Bad Groups

[Ingmar]

Could they be happy doing 10?

[Chimpy]

Even server-first raiding guilds have shit like that happen.

And oddly, the ones that end up exploding to weird dramatic shit end up reforming with the same fucking people leading. They always make some promises about how they have learned from their mistakes yadda yadda and have made adjustments. Then you get a month or so into raiding, and you see the iceberg as the Titanic steams along.

[Paelos]

I've had two women who led raids that I was in. One was competant, well-reasoned, and good at communicating. The other was a complete batshit crazy bitch who made personal decisions about everything in the raid instead of basing them on logic. The first one led an MC raid for over a year with several different people rotating through, and the second led an MC run for about three weeks before we told her to basically piss off. The last straw was when she booted my OT who happened to be a guildee of mine because he said she made everything personal and wouldn't shut up.

The key to any raid leader being good in my book, male or female, is to keep everything as impersonal as possible. Also be able to back up your decisions with documentation you made at the beginning of the raid, or facts you gleened from recount, etc.

[Sjofn]

I'm not sure how it fucking happened, but on the week Ingmar isn't in the raid (we have three tanks, so we rotate sitting), I'm always the fucking leader and I always fucking hate it. At least people have finally, finally stopped re-giving instructions after I have finished doing so. It was getting to be a running gag about how I would give the short version, and then inevitably someone else would give the long, blathery version that just confuses the one person who just needed to know DPS's job for this fight is "kill the dude" instead of what the fucking tanks are doing, etc.

[apocrypha]

Just wading in here without reading the entire thread (I'm lazy, sorry).

I consider bad groups my penance for refusing to join a guild other than my own, which currently (and for the last 2 years) has nobody in it but my brother (no characters over level 30), my girlfriend (one level 60 but she hasn't played it for months, prefers low levels) and me and my army of alts.

So if I get a group at all it's a PUG and PUGs are like jobs - sometimes you get a good one but mostly they're shit 

[DraconianOne]

I was in a bad group the other night. We were doing Heroic UK and failed to get past Kelseleth (sp?).  Must have wiped 5 or 6 times. 3 of the other 4 people knew each other and I think were hoping to get their mage friend some upgraded gear.  The 4th guy was a DK who got infuriated with the mage and left the group after about the 3rd wipe then promptly whispered the leader to get back in the group. 

Eventually we gave up.

I didn't dare mention that I think my lack of DPS was the main reason we failed.   

[Rasix]

Could they be happy doing 10?

I don't know.  We'll see.  Right now everyone seems to be sitting on their hands or in a state of shock.  The group I was in is probably the only one that will have cleared 10man Naxx this week, and after KT no one even really wanted to do Maly.  Stuff is at least scheduled for next week and if they're smart they'll do a 10 and rotate people in (losing active tanks sucks).  25s are really going to be out of commission for a long time unless they form a raid alliance.

If something doesn't happen within the next 2-3 weeks it'll be a slow bleed until guild chat is a ghost town and the crazy GM starts a new guild and and tears a majority away under a promise of a more serious focus to raiding (like she did to form this one, hello Chimpy's comment).

I should probably bail, but it's a good support structure and there are some highly decent folks in the guild that I like doing stuff with. Then there are some nice folks that probably shouldn't raid.  I mean really how many times can you hear "ohh shit, I clicked the wrong person" after someone dies from frost block without going insane?

[K9]

Fuck me, I just had a rollicking ride with team terrible through OS25. 1/3 of the DPS doing less damage and DPS than any of the three tanks. Two damn goons who got wiped on the first lava wall on each attempt spamming raid chat for brezzes. I mean, how hard is it to not get hit by the fire wall while doing your job, all the healers manage to get through each attempt with zero or one hit between the five of us, and we're having to work twice as hard keeping chuckleheads who can't move alive...

Gah!

