Bad Groups

[Xuri]

When I end up in heroic Azjol-Nerub on my rogue, I consequently ignore/decline any requests to do the "vanish trick" on Hadronox, since it's clearly an exploit. More often than not, this results in some of the other group members going insane with profanities, name-calling and sometimes even vote-kicks. When this happens and they fail to vote-kick me, I'll have to be careful the rest of the instance because the tanks will try to "let me" take aggro, while the healers will avoid healing me. Great fun.

[Rendakor]

When that happens, Tricks the healer. Since the tank's ignoring the mob you're on, he'll have no threat and it'll go right for the healer.

[Paelos]

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. 

Anybody who bitches about speed to the tank is a fuckstick. Especially if everyone is alive.

[fuser]

Anybody who bitches about speed to the tank is a fuckstick. Especially if everyone is alive.

This a million times.

Still leveling my warrior, and I really have a hatred on for DPS demanding us to go faster. There are a few exceptions but nothing pisses me off more them demanding/or in most aspects they aggro to pull faster. At the end of a run it never ever fails to see the dolt do 10-15% of overall damage because they were busy looting etc.

I've taken to one warning to calm down, to never taunting mobs off of them and hopefully letting them die. Where I'm usually grinding out LFD with a healer buddy its quite effective. 

[Sjofn]

Most of the time for me, it's been the healer egging the tank on, if anyone is complaining about the speed. Whining we should skip bosses comes from anyone but the tank, the tank just goes where ever the fuck they want.

[Setanta]

Regardless of which tank I'm on my first few pulls will be to see how the healer performs. If their mana stays stable and my HP don't spike then I'll start pulling more. On the Pally I tend to limit myself to 6 (44K HP) because shield holds 4 (glyphed) and consecrate will hold the others... except for the retard rogue/DPS warrior/huntard that single targets any of the mobs I'm not directly hitting - in which case they die and I patiently explain to them why and that I'll save them if they single target my target and pull aggro - if not then they fend for themselves. On the druid... well, I had a good healer a few nights ago and we pulled every troll on the second highest level of H-Gundrak because the healer and I were bored. Currently on the warrior (79) I'm limiting myself to 5 mobs total - only 22K HP and not as comfortable as I am with the others.

I got told I was "old-school" last night because my warrior was doing LoS pulls in HoS... DK says don't worry, I'll DG the casters to you and then promptly miss-targets and pulls the wrong pack... after that we res him we go back to doing it the way I learned back in vanilla WoW :)

A few nights ago I got some angst when a friend who plays ele shammy used that stupid AoE knockback in frost wing. We'd just finished spiders and the humanoids had spawned, tossed avenger's shield to silence the caster, lined them all up and was about to start my rotation and bang - knock-back blows them all away and the caster is blown away the furthest so we can't group them up - I drop a "cut that shit out" in vent and then have to explain that it might make  pretty noise but it stuffs up my job.

[Sjofn]

Ingmar has been tanking with me this entire expansion and he STILL forgets I can DG stuff to us.

[Ivanneth]

I got told I was "old-school" last night because my warrior was doing LoS pulls in HoS

Being called "old school" is a compliment, IMO. You draw experience from a time when you had to use forethought on each pull or else you end up with adds and likely a wipe. I remember just how touchy some of the trash pulls in Scholomance were before they nerfed the place. I don't think there's anyplace that's like that in WoW anymore. Not that it's a bad thing.

[SurfD]

I got told I was "old-school" last night because my warrior was doing LoS pulls in HoS

Being called "old school" is a compliment, IMO. You draw experience from a time when you had to use forethought on each pull or else you end up with adds and likely a wipe. I remember just how touchy some of the trash pulls in Scholomance were before they nerfed the place. I don't think there's anyplace that's like that in WoW anymore. Not that it's a bad thing.

Ahh the fond memories of 2 hour Strath clears in a 10 man group, where you could be expected to wipe, or almost wipe, at least once every 15 or 20 minutes.

[Chimpy]

One thing about the old days of "raiding" scholo/strath/LBRS: I met a lot of good people back then (and a lot of bad). I was also able to get a reputation for being good at my class (hunter) and not a douchebag.

Now sure, that was when there was no one parading around in full purples (maybe 1 in 20 people even had a purple item) but the game lost something when you could no longer pug stuff with 10 that was doable (if considerably harder) and chill a bit and have fun. Kara and Z'A were never really puggable in the same fashion.

