Last night I had the strangest PUG.
At first, we had done a very fast run of Heroic Forge of Souls. At the end we decided to go through the portal to continue onto Pit of Saron. The tank discovered he was saved so he apologised and dropped group, letting the rest of us pug another tank. So far, so spiffy.
When a new warrior tank joined the group, the rogue piped up and started going on about how we should vote kick this guy, "He's no good, the run will fail, he's got *expletive* gear".
I checked, and he was right. Mostly blues, 24k-odd health. I myself have about 21k health. This could be interesting, but I remembered what it was like being a new healer in this place. Besides, the rogue was being a dick about it.
I said, "Calm down. Are we going to get started or what? "
Roguey says: "Watch how fast I pull aggro from him!" (in rather worse spelling).
After the first pull, when he didn't, in fact, pull aggro, the rogue said "If we make it through this run I'll apologize and retract my words"
I replied, "Low HP tanks are the healer's problem anyway, so it'll be me you're apologising to later."
At this point the tank pipes up with, "Oh, don't let the rogue bother you, I already ignored him right back at the start!"
We continued on.
Then, halfway to the second boss, this flashes up on my screen in a whisper:
Rogue: "how much do you weigh leesah?"
At this point the tank nearly died because I was staring open-mouthed at the screen, wondering if this guy was serious. I guess others would have vote-kicked or given him a serve, but at the time I was healing the tank heavily so I had no choice but to ignore it and try to concentrate. He continued with something along the lines of, "link me your facebook, sorry I can't be your e-boyfriend if you're unattractive. "
I said "what if I'm a bloke?"
He replied with something like "nah, you're a girl, are you hot?"
After that I did tell him where to go, in no uncertain terms. But I don't like putting people on ignore in the middle of an instance. So I ignored him by not replying further and continued healing, furious and wondering whether he was a 16-year old up past his bedtime or just rude and immature. I ignored him later once the run was complete.
The tank did fine, despite at one point riding off up ahead to pull and causing a wipe since he was out of range, and later during a boss fight shouting "bres me!" about 3 times when it was on cooldown and I was too busy spam healing the DK to reply. Since we was obviously still gearing up and learning tanking, I had no problem with these things, but I think the pressure was getting to him a bit because at one point he whispered me with, "Omg pls don't kick me". I felt sorry for the poor guy.
At the bottom of the hill after the second boss, the rogue says "we'll wipe here. I'll leave"
I held my tongue and thought Do us all a favour and leave now, and concentrated on keeping people alive.
Adrenaline-fueled healing is great - it puts you on your toes and your reflexes are sharpened. I managed to keep that low-hp tank alive up the hill and through the tunnel without any wipes, all the while the rogue alternating between complaining about the "bad tank" and shouting song lyrics for some reason.
Anyway, long story short, we got it done with only one wipe on Tyrannus and with the rogue whispering me with some BS about being made for each other. If at any stage it had got obscene I would have vote-kicked him in a heartbeat and probably reported him, but it was pretty harmless, and by that stage I was past the furious stage and thought the whole thing was hilarious. He was only saying it in whispers, not party chat. Not that it mattered much because I suspect everyone in the party but me was ignoring him!
At first, we had done a very fast run of Heroic Forge of Souls. At the end we decided to go through the portal to continue onto Pit of Saron. The tank discovered he was saved so he apologised and dropped group, letting the rest of us pug another tank. So far, so spiffy.
When a new warrior tank joined the group, the rogue piped up and started going on about how we should vote kick this guy, "He's no good, the run will fail, he's got *expletive* gear".
I checked, and he was right. Mostly blues, 24k-odd health. I myself have about 21k health. This could be interesting, but I remembered what it was like being a new healer in this place. Besides, the rogue was being a dick about it.
I said, "Calm down. Are we going to get started or what? "
Roguey says: "Watch how fast I pull aggro from him!" (in rather worse spelling).
After the first pull, when he didn't, in fact, pull aggro, the rogue said "If we make it through this run I'll apologize and retract my words"
I replied, "Low HP tanks are the healer's problem anyway, so it'll be me you're apologising to later."
At this point the tank pipes up with, "Oh, don't let the rogue bother you, I already ignored him right back at the start!"
We continued on.
Then, halfway to the second boss, this flashes up on my screen in a whisper:
Rogue: "how much do you weigh leesah?"
At this point the tank nearly died because I was staring open-mouthed at the screen, wondering if this guy was serious. I guess others would have vote-kicked or given him a serve, but at the time I was healing the tank heavily so I had no choice but to ignore it and try to concentrate. He continued with something along the lines of, "link me your facebook, sorry I can't be your e-boyfriend if you're unattractive. "
I said "what if I'm a bloke?"
He replied with something like "nah, you're a girl, are you hot?"
After that I did tell him where to go, in no uncertain terms. But I don't like putting people on ignore in the middle of an instance. So I ignored him by not replying further and continued healing, furious and wondering whether he was a 16-year old up past his bedtime or just rude and immature. I ignored him later once the run was complete.
The tank did fine, despite at one point riding off up ahead to pull and causing a wipe since he was out of range, and later during a boss fight shouting "bres me!" about 3 times when it was on cooldown and I was too busy spam healing the DK to reply. Since we was obviously still gearing up and learning tanking, I had no problem with these things, but I think the pressure was getting to him a bit because at one point he whispered me with, "Omg pls don't kick me". I felt sorry for the poor guy.
At the bottom of the hill after the second boss, the rogue says "we'll wipe here. I'll leave"
I held my tongue and thought Do us all a favour and leave now, and concentrated on keeping people alive.
Adrenaline-fueled healing is great - it puts you on your toes and your reflexes are sharpened. I managed to keep that low-hp tank alive up the hill and through the tunnel without any wipes, all the while the rogue alternating between complaining about the "bad tank" and shouting song lyrics for some reason.
Anyway, long story short, we got it done with only one wipe on Tyrannus and with the rogue whispering me with some BS about being made for each other. If at any stage it had got obscene I would have vote-kicked him in a heartbeat and probably reported him, but it was pretty harmless, and by that stage I was past the furious stage and thought the whole thing was hilarious. He was only saying it in whispers, not party chat. Not that it mattered much because I suspect everyone in the party but me was ignoring him!
My emotional rainbow went something like this over the course of the instance:
Start, mildly inconvenienced by the tank leaving. New tank, hooray! Rogue being an arse, annoyed. Can't believe what I'm reading, furious. Determined. Bemused. Amused. At the end I was shaking my head and thinking what a bizzare game this can be at times!
Still, here's a tip for young players: don't go giving your real name out to random strangers in pugs!
The moral of the story is, give newbie tanks a chance! When I was a noob healer (still am to be honest), a well geared tank made runs easier. If the tank is undergeared, it's the healer's problem. If the tank and the healer are both undergeared, then the problems are bigger, but not insurmountable. I probably should have vote-kicked the rogue at the start and saved myself the stress.
So, dear readers, if you've made it this far I salute you ;) How quick are YOU to vote-kick someone? Would you have kicked the tank at the start? I'm guessing most would have kicked the rogue!
