When You're the Bad Pug (in RFD)

Last Sunday I healed a Razorfen Downs pug with my undead priest in Season of Discovery. It went... awkwardly.

I felt chipper enough when I first joined the group - I was filling the last spot, so we were immediately ready to go. The group had been listed for several dungeons, so I asked what the ultimate destination was meant to be and was told that it was Razorfen Downs. I could see that several people were already on their way to the entrance, and the tank was a warlock, which meant that I could simply await a summon, which was nice as I was very far away.

The tank asked whether we were all okay with doing the escort quest after the first boss, and I said "sure". I mostly took it as a given that the escort and its associated boss encounter would be included in an RFD run, but there's nothing wrong with making sure that everyone's on the same page! The warlock wasn't appeased that easily though - he insisted that each individual member confirmed in writing in the chat that they were okay with doing the escort, and that they would wait for everyone to hand in the previous quest before picking up the next one (the actual escort). A rather unexpected degree of paranoia I guess, but I wasn't put off just yet because I was well aware of how much of a pain that escort could be. (I mentioned it in this post from 2011!)

Anyway, eventually a summon arrived for me, and the moment I loaded in, someone shared the quest you can pick up just outside the instance with me. I thanked everyone around me and started buffing everyone with fortitude, something that still takes more than one full mana bar even in SoD. I hadn't even buffed everyone yet when the tank was already off to the races - and thus began half an hour of me frantically chasing after him, trying to sit down to drink every now and then but barely getting above 20% of my mana at any given time.

At one point before we even got inside the instance, the tank died because he had charged so far off, I hadn't stood a snowball's chance in hell at getting in range of him in time. He put "mb" in the chat but didn't seem to learn a lesson from it as he still didn't slow down in any way the moment he was back on his feet. Eventually I did put "oom" in chat myself because I really wanted a moment to drink, but this still wasn't enough to stop the tank. One of the dpsers took pity on me and handed me a mana potion though. At one point we spotted a chest and a few people rolled on it - I won but again didn't have time to actually grab it because the tank was running and pulling again and I had to race after him in turn to keep him alive.

When we reached Belnistrasz, the tank was very firm that we should all "just accept, don't talk". Frazzled as I was from the constant running and barely being able to keep up, I quickly accepted the first quest, hit complete and then accepted the second quest, which immediately started the NPC running. "Who hit accept?!" the tank roared, and it took me a moment to process what had even happened. He'd said to just accept, not talk, which was what I'd done... but then I opened my quest log and could see that I was the only person on the escort quest. It was only then that it came back to me that of course, that's why it was so annoying, because there is no separate dialogue option to start the escort, it immediately starts the moment you accept the quest. Why had he said "just accept, don't talk" then though...?

Anyway, the tank kept demanding to know who'd ruined everything while we ran back to the entrance to reset the instance. I wanted to be honest and confess, but he seemed so mad, and someone else piped up with a comment along the lines "somebody probably had auto-accept on" (in an addon). I of course had no such addon installed, but the temptation of blaming an unspecified person's addon was just too great and I said nothing.

When we got outside, the tank again made each of us confirm individually that we didn't have any auto-accept function on (anymore) before resetting the instance. As we fought our way through the same bunch of pig people a second time, he also kept putting "alfa" in chat repeatedly. I didn't know what that meant, but already racked with guilt and nervous as I was, I worried that I was missing something important and eventually asked whether that was a SoD thing. Someone simply said yes and the tank repeated "alfa" a few more times. But who was he talking to? I searched Wowhead for "alfa" on my second screen and got no useful results. Was I doing something else wrong now? Fortunately it eventually turned out that it was the shaman he'd been pestering, namely for the buff "Spirit of the Alpha".

Anyway, we got back to Belnistraz again, and it was once again emphatically repeated not to start the escort quest until the tank officially called for it. I meekly hung my head and waited. When I noticed level-up type sparkles around people's heads as others handed in the pre-quest, I started to sweat again. What if people were paying attention and noticed that I wasn't visibly completing the pre-quest just now? Would that give away my bad deed from earlier? However, even as I wondered about that, I suddenly got the pop-up to say that someone else had started the escort quest and whether I wanted to accept it too. I clicked yes of course, and there was once again raging about how someone hadn't waited, though at least I knew it wasn't me this time. There was also no threat of a reset as only one guy had been unable to pick up the escort, and the tank was like "screw that one guy" I guess.

