Represent

I don't often write about failpugs these days for two reasons: I've found them pretty rare in WoW Classic, and a lot of the runs I go on these days are with friends online.*

That doesn't mean those failpugs don't exist, however.

I was reminded of that in AQ20 last night. It was a sponsored run by said guild, and I attend regularly because I want to see these runs --Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraq-- to succeed. And for them to succeed, they need a core of people that the raid leader can depend upon to show up week in and week out. Plus, I really like the raid leader's work ethic and how she runs the raid, and this is my way of showing support.

I've done over 15 or so AQ20 runs, so I know the ebb and flow of these raids fairly well. I've even been both a runner and a clicker for Ossirian**, so you know I've been around a bit. We get about roughly half pugs in the AQ20 run, although about 4 or so puggers are regulars, so the number of "true" puggers number about 6. 

Last night, that included a tank pugger from one of the top guilds on the server. 

I realize that other people's experience may vary, but in my case I've frequently had good experiences with this particular guild, so my first impression was pretty good. And the first few boss events went well too. But by the time we got done with Buru, I began to notice some troubling signs. 

Even though this tank was technically the off tank, he'd kind of muscled his way into the main tanking role. Consequently he marked up Buru's eggs the way he wanted it rather than how the raid leader wanted it. After we cleared the two slimes that tend to wander back to Buru's area, the raid leader found the markings and rearranged them. No extra commentary other than "huh, someone already marked these".

I should have realized this was the opening salvo, but I figured it was a basic faux pas.

After Buru, the road to Moam has Obsidian Destroyers and packs of bugs. The strat is simple: burn down the Destroyers --and let the 305 level miners harvest the mining nodes that drop-- and AOE the bugs (standing in the middle so the bugs don't attack people at distance).

Simple, right?

Well, the pug tank decided to do some chain pulls --because we weren't pulling fast enough, I guess?-- with both bugs and Destroyers in the same pull. Of course, that upset the strategy a bit with some of us AOE-ing and others single targeting the Destroyer. For me, the biggest deal was to AOE the bugs because we weren't stacked in the middle, so to avoid their knockback we needed to eliminate them first. The melee could focus on the Destroyer, but of course with that additional time spent in AOE it meant the Destroyer came closer to getting a full mana bar that it ordinarily would. Still, we managed just fine.

Moam came and went without much incident, and the Anubisaths weren't that much of an issue either, except the tank did do some chain pulls without letting the healers breathe.

Oh, and BTW did I mention that we had at least 2 people who'd never been in AQ20 before? No? Well, neither did the tank, who expected everybody to follow his lead and ignore the raid leader's instructions.

Things came to a head against Ossirian, where the first wipe was caused because one of the runners was new to AQ20 and didn't understand that he was to click on the devices on the outer edge of the room, not closer to the middle. No worries, because it happens, but boy did the tank disapprove. He kind of blew up, saying the dude was an idiot and "let me do all the clicking." The second pull we proceeded to wipe because we didn't get the coordination down quite well enough, particularly because the tank expected to be able to do things his way rather than what was expected of him, and the guy started ripping on the main tank, the clicker, the raid leader, and "you don't know how to handle this boss, don't you!"

Well, enough was enough, and the raid leader kicked him from the raid and got the co-GM to kick him from the Discord. The co-GM joined the raid, and after he shook off his rust from not having tanked Ossirian in quite a while we got the boss down. The rest of the raid proceeded without incident.

***

At times like this, I am reminded of what I used to tell the (no longer) mini-Reds back when they were in elementary school: People will judge you by your actions, but if you are wearing clothing with a logo on it they will also judge that logo based on your behavior. Doesn't matter if it's a school or a sports team or even something you like (such as Star Wars): if you're wearing a hoodie with your school on it and you behave like an ass, people will judge that school based on your behavior. It's not fair, but that's how it goes. 

From AZ Quotes. Doesn't have quite the zing
as in the movie "Miracle". To spare people
from seeing it again, go watch the trailer for the
2004 movie if you're interested. Bonus points for
Disney using Blue Oyster Cult in the trailer.

I've seen this play out time and again in games and in real life.

