I’m really looking forward to the random, cross-server PuG system.

I love to PuG. Call me crazy, but I really do love it. What I don’t enjoy, though, is having to find groups. Even as a healer, even though it’s easy to “get” groups, because healers are in demand – I still find it tedious to join a group, see that we only have 3 people.. start heading to the instance, realise that the rest of the group thought they’d stay in Dalaran until the group was full.. wait for another person to come to the stone – all while the rest of the group whines for summons. Blah. It’s really what discourages me from grouping with random people – I’m too impatient for everyone else to get their act together.

So I can’t wait for the random PuG system that fills the group for you, and teleports you right to the instance. Zap!


It’s either PuG, or take off my pants

I remember my very first heroic, back playing my NE druid. It was harsh. I remember having to spam heal the tank just on the trash pulls – and that was in one of the easiest heroics, Slave Pens. I thought it was crazy difficult.

Later playing Keeva, throughout TBC we jostled for the top guild on the server, and we were pretty much geared to the teeth. Heroics became so easy that I could tab out and talk to people on MSN during fights (bad druid!), or watch TV. Once you outgeared the content, Heroics became just as easy as doing a normal instance, really.

So I started to strip down for heroics.

That is, I would remove some gear to make it more interesting. More of a challenge. Less power, smaller mana pool, etc.

My outfit of choice was usually my Blue Overalls, Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat, and Farmer’s Broom. I found that I could remove choice visible items from my set, but keep the items that didn’t show – so that it looked as though I was wearing just the RP set, but I still kept a decent amount of healing:

- Neck
- Cape (not shown)
- Belt (looked fine with the overalls)
- Boots (I’m Tauren – they don’t show anyway)
- Bracers (no gloves though, too bulky)
- Rings
- Trinkets
- Idol

I managed to keep around the 1400 healing mark, which was around about the amount of healing I started doing heroics with, which was perfect to provide a challenge.

Farmer Keeva will heal you!


Note: I don’t do this sort of thing if I think it would jeopardise the run or annoy people. Someone did blame me for a wipe once, but he pulled two groups of mobs when the group wasn’t ready, and everyone agreed it was his fault, not mine. It’s really not my style to do things “4 lolz” at the expense of the group – I just sometimes feel like stripping my character down will be more challenging and engaging than steamrolling it.



Me, Keeva, Kiiva, Christmas, and waiting for ICC


As you guys know, I mainly do 10 man raids on Keeva these days. With ICC looming, Christmas around the corner, and two jobs, I don’t have much time to play at the moment. But I find that when I am online, I don’t care for any of the stuff I used to like to do. Farming, grinding, collecting achievements, doing dailies. I used to really enjoy that. Now, it bores me. I try to fish for a while, but zzz. I haven’t done my Argent dailies for ages, despite wanting the mounts.


I just want to raaaaaaaaaid.


In the small amount of free time that I get to be online, I want to log on, do some raiding… and then I usually have to log off. I don’t really mind what I raid.. I just want to get in and heal people.


Obviously, Keeva gets locked into TOC10 and TOGC10, so I can’t go PuG that with her outside of normal raid times. We also PuG TOC25 and TOGC25 on weekends, so I can’t take any groups through the week.


That’s where Kiiva (or “scrubby Keeva” as I have affectionately nicknamed her) comes in. Kiiva has a couple of TOC10 items, but the rest of her gear is crafted, with a smattering of Naxx gear and some blues. I refer to her as “my baby druid”.



Kiiva


I answered a call in Trade the other day for a healer for TOC10. I linked my achievement, and told them that I had also done TOGC10, and TOC25 on my main, just to give them a little more confidence in my ability. I was invited, and headed to the instance.

When I got in there, the raid leader looked at my gear, and said,

“16k hp and mana??????”


I laughed, and told him I had done it before, and it would be fine.


One of the healers disconnected very early on the beasts encounter, and the other one died partway through Icehowl, meaning I had to solo heal it. And I did, just fine.


At the end, I got a bunch of surprised whispers about my healing. It felt really good. Obviously, I knew I could heal it; I had done it before; but it was really nice to go into a group where everyone doubted you could handle it, then to have the other healers die or disconnect, and still pull the group through it (especially if your gear is pretty bad). It was great. For the rest of the night I helped the priest learn the fights through whispers, and passed a healing neck to her (Kiiva is my alt, after all.. and I had already picked up some shoulders). Another 25man raiding druid jumped in after that, and it was a really smooth run.


I love doing raids on Kiiva because her gear gives a bit more of a challenge. People look at her Charmed Cierge and think “we’re doomed.” Then, miraculously, it’s a great run, and everyone learns not to judge a book by its scrubby, scrubby cover.


It just goes to show that if you know your class (having played 5 druids over 4 years helps), if you know how to manage your miserable 16k mana, if you know the fights already (I think I could do TOC with my eyes closed).. then you know the dance, you know when certain damage is going to come in, and what to cast to prepare for that… and you can do it with 16k mana and ~1800 spellpower. And boy is it fun! :)


So here’s to PuG raid leaders who take chances.



We pug TOGC25


On weekends, a priest in the guild runs his own TOC25 runs. There are a couple of GDKP runs on the weekend too, but our “thatpug” runs have cemented themselves as (I guess you could say) the premier PuG hordeside. We clear everything in about an hour, very smooth. The loot is done through a standard main spec /roll (the usual deal), which is less attractive than GDKP to many people, but our runs are so smooth and quick that we still have a huge demand for spots.


With the calibre of players turning up, the DPS output and how smooth the runs were, we decided to try TOGC. At first it was almost for laughs – to see if a PuG could clear hard mode Beasts (something than many guilds are still working on), but we really started to see that there were some high quality players showing up, and we realised it wasn’t such a silly idea after all.


We killed Beasts on our 5th try – first time we had been in there. 46 attempts remaining. We also killed Jaraxxus. He didn’t drop my trinket.


This weekend, our second week of tries, we got Beasts on the 4th try – 47 remaining. We one-shot Jaraxxus, and got Faction Champs in 3 attempts.


We’re coming 6th on server progression, although nobody can officially recognise us because we’re not a guild :P


Note: A few people have said, “It’s not a PuG if you have the same people going each week” (ie, “you’re cheating!!!!”) but in reality, there’s really only a small core of people who go each time. The priest hand-picks the best people available, and while it does include people he knows (because he knows their level of performance), it’s not always the same group.


Some have also said “why don’t you just join up as a guild” but the fact is, we all have guilds already – and a lot of the people that we bring in are skilled, geared alts, whose mains are already saved because they belong to progression guilds. We like coming together on weekends, but we have our own guilds that we want to stick with



My name is Keeva and I love to PuG!



Possibly Related Posts: