Well, I did announce the new “one piece per person per raid, unless other parties interested decide they can have more” rule last raid. Guess who wasn’t pleased? Our warlock who gobbles up loot like Pacman on steroids, regardless of who else needs it, and her boyfriend, but that was hardly surprising. Everyone else was completely fine with it, but then, everyone else possesses enough sense to know that we do our best to ensure every piece of loot goes to the person who will benefit from it most.

But what about offspec rolls? Cried she. We pointed out that a warlock hardly had an offspec like a hybrid’s. PvP spec, said she. At this point I had a brain overload, since ohmyGod you’re a warlock needs resilience there is no resilience on Ulduar gear jldsjla does not compute, but thankfully our MT pointed out that we will hardly let gear be DEd as long as there is someone willing to use it.

The way Stratomize, our paladin, put it, we have two options: Common sense, or Loot Council. I’d much rather we did Council since certain members of our raid group seem to lack this common sense thing (HINT: If you have epic wand and priest has green wand, please feel free to not roll on new wand), but it’s very easy for Council to look biased. So I guess new loot rule it is.

Also had to have a talk with resto shaman about his girlfriend’s consistent failure, since everyone always complains about her, and ultimately, people also see me as being at fault for inviting her. Since she and the resto shaman are a package deal, if we want to keep resto shaman we also have to get along with warlock, and we’re rather fond of the guy.

Resto shaman, unsurprisingly, found nothing wrong with his girlfriend’s style of play. I had hoped he also noticed that she was succeeding greatly at being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and generally letting us down everytime we counted on her, but no. At the end, we agreed that everytime the raid decided she had failed, I’d mention this to resto shaman. I’ll start doing this tonight, and see how it goes.

Christ, people, please accept your bad. There is very little to be gained from not accepting it, and a lot from accepting it and trying to improve.

Oh and also, the subject of raid invites. This part manages to consistently drive me crazy, due to people who won’t accept or decline until the last second, thus denying the raid leaders the option to find a replacement if one person won’t be around. I think I will be creating a new rule saying that the event will be locked for more signs 24 hours prior to event start, and if you haven’t accepted your invite until then, it’ll be counted as a decline.

Take a guild.

A good guild, if you were looking at progression. Everyone Twilight Vanquishers, rolling in epics, going for raid achievements, that kind of guild.

I have had the dubious pleasure of wiping with such a guild on Maly10 today.

It all started when some guy was looking in trade for people for a Maly8. After a five minute interview, he was convinced I’d do a good job, and chucked me an invite.

Mayling, who heard this, also wanted in, so I directed him to the group leader knowing how much resto druids were wanted for Malygos. He got in as well. Great, I thought.

Until he got kicked a minute later, apparently to be replaced by another resto druid, because the priest had threatened to leave if said druid wasn’t invited. It obviously didn’t help that this druid, who had the word “Noob” in his name (and who does that, seriously) had better gear, either.

I gave the group leader a piece of my mind, but I was in the instance already, and oh well, let’s give this a shot.

Try 1: Hit berserk timer in P3, wipe. Only one person had 18 stacks of the DoT, the others were at… 3. I suggest people put more effort on keeping their stacks up. The DK says DPS is bad in the first two phases. He has a point, since we have only two people breaking 3k.

Try 2: Hit berserk timer in P3, wipe. No matter how I turn Malygos, the DK doesn’t seem to be able to grip the spark next to the other. I don’t think we ever had two stacks at any point. I point this out, the DK retorts with “DG has a cooldown”. I don’t quite understand how this is relevant, because I mean, with the way I turn Malygos, he ought to be able to catch at least _one_ other spark on top of the one that we killed wherever it was. He also doesn’t manage to ever break 2k dps. Raid buffed. With 4 piece Valorous.

Try 3: Hit berserk timer in P3, wipe. How surprising. I’d say Malygos ate about half the sparks during this try. The non-guildie warrior, who’s been doing decent DPS, is kicked, because the DK will invite a “more imba” warrior.

Try 4: Same stuff, different try. The more imba warrior does 2,5k dps with best in slots.

The shadowpriest, who incidentally was our top DPSer, says he’s had enough and leaves. The hunter, who was the only other guy to break 3k dps, also leaves. The druid, who was a friend of the SP, follows.

The group is quickly filled with… more guildies, as the group leader decides to screw 8man and just go for 10. Everyone has great gear, we have a paladin for blessings, this is going to great, and we move on to…

Try 5: By some grace of God, two sparks end up in the same place. Heroism is popped. The other fury warrior pulls aggro and dies. I get yells of “OMFG CR”, which I can’t do till P2. However, the holy paladin also dies to Vortex (Vortex is srs bznss with a resto shaman and a paladin as your healers), because apparently, he doesn’t have a bubble button.

