WTF PuG Moment of the Day

My intent with this blog is not to skewer individuals I run across in cross-server PuGs - although I have no problem calling out the really annoying ones that behave like spoiled children or sociopathic asshats, there are some players who are still new and haven't learned a lot about this game yet.

And there are some who, no matter what the rest of us would like them to do, would not research how to gear, gem and play their chosen class or spec even if they knew where to go for the information, because they consider WoW "just a game" and that sort of research too much like work.  I can kinda see where they're coming from, really... but even when it comes to games, I dislike sucking at things.  If I find myself doing poorly at something, I either choose not to engage in that activity except under very specific circumstances (see golf, bowling and other such activities), or I use whatever resources are at hand to get better at it.

Twice yesterday, I found myself in PuGs on my mage where an essential party member decided they were not doing well enough and dropped the group very suddenly.

The first time was a Heroic Halls of Lightning group.  I was on my mage, who is now decked out in 4pc T9 and a new shiny Merlin's Robe, along with mostly heroic level or better items (except for cloak, boots, and crappy trinkets).  She can put out some very respectable damage, and I'm learning quickly just how fast I need to be ready on the Ice Block/Invis trigger. 

The tank, a DK who was very personable and set a nice pace for progressing through the instance, seemed to be slightly on the low end of the heroic tank gear scale, but I'm not one of those who expect every heroic instance tank to have 35k health or more - as I recall, this one was more along the lines of 28k health, which is perfectly fine for the non-TOC/ICC heroics.  She/he did a fine job on the first boss, and the "suppression room" gauntlet with the WTFexplodyslag that tends to kill anyone in melee range if you AOE them (one dead rogue at the end, due to overzealous and overgeared lock who just couldn't be bothered to single target).  At the first landing above that room, someone accidentally pulled both packs, when you can normally skip either the left or the right one, and the tank admirably rounded them all up, managing to lose only one of the DPS in the process.  Great healing, heads-up tanking, and I gave the team a cheerful compliment at pulling that one out with a win.  

At the top of the stairs, while rounding up trash to the second boss, the tank informed us that she/he was actually brand new to tanking, and still learning.  The warlock took this announcement as a challenge to test his/her ability to hold threat, and proceeded to do his darnedest to pull aggro on the next 2 trash packs.  And, unsurprisingly, the warlock died.  I tried not to pull, but I did watch Omen carefully and pushed my threat to the limit a few times.  After the lock's death, the tank decided we were too geared for him/her, and needed a "better" tank.  I was just on the point of reminding our tank-in-training that it is the DPS's responsibility not to be stupid and pull aggro, and he/she was doing fine, when we abruptly found ourselves tank-less.  We would have been fine for the rest of the instance, really, and the warlock laughed about the fact that he knew he was setting himself up to die when he started pushing the tank's threat purposefully, but it was too late.  We knew she/he was a new tank, but we didn't know they were that insecure about being a new tank.

So the dungeon finder served us up a confident and overgeared DK for our next tank, and the lock and I stayed on the low side of his threat easily.  Life went on.

Later in the evening, I determined that I was quickly reaching the end of my use for Triumph badges, and would be better served to queue for specific instances that had upgrades for my weak slots after my daily random for the frost badges.  Primarily I picked Heroic VH and Oculus for the trinkets and cloak, and both normal and heroic versions of TOC and the ICC instances.  I can't queue for Heroic Halls of Reflection on the mage yet, but there are nice items I could use in the others.

On one particular normal TOC run, we went through the mounted combat as usual and gathered in the middle of the arena to buff and drop a table.  The priest, who was the assigned healer for the instance, neglected to buff anyone - even himself.  I found this... odd, but chose not to make a big deal of it.  If the tank didn't care whether he had Fort, I wasn't going to gripe about it, and really, it's not that hard of an instance.  No biggie.

I didn't inspect the priest, but his health and mana levels appeared to be decent - about what you'd expect from iLvl 232 T9 and a smattering of other random epics.  However, he did warn us at the outset that it was his first time ever healing an instance.  I was happy for his sake that we had the hunter, mage and shaman combo.  The absolute worst combination for healers is when you get the shaman (who you'll want to kill first so he doesn't heal), warrior (with his Mortal Strike on the tank), and rogue (AOE poisoning everyone in sight and constantly dropping poison vials that unobservant DPS like to stand in).

So warned, the tank ran in to pull.  Now, where the faction champions stand at the beginning of the fight is a very bad one - it's like an invisible wall, where no matter where you stand to DPS them, you are out of line of sight.  This tank, not being aware of the issue, neglected to pull them back to a better spot at first - and I mentioned in party chat that he'd need to.  By the time, however, he moved them out from the invincible spot, the tank was dead.

Now, I'm not sure what healing spells the priest was using, but clearly, they were the wrong ones.  He said nothing about having line of sight issues with the tank, he just apologized for his failure and said goodbye, and dropped group before even zoning in to rez.

While griping in a chat channel about this "oh, I suck, you guys need another tank/healer" attitude that causes people to drop group without giving themselves a second chance, I looked up the guy on armory, just out of curiosity, and was boggled by what I found.

I sincerely hope at some point, if someone other than me reads this blog, that going to that link will not reveal what I'm seeing today.

The priest was main spec shadow, and his shadow spec is perfectly fine.  His second spec is Discipline, which he was clearly using for that instance run.  Aside from the complete lack of glyphs, the spec itself is a complete mess.  I have no idea where he came up with it, but it's good for neither PVP nor PVE.  Now, the fella has been 80 for less than two weeks at this point, but he's had dual spec for a month and a half now.  He's not bothered to learn how to spec, or how to heal, or even buy glyphs for his second spec.

What really disturbed me, though, was his gear and gemming choices.

The guy picked up 5 pieces of healer T9, so clearly he's intending to heal with them, isn't he?  But then he gemmed them amazingly badly.  Completely aside from the epic spirit gems in the chest and pants (seeing as how discipline spec priests don't consider spirit important in either gemming or gear choices), and the apparent lack of a meta gem... The guy's using hit gems.  In his healer gear.  And crappy green ones at that... So maybe that was all he had handy and he just tossed 'em in until he could get better gems off the AH?

He's also equipped a smattering of DPS gear accessories with his T9 - a hit/haste belt from Forge of Souls... The hit trinket from Auriaya in 10 man Ulduar... and the craptastic Darkmoon Card: Death... So maybe he's intending to become a primary healer, hence getting the healing T9 set pieces, but is gemming them temporarily for DPS while he finishes gearing up?  Maybe he's not completely clueless about how to gem in reality? 

No.... in his shoulders, he has an epic 10 hit / 10 expertise gem.


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Wat?!