately.

The other Icecrown five-mans are well within the normal average, presumably because even though they were released late, I ran them a stupid amount of times for gear drops for my alts.

My second least-visited dungeon is, not entirely unsurprisingly, the Oculus with forty-two completions (thirty-seven on heroic). I may have overcome my dislike for it now, but the fact that I avoided it like the plague for the first half of the expansion left a visible mark on the numbers.

Slightly above it with fifty-four kills is Sjonnir the Ironshaper from Halls of Stone (forty on heroic). Just goes to show that even though it feels like I get that instance all the time on some days, I really don't.

That's a crazy number of dungeon runs either way. Unlike Enlynn from Bubblespec I don't really regret them though. I mean, there is of course a vague sense of having wasted a lot of time on WoW, but as far as activities within WoW go, instance-running is still one of my favourites so there aren't many things that I'd prefer to have done instead anyway.

Strange five-man boss nerfs

While running multiple random heroics per day in the past week, I couldn't help noticing a couple of strange changes to some boss fights.

Ionar in Halls of Lightning only disperses once per fight now, instead of three times.
The Prophet Tharon'ja in Drak'tharon Keep only does his psychadelic "I'll turn you all into skeletons" thing once per fight now, instead of three times.
Grand Magus Telestra in the Nexus only splits once per fight now instead of twice.

I wonder if there have been more changes? These are the ones that I noticed anyway. I neither love nor hate them; more than anything I just find them confusing.

The first two changes were apparently part of a hotfix a few days ago, which immediately poses the question... why? Ionar and Tharon'ja have been among WOTLK's easiest dungeon bosses from the beginning (I'm not sure if I ever managed to wipe on either of them), so I don't understand why what little of interest there was left about their fight mechanics had to be taken away too. The only people that I can see benefitting from this are the manic badge farmers who were always sighing in exasperation about the way the bosses' abilities artificially extended the fight and prevented you from pwning him more quickly. But was that really such an issue?

As far as Telestra goes, looking at various websites they all claim that there's always been only a "possibility" for her to clone herself more than once on heroic, but in all the heroic Nexus runs I did before the latest patch she always split herself twice. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a lack of dps either, as it seemed to be tied to her health (first split at 66%, second split at 33%).

Telestra actually used to be pretty tough back in the day, and the double split certainly played a role in that, so I do consider this a "serious" nerf. However, once again I can only wonder about the reasons behind it, because people go into heroics with better gear than ever, so nothing is nearly as hard as it used to be anyway?

I can't help feeling that Blizzard is currently pushing the "farm everything into oblivion as quickly as possible" mindset a bit too much at the moment.