Leave it to a mage . . . to be a perfect pug!

Okay is there really such thing as a perfect pug? Eh, probably not. I mean, there is a reason our Perky Pugs run around and then drags their asses on the ground – you’ve never noticed? Watch your pug the next time you have it out.

Last night I had the pleasure of running with a mage and a warrior from my server who were both about as close as it gets to perfect pugs. We were running Ony10 followed by ToC10.  Our guild has only been raiding for about a month and are still working on gearing people up. We usually have just enough for a 10 man or just shy of 10. Last night we were just shy of 10 and needed a coupled DPS to help. We picked up our mage for Ony10 and I needed to find a dps replacement after Ony, that’s when our warrior joined us.

After Ony I had whispered the mage and invited him (or her, but let’s go with him for the sake of conversation and ease of typing over him/her). His response was “sure. I’ve never been before but I know how to play a mage and I know not to stand in stuff” WIN! If you can articulate “I know not to stand in stuff” you’re halfway there as far as I’m concerned. The other half is doing it.

I didn’t bother gear checking the mage or the warrior (OMGWUT – yes, you read correctly). The mage pulled great dps during Ony so I wasn’t worried. The warrior, I figured even if he didn’t do great dps as long as he was higher than the tanks I’d be happy.

As it turns out – they absolutely rocked. Even though I raid lead often, I usually don’t like talking in vent. Our warrior friend piped up and called out snobolds as well as Icehowl targets – yay for him! Neither stood in fire, neither ran like loons when they got paralytic toxin. Hell, both of them moved out of the way for Icehowl. This is where I note that if you run from Icehowl, make sure to run AROUND the stuff sticking out from the wall because you can’t run through it. That was my first time healing ToC10 and I ran to what I thought was out of the way. I was busy looking at the raid to see who needed heals and didn’t notice that while my toon was running, the screen wasn’t changing.  /fail  You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about raiding and healing, but I’m a sucker for punishment. Plus after I get a run or two under my belt I’ll be able to relax a bit more because  more relaxed = better play. This is why beer is such a good raiding beverage of choice.

We one shot every boss up to Anub’arak (yes, even the Faction Champs went down in quick order). The Twins didn’t start off looking like a one shot because they got their first two heals off. But kudos to the raid group, they pulled it off! We wiped once on Anub’arak, but that was due to a little confusion over ice duty resulting in some add craziness but we got him down to 27% ish regardless. Second time around though, not a problem to note at all. I did take the time to explain the fights and we didn’t rush through like we were on a speed run from hell. Overall it was a really great group.

Our two pugs were awesome. They were patient, they participated, they didn’t yell “go go go go go” before every pull. The mage actually thanked me for walking him through afterwards and both were promptly friend-listed. Unfortunately Armory is down for maintenance so I can’t pull them up though just from a quick WoW Heroes peek, they actually are both decently geared. Both have their fair share of achievements under their belt – even our mage friend who said they hadn’t been to ToC10 yet. (Maybe to lower our expectations? regardless. . .)

Thank you, thank you Jugganuts and Cinderstein for being such cool pugs.

And yes, it feels great to write a post about kick ass pugs.

In light of the rather lengthy response I posted to a comment, I am going to keep this post short and sweet.

1.
Each guild is managed and run differently.  Even within guilds, there are different styles of management that exist between raid leaders.  While general rules stay the same, the attitude and atmosphere may certainly be very different.

–>  You pay to play this game therefore ALWAYS remember to enjoy it.  If you do not like the way a guild is run, then by all means find a new home that is better suited to your expectations.  If you do not like the way raids are run or the style of a particular raid lead, discuss it with the raid lead, the GM, or better yet offer to step up and lead raids as well! Learning is something ongoing, even for the most experienced of people.

2.
This is really just a game. It’s a virtual environment. It’s important to remember that it’s not necessarily indicative of who people are irl.  Even I realize that the elitist asshats that I tend to bash through parodies and poems are not always like that outside of game (this is where I am supposed to be a smart ass and say “well like 99% of the time they are” but I am going for a semi-serious moment).  The people that are boisterous and outspoken may actually be very shy and quiet and vice versa.  Some people that are great coaches irl may not fair so well in a virtual environment.

