Crappy Groups

[Kalliope]

Generally, if the healer has aggro, the tank hasn't hit the mobs that are on them. Ugh. :/

[Talaridan]

Generally, if the healer has aggro, the tank hasn't hit the mobs that are on them. Ugh. :/

I know! It just boggles my brain that some tanks don't use AoE when dealing with groups. I can understand on a boss not bothering, but if it's a group, why would you not be using whatever AoE your tanking class has? All of them have it! That's usually quite adequate for keeping it off the heals.

[Kalliope]

*nodnod* Exactly, Raun! Especially the dks, since they have no form of AoE taunt whatsoever. Arrrrrgh.

[Azunara]

*nods.* Typically when there's mobs on the healer, I'll have Maxwell the Felguard beat on them until the tank picks it up. He can hold his own pretty well, and the healers usually try to keep him up as well since, you know, he's preventing them from dying.

But yeah, stupid tanks are stupid. We had a BRD run once with this tank who could not hold aggro. My dad, while he outgeared him, was also holding back, easily pulled aggro off of him. And he couldn't hold the boss. Or the adds. Or anything, so in the span of about fifteen minutes, we wiped three times. Needless to say, my dad, guildie, and I called it quits real fast.

[Talaridan]

On the other hand, I hate-hate-hate jerky DPS and healers.

Today, I had a fresh tank that was learning and trying hard. He wasn't doing a bad job; he was just ignorant of the fights and the other DPS kept pulling while I was trying to explain. Some stupidhead of a Shaman started cussing and yelling at the poor guy for moving during the Draga fight in Grim Batol, even though he was only moving to get out of the AoE. The poor tank didn't say a thing and was clearly trying hard to figure out what the heck he was supposed to do. I finally let loose and ripped the Shaman up and down both sides. He promptly dropped group and I put him on Ignore. The run went much better after that, though still a little rough since he didn't know the Erudax fight either, but once he figured it out, we all did fine. There was just no reason to be rude at the poor tank for not knowing any better.

Next group I ran with a friend, and this impatient whiny healer, who wasn't even that good, kept Life-gripping the tank around! He'd pause to loot and she'd jerk him up to the next group, pull them by proxy, and bark at him to hurry up! That it should be a 'quick run!'. I wasn't even the tank and I was just annoyed as heck. Unsurprising, she tossed him into a boss with half mana, didn't heal for beans, and wiped us. While she was moaning and complaining in group while we ran by....I kicked her. And put her on Ignore.

Man, people just need some manners. EVERYONE in the group is important. I don't care if you're tank, heals, or DPS. You all have a job and not one of them can SOLO the place. We all need to work together. If you're gonna be a horse's booty, just get out and quit making it unpleasant for the rest of us!

[Kalliope]

Ha, sounds familiar! I tossed my priest into the queue and got Vortex Pinnacle. The warrior dps apologized at the top of the run for having lesser gear, as it was a new 85. It wasn't the nervous sort of apology; the guy was clearly a knowledgeable player who just happened to be on an undergeared toon. I can totally respect that. The first boss (who killed the tank, who decided to stay in the tornado phase despite his 346 level gear...yeah) dropped a tanking helm, which the warrior took. The pally tank, who hadn't needed it, chastised the warrior, saying that "if he didn't have tanking gear, his dps would be higher." I checked the warrior's gear - counting that helm, he only had two pieces that were tanking gear. The helm replaced the BoA helm too! The warrior definitely knew what he was doing; it grated on me to see the pally tell him that "he'd carry him through the heroic," but "just thought he should know." Ironically, it was the pally who didn't know what he was doing. I had to tell him how to tank the trash drakes that you're supposed to face toward the group and basically had to pull out all the stops for the later trash packs. *sigh* We made it through, but it was rough. Thankfully, the other dps were geared (as was I), so it made it doable.

[Talaridan]

Ugh, what is it with people just rudely calling people out?

I can understand getting irritated at having to 'carry' someone, but if the person is pulling over 10k, I don't really considering it 'carrying'. There's no need to whine at my poor friend, whose still learning their spec, and grumble about them only pulling 12k. 12k is just fine for goodness's sake.

[Karin]

Lately, I have been reading other people's horrible experience with PuG runs in the main WoW forums. I was mainly reading from the healers' point of view of these bad runs. Most of their stories involved them getting blamed for many things when it clearly wasn't their fault. It was either the other players didn't move away from bad things, they tried to make a healer's job much more difficult by making several tanks out of themselves, or they never give them a chance to drink before running off again. Not to mention there were squishy tanks, too (dps, PvP, ungemmed gear, etc.). I do understand that some tanks can pull it off without the proper gear they need. Then the healers don't ever get good credit for trying to keep everyone up as best as they can. Those heals are huge mana guzzlers.

