Tag Archive for 'lfg'

The nice PuG

Published
by
Yashima
on January 8, 2010
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The other day I went back to another really random heroic with 4 unknown players. I ended up in Azjol Nerub which I was relieved to see, since the last few groups I had been in were pure guild groups – despite LFG – and I had heard nightmare stories from others once again (h The healer who didn’t heal 2 dpsers in the final fight of Halls of Stone, let them die and left the group after the fight, letting them run back in … and my all time favorite the over equipped tanks posting dps meters )

Since I am pretty much beyond worries for Azjol Nerub having been there enough times already I was sure I would be getting my marks without anybody insulting me, my playstyle or my equipment.

Everyone got in, the mage placed a table (thx!) and we started. The fights on the first boss were harder to heal than I remembered – lots of poison. But nobody died, I didn’t have aggro. The dps DK pops the “25 Dungeon & Raid emblems” achievement. I congratulate him, rest of group follow suit and he confesses he only turned 80 that morning at 4 a.m.. A friendly bantering about not sleeping, working and holidays kept us busy while we made our way to the second boss, which we downed just as nicely as the first one.

All of a sudden we are standing in front of final boss. The fight took some time. We were quite slow – guessing low dps? – but I managed to keep everyone alive. Boss goes down. I thank everyone for the nice group, the others do the same and I leave.

I am guessing that most of these players were equipped much worse than my guildmates or myself or whatever I am used to. I had to heal a lot more than most heroics I run. It was fun, however the instance not being so trivial for me! We may have been a bit slower than some other runs, yet we still made it in about 20 minutes without much of a problem.

My point is: maybe these people were still needing some items from the heroics they run and they were not totally facerolling the instance and maybe we took a couple minutes longer than some overequipped group but they were nice and courteous and were not making disparaging remarks about each other or their equipment. I have much more fun when I am not continously made to feel bad … I actually had more fun healing with a little bit of a challenge! I enjoyed the thought of being able to get my marks and actually help others.

I read so many posts and comments about people being elitist and commenting on the terrible gear of others and how much DPS they do or don’t do and generally being asshats. Does it really have to be that way? After all the title given out for pugging is called “the Patient” … so maybe it would be nice if more people would live up to that title they often wear while they are everything but …

Glory of the Winter Veil Holidays

Published
by
Yashima
on December 30, 2009
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So while we had no time to play during the actual Holidays we’re now on vacation and had some fun. We had been talking about doing “Glory of the Hero” and got off to a very slow start with that.

But of those few achievements we tried we managed to get a pretty good number done for example “Better off Dredd” in Gundrak. Quite easy you just have to kill all the adds you keep getting feared into during the fight (actually there is one add too many in the pen which you can pull before the boss fight). The fight is a bit longer of course so it puts a bit of strain on the healer but if you’ve been running a lot of heroics with the new LFG you should be well enough equipped to handle it. I did have to Innervate however ;)

We also managed to do “Split Personality” in the Nexus. We chose to simply AoE the mirror images (I think one of them is channeling a spell, interrupt that to kill it timely!) and so it was super easy.

Not quite so easy was the “Chaos Theory” achievement also in the Nexus. The rifts spawn lots of mobs when not killed, cause tons of chain lightning damage and the boss becomes stronger. But you cannot kill the rifts when getting the achievement. We had cleared lots of space around the boss to be able to kite him all over the place. We did it but I would advise to get some better strat than ours which was to just kite and burn him down! We were quite close to failing when at some point a player died and someone yelled on Teamspeak: “He’s healed himself” meaning the boss. I nearly let us wipe then. Reminds me to always but the boss on focus in such fights!

For us druids “Intense Cold” is stupidly easy: just jump all the time and shift when she freezes you. I had already done it but our druid tank got it during this run.

Yesterday I finally completed the 3rd and last of the new instances in Heroic mode with the promised guild group. Actually we completed a wipe-free run of all three of the Ice Crown 5-man instances on heroic and even managed to snag the “We’re advancing in a different direction” achievement (and probably by a long margin, too, or so it felt). The final fight (some Tyrannus guy) in the second one turned out to be tricky as I was killed pretty early on in the fight by an add shooting at me which we did not notice and so they had to complete the fight without a healer – believe me: listening to them do the fight on Teamspeak was … quite nerve-wracking. Now the next time someone tries to tell me I am not geared well enough for Halls of Reflection I can tell them to … whatever. Of course since that first LFG encounter with the instance my gear has improved by at least 15 iLvls.