If you act like a dick, everybody will associate your dickish behavior with whatever you're wearing or representing. And on the flip side, if you act well toward others people will remember that too.

Hell, Blizz has a version of that on loading screens: "Being polite while in a group with others will get you invited back!"

So why do some people continue to act like jerks?

Hell if I know. I try to always follow the Golden Rule***, so the concept of being a jerk is kind of foreign to me. And when it happens to me directly, I'm more shocked than anything else.

Like the time a week ago while I was farming herbs in Eastern Plaguelands, I stopped to pick up some herbs (want to say Dreamfoil but I'm not sure) and a nearby hound aggroed on me. While I was standing on the node killing the hound, another Alliance toon just rode up, took the herbs, and rode off. 

I even said "REALLY?" out loud in game, but that guy didn't give two shits and just rode off to the next node. I knew the person wasn't a bot because I saw him talking in the LFG channel, and I was tempted to call him out there for being a ninja looter. But the reality is that he didn't ninja it at all, because he brazenly rode up and did it.

What gets me the most about that sort of behavior are the taunts if you do call them out, showing that they really don't care: "Oh, look at the baby who can't handle real life" was once response I saw to a person being called out in Trade chat. "Go back to Retail" is another common refrain when being asked to not be an ass in game. 

***

I suppose you could say that this is a bit of an improvement from the old days, but when I'm referring to people being overtly racist and sexist in Trade Chat in Wrath, that's kind of a really low bar to jump over.

Still, there's only so much that I personally can do. And most of that is to behave the way I expect others to behave.

And for pete's sake, if you're in a pug or another guild's raid, remember that you're a freaking guest and behave accordingly. Just because you're from a "top guild" doesn't give you carte blanche to be an ass. And I'd hope that if you behaved like that in your own guild's raid/group that guild leadership would do something about that, because if they don't they're basically saying "we're a bunch of assholes and we don't care what you think". In Retail you can get away with that because of cross server grouping, but in Classic? You try that on a server you'll quickly find that you're ostracized.

At least I'd hope so.

Nevertheless, in the words of Bill and Ted:

From giphy.com.

*Yes, that includes the guild I raid with.

**Definitely prefer being the clicker, because if you end up with a Mage as a runner, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

***And no, it's not "he who has the gold makes the rules", even if that is true in real life.

Letting My Fear Flag Fly

The Warlock Follies continue unabated, starring me as a Warlock who'd prefer to be in a good match of Warsong Gulch right about now.

I experimented with just Fearing packs while attempting to use the Voidwalker to tank the one that I've left behind, and I've had mixed results. About 3/4 of the time the baddies that I cast Fear on ran right into another pack, and I went from having 2-3 enemies at at time to 5-7. That's pretty much in line with what I expected, particularly given the closed-in nature of some of these groups.

Given these results, maybe going Destruction is an option to try to quickly AoE down mobs. I'll have to think about that, although I'd prefer to run Battlegrounds with the Lock than, say, instances.

***

Speaking of instances, I've run Deadmines twice on Dominius. First time, things went fairly well up until the Healer dropped group. Second time, not so much.

Since I hadn't run any instances on Adelwulf back in the day, my Warlock experiences in an instance were limited to the effect that Warlocks have on group dynamics. Just like any player, good players enhance the effect of the group and do a great job of DPS-ing down mobs and bosses. But bad players have a greater effect than, say, your average DPS.

While a Mage, Rogue, or Druid can pull mobs like crazy if they don't watch their threat, the presence of the Demon companion adds a level of complexity that only the Hunter shares. I can't count the number of times over the years that I've experienced a wipe caused by a Hunter's pet or a Demon was set to "Aggressive" in an instance. And then when you factor in the Warlock's Howl of Terror or Fear abilities, well....

Yeah, I'm not the greatest fan of poorly played Warlocks in instances.*

So... Let's talk about some things that I need to improve on.

***

In the first Deadmines run, almost as soon as we started, the Healer started giving the Warrior tank grief.

First, about tank's lack of a shield. Second, about how he wasn't going to bail the tank out if he wasn't keeping up sufficient rage. And after a few pulls, he started grumbling about the tank's pulling technique.

