Crappy Groups

[Lisaara]

so today I had a "crappy group". DK gnome tank, enh shammy, hunter, pally healer and myself on my boomy. We got...umm forget name, the dungeon with all the dragonkin, the long mob heavy one. Anyhow, the tank had never been there before and didnt really wait for instructions, the hunter didnt know what CC was...or trap launcher, or how to use it. And our pally healer was in mostly lv 80 greens and we were all lv 85. Healer could bearly keep tank alive let alone group so I found myself desperatly throwing out heals and DoTs, and finally by the 2nd boss, I took the oppertunity while we waited for him to pat back around to stealthly switch to Resto, and get my gear set and buff myself. It was a good thing I did else we would have wiped serveral times over. I never mentioned to the group that I was resto spec'd now, just went on Dots and Hots and hoped for the bast. shortly after though the tank DC'd so we waited a bit and got a druid tank...who usually played in resto spec and was new to tanking...

So A tank that usually heals, a healer who cant heal, a hunter who doesnt know how to CC, an Ehn shammy that seemed to know what he was doing, and Myself double rolling.

Every pull was a gamble on whether we'd live or wipe, and somehow we always seemed to just scrape by with most of our hides intact, and somehow we managed to get through the whole thing, even managing to get the adds down in time on the last fight. After the fight, the Pally whispered his thanks to me for helping with the heals, and then the shammy whispered me about how relieved he was that we'd made it through with such a mismatched group, and a thanks for the awsome juggeling job I'd done keeping everyone alive and still burning mobs and bosses down.

I felt pretty good

That would be Grim Batol.

Glad you got through. That group was just sad.....very very sad.

[Miraga]

I ran the Valentine's day event a few days before it was over. The group was fine but the healer was switching specs and said to not start the event yet... right after the tank started it... so we go on as best as we could with a mana-less healer and, surprise surprise, the tank dies. I go OMG and turn growl on for my devilsaur Altan... and I have to say, he tanked it beautifully. We burn down the first boss and move in on the second. I'm spamming mend pet and my misdirect macro while everyone else DPS'S like madmen. The oh noes! Altan dies! But wait! HEART OF THE PHOENIX!! Altan gets up like it ain't no thang and we finish the event. Everyone loots the body and leaves without even a "thank you" but I know Altan and I did a fantastic job He's my number one devilsaur! <3

[Makoes]

Had a wonderfully crappy run a few days ago. I was on my lv 33 Worgen druid alt, and I was doing random dungeon runs through the LFG tool. Now, generally at this level, people tend not to really care about other peoples gear, especiually since we're all leveling 2-3 times per run. Sadly some people seemed to miss that memo.

Pally tank and a Priest healer pair-same guild. A Warlock, a mage and myself (feral druid). As soon as everyone zones in the tank went about inspecting everyone and promptly said "Warlock, you're ring sucks, your belt sucks and you have the wrong pet out. Go fix it."
Well me, the lock and the mage pipe up that its low dungeons and gear doesnt matter since we level so fast in the runs. No one cares about gear at this level.

Well then the tank says they care and the healer cares so go fix it. The lock refuses, saying that since the tank doesnt pay for his account he has no say about how he gears the character.
This goes on for a bit, finally the tank gets to actually doing his job...and anytime the lock pulls aggro he started ripping on him again, and the healer refused to heal him. we made it past the first couple bosses, I made an attempt to Kick the tank for being an ass, but sadly it failed, the healer told the tank what happened and thetank turned around and tricked the group into kicking the lock...well, after that I just plain refused to continouse on, ended up porting out and picking herbs for a bit, and then when they noticed I wasnt there, I logged off. Checked my AH sales on my bank toon and then logged back on my druid, he wasnt in group anymore, requed and ended up with an awsome fun group and we had a great run. I did however report the tank via ticket for herassment to the group.

That reminds me of another run on my Feral druid, we where a great group except for one of the dps, who kept trash talking everyone, and when we attempted to kick him we got the error message "Player cannot be kicked for 2hrs" So I reported him for herassment as well as noted the error message and my concern that he was abusing this to further herass players.

