Decency and Vote Kicks in PUGs

"What the hell is wrong with you," said the healer to the Hunter, "Why did you run towards me? You got me killed."

Typical PUG grandstanding and raging over a wipe in a 5-man, nothing too new or unexpected. Except, this was on the PTR, on the last boss of a new dungeon that most of us were doing for the first time. I looked at the words on the screen and paused for a minute before beginning to type. I politely explained that this was probably the first time for most people here, and now that we know what not to do, we shouldn't have a problem.

"I just wanted to let him know he was being stupid for killing me."

Again, I began to type, and explained that since we didn't cover the fight before pulling, we couldn't know what to expect from a new mechanic.

"Doesn't change the fact that he's stupid."

I was expecting a vote-kick window to pop up in front of my face to get rid of the hunter, who hadn't said a word this whole time. I'm sure he was feeling bad enough without this guy ripping into him for no reason.

"I think you could have pointed out that he misunderstood the mechanic without being rude," I said, expecting that I would be kicked as well at this point for talking instead of pulling.

Except, that one of the other members chimed in, talking about the need for civility, politeness, and understanding when we're doing new content, and the hunter thanked us for not kicking him. The healer didn't find anything else to say at that point, so we pulled, killed the boss, said our thank-yous and went our way.

I don't know if that healer would have initiated a vote-kick if I hadn't jumped in right away, I don't know if the other two people would've just mindlessly clicked "Yes" when the window popped up, maybe they would have declined and one of them would have said something.

But I felt like I was taking a risk just for speaking up in the hunter's defense.

As a tank, my queue times are irrelevant so I wasn't really bothered about being kicked, the risk for me was minimal, but I can completely understand why the other two DPS stayed quiet.

They don't get an instant queue if they get kicked. They have to wait another 20 minutes, a half hour and maybe re-do the dungeon all over again. I know because I think the same thing when I'm PUGing on my Warlock - I don't want to do anything to give cause for vote-kicks. I don't want to draw any attention to myself. It's practically Orwellian how much power the group, in particular the tanks and healers have over a PUG.

I don't know how to fix it, but I think, based on what I saw yesterday, most people are going to side with polite behavior, and empathize, especially when the anger is as unjustified as it was in this case, so long as someone takes that first step - someone needs to speak up on behalf of the victimized member, even if a mistake was made.

No one deserves the kind of treatment DPS get, when they make a single mistake. It makes me want to PUG more just to add to the list of people who will vote "No" when frivolous vote-kicks fly.

The Great PUG In The Sky

A new motto for tanking, perhaps?

I'm not afraid of tanking. Any PUG will do, I don't mind. Why should I be afraid of PUGing? There's no reason for it - we've all got to PUG sometime.

And if you get the reference without looking at the tags, you probably listened to too much music while lying in your bed with headphones on staring at trippy lights moving on the wall like I did, when I was a teenager.

PuG Blues

Man, this is the longest gap I've taken from writing in some time. Mostly because I've been kind of glum in game as raids haven't been very engaging - not that I don't want to raid, but our raid group has been having some trouble gathering up and actually raiding and it's starting to wear on me.

I feel like we're just in this hanging phase, where all we need are a couple of good, solid, three-day weeks to push through to Ragnaros. This is exactly what it was like when we were on Nefarian - except that was one bsoss and here we have an entire raid to learn. Our core is kicking ass as usual, it's the last couple of slots that worry me. We've been picking up people, and if I look at the roster, there are 21 people who could conceivably raid... and yet I'm PuGing at least one slot every week.

There are a lot of things that happen when you have to bring in someone new.

1. You have to let your entire raid comp adjust to this new person, personality wise. We're a nerdy, smart, funny, laid-back group and we've had people join who immediately began poking, poking, poking at someone's performance, I think jokingly, and it got to be an issue. While I'm trying to figure out DPS distribution, I don't want us to be distracted by people management.

2. Things are just going to take longer. Even if they've done everything, they might not just gather up scorpions to AoE and then move out as stacks grow. Maybe they kill Shannox a completely different way, or they're used to being on the top with Beth'tilac and don't know how to manage adds on the bottom. Or worse, they don't know the fight at all and now the raid is sitting there for five minutes while you explain their role to them and suffer wipes while this person gets up to par. We're not to a point in Firelands where we can just cruise through a boss with a person down. And there is nothing worse - nothing worse - than explaining complicated things to one person while eight other people sit on their hands doing nothing.

3. The rest of your raid suffers from having to adjust around this person. Maybe you're moving people's roles around, maybe someone is playing an off-spec, and you go through all of the above with your own people. Admittedly this is less onerous, but it is still an issue where the alt-spec gear might not be up to par, or the person might be rusty or less adept with that spec, and you're wasting more time getting them used to the fight in a different role.