These grumblings weren't whispers to the group leader (me**), but said out loud in party chat. I've been in runs where I get whispers from someone complaining about another person in the group, but nothing quite like this.

Nevertheless, we kept going and downed the first boss. I'd made a point of the following rotation when fighting, and it seemed to work well enough: DoT the pack, do a Life Tap to boost my mana, Drain Health to add some health back, then repeat the cycle. Instead of a Voidwalker, I opted for the Imp and kept him on Passive until I told him to attack specific targets. This is the "prior experience with Warlocks" working here.

Once that first boss was downed, we started forward, and I realized the Healer remained in place.

I called out for the group to hold up a sec, steeled myself for another set of complaints, and asked the Healer what was up.

He said nothing.

And then he DCed.

"Really?" the tank asked. "Was I doing that bad a job?"

"No," I replied. "You were holding threat well enough, and you weren't running around like crazy trying to pull the entire area."

I took stock of the situation, and started putting out requests in LFG, LookingForGroup, and in the instance chat for a replacement healer.

No dice.

We eventually had to drop group, because without a healer we weren't going to proceed.

***

The second Deadmines run was, well, different.

Unlike the previous run, I was struggling to keep up with everybody. Not as in running with everyone, but trying to keep the DoTs up and whatnot. I'd also run out of Soul Shards prior to the run, so I was trying to kill as many Defias in Moonbrook as I could to obtain them, make Cookies, and distribute them to the group I was putting together. (Again.) By the time the group was ready, I had even managed to get a Soulstone together, so I figured that if I needed extra shards, I could suck them out of mobs we'd run into.

But still, it felt like I wasn't pulling my weight in the fights, as I was at that level (L18) where you get boosts to some of your other abilities, but not a new ranking in the DoT capabilities. Being specced as Affliction, DoTs were kind of my thing. And not being L20, that meant I didn't have an AoE I could use in an emergency.*** Even beyond that, I felt I was missing something that I couldn't place my finger on.

At the same time, the Mage began running ahead, exclaiming "Look, I'm a tank!!" and aggroing the next mob, forcing the Druid tank to catch up and pull aggro back to keep the Mage from getting plastered.

Oh, this isn't going to end well, I thought.

Two bosses down, we headed into the Foundry, working our way down the ramp. This is the locale where those remote control units the Goblin Engineers drop can wreak havoc. At the base of the ramp, the Druid pulled, and we had another three enemy mob to deal with.

Then all hell broke loose.

I was busy dropping DoTs and when I focused on the main screen again****, we didn't have a mob of 3, but 8-10.

"WTF!" the tank called.

"Shit!"

"Ow!"

We wiped.

We all appeared back at the graveyard, and the tank asked me "Did you use ss back there?"

For a brief second, my mind went blank. Was he accusing me of pulling all those extra mobs? "It wasn't me," I responded. "I only hit the mob you pulled."

"..."

"And," I continued, "I keep the Imp on a tight leash so this sort of thing doesn't happen."

"... I meant soulstone."

Oh crap. I completely forgot to set the Soulstone on the Healer.

"OH," I finally replied. "I thought you were accusing me of aggroing the entire group back there. No, I forgot. Sorry about that."

We got back into the Deadmines and I made a point of creating a Soulstone and tagging the Healer with it, and then letting the tank know I did that.

Or I thought I set it up, until I realized that something wasn't right again, but I didn't have time to find out what it was because everybody was running forward.

Gah.

We finished the Foundry, and then the DPS Pally dinged. He then surged to the front, exclaiming "I'm the tank now!"


Not again.

This is how it went through the instance, up until we got to the ship. We fought through Smite, went up the ramp, turned right, and then the Pally jumped up onto the Wheel. Everybody else followed, except for me, because the mob he'd aggroed zeroed in on me as I was in the back, and as I was surrounded I couldn't do anything even if I ran.

The Healer jumped down to rez me, while the Pally tank was saying, "Hey, I thought you guys were skilled."

Given that in the number of times I've run Deadmines --both pre- and post-Cata-- I think I've only jumped onto the wheel as a viable strategy to bypass mobs maybe 2-3 times. And this was definitely the first time since roughly 2013 or so.

But still, it was incredibly humiliating, first forgetting to Soulstone, and now not remembering the wheel.

