There have been some bad ones, as I’m sure everyone has experienced. Xerin talked about some of his in the Ten Ton Hammer WoW newsletter, The Overpull. And poor Lodur over at World of Matticus has had some doozies.

My own experiences…well, I’ve had some interesting ones. Most often, we get that one dps who’s pulling 3-digit figures in Recount. But as long as they don’t start pulling mobs ahead of the tank, I usually don’t care. I’ve had a couple bad tanks or healers, including one that asked if our druid tank (aka my guild leader) had the right gear to be def-capped. (Pssst, druid tanks get all their defense from talents, ya moron.) He seemed to be having trouble healing the druid which I thought was strange because not only had I had no problem healing him before, but at the time he was also one of our best geared characters in the guild. And this was just H-CoS.

Surprisingly, I’ve had the worst experience with pugs that are below 80. For example, my little warrior Tuyok along with Kazi’s little warrior and another guildie on his druid decided to pug SFK. Kazi was the tank and our druid offered to heal but let us know that he had never done it before. A pugged pally that joined us was specced ret but said that she would heal because “i no wat im doing”. After some discussion, our druid ended up healing anyways. And he did a pretty good job all things considered. However, the paladin…kept pulling off Kazi somehow. For the entire instance. We still managed to make it to Argul without much incident. We nearly wiped on him because of some bad coordination but managed to kill him in the end. After the paladin had left group, we checked Recount just out of curiosity. Hand of Reckoning, which is the pally single target taunt, was 30% of her dps.

Let me reiterate that. A dps paladin used her taunt as part of her rotation. Either she was completely ignorant of what it did or she was an idiot. Either way, I was completely blown away. And this was the person who said that they knew what they were doing.

Then there was the pug that, in my opinion, was good and bad. It was H-HoL, with me on Niqo, Kazi on his pally tank, and our two fury warrior friends Jorgath and Barashi. All we needed was a healer so we decided to pug one out. We get a priest who quickly switches from his dps spec and clothes into his healing set up. Soon we’re all set to go and Kazi starts pulling. We quickly figure out that something is very wrong. The priest is barely healing Kazi, nevermind the rest of us. By the time we kill the second boss, we have learned that this priest has not only not healed before but is entirely not ready for it. Sure he has a holy spec…which does not have the 51-point talent and has things like 5 points in Darkness in the Shadow tree (which increased Shadow spell damage). He is also dressed in almost all greens, including some gear that has stats like strength and agility. We all shudder.

We could have kicked him. We were sure talking about it over vent. But from the way he was talking, I could tell this guy was a new player and it had probably never occurred to him to research his class. He had most likely fumbled his way up to level 80 solo with a lot of dying and no one to help him. What can I say…I took pity on him. Barashi had a level 40-ish priest he was leveling and as such, was the only person who had any kind of expertise on priests. So we started teaching him. Barashi covered the priest specific parts while the rest of us filled in the general information of how a group operates. He took all this information to heart and with complete soberness. Never did he talk to us with disrespect because he thought we were lecturing him. In fact, he thanked us numerous times for the advice.

The next few pulls showed some noticeable improvement in his healing but it was obvious that he just didn’t have the gear or the practice to heal us through to the end. So I jumped on Saraku and switched him to Holy. We gave the priest a task: to stay in his healing gear and spec and practice healing Barashi. And I will say that he did his job. His reaction time was still a little slow but I had to throw almost no heals on Barashi except on the last boss. We finished by reminding him to clean up his Holy spec and to get gear that was meant for his class. He thanked us again, and then we went our separate ways.

The priest wasn’t even from our server, there would have been no repercussions from kicking him and getting another healer. But…I dunno, it didn’t seem right to do that. It felt good to see him improve from our advice and to know that he was lucky to have landed with us. Who else would have been patient enough with him? I can only hope that he’s out there somewhere in better gear and a proper spec, healing up a storm in heroics and the like.

With all of this said, the majority of my pug experiences have been good. A lot of them are fast and pretty quiet, speed-farming their badges just like us. We have the 15-minute H-AN down to a science now with a good group. Kazi and I met a kitty druid on our server during a pug, who was so impressed by our healer-tank duo (with me tanking on Saraku) that he told us once “I’m going to glue myself to your shoe.” He has since accompanied us on numerous random runs when we’re looking for a solid dps and has made his way onto my friend’s list. A pair in the same guild from another server joined us for a random through H-UK and were nice enough to comment at the end that it had been the smoothest heroic they had been through yet.