Anyway, I feel for most of them. I don't get why it is so easy to blame healers when it could be one of several things easily that failed miserably. The tank-is-always-right part doesn't side well with me either.

EDIT: Anywho, I do love this thread so keep it up. I have an addiction with reading about bad PuG runs.

[Lisaara]

So...I wanted to raid with Taluwen for the first time.....I knew the fights after doing them a lot on Jetfyre.

I got stuck with a special snowflake hunter....

1. She felt she should get all the hunter gear cause she was top dps amongst the hunters.
2. She ninja'd the lockbox that dropped, got called out on it, and denied 'Need'ing on it.
3. She tried to say Nightcrawler(my worm) facepulled the slime boss. I poked major holes in her claim. For one, I was no where near the water or the remaining slime adds. Second, Someone facepulled the slime adds and the boss at the same time....again I wasn't anywhere near either of them. Three, Nightcrawler only began charging at the ADDS, not the boss as she claimed he did. Four, Nightcrawler only went to the adds AFTER the green one slimed me.....aka Assisting me as a pet is designed to do.
4. She raged hard when the other hunter one a tier piece.

[Makoes]

Decided to bring my shammy healer to a troll run to get back into the swing of healing. Yeah...well that ended very shortly. The tank had never been there, didnt wait for any explinations, pretty much anything and everything he could do wrong he did, and this was before we even got to the first boss (the snake guy). Interupt that poison spell? nope! tiki mask blasting that unavoidable damage, lets just run and stand over where everyone else is!

The snake guards, he tried tanking in the room where the boss it...and kept dying. we finally managed ot get him to pull them out so thaqt we could use the damn cauldron to mitigate the damage. But he still wasnt interupting the spells. And when we finally got to the boss, instead of waiting for the explination on wtf to do, he just runs in pulls boss...needless to say we died pretty fast. I left after that.

I can tolerate new people, but I will not tolerate new people who dont wait to hear what needs to be done. Or who wont interupt spells that are hurting people badly.

[Karin]

To keep this topic from going stale due to inactivity cuz I love it so much, I wanted to reflect on a memory of a dungeon run I did a long time ago. I wouldn't consider this a bad run because it did run smoothly and everyone seemed to know what they were doing, but there's a small part I just can't get over, even for so long.

What happened was this. This was in the latter part in Maraudon not far from the bridge to the rock giants. I don't remember the whole group but I do remember the druid tank and a mage. While the druid was concentrating on the small pack of diemetradons, one of them slipped off of his aggro because it seemed the mage wasn't attacking the tank's main target. So, it was going for the mage. I noticed this right away and ordered my pet to change targets and go straight for the stray mob. I immediately did Intimidation and turned Growl on just in case Intimidation wasn't enough and the diemetradon started attacking my pet. I could've ordered my pet to go back to the original pack where the druid was at and maybe the mob will go for him instead, but my pet had very little trouble holding off the mob until the druid went after it. It did take a while for the druid to notice, which was why I made my pet attack the stray pet. The mage would've been in trouble throughout that whole time if it weren't for my pet.

After we downed that pack and went for another, the druid noticed my pet had Growl on (the typical I-forgot-to-turn-it-off-afterward) and started snapping at me about it. Although I didn't explain it well while moving and attacking at the same time, I tried to explain to him one of the mobs in the previous pack went for the mage away from him. Of course, one R-tard bomb towards me and then he explained how Growl lowers DPS. I was thinking, what were you smoking? I decided not to continue the argument with him anymore so as to prevent a possible kick over a little quarrel but I knew that was wrong. Even if he meant my DPS, that would be even more preposterous. If he meant my pet, it wouldn't have mattered because my pet was a tenacity pet and they don't rely on DPS as much as the other two pet classes do. If they did, then it'd be the same as a tank going in on DPS gear and/or talents.

This has been bugging me since then. Now, during that time when I was breezing through dungeons and leveling, I have done that bit of good deed with my pets quite a few times, which is why I do consider Intimidation a useful spell in my case. I know it's not for some and I respect that. Whenever a mob goes for someone else other than the tank, my pet can be the temporary off-tank and hold off on strays until either the tank goes for it next or the mob dies. Since I am talking about low-level dungeons, this was never a difficult task for my pets; I've never done end-dungeons so I suspect that can be harder to pull off. This may not be the best idea but it had worked for me.

On the other hand, during some other dungeon runs, I did have at least one healer praise me and my pets for my efforts by doing the same thing with mobs so they will never reach them before my pet gets their attention while the tank does something else.

[Kalliope]

Dear terrible tanks,

Please stop blaming the healer when you pull mobs out of LoS and/or are not wearing a single piece of tanking gear. You are bad tanks and saying such things makes you bad people. Also dumb.

Love,
Kalli

P.S. I wasn't even healing at the time.