4. You have no reliability. The person might just have joined to get the sword from Shannox and then drops group right after the boss dies. Or they were in your raid because their own guild benched them, but suddenly asked them to swap in as one of their members left. Or maybe they forgot that they had another obligation and when you said "10 server" they thought you meant "10'o clock their time" which is an hour after you started. Sorry. And now you're stuck a boss or two in with no hope of finding someone to come into a locked instance.

5. The night is shorter because of it. You might have wasted time at the start of raid finding someone and by the time you zoned in it was 15 - 20 minutes past your start time. Now you're pulling, and explaining at the same time, and maybe someone gets confused typing or talking and half your raid just got punted off the ledge. Or you wiped. Or even if you get to the boss quickly, instead of just pulling, you're sitting there explaining again. Now it's 50 minutes after raid time was supposed to start and you do your first pull on Shannox. At this rate, you're looking at no progression work at all, and by the time Beth'tilac dies your raid is so shot and grumbly from relearning downed fights, that you might as well go see if your faction has BH just so you can come back in tomorrow with fresh brains. And you better hope like hell someone will show up tomorrow to fill that PuG slot because your odds are slim that they'll show up again.

6. You have absolutely no way to separate the good from bad. This is probably the worst problem. You can look at their armory, you can look at their gear, you can look at prior raid experience, you can even check the dates of their achievements on kills to make sure they killed Nefarian when he was far more difficult - but all of that won't guarantee a good player. Maybe they were carried through, maybe it's their girlfriend's account, maybe they're having a bad night or swapped spec because you needed a DPS and they went Shadow just to step in and haven't actually played Shadow in months. That vetting you did, checking their amazing gear, raid experience and availability for length of time just went to crap and you might not even realize it until you get to a boss.

All of that said, I'm just grateful to those who PuG with us for two things.

1. I've met some of my favorite raiders through PuGing. Three members of my core right now are people who responded to my "LF1M" calls on LFG. That's what keeps me PuGing - knowing that there are amazing people out there, looking for a chance to raid, and every time I PuG with someone, I don't know if they're going to be the next core member of my raid group.

2. I do get to go into Firelands and kill things. This is started to feel a lot like late summer from last year when we were literally begging for people to get a raid, any raid, off the ground. And other guilds are struggling far more than we are just to get started. So the fact that these PuGs let us raid and kill things is enough to make me very grateful for them.

What makes this worse is that I actually quite like Firelands and would love to get to work on it with a good, consistent team. I am enjoying these raids so much, both T11 and T12 have been fantastic raids to work on.

But. The patch is relatively young still and if our record is anything to go by, I think we'll clear the normal modes and at least a couple of hard modes before 4.3 drops, though our progression rate might move at the pace of our guild's namesake.

I hope you're having some luck out there! And if you're looking to raid, poke that link.

I Still Queue As Tank For Dungeon Finder

I've talked earlier about my bad experiences in the Dungeon Finder system and I'm certainly not immune to the frustrations that come from dealing with DPS and Healers who have refused to recognize that I know what I'm doing, that the way I'm doing something is feasible and has worked in the past consistently, and refuse to accept the slightest criticism or suggestion offered up with a smiley.

But I still enjoy tanking for Dungeon Finder as there are some rewarding experiences to be had - I ran a few cap-heroics last night and here is how they went:

PuGing on an RP server

I don't try to hide the fact that I play on a (notorious) Role-Play server (Moon Guard, where all of Goldshire became a red-light district and had degenerated to a point where invisible GMs started monitoring the place).

When I queue in LFG, the people from other servers will comment on where I come from, expecting to wipe continuously, or will remark on the fact that I have raid-gear as an aberration to what they would expect from Moon Guard. My druid friend Lava and I really enjoy telling them made-up stories about how we just sit around being furries in Goldshire since we're from Moon Guard.

But outside of that notoriety the fact that this server has a large and vibrant community of Roleplayers serves me well. The place has a filled in, living and breathing feel to it.

Worse and worse

For a variety of reasons, I can't really get into guild groups for heroics on the days we raid - I log in just before raid time and after raid most folks are too burned to run anything so I wind up PuGing, which is why I've been writing about these unsuccessful runs lately.

--

But last night's adventure after raid was a rare bit of insight that I can't even bring myself to recollect. I'm hoping copious amounts of alcohol will suffice to diminish the memory of that PuG.