After Icecrown we got together a guild group – 13 people online! – and quickly cleared out Archavon & his friends. Not a single wipe!

But just for another jab at LFG: we used the tool yesterday to fill in a missing tank and dps and landed in Utgarde Pinnacle. I used my new Dreamstate spec to DPS a bit on the side and managed to not let anyone die because of that :) The run went fast and smooth. In the end however the Paladin tank had to post is Recount stats which showed he had done the most damage and while I was still thanking people for the nice group he left without a word. Could he just NOT have posted the stupid stats? What did he gain? I am a healer I am not offended by only doing 5% of the damage … but after a smooth run it just leaves a bad taste which was completely not necessary. Not everybody is raid-equipped … and we still did not complete the gauntlet fast enough for the achievement ;)

LFG Impressions

Published
by
Yashima
on December 16, 2009
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So far I did not have much time to use the new tool. Here’s my rundown so far.

1) Needed 1 more dps for a run through the new instances on normal difficulty. Got one fast, was not overly competent and my hunter complained loudly (to me) about the random rogue also needing the epic gun that dropped and getting it – oh well, he can use it … to pull? Otherwise friendly player who seemed happy to find a group doing the initial quest through the instances with him. As for the instances: I enjoyed them a lot and I am happy there are a couple of new boss mechanics – especially the finale with Arthas …

2) 2 randoms including tank for random instance which turned out to be Nexus. Competent and friendly players who even laughed about my hunter always pulling adds because he is having trouble with tabbing and auto-attack, they could have complained but they did not! The random dps even thanked tank and heal (that was me!) for doing a good job!

3) me and 4 randoms (3 knew each other I think) got dropped into Violet Hold, the tank complained he didn’t get any rage and I complained about not needing to do much. Nice group, nothing to complain, instance quick and way too easy.

4) me and 4 random players. I got into Heroic Halls of Reflection and immediately knew I was in for trouble because I had only been there once (see 1) on normal. I had no idea about the bosses on heroic. The trouble started much earlier than I had anticipated. We went into the first room with the ghost waves and the tank orders us into a corner. I manage to keep up everyone during the first wave … second wave wipe- no idea what happened. I – always ready to take the blame?! – say: “Sorry guys never been here on heroic!” Tank: “Well I already saw your equipment isn’t good enough for this anyway.” I offered to leave before they decided to kick me.

If a group thinks like that there is no way I am trying to finish that instance that late into the night. I complained in guildchat about it because I just felt terrible after that. What made it even worse in a weird way was that they kept assuming I was a guy and kept referring to me as “him”.

Ironically 2 of the people were wearing a title “the Patient” and I have no idea where it comes from.

I know once more why I hate to do PUGs.

So I asked the guildies if my equipment was really that bad. As a tree I have self-buffed 2250 healing power which is enough to heal Ulduar (10), any other heroic 5-man and Ony (10). Sure my equipment is not that of a regular raider and healing this instance was not going to be trivial, but surely not impossible.

I am used to my über-competent and patient guildmates … the answer in guildchat was soothing: “Oh your gear is good enough for us, you’re a good healer! We’ll go with you sometime soon!” Made me feel better to hear that :)

Still – that group … I guess this is happening to players all over the place … it’s the same as before when people were dissing you for doing to little DPS … sometimes I really miss the good old times running instances without everybody watching Recount/Recap/etc like a hawk. I wonder if there are addons that shout “Alert! Alert! You’re grouped with a low-equip person … provoke a wipe blame them and kick them!” ?! I really hope they did not find a healer too fast!

On another note: I am planning on hitting the 6k achievement points before Christmas. It is not going to be easy however getting the Merry Maker. I got all of 5 kills before losing my costume … just like it worked last year. 23 down, 27 to go, so … hopefully only 5 more battlegrounds :P