Every so often you get these bad PUGs. You bitch about them to your friends, and if they’re too horrendous, you drop group. Hell, every so often, you might even get terrible PUGs.

And then you get ones like this.

Setting: Nexus. Actors: A poor random DK, an elemental shaman. Then this huntard to shame all huntards, and a paladin from his guild. And poor Lumi who had to queue as tank today because I was in a hurry to get the heroic done.

So we start off, it’s all going well, I’m asked to pull more, etc, etc. In one of these big pulls, I get a whisper:

“Druid innervate me”

Boggled, I glance at the party frames. Yes, this request is indeed, coming from the hunter. That’s fine, maybe he’s asking on behalf of the healer or something… except, nah, the healer hasn’t even spent 50% of his mana pool. However, the hunter is maybe on 25% mana. So I sort of ignore the request – I couldn’t innervate even if I wanted to, it would have been suicide to drop form with six mobs beating on me.

After the pull, in party chat, the paladin goes:

“Durid u know what innervate means?”

Um, excuse me?

Was a tank, honestly expected to, during a pull, drop form, Innervate a hunter, and go back to tanking presumably with zero rage? You know, the class that gets Aspect of the Viper at level 20 to accommodate all their mana needs?

I replied that the hunter, perhaps, could make use of this spell to regenerate mana between pulls, instead of expecting a tank to Innervate in the middle of a pull, lose all her rage, and more than likely cause a wipe.

“Teamplayer lol”

Um. Okay.

Now at this point, perhaps you might guess that this hunter had never trained said aspect and didn’t even know what it meant. I mean, I’d be sort of okay with it, perhaps even lend him some drinks and teach what the Aspect does, be on our merry way. Nope, this sadly wasn’t the case.

This hunter wouldn’t to pop Aspect of the Viper, because, wait for this…

…he didn’t want to lose DPS. It was just so much more practical for him to receive an Innervate every cooldown, you see, instead of changing aspects between pulls. He was making the most numbarz on the metarz, so this made the most sense. Except, this whole thing wasn’t explained as politely as I put it here, sprinkled with random “lol”s and explanations as to why I was bad from his pocket paladin.

At that point I wouldn’t Innervate this guy if Tyrande herself asked me to, and I mentioned this was likely the stupidest thing I’d heard from a hunter in four years of playing (and I’ve heard a lot). Yeah, I was well pissed.

He asked for an explanation of why this was stupid, which I ignored because I was trying to tank Anomalus.

And then they began a game of  “Hey, if we aren’t able to get her to give us an Innervate, let’s start in on her tanking abilities!”

[Party][Paladin]: lol im a much better tank than this
[Party][Paladin]: in my mainspec

Note that at this point I:

• Haven’t lost aggro to anyone
• Haven’t caused a wipe
• Have handled much bigger pulls than usual
• Am pulling 2k DPS while tanking

In response, I went “Really? Feel free to do that now, then!” and dropped group.

Honestly, it was way too early in the morning to put up with that bullshit, even if I was pressed for time. So I thought to myself “perhaps the next time they’re waiting in LFG for twenty minutes to get a tank, they can contemplate where they went wrong  to cause this tank shortage”.

But that’d probably be too much to hope for.

1. Where you get to relive your driving lessons

Flame Leviathan is easy. No really.

After you get over ooh-ing and aah-ing over your vehicle abilities, and go over such important steps as HOW DO WE IGNITE THE FUCKING TAR, you can move on to the WHERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWERS phase. All as you trudge through a million dwarves, complete with choppers that shoot lazorbeems and big bad things that like to smash you in the face. I didn’t really pay attention to this phase, as I was busy giggling and squeeing and going pewpewpewomgikillthings.

After you stand in green glowy pads to heal your vehicles, and one of your group inevitably forgets to, you move on to Flame Leviathan. Did I mention Flame Leviathan is easy? After your guild gets over the hahaha woman driving jokes, your bike riders remember to pick people up from where they drop, and your DPSers thoroughly enjoy being launched into the air, collect your epics and move on to:

2. Razorscale: When Skadi isn’t annoying enough

Razorscale consists of two phases, in phase 1 you get to kill annoying adds and heal through annoying breaths while one of you harpoons the annoying dragon above, in phase 2 you get to DPS the annoying dragon while you move away from annoying blue fire and tanks pray they don’t get taunt resists. This might sound oddly familiar to you, however don’t dwell on it much, distribute the purplez, because ahead waits:

3. You might think this is the worst trash ever but it isn’t, aka HAI IS THIS MOLTEN CORE

The next thing you notice will be two giants who have made this their home. The next next thing you notice will be your tank screaming his dying breath as he gets to admire the floor up close because all the healers were stunned. After that, you will probably notice your healers cursing up a storm as they constantly get their drinking interrupted by the ball of fire. Next up will be the “Hey, try iceblocking” and the “How about Cloak of Shadows” parts as your entire raid slowly realises that the ball of fire is here to stay.