[Nick]

Oh god. Just... Oh god.

Had the most wonderful Deadmines run a couple days ago on my baby human hunter. Everyone was rolling along perfectly... except for the healer. We noticed her lagging behind, and then multiple complaints in chat about "omg you guys, why am I walking?!?"

I sigh and politely tell them that they probably hit the / key on their num pad. Three times.
Three. Times.
And they still walk halfway through the dungeon until a rogue (why later dropped while QQing about everyone but him getting a Defias Mask, which was the only reason he was there) kicked her.
I dunno if the person was just new or if they honestly were trying with all their might to troll us but, honestly, that was the slowest dungeon I've ever been in.

[Wark]

Fresh heroic Stonecore.

-Me, on my resto druid, hopping into the dungeon because there's four items I still want out of heroics and two of them come from there.
-A rogue and hunter, same server same guild.
-A tankadin and DK, same server same guild (different from the rogue and hunter).

I lead off with a remark about how I <3 traps and saps (hooray, NOT having to heal everyone for their entire health bar at the same time!) and then we pull. What's CC, precious? Better yet, what's not standing in everything that can kill you? Also, Earthragers. And the rogue pulls aggro. What is this, 2006? Cry into my mana bar, book it out of the instance when the tank goes down as the first mob dies, shuffle around outside for a bit and come back. Tank says nothing. Rogue maybe makes an offhand remark. Ok, at least something died, lets do this again! So we do. Slowly, painfully, with near-maximum transformed Earthragers and absolutely as much Whirling Slash as we can stack on ourselves, but we progress. Somewhere around the last pull before the first boss (for those counting at home: LESS THAN FOUR PULLS IN) the DK goes capslock on the hunter for trap-pulling. I try to point out that that's how it's done these days, "BUT THE TANK WASN'T READY DUMBASS" etc. Err... we knew how? "WELL HE SAID IT ON SKYPE" ...that's very handy for the rest of us. The rogue and hunter fire back less politely than I try to, but everyone manages to bicker in the boss' direction so we pull him and oh... oh. So. Uhm. Crystal-spawn-things? With the AoE obliteration and pain and oh god why is the tank bleeding, I didn't even know anything capable of bleeds showed up in this fight, oh $deity why am I bleeding could we please kill the crystals sometime today whoops no I'm dead, we're all dead. And the rogue pulled aggro again.

...during the run back the DK hammered his caplock back on to shout over the rogue/hunter's mockery about how everyone was terrible and stupid and then he left. A minute later his tank buddy silently dropped as well. Leaving me in a Stonecore with two uppity DPS, one of which was electromagnetically attracted to the floor.

(The ending's halfway happy: once the rogue and hunter didn't have anyone horribly awful to mock they mostly shut up, and the new tank was a warrior with more than 5k DPS to his name as well as a polite respect for my mana bar. The rogue only died a gajillion more times, the replacement mage we found had a talent for backing into trash we were trying to skip, and the tank DID manage to get brick'd upside the head by the last boss. But hey, we finished, and I only picked up half a dozen gray hairs from it.)

[Linnetbird]

Here's a story about an awful tank and a few awesome groups.

I was doing LK dungeons (getting UK every damn time) and just sort of autopiloting. Once in a while, we'd get a druid tank and I'd have to hold back on the AoE, but otherwise, it was just tediuos.

Then I got grouped with the tank I'll call Mr. DK.

First encounter: UK, of course. We kill the two fist mobs fast, and then Mr. DK pulls the two next groups. He -almost- dies, and only because the healer was paying attention and healing him like crazy, while the DPS off-tanked a mob or two each. The healer asks "Wth is wrong with your health, tank?" to which he doesn't reply. We inspect him in turn, and find out he's not wearing any tank gear. None. At all.
Meanwhile, Mr. DK has gone ahead. Three-mob pulls, but he can only handle one mob at a time. I try to help out with trap and Wyvern sting, but he breaks them every time. At this point, we're trying to kick him, but we have to wait 15 minutes.
Eventually, we make it to the first boss (Mr. DK refused to skip -any- trash, appearantly) and, by some miracle, manage to kill him. Mr. DK got pretty much one-shot by Keleseth.
15 minutes have passed, and we kick the tank. One of the DPS leave, and we're down to me, a demo warlock and the shammy healer.