[Rendakor]

ICC 10 with the 30% buff is pretty PUG-able; at least the first 6 or so. Even if no one's been there before, DBM and/or a minute or two on wowwiki per fight will get you that far.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Kara was certainly puggable, and ZA was just more strict with mechanics (damn you, Jan'alai, for requiring a pally tank). I did 3 timers in a pug. Wiped on Jan'alai or we would've gotten the 4th.

And of course, the hardest of the first four bosses was the one with a drop I needed (resto shield), which he never did drop.

And yeah, ICC is certainly puggable these days.

[Chimpy]

In Greens and a smattering of Blues?

I'm sorry, but with all the talk I hear about this "gear score" term (something that came about long after I quit) it is obvious that there is a difference between how the game is now and how it was then. And "being puggable" does not mean that doing an instance tuned for 10 people with 10 people you don't always run with is remotely the same.

The correlation to your "Such and Such is so puggable" would be "Scholomance was puggable 5 man before they nerfed it." Running 10 man scholo/strath/LBRS was an entirely different animal in what is effectively an entirely different game. No "reading of strats" or "boss mods" or "gear score" were needed. You grabbed a tank, a healer or two, and a bunch of DPS and you went. Who cares if the mage didn't wear shoes or the rogue was using a green dagger with +spirit on it.

[Rendakor]

I don't understand your argument. People with a 5k GS (which is easily obtainable via ICC 5ms and triumph badges) can PUG the first 6 bosses of ICC10 with relative ease. The bar for entry is higher now, because the average WoW player knows more about the game, gear, etc. than he did in vanilla.

[Sjofn]

He's saying you can't grab 9 other random people and just get on your bikes and go. Which you can't.

[Azazel]

Very true. And on my server, apparently the only way you can get uinto a PUG ICC is to have 5.8 GS and all the achievements. So it kind of works against you if you would like to see all the content...

[Chimpy]

He's saying you can't grab 9 other random people and just get on your bikes and go. Which you can't.

Thank you.

[Shrike]

Very true. And on my server, apparently the only way you can get uinto a PUG ICC is to have 5.8 GS and all the achievements. So it kind of works against you if you would like to see all the content...

Which, on the surface, seems to be true of Whisperwind. Although, I suspect that after an hour in /trade looking for those elusive players with 264/277 gear and bored enough to drag your sorry ass through an ICC10 run, they relax the moronic conditions a bit. Not that I have any personal experience of such, since I generally got in arguments with the dumbass forming the raid over my complete lack of GS-fu (What's my GS? I don't know. Who cares? It's a number. Make one up).

[Ironwood]

It's the same on my server ;  you can't get into ICC without the achievements.

Which, to me, is a massive annoyance.  I'd quite like to get the achievements so that I could go get the achievements.


 

[Chimpy]

My kind of "pug raid of yesteryear" was more like a playground basketball game where you just wanted to have fun and play.

The new definition of "pug raid" is, apparently, the kind where your gym teacher sets up a game and the stakes are that the winning team gets out of the mile-run at the end of the week so you MUST HAVE THE BEST TO WINS.

[Rendakor]

Since everyone here seems to have a tough time getting groups, a few suggestions: finding ICC PUGs is easiest when Marrowgar is the weekly. A lot of people will form more casual runs then simply for the frost badges, and they'll typically go at least first 4 so you'll have an achievement to link next time. If your server does GDKP runs, you can usually get in those without experience if you've got enough gold. Finally, if you can heal (or tank) you'll obviously have a much easier time finding groups.

Maybe my server is an anomaly; getting PUGs has always been reasonably easy as long as you're not willfully difficult (FUCK GS!), very poorly geared, in a guild of bads, or known to be retarded.

[Xanthippe]

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 seen it work successfully most of the time  (say, 4 out of 6 or something like that).  But everybody has to have done it before, I think.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

My server must be more generous than yours in acceptance into pugs then... my first ICC10 (not a guild run, either) was with a 4.5k GS, still wearing a piece or two of T6-ish gear. I don't think I was a very good healer, either. Didn't know how to gem, at that point. Turalyon must just be an exceptional server 

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Paladin tank (hello, 15% run speed!) in H UP pulled from the first boss to the second without stopping, outran me, and died. I told him to slow down twice during his mad jaunt, and he ignored me, then told me to keep up better when he died. Shortly thereafter, he died again. With me standing by, /cackling to my heart's content.

Tanks like this infuriate me... I hope the first time they overpull in Cata they get cut to pieces, while I run for the door /cackling to my heart's content.

This was before 4.0.1 though.

