Bad Groups

[Morat20]

I've been there. I just can't decide on a skin I like. I had a bird pet once, and it annoyed me. Always flapping around, in my face.

[Sjofn]

I don't mind the birds, but the serpent (just the run of the mill serpent, not the silly wind serpent) was pretty unobtrusive when I had one.

[Rendakor]

I'm a fan of spiders, personally.

[Soulflame]

I always wanted to like spiders, because, you know, SPIDER, but they always sucked.

[Shrike]

I've been there. I just can't decide on a skin I like. I had a bird pet once, and it annoyed me. Always flapping around, in my face.

That's the whole point of that pet. Get in peoples' faces, block their vision, and annoy the hell out of them. Works pretty well in PvP.

[Lantyssa]

My old roommate used to gripe endlessly about my wind serpent blocking his view.

He wouldn't use anything but the basic warrior stance, and I got tired of pulling stuff off him with auto-attack, so I kept using it.  Pretty indigo and annoy my annoying roommate to no end?  Win-win.

[Sjofn]

Back when owls had the SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE attack (I think it lowered the target's AP or something, I forget), Fordel loathed my owl. He would try to forbid me from using it. :(

[apocrypha]

Naw, the 5 pet stable is for everyone, BM just gets a wider choice of pets.

The fifth slot is sorta pricey, so I wouldn't expect to get that unless you have a well-off main. It's like 100 or 150 gold or so.

Currently I'm trying to decide on a cunning pet -- it's all birds and stuff, and I can't really decide what I want. I have two ferocity pets and a tenacious pet, so...wanted to have one of each.

It's 150g, which I consider incredibly cheap. That's an hour of farming herbs/ore/dungeons/dailies/whatever at lvl 80.

I went and tamed this guy yesterday for a cunning pet. He's awesome (if a bit small), makes the most horrific skittery noises and shoots webs at people.

[Fordel]

Back when owls had the SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE attack (I think it lowered the target's AP or something, I forget), Fordel loathed my owl. He would try to forbid me from using it. :(

I hated that stupid bird, it would not only block LoS constantly, it would make that horrible noise. SKREE SKREE SKREE, the entire fucking instance!

[Sjofn]

Luna just wanted you to like her. 

[Shrike]

Back to bad groups.

Tonights winner is an old standby: healer that can't/won't heal. In this case it's can't. Kinda hard to heal when you die on about every pull. Human priest without a clue. The scene of the crime was HFoS. The tank wasn't exactly the most dialed in one I"ve ever seen, but the priest would die 20 yards away without a mob anywhere nearby. I suspect suicide by stupid.

Seriously, this guy was a death magnent. Even the few times he managed to survive whatever was killing him, he couldn't seem to find a heal button more than maybe once a minute. So it devolved on the enhance shaman and a bit of boomkin to keep the tank up (and a LoH at the last boss). Luckily, this was before 4.0. I doubt I'd have had the mana pool for the LHW spam on the Devourer. I think the spirit wolves did most of the killing there, since the priest (of course) and the hunter were dead inside 30 seconds.

Ugly and messy. Can't wait until 4.0...yeah...

[Selby]

The scene of the crime was HFoS. The tank wasn't exactly the most dialed in one I"ve ever seen, but the priest would die 20 yards away without a mob anywhere nearby.

Funny, I healed H-FoS tonight with almost the exact same problem, only the issue was the tank.  He would charge A mob, then ignore the rest.  So you get adepts casting their shadowbolts everywhere and the skeletons with their bones flying.  It was a wonder we didn't wipe and I managed to keep the entire raid alive (he also liked tanking with HIS BACK to the mobs).  So you get AoE casters, no aggro from tank on 2 of them, no interrupts from 3 classes who can do it, and lots of major damage going around.  I had to drink after every pull (but we never wiped).  If someone had given me any attitude about it... luckily they were all understanding that it was the tank who was sucking and not me.  I was suffering from a lack of teh purplez.