I combat res the paladin going into P2. He doesn’t accept. The whole group is screaming at me to res, and I’m trying to type that I have, and tank two Nexus Lords. Which is slightly more challenging than it should be, because attacking the skull is hard. The enhancement shaman who was attacking the not-skull also dies. Paladin finally accepts the res, and proceeds to die to the next breath with about… half of the group.

After the wipe, the enhancement shaman loudly proclaims that he is not staying for another try unless we get a priest or druid for Vortex. A resto druid is hastily found. At this point I’m giggling at the irony of them having kicked Mayling only to end up needing him various times.

Then the shaman starts yelling at me. Now I had been expecting that, being that I’m the only non-guildie in the group, the wipes will probably end up being my fault.

He claims that I haven’t been above 3k tps the entire fight (I usually fluctuate near 5k selfbuffed, breaking 6-7k depending on the raidbuffs I have), and that he can’t do as much DPS as he wants to because I’m not building enough threat. However, strangely, he also admits that he doesn’t have a threat meter installed. Because he “doesn’t need it”, because his guild “is very good”. I end up pointing out that half his guildies have died to the breath, and that you can’t get more terrible than that. Not to mention the Death Grip-challenged DK and the holy paladin who can’t find his bubble button.

Try 6: We have a Vortex at 51%, which ends up working to our advantage as Malygos goes to about 44% in between the break before Vortex and the one before P2. The Nexus lords go amazingly smoothly, thanks to one of the warriors (the not-failing one) yelling “Let the tank get some threat, and attack the skull” at the start of the phase. You know, to do the things that we learn at level 20 in DM.

P3 goes smoothly, and Malygos finally dies, with the only loss being the retarded fury warrior.

And this, guys, is how a good guild is not really very good.

(P.S.: And me? I admit that I make mistakes. I’m relatively new to druid tanking, having always been resto. I try my best to do everything the way I know how, but obviously I can’t always do it, as the mishaps show. I realise that I’m sometimes missing obvious things. But when I’m putting 100% into it and others aren’t, and I end up being blamed for everything that goes wrong at the end… does not sit well with me.)

We see it in battlegrounds all the time. “OMG Horde/Alliance sucks!” “We lose all the time!” “Nooooooooobs” (in the case of certain younger players who are out of school due to holidays).

But seriously, question yourself.

Are you fighting near an objective every time, or are you just farming HKs midfield while waiting for someone else to do the job for you? Are you leeching somewhere in AV and complaining about your honor per hour at the same time? Do you respond to help requests? Do you defend? Or do you just follow the mindless zerg around and hope you win? Do you play armchair general in /bg?

Your side might lose. Your side might lose a lot more often the other side, or so it might seem. But you are part of the team you are criticising, like it or not. It’s in your hands to win – even a couple of geared people who know what they are doing can turn the tide of a battleground (The day where Randomize, Cuteip and Rochalie queued together and won 8 EotS’s in a row comes to mind). If everyone who yelled insults in battleground chat actually worked towards the objectives, the game would be won.

Other than that, my battleground wisdom for this weekend, made after seeing 10 Horde zerging the middle when we had no towers:

Some paladin: “LF1M healer, Ramparts heroic!”
Roch who was looking for something to do: “Yay! Me me!”

Invite gets thrown out, and the first thing I hear in /p is some gibberish in a foreign language I don’t happen to speak.

I wait a few minutes, maybe they were carrying on a conversation in their native language before I came in, maybe they’ll switch to English now because I’m there. Nope, doesn’t happen.

“Mind speaking English in /p, please?”

They completely ignore me and go on. I ask again a couple of minutes later, with the same result.

/leaveparty

3 seconds later, whisper from the paladin:

“wtf dude why you leave?”

I explained politely that obviously they were not going to bother to show me a little respect by speaking in a language I did understand, so I wished to have no further dealings with them.

“lol dude we were not in instance so it was nothing important to you and my friend can’t speak english so what he had to do?”

Er, if he can’t speak English, 1. Why can’t you take it to whispers, 2. How am I supposed to communicate with this guy once we are in the instance?

“he is lame I know but I never saw anyone who will left because of language”

I pointed out that the instance would be infinitely easier if they took a healer that spoke the same language instead, goodbye, good luck, have fun.

No but seriously.

When I have people who speak my native language in the party, I make sure we switch to English when people who don’t speak it come in. It’s called respect, and it’s wholly irrelevant to the subject whether the topic of conversation is interesting to the other person. It’s passively excluding others, and I’ve had it done to me enough that I won’t ever have it done again or do it to anyone else.

