The Wipe and DitchFollow

Storytime! I love reading these on my breaks so hopefully you guys do too.

I went looking for an RFD group on my Druid. Took me a while but I finally found a priest and Paladin in the LFG channel looking for more. I waited but got no whisper or invite so I asked him "Have room for a druid for RFD?" He said "yeah", and I said "Great, toss an invite." I waited a minute and got the reply "you wna come?" THis should have been my first clue, but I said "Yes" and got my invite. Took a while to find more but we finally ended up with myself (being the tank), a nicely geared and well-played Palain, the priest, a hunt(ard) and a rogue. It took about 10 minutes of my saying "I can tank" before the priest leader heard me and finally picked up the final rogue after looking for a tank for a while.

(On a side note, my main is an Alliance Mage, but this is my Horde Druid and I'm really enjoying it - I've mainhealed SM with my feral spec and think I'm not too bad all-around. (In which the hunter - different one - picked up the healing mace at the end and I ******* him out - yay PUGs) This was my first time tanking anything in a long while but RFD isn't too hard - run around trying to hold as much hate as I can.)

It'd been about 6 months since I was in RFD so I wasn't sure which way to go so we headed on in after I got sorted out. The hunter suggested his cat could help tank. First of all - the big cow is the tank. Kitties aren't tanks by any means. Still, he never once turned growl off. I dealt with that best I could. CC was rare, Hunter's pet would never OT his Ice trap mark, he'd go after mine, Rogue would pull off extras and solo them, and the Paladin (who main-healed) was a little frayed. The priest was Shadow. Or as shadow you can be pre-40. Which means very few heals even if he could.

We get to the gong and some Plate peice drops - we all pass but the priest. Paladin says she wants is and the priest asks "Paladins can wear plate?" (This is relevant later - keep this in mind.) We reply yes, at 40. He finally passes and allows the Paladin to take it. I think the Hunter was a new player too - newbie-ish mistakes, but no stupid moves besides the pet. Just after that some leather stamina chestpeice drops and I ask if I can use it for my tanking set. The priest asks why I'm not using mail. He gets informed that I can't wear mail and we finally convince him to pass it over to me, too. (He was one of those people who would sit without rolling forever and hold everyone up).

So we move on and continue through the trash. We get to the Skeleton room and someone accidentally pulls them and we wipe - couldn't get my rez off in time.

Now, here's where it gets stupid. We wipe, Pally and I are already running back from the (YAY new!) graveyard when the priest says "gtg guys". We all kind of "-_-" and "WTF" and such. So, get this, he says "It's time for my guild to run Kara". .... We all kind of O.o at this and ask why he didn't mention it beforehand. I make some rude comments about not knowing anything about gameplay but he has a level 70 to run Kara? The others kind of ***** at him too and we end up splitting. He leaves just before the cloth-dropping boss, too. We could have had him down in another 10 minutes and he was the only cloth wearer in the party - he could have had free loot, and he ditched us. I called him on the "wipe and ditch" and he just said again that he had Kara.

I laughed it off, mostly - only had 40 minutes or so until Heroes started anyway, but, still. And I'd warned everyone when I had to go because of my show. Gave me time to mule and settle in with a snack infront of the TV anyway. (Hiro is the cutest thing ever, by the way.) Ever since I've gone back to school I find sitting for a full instance to be a bit of a stretch for me. Or sitting for the length of time it takes a bad PUG to go through something. On the upside, I've been friending a good amount of people since it's mostly alts being levelled right now.

How do you guys deal with a Wipe and Ditch? Do you call the people on it, ***** them out and then blacklist them?

you missed an oportunity to teach a new player

Or so he claims.

Edit: YAY! I figured out how to quote!

Edited, Oct 9th 2007 2:13pm by Borkin

Well, he probably sucks as a priest, but decent on his main. Pally's my main and learning other classes on my alts. So of course there's a learning curve when doing a new class...hence reading the class forums, guides, etc.

I won't ditch after one wipe, but after repeated wipes it's time to go. I don't care if the party agrees that it's a lost cause...it's my gold covering my repair bill to account for their mistakes. I don't place judgement on them, I'm not rude to the entire group (ie. ********** you guys suck"). I just say that I'm calling it and wish them luck.

I ran with a group through Sethekk Halls a few days ago. It was a level 68-70 group in a level 66-68 dungeon. We wiped on a couple of pulls gone wrong. We wiped when the other Hunter in the party choose to go toe-to-toe with a same level elite using his dual-wielded swords. (He was the typical Huntard...didn't know how to CC (prefering Frost traps over Freeze), crap gear for his level, etc.) The healer was doing their best to keep him alive, but it's not surprising how that turned out.