[Wolf]

Still, I'd like to see the healer that could pull anything off me with healing agro, or any DPS with decent aoe for that matter.

In unrelated news VE is retarded good atm and in serious need of a nerf, good thing it's the end of the expansion and noone cares. I can tank most of the trash in heroics just fine :)

[Azazel]

Is that a post about how awesome you are?

[Ivanneth]

I read here a lot, figure I might as well contribute a story -

Last night in Heroic Pit of Saron I was running through as dps on my Death Knight trying to get the 2h axe. I get grouped with a DK tank, disc priest, ret paladin and demo warlock. We zone in, buff up and I happen to notice that the tank is wearing a bunch of blue reputation vendor equipment. I say "happen to notice" because I rarely bother to inspect people anymore. I've run into far too many idiots with amazing gear and great players with crappy gear to draw conclusions based on what they have equipped (unless they're a warrior in spellpower plate or something). What I noticed was his helmet and shoulder graphics were what you'd normally see on someone who was leveling up. I get a little nervous about our chances of success, but I figure I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Everyone mounts up and we ride to the first pull.

The tank grabs the first stationary group and holds agro admirably. He fails to notice the patrol pathing up behind the healer however, who promptly goes *splat* and we wipe after taking out the skeletons. Everyone runs back to the instance, buffs up and rides back where the healer says "afk a minute" and then goes afk right in the path of the patrol that wiped us before. The tank then takes this opportunity to free slaves for the quest. He runs around releasing them and manages to accidentally body pull a skeleton. Amazingly this doesn't result in any deaths - the ret paladin decided to heal the tank, and I kept an eye on the patrol and death gripped it to the tank to save the healer. The healer comes back from afk and we move on.

The next set of pulls went smoothly, with the exception of the fact that we skipped the dragon rider mobs. It annoyed me that we spent more time waiting for them to path by then it would have taken to kill them, but whatever. We get to Garfrost, who we take down without a wipe, but the tank drops dead when Garfrost was at about 15% health. For the first time someone speaks, and it's the healer: "You gotta clear the stacks. 15 stacks is not cool" The tank says nothing, and then wanders around freeing slaves. He accidentally body pulls another skeleton and we kill it without difficulty.

We move on and get to the area with those abomination things that lob green goop onto the ground right before Krick and Ick. The tank pulls one and we end up with three adds due to a bad pull. I pop army of the dead, frost presence and off tank one of them. The tank grabs 2 and my army keeps another one busy. We manage to kill them all without a wipe. The healer did an awesome job keeping multiple targets alive. After a brief rest we take on the boss. We don't have too much trouble, except the tank died when the boss was at about 5% health due to not moving out of the explosive barrage. He gets rezzed and rebuffed. We all mount up for the ride up the hill that everyone does, but no one succeeds at.

Has anyone here ever seen the the "ride past the mobs on the slope" trick work? I have never seen it work. Someone is always too slow, or went afk without saying anything, or SOMETHING. It never, ever works and no one ever listens when I break my usual silence and suggest that we just kill the mobs instead of riding past.

So we wipe again, but the healer was soulstoned (thank you, warlock!) and managed to die away from the mobs (kickass healer!). He rezzes us, we rebuff and amazingly the tank decides he's going to start marking mobs. He puts a skull on one of the skeletal frost casters and pulls. The dps all go for the skull...but the tank doesn't. He put a skull over the mob and then didn't touch it (in retrospect this might have been intentional). Things go to hell after this, and I'm not sure if we wiped because the tank and healer dropped group, or if we were already wiping and they left when they realized it. After the wipe one of the dps drops too (the warlock). This leaves me and the ret paladin left. We chat a bit about what went wrong and requeue.