The silver lining of the run was that the boss at the end of the escort dropped Scroll of Shadowfiend for me, which I took with some delight. I had no idea you could even earn extra non-rune abilities like that too!

Anyway, we continued the run as before, crazy rushing included. One of the bosses dropped a really nice caster cloak, but I saw the tank roll need so I passed, guilty conscience still gnawing at me, plus I had got the distinct impression that this tank had very strong opinions about getting what he wanted.

He also died two more times on trash, even though I was able to keep everyone else alive. He hadn't run out of range either, I just... wasn't able to keep him up? He seemed to take crazy amounts of damage sometimes, but I have no experience with warlock tanks so I couldn't judge whether this was normal or whether he was effectively doing the warlock equivalent of tanking in battle stance and without a shield when you're under-levelled for the dungeon. I just felt like I was failing as a healer, even though nobody said anything. At one point after I'd resed him again, he just stood there for a minute not moving, and I imagined him telling his guild mates about how trash the healer in his RFD run was.

Eventually we got to the end of the dungeon. We ran past another chest, which nobody but me even attempted to roll for this time, so I just looted it after everyone else had left. Amnennar the Coldbringer dropped his Coldrage Dagger, on which the rogue in the party rolled need... but so did the warlock, and he was the one who won. The rogue just put a ":/" in chat, understandably not pleased with a caster needing on a melee weapon. I felt bad for him, but that last incident also made me feel a bit better about my own failures, knowing that the warlock wasn't just bossy and in a hurry but also a ninja. Didn't need to feel quite so bad about him dying then I guess.

I hearthed back to Undercity and did my quest hand-ins. I then opened the group finder one more time just to see what else was happening, and saw that the warlock was already in the process of forming another group for Scarlet Monastery, this time with a druid healer that was only level 33. I silently wished that guy good luck in my head and logged off for the day.

Return of the troll druid: instancing in the forties

I've decided to pick up playing my troll druid again, the one that I created right after the Shattering patch, to continue my project of levelling through the revamped old world dungeons to see how they've been changed. In my last installment I had made it up to Uldaman, which means that I was about to reach the stretch of levels where Blizzard has now placed the five-mans that used to be endgame back in vanilla: Scholomance, Stratholme and Dire Maul.

On the whole I have to say that I really like this change. These places are good dungeons and it was a shame to let them rot in a level bracket where nobody ever ran them anymore, especially while other, lower level brackets had so few instances in them that you ended up running the same ones over and over again if you were using the dungeon finder a lot. Revitalising old content and increasing variety are good things.

I do have to say that it's not without problems though. Thing is, these places were designed to be endgame, meaning that they included all kinds of fiddly bits and pieces that were there to keep you entertained throughout repeated reruns, such as the postbox keys in Stratholme. However, Blizzard hasn't always made sensible adjustments here and some mechanics just plain don't work in a levelling dungeon environment. Klep wrote about the silliness of splitting the postbox keys between the two Stratholme wings before, but there are others.

For example you still get only one ogre tannin per instance in Dire Maul North, so only one person in the entire group can actually complete the associated instance quest. Now, I hesitate to say that making that item drop only for a single person each run was ever a good idea, but while Dire Maul was endgame it at least didn't matter as much. With everyone running the instance over and over again at the level cap you were bound to have a shot at the tannin eventually (even if other people wanted spares to craft more ogre suits). But in a levelling instance? You're only going to run that two or three times, tops, and thanks to the random dungeon finder probably with different people every time. How do the devs expect the majority of players to complete this quest?

But enough of that. I found it interesting that while queuing as both dps and healer, the dungeon finder actually made me alternate between the two roles reasonably often, showing that healers are not that much rarer than damage dealers in levelling instances. When I was healing however, I was pleased to see that Blizzard swapped Nourish and Healing Touch around in the druid levelling progression, so the problem of only having expensive and way too large heals as a levelling druid healer has been addressed since I originally complained about it.

