24 April 2010

Trade Chat PuGs and "Elitism"

So last night, a group of 4 or 5 of us were hanging around in vent together, bored out of our skulls.  It was well past midnight server time, nothing going on, and a couple of us had switched over to lowbie Horde alts to pass the time while chatting to the others.

Sometime after 2 AM server time, one of our crew spotted an ICC25 PuG forming, with a smallish guild leading the run and advertising in trade chat.  The raid leader had indicated he'd be checking people out with WoW Heroes, which was fine IMO because he wasn't just going to be looking at Gearscore.  All four of us have experience in ICC on our mains.  My guildie and I have done Lich King attempts in 25 man, while our friends' guild is working on Sindragosa - I have killed LK in 10 man and am 9/12 on Hard Modes, while the others are working on LK10.  None of our alts are undergeared scrubs, and we know the fights better than your average trade channel pugger at 2 AM.

We contacted the raid leader separately and asked for an invite - these are the characters we proposed to bring:
My resto shaman
Geo's arcane mage
Chim's marks hunter
Duce's survival hunter

One of us got in the run - the mage.  The rest of us were told we weren't geared enough.  Caydance was willing to accept that explanation - that was actually his least geared 80, and his character was showing on WoW Heroes as having ICC25 in the "yellow zone" for difficulty (the rest of us had it as green).



When I questioned the raid leader on his decision regarding my shaman (the best geared of all of our alts), he indicated that there was already a resto shaman in the run, and they thought I was geared enough for a 10 man, but they'd prefer I had fewer pieces below iLvl 232.

I pointed out that my cloak was the only item I had below 232, plus a 232 neck.  He then suggested that they'd prefer I had more 10 man items, or at least one piece from 25 man.  I was starting to fume a bit here, and pointedly linked my Sanctified T10 shoulders and my 264 pants (admittedly, these are BOE, and were sold to me for cheap by my friend whose guild gets a lot of them... but it's not like I haven't set foot in 25 man before, and most of my gear *is* from 10 man).

At some point in there, the raid leader said they would have preferred I had more best-in-slot gear, and they were hoping to fill their open slots with "better" healers first - "no offense intended", of course, and they'd keep me in mind if they couldn't find a better geared healer waiting to get into a 25 man PuG at 2:30 AM.  I flatly stated that it sounded like they were hoping to find people who didn't need gear from 25 man, and good luck on that.

My guildie who had gotten in the raid indicated that the other resto shaman was one of the raid leader's guildies, and had worse gear than I did.  I looked him up out of curiosity, and found this.

Oh, now I see.  Crappy alt is switching from elemental to resto, and wants a better shot at the healing gear drops, so he didn't want me rolling on "his" loot.  Apparently their hunter was exerting the same influence to keep Chimshot and Caydance out of the raid (although Chim was later told they changed their mind on him - apparently it was slim pickin's close to 3 AM server time).

Chim, offended on my behalf, began mercilessly taunting the other guild's shaman in trade chat while they advertised for one more healer and DPS to fill their raid.  Astoundingly, Alliance managed to win Wintergrasp at this point (we're not as unbalanced faction wise as Mal'Ganis and Cho'gall, but 4:1 Horde to Alliance, with fewer and fewer Alliance interested in PVP means any time we get control of Wintergrasp it's a shocker).  Divided Sky's attempt at an ICC25 PuG was put on hold while everyone scrambled to assemble VOA groups while they still could.

I got into a VOA25 group being formed by a friend, who ended up - due to said slim pickin's - deciding to run with 4 healers - myself, a disc priest, said friend (normally shadow, because he's a horribad holy priest), and another holy priest who just came back from a year's hiatus and is still wearing T7.  The friend who started the raid plays from Australia on a relatively bad connection, and was actually disconnected for the entire time on Toravon, and again on Koralon.  So essentially, I three-healed both fights on 25 man.  With a disc priest, and a severely undergeared holy priest.  Very successfully - I think we had two deaths on Toravon (one of them being the undergeared holy priest), and none on Koralon.

Yeah.  You guys were waiting for a "better" healer.  Good luck with that.

2 comments:

  1. They should have just been straight-forward and honest. :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yep. "Our resto shaman needs a lot of gear and would prefer we find someone who doesn't need much of anything to carry him."

    I would have been less pissed off by that than "We're hoping to fill the slots with better healers. But hey, no offense... You'd be fine for a 10 man."

    ReplyDelete

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