Ah, but things weren't done.

While I was trying to climb on the Wheel after I'd been rezzed, I aggroed that same damn pack again and jumped off the platform into the water to escape them, figuring that I'd lose them after jumping down.

Well, that didn't work, as the pack came down and zapped me from behind.

"You'd better go rez him," the Pally tank said to the (former) Druid Tank, who came down and rezzed me.

"You should have died up here so we could rez you from here."

"Right," I replied, just focusing on finishing this damn thing and being done with it.

Even if I'd have managed to get up on the Wheel that first time, it wouldn't have saved us any extra time as we still had to fight the same mobs because the Pally tank got cute and ran around, picking them up anyway for no reason other than "just because".

The rest of the instance proceeded without incident, but it wasn't until afterward that I realized that I hadn't actually clicked on the Healer before setting the Soulstone, so it was actually set to me. But since we didn't lose the Healer, I was actually spared that further humiliation.

***

About the best thing that came out of those two runs was that the Rogue in the second Deadmines run, who'd remained pretty much silent the entire run, whispered me at the end that he was going to be doing some dueling and asked if I wanted to come. I told him no thanks, as I had to get going to bed. While that was technically correct, I just wanted to log off and not think about Warlocks, Soulstones, and the Deadmines for a while.

For a person who'd actually played a Warlock before, I felt woefully unprepared for being in an instance as a Warlock. While I knew a lot about what not to do, what I should do was where I was lacking. Rotations are one thing, since you can figure out a mana efficient way of inflicting damage while being out in the field, but forgetting how to do a Soulstone? That's pretty basic --and critical-- stuff.

And the activity a Warlock has to balance is insanely high compared to a Rogue or Mage. Managing the demon, making sure that it is actually doing damage to the right toon, and keeping all the DoTs going means that a Lock's instance activity is actually harder than in the average Battleground, where the Lock is looking more to lay crowd control via Fear nearly as much as DoTs and AoEs. In a BG, a Lock can let their Demon just go do their thing with minimal supervision, but in an instance I was tempted more than once to simply dismiss that Imp so I could focus on the rest of what was going on.

I realize that this was good for me in the long run, as I needed this experience if I'm going to level Dominius up to L60. Better to learn these lessons now rather than at, say, L35-40. I'm not going to lie and say it was fun, however. It wasn't.





*And that's coming from a player who --the past several years, at least-- prefers to play Rogues. My brethren don't make my job any easier, as poorly played Rogues will forget that what they do in an instance affects the entire group, so if you get cute and try to sneak past mobs --accidentally aggroing them-- they all come after your companions if you decide to use Vanish to escape.

**I'm not kidding when I say that I frequently get assigned the job of pulling a group together. And if you knew me in real life, you'd laugh because I'm a big introvert.

***The first Warlock AoE is Rain of Fire, learned at L20.

****I was cycling through the entire pack, making sure I had DoTs up on each Goblin, so I was focusing on the enemy target icon and making sure the right DoTs were present.

Same as it Ever Was

I've not had a big enough chunk of free time to pull off an instance run (SWTOR or LOTRO) in ages, but this past week I actually had a few hours to myself without having to go anywhere or do anything*, so the siren song of running a SWTOR instance proved too irresistible.

Rather than learning a new (for me) instance, I figured that I ought to ease back into instance running with some of the original SWTOR instances: Hammer Station, Athiss, and Mandalorian Raiders. Why those three? Well, they are my favorites of the original instances (with the possible exception of False Emperor), and they are also the three I'm most familiar with. Even with the leveling adjustment put in place, I figured that these three instances ought to be the Azjol-Nerub of SWTOR**: once you learn them, it's a fairly quick and painless run.

Unless, of course, you're dealing with an all DPS group.

(Guess what groups I got?)

Now, to be fair, the Hammer Station run was pretty straightforward with a standard Tank/Healer/DPS/DPS group configuration, and we pretty much blitzed through the entire instance. Not exactly at the same level as a classic Azjol-Nerub run, but we finished in about 15-20 minutes, and that included me getting stuck on the other side of the meteorite cannon while everybody else took out some more trash before the final boss.

