Happy Groups!

[Kalliope]

Ran heroic Deadmines with a guild group from Argent Dawn tonight. I was the odd woman out as the healer on my priest. Was very glad to see they weren't like my last 4 guildie run. I was patient as they worked out fight breakdowns and such for the warrior, who hadn't done much of the instance before, and they in turn stuck with me through Ripsnarl's brutal healing (and helped by changing up what they were doing too, even though I was sure it was me that time). Not only that, but their casters both passed on Cookie's wand, which was the biggest upgrade for me, but would also have been an upgrade for the warlock. I was absolutely stunned by such generosity, especially since Aisling's roll luck had been playing well on the blues from previous bosses as well (which I didn't even realize until afterwards, when I had a chance to go through my bags; I was tunneling healing pretty hard). I don't think I expressed nearly enough gratitude to all of them, but I hope the valor points were enough!

[Azunara]

Oh huh. I never looked back at this thread to reply. But since you brought it up...

Maxwell is Maxwell because I didn't like his given name, (Izzikrill. Made me think seafood.) so I decided I'd introduce him as Maxwell, call him that, etc, until it stuck that his name was Maxwell.

[sXe Angel]

Ran norm HoO a couple nights back with my hunter, a fox I was trying to lvl as pet for most of the run (my black one, named Mulder, and we all had a good laugh at the X-Files joke there), druid doing dps, pally tank, shammie heal, and a mage rounding out the dps. The tank was new to the instance, but between myself and the healer we managed to explain the big points in the major fights so we were doing decently. We even went for 'fire Marrogar' during the run, and were cracking jokes about 'Bonestorm' during the fight in party chat. Once we got to the upper level, we went for the sun/fire boss first, which technically is the end of the dungeon. Mage left right after that, but the druid asked if we could take a shot at the other three as she needed them for the quest. Things had been going so well we figured that we'd take a shot at getting a full clear. The tank hadn't done any of them before, but was willing to wait a few moments before we took on each boss to ask questions about the upcoming fight.

Being one dps down made the final three tougher than they would have been if we'd had a full group, and I had to swap Mulder out for Punk, as I lvl'd him to 85 first and keep him in my first slot during randoms for emergencies. We had a couple close calls on the plant and magic bosses, but managed to take them down. One left, the shadow/summoning boss, toughest fight of them all just because it's so easy to get overwhelmed by adds, and being one dps light the boss wasn't going to get dropped as quickly as he should have been. I send my loyal worg in with growl on to tank the boss, while our pally was gonna do his best to grab the adds and heal himself to buy us as much time as possible to burn the boss down. First attempt one of those random party d/c's hits, and party gets wiped as a result.

As I'm logging back in, muttering all sorts of curses under my breath about how WoW always d/c's at the worst times, I see all of us in ghosty form running back to the dungeon entrance and we are talking in party all determined to prove that the wipe was just a fluke and we can do this. We get back in the dungeon, heal and buff up, then go at it again, second time we manage to drop the final boss and everyone starts jumping around doing happy dancing as we're congratulating each other on a job well done. If it hadn't been so danged late and everyone sleepy and casting longing looks at their beds we would have rolled a few more. As it was, we headed off to bed happy, and I was wishing we could have cross-realm friends list that we could form a party with for future randoms.

[Kalliope]

Ha, I love when groups really pull together like that! Even though certain fights are easy with a complete group or a better geared group, there's a certain satisfaction you get when you can down a boss with a pug that has the odds stacked against it.

[MeAjur]

Recently I ran some dungeons on my disc priest to get her to lvl75 so she could learn Cataclysm enchanting. It's probably a measure of the kind of groups I usually get that my idea of a working group is "we're alive... or at least most of us" but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a group that not only stayed alive but also took little damage. As a healer that last part was the most important part to me (true I'm sure some of it was due to all the PW:Ss I was throwing up). There were only two minor downsides: we were going through AN slower than I had gotten used to on other toons (due to all of us being 70s and mostly in quest gear), and it was AN. The downsides weren't strong enough to complain about it, though. At the end of it the tank queue'd us again right away. I thought to myself that's just the way this player is, just wants to run repeatedly and quickly; which was fine by me since I was using the dungeon finder as an easy way of getting xp. We got AN again... and a third time... fourth... fifth...

Turns out I wasn't the only one who didn't like AN. The tank didn't. At least two of the three dps didn't. But why did they all stay? The dps warrior said it all: "the tank and the healer are both good, only reason i'm still here, i hate this place"

And that's when it occured to me that I had been in worse groups that day, and that this group was in fact pretty good.

