Lo-Quality WoW

I ended up getting invited into a Naxx 10 run. Like ourselves, it was primarily a guild run with a couple of ringers like myself. They had already passed Patchwerk but I got in when they went through the rest of Construct quarter. Grobbulus was no problem. For Gluth, I was assigned as the kiter. Kiter, singular. In the past, usually I’m paired with someone else and a healer, but this time it was just me. Okay, I can adjust.

The first time, I’m not sure what happened but I didn’t get a heal when I should have and I died and a secondary kiter couldn’t pick up after me fast enough. The healer actually apologized to me about it, so I was cool with it, it does happen after all. Second time, I actually did relatively well until I accidentally cut my corner too sharply and a few of the zombies caught up and killed me. Fortunately, about a second afterwards, Gluth went down and all was well.

There was some confusion on the setup for Thaddius. I asked which side was which and was derogatorily told by someone “if you have DBM, it’ll tell you which side.” I pointed out that not everyone used DBM and I’ve had runs with the setup reversed so it never hurt to double check. Then for some reason they placed myself and the other hunter, the top dps, on the same side of the room. And there were also some confusion since two characters both had “blood” in their names and for awhile weren’t sure which side they were supposed to be on.

We moved forward and naturally, our side was out-pacing the other side badly. It was actually funny because both myself and the other hunter slipped into Aspect of the Viper to slow our damage down. Even then, I still had to slow my shots a little. And while amusing, it did the very important thing of making sure both hunters were at full mana when we took Thaddius on. Thaddius himself was easy.

Then we entered the Plague Quarter. Noth was easy. Heigan is where I lost my temper. We had two shaman and one shaman correctly pointed out that we should have a shaman in each group to allow the cleansing totem to keep the fever off us. That change never happened. So three times in a row, we wipe, and I specifically survived the dance part only to keep getting killed on the platform from the fever. The raid leader started insulting people by saying “if you can’t do this dance, we might as well give up because you suck.” I snapped back that I was getting killed by the stupid fever and not the dance. The shaman repeated his suggestion as well. And what do you know? Once we had a cleansing totem in each group, Heigan went down easily. Loatheb was almost an after-thought. We ended after that though and I never heard from the raid the rest of the weekend.

I still was up so I asked a couple of guildmates for help to finish off a quest string in Icecrown, the Battle at Valhalas chain. I had tried to solo it but wasn’t doing so well. But I did get to see a DK go at it solo, which hurt my pride a little when he was able to breeze through the first few battles by himself. He started getting murdered half way through the chain but a hunter showed up at helped him out. (Considering the hunter was a draenei and the DK was a blood elf, I have no idea why the hunter decided to start helping.)

Anyway, half way through the chain I got a nice surprise. I got a hat trick of achievements consisting of Icecrown: The Final Goal, Loremaster of Northrend, and The Loremaster. I even switched my title over to “Loremaster” from “the Seeker”. I’m proud of both titles but I’ve been “the Seeker” for awhile and it was change.

Saturday started out interesting in that one of the guys from The Agency asked if the PKT’s had a couple of tanks they could borrow to work on Ulduar. Unfortunately, everyone with a tank characters was not logged in except for myself and Aleania is way too undergeared for Ulduar. I’m nervous taking her in to tank Naxx. But I did get an invite to a Naxx 25 though.

Like the Naxx 10, this was primarily a guild run with some pick-ups. Looking back on it, I should have been warned when right at the beginning the raid leader is handing out assignments when one of his guildmates, a priest, points out that he is dps and not a healer. “Oh, when did you switch to dps?” “What? I’ve always been dps.” Several other members of the guild also chimed in to confirm that the priest had always been dps. Never a good sign when the raid leader doesn’t know something that basic about his own guildmate.

We take on Arachnid quarter first. And again, I should have clued in to the fact that more often than not, one tank would aggro one group, and then another tank would aggro a different group and at the end of every encounter we would have a few dead each time. I blame the cold medication. But there’s absolutely no reason to be grabbing two or more groups at a time. Yes, it’s faster but harder on the wallets of those getting killed and totally unnecessary.