[Worba]

You weren't even the group healer e.g. not the one with the "+" next to your name, and the tank blamed you for not healing him? O.o

[Kalliope]

No, I mean that I'm not even the healer and I'm complaining about the healer getting blamed. Because it was so obviously not the healer's fault. >_<

The first tank chain pulled way faster than the healer could keep up. He ended up dying after pulling a three pack around yet around wall. He died, the dk dps died, the rest of us lived. The tank (a warrior) did not accept my soulstone res, then proceeded to walk back into the instance instead of taking the normal res. He then complained about the healer before leaving group. Should have been obvious, right? Nope. The dk dps from piped up and joined the bashfest before I pointed out exactly what had happened.

Then the second tank wasn't wearing a single piece of tanking gear and had the gall to blame the healer. The healer and I had 2k hp more than this guy. I offered CC to help, especially since the hunter seemed pretty competent too, but he ignored it. The healer left in frustration and the tank had the nerve to make a cutting remark about the healer's capabilities. I pointed out his COMPLETE LACK OF TANKING GEAR, which seemed to prompt the mass exodus of the rest of the group. Ultimately a good thing, since I was going to leave myself after that.

[Royi]

Ugh sounds like a wonderful time

[Kalliope]

It wasn't as bad as all that, probably since I knew what was coming the entire time. I was okay with us not making it to the second boss.

[Lupis]

Ugh. Healer fell in water and wasn't in LoS, so as tank, I didn't pull. The hunter got impatient and pulled. I picked up aggro and told him not to pull when the healer wasn't ready, to which he said "Fuck tanks" and pulled out a warpstalker. I left.

Got another group. Same people. Boss was dead. I laughed, turned in my quests. Hunter kept calling me a fag and fail. Healer blamed me for pulling. …Really, guys?

[Worba]

Yea being blamed for other people's screwups is never fun - usually because 1 person is too embarrassed to admit their mistake, and another 1-2 are too lazy to use their eyes or put the facts together, so they just sign on with whoever points the finger first like good village idiots.

Like the other day when I tanked Blackrock Caverns - the LFD places me in as replacement tank, and literally 2 seconds after I join the group, the frost mage says "TANK?", as if I'm wasting time or something. I let it go and get tanking. We get to the dragon lady and I ask if everyone knows the fight. 1 person says "yup let's go", rest say nothing, so we jump down and proceed to fight.

I notice mage's elemental pet toodling on down the stairs (having gone the long way down due to not being dismissed) and think "that can't be good".

No one blocks the beams, so now we have to ascended dragon things, plus healer's not very good, but we're still just about managing... when a dragon add comes down the stairs after the mage pet, and wipe ensues.

Normally I would let that go, but after the mage's earlier attitude I said "nice one mage".

To which another group member responds: "shd hav killd the top 1 first". So I had to go ahead and explain to the group about how that's a waste of time and ppl just need to jump down, but pet casters need to dismiss their pet first so they don't aggro mobs going the long way down.

Mage says "my pet was on passive the whole time". So I had to explain that mobs will attack PC pets without being attacked first. Then I explain how to block the beams, ask if everyone's ready, they say yes, we try again... mage dismisses pet this time but once again no one blocks the beams and we end up with 2 ascended dragon mobs, so I just dropped group and let them eat it at that point, which is something else I normally never do, but these guys really did deserve it - I can tolerate bad groups, and I can tolerate jerks, but not both at the same time.

[Kalliope]

I know that feeling, Worba. You've done everything you can for them and they STILL don't listen, so you're just jumping off a sinking ship rather than going down with them. Cause sometimes, there's just nothing else you can do. -_-

[Melentari]

I was in a group with two friends this morning, one who was tanking (DS geared) and another who was gearing up a mage. We were doing normal heroics, and somehow we managed to get a string of healers that had no idea what they were doing.

First was a paladin who didn't target the right targets to heal. When people died, he asked if my friend even knew how to tank, and then I noticed in the next few pulls that I was the one getting all the heals - even when I was at full health. He dropped before the first boss.

Next came a shaman that barely had a mana pool, but that one actually targetted the right people for the heals. The shaman lasted through the first two bosses. That one had to leave, though, and we ended up with a priest.

This priest took the cake. He had all of his talents in Holy. All of them. The priest lasted through one wipe and one success on Drakha and complained we all had aggro. Apparently he didn't understand the idea of AOE. He dropped right after the fight, and then we got a druid.

The druid, at last, was competent. He got us through the rest of the dungeon without incident.

Well. Almost without incident. Through the whole thing, we had a warrior that ate the floor every time that we looked around. He didn't understand that you have to run away from the fire elementals during Drakha; he ran toward them. I think he taunted off my friend sometimes, thinking he could offtank, and ended up dead. I have no idea how many times he had to be rezzed, but I could generally always count on finding him eating floor.

Luckily, things went better after that particular dungeon. But that one was... wow. In a bad way.