So we go right ahead and use my two forms of CC and the warlock's pet to clear up to second boss, at which point we're joined by a fresh tank. At no point were we in any distress during our tank-less time.

Second encounter: UK (again) and Mr. DK. I'm tempted to leave, but instead, I inform the rest of the group that the tank is terrible. They inspect and agree and we ask him to leave. No response. He runs into the first three groups and promptly dies. He doesn't release, and we decide to leave him there. I switch to BM and call out Fluffy, my core hound. Using Fluffy as a substitute tank, and making good use of our CC, we make our way to Keleseth with ease! However, as we're fighting the trash in front of him, Mr. DK has finally found his way to us, and he manages to aggro the boss. We wipe, res, and kick Mr. DK again. It goes to show how bad he was that we were actually in -less- risk of wiping when he was dead.
Sadly, just before we're about to attempt Keleseth with Fluffy tanking, we get a new tank. Or, well, that was good, we finished the instance in no time after that, but I would've liked to have a go at it.

Anyway, Mr. DK inispired me to explore the Pet Tanking thing, and I've gotten pretty good at it. At this level, the bad tanks aren't far enough between, so an off-tank is always welcome when the murloc hits the fan.

Now I just hope Blizzard will allow BM hunters to queue as tanks in the future...

[Comett]

I love these posts. An awesome way to kill time!

My most recent "bad group" experiences weren't really that bad I guess, but I'll share anyway.

I've been trying a few pugs recently due to... well, "reasons". I'm a very nicely geared raid hunter, so to an extent I'm able to pull weaker groups through some heroics - but there's a fine line where it has to stop ._.

Earlier today I was in a GB run. It was just before the first boss when I was ported in, so obviously someone had already left/been kicked. They seemed quite nice. The tank went random-AFK without telling anyone bar the healer over vent (is it just me or is that SO rude when you're with pugs? I always make a note to keep any pug up to date with what's going on in a guild run), so we were waiting around for five minutes. Finally he comes back and pulls the boss. There's a bit of struggling as the mage tries to sheep the add and the tank keeps aoe-breaking it, but anyhow. We get it done. I'm shooting away and watching the DPS. I'm sitting at 16-20k, great. I watch the other DPS. Now I don't mean to be elitist but doing 4k and 6k in a heroic is just... not cool. :/ The tank was doing 10k (and getting hit like a tonne of bricks, which might be why heh). I guess there's a possibility we could have done it but after the boss I just apologised to the group and wished them luck but said I didn't think they'd get far with such low DPS. *not in the mood for a wipefest*

Yesterday, I was in a Deadmines run. It was a guild run and I was the only pug, and they were all on the lower scale of gear but were very nice and we were managing quite well, with my pet off-tanking when the tank died etc. We got to the Reaver boss who I have never considered hugely difficult before. The warrior was doing the lowest DPS, so the group asked him to be in the machine. He wasn't sure how to do it so a wipe ensured (but that's fair enough, we all have to learn). However the next... what... five wipes got on my nerves, so I offered to do the machine. I did it fine, however it sort of hits a soft enrage at the end where the fire elementals spawn so fast you can't keep kicking them off the edge? Yeah, we hit that. Again, with the warrior doing 4-6k and the shammy doing 10k. Simply wasn't good enough damage output. Eventually I left, again wished them luck etc, and apparently they did eventually get it because when I tried to go in again later it was a 6/6 save o.o; I can only imagine they swapped tanks or something lol.