Anub’Rekhan was simple. Faerlina, it was decided to wipe the adds than pour onto Faerlina. Here is where we began to wipe in earnest. Usually it was because a tank would wipe and none of the others could pick her up fast enough. Part of the problem was that healers were getting confused on assignments. Not entirely there fault because assignments were being given in vent and in the raid chat channel and the assignments didn’t always match up. Also adding to the confusion is that I don’t think that guild ever learned that yelling “I need help”, “I need a buff”, “heal me!”, “I have an add on me” doesn’t quite work when you can’t recognize voices. Not that you have to go around speaking in the third person all the time but even a simple “tank needs heals” is more informative than “I need heals!”.

Eventually Faerlina goes down. On the way to Maexxna, we started wiping again. Why? Because this time, people would be taking “short-cuts” and not everyone knew we were taking them. I also should mention that a ring had dropped off Faerlina that I had wanted but I didn’t get a chance to roll on because I was too busy helping to kill the group of adds a tank had decided to pull without warning the rest of us. It also didn’t help in that the loot master called for the roll and then immediately awarded it without giving a warning or checking to see if that were all the rolls since I saw at least two rolls come in after he awarded the ring. But I blew it off and didn’t worry about it.

Maexxna was only difficult in that some of her webbed people got stuck up rather high off the ground and it was hard to spot them at times. But again, I probably should have been concerned that after each boss fight, half the raid was usually dead, including at least two or three tanks. Considering Arachnid is recognized as the easiest wing, that was not a good sign.

Plague was next. Noth caused havoc during the fight. Blame was being laid around. “Dammit people, you need to group up!”. Except that I heard at least three separate instructions telling people to group up in different parts of the room. There was some arguments about this until I suggested that maybe they mark the tanks to make it easier to figure out where people should group up. Once that was done, it was a lot easier to spot the tanks, gather round them, and then aoe the heck out of the adds.

Heigan is again where I lost my temper. We wiped only twice but again I was being told that I sucked since I kept failing at the dance and once again, I was perfectly fine during the dance but was getting killed on the platform by the fever. In fast, when Heigan finally went down I spent 10 minutes looking up his skirt as he stood over my dead body during the dance. Considering I was the only dead body on the platform and everyone else kept dying on the dance floor, being insulted for “not being able to do the simple dance” just pissed me off.

Loatheb was nothing to talk about and went down on the first try. Then on to Construct. Everything was fine, we cleared the way to Patchwerk no problem. The tanks were identified, healers assigned and everyone was ready on the ready check. Then the MT rushes in and DIES! Patchwerk then romps through the rest of the raid in a few seconds. I did a quick Feign Death when I realized most of the raid was down.

Again, blame was being parceled out quick and fast. Eventually it was determined that while at least one healer had listened to his assignment, the other healers hadn’t and neither had the other tanks gone in when the MT did, resulting in the MT eating two Hateful Strikes in a row. And naturally, since only one healer was on the ball, he was next on the aggro list and went down next. None of the other tanks were able to pick up the aggro and if the did, a healer usually didn’t get to them in time to eat a Hateful Strike themselves.

Surprisingly, Grobbulus caused no issues, even with at least two people dropping their clouds in the middle of the room. Gluth is where things went wrong again. We had started the raid with three hunters but people had been rotating out all night so by the time we got to Gluth, neither of the other two hunters were the ones we started out with. And we were assigned to do the kiting. I did point out that they probably want at least one of us to be doing dps so we could do a tranq shot when Gluth enrages but was ignored.

First time in, we wipe. Why? Because all the healers ignored the kiters! Second time in, the kiters were fine except the tanks die and we wipe. And the hunters were being blamed! Why? Because we didn’t tranq shot Gluth when he enraged and the tank took too much damage. By this time, I was already well pissed off so I didn’t say anything. Third time, they had us doing dps but had a mage and a DK in the back but zombies were slipping through and I had to break off my dps to misdirect or directly pull them off of our healers. We wipe again, no blame this time but people are tired so we quit, saying we’ll pick it up the next day. I asked what time but the raid leader and a large majority of people had dropped from the raid and logged off before I could get any answer. So I shrugged my shoulders and waited for the next day.