[Simond]

From someone else, somewhere else:

Had a druid in my UK keep run bitching that blizzard had fucked up and bugged the shit out of Tree of Life, because he kept dropping out of the form and it had a 3 minute cooldown.
/sigh

[dd0029]

What is the deal with leveling tanks in VH?  Twice in a row I got thrown in a random with clueless tanks.  The first one was a pally who could not seem to grasp the concept of the waves even after 18 of the damn things.  This idiot would just stand around after each portal closed.  Then, to make things more awesome, we get both of the tough bosses, Xevozz and Zuramat.  "Fortunately" the ethereal was first and the druid healer was really good, so we only wiped once.  And two casters made Zuramat burnable.  Second was last night.  This was a "wonderful" DK who also had no clue about the portals, but at least seemed to clue in to the concept.  However, he went AFK after the second boss and never came back.     Fortunately we randomly had a Kingslayer pally show up as the healer for a non heroic VH and he managed to heal tank most of the instance while randomly shifting between Holy and Ret for no apparent reason.

[Ivanneth]

I've been a bit overwhelmed by all of the changes since the patch, so I've just focused on my favorite char: disc priest. A friend and I will play tank/healer in LFD for instant queues and to cut down on the impact the inevitable random retards we get have on the group - it's nice to know for certain that the healer and tank will be competent and reasonably geared.

With that said, since the patch there's been a lot of ping-ponging of mobs between my tank friend and some of the DPS who haven't "got it" yet that agro can't be ignored anymore. I've had almost no trouble healing through their foolishness until my buddy can taunt the mob back, but last night an elemental shaman managed to get himself killed when I got feared out of line of sight. He reincarnated right back up and I healed/buffed him immediately and we moved on as if it had never happened. He never said a word. Chances are he was just pissed that the HEALS didn't save his dumb ass, because that seems to be the usual sentiment, but I like to think he stayed quiet because he was embarrassed that he got himself killed.

[Sjofn]

Whenever I die as DPS, even if it is not actually my fault (I often die because some overgeared tank decides to pull four packs of AE damage doing mobs, which kills my rogue in about three seconds), I don't say anything because it seems pointless to do so. If it's a good healer, they already feel a little bad I died or know they couldn't do anything to save me, if it's a bad healer, my complaint would bounce off their skull anyway. If it's my fault I'll sometimes acknowledge it. If it's basically the tank's fault, I extra know there's no point to saying anything because 99% of chainpulling tanks are assholes. 

[Ginaz]

I got kicked from a pug LFG HHoS, as a tank, for asking people not to pull mobs.  Call me crazy, but thats the tank's job, imo.

[Hawkbit]

Used to be the hunter's job.  I stopped playing my hunter when I could no longer pull for groups.  (was a monk in EQ too...)

[Ingmar]

I've never let hunters pull, it was never their 'job' IMO.

If some random guy decides he wants to pull in a dungeon I'm running, he gets one "hey stop that, let the tank pull". If he keeps doing it, he gets a vote kick, if the vote kick fails they get to wait for a new tank. (Probably not for very long, sure, but on top of having routes and orders I like to use through an instance, as a warrior tank I have rage management that affects when and how I pull and I don't feel like scrambling to save people who can't wait an extra 10 seconds to pull that next group.)

[Sjofn]

Used to be the hunter's job.  I stopped playing my hunter when I could no longer pull for groups.  (was a monk in EQ too...)

It was never REALLY the hunter's job. Hunters just really badly wanted it to be. You did occassionally pull as a hunter but it was never a straight up JOB.


EDIT: And yeah, once I started tanking, I became a big fan of "the tank pulls unless there's something completely weird about the coming fight."

[Hawkbit]

A hunter pulling MC was a lot easier than the tank.  We had better range, mark - all the things to prep the pull.  I didn't even dps - I would just go get things to kill for the raid. 

[Chimpy]

A hunter pulling MC was a lot easier than the tank.  We had better range, mark - all the things to prep the pull.  I didn't even dps - I would just go get things to kill for the raid. 

Pet pulling > anything for MC.

But for 5 mans, it was always the tank's job unless it was some of the wacky double freezing trap shenanigans we would pull when we didn't have the right CC (like running scholo without a priest, for instance).

FD was the main reason people let hunters pull at all I think. And usually it was for the one time out of 50 where FD resisted and you got splattered so they could laugh and say "payback is a bitch" for all the times you got out of dying in wipes.

[Azazel]

FD was the main reason people let hunters pull at all I think.

This. It was part of the EQ culture that WoW inherited early on.