–>  No matter what anyone says about you or someone else, take it with a grain of salt and move on. There’s only so much we can glean from one another through this virtual environment and even opinions we do form may be completely worthless in person. Grudges are a waste because it just adds bitterness to a game that should be fun.  Does that mean you have to like everyone in game?  Hell no –  But don’t let it spoil your fun!

3.
Let bygones be bygones and just agree to disagree.  It does, after all, make the lemonade taste much sweeter.

So I’m back for the conclusion of the story.

I left you yesterday standing in front of Ignis, about to knock out the weekly raid quest. Things are seemingly more positive for the time being.

At this point, I’m past the red flag moments. I have no excuse from this point on for having looked past any warning signs. I had already failed by letting the raid run rampant so let me just sum up the last fight for you.

Instead of downing Ignis how I have all the previous times I’ve done it, we ended up tanking him at the edge of the pool and not kill any adds. There are certainly multiple strategies for fights and kiting him is not the only way to down him. However, as raid lead I’ve never done it that way and I’m healing for the first time so I would have been more comfortable with the kiting method just because of familiarity. Sort of like my security blankie?

Anyways, we get Ignis down to under 200k the first attempt but we wiped. Not killing the adds meant he was stacking the buff increasing his damage with each stack. DPS didn’t look bad at all. Including the tanks, dps ranged from 7.6k down to 1.7k. We only had two people below 3k for that attempt. So we try it again, after all we really did almost have him. Second attempt was not nearly as pretty. DPS ranged from 4.5k down to 1.8k with again, 2 people below 3k. At this point the mage pug in the group proceeds to start whispering me.

Sadly, I didn’t phrase my response well. My intent was to be nice in telling the mage to stfu because the dps was fine. Instead, much to my dismay it came across as an agreement. I suppose after that I should have expected nothing less than the “I told you so” after downing Ignis. Remember back in the old days before Ignis was nerfed and people used to take him down with much less dps? I wish I had screen-shotted that kind of thing for times like these. To top things off, this mage also spammed DPS meters after each wipe. I detest that and it is easily one of my top three pet peeves. Of course, yet again instead of calling her on it and telling people to not do it again. . .I said nothing. I don’t think I’ve let so much crap slide in one raid – ever.

Two hours after I started looking for pugs and we downed him after the third attempt using the kiting strategy. After loot was done, I logged off the game and vent to save my sanity. Before I logged though, I made a slight comment to the tune of “that’s the last time I get talked into something” and a guildie whispered me immediately “Now you’re thinking with your head”. Last night consisted of a pretty long chain of errors on my part. Am I blaming anyone else but myself – aboslutely not. I cannot and will not put any blame on others if there were no expectations laid out up front nor if zero corrective actions were taken. I’m by no means a “my way or the highway” type, but this was certainly a very clear reminder to me that this is a new server and new guild both chock full with new people. The “norms” here are actually quite different than my old server. While that’s not a bad thing, it’s something that I need to adjust to.

It’s clear off my mind today aside from writing this post, hence the quick storytelling. I’m forming my steps forward and tagging this as Epic Failure #1 for 2010. Fortunately it’s out of the way early and hopefully few follow.

I like to try and find the silver lining to every story and the best I could come up with here is that while this was my first Epic Failure of 2010 . . . at least I didn’t die standing in fire.

And it only took two bosses.

Tonight was the first time ever that I’ve quit a raid.  Yes.  You read that correctly.  I quit the raid after the second boss.  A horrible example as a raid leader, and an even worse one as a guild officer.  But a blood vessel was going to pop, figuratively or literally who knows. My brother was in the raid and saw the shenanigans and my reactions first hand.  He suggested that Starbucks might be a good cure.  So we grabbed our laptops, hopped in the car and headed to Starbucks.  Kharma began the payback immediately because wouldn’t you know, Starbucks was closed.  We peeked across the street and Panera was also closed.  (And my parents wonder why I was in such a rush to move away from home?  Fortunately this is just a short visit and it’s back to civilization for me soon.)  We ended up down the road to Sonics, I picked up a Hazelnut Java Chiller and here I am back at home to admit my failure as a raid lead.

