Bad Groups

[Lantyssa]

Feral Druid yesterday got booted from heroic Violet Hold -- after two warnings -- because he was doing...60 DPS.

Sounds like the Shaman we had in UP that "didn't do trash".  The tank made sure to angle the final boss' attack at the guy so it killed him.

[Xuri]

Do druids need weapon-skill these days? I can't remember. If they do, maybe he had just gotten a new weapon which he had no weapon-skill for? *shrug*

Anyway, I had an interesting experience while tanking HoR (as feral druid, urk..) the other day, where the healer, after he failed to keep me alive during the trash-waves, said something along the lines of "u suck at tanking, ur not ready for this". The former may or may not be true, but the latter was kinda ironic seeing as how his own equipment was a horrible mix of epics, blues and greens that likely barely met the minimum requirements to even join the instance.

DPSers who sign up to random heroics the moment they ding 80 and are still decked out in greens and low-level blues are slightly irritating, but I can usually live with them since one sub-par DPS in a group of 5 usually doesn't matter much - but trying to heal (or tank) through the ICC heroic instances with the bare minimum amount of gear that is needed to be allowed to set foot in there, and then complaining about the tank (or healer) not able to stay alive (or keep you alive)? ARRRRRRRRRGHHHH.

[Ashamanchill]

No feral automatically are counted as having max weapon skill in whatever they are using, which considering that only staves and polearms are really itemized toward them, doesnt matter all that much. I'm guessing that the 60dps was coming from some mob hitting his thorns once or twice. That's the only explanation.

When I queue as a tank I have yet to have problems with a dungeon. Probably because I am way over geared, and always watch my healers mana with an innervate in my pocket. When I queue as a dps and risk getting a crummy tank, that's when the shit starts.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

He couldn't have been in travel form as it is only usable outside. And even if his weapon skill started at 1 and mattered, by the end of the instance it would have risen sufficiently to hit most times, and special abilities do their damage regardless of weapon skill if they hit. So... 60 dps is inconceivably bad. A healer's auto attack could do that. Did you look at recount to see the damage done by each ability?

[SurfD]

if it took my druid, stripped her naked, removed ALL of my talent points, shifted to cat and simply auto attacked a target dummy, i am pretty sure i could easily break 200 dps.  60 DPS is so low it is rediculous.

[Sjofn]

We had a DK decide to level his ... axe? in our heroic HoL (I think?) run the other night. I thought recount was broken until he said "lol just hit 202 skill." And I knew, I KNEW he would ask if we wanted to go again at the end (it was four of us, he was our token stranger). And he did not disappoint. <3 Ingmar and proudft's wife fled the scene without answering.

[Selby]

And he did not disappoint.

I hate this.  I usually get this on my mage when I've carried someone and almost 90% of the time when I am tanking on my DK.  Some people don't even ask and just queue it right back up.  Even with guild members who are horrible we still drop group and re-form elsewhere just because of how annoying and badly some people play.

I also consider it an insult to the rest of the party to be 80 and not have at least my weapon skill in the 390's.  I don't care if I just got a new shiny, I go level it up before I join an instance.

[Sjofn]

I think I started shooting my crossbow in instances around 370, but I was winning damage (I was toiling in the loser bracket with proudft and his wife's fresher 80's), so I didn't feel too bad. But yeah, I made sure I went out and shot shit to GET that high before actually using it.

As an aside, is it just me or do weapons skill up much faster in the upper range now? Getting to 400 from zero took me virtually no time at all.

[Morat20]

My dwarf hunter had used guns from 1 to 78 or so, when a blue bow dropped that was simply too huge an upgrade on my gun to ignore. So I needed it, told them I didn't have any arrows on me (true) and continued on. As soon as we killed the last boss, I flew to Grizzly Hills, and proceeded to go out  and...shot shit. Until I hit about 315 or so, and then went back to questing wherever I was.

Took fucking forever.

