Jerk-taliation

Over at WoW.com, Matthew Rossi's Breakfast Topic for today was about dealing with jerks in PuGs - sometimes by being just a little bit of a jerk right back to them for the greater good of the group.  The comments section is full of stories, and other readers judging the behavior in those stories.  Some of them are rather entertaining, while some make me shake my head in wonder at those who perpetrate such things - and then brag about them.

I left a short comment of my own, but really wanted to expand on my "maybe I was a jerk but they deserved it" story, and this is of course the best place for it.  Especially since I don't think anyone else is reading this blog anyway, so nobody's going to be bored by it unnecessarily.  ;)

A li'l background here... Except for a couple of short forays into Hyjal, BT and Sunwell just for grins, my guild was not raiding at the time Patch 3.0 was released.  Hence our first real raiding with the new WotLK talent trees took place in Naxxramas, where there was AOE a-plenty and classes with new knockback spells that positively delighted in using them on trash packs.  Being a new moonkin determined to prove my worth to the raid, I got a bit defensive when accused of using Typhoon in those days - especially because my talent build did not at the time allow me to even have Typhoon in my main spec. 

It became something of a joke within the guild to blame me whenever a mage Blast Waved an AOE pack, and while I quickly became less prickly about the blame thing, I never really did get over the irritation at mages and shamans who continued to use unglyphed Blast Wave and Thunderstorm on trash packs.  Knockbacks on large trash pulls are bad, mmkay, for several reasons.  Tanks hate them - especially when they've barely touched the mobs - because it makes holding aggro more difficult.  Healers hate them because half the time the mobs aggro onto someone else that they have to heal (or the healers themselves), or they reposition themselves behind the tank when they run back, making the tanks harder to heal until they can carefully adjust them back to the frontal cone.  Other ranged DPS hate the knockbacks because suddenly our AOE is hitting... nothing.  Melee DPS really, really hate knockbacks because the mobs have disappeared, and they either have to run after them or wait until they run back to the tank - if they make it back to the tank.

I've played all four roles, and I can say without hesitation that the only person who really enjoys the knockback in 99% of the situations is the person who cast it.  Now, there's that 1%  where a situational knockback can be useful.  That's the only reason why Typhoon is unglyphed and in my spec right now.  I picked it up when we were farming Trial of the Crusader and starting to work on the hard modes, specifically because it came in handy on Faction Champions when one of the melee mobs was in my face and Nature's Grasp was down, and on Anub'arak when I just couldn't keep one or two scarabs off of me.   I keep it now for the blood beasts on Saurfang, and the occasional use in instances when a stray mob comes after a squishy, knocking it back toward the tank. 

Of course, Typhoon is a staple in my PVP spec.  My friend Geo and I had a fantastic time one night running late night BGs - for once, I had my own personal healbot, as she runs as PVP resto and chose to stick by my side as I ran flags in WSG, etc.  The most fun, though, which caused the two of us to giggle like giddy schoolgirls for most of the night, was guarding the Lumber Mill in AB.  The two of us would go cat form and stealth near the flag, calling out in vent when we spotted incoming Horde with Track Humanoids.  When they'd inevitably think the node was deserted and start to tag the flag, I'd position myself, pop into Moonkin Form, and Typhoon them to a plummeting death.  If I had time, I'd target them and /wave.  Then we'd re-stealth and laugh in anticipation of the next hapless Hordeling who tried to make an easy cap.

But I digress.  My point is that, as a main spec raiding moonkin, I am very sensitive to misuse of Typhoon. 


At level 73 or thereabouts, my feral / resto druid alt set out to PuG Utgarde Keep.  This was in the good old days pre-3.3, when it took forever to find an instance group for anything other than heroics, and I felt myself fortunate to assemble a group for UK before I had finished questing in Howling Fjord. 

The group consisted of myself, a Night Elf priest who volunteered to heal, a moonkin, and a couple of melee DPS, as I recall.  Being relatively unused to tanking due to the scarcity of pre-80 instance groups, I was a bit on the cautious side.  The rest of the DPS wasn't too difficult to deal with - I had to occasionally taunt off of the DK who was targeting something that I didn't have solid threat on - but the moonkin... oy vey.

Clearly he did not have the experience I had with the group dynamic and knockbacks, and did not consider pre-80 instances as the training ground to learn how to behave in more difficult instances.  I'd Faerie Fire pull a 4-pack instead of charging in when I was low on rage or wanting to LOS the casters, and Mr. Chickenpants would gleefully typhoon them away from me before they'd even finished running to me.  The other DPS, often not realizing this was a stupid move, would run to begin attacking, again before I'd even touched half the mobs.  I found myself running around rounding up stray mobs nearly every pull.

The first time, I politely asked the moonkin not to use Typhoon, because it made it difficult to tank the mobs when he kept knocking them out of range.  He lol'd and said "sorry", but 2 pulls later, did the same thing, this time being one of the occasions when I'd Faerie Fire pulled and hadn't yet been able to swipe. 

Again, I was relatively civil.  "Dude.  Please stop using Typhoon."  Again, he halfheartedly apologized and explained that it was habitual.  I suggested he take Typhoon off of his bar so he wouldn't "habitually" keep using it inappropriately.  And again, he lol'd.

The other DPS were actually starting to find it annoying as well, so the next time he Typhooned a trash pull, the DK joined in on my stern demand that he quit it.  Now.  "Dude," he said, "just stop using it."  I informed Mr. LOLtyphoonkin that the next time he "accidentally" typhooned a group, I would not-so-accidentally refuse to tank the rest of the instance.

Sure enough, next pull... I see the Typhoon animation and 5 angry mobs blown out of my range before I'd been able to aggro more than one of them - and that one got pulled off of me by the other DPS, stupidly not waiting for me to be actually tanking the mobs before opening up.  I backed up, went to cat form, sprinted back down a couple of flights of stairs into the second boss's room, and shadowmelded, then hit the hearthstone.

The longsuffering healer, who did not deserve such treatment, I sent a tell of apology.  She laughed, and informed me that she'd also shadowmelded, so she survived the debacle.

I don't think I've ever been so happy not to finish an instance in my WoW career.