Kind of a huge blow to me personally actually.  I have never once been so frustrated that I could not – not mentally or physically – continue raiding.  The evening started fairly benign.  We went to my parents this evening because it was my mom’s birthday. Trying to excuse ourselves to get back in time for the raid was almost impossible, but we made it just in time.  We didn’t have many people on, but the weekly raid quest was Ignis and I decided to just pug out the spots that we needed.  It took a good 35 mins to fill everything but after losing a couple pugs and finding pugs replacements for the pugs. . .we finally get going.

Red Flag #1.
I ended up going on my druid to heal so that we could fill out the group.  Let me put this into perspective for you: My druid hit 80 on January 2.  That’s just under a week ago as of this post.  She’s fairly decently geared through badge gear, a few hand-me-down BoEs and craftable epics from fellow guildies so I’m actually way ahead of the gear curve as far as turning 80 is concerned.  I’ve been running heroics regularly and picked up some addition upgrades, but the only raids I’ve done are Ony 10/25 and Instructor Razuvious for the weekly quest last week.  I spent most of my time leveling through battlegrounds though so it’s not like raid healing is completely foreign to me.

Regardless, there is still a learning curve.  Healing a raid for the first time while raid leading isn’t generally a good mix, especially when you consider that this is the first alt that I have gotten to 80 and the only one I’ve raided with aside from my mage. Small things like “hey you can heal yourself while in the slag pot” slipped by me tonight.  And yes, I know that there are rockstars out there that solo healed Ulduar 2 days after they hit 80.  /eyeroll First of all you can suck it.  Second of all I have never come close to being a rockstar player and am honestly just a mediocre healer by my standards.  Had we had close to perfect circumstances this would still have been a challenge for me.  I am still in the dps mindset – it’s a harder transition that I thought it’d be.  Plus I’ll admit, I’m not perfect.  I’ve certainly made mistakes as a raid lead before, but I have never. . .ever. . .quit a raid – until tonight.

Red Flag #2.
We lost several pugs before we even started and had to find replacements for them. Before you even start summons and you go through 15 people just to do a 10 man raid, it’s the universe telling you to go fish mats for feasts instead.  I believe in fate and I should have recognized the “stars aren’t aligned” feeling early on (read: gut instinct) and that I needed to mentally prepare myself and I didn’t. However I did try to at least take advantage of the time we had while finding replacements by going ahead with vehicle assignments for Flame Leviathan while waiting.

Red Flag #3.
Someone activates Hard Mode by accident.  Granted, it’s easy to fix – just take out the towers.  A little more trash killing and it’s not an issue.  Plus, not many people run Ulduar so it’s easy to forget these things.  However . . . maybe it was fate speaking.  I did feel a knot in my stomach when someone said “oh I already talked to the big guy”. At this point I realize that I haven’t done my standard raid lead schpeel, especially in Ulduar so people don’t start hard mode unless we are going for hard mode.  I shrug off the bad feeling and roll with it.  Rolling straight to hell in a two-wheel soapbox apparently.  I should have stopped there and set the expectations and foundation.  My soapbox was rolling with loose axles and soggy cardboard at this point.

Red Flag #4.
I let people rush me - I let people rush my raid.  Not cool.  WTF was I thinking?  The minute I said to myself “and you can hold your gd horses, stupid ass” I should have made sure I had solid grip on the reigns.  Instead, this was a wild horse that was having none of it.  (how did we go from soapbox to wild horse, I’m not sure – just got with me on it) Regardless, we haphazardly clear trash and down Flame Leviathan in short order. Next thing I know people are complaining because everyone wasn’t grouped to do buffs for Ignis. Of course not you stupid asses – I was still doing loot so of course I’m not going to be there. But did I say anything? Nope. The knot in my stomach got a little tighter because I felt the reigns slipping away yet wasn’t doing anything about it.

Red Flag #5.
We have two tanks who have not tanked in Ulduar before – before I get to far into this section let me just say they did a great job and it could have been a heckuva lot worse. At this point, vent is bubbling with chatter and we have a couple people giving directions. I on the other hand, couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Normally I nip that in the bud as raid lead but for some odd reason, I let it slide tonight. We lost a few people during the first trash pulls to Ignis but recovered and the rest of the trash went very smoothly. Hey things are looking up right? Not hardly, it was simply the calm before the storm my friends!

Remember, I said it only took two bosses and here we are facing Ignis.  What happens next?  You’ll have to tune in tomorrow.