But yeah, what is this new trend of stepping into heroics and hardly being able to do 6k? I think all classes should be able to manage around 8k or so minimum with entry level greens/blues... I understand a guild carrying you or something but relying on chance that a pug will be good... I mean as shiny as the numbers are I'm not happy when I'm doing, yknow, 50-60% of the damage. You need more than one or two good players out of five to do a heroic!

Yeah, so glad I don't often have to pug. I hope it doesn't become the norm heh

[peanutbuttercup]

But yeah, what is this new trend of stepping into heroics and hardly being able to do 6k?

I don't even complain about someone pulling 4 to 6k dps any more because at least it's better than this guy...

Got in a heroic Throne of Tides with a DK that pulled a whopping 2.7k. My pet (and I'm not BM) was outdpsing him. I let it go at first thinking my meter hadn't been reset, but even after reset it was clear that this guy wasn't pulling his weight. I point it out to my guildmates and the tank tells him, "DK, pick up your damage." Two more trash packs and we're almost to the boss' room, and I look and the DK is now doing 2.9k. Tank asks, "Is that really the best you can do?" Apparently it was.

I don't remember ever voting to kick anyone else (except DCs) before that moment.

[Makoes]

@Comett: About the dps numbers. Some classes are very underbalanced at the moment, my hunter at 345 gear was pulling 8k-9k eaisily, however my boomkin can bearly manage 5.5k. So if any of the dps with low dps were boomkins, their dps is low because blizz castrated them.
Its a bad feeling going from topping charts on my hunter easily, to being easily dead last on my boomkin in heroics. For the most part I've taken to only running heroics in Guild runs or a few random lfg's, either way i am not having much fun on my druid at the moment. I've actaully started taking the steps to just scratch boomkin for now and focus on resto (which of course causes issues when rolling need on healer gear as a boomkin in randoms) However I cant just keep asking my guild to drop what they're doing to help me get geared. I am stuck in a damned if I do Damned if I dont situation on my Druid atm, and its not fun at all.

[Saturo]

Some classes are very underbalanced at the moment, my hunter at 354 gear was pulling 8k-9k eaisily

That is almost ridiculously low for that level of gear. Might want to adjust your playstyle.

Anyhow: Zone into HC ToT on my DK. Group consists of a warrior tank, an arcane mage, a resto shaman, a rogue of some spec and me. I notice that the warrior never keeps aggro, and that somehow the mage is constantly being beaten on. I point this out to the group, and the warrior says "Yeah, he's the tank.". I respond with "He's a mage. You're the tank.", at which point I get a "lol im the tank retard" from the mage, and I now notice that they're all guildies. Inspect the warrior, and wow, look at that. Arms.

Did I mention that we wiped about seven times? We did.

[Makoes]

Whoops!! dislecsic moment...going to edit, should have been 345
and by easily, I mean auto-shot and grabbing a coffee.

[Nubhorns]

I had a Blackfathom Deeps group on a baby hunter a while back who were fairly competent...save the healer. The first thing out of her mouth when she zoned in was "Ugh, I can never get a geared group!". The rogue said something about that probably having to do with the fact that none of us were 85, and she went "That's no excuse, you all need heirlooms. I don't heal scrubs.".

Despite her no-scrub-heals speech she still stuck around to tell us all we were bad because we don't farm points for heirlooms. I pointed out that some of us may be rerolls on new servers with no main to feed off of, and she said 'lol' and finally dropped. I swear it was 15 minutes of her standing there going "Get geared or I won't heal.".

