I hit 50 today on my mage, which gave me quite a shock as I wasn’t expecting it and the achievement freaked me out a bit.
‘Grats.’
‘Grz.’
‘Grat.’
‘Thx.’
So much social conversation in WoW.
I was running a PuG in the Black Temple again, and once again I actually got a good group. Even the hunter was good, which was nice. And I was thinking about that and how I’m going to rip it up to level 58 and hop over to Outland when it hit me:
I’m going to have to start doing PuGs with Death Knights.
As Scattered Shots reminded me today, a lot of the bad players stopped being Huntards and became Death Knights over the last year or so, thus giving hunters a bit of a break, (I actually think that they’re rolling rogues as well as I have seen some serious fail-rogues over the last 20 levels or so). And pretty soon I’m going to start running into these failures and most probably they’re the ones that are going to be doing the tanking. It is making me dispair somewhat just at the thought of it.
So I’m wondering what I’ll do once I get my first DK tank PuG run. Do I ask him straight off the bat if he knows what he’s doing? Do I just remain mute and assume the worst until proven otherwise? Do I wonder why I cannot get cherry cola in Europe? Over at GTFOOTF, Cozmo has posted on running his death knight as a tank and the prejudices that he is having to face. So it seems as if I do have cause for concern. I know the Ramparts in Hellfire like the back of my hand – I ran that place a lot back in the day. That is the spot where I will probably face my first Death Knight experience. I think my only option is to hit the leader button before we go in and make sure that I am leading the group. Usually it is taken as a given that the tank leads the group. It is much easier that way for all concerned as no written communication is required. The tank leads, you follow. If someone else leads then they must do so by written commands, which is much more time intensive.
It’s a long-winded way of saying that I’ve been lazy on my mage. It’s lazy to sit back, and always let the tank lead and then crap all over them if they suck. It takes effort to lead the group this way, something which I have not been doing. So I think the best thing that I can do is to climb down from my high horse and put a bit more effort into PuGs instead of following along behind the tank and killing things. And if the DK’s are fail, then I’ll try and help them to not fail so much.
February 9, 2010 at 11:07 am
I hit a run of bad ones at 58. Almost got to the point of making a macro for ‘Dude, I know you don’t have DnD yet, but try Pestilence, Blood Boil, and for the love of C’thun, Frost Presence’.
Late-night lowbie pugs tend to be excellent. Weekday-daytime, more variable.
Personally, I’m trying to learn to heal, and it’s player-experience I want, not character XP – so I’m not too averse to a bit of a disaster, that I might practice emergency management.
Still, the tank who responded to ‘either you remove Smoulderweb’s poison yourself – or I’m doing it with Ressurection’ by charging… yeah…
February 9, 2010 at 1:02 pm
The fail hunters are running on Protadins nowadays.
February 10, 2010 at 7:27 am
I recently passed that threshold on my holy priest alt, went to Outlands, and level 66 now, using dungeon tool a lot… Yes, I was scared of my first meeting with the DKs. Actually it wasn’t that bad, it wasn’t that many of them as I expected, it isn’t as big a flood like a year ago. Also while a few of them were crap, it wasn’t even the majority.
Yes, some people believe fail players reolled from DKs to Paladins (be it ret or prot), but I didn’t find it true, I’ve met good and bad Paladins but the average remains… average, not awesome, not rubbish.
The class I learned to hate the most up to now?
DPS Warriors.
Charge.
AoE.
Pull aggro.
Never move out of bad stuff.
And yell “heal me!”
Don’t know if it’s my bad luck but after expecting a crowd of moronic death gripping DKtards I had to revise my standing, I started to be afaid of groups with dps Warriors more than groups with DKs.
The most often happening “big fail”?
No, not abusing death grip, and not army of the dead because they don’t get it before some high level.
Frigging
pet
pulls.
It counts for both Hunters, Warlocks and DKs with talented ghoul, frost mages with glyphed pet can be added too, since “frost is the levelling spec” and I meet them quite often.
Jumping and pet runs around pulling 2 other groups? Check.
Mob runs away and pet follows, pulling another group? Check.
Sending pet on wrong tab-targetted mob? Check.
Oh, and people yelling at me to heal their pet.
My order if healing is tank -> me -> other players -> pets, and while on my main I can spam heal on everything at my leisure as far as global cooldown allows, on my lower level Priest I need to manage mana, no one waits 30secs between pulls so the poor Priest can drink, I had to learn to manage pulls with 1/3 mana left most of the time and I will not heal you mr. Warlock who lifetapped to 10HP plus your pet because I will be left at 100mana and tank pulling next room already.
February 10, 2010 at 10:10 am
Interesting that you say that about warriors, as I’m starting to see a lot of warriors trying to tank on fury spec. And it doesn’t work for them, at all. It’s gotten to the point where I am checking the tanks talent tree at the start of the run. If it’s fury I either say something in chat or if i can’t be bothered I know that i cannot use any AoE abilities.
February 11, 2010 at 8:41 am
TipTacTalents is a great tool.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8448-TipTacTalents.html
Just mouse over and you see if someone is “wrong spec” or 0/0/71 or didn’t spend half his talent points…
However don’t bash everyone for their “strange spec”, some people, and especially healers, level in mixed specs so they aren’t complete rubbish soloing in healer spec, some healers heal instances while levelling in dps spec, some healers heal level 80 heroics in their pvp spec… it’s usually not a problem with the “easy” content.