I'll try to be as objective as I can and say that I think I'm not a terrible person to run PuGs with. I throw in a lot of emoticons and happy faces when I ask people to do stuff. I explain things if anyone is unfamiliar with stuff and always ask if my explanation was sufficient. When possible, I'll take on the ugly roles of the fight so people can do a minimum amount of work to win. I'm happy to do most of the typing as well so long as I can get a minimal acknowledgment from the person I'm addressing.

I don't think that asking for someone to say "ok" after telling them to, for example, kite adds or block a beam is too much - it's just common, polite, human, civil courtesy to reply when addressed directly, I think. Or maybe I'm just too much of a social chatter box for expecting such behavior from PuGs who're only there for gear and Valor points.

As we hacked and sawed our way through a dungeon (wherein the entire group died to AoE that they couldn't run out of to the first boss and I kept myself alive for 2 minutes while they ran back and helped top me off and do some damage to the boss before... all of them died to the same mechanic again and I slowly whittled at the 1 million health left on the boss), I asked the silent mage if she could please block the right beam.

No answer. I ask again. And what I get is a reply that beggars belief.

"I'm not illiterate, I can read."

Am I being a completely over-sensitive bastard when I just want to make sure that when we're planning placement for a crucial mechanic that the person ACKNOWLEDGE the request being made of them?

A bit of back and forth later, we pull, I block one beam, the healer another, and the mage stands by the beam without blocking it, neither of the other two DPS step in, and as I stare helplessly, the add evolves and murders me dead.

I just don't get it.

Communication is such a vital part of this game. If you can't be bothered to acknowledge the existence of other players in the game why bother doing content that requires you to work with them? Just run quests and do solo instances for stuff you out gear or out level.

But if you do choose to PuG - please acknowledge text directed at you or the group in general. There is nothing more helplessly frustrating than staring at an unmoving chat-box after asking for input.

Tanking PuGing

So.

I'm primarily a tank. I like to tank instances a lot. It's probably my favorite thing to do in the game. Running 5-mans is fun, the daily Heroic can be an enjoyable instance, and any time I'm with a few guildies, even 2 or 3 others, the run typically goes by in a breeze and no wipes happen.

Other time, I log in and there is no one else online, and I find myself hovering my mouse over the LFG button and I hesitate. What if my group is a bucket of fail? What if my healer is a ball of stress and can't keep up with the damage? What if I'm top DPS on boss fights again? What if no one remembers how to interrupt?

But, being a masochist, I click the button anyway, and a second or two later, the dungeon-entry screen flashes at me with a shield in the center, and I press the "Enter Dungeon" button, waiting for all the tick-marks to line up, wondering what fresh hell I'll encounter on the other side of that instance loading screen.

I usually open a greeting and throw in emoticons liberally, trying to earn some favor with these people. I'll take a glance at the healer's gear and estimate how much CC I'm going to need to use (full disclosure: when running with guild groups, I've more or less given up using CC even on 3 or 4 add pulls. It's almost back to Wrath dungeoneering - gather 'em up and nuke 'em down with a couple of stuns thrown in for good measure.)

Sometimes, things are sublime - everything goes well, and with nary a hiccup, the Valor Points are tallied to my currency total and everything is fine. Other times, things aren't so simple, and it takes a bit of effort to wrench victory from the jaws of defeat.

Take, for example, this group I had for Heroic Blackrock Caverns. I cast out my usual greeting and smilie, received dispassionate "hi"'s in return, buffed, waited for others to buff, and then, seeing the healer full of mana, everyone's health at full, and the two-add patrol walking up the ramp, I warning everyone - "pulling!" - and like Captain America facing down a bunch of Nazi's, throw my shield into their faces.

A few seconds later the adds were dead, my health had barely dipped and I felt confident. The trash went quickly, Rom'ogg Bonecrusher came thundering up, screaming and yelling, and went down just as fast. While the healer drank, I watched Raz do his thing, tearing up adds and once we were ready, we ran down, clearing trash.

So far, I was feeling pretty good - DPS was high, the healer was easily able to keep up with the damage, and I was happy to be on my way towards a quick clear. Then I realized our warrior was still standing back by the first boss.

"You coming, Steve?" I asked.

"1 sec," he said.

I shrugged - our DPS was good, there was a DK in the group, so I pulled the Zealot waiting at the bottom of the ramp. "Please interrupt Strikes" I reminded him in chat (the third DPS being a hunter), and watched the cast bar filling up slowly before using my own (1-minute CD) interrupt at the last second.

"Dave," I said, naming the DK, "Please interrupt the casts."

With only 2 DPS the Zealot wasn't dying so quickly that the Strikes were not an issue - in fact, the second and third both hit me and I started chaining CDs as my health dropped below 20% and the healer strained to keep me up.

