Shifting Perspectives: The unbearable suckhood of pugging

I swear, this writer is after my own heart. Linked below is their post, which is completely on spot.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/22/shifting-perspectives-the-unbearable-suckhood-of-pugging/#continued

I recommend following the link to get the full effect of it, go and read it. For a quick flyby, here are a few excerpts:

A Throne of the Tides dungeon finder group.
Allie: ... So this is the skull; I'll root the melee mob over here. Shammy, can you Hex this dude? Mage, can you sheep the healer? I've marked her with the moon.
Shaman: No problem.
Mage: (silence)
Allie: (foolishly assumes that silence implies consent) LOS pulling.
The entire group minus the Hexed and rooted mob aggros. Allie, who is line-of-sighting behind a wall, watches the pull go to hell as the group opens fire on the skull. The ranged mobs stop dead in their tracks, the melee aggro the group due to DoTs and AoE, and the unsheeped healer mob keeps healing the others to full.
Allie: (Feral Charge) (Challenging Roar) (cooldown cooldown cooldown)
Allie: Mage, if you could sheep the next moon, that'd be great; it's just gonna keep healing, otherwise.
Mage: No.
Allie: Jigga-what?
Mage: Just tank this s%&t, you don't need to CC here.

I swear to god, I ran into that exact mage. I was healing a lost city run and the tank was busy with two or three mobs, while a caster sat at range and threw handfuls of colorful pwnage into my face. I asked the mage to CC said mob and was advised that he had been here several times and hadn't CC'd a single time, and that this instance was just a tank n spank instance. He further advised that he wasn't going to waste *his* mana CC'ing something that didn't need it. I suppose he prefered me wasting my mana to heal myself instead of the tank. Thankfully, the group had a paladin who agreed the mage was an idiot and who kept the ranged mob stunned from there on out. (I love you, mystery paladin)

The final boss, Erudax, in heroic Grim Batol. The group has run back after a wipe.
Allie: Okay, that was a good attempt, but we need to switch DPS to the adds a lot faster. They spawn straight after Shadow Gale, so be prepared to run. Ready?
Rogue: r
Priest: r
Warlock: r
Ret paladin: r
Allie: (pulls)
Warlock: (keeps DPSing Erudax after Shadow Gale)
Rest of group: Adds?
Warlock: (keeps DPSing Erudax)
Rest of group: Adds? Hello? Bueller?
Allie: Goddammit.
Allie Feral Charges one of the adds and helps to DPS it down, because she is awesome. The group wipes on the next add phase.
Warlock: (posts damage meters showing himself at the top)
Allie: (hunts around for the aspirin bottle located somewhere around the laundry bin)

Well.

That's about all there is to say to this one. I've never really liked the recount guy. EVER. He's generally stupid, annoying, and too busy stroking his own *filtered for the children* to actually be useful. More often than not, his refusal to follow basic instructions is more harmful to the group than his dps is helpful.

A heroic Stonecore dungeon finder group.
Tank: Everyone ready?
Allie: Sure. Are you going to mark the p-
Tank: (pulls)
Allie: (to herself at the computer) This will end in tears. Probably mine.
Nobody: (interrupts the Stonecore Earthshaper)
Stonecore Earthshaper: Whoo! AoE! Heal through this, sucka!
Stonecore Berserker: Sweet, I can Spinning Slash through the melee and tank and NO ONE WILL MOVE OUT OF IT.
Allie: (heals like crazy and goes OOM).
Pull: (finally dies for some unaccountable reason)
Tank: (runs to the next pull)
Allie: Mana!
Tank: Are you going to have to drink after every pull? This place is going to take ages if you do.
Allie: TREE SMASH.

I'm gonna be honest with you here- I haven't moved on to heroics. Because I am Horde at heart, and my current guild is... alliance, I'm a bit of an outsider. I think they're just racist against the Horde. Regardless- it is incredibly difficult for me to get guild groups, so I do a lot of pugging. So far, even with more than an adequate ilvl to move on to heroics, I am sticking with regulars. There are a couple reasons for this.

1. All these dungeons are new, people are still learning wtf to do. Myself included. I would rather learn in a regular and then progress to heroics, rather than stumble into a heroic and watch the group scatter when I announce that "I've never been here before."


2. The same as I don't want to make others suffer through my learning curve, I don't want to suffer through anyone else's learning curve.


3. PUG's suck. Even in regulars, I am rarely getting grouped with anyone who still deserves to be in the gene pool. I would quite possibly be the next viral youtube nerdrager if I tried running a heroic pug.

All that said, even in regulars, I am managing to burn through mana faster than that Qur'an burning pastor burned through media coverage. It is necessary for me to drink, if not every pull, then at least every other. This is with groups who are actually doing mostly everything right. Forget groups who manage to do everything possible wrong. In that situation, I'm keeping all my mana recovery abilites on CD as well as needing to drink all the time.

I would like to welcome all scrubs to Cataclysm. We are no longer in WotLK. Sorry, but we're not blasting through instances in 15 minutes or less anymore. Relax. Sit back. Take your time, and do it right. If your healer has to drink, let them drink. In case you missed the memo, they're the healer. Their mana determines the pace of the group. Ignoring this basic rule will invariably result in a corpse run. There are some great healers who can heal every kind of "oops" imaginable. But unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult for even the best among us to heal stupid. Even those of us who manage to heal stupid can only do so a long as we have mana. No mana, no heals, no shiny new loot.

 

Again, Go and read the original post over at http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/22/shifting-perspectives-the-unbearable-suckhood-of-pugging/#continued It's a great post!