Our friendly attitude might have been part of it on that last run. I squeed with glee in party chat as I always do when Kazi hexes the rider off his drake on the way to the last boss. And I proceeded to tell them how I make him do that every time we’re in there, which they chuckled at. What can I say? I’m easily amused sometimes. >.>

All in all, it’s been my experience that there has been more Good than Bad and Ugly when it comes to pugs. The LFG tool has certainly made it a lot easier for me to get emblems. And the teleport to dungeon feature is absolutely divine. Even if no one says a word the entire time, all I want is to get the bosses down in a efficient and timely manner. Meeting some cool people far overshadows the few idiots I’ve come across. Then again…maybe I’m just lucky.

The other day a member of Carpe Jugulum (a guild that Bloodriver has an alliance with) was leveling an alt and asked in our common channel is anyone had a character that they wanted to take to RFC. I remembered my dragonling pally Sarauku so I logged onto him and we both got started gathering the quests for that dungeon. In the end the group fell apart and I didn’t get my run that night but I rediscovered how much I love playing Saraku. So since then, I’ve basically been doing dailies on Niqora and then logging onto Saraku for the rest of the night.

While questing with him one of these nights, I got into LFG for Ragefire and merrily checked all the role boxes (even though he’s specced Prot, he can still heal and DPS at level 14, right?) It wasn’t very long before I was invited into a group of a warlock and a druid healer, who asked if I could tank. Which was perfect because I want to learn to tank on the dragonling. A rogue joins and then gets his shammy friend invited as well.

First pull in the instance…is not by me, but the rogue. Okay, whatever, maybe he stealthed a little too close. Only the next pull is the same. And the next. And the next. Not only that but I’m fighting for aggro with the shammy as well. This is my first time tanking and they’re not dying so I chalk it up to my inexperience. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong as I’m using Righteous Defense whenever I can but I keep going and don’t say anything.

Then the shammy yells out “AM I ONLY F***ING TANK IN THIS GROUP?” Which wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t iterated several times that I was going to be tanking. As I’m remembering why I don’t like pugging, I calmly respond with “I’m tanking but I’m having some trouble holding aggro against you.”

A couple minutes later, the rogue and the shammy are still pulling aggro from me but not as often. Well, I’ll take what I can get. Then the shammy has to leave. The rest of us decide to try and 4-man it. Now the rogue is really pulling everything, even if the healer has no mana. Does no one watch their healer’s mana bar? Then the rogue manages to pull a nice big group when neither the healer or me are ready. He takes a couple good whacks that bring his health way down and has the nerve to call for me for help. He manages to survive thanks to the quick thinking druid but I give him the warning “You pull it, you tank it.”

Of course that doesn’t stop him from pulling anyways but by this time, I’m getting pretty good at figuring out when to taunt and use my other abilities so I’m tanking most of the time. Nonetheless, I’m still getting really irritated by him.

We kill Bazzalan with only my poor dragonling dying (it was no one’s fault, the healer just had a lag spike) so I get rezzed and as I’m drinking and eating, I see the rogue sidle up to the ledge right over top of Jergosh. Oooooh, I can just see the tiny gears in his brain turning. He wants to jump right on top of Jergosh. Saraku’s bars are all full up so I walk over beside the rogue to peer down as well, and the rest of the group joins us.

Do you think the rogue asks if we should do this, or even asks me to go first? Nope, of course not. He stealths and jumps off the ledge. He’s lucky and lands without the boss noticing him. But he doesn’t wait for the rest of us, oh no. He attacks Jergosh and his two cronies all on his own. The druid and the warlock aren’t moving an inch so I’m not moving either. Then finally, right before the rogue dies, he asks for some help. Only then do I jump down and try to get aggro off of him but of course it’s too little too late and the rogue dies. And releases because he’s certain it’s a wipe without his pwnage.

We kill Jergosh and his pals. And between frantically clicking on mobs to make sure that the rest of us didn’t die, not only did I not notice that the rogue had released but I accidently right-clicked Jergosh’s corpse (in all honesty, I did not mean to).

All in all, Saraku got Subterranean Cape and quite a few greens which was nice. Personally, I had my first tanking experience…and got some first hand knowledge of what it’s like to be the tank of a crappy group. Oh well, tis life.

P.S. If all my references to “dragonling” are confusing, I roleplay Saraku as the humanoid version of Niqora’s netherdrake. He doesn’t have any uber powers or anything (just noting that for you RP natzis ) and he can’t transform back into a dragon while in Azeroth due to the lack of nether energies (although he amusingly turns semi-transparent at the most inopportune times. Makes for some great RP)