Sunday comes in and I go about doing dailies, waiting to hear back from the raid. Nothing. It’s only by chance that I happened to wander back into town to catch the LFM request in the Trade channel. As I said, the raid had been rotating people in and out all night, but I had stayed there the entire time and the entire time I was in the top three of the dps charts, both in overall damage and straight dps for the overall instance and most of the boss fights. (The exception being Heigan where I was killed early.) Yes, this is a bit arrogant of me but you would think that someone would have written down my name to make sure I was invited the next night when they were continuing? It’s not like I was sitting in the back screwing around.

But I bite my tongue and even helped summon everyone. We go in and are on the pipe waiting to get going. This is where I start losing my temper again. There are a couple of items that force people in the nearby area to do an emote. And some moron kept playing with them. It’s hard to make sure people are getting buffed correctly and getting assignments when everyone is doing the “train” or “dance” emote, especially on that stupidly small pipe. The raid leader was no help. He was even telling everyone to clear vent so he could give out instructions but as far as I could tell, it was members of his own guild who just ignored him and kept talking about any damn topic other than the fight.

Here’s the highlights from the next hour or so:

• A mage, DK and another hunter was set to kite but from what I can tell, the other hunter didn’t start kiting until after the DK and mage both died.
• A warrior saying “come on you crappy hunters, it’s easy to kite this.” One, the warrior wasn’t even in the room since nobody summoned his ass. Two, I checked and as far as I can tell, the guy has never played a lvl 80 hunter and wouldn’t know how to kite as one.
• Same warrior, this time he’s in and he’s in the back kiting. I die early when nobody heals me. Mage dies likewise. And warrior blames the hunters aren’t using Misdirect enough. You know, the shot we can only use every 30 seconds!
• The MT running half way down the pipe then suddenly stopping and saying “oh, I need Fortitude on me”. You do not go running into the pipe into Gluth’s room and then stop because you’re missing a buff. You say that stuff before you start.
• Another try, another wipe. Hunter again get blamed when we are unable to “just kite them along the back wall”, “why aren’t you dropping your traps in the middle of the room”, and “dammit, you need to tranq Gluth when he enrages.” How we were supposed to be in three different parts of the room simultaneously, I’ll never know.
• This time, all three hunters, two tanks, 3 other dps are all kiting with 3 of the healers watching over us. Half the raid dedicated to kiting! This time, the MT dies, and the OT for some reason, tanks Gluth in the middle of the room.
• The three hunters, my favorite warrior, a mage, a DK, a resto shaman and three druids are tasked to the back. 4 “healers” and I still die because nobody heals me. We wipe and again somehow it’s “the hunters fault” and that “we must suck since we obviously don’t know what we’re doing.”

I gave up at that point and left. From what I can tell, they never got past Gluth. The warrior got tacked to my ignore list, not that he probably gives a damn. I did notice that he never seemed to blame the mage or the resto shaman at being bad at kiting. Could it possible be because they were in his guild and we weren’t? (A different guild from the one who was running the raid.)

Now among the other things was the fact that the guild running the Naxx 25 was advertising that they needed members. But to me, if that run was any example, I sure wouldn’t want to be running with a guild that disorganized. It seemed like most of the guild was too busy goofing around to pay attention. Buffs double applied or not applied at all. Continually talking even when the raid leader has asked everyone to clear vent so he gave give out assignments. Giving conflicting orders. Now I understand when stuff like that happens when it’s completely a PUG but not when your guild makes up over half the raid and it’s your guildmembers causing the issues!

And to add insult to my runs, our druid in PKT got into another Naxx 25 run. One where they were lamenting the fact that they had no hunters on their run. One where Arrowsong dropped and nobody wanted it so it got disenchanted. Life just sucks at times.