I leveled a two-handed axe I got in Tanaris, since I could swing and miss all damn day without getting hurt. :)

[Wolf]

just dinged 80 with my hunter, I was pretty amazed at how little it took to let me queue for the random heroic. When I dinged it wouldn't and I just bought the t9 headpiece and it let me queue for everything (including normal icc and totc). I still have my ilvl85 pants from Hellfire Ramparts :)

Now my leatherworker friend needs to wake up and I'll have plenty of gearscore

Can some hunter people take a look at this: http://www.wowhead.com/profile=21618112 - it's what I'm thinking will be fine to start pugging ICC with. Some pieces will never happen, but it's good to dream :)

[dd0029]

Had a pair of straight up bad tanks last night.  Both pallies oddly enough.  I've had really good luck with paladin tanks 'till now.  Anyway.  The first was not only woefully undergeared, but just terrible in general.  Thanks to someone pointing out the handy /gs command for gearscore, I found out he only had 226 defense and somehow got tossed in UP as the tank.  He also apparently didn't believe in using anything other than consecrate and the initial Captain America.  So, the lock somehow could not figure out why he kept dying.  The rogue would only auto attack for threat and I kept FD and MD on CD.  Poor bastard managed to get pasted on the worgen/werewolf statue thing on the second boss.  Somehow the priest was able to keep the rogue and I alive running around on that one and rez the pally before the third statue up.  We managed to get the boss down, but it took so long that we had a 10 stack of the roar thing so, 22k pally was at 12k hp by the end.  I bailed at the point, because even with the hot healer, there was no way that pally was going to be able to survive Skadi, much less Ymiron. 

Second was CoT.  I figured, cake walk.  Had a pally tank again.  Slightly undergeared considering current gear levels with "only" 30k health, but I used to do 20 minute runs with 20k tanks and much more poorly geared healers.  The timer was already a minute down when I showed up so we start running down.  The first wave is always in the same spot to the right.  We take off down the road and the pally inexplicably hares off to the left, gathers up a ton of zombies and proceeds to do who the fuck knows what with 'em.  I say, no over here and he's still fucking around with zombies.  He eventually figures out something is wrong so comes to join us and I figure out this guy is the other guy's slightly better geared mentor.  No seals, no judgments, no shield only consecrate and melee.  The AoE is enough to take things down fast enough that most of this is not a problem.  But I do notice that our tree is having some trouble keeping people up.  I think the nourish chain spam was somehow a failure.  I've never paid attention to trees, but isn't there usually something else?  So, Meathook comes up and things fall apart.  Two DPS die to mr no threat who, once the boss manages to die of boredom, goes haring off to his favorite corner again and I once again said fuck it and left.

[Paelos]

Fucking up CoS as a pally tank should mean you get your tank card taken. The place is almost entirely undead.

[Shrike]

Fucking up CoS as a pally tank should mean you get your tank card taken. The place is almost entirely undead.

+1. It's a playground for paladins.

I'd blame the lack of defense on a relatively recent trend in the O-fficial boards decrying the need for capped defense, since healers are geared enough now to "heal through anything", 5% chance of getting crit is "good enough", and stuff in heroics doesn't really hit all that hard. Um, yeah. If you're a 50k hps T10 warrior, tanking in your T10 dps gear for rage generation might fly with a good healer, but if you're anything short of that, cap your defense. I've seen a lot of tanks faceplant on largish pulls. None were ever def-capped. Even at 1%, back to back crits on any boss can drop your ass faster than your half-asleep healer can react to--especially if it's some boss that's primarly magic damage, like Mal'ganis. And it does happen even at .1%; ask me how i know...

I had some bad behavior in HCoS last night. Nothing really overt, but people just kept quitting. I was on my DK, so I was running as dps. Dps dropping was no big deal--I can cover any checks the tank might write in there. However, when the warrior gets pissed because I have to keep policing up adds he can't hold aggro on, well, tank-boy, you suck. Then the healer quits, too, since he's tired of the piss-poor tank. I think we went through two whole groups worth of people to get that place done.

[Wolf]

that lower braket thing you mentioned? I'm not seeing it. Which is good I guess :)

I've been to three heroics since I dinged, first had an irritating DK tank that wouldn't stop complaining about my DPS, even though there was a 6kGS ret pally ripping through HOL. Ignored him at the end of the run for good measure, decent tank though. Second had two goons DK tank and Shammie healer, that I guess were badge farming for gems or whatever, because both had precious little 264 items on them, most were 277.

The third had a 6k Shammy healer and a 60k health bear tank. I thought we were golden, than the bear died on a 20 odd mob pull in hos. Guess he didn't notice I was his top DPS with my hairloom bow. I still don't think he should've died but the shaman fell asleep on the previous couple of pulls. They both quit the group after that. I don't know if I'm lucking out, but I'm getting some very decently geared people to boost me :)

[Morat20]

I dropped into Marudon run (the waterfall one) in my mid-40s as a mage. I was grouped with...4 shaman, I think. Might have been three Shamans and a pally tank.