About 10 minutes later the replacements show up. We get a well geared warrior tank, disc priest and another warlock. We make it to the last boss without any trouble. As the scourgelord recites his over-acted speech, the warlock starts ranting, "NOBODY TOUCH THE BOSS BEFORE HE HITS THE TANK OR ELSE HE'LL BUG" and caps lock stressing the importance of it. So of course the tank lobs a heroic throw at the boss before he hits the ground. The boss stands there for a moment, and for a brief second it looked like he wasn't going to bug. Suddenly he teleports back up to his mount and proceeds to yell at us while flying in circles. The warlock reams the warrior for bugging the boss and drops group. Everyone else teleports out and back in again to reset the boss. We requeue, get another warlock and take out the boss no problem. Of course the axe doesn't drop, so I get to try this again tonight.

[Xeyi]

Back when owls had the SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE attack (I think it lowered the target's AP or something, I forget), Fordel loathed my owl. He would try to forbid me from using it. :(

That attack was fantastic for aoe tanking while soloing, I had a vulture that had the same skill from what I remember.   My guild forbid me from using it in alt raids, apparently it was all the tanks could hear :(

[fuser]

About 10 minutes later the replacements show up. We get a well geared warrior tank, disc priest and another warlock. We make it to the last boss without any trouble. As the scourgelord recites his over-acted speech, the warlock starts ranting, "NOBODY TOUCH THE BOSS BEFORE HE HITS THE TANK OR ELSE HE'LL BUG" and caps lock stressing the importance of it. So of course the tank lobs a heroic throw at the boss before he hits the ground. The boss stands there for a moment, and for a brief second it looked like he wasn't going to bug. Suddenly he teleports back up to his mount and proceeds to yell at us while flying in circles. The warlock reams the warrior for bugging the boss and drops group. Everyone else teleports out and back in again to reset the boss. We requeue, get another warlock and take out the boss no problem. Of course the axe doesn't drop, so I get to try this again tonight.

First warlock was right, seen it bug out a lot resulting in a wipe. Don't know how you got out of combat because the event always continues with rimefang still reaming you out with his attacks. Then 25-50% of the time it never resets.

Let him land, start moving and it won't bug.

[Sjofn]

Has anyone here ever seen the the "ride past the mobs on the slope" trick work? I have never seen it work. Someone is always too slow, or went afk without saying anything, or SOMETHING. It never, ever works and no one ever listens when I break my usual silence and suggest that we just kill the mobs instead of riding past.

NO, I have never seen this work EVER and I wish people would stop fucking doing it. You and I should form a vigilante group that goes around punching people who insist on doing that in the face.

[Selby]

Has anyone here ever seen the the "ride past the mobs on the slope" trick work? I have never seen it work.

I've done it multiple times, but only with guildies and ONCE with a PUG group.

[Fordel]

Back when owls had the SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE attack (I think it lowered the target's AP or something, I forget), Fordel loathed my owl. He would try to forbid me from using it. :(

That attack was fantastic for aoe tanking while soloing, I had a vulture that had the same skill from what I remember.   My guild forbid me from using it in alt raids, apparently it was all the tanks could hear :(

SKREE SKREE SKREE

[Azazel]

Has anyone here ever seen the the "ride past the mobs on the slope" trick work? I have never seen it work. Someone is always too slow, or went afk without saying anything, or SOMETHING. It never, ever works and no one ever listens when I break my usual silence and suggest that we just kill the mobs instead of riding past.

NO, I have never seen this work EVER and I wish people would stop fucking doing it. You and I should form a vigilante group that goes around punching people who insist on doing that in the face.

I've started countering it with "let's just kill them instead, something always goes wrong" and people seem to listen to that.

[Lt.Dan]

Has anyone here ever seen the the "ride past the mobs on the slope" trick work? I have never seen it work. Someone is always too slow, or went afk without saying anything, or SOMETHING. It never, ever works and no one ever listens when I break my usual silence and suggest that we just kill the mobs instead of riding past.

NO, I have never seen this work EVER and I wish people would stop fucking doing it. You and I should form a vigilante group that goes around punching people who insist on doing that in the face.