***

But Mandalorian Raiders came next, and the run consisted of all DPS.

My prior experiences in the "Fun With Mandos" instance with an all DPS group meant that the toughest boss to take out was the Houndmaster, the first boss, and this group proved that in spades. The Houndmaster hits too hard for a standard DPS to handle without utilizing Tanking abilities or having a Healer in tow, and to compound the problem we had people attempting to down the Houndmaster instead of the hounds first. After the third wipe, somebody asked in chat "Why can't we down this guy?"

"We don't have a healer," the Jedi Sentinel tanking the Houndmaster replied.

The Jedi Sage we had in our group wrote something incoherent in group chat, and then said "I'll do it, but remember to move in the right direction. Got it?"

"Of course."

This time we managed to down the boss properly, with the Sage's healing supplemented by the healing stations around the boss fight.

After that, the Mandalorian Raiders instance proceeded much quicker, with the only hiccup being the Sentinel who thought it a good idea to jump onto the downward descending platform in the section leading to the final boss. As you can guess, he finally caught up to the platform in time to die due to falling damage.

"Rez me!' he cried.

"I'm trying, but I can't select you," I replied. "How the hell did you manage that one?"

"I'm talented. Hee hee hee."

I grumbled something as the Sage rezzed him.

***

Athiss was a different beast entirely.

I knew I was in for an interesting time when we kept having people reject the instance before we finally got a full group.*** Then while a few of us jumped down into the ruins and healed up, a Jedi Sentinel sliced the elevator...

And jumped down anyway.

"Hoo boy," I thought. "I hope that was just an accident."

But by the time we got to the first boss, I could see clearly that it wasn't an accident. That same Sentinel pulled one too many mobs for a pure DPS to tank, and we wiped on the trash. Then we nearly wiped on that first boss, even though that's actually kind of hard to do with four DPS burning down that boss quickly.

But things seemed to settle down a bit when we plowed through the next several rounds of trash, until we got to the Beast of Vodal Kresh. There, we wiped repeatedly on that boss because a) people weren't using the healing stations (twice), b) people (including myself once) got knocked off into the level below and the trash below aggroed****, and c) nobody could hold aggro well enough against Ye Olde Beast.

Sometime after the fourth wipe the other Jedi Sentinel who'd been acting as the tank --all the while spewing invective in group chat-- ragequit. I took that as my cue to leave as well, since it had become obvious that this particular group simply wasn't going to get past the Beast of Vodal Kresh.

I then decided to hang around my starship for a while and relax, letting some 30 minutes pass by reading the codex and checking on college basketball scores.# I figured that 1/2 hour was time enough for me to not run into any of those three players again, and queued up for Athiss once more.

And I got an all DPS group. Again.

This time, however, the run went without incident. I'd not call it smooth, as Prophet of Vodal Kresh took a lot longer to kill off than I prefer,## but nobody died and nobody complained in group chat. It had been a long time since an instance ending in silence

***

After those instances, I decided that I'm not going to venture into any of the post-Vanilla instances for a while. First, I need to get up to speed on a rotation for my Shadow, as I constantly felt a bit slow compared to everybody else##, and second, I think I'd need to study the instances before simply being dropped into them. The instance running crowd is as I remembered it: with few exceptions, people are of the GO-GO-GO variety. One scolded me for not skipping the dialogue sections, but I wanted to tell that person that SWTOR is great because of the dialog, not in spite of it. If people do that to me on a new (to me) instance, there's likely to be some pissed off group members. In my WoW days, delays were frequently given as a reason for a votekick --which I'd often reject unless it was someone who went AFK for no good reason-- and I don't feel like reliving those days again.





*This included house chores such as laundry or dishes or cooking. I'm still not sure how I managed to get this free time this week, but hey, I'll take it.

**That ought to take old WoW players back to the good old days of Wrath of the Lich King. By the time Wrath came to an end, a random pug could pull off an A-Z run in about 10-12 minutes flat. Sure, being overgeared for the instance helped, but once you knew the fights it was a rare occasion to see a wipe in A-Z. Even Utgarde Keep couldn't match that one.

***Of all DPS, naturally.

****In my defense I knew about the knockback quite well, but I was speeding to a healing station that was still open when I got knocked down.

