I try to be a fairly patient person. Not much gets me going, really.. it takes a lot to make me mad. But the one thing that absolutely makes my blood BOIL is when stupid/bad people genuinely think that I am stupid/bad, when it’s actually them being stupid/bad.

Up until 10 minutes ago, I haven’t had any particularly negative LFG tool-generated PUG experiences. I’ve had the odd person who was a bit snooty, some hiccups in Oculus (who hasn’t), but overall, PUGs have been great. I enjoy doing them.

Until today.

Drucie is now 80 (more on that another time, though). I’m running her through groups to gear up. I got into Forge of Souls – I was a bit surprised, but the two pieces of Tier 9 that I bought probably bumped her up a bit and let her in. I was confident – I’ve done plenty of groups in her gear and had a lot of compliments on my healing, despite the scrubbiness.


FOS was a bit tough on my terrible regen, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

The problem was that on every trash pull, each of the DPS would attack a different mob. It’s a huge free-for-all. On packs of 4-5 mobs, you could guarantee that every person in the group had aggro – the tank from trying to tank, the DPS from each picking their own target, and poor me from healing those impromptu tanks.

So I speak up. I try to be nice, because you can never tell if people are just really new – and I’m not a mean or rude person, and I try not to judge people harshly. So I just said, “Can you guys stick to one target please, I can’t heal everyone at the same time.” Which is the truth – they were making it so I had to heal every person at once, which was just making it harder than it had to be.

We keep going. It happens again, and again. I see lightning bolts fly towards one mob, bullets heading for another, and the warrior off in a corner bashing on some other mob. I ask them again to stop splitting DPS; they all claim to be hitting the same target. Now, I know I’ve said lately that I may need a new glasses prescription, but I’m pretty sure I can see clearly when lightning bolts (not chain lightning, lightning bolts) are hitting one mob, and bullets are hitting another.

I’ve had enough. I tell them flat out – “If you guys don’t stop splitting DPS I’m just going to go. You’re making it hard on the tank and healer, harder than it has to be.”

In hindsight, I should have just left. Good old hindsight.


lol, take ur blues and leave, scrub

“Take your blues and leave if you want, stop bitching.” says the (unguilded) warrior – who, not five minutes ago, had fallen spectacularly and stupidly to his death by walking off a platform.


Figure 1: The Gravity Boss claims another hapless victim.


For the record, Mr Warrior, my blue gear may mean that I look terrible and that I have to drink quite frequently, but evidently your epic gear doesn’t stop you doing stupid things like wombling off great heights like an epic plate-wearing lemming.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (…splotch.)

Protip: blues don’t make baddies, and epics don’t erase stupidity. Perhaps you might like to invest in a Skyguard’s Drape for your next trip to Forge of Souls? Best to play it safe.


On the next pull, predictably, every person has aggro, and I die to healing aggro. The tank questions me.

“How did you die? Too busy typing? :P”
“I was healing people who shouldn’t have been tanking :)”
“I had all the mobs.”
“No, I had aggro, that’s how I died.”
“No, I had aggro on everything.”


Preeettty sure I can tell when something is bashing my face in.

That’s “aggro”, right?

So I had a tank who didn’t know who in the group has aggro (and thinks he is doing a great job), and three DPSers who keep choosing different targets but swear til they’re blue in the face that they’re assisting the tank every time. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh.

But worse – when you trying to turn things around, when you ask them to single target, they laugh at you, and you’re the bad one. That’s what drives me absolutely up the wall, I can’t stand it. Like the time I was driving, came to an intersection, and waited (correctly) for another car to turn in front of me, as she had right of way on the continuing road. She waited for me to keep going, but she was meant to, so I stayed there. Finally she threw her hands in the air and turned, and as she passed me, gave me a disgusted look (which, in WoW, would have been the equivalent of saying “l2drive noob!!1111″). She was the stupid one who didn’t know the road rules, yet she drove away thinking *I* was the baddie. I hate that – when someone else is an idiot, but they walk away thinking you’re the dumb one (and they likely didn’t learn anything from it, either). GRRR!!

So the moral of the story, kids – is that if you’re in with a group of baddies, and you ask them nicely to stop doing something that is making things painful, you will probably be dubbed a blues-wearing, bitchy noob. Honestly, 99% of my PUGs so far have been great.. but next time I get one like that, I think I’ll just leave and save myself the frustration.

Which is sad really, because I like helping new people. If nobody wants to endure the frustration of trying to teach people the fundamentals of group play (like please single target mobs down, kthx), then the truly bad players are just going to keep being bad, and they’ll just keep driving other people nuts.

I don’t leave groups on a whim because I don’t like the instance, or because I think someone in the group is a “noob”, etc. But – if I get another awful group like that – where everyone is doing the wrong thing but A) think they’re awesome and B) refuse to do things properly.. I think I’ll just save myself the headache, and drop.



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