We wiped three times on Ikiss before I called it. On the first attempt, the tank insisted we (both Hunters) send pets in to start the fight and then he just stood there. He didn't move. Both pets were dead before he finally engaged, and hardly any damage had been done to the mob. Over the course of the three attempts, we never even came close to getting 1/4 of his life off. At that point, you've got to know you're beat. You're not going to learn anything from the trouncing you're going to charge into...go practice some fundamental skills on something a little less deadly, upgrade your gear, and come back in a week or two. The tank/healer husband/wife combo I was with was grimly determined to stick it out.

The group was forced to disolve after I left.

The only reason I joined was for a shot at the boots the first boss can drop. After he didn't drop them, I stuck it out through weak tanking and the antics of a Huntard until it simply became apparent that all I was doing was wasting time and gold on repairs and ammunition. No rep. No potential worthwhile loot from the boss. And all of this with a group of people I had no interest in running instances with again.

Ditching after one wipe is not very good. Ditching after several is highly acceptable imo.

What annoys me is...

"You should spec such and such" or "Such and such a spec is the best"

These people know so much about the game but they can't avoid pulling aggro every pull?

Edited, Oct 9th 2007 5:28pm by Torux

I was just doing Waliing Caverns on my Druid alt. I'm not sure if this was everyone's first character, but it seemed like it. The tank couldn't tank at all. He never used sunder armor, never kept aggro on more than one mob, if he even did that. The healer was always pulling and dotting, which jsut made it more difficult for the tank to get aggro back. The healer also kept fearing any mobs that got near him, which resulted in adds.

So we've just killed the first boss. I'm basically tanking any mob but the first one the tank attacked. I'm also off-healing the warrior, because the priest is too busy DPSing. I love Druids, so fun and versatile.
Well, eventually the priest says he has to leave. That's fine with me I have a healing set(At level 19. Yet, all the pallies I group with on my main, can't seem to find one at lvl 67.) Lucky for us, there's a shaman in the queue. I was about to invite him, when everyone else says they have to leave soon.

/leave party
/hearth

I mostly have to PUG, due to only just hitting 60 I don't want to pester my higher guildies (of which I have not been a member that long).

I find that as longs as you all have some idea on how to play your char, it is harder to wipe now than it used to be. I ran Ramparts the other day and it was me 59 lock, 59 ret pally, 62 ret pally, 58 shadow priest and 63 mage. I thought with that group we would struggle, but we managed to push through at a good pace, with little or no problems. Everyone watching each other and maintaining CC.

Only problem was we couldn't tank the last boss and so did have to give it up. But it was a very good run for lower level toons.

I have not had too many problems with W&D, but I thought I'd bring up a similar problem I have had with PUG's and my solution:

The "all-my-gear-is-red-so-I-gotta-ditch-out-half-way-through-the-instance" guy. I always seem to find him when I am running low level instances. Having to lfg 5 times to get the Gem of Serpentis was quite a pain.

What I came up with to help anyone else having this problem is that I politely remind the party to do a gear repair (and make sure that their bags aren't 99% full, since this also seems to kick some people's butts) before we go in. It's easy enough for a party to leave 2 people at the summoning stone while the rest hearth and repair then re-summon.

'Locks are also good to have in a party to help prevent this too. If someone's gear (except the 'lock, ha) is going yellow or red you can simply go back to the entrance to the instance and let them hearth and re-summon without having to fight your way back to the stone (they aren't all as easy to get to as RFK, ha).

Anyways, that's just my 2 copper...

I see alot of people in this post have/had a hard time in a PUG. As bad as pugs are I find them to be great sometimes, with a little thing called communication. Yes I know that sometimes when this is tried you get alot of flak from the person your trying to communicate with, but for me, most times if we talk about whats expected of everyone and the "tone" of the advice given isn't harsh, things go well. I like to ask everyone before we even stone, "does everyone have enough time to finish?", "have you ever tanked/healed before?", "ever run this instance before?". With this stuff being talked about before hand you can almost always spot a wipe group before you actually waste your time. My biggest problems with pugs are finding the kind of people who will communicate, and take advice without jumping on the defensive. IDK maybe my server has less hateful nooblets then some of the servers you guys are on. I like to pug, meet new people and add them to my F-list when we do good, or I-list if they were terrible. Just my 2 cents.


Roland

I've had some good and some bad experiences with PUGs. However, I don't ditch on a single wipe. Sometimes, mistakes happen. Sometimes, people get adds. No matter how good any player is, everyone's human (unless you're botting), and humans are fallible. It's that simple.