A little anecdote: When I and my friends first joined Love Vendor, it was the reroll project of a group of real life friends. We joined LV because two of the founders were an officer and a prominent member from my old guild, both of whom were good friends, and they had assured we would be welcome in the guild.

However, we found ourselves increasingly excluded because guild chat was almost exclusively in Norwegian. We felt discouraged from ever starting a conversation or joining one. Even if we happened to be speaking in English, someone would deliberately respond in Norwegian – after one of those episodes, I even got a whisper saying “isn’t it hard being in a guild where you don’t even understand the language being spoken?” (bully-speak for “Why are you here?”). Thankfully eventually most of them got tired of their little reroll project (Haomarush was apparently too low-pop for their taste) and went back to the server they came from, minus our two good friends, and we reclaimed the guild chat.

But I heavily dislike this bully-tactic, this “we don’t care for you so we’ll do whatever we like, and you are the weird one for being offended” doesn’t sit well with me, and I won’t stand for it. If people aren’t willing to show the respect and stick to a common language, they aren’t people I would like to group with.

Dear dumbass shaman who decided that it was a good idea to kill a mage while waiting for our Ring of Blood group to assemble,

You are stupid.

You are stupid.

You are stupid.

You are infinitely fking stupid if you haven’t realised that oh hi, we are preparing to do an outdoor event, and griefing a member of a group who just finished said event. Despite me yelling “Don’t kill any Alliance while at Ring of Blood, they’ll just come back to ruin our quest”.

If you ever thought that said mage wouldn’t come back to retrieve his body and prepare for a round of justice, which he would be completely justified in delivering, you are wrong. I hope the HK was worth seeing the group break up at the second boss after repeatedly dying, since we couldn’t do much of anything while the healer was sheeped and the tank was eating Frostbolts to the face.

Why must you be so completely stupid?

Gtfo,
Your tank.

1. I am prot. That means I tank. I only tank. Sorry. No healy for you.

1a. As an extension, I won’t DPS either. If the other designated tank wants to DPS, I’ll gladly tank. If I wanted to DPS in groups, I’d go retri (and more than likely, never get any groups. Sorry. Retribution sucks in 5-mans, it has always sucked, and continues to suck even after its buff. Please accept this fact and move on, and don’t QQ about not being able to get any groups. It might be your $15 per month to play as you like, but in a group it’s the others’ $60, and it’s more than likely they’ll take someone who brings in more utility. If you want more groups, spec prot or holy, get all the badges/rep/offspec gear you desire, go retri. Just don’t QQ about it. /rant)

1b. Establish all those rules before you invite me. ie, if you ask my spec, and I say prot, don’t invite me to DPS or heal without getting confirmation. You waste 4 other people’s time, and now I’m pissed because you were retarded and didn’t ask, and I can’t be arsed to group with you again.

1c. If you’re sweet enough, literate enough, funny enough, and I like you, I’ll slap on my healing kit and heal. That’s a lot of ifs.

2. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever pull before me. Sit, drink, heal, rebuff, do your nails, I don’t care. Just don’t pull. I have no qualms letting people die.

A moonkin found this out the hard way when he pulled a boss before I explained any tactics or rebuffed. He called me a bitchy tank for the rest of the instance.

Meh, we made up afterwards. He was a nice guy.

2a. Crowd controlling or otherwise putting me in combat before I pull is subject to the same rules.

2b. If you see me drinking, please immediately proceed to not pull. You can wait 30 seconds. I’ll need that mana in a few seconds to taunt off of your overnuking clothie ass.

3. Make sure all CC is applied before the mobs are smack on top of me. They’re dazed, they’ll take a while to get to me, you have ample time. But if I’ll hold aggro, I’ll need that Consecrate.

3a. Make sure all CC is applied after you see that shiny holy shield thing hit those mobs. If you apply it beforehand, I’ll just break it. If you wait until they are on top of me, I will still break it because you took ages to CC it and pissed me off. It’s a lose-lose situation. Except when you time it properly.

3b. If your CCed mob somehow gets into the Consecrate, for the love of $deity_of_choice, leave it alone. I’ll tank it. Why you are trying to resheep a mob that is in the Consecrate area is beyond me.

3c. Don’t CC unless I ask you to. Trust me, I can tank them all, and the run goes 500 times faster. It ticks me off when you CC without being asked. I’m saving you the trouble, so shut up and run with it. Gift horse and all.

4. If you can give me a viable reason as to why you want a blessing other than the one I gave you, you can have it. “Larger epeen by topping the damage meters” does not qualify. “Larger epeen by getting bigger crits” also does not qualify.