It was fucking totem central and fun as hell. :) Not really a bad group, per se....

[Shrike]

One of the most entertaining groups I was ever in was a 5 hunter group. Bosses were a little ticklish, but the trash died like, well, dogs. This was back in vanilla, of course.

Similarly, I was on my ret pally once and got drafted to heal in ZF for four hunters. That was pretty fun, though I felt like a fifth wheel for most of the run. Fun to watch anyway.

I remember a semi-PuG Gruul run in TBC where we had like six shamans in the raid. Talk about a totem field! It was interesting since every individual group in the raid had its own shaman (or two). You'd see little clusters of totems with little clusters of people next to them. Ah, that's G1. Over there is G2...ah, 8 totems there, must be the tank group. It was like identification lights on airplanes or something.

[apocrypha]

I think the nourish chain spam was somehow a failure.  I've never paid attention to trees, but isn't there usually something else?

Yeah, there really is. I rarely use nourish outside of ICC. Rejuv, Lifebloom & Wild Growth can all be ticking away on most of a 5-man group 90% of the time without having a noticeable effect on my mana. Then you've got Swiftmend handy for an instant dump onto anyone getting below 80% and even Regrowth to drop on a tank for some extra HoTing on a tough fight.

Nourish is a great spell but spamming it in 5-mans is not a good way to tree heal.

[Ashamanchill]

I've also been in a multi hunter group, only this one was a 9 hunter (out of 25) ToC run. It seems most, or all of them, had guns instead of bows, because it sounded like the battle of the Bulge in there.

[Morat20]

One of the most entertaining groups I was ever in was a 5 hunter group. Bosses were a little ticklish, but the trash died like, well, dogs. This was back in vanilla, of course.

I went to blackfathom  with my mage, back in Vanilla. Two mages, a warlock that had just seen the instance go grey to him, and a priest with a warrior tank. Warrior bails the instant we all walk into the instance. (Fucker). So I check my guild (Back when I was in one) and we snag another preist.

And proceed to do the entire instance with the warlock's pet tanking. Both healers worked their asses off to keep it alive, but between a warlock and two mages, we fucking burned down everything. It was a mess of mass fears, frost novas, and explosions.

Probably the most fun instance I'd ever run.

[Arrrgh]

One of the most entertaining groups I was ever in was a 5 hunter group. Bosses were a little ticklish, but the trash died like, well, dogs. This was back in vanilla, of course.

I went to blackfathom  with my mage, back in Vanilla. Two mages, a warlock that had just seen the instance go grey to him, and a priest with a warrior tank. Warrior bails the instant we all walk into the instance. (Fucker). So I check my guild (Back when I was in one) and we snag another preist.

And proceed to do the entire instance with the warlock's pet tanking. Both healers worked their asses off to keep it alive, but between a warlock and two mages, we fucking burned down everything. It was a mess of mass fears, frost novas, and explosions.

Probably the most fun instance I'd ever run.

They should give every pet class a tank pet that could handle heroics. It would do away with the tank shortage and give everyone more reasons to hate hunters, thus shutting up their whining about DKs.

[Morat20]

They should give every pet class a tank pet that could handle heroics. It would do away with the tank shortage and give everyone more reasons to hate hunters, thus shutting up their whining about DKs.

Playing a hunter has just broken me. My DK has a permanent ghoul (well, she's also only 59) and I'm looking forward to my water elemental. (I don't have a warlock, though). It just seems to....cave manish to fight yourself, when you can have a dedicated meatshield up front.

[Der Helm]

This guy tanked the Scarlet Monestary: Graveyard ...

It was ... interesting... 

[Selby]

This guy tanked the Scarlet Monestary: Graveyard ...

It was ... interesting... 

Think he was going for the "one point in everything would be AWESOME!" spec?

[Morat20]

This guy tanked the Scarlet Monestary: Graveyard ...

It was ... interesting... 

Wow. That's...sure...something, right there.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

This guy tanked the Scarlet Monestary: Graveyard ...

It was ... interesting... 

WTF. At least he has Improved Rend maxed out for the leet bleed ticks! 

[Sheepherder]

Even at 1%, back to back crits on any boss can drop your ass faster than your half-asleep healer can react to--especially if it's some boss that's primarly magic damage, like Mal'ganis. And it does happen even at .1%; ask me how i know...

Magic damage dealt by mobs cannot crit.

WTF. At least he has Improved Rend maxed out for the leet bleed ticks! 