I've started countering it with "let's just kill them instead, something always goes wrong" and people seem to listen to that.

It's like bugging Hadronox.  Someone always asks but usually I'm the one that has to say "Recount says No" and links the dps stats to party chat.

[Lt.Dan]

I was the cause of a bad group last night.  I'm gearing up my off-off-spec bear tank and am going pretty well with gearscore around 4k.  My resto and boomie sets are both about 5.5k so of course I get HHOR as the random.  Needless to say it didn't go well and there was much wailing and whining from one of the dps after we wiped on the second wave leading up to the first boss.  It all ended amicably when I suggested they just votekick me.

I'm not sure I understand why the lfd tool looks at all your gear not the gear you're wearing.  Sure you could exploit it to get easier dungeons by wearing greens and switching in the instance but you can always group with a lower geared guildie and get the same result.

[Shrike]

Has anyone here ever seen the the "ride past the mobs on the slope" trick work?

Yeah, I've seen it work and even in a PuG no less, but usually you're spot on: recipe for disaster. The ONLY time it's worked is when the leader gets everyone on the same page before even getting near the ramp. Moslty, I'll usually stand my ground and insist on killing those bastards. It's just simpler and easier than friggin' around with the herding cats thing to get past those mobs.

Oh and bad groups again. Tonights episode takes place in HAN. Actually this one was going pretty well until the (50k hps) tank loses whatever few brains he might have had and jumps Hadranox with all his lttle friends still uneaten. I've only ever seen this work once and it was with a guild group with some seriously smokin' dps--and a shaman. This PuG was lacking on both the smokin' part (despite my DKs 8k+ on this encounter) and the shaman. Fail. Bitchfest on the tank who was almost properly abashed and once everyone settled down, we finished without anymore drama.

The moral of all this is on the wisdom of skipping bosses via exploits to save a few minutes. It an't a good idea. Almost invarably it casues a wipe and takes three times as long to do as just doing it right the first time.

[Rendakor]

I was the cause of a bad group last night.  I'm gearing up my off-off-spec bear tank and am going pretty well with gearscore around 4k.  My resto and boomie sets are both about 5.5k so of course I get HHOR as the random.  Needless to say it didn't go well and there was much wailing and whining from one of the dps after we wiped on the second wave leading up to the first boss.  It all ended amicably when I suggested they just votekick me.

I'm not sure I understand why the lfd tool looks at all your gear not the gear you're wearing.  Sure you could exploit it to get easier dungeons by wearing greens and switching in the instance but you can always group with a lower geared guildie and get the same result.

The reason it looks at all your gear is that it was originally implemented as a PVP solution; the gear check was there to create evenly matched battles instead of twinks vs noobs. In that context, it makes sense to view all of your gear owned, rather than let people sandbag and put on greens or greys til the queue pops then throw on their purples.

Why blizzard didn't change the system when they converted it to the dungeon finder, however...

[Shrike]

It's only Thursday and already a trifecta of fail in PuGs this week.

This time around it's HAN (again) and another tank issue. This one is all about (not) knowing the dungeons and fights therein (I'm a bit guilty of this myself on my tanks--but I've yet to wipe a group because I didn't know what the hell was going on). Initially, this looked easy enough. Healer is present and conscious. Tank is a warrior and has about 46k--wasn't 2/3hps when I spawned in, so at least he wasn't switching from fury right away. Rest of the dps was over 2k, which is a rarity anymore. I'm on my shaman, so poison shenanigans are covered.

Everything is OK up until Anub. Tank is a bit lazy on aggro. My shaman can pull it without trying too hard, but most stuff isn't around long enough for it to be an issue. What is an issue is the bozo has no clue how Anub works. You do NOT run his fat ass around like a hamster on crack. Pound is a cone with a castbar...tank doesn't get this. So he wipes the dps on the first pound because Anub is spinning like a dervish on meth and dps is trying like hell to avoid the front, but with no clue where he'll end up. Healer manages to stay up and after about 10 minutes, they kill him. Yep, that worked well. Tank never does get a clue when told, no you don't move that way on pound. Argues until group breaks up--free to perpetrate mayhem again out in PuGland. Christ, man, you had 46khps. You can eat pounds with no difficulty. Nope, insisted the boss had to be "moved around".  