4a. I withhold the right to demote you to Salvation from Might/Kings/Wisdom whenever I see fit. Whenever I see fit is defined as “when you are being an ass aggroing everything in sight”.

4b. If you refuse to turn Growl off, your pet gets Salvation. Good luck with that.

4c. If you’re 384302 levels higher than me, you’re also getting Salvation. Sorry. I’m not a fan of having my mobs run all over because you think since you’re 70, you don’t have to hold back your threat.

4d. Repeatedly yelling at me to “pala give 10 stat buff” “pala give might” “MIGHT” or any incoherent, badly spelled and demanding variation thereof can and will get you a blessing very fast. It’ll be more than likely Sanctuary. Enjoy.

5. If I hit Avenger’s Shield, then run away from the mobs, that means I’m LoS pulling. It does not, contrary to popular opinion, mean you should stand in line of sight and load up your hardest hitting nukes. You’re retarded.

5a. If you’re a mage/shadow priest, a caster is unloading on the group from range, and if you’re busy loading up a damage spell instead of taking out two seconds to cast a Counterspell/Silence, you’re even more retarded.

I don’t know how many times in the past week I’ve had to call for a CS, and still didn’t get one as the mage happily Frostbolted away. (”But I have CSed!” No you haven’t, I didn’t see any CS animation, I don’t see your Counterspell being on cooldown, you’re just a lazy ass.) And a patrolling group walked past the ranged and proximity aggroed us. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Recent PuG pet peeves, in no particular order:

1. The retarded arms warrior who taunted off me.

Now this guy was an interesting one. He was three levels above me. He got Kings – I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, since I saved him from tanking, he would play nice, right? Wrong. He was aggroing. I stuck Salvation on him. He was still aggroing. The healer rightfully protested after a few groups. I warned him a few times to watch his threat meter.

…so instead of being careful with DPS (ie MAYBE YOU SHOULD NOT CHARGE IN AND UNLOAD BEFORE I GET A CHANCE TO TOUCH THE MOB), this guy equips a sword and board… and proceeds to taunt off me.

I taunt, he taunts back. I taunt, he taunts back.

That was when I dropped group and hearthed. One tank per group is plenty.

2. In this group, everybody is a tank!

Cat druid + enhancement shaman + rogue who had 2 levels on me = so much failicious DPS I don’t know where to start.

We enter the instance – the healer lagged, so he isn’t even in the instance yet. The rogue immediately proceeds to pull. The druid joins in. At this point no one has buffed, no pre-instance preparation, no marks, etc. These guys are sure in a hurry.

I yell at them to chill, demand leadership to mark, blessings and various other buffs are given. The druid doesn’t buff. I have no idea why. He just doesn’t.

And he keeps pulling. Every damn group. Before I get a chance to smack Avenger’s Shield I spot Mangle on my mob.

“Ure too slooow!!!!!11111oneone”

Everyone DPSes a different mob despite marks, I seriously can’t keep track of what mob is where because everything is targeting someone else. MOST FREQUENTLY THE DRUID. The healer is yelling because aggro is everywhere – if I was him, I would yell too. I have dropped groups on Ely before because DPS decides they want to tank.

But the clincher comes when, right after a wipe, I go up, mark a group, and the druid bearforms and charges…. right into ANOTHER, substantially larger, group.

/leaveparty
/cast Divine Shield
/cast Hearthstone

3. The druid who decided meleeing things in tree form was a good idea. Don’t ask.

4. The holy paladin who gave Light to everyone regardless of class.

“It’s my healing style, kk?” Kk. It might be time to hearth.

5. The melee DPS (there was plenty) that constantly pulled aggro but still demanded Might.

Shut up, and accept Salvation. I am not here to provide extensions to your minuscule epeen, I am here to ensure the instance run is smooth and make the healer’s job easier. If this requires that your overaggroing ass gets Salvation, that’s what I’ll give you. If you insist, you get Sanctuary.

6. The DPS warrior who got Kings and demanded Might. I am sincerely puzzled on that one.

7. The random DPSers who demanded damage meters after every pull. Go install your own and shut up. Nobody cares about the size of your epeen.

8. The shadow priest who decided to play epeenflex with the mage three levels below him. “What’s your plus damage?” “270 why?” “405 lol”.

Why oh why do you think the group cares?

This guy also always spoke in /s. Also after we are done, he asked “Go again?” We said no. He found it appropriate to yell “NOOB LOL” and leave the group. To this day I have no idea why.

9. The mage and warlock who were obviously friends, and played a game of “who can aggro and get themselves killed” over me. I just wish a rapid death in a fire for those two. Nothing more.

10. The warlock who fully dotted up everything, regardless of whether it was the main DPS target. AND Death Coiled it. Why. Why. WHY.

/facepalm