/facepalm

Edit: I find these sorts of situations worryingly common because of how forgiving I tend to be. We wipe five times, alright, try again. DPS is low, it's okay, not everyone has the same skill level. Tank is a douche, I bite my tongue because I can use the exp. My warrior friend won't handle any of that and isn't afraid to drop, but I don't think I've ever, ever left a dungeon group without it falling apart first. In nine out of ten situations I'm the last one to leave. I ain't no quitter! /shakefist

[lilatha]

Crappy/Good group! (depends how you see it)
So I was leveling another druid on a old realm and ended up doing randoms with a ex, so ofc we get spammed with Stonecore, one group was a Pala tank (84) Frost Mage (85 and my ex) Resto Druid (83 and me) MM Hunter (84) and a Lock (83)
So the pala stands at the start for a goooood 5 mins? Then randomly decides to run off missing the first pack of mobs of Stonecore ... So the rest of us are like 'Dude erm WTF maybe get here and tank?' So that sets him off on a rant about how you can miss these packs since we don't need them (feel free to lol) We spent about 10 mins trying to make him understand you need the Gnome to get the boss up otherwise you can't do anything. By now we have wasted 15 mins so my Ex starts tanking on his Mage hes got good enough PvP gear to pull it off and doesn't make me OOM.
So ofc the Pala just has to rage about how its his job to tank even though he wasn't doing that ¬.¬
So we can't kick him for awhile so hes just kinda tagging along no one is healing him or even bothering he doesn't seem to ninja anything either. Now I'll admit I was being really harsh to this guy but I do hate Palas as a class and tbh MOST people who play them are retarded at the best of times -.- So I did mock and insult him along with the rest of the group, we wanted him gone so we could get a real tank!
So we get to the Drake boss and as always the mount drops (no joke that whole day of doing Stonecore and the mount dropped every 2 runs!) So we all ofc need now the Pala doesn't win it but thinks he should be given it? REALLY? THE MAGE IS TANKING YOU DIV! Its like AUGH!
So we all refused to move cas I think we were all pissed at this point for him saying this and only 1 min till kicking time! So he attempts to pull and ofc we won't move and I don't intend to heal him so he dies then nags on about how Im a shit healer which I was like /yawn yeah yeah.
He doesn't even get back in and we've kicked him ... And ofc tanks are hard to come by I know but my Ex continued to tank on his Mage we were just about to pull the next boss when we lucky enough got a good Warr tank! Now again Im not a fan of tanking Warrs since the arggo issues they have sometimes D: BUT OMFG! This guy was amazing I wasn't ooming he let me drink he even checked my mana! THATS LIKE OMFG! No tanks bother to check the healers mana before trying to get themselves killed D:
In the end we all got something out of the instance was fun shame about the Pala I wonder do people not understand apart form insulting your realm, guild and class ... They are making a fool out of themselves!?
/end rant ;D

[Kauqilla]

Crappy group/ AMAZING group...
I was in a small group running gruuls lair. 2 BM hunters (HI NEF!) a dps DK, a mage and a paly for heals for our 85s. We had a 71 paladin as our tank but they had to leave after first boss. We continue towards Gruuls then it hit us....we have no tank....

*EPIC mini beetle from Naxx(thanks again Nef for helping) walks in* Oh hai guys. Need a midget beetle tank?

so....5 85s and a lvl 82 tank beetle....

RAWR YOU DIE NOW...

*five minutes later*

Gruuls dead....we're all standing around going huh.... how...what...*points at beetle* That little guy is like 1/1000th the size of Gruul!

5manning a 25 man lvl 70 raid with 85s crazy....with no true tanks...insane.....yup...we managed somehow... too bad no hunter loot dropped from Gruul though..

[Sarai]

I have given up on running randoms on my Silver Hand toons (apologies to all the decent people from that battlegroup). I just have no luck whatsoever in getting decent groups.

My level 26 hunter has had to try and pet-tank dungeons because the "tank" is DPS-specced and has no tank gear whatsoever. Andrano's pets have had more health than some of these tanks.

My 24 druid is still wearing some quest-reward legs from the starting Darkshore quests, because every time something drops for her in a dungeon, she's lost the roll- and usually to the bleeping TANK. Which reminds me...

Mr. Arms Warrior that stole the fang leggings in my last WC run: you do not need leather +agility legs, no matter what you might think. The entire rest of the group even tried to tell him he didn't need them, but he refused to listen to anyone. Then he proceeded to chain-pull half the instance to keep us from vote-kicking him, before finally dropping the group.