When your healers and DPS finally manage to drink up to full, you can move on to the next bit, which involves Trash That Does Whirly Stuff and Trash That Does Not Do Whirly Stuff.  Move out when the Trash That Does Whirly Stuff does the Whirly Stuff, and make sure each member of your raid lives through the unique experience of being bounced between two Whirly Stuffs. After your raid is done declaring this the worst trash ever, and the more knowledgeable among you giggling that they ain’t seen nothing yet, you can face:

4. LOL WHAT DOES HE HAVE ON HIS CROTCH

The Ignis fight involves a lot of fire. But it is one of those innovative fights that actually involves your offtank standing in the fire as he tries to figure out how to kite the adds through them without making your healers lose their will to live. You will go through a lot of tries at this point, most of which end with your offtank dying a fiery death, your main tank dying a fiery death, or someone else crucial dying a fiery death. Another of the biggest obstacles in your way will be your raid getting over the required KEKE YOU ARE IN HIS CROTCH jokes. When you decide you have wiped on Ignis enough and want to KILL HIM WITH FIRE, your raid leader will decide to skip him and you can say hello to:

5. “He sounds like he’s had his balls removed”

The first thing you’ll notice about Deconstructor is that he does aerobics. The second thing you will notice about him is ROFL HE SOUNDS LIKE A LITTLE GIRL. After your raid gets over the whole voice bit, and you wipe to the enrage timer because you tried to DPS all the adds, one of your tanks will hopefully be smart enough and will suggest offtanking the Pummelers until Deconstructor is dead.

This works perfectly, but there might be a few kinks to be worked out, such as How To Teach Your Melee to Not Die To Bombs and WHAT THE FUCK THE SCRAPBOTS ARE EVADING, combined with the ever-delightful HOLY CRAP SCRAPBOTS FROM THE LEFT WATCH OUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODHKSHK WIPE FAST. When these kinks are smoothed, onwards to:

6. The worst trash ever, part 2

If you’re lucky like us, you’ll have a friend who has done the trash pop on Vent to dispense advice, if you aren’t, prepare to wipe. And wipe. And wipe once more for good measure. After these wipes you will probably figure out that 1. You cannot outrange the 10k damage/tick DoT, 2. You still should not stand in things that will result in fiery death, 3. HAHAHAH FEMALE MOB THAT SUMMONS BALLS IS SHE A FEMALE OR MALE IF HE HAS ONE BALL LOLOL AHSHIT THE MT IS DEAD. Hopefully you will soon get through this most exciting trash, and go through the exciting experience of your raid leader gloating on Vent that the raid has figured out the Rune Giants until someone explodes in the middle of the raid. Next up on the list is:

7. THE LEFT ARM, NO I MEAN THE RIGHT ARM, FFS IT’S THE SKULL ARM ALREADY

Kologarn is normally a fight which involves healing the people that need healing and tanking the things that need tanking, not to mention running out of glowy lazorbeems. It also requires your raiders to be able to tell their left from their right when the right is really left. However, Blizzard in their infinite wisdom has decided that this is too easy and they must add in THE BUG OF DOOM, aka How To Wipe On Kologarn When Things Are Going Just Peachy. This bug involves Kologarn hitting everyone in the raid with Ability of Doom even though your main tank is perfectly in melee range. After you get sufficiently tired of wiping to this, you will want to try:

8. “…guys? Fusion Punch was dispellable after all.”

The Iron Council consists of a Very Big Mob, a Smaller Mob, and the Smallest Mob. You will want to kill the Very Big Mob first as he has many abilities that will hurt your raid. Your raid can put their Iron Boot Flasks to good use here to confuse the shit out of your tanks. Proceed to wipe a few times while your offtank figures out the range on the BIG EXPLOSION and your two disc priests try to heal through Fusion Punch without realising it is dispellable.

After all these things happen, there are but a few minor details to be worked out, such as 1. Your offtank interrupting Chain Lightning, 2. Your mage or shaman dispelling the shield because your disc priests are completely hopeless, 3. Your DPS not standing in bad things, 4. Your DPS standing in good things, 5. Your main tank not inexplicably dying, 6. Err shit I forgot but it does not matter anyway because we did not get to kill Iron Council.

NEXT WEEK: THE TRASH THAT IS CALLED TRASH, AND OTHER EXCITING STUFF

Purchased Lumi’s dual spec. Specced cat. Got glyphs. Trudged off to a target dummy to try it out.

Now, her gear is nothing special, and she’s not gemmed optimally. In the exact same gear before 3.1, and a cat spec, she used to average 2k dps on a target dummy.

In the same gear right now on live, she’s doing between 3 and 3.1k sustained. Self-buffed.

Needless to say, happy druid? Is happy.

I’m not at all pleased about Savage Defense, though. I feel a lot more squishy, having lost 4k armor and 3k HP overnight, and I really don’t think Savage Defense is making up for that. Maybe less of a nerf to HotW and SotF, or a better idea to have a damage shield was in order?