Random, Schmandom

I hate Halls of Stone.

I wrote a guestie for Tarinae a little while ago looking at her Heroic Dungeon stats, to see how random the random dungeon finder really is. After getting Halls of Stone as my random AGAIN today, I decided to take a look at my own stats.

We found out after that guest post that apparently there was a bug a while ago where Prophet Tharon'ja kills were recorded  as three kills instead of one, so for argument's sake I've divided my DTK count by three.

For Leesah:

Twenty-seven times.  Not all bosses were killed every time. Some of them were quick, others were painfully slow. Some quiet groups, some bitching children (take today's for example, grrr). Some decent tanks, some decent dps, one starting out terrible but gradually improving healer.

Leesah dinged 80 on Valentine's Day. That was, in fact, almost exactly 27 weeks ago. I've completed Halls of Stone once a week of every week that Leesah has been level 80. For some of those weeks I was away on holidays, or didn't have time to do many dungeons. Not to mention the 7 times I have done it on Aefa, or the times I did it on my EU characters!

Now I understand why I scream every time I see that loading screen.

Do your stats stack up to randomness?  Is there one dungeon that you hate hate hate?

Tree Gets Mad: A Pug's Tale

This is a story about a pug of randoms.  Yes, it's one of those stories. 

I'm not normally one to get mad at people - I'm usually pretty forgiving. But last night, my patience was tested to the limit.

Scene: Heroic Forge of Souls. In the corridor leading to the final boss, there are a number of ghosty mobs that hit the whole party like a truck. We went in, attacking one. There's another one outside the door behind us - it gets pulled by accident. We wipe - no biggie, we just need to take the mob outside first.

When we get back in there and get going again, the tank just runs into the tunnel again, leaving the mob outside.  The DPS warrior gets all funny about it and says something like "wtf are you stupid?".  The rest of us just run well inside the tunnel and keep attacking the mob in front of us.  

Then, the DPS warrior runs back out of the tunnel and picks up the mob outside.  Meanwhile, the rest of the group are attacking the next mob towards the boss - all I knew was that the warrior was taking damage somewhere outside my range.  I didn't realise what the idiot had done until he says in party chat, "HEAL!".

Now I consider myself a reasonable person, but people telling me to do my job when I am clearly already doing it really makes my blood boil.  It's probably a good thing that this guy couldn't hear the names I was calling him.  This time I just managed to heal through the two mobs and we didn't wipe (adrenaline?), but I was so pissed off afterwards that I told him exactly where to go.  A vote to kick was initiated, but since we were right near the final boss anyway, it wasn't worth it so I just said no, and we just killed the boss and left. I didn't record anyone's names, because I was so mad I logged over to my mage to throw spells at stuff for a while.

I vented my spleen on gchat and on Twitter about it, and most people's reactions to it were along the lines of, "Should have just stopped healing him then - let him die." At the time it had occurred to me that I could have just let him die, but I didn't. I thought about why I had kept healing - I guess it must be that as a healer, I'd feel like I hadn't done my job properly if I let someone die, even if that person was a total asshat.  I honestly didn't really think about it at the time, only later once I read everyone else's reactions.

Why are healers so vindictive?  Is it because we have the power to keep someone alive, so if they make us mad we use that to our advantage? Did I, by choosing to keep the asshat alive, decide to use that power for good rather than evil? Do we feel like we need to teach the idiot dps a lesson?

Would YOU have let the asshat die?

Looking for Multitudes

Leesah made a new best friend last night, after achieving Looking For Multitudes.

He's completely adorable, except that I think he might have worms - he keeps scratching his bum along the ground in a quite off-putting way.

So, what has Elder Leesah learned from grouping with 100 random people?

1. There are good tanks, there are great tanks... and then there are tanks who are still learning.
   
   
2. DON'T PANIC!  Panic leads to death.  Use Swiftmend, use Wild Growth, use Tranquility.  Let the mage die.  He'll get over it.
   