The zealot goes down, I try to stay polite. "Please use your interrupts when you see the Zealot casting," I said. "It does a lot of damage and drains healer mana to bring me back up to full."

We cleared the next trash group before I realized the warrior was still sitting back at the beginning. "Steve," I said, "We're waiting."

"lol 1 min"

A vein began to throb in my forehead. I pulled the next Zealot. He begins to cast Shadow Strike. The cast-bar fills up. My finger inches towards the Hammer key-bind. I restrain it - maybe Dave will come through. I hit my 20% damage reduction CD instead.

I get hit, and the healer begins churning out Nourishes to get me back up.

"Dave," I type out hurried while popping wings to get this add down quickly - where the hell is Steve? - "I really need you to interrupt those, man."

Silence. Another Strike lines up. The hunter keeps on shooting blissfully, and Dave keeps on swinging happily unaware that I'm about to die. I hit Ardent Defender. Whack. A bloom of golden light envelops me saving me from death and then the add goes down.

The healer chimes in - "What the hell is going on?"

"Dave, why aren't you interrupting?" I asked.

"I don't have interrupts," he says.

The vein is red and pulsating at this point. I take a breath - maybe he's a fresh 85, maybe he's never had to interrupt in his life, I don't know what his deal is.

"You do," I say. "Look up your spell book - you should have Mind Freeze under Frost and Srangulate as well, but it's on a longer cool-down. Just put it somewhere you can hit easily and please use it every time you see the Zealot's casting. Hit 'V' so you can see their nameplates and it becomes pretty easy to see the cast-bar. Just hit that Mind Freeze button before they fill in."

"ok."

I rub my eyes while we sit in front of Corla, Herald of Twilight.

"I'll take left," says the hunter.

"I've got right," says the healer.

"Block center, would you Dave? And also interrupt her fear, please, it makes life very easy."

"Block what?"

"The beam in the.... never mind, I'll do it."

"Ok."

"You coming Steve?"

Silence. I initiate a vote-kick and it passes. Another DK takes his place.

"1st time here lol"

I shudder for a second. "Ok, just stay behind the boss and burn her down, and please interrupt the fears."

"Easy."

Yes, easy.

The fight goes just fine, except for the fact that every Fear I can't interrupt gets through and the fight just drags forever. Thankfully, no Zealots evolve. Finally she keels over and spits up her loot, and we continue down to Karsh Steelbender.

I whisper the healer, "Do you think I could just keep stacks up? I don't think these guys will be able to kite and kill adds away from me."

He whispers me back and tells me to do it however I want. I thank him, ask everyone to hold off on CDs until I say and then to burn him fast. I quickly work him up to 8 stacks and give the signal. I don't know if it works but he croaks as I reach 14 stacks and am about exhausted with all my CDs and the healer had turned into a tree spamming heals to keep everyone up.

The next set of trash dies, and I just walk by Beauty. I'm not going to pull her with this group.

"You don't want the JPs?", the new DK asks.

"We lack the CC necessary to clear this."

"Good group. We got it," he says, "Let's try."

The healer whispers me, "Please, no."

I ignore the DK and pull the trash. He doesn't ask again. We get down to Ascendant Lord Obsidius, Raz dies, and I look at the hunter and quickly setup a macro to cast Hand of Freedom on her.

"Think you can kite the adds throughout the fight? He'll occasionally swap places with one of the adds so you'll have to pick up agro on it."

"ok."

"Great, go ahead and pull, I'll taunt the boss away."

She pulls, I drag the boss to one side, and everything is dandy. Everytime a thunderclap happens, I hit a HoF on her and she seems to be doing well.

The first swap and I start running to pull the boss off of her. The add starts channeling on me.

"Add on me," I type in chat.

She's happily kiting, half a room away.

"Take this add off of me, please."

I try kiting but I've already used my HoF on her and my waddling run isn't doing much.

"Please?"

The healer is spamming me and pulls agro on the add as I've avoided touching it for fear of making it harder for the hunter. Now the healer is kiting while the hunter gets cornered and eats some damage.

I taunt the add off of the healer, giving him some time to top everyone off. Boss swaps and now I'm running to keep the new add of me, and drag him into the one add she's still kiting - a multi-shot snags the add and I go back to the boss.

That vein in my forehead has burst and is leaking blood down my face.

The DK's happily sit on the boss, swinging away. The boss doesn't hit that hard anyway, once topped off, I stop kiting and CD through the healing Debuff, just burning through the last 30% of the boss' health.

I whisper the healer and thank him for helping me get through the dungeon while the DPS are all happily cheering about a "GG."

Yeah, GG.