The overall quality of my pug groups was so-so. I was disappointed that I only met very few people with whom I would have been happy to group again, and way too many that were simply clueless, rude or both. There was also a depressing amount of player rotation each run - which I guess isn't all that different from pugs at max level, but somehow I find it even sadder while levelling. At the level cap, the "daily" dungeon has been established as something that is very routine and I understand why someone might not be very invested in it and quick to drop from a group. But levelling is so fast, you're unlikely to see the same instance many times, and every time you drop from a run you might be forfeiting your chance to ever complete that dungeon at level (on this character). For many players it's also clearly the first time. Is there no curiosity left in them to find out what the dungeon is about, even if it means wiping a couple of times?

Dire Maul

I love Dire Maul. I have very fond memories of my first forays into it, and it's got what I consider a "classic dungeon atmosphere". It feels like a proper place that's not just there for you to come and kill stuff in it, while still offering interesting challenges to the budding adventurer.

That said, I felt that it doesn't flow very well as a levelling instance. The Warpwood Quarter and Capital Gardens are a little non-linear, which can easily confuse groups these days and cause them to miss out on bosses and quests if you don't have at least one person who knows what they are doing. Basically these are still dungeons that were clearly meant to be played through with a group that actually cares, and little has been changed to make them less so. That's a good thing if you like this kind of design, but a bit of a pain if you're stuck trying to explain to a pug how to free Immol'thar and why - after all it's only mentioned in a quest and there are no markers on the map to show where the crystals are, so how could anyone be expected to know what to do? [/sarcasm]

I also thought it was funny that while almost all the old dungeon quests for Dire Maul have been moved into the instance with minor adjustments for convenience, the old quest to kill Prince Tortheldrin is still given in the most inconvenient place possible and requires you to run back and forth across the instance multiple times if you want to get your reward.

Gordok Commons felt quite a bit harder than the other two wings, though that might have been because I had some pretty poor players in that dungeon. Either way the ogres hit quite hard if you're not the tank. And of course there's the silly issue with the ogre tannin mentioned above.

Scholomance

Another instance of which I have fairly fond memories, even if it was never one of my favourites. This one really felt a lot like old times to me, even if AoE tanking and greater average character power still made things easier than they used to be. (The tank in my run chewed me out for running out of mana while he was tanking the entirety of Lorekeeper Polkelt's exploding trash at once, because supposedly he does this all the time and it never caused any of his healers problems.) Still, things like wiping in the first room because the patrols and trash pulls are way too easy to chain-aggro felt very old school.

Even better, anyone remember that bug that caused warlock AoE to aggro mobs through the floor? Yep, that seems to have made a comeback in some form as well, or at least the Ravenian and his entire trash bore down on us right as we were fighting Instructor Malicia in the room above and wiped us. The tank rage-quit after that because he was convinced that someone had wiped us on purpose (how did he think anyone could intentionally pull through the floor?), but I just had to chuckle at the silliness of it all.

I still remember the first time I ever fought Darkmaster Gandling and the sheer WTF-ness of the moment when he teleports everyone into different rooms. It was nice to re-experience that at least at level, even if it's never going to be as good as the first time.

Razorfen Downs

This instance confused me a little. Either they changed the layout a bit, or I just never noticed it properly before the low-level dungeon maps were introduced. Otherwise it largely seemed the same as before the Shattering, almost too much so. I mean, I can't believe they still didn't fix Belnistrasz's stupid escort quest to make it easier to do as a group. As it is, it still has the silly pre-quest that just requires you to talk to the NPC and say that yes, you will help him, so whoever inevitably starts the actual escort before everyone else is ready will lock at least some people out, as the quest can't be shared if people didn't get the chance to complete the redundant prequest. Of course this happened during my latest run as well and nobody but the impatient rogue actually got to do the quest. /sigh. The funny thing is that he claimed that it was his first time - you wouldn't necessarily expect someone who's never seen the quest before to click through it even faster than those who've done it many times on different characters.

Also, when you fight Amnennar at the end, a random red dragon (not Belnistrasz) now comes flying past, breathes some fire on the boss and then flies away again. Everyone in my group just stared in wide-eyed wonder and confusion. Since when does this instance have random dragons? And why? Who knows?