[Soulflame]

I was invited to a PUG Naxx 25 this weekend.  Spider wing down, Plague done up to Loatheb.  I figure this is a reaaaally bad idea, since Patch is the killer of Naxx PUGs on my server, and I've never gotten to see military on Naxx 25 ever, but I figure what the hell.  So I get in, everyone forms up, starts down the tunnel to Loatheb.  Wipe.  Not even a credible effort, just a flat out wipe.  People release, form back up, then it gets confusing.  We start into the tunnel, and suddenly everyone's running back out of the tunnel.  Half the raid dies, the rest are standing around within range of the eyestalks, which locks everyone into combat.  I run back into the tunnel before Heigan's room, drop combat, and start the ress train back up.

About this point people start asking for summons, which baffles me.  I've flown to Naxx more times than I'd care to think about from the GY, I cannot for the life of me figure out why others can't.  So we finally form up, make a third mad attempt to dash to the other end of the tunnel.  Wipe.  People start dropping from the group one by one, til 1/3 of the raid has left.  I figure it's over, but maybe the raid leader will rebuild.

That's about the point where the raid leader calls the raid, and drops.  I figured the whole thing was a waste of time when I had joined, as there were exactly 0 priests in a raid that had to choose between military and construct, assuming we managed to actually down Loatheb, which after seeing the stupidity I was highly skeptical of.  I was just sad that I had burned my chance at Naxx 25, only to down exactly 0 bosses.

[Khaldun]

I simply do not join OS-25 or Naxx-25 pugs any more for this reason: I don't want my raid ID locked to idiocy. Naxx-25 particularly I only go now with an alliance of my guild and two others. OS-25 I need to know who the "backbone" of the raid is.

[Merusk]

Yeah PUG-25s are a scary situation. I'll join my guild's run where we pug to fill our empty spots, but I can't imagine joining a group full of people I have no clue about.

Had a guildie and her husband do that this weekend, though.  He desperatly wants spider wing stuff, but since he works Friday nights when we do it, he's never gotten to go. So he passed and PUG'd on Sunday night where they spent 2 hours in the zone, wiping to trash.   He made her stick with it until the group booted ~5 players.. which ceased all wipes and they proceeded to clear at least 3 wings.  Still, I can't imagine ever caring enough to stick in a zone for 2 hours of wipes.

Had another bad PUG myself this weekend on the priest. Group wanted to do the last boss of heroic A'N, and their healer had dropped. I figured, sure I'll do it it'll be a quick 5 min fight with a chance at some purple cloth and a Proof of Demise completion.  I warned them,  however, that a priest was a bad choice for the group with the evil poison dot, and were they sure. "Yeah, we're fine the pally (tank) will cleanse." erm.. ok.  I should have quit right there, but no I was bored.

I get killed by the 2 adds on the stairs down to the boss.  Just flat-out toasted and I'm still not sure what hit me, I just know that trying to heal myself and the tank wasn't working well.  I get rezzed, and we engage the boss.. the tank isn't using consecrate and the adds eat me on the first submerge.  After the wipe I explain, "hey, yo.. adds are bad can you pick them up." "Oh, ok just stand near me."

2nd attempt, I stand near him, things are going ok, he gets the adds this time but the poison kills the DK.. then me, then the rogue.  Runnig back the rogue says in party "I don't know about you guys but I don't want to wipe 5 times and not kill this guy." Then "Man, fuck this place."  I figure he's about to quit group.. instead the pally passes him leader and I'm kicked from the group.  Erf?

I get no response to inquiries, but seeing as I'm now saved AND in the zone I decide to be a prick right back.  I go hide under the rocks near the Prophet's area and go afk. I come back ~15 mins later to a few "/1 Sab, please leave the instance" and some yells from the boss that tell me they engaged, probably to try and get him to kill me and force a zone-out, but that's it.  I see on who they've left/ logged off.  Buncha asses.

[Rasix]

I was going to do a heroic VH yesterday and when I get invited I see it's a full group (the guy was looking for a DPS and tank).  So, looking at the HPs of everyone, I ask who the tank is.  The warrior said he is going to tank it.  He's sporting 19k HP.  Everyone asks him to get in his tank gear and he says something like "I said I could tank it, I didn't say I overgeared it" and leaves. 

 

Granted, he probably could have done it (VH is free badges), but seriously 19k hp?  That's not putting in a lot of effort.  Tank search proves fruitless and I go back to leveling my shaman.  Now that I'm actually leveling him up, my patience for sitting around waiting for a pug to fill out maxes out at about 5 minutes.