Excuse me while I go curl up with a glass of whiskey.

PuG - how to and how not to

I was puttering around on my Forsaken Death Knight yesterday afternoon and as I tend to do while puttering, I left myself in the Raid Browser as Tank/DPS on the unlikely chance that someone might need me.

You see, with my raiding and guild obligations Alliance side, I don't really want to commit to a Horde guild as I will always put my Alliance guild and toons first, so I don't think it's fair for me to join a guild with an alt. I can see it working out if I can find a raiding guild that does weekend work only or something, and while I don't mind PuGing - it can lead to fun and excitement and meeting great people - in the end of the day, I play this game to raid with friends.

So anyway, I was herbing away when I get a whisper - "Tank for ICC 10? Marrowgar is down." I do my usual Litmus Test - pop the person's name into Wow-head and peruse their gear/raid stats, and he'd done 8 or 9 bosses in ICC a few times, so I figure he is a professional PuGer. I accept his invite, zone in, click "Accept" when I'm asked to enter into the lockout and am sealed to this raid.

Happily I put on my tank gear, take my flask, eat my food, log into Vent, and start jumping up and down, ready to pull. That's when I realize with slow dawning horror that this will not be productive. That I have, in fact, thrown away my raid lockout for nothing. For one, my co-tank with massively better gear than me but in the same spec as me is doing far less damage than I am. The Raid Lead isn't leading so much as telling people when to pull. The DPS is non-existent and there are two healers, one of whom drops raid after one pull of the boss that lasts seven minutes to get to phase 2 at which point I explode the second I stop chaining cool downs.

Mind bogglingly, the raid leader then says he has time for one more pull and I just about have to induce a stroke in myself to keep from punching that press to talk key and screaming, "What the fuck?"

Disgusting.

Later in the night, my normal Alliance raid was short three people due to massive log-in issues that plagued my entire Battlegroup and I wound up PuGing and did a mixed bag of Heroic and Normal mode kills. I actually wound up with a couple of upgrades that I had been looking for, for a long time. And as usual, after we had killed 9 bosses in 2 hours at the end of the night, the PuGers whispered me kindly, asking me if we were looking for recruits.

Why can't I PuG for my guild's counterparts Horde side? Anyone on Moon Guard need a part-time Tank/DPS DK? I swear I don't suck.

On top of that, some roster issues are starting to nag on me, wherein I've had our Shadow Priest sub-healing hard modes for our Resto-Shaman who's on a sabbatical and he's getting antsy to get back to his normal spec and is tired of keeping up two gear sets, so I've sent an e-mail off to the Shammy to see what her status is.

Little, minor issues like these are starting to pile up. I might need an officer meeting soon to sort this shit out!

Inbetween Guilds

So I'm kind of in-between guilds right now.

A long, long time ago (until June of last year) I was in mostly RP/casual raiding guilds. They were fun and happy affairs where logging in was enough of a reason to celebrate, friends would regale you with greetings, smiley faces were thrown about hither and yon, every fucking achievement was reason to throw a parade and clearing Naxx was reason enough to pat people's backs.

Then I joined a 25-man raiding guild. And was abused and beaten and cried and cut myself and all that emo stuff, but eventually I got better and did awesome, and led raids, and tanked with my fucking face. Well, not really, I was a paladin, and tanked with my fucking shield.

That guild transitioned from a 25-man group into a 10-man group with 25s in an alliance and that went south because we didn't get along with an officer in the other guild, drama drama drama, and the guild split. We went back to doing 10s, I tried being nice and running two balanced groups of 10s and that was about as successful as you might imagine. After putting in 12 hours into Ice Crown and barely squeaking by Rotface, I punched myself in the testicles, RAGEQUIT, switched factions, and joining a dedicated 10s group that was doing awesome progression.

Long story short, that didn't work out, I transfered back, a few old friends from my 10s group all piled into a small guild to raid together aaaaaaaaand here we sit. In the In Between State.

This is the zone of the PuG raid.

This is the zone of meeting people, making friends, socializing, realizing how diverse your server population is. This is the zone of, "I'm undergeared and I've never seen this fight and I want to learn and I'm really earnest and polite and kind but my DPS kind of blows screaming chunks of shit at the moon and you will take me anyway because what choice do you have?"

And... and... oh god, I want it to end. I want a dedicated group of raiders who are in my guild and know the fights and have the gear and I want to kill Arthas already.

Please, please, help me. I don't want to PuG really nice people who stand in fire until my Nourish button breaks. I don't want to see my tank DPS be number three on recount and wipe on enrages. Please rescue me from this zone.

I don't want to be an InBetweener. TAKE ME WITH YOU!