#My alma mater won, so I was happy.

##One player decided to start hitting the balls of fire rather than the Prophet, which meant one less DPS on the Prophet.

###I'm sure lag has something to do with it, as I was playing on a European server.

Gotta Keep 'em Separated

I've been reading some blog posts recently about player advancement, 5-man heroics, and progression raiding.

Priest With a Cause: An Annotated History of the Badge System
Blessing of Kings: The Root Problem
Blessing of Kings: Blocked Player Advancement

I've found the discussion interesting, particularly when you combine these articles with numerous PUG stories out there about overgeared toons behaving badly in Heroics.*

Now, I like Rohan's idea of removing Valor Points from the game, but the problem of overgeared toons running Heroics would still exist.  There is no need to run them from a gear standpoint, but that doesn't mean that you can't film an episode of Overgeared Toons Behaving Badly on a regular basis.  I can think of a few reasons why an overgeared toon would want to enter a 5-man Heroic anyway:  guild runs with guildies who aren't raid ready; mat runs farming DC-able gear and Chaos Orbs; and Justice Point farming runs, where a toon is farming JP to purchase heirlooms or convert the JP to Conquest Points (for PvP gear).

If the goal is to discourage badly behaving raiders from running random Heroics, isn't there a more direct method:  expanding the raid lockout to include heroics?  I'm not talking a daily lockout, but a weekly one.  Or better yet, if you enter a Cata raid, the lockout will include 5-man Heroics via the Dungeon Finder.  (Toons could still group up and enter a Heroic the old fashioned way via the meeting stone and instance entrance, however.)

Either suggestion is a very draconian method to keep the overgeared raiders away from the properly geared Heroic runners, but it does force one problem with this entire exercise into the limelight:  issue prioritization.

Which is the greater problem:

• Keeping bad apples out of 5-man Heroics
• Reducing wait times in 5-man Heroics

While some of us may see the former as the problem, Blizzard has voted with the latter and instituted the Call to Arms to encourage people (*cough* tanks and healers *cough*) to jump into randoms to alleviate long wait times.  But I'd argue that long wait times would discourage the asshats from queuing for instances in the first place, so why "fix" one problem when it exacerbates another?

Perhaps the solution to keeping the bad apples out is to increase the wait times for a random out of the Dungeon Finder, not reduce them.  If you queue for an instance run via the LFD tool, you have a minimum 30-45 minute wait.  No exceptions.  You end up getting the people who really want to be there, who will want to work out issues and setbacks in an instance run, while discouraging the jerks from entering.  The poorly behaved toons can still join groups, but their best chance of instance running is with a guild/friend group.

But what about the rewards for a guild runs?  Who'd want to have a guild run via the LFD with a wait like that?

Well, why restrict the daily LFD rewards to the LFD tool?  How about allowing a party to reap the same rewards via the traditional route:  entering via the meeting stone and traditional instance location.  Getting to an instance will be much quicker than the wait involved via the LFD tool, but would yield the same amount of rewards.  It also means that people will get out in the world a bit more, rather than loitering around Org or Stormwind.  Finally, it also means that people might just group up within the same server a bit more often, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  (Okay, Rhii might have a different opinion on that, given her disastrous encounter with some puggees from her own server, but those asshats will eventually get their comeuppance.  Karma is a real bitch that way.)




*Of course, there are plenty of toons that behave badly no matter their gear.


EtA:  Yes,  I like The Offspring.  I couldn't justify using "Hit That" or "Pretty Fly" as the title of the post, tho.

So you're minding your own...

...and you suddenly get smacked in the face. 

Do you:

A) Dust yourself off, apologize for being hit, and ask for another

B) Act like nothing happened, as this occurs a lot

C) Try to maintain some civility while letting the person know their behavior is not acceptable

Well this happened to me more or less. But before I get too deeply into the post, I want to explain a few things. 