[Ingmar]

The rogue in the PUG 10 person Thaddius I ran last night did 160,000 damage to the raid from polarity shifts. Somehow, we still won. I like to think it was my mad chain heal mashing skills (I had to respec resto just to get the thing off the ground) but it was probably more the actual good healer we had.

[Lantyssa]

So what's the DPS on 160k in a fight?  Did it push him to the top of the charts?

[Paelos]

Granted, he probably could have done it (VH is free badges), but seriously 19k hp?  That's not putting in a lot of effort.  Tank search proves fruitless and I go back to leveling my shaman.  Now that I'm actually leveling him up, my patience for sitting around waiting for a pug to fill out maxes out at about 5 minutes.

19k isn't trying at all. Warriors have 9.5k base health at 80. That means he only had 1000 stam on his gear. You can get 600 stam on unenchanted, ungemmed blue quest rewards without even tanking into account necklaces, rings, trinkets, cloaks, weapon, OH, and ranged stat stick.

That's very lazy.

[Merusk]

I had 19k as a death knight in blue DPS gear.  19k as a prot war is fucking shameful.

[Selby]

19k isn't trying at all.

My druid had 21k in quest blues from up to Grizzly Hills.  That is pretty low.

[Rasix]

I'm a DK and there was another DK in the group.  We both had a chuckle.  He was 4K up on the warrior and I was around 2K up in blood presence and dps gear.

Ohh, I found him: Khargol.   Hey, he's up to 21k now and check out those defensive stats    The guild he's in isn't bad at all. He must be someone's younger brother or think since he had lvl 80 dpsers and healers carrying him through leveling dungeons, that he's good at this tanking thing.  I mean, who really needs HP and defense when you totally pwned regular DTK. 

[Paelos]

Wow, just wow. At first glance you think, "He's in all blues, what's the deal?" Then I dug a little deeper. He's a level 80 warrior using a chestpiece from regular Old Temple (74 instance). His shoulders came for a 71 dungeon quest in the Nexus. His rings are 72-74 quest rewards.

He basically looks like he stopped upgrading his gear at level 75. It's mindboggling in fact.

[Ingmar]

He just needs to hit a blacksmith up for a full set of tempered saronite and he'll be good to go basically. He has the best pre-heroic tanking weapon so that's a good thing at least. (edit) He's way short of the defense cap but the HP total is probably OK for the easiest heroics (Utgarde Keep for example.)

Well except for that spec. That's a bit of a mess.

[Paelos]

Well I mean for fuck's sake, a days worth of daily quests would give him the money to basically upgrade everything he has. I mean the rings alone boggle my mind. A JC can make you a better one for 50g worth of mats.

I didn't even look at the spec until now, but there are a few glaring errors. He didn't take improved thunderclap, which is one of your best AE threat generators, and he specced into improved spell reflect which nobody uses in pve.

[Ingmar]

Which JC ring are you talking about?

[proudft]

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43317 maybe?  A Titanium Earthguard is a lot more than 50g, so that's my guess.

[Ingmar]

That might be it, although I am pretty sure 2 titanium bars will cost you more than that on our server at least. In any case, that ring will help him almost not at all, since his #1 problem is he's not at the uncrittable cap and that ring has no defense.

Also, I would sort of suspect it is going to be hard to find a JC willing to blow 4 days worth of JC tokens on a blue tanking ring that is only really ideal for druids, when those tokens can be turned into dragon's eyes that sell for 150+g each, at least on my server. Maybe by now the completist types are filling in that recipe though? It isn't nearly as tempting as the spellcaster hit blue ring.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43248 would be easy enough to get though, and that would definitely be better than that dps ring he's running.

[proudft]

Those Stoneguards are routinely under 15g at the AH too, so they're nice and cheap.  On our awesome server, anyway.

[Paelos]

Yeah it's a druid ring, but the dude's using a 74 quest reward dps ring. Anything is better. The green would be fine too.