When I get someone in my group that bails on the first real issue (whether it's wiping, people who have a tantrum when they lose an item on a fair Greed roll, people who have a ****-poor attitude with the others in their group, someone knew they already had an engagement which would occur in the middle of the instance, someone who won't listen to constructive criticism from the others, etc.), they tend to go on my Ignore list and I won't group with them again. I don't go into groups unless I can see it through to the end, and I get annoyed when someone decides on a whim that they need to go. "Oh, I gtg, I have a soccer game in 5 minutes" is not a valid excuse. They knew what time they'd be playing, but selfishly decided to join a group anyway, regardless of the inconvenience it would cause the others in the group. "GTG- cat's on fire" is a valid excuse. So is "GTG-baby just threw up." They aren't planned, and are real emergencies. Real life always trumps a game, but if you know you can't finish it, either make sure the rest of the group knows or wait until you can devote the time. Don't be a selfish asshat.

One memorable D&W was with a guildie (a hunter), unfortunately. We were doing an MC run, and he was issuing commands like he was the group leader- commands which both were pointless ("dammit, AoE the adds!"- which we already knew) and often contrary to what the actual raid leader was saying. When he died after doing his own little thing, he had a tantrum, told us we sucked, and hearthed. He got a 5-day ban on raiding for that. I was class officer at the time, and when he came on, he apologised, said that he had been having a bad week, and it wouldn't happen again. I kept his ban, but told him to wait it out, as 5 days wasn't so long. Once his ban was over, he was invited to do a ZG run with us. We were doing okay, but for some reason, he decided to throw out Damage Meters every fight, showing that he was beating me on the charts. Needless to say, he was actually quite far from me. The healer, who was relatively close to me, threw out his DM, which actually had me two spots above the hunter- who then started complaining that the healer's DM must be inaccurate, and that a healer shouldn't have DM anyway, but Healing Meter (okay, so they can't run both?). The healer then showed healing charts- which I beat the hunter in again, because I would bandage people occasionally. The hunter then conveniently disconnected and got a ban from raiding (My old guild was a little lenient with asshats).

Pugs are kind of iffy, especially at low levels. I have so high level characters and I have been playing for quite a while so it's shocking to have to group with some people who have never played the game before. Sometimes I meet fantastic players with loads of skill when I get a group and other times I just find morons.

Last night I (Enhance Shaman) was running RFK with a guildie (Feral Druid) and 3 random people (A ret pally, holy priest, and a lock who I didn't bother to ask his spec). My druid buddy was tanking, priest was healing and everyone else was DPS and back up heals for those who could heal. The priest was a fantastic healer and let no one drop, druid did well and pally did some considerable DPS...now the lock on the other hand...The second we got in the instance he says "lawl brb guys, i folo preest, dont kik". We are like...whatever lets just go. Well he doesn't decide to come back until the ****** dagger with stam and spirit drops off of the big pig and he just pops in "NEED NEED". He needs and I'm like "you gonna equip that bro?" Needless to say he never equiped. I asked him why he needs a ****** dagger for a warlock, he should be using cresent staff which had 10x better stats than his dagger and +2 intel off hand thing. He was a complete idiot and this kind of stuff just irks me.

I think Blizz should create a ranking system (sort of like karma system for message boards). If you were a group member, people vote that you are a good player. If you are an idiot, you get voted down. This way we can avoid the idiots and ninjas that seem to infest WoW.

People are jerks for walking away from a group, but hey it happens.

I did it the other day, without meaning too.

A pug formed for ARC and we had a wipe on the first boss. For some reason when he has that aoe lightening thing it always glitches my computer up. I warned them ahead of time, so I went in, died by myself to make it glitch up before we started. They rezzed me, since I was the main healer, I got everyone ready to go and we started.

Boom - computer glitched up again (which isnt normal), people started complaining stating that I knew it was gonna happen ect. Well needless to say, I felt fortunate when I restarted my computer my internet went out and I couldnt log back on. Im was sure they all thought that I quit on them because they yelled at me.

Needless to say, one messaged me this morning when i logged on for the first time since the wipe, yelling at me, I explained my situation, and they didnt believe me. Who cares? I mean, it was a pug and I dont need people to take peoples crap over it. My ignore list got one name longer and Im not worse for the wear.

You should do the same, put that guy on your ignore list, to remind you that you do not group with people with attitude problems.

That reminds me of another group that I was main healing for, we were in sethekk, downed the last boss, and a mail pair of healing legs drop. I really did need them at the time, and I asked If i could need. The rogue flipped out because his buddy was in the group a tank paladin. Stating that the paladin is starting his healing set and needs healing items, and If I roll on them he will have me put on ignore from everyone in the #1 guild on our server.

Needless to say, I was kind enough to give the paladin the legs, because he was nice enough to appologize for his friends antics. I advised the paladin, that he can take the legs and in return he gets the ignore button as well as the rogue, because I dont dont deal well with drama like that. If you associate yourself with people like that, you will be blacklisted just like they are.

The paladin tries to talk to me on other characters every once in a while because you can tell he honestly feels bad for what happened (he has still never healed one instance because he enjoys tanking more, so it was absolutely a waste to fight over), but his main is still blacklisted with me, and will always be.