First off, I have three level 80 tanks, and have experienced current (at the time- my pally only did Nax and EOE) "end game" content with each one.  I have a fairly damn good idea of how to tank.  Secondly, I hate hate hate hate the Halls of Reflection.  Some sort of swear word literally escapes my lips IRL when that dungeon pops.  Most of the time I will leave group immediately instead of waiting around to see if it's a fail (as you will see why in this post) and it's not becuase I doubt my ability to actually tank it. I don't care to rack up a repair bill for a dungeon where the only thing I need is two frost badges and my level of faith in the average LFD random guy is not that great. 

Also, I use tidy plates addon with the threat plates theme.  This turns name plates into a threat meter, and I can see if I have aggro on a target (name plate is small and green) or if I need to get a taunt in on something (large red name plate).  This gives me a very very good idea of what's going on and if I need to get some hits in on something at range.  And lastly, there's a guild member who just joined recently and could really use some loot out of there in the group with me.

So here we are... in the LFD que quickly followed up by the HOR loading screen.  #($*&#)(@#.
Group makeup: Warrior tank (me), Warlock (guild mate), Hunter, DK, Druid healer.

The events start and the group immediately heads for the corner.  I tell them I'm not going to be doing the corner, and to come back to the door.

Everything is going OK on the first few waves of trash.  I had to blow shield wall and last stand at one point because I was getting no heals.  On the first boss, everybody dies, but the boss manages to drop as well.  So the group runs back in, gets loot nobody needs and starts up for round two.  Two waves towards the second boss I just drop from lack of heals.

Chat legend:
Green = guild member
Black = Me
Grey = Pug
Demonikal = Fuckin retard DK
Silfactor = mouthy druid
(I'm not going to black their names out, because if they want to be internet tough guys they can deal with having their names posted)

So everybody runs back in and the group chat looks like this:

It's a fact.  I can't tank when I'm dead.  Yep.  So the group continues past the second boss.  I try to pull the giant out of the hallway to avoid getting the extra adds, not that they're a big deal, it just takes longer.  Halfway down the hall the DK charges in and pulls aggro.  /shrug  Ok... whatever.  The DK then says "lol fail tank" 

And at that point I had had enough - it was a combination of a bad day at work, not wanting to even be in HOR, and retarded dps that can't even assist a tank.

So I'm tired of the whole childish "lol fail tank" crap when t he healer is the one having troubles and I get called names?  I'm so glad I'm stuck in the dungeon with you guys.  (Also I find it very funny the guy was playing a female character in a fantasy game and was so quick to toss out that derogatory comment.)

Five minutes later:

Haha!  Asshat DK got kicked.  Feeling a tad guilty for making the rest of the group I said I was sorry, and immediately regretted it.  In fact, I wasn't sorry.  I wasted 5 minutes of your time.  Deal with it.  So I get called an "inconsiderate fuck" for actually choosing option C above.  What the hell?  What does it matter?  It matters because I don't have to put up with bullshit, and I chose to take a stand.  Grow a pair and stick up for yourself, man!

I'd rather have time to charge mobs and have a lot of space to work with as opposed to having mobs come around the corner when my thunderclap and shockwave are on cooldown and instagibbing a party member.  And most importantly, I'm the tank.  You follow me.  That's just how it works.

So we're on the last icewall before the dungeon is over, and the red pug actually says something intelligent!  The funnies thing, however, is the DK who was kicked from the group was bothered enough by the kick that he actually made a character on my server just to talk some more smack.  And he had the cleverness to name it (MyCharacterName)isgay. 

Rest assured, Demonikal, I never doubted your ability to display what a gem of a person you truly are!  Just slap a sticker on your helmet that proudly proclaims how special you are, and keep jumping in the LFD.  I'm sure you'll find more people willing to tolerate your bullshit.

And I'm still boggled by Silfactor's attitude.  Just because it's a random person you probably won't spend time with ever again does not mean you have to tolerate behavior like that.  I can't believe you're willing to just more or less whore yourself out to the LFD.  It doesn't matter how it treats you, it will be over soon and then you can go about your business, right?

After that dungeon run, I was in a rather foul mood.  It's a good thing my arena teammate was on and looking to do some matches.  It was a nice stress relief.  Who knew arenas could be less stressful than dungeons? lol.

Between matches, I received a whisper that made my night though.  I guess we stomped his team at some point.

So you want to know why tanks freak out now and again?  Here's your answer: retarded DKs and mouthy druids.