[Gobbeldygook]

I didn't even look at the spec until now, but there are a few glaring errors. He didn't take improved thunderclap, which is one of your best AE threat generators, and he specced into improved spell reflect which nobody uses in pve.

Imp spell reflect is defensible from two limited PVE perspectives.  First, if you genuinely want to absolutely max-out your mitigation, it does let you sometimes resist spells.  He's definitely not approaching tanking from that perspective given some of this other choices; I'd guess he's going for maximum rage efficiency.  The second situation is malygos phase 2.  It works vs the arcane blasts the scions pelt your raid with.  You can take advantage of this depending on strategy.

It's still a bad build that isn't optimized for any task whether that be mitigation, threat, main-tanking, or off-tanking.

[Ingmar]

I think he's just speccing the way all new tanks tend to spec; they spend points in their tanking tree until they run out of stuff that looks good to them, and then they move on to other trees. All in all this guy just mostly sounds inexperienced. He's actually wearing defense gear for the most part, etc., knew enough to snag the 5% parry in arms, etc. I've seen much worse projects.

[Rasix]

Woo, new kind of bad group today.  Within 5 seconds of joining I was called a "faggot" and told that my guild sucks by the officer of a johnny-come-lately raid guild (the other 4 members of the group).   If it were something other than H VH, I just would have bailed.   I still out dps'd those l33t raiders.  Heh.

Of course, the guild statement isn't totally inaccurate; just rude.

[Ingmar]

You're more patient than me, I would have been out of there immediately.

[Chimpy]

OMG +12 stam to legs? Really?

[Sjofn]

Woo, new kind of bad group today.  Within 5 seconds of joining I was called a "faggot" and told that my guild sucks by the officer of a johnny-come-lately raid guild (the other 4 members of the group).   If it were something other than H VH, I just would have bailed.   I still out dps'd those l33t raiders.  Heh.

Of course, the guild statement isn't totally inaccurate; just rude.

How ... weird. I mean, even if I thought a guild sucked so strongly that I would have to tell the person I just picked up to fill out my group, I would wait until the group was finished. It just seems a special kind of rude to OPEN the group with "I think you are TEH GAY, which I think is bad, and also your guild sucks."

This reminds me of a time I left a PUG because one of the people in my group (the group leader, natch) kept saying "fag" and "gay" every other word, but the real capper was when our healer ditched and he complained he had about as much chance finding a girl to rape him as a replacement healer. I felt bad, because the other two people left were nice enough, but man, that one guy was a huge douche.

[SurfD]

One of my former guildies joined a new guild.  I ran 1.5 nights with them.  They brought four tanks to Naxx, one of every spec, and then ran a DK and druid tank for Patch.  That's right, they ran a two-tank strat when they brought FOUR tanks and equally importantly the wrong two.  DKs and druids are much better at DPSing in their tank specs than protadins or prot warriors.  Convinced they were retarded beyond redemption, I rejected them.

He reported last night that they've successfully killed Sarth 25 3-d and yet still act surprised and angry when their Immortal attempts are ruined by melee dying every week on patch.

Sorry if this is a bit of a necro, grabbing something from a page or two back, but I am a bit confused.

How exactly does one run a 2 tank 25 man Patchwerk, and still keep mele dps alive?

From my understanding of Patch, in 25 man, you are REQUIRED to have 3 tanks if you want your mele to survive (1 Main tank, and 2 hateful tanks).  Reason being that hateful strike is designed to target the 2 people in position 2 and 3 on the aggro table who are in mele range, whom it then switches between based on Highest HP.

Only having 2 people "tanking" would mean 1 main tank, and 1 hateful tank, which would mean that you would have Mele DPS eating hatefuls every couple of seconds?

[Chimpy]

iirc, if the hateful tank is healed up fast enough after each hateful, then he will take all of them. I also vaguely remember that it is not position on the aggro list as much as highest HP+high threat, so any time a hateful lands when the soaker is below the health level of the MT should hit the MT.

[K9]

Yup, Patch hateful strikes the person with the highest current HP who is 2nd or 3rd on his threat list. If you use a geared Druid or DK as a soak tank they can take one or two hatefuls before their HP even gets below that of the next melee. It does require some very tight healing though.