[Azazel]

I'd just like to take this opportunity to reiterate that the biggest assholes I encounter in PUGs are invariably Bear-Druid-Tanks with 49-60k hp. Not every one of them is a complete fuckhead, but enough of them that everytime I get one of them, I take a few pulls to wonder if he's going to be a jackoff, a jackass, or actually okay.

And yes, lots and lots of alts being farmed through heroics now. I'm the top DPS in half or more randoms I get into no, and that simply shouldn't be, since I'm not especially well-geared. It's not that I'm amazing (I consider myself good, but not outstanding at this point), it's that the others don't have the pewpew anymore.

I did have a nice surprise yesterday when a 26k Pally tanked in heroic somethingorother One of the Uludar ones. I was immediately thinking "oh fuck, wipetime", and when I inspected him he had more than half blues, but he held aggro better than a lot of 46k tanks, and most of those jackass bears mentioned above. Damn fine player. 

[Sjofn]

It's nice to know my bear druid is a happy surprise to people, then. 

The worst thing for me when I'm on my rogue is when the tank and the healer have a fight over something. You can just tell all the DPSers are shuffling their feet and hope mommy and daddy stop fighting so we can finish the instance.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

I actually like having undergeared tanks (or more appropriately geared tanks, I should say) while healing (like your 26k pally, or the 22k I got in HHoS), as long as they know what they're doing. It's nice having to actually look at the screen and cast more than Earth Shield. Of course, if they suck I just leave as the heal-aggro mobs charge towards me. But the point is the same, appropriately geared the tanks make the heroic more fun, in my opinion.

[Chimpy]

Unless the game has changed drastically (which is probable), the high-geared ragebar tanks are proably having issues due to rage starvation due to avoiding most of the incoming damage. At least that is what happened the last 2 times there were end-tier raid geared tanks running 5 mans (and from everything I hear, the difference in gear available through badges is at least as high above the original 10 man gear from Naxx when comparing stuff like t6 to Kara gear).

[Ingmar]

I get rage on dodge/block/parry now so really it isn't bad this time around. I think the problem is more a lack of ability to judge what their dps or healers are going to be able to handle in terms of pull size and/or just being an asshole.

[Chimpy]

Like I said, I figured it was probable that they had changed it to something that didn't penalize people for getting better gear but I have not played in a looooong time and we were all still only slightly outgearing heroics at the time I quit.

[Azazel]

It's basically just choosing to be arseholes that's the issue. The aggro issues are mostly because they feel bulletproof (because they often are close to it) so they pull way more mobs than they can keep aggro on, so when the dps hits them with AE, or even a decent chunk of damage, mobs inevitably peel off and flatten the dps, since they can't pull aggro back fast enough.

It's the same thing that used to afflict higher-level cleric players back in EQ - they are in demand, so if they are geared on top of that they often just become arrogant dickheads/sociopaths if they already had those tendancies. Plus, you know, WoW players. There was the droodbear in trial of the champ that rolled need on everything he could, just because he was an arsehole. With 64k or so, I don't think he was getting quite that many upgrades.

Ah well, only what? 4 1/2 days more and it's all over anyway.

[Ironwood]

What is it with lower level characters pretending their Hardcore 6k GS raiders ?

Don't fucking pull more than 4 you asshole !  You're still wearing that shit you got in LBRS !

[Sjofn]

I'm not sure which pisses me off more, the tank who thinks that they can pull WAY MORE THAN THEY ACTUALLY CAN, or the healers who whine the tank should be pulling way more than the tank can hold aggro on and/or the healer can actually heal through.