[Kalliope]

Well, last night's heroic Vortex Pinnacle run was....interesting. Had the first healer drop after zoning in, then the second healer dropped in the middle of the first pull ("I was just here and the last tank sucked!"). The THIRD healer dropped after the third pull (supposedly for a baby, but he'd just gotten the rep he needed....). The fourth healer (druid) stayed, but then the tank said he had to go after the fifth pull and didn't drop group. Hell of a way to kick off an instance, right? The feral druid, who had already been covering for many of the tank's failings, was pretty ticked off at that point; the tank was a guildie of his and apparently, this sort of thing had happened to him four times within the past week. I do hope he finds a new guild; he deserves better. >_< At any rate, despite the terrible terrible rotating healers and tanks, the next tank (pally) joined before we even had a chance to pull the next trash pack, and that was the solid group for the rest of the instance. The shadow priest was unhappy with her dps, but we were running a melee train at that point, so it really wasn't a big deal. Even the disgusting pulls with the cat people went pretty well, despite our lack of long-lasting CC. Everyone knew their roles and their characters. It was a good group. ^_^

[GormanGhaste]

I love this thread!

[Kalliope]

Heroic Lost City on my resto shammy - err, the dwarf one. Three guys from Ragnaros (prot pally, marks hunter, shadow priest) and a feral druid. I knew it was going to be a different sort of run when the priest immediately commented on my shammy being a cute dwarf! It wasn't intended to be anything more than a simple statement of truth (indeed, my shammy is far cuter than my dwarf priest and always has been) and the whole thing left me with warm fuzzies. I found myself wondering which white lion the hunter had tamed, but didn't get up the courage to ask. The poor feral druid ate some major damage on the first couple of bosses and went down (he admitted he wasn't playing well as he'd had a long day and I felt bad that I couldn't keep him up regardless of where he was standing), but he took everything in stride, which was nice. It all worked out in the end, cause he was fine on the other bosses. Overall, the run was quiet, but smooth. I got hugs at the end, which was highly unusual and ultimately why I'm sharing this. Pugs giving hugs = <3

Yay for happy, drama-free heroics!

[Sarayana]

Hehe, ya gotta love a person that can appreciate the inherent cuteness of a dwarf.

I just had an awesome series of dungeons over the last couple of hours. I was tanking on my lowbie warrior, and over the whole time we only switched healers twice! The last healer even said "pro tanking = easymode healing" and it gave me all kinds of warm fuzzies (and also totes made me feel like I might know what I'm doing after all! )

[Kalliope]

Hee, don'tcha just love that? Warrior tanking is seriously super-fun too, especially as you pick up more abilities.

[Sarayana]

She's only 36 right now so the only new ability I got to pick up last night was Last Stand (which did come in handy a couple of times when I charged and LoS'd the healer... the healer in me hates me as a tank, I swear!!) but yes, it's a lot of fun. I've only ever druid tanked back when swiping did the trick around early ICC, and I didn't enjoy it. I thought tabbing through the mobs would be hard, but it makes a lot of sense. It's definitely a more intuitive form of tanking to me.

[Furiku]

So I've got a story from a little while back that always makes me giggle when I think of it.

It was H.Lost City and I was running it with a friend. We got up to the third boss with little to no problems though I'm pretty sure the tank hadn't done it on heroic/been there before because some points we had problems. (Other then Lockmaw, we were really scattered with what the hell we were doing so we wiped a few times. Lol)

So when we hit the third boss, I tell them I'll handle the phoenix in the first and third phases since I can just burn it down and stick my pet on it and my friend would prefer it to be me since he knows I know what I'm doing. Apparently the tank didn't hear me and pulls the bird off so I'm fighting for aggro and we wipe. But remember this is a giggle worthy story so it's all good!

We try again and I get hit with a horrible lag spike and almost die thanks to a stupid sun pillar o doom, but my buddy keeps me up since he was heals. First phase goes fine, Zevryn is eating the phoenix, then second is a little shaky but we get it down too. Then we hit the third phase. During the transistion where you're thrown into your body and back a bit, I literally left the area. I was in the instance still but I was outside the wall and on the other side of the river. Don't know how the knockback hit me out there, I'm pretty damn sure I didn't hit disengage nor do I think it'd work. My pet was still up and on the bird so I just kept spamming BW and KC, but you have no idea how funny it was.

So beware, you can be knocked out of the Lost City of the Tolvir if they decide they really don't like you. I guess insulting his mother wasn't the smartest idea. >>