At least on Feathermoon (my "main" server) I have loads of people I can run things with, so I've never had to run a random, unless it was by choice.

[Comett]

In regards to the comments about low dps in heroics~
I think ANY class, even under-balanced ones, can easily easily do more than 4-6k in a heroic situation if they're geared right I mean I guess I could be wrong but I know a few Boomkins who are quite good, I haven't seen many warrior dps's around so maybe that's why? But yeah in general I think 4-6k in a heroic is not only fail but unfair for the rest of the group... if it's a FULL guild run, whatever, do your thing, but to rely on a pug that very easily could have also been doing 4k dps... xD;


And @Sarai
OMG I hate tanks that chain-pull to prevent you from kicking! Blizz really needs to rethink the dungeon kick rules because they're so ridiculous half the time (or more) it's actually impossible to kick an asshat. We had a warrior tank in something (totally forget what) but he was a prick, for whatever reason, and he essentially said "lol kick me then" for the entire run while chain-pulling so we couldn't. Finally the entire group were obviously spamming the kick function - we were getting "cannot kick in combat" "cannot kick shortly after combat" "cannot kick for another 2 minutes" "cannot kick while dead" BLAH BLAH BLAH. Cannot kick unless the moons align more like?

[Comett]

Zzz

Just did a heroic Deadmines run on my main with a guildie tank and DPS.

At the beginning of the run I asked the healer, a Shammy, if he'd mind trying the achievement on the last boss via Shammy hax. Pretty much (as far as I'm aware) you skip the first pack of wolves, die, Shammy ankhs and tags boss = win. He made some smart ass comment about never needing to do it that way before, I replied with a friendly "well I'm a noob and always manage to die but we can try genuine if you'd like", he made no notion here or there so we continued. His heals were okay... a few wipes, whatever, it's a pug. Finally we get, in good time, to the worgen. Guildies and I are "skip or no?" and at no reply I say "skip". We run past and wipe and the shammy says "Btw I have no ankh, perhaps you should check first". Now that's just rude and annoying imo, as he had time to tell us this, we had been friendly and accommodating the entire run, and if he'd said originally he'd rather not do the achievement I would have been fine - but fact is we wiped, got a repair bill and he was an ass out of it.

We continue up to the boss, pull her, win. At the very end (where she blows herself up), she flicked over to shammy at the last minute and he died.

"Too bad you don't have an ankh."

Sweet, if petty, revenge.

[Makoes]

hahahahhahahaaaa that shammy deserved that

[Comett]

Exactly ^_^ Karma always gets them in the end, sometimes it's just nice to be able to witness it.

[Cialbi]

Queue for random WotLK dungeon as tank. Completed without too much hassle. Another dungeon? Sure. Well, someone queue'd us up for a random tBC dungeon. Oh, we have Black Morass (Dark Portal event). Well, healer doesn't know this one, but at least the tank (me!) has done this more times that he cared to.

I race out ahead, telling them to let me bodyaggro all the animals in my path. So, I finally get within sight of Medivh, dismount and shapeshift. Oh, great; the healer just threw a pre-emptive HoT on me, and now has pulled every single one of the beasts that I had trailing me; no chance for me to so much as poke one with a toothpick yet. So, I race over to the healer, using Demoralizing Roar and Swipe, and waiting until all the not-so-little creatures get within range before using Challenging Roar.

Wait, why's Medivh yelling at me? Oh, shit. Cue bear waddling over to the first portal, Swiping at a following crowd of tarantulas that broke into the Wheaties factory and enough crocs to devour a small village.
_

Hey, we made it! Yay for me, I guess. Huh, another? Okay... wait, Black Morass again?
*grumble*
*gains one (1) Chronobeacon*
*gains one (1) fan club of crocs and spiders*
Medivh yells: "The time has come! Gul'dan! Order your warlocks to double their efforts! Moments from now..."
*facepalm* Shame on me for not pointing this out to whomever had done this the first time.

...at least the healer had learned, and this time waited until after I had properly greeted my new fan club before healing me.