   
3. If a party member makes jokes about women, abuse, racism or whatever, and you are offended, chances are someone else in the group is too.  Just vote-kick the joker.
   
   
4. People will roll need on offspec items then leave the group.  Items that are healer items.  Grrr.
   
   
5. If a cloth item drops that you really want, and you are not a clothie, everyone will roll disenchant and it will be de'd before your QQ'ing eyes.
   
   
6. The DK/Shaman/Hunter/Retpally keeps pulling aggro.  Let them die, or spam heal them?  That, my friends, is the question.
   
   
7. Warlocks Lifetap constantly.  Every time they do it, it scares the hell out of me.  I think they do it on purpose to freak me out.
   
   
8. People who refer to other party members by their class name really make my blood boil.  Go on, call me "druid" ONE MORE TIME.
   
   
9. People are impatient.  I think in 4 out of 5 groups, the tank will go charging off into the first mobs before waiting for buffs or to make sure the healer is ready.  Most of the time I am able to catch up.  Other times, death.
   
   
10. I queue for heroics as healer/dps.  I have been surprised by how often I get into a group as dps.  In fact, I usually get in as dps while I'm in resto spec, and in as a healer when I'm in dps spec.  This means I'm often frantically swapping specs and gear and trying to mana up at the start.  Refer to point 9 for the logical conclusion.

In summary, I've found the LFD system to be incredibly useful and makes the emblem-farming process a lot faster.  Most of the time, people are polite, and while I've had a few bad experiences, the majority of the runs have been great.

The only gripe I have about it is that you can't choose just to group with people from your server.  I'd like to be able to suss out guilds while doing heroics, but I very rarely get random people from my server.  I guess I'd better get stuck into pug raids instead.

What, dear readers, have you learned from the LFD system?  Do share your stories!

LFG Impressions

Many bloggers around the place have been posting about their horror stories with the new LFG tool.  There have been tales of people being kicked, dropping group, ninjas and general anguish.  Oh, and plenty of ranting about Oculus.  I never minded going in there, it was something a bit different.  One of my old guildies ran it every day for about a month to try to get the healing plate legs out of there.  I haven't ever pugged it yet, mind you.  I look forward to that.. /sarcasm.

In any case, I joined the random dungeon queue with Leesah at level 60 just to see how she went as a healer in Balance spec.  Bam, instant group for Ramparts, so off we went.  The group looked good - Pally tank, a dk, kitty druid and an elemental shaman.

Soon after we started, the tank had to go, so we picked up another dk as tank.  So far so good, except that for some reason I was drinking after every pull.  You may say "But Ang, balance druids will run out of mana really fast when healing so it's no wonder you have a drinking problem!", but the actual reason was because the elemental spec Shaman was standing up front with the tank, hitting stuff with his weapon and flinging out spells left and right, continuously pulling aggro.  I pretty much had to spam heal him to keep him alive, and there were quite a few times where I couldn't catch him and he bit the pavement.  Also lack of threat control meant that a few got through to me and I died pretty quickly when they started thumping me as well.

Now I realise some people may not understand threat mechanics, so I'll explain it simply.  If you are not the tank, and stuff is hitting you, gtfo and stop doing dps.  I'm not sure whether level 60 Shaman have some kind of threat dump but honestly, this guy was just getting pummelled the whole time.

I thought about asking him whether he had Omen or actually knew that elemental shammies are usually supposed to stand back and shoot lightening, but he looked like he was enjoying himself dying all the time so I decided to keep quiet, but by Elune trying to spam heal a wannabe tank shammy is not a relaxing way to spend time, I can tell you.

We managed to get through the instance and I picked up a nice blue necklace from my Satchel of Spoils as well as some loot from one of the bosses, so I think I may do a few more low level pugs soon.  On the whole the group was very polite and no-one said anything nasty to each other so I think that went quite well don't you?

PS.  Follow the ninja link.  But don't blame me for getting it stuck in your head.