Maxing Improved Rend is optimal for Arms specs.

[Shrike]

Rend can help with threat on protection, but it's realy about a protection warrior with a shitty, unfocused spec. Rend is the least of your concerns when spending talent points below 40.

Point isn't whether magic can crit or not; melee sure as hell can. Point is too much incoming damage and the healer can't keep up for whatever reason. Lot of magic--unmitigated--plus some back to back crits, dead tank.

[SurfD]

Yeah, magic can't crit, however it also can not be dodged, blocked or parried, so usually the only thing standing between you and a bigass magic hit coming on the back of a mele crit is your talented passive X% damage reduction for being in tank stance / form / whatever.

I still remember a good old "WTF" moment in naxx 25, when we were doing the "Momma said Knock you out" achieve, and our warrior tank gets 1 shot crit shortly after the boss enrages (she hit him for something like 3k more damage then he had total health, absolutely nothing would have saved him).  Turns out, Anub had dropped a piece of loot that was somewhat of an upgrade for him (even un-enchanted) and he had immediately equipped it, however it had dropped him to something like 2 points under the defense cap.  Unfortunately, that 0.001% chance to be crit or whatever cought up with him.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Even at 1%, back to back crits on any boss can drop your ass faster than your half-asleep healer can react to--especially if it's some boss that's primarly magic damage, like Mal'ganis. And it does happen even at .1%; ask me how i know...

Magic damage dealt by mobs cannot crit.

WTF. At least he has Improved Rend maxed out for the leet bleed ticks! 

Maxing Improved Rend is optimal for Arms specs.

Well, if he was Arms... sadly he's something else entirely

[Sheepherder]

Point isn't whether magic can crit or not; melee sure as hell can. Point is too much incoming damage and the healer can't keep up for whatever reason. Lot of magic--unmitigated--plus some back to back crits, dead tank.

A fury warrior with 40k health and 50% armor has twice the effective health required by a heroic.  If you cannot react fast enough as a healer, you are a failure.

[Azazel]

Feral Druid yesterday got booted from heroic Violet Hold -- after two warnings -- because he was doing...60 DPS.

Sounds like the Shaman we had in UP that "didn't do trash".  The tank made sure to angle the final boss' attack at the guy so it killed him.

Why would you keep him? I've found that when in overall bad groups, the best thing to do is bail and leave them to their own devices. When you have one player who is a giant douche, kick them and get a rep. I was in a  dungeon last night - the ZD one with the Tyrannosaurus - and the tank was undergeared (wearing scattered greens & blues with a few purples, 26k hp in bear form - my mage with the same buffs had 21k), a poor player and a mouthy tool to the DK, the healer and myself. The second time he want AFK he said "DK change to frost and tank the trash till i get back" So after about 30 seconds I gave him a kick vote and he was gone. The rest of the group was solid, and it's not like I've been in groups where DKs or Pallies haven't tanked trash when something has happened, but add to that a giant douche that we were carrying, and it's fuck off dickhead time. New tank was great, and we did another run with 4/5 of the group that was superfast.

Out of interest, why do the woefully undergeared try to tank or heal heroics, anyway? As in, why not dual spec to DPS and gear up that way before going healer or tank? Actually, I think I just guessed the answer. Instant queue times?

[Rendakor]

Got it in one.

[proudft]

Feral Druid yesterday got booted from heroic Violet Hold -- after two warnings -- because he was doing...60 DPS.

Sounds like the Shaman we had in UP that "didn't do trash".  The tank made sure to angle the final boss' attack at the guy so it killed him.

Why would you keep him? I've found that when in overall bad groups, the best thing to do is bail and leave them to their own devices. When you have one player who is a giant douche, kick them and get a rep.

I was the tank in question.    

It was before the teleporting new-guys-to-the-party went in and we were like 2/3s through before this all came out.  I figured it would take more time for a new person to catch up with us than for us to just finish.

[SurfD]

Depends.  I have seen "woefully undergeared" people who actually know their class preform REALLY well.   It's the combination of Woefully undergeared +  Just Bad At The Game that makes your pug runs a living hell.

Case in point, I just did a heroic Culling of Strath run, with a warrior tank who had a 2500 gear score (he was in like blues and greens with Heirloom pieces).  He had less hp then my DK.  He stomped the hell out of that place, holding aggro against people that out geared him by EASILY double his gear score.

[Azazel]

Ok fair enough, I have only been back for a little over a week so no idea when each incremental change happened (or even what the increments were).