For every Good PUG, there is a bad one

Got into an Heroic Slave Pens PUG over the weekend. Still lovin' it.

We had a bit of a surprise, though. The MT and Healer group-quit and left after the first boss. No warning, just looted and ran. It wasn't even a ninja-loot: they only took Badges.



WTF? Really?

Kazard of Tempest and Dojin of The Fearless.

Now, a bad PUG is one thing, but this wasn't a bad PUG. We were making pretty good progress, despite the fact that the MT was Fury-specced and in full PvP gear. No one was arguing. As near as I can tell, there was no reason for the two guys to do it. And yet ... they just chose to be jerks.

But wait, it gets worse.

As I was pretty irked, I Armoried both of them and looked around to see if I could find an officer of each guild to let them know that their guildmates were trashing their rep. I spoke with Rabidewok of Tempest, and he was nice but it was pretty much obviously a dead end. I then spoke with someone with The Fearless and was told, flatly, to not even bother: no one cared. I hadn't even said what the problem was, just that I was looking for an officer to talk about a problem with one of their guildmates. I was nice. I was respectful. And in both cases I was blown off.

There's also a half of an epilogue.

Last night in /Trade I saw Dojin spamming for a Tailor. I cannot convey to you how strong the urge was to reply in the affirmative, as I'm sure he has no memory of who I am, then take his mats and tell him to please go fetch my missing Badges. Oh wait, they're Soulbound. Good luck with that.

But I didn't. I'm not that guy. There are times when I want to be, but I'm just not. (And I would have had a hard time defending my behavior to a GM.)

Either way, I don't think I'll be accepting anyone from The Fearless into any of my PUGs any time soon. It's a small revenge, but it's about all I can really do.

Two! Ha, ha, ha!

I did not one but two (!) heroics last night: Mana Tombs (Daily) and Slave Pens.

The Heroic Mana Tombs run was a PUG (for me) with four guys from Grateful Undead. They have a small guild of IRL friends, just like ours, and struggle with finding comparably-able players to fill slots in their groups, just like we do. It was simultaneously comforting to see another guild working the same problem, and also a little bit of a bummer. Long story short, it was a very good fit. (And they spoke in complete sentences! omg!)

It took us a little while to get past Pandemonius. Okay, 3 wipes. After the second wipe we saw that the Druid tank was just taking far too much damage, and was getting 3-shotted. The Shaman we had healing just couldn't keep up with that kind of damage. Given that mana and DPS weren't the problem (the Mage was putting out enough DPS for both of us), we saw that I needed to put on some healing gear and off-heal.

We did wipe one more time. But I immediately saw that it was my fault -- I hadn't gotten into a healing mindset and hadn't been able to keep up, either. (You try switching from DPS to healing and doing it exactly right the first time.) It was frustrating, but we gave it one more try.

The fourth run went as smooth as chocolate silk pie. I kept a Renew, PWS, and a PoM on the tank at all times, then threw out GH and FH as necessary. I even got to practice a few GH dekes as I saw that the Shaman was able to keep up. When I had a few spare seconds, I DOTted and Fiended. Smooooth.

The rest of the run was a cakewalk, and we one-shotted everything else. It's nice to work with proper villains heroes.

But there was a downside.

I really, really had my A-game on for that run. We had a kick-ass team and the synergy raised the bar. I can honestly say that I think I performed better on that run than any other dungeon run I've done. I don't mean in terms of DPS or total damage or any other stats. I mean that I went above and beyond.

I was dispelling Immolates and Silencing left and right. (Recount said I had 52 Dispels by the end of the run.) If it looked like the Shaman needed an extra half-second to get off that Chain Heal, I blew a bubble on whoever needed it. If we started taking massive AoE damage, VE went up on my next cast. If the Shaman started taking aggro or got Silenced, I bubbled him and popped Shadowform to heal for a second, then popped right back in and kept going.

I didn't have to be told to do anything. I just did it, and it made a noticeable difference. I was frickin' heroic, dammit.

So what's the problem?

I thought I had been bringing my A-game before, but it turns out it was more like my B-game. Now I realize I've been slacking off. I need to be this on top of things all the time, not just when I get a good group.

Anyway ... it's something for me to think about.

The PUG for the Heroic Slave Pens run (which I am beginning to love) was both the same and the exact opposite.

It also started off with a few wipes, but they were dumb accidents. Several of the others were on Vent, but I wasn't given the info so I just did my thing to a mostly-silent chat channel. But ... that was okay. Vent is great for coordinating, but sometimes it is overkill. It was getting late, and I now feel like I have HSP down pat, so I appreciated being able to work in silence.

Hello. My toon's name is Apanthrope. Duh.

The bosses were all one-shots. I got a nice healing belt that no one else wanted, as well as my second [Primal Nether] for the evening. The entire run, including the dumb wipes at the beginning, took just over 45 minutes. Wicked.

But that was pretty much it. There were no tales of heroism for the second run. It was a nice, quiet way to end an evening, but with a few more Badges and mats in my bag.

Heroics have begun!

As I've alluded to in my past couple of posts, I did my first Heroic run last weekend. The Daily was for Slave Pens, and I'm still locked out of Kara until Wednesday, so I figured it would be worth a shot.

Heroics are actually easier than I expected. For a Shadowpriest, you really aren't doing anything different. In a nutshell, Heroics make the group coordinate and work together better than Regulars where you can get away with winging it. Thus, if you are an “always bring your A-game” kind of person anyway, Heroics won't give you any problems.

It's oh so nice that everyone gets badges every time. Badge gear is still wicked expensive — figure no less than 6 to 8 full Heroics before you get to the first gear, and weeks of farming before you get to the really awesome stuff. But I'll still take that over the drama and chance of farming for loot. (Even with as lucky as I have been with Kara.)

Just one piece of advice: Take the time to get all of the keys before you PUG any of the Heroics. The keys aren't hard to get, especially now with the lowered rep requirements. If you've been following normal progression, you probably already have enough rep to get all of them.

But when you go for that first Heroic PUG, you don't want to walk through the instance portal and not zone in. It's embarrassing. Trust me. Get all of the keys and you won't have to worry what the daily is or what groups are just looking for one more DPS/CC and if you can get in or not.

How do you know if you're ready? In case you missed it in my last post, you are “Heroic-geared” when you are greenless, hit-capped, and sitting on roughly 750-800 unbuffed spell damage. By the time you've gotten your keys and have run Kara a few times, you're probably ready.

Ahune

Finally managed to down Ahune this weekend. Heroic Ahune, no less!


We wiped a few times. We had been trying to deal with the adds as they spawned, leaving me and the tank to down the elite. On our third or fourth try someone piped up that the elite was taking too long to go down. There was much grumbling, as I was the only ranged DPS and no one else wanted to get close enough to melee DPS and thus suffer the DOT. But, we figured it was worth a shot.

Long story short, the elite was down in under 15 seconds and it freed up time to deal with the adds. We had the core DPSed down the second time it popped. w00t!