Popped in to run my Daily Heroic—it turned out to be Trial of the Champion (the arena one) and I wound up with The Worst PUG Evar. Well, maybe not –ever-, but at least in a long while. The tank started off by letting us know it was his First Day Tanking (never a good sign, but everyone has to start somewhere, right?), so I paid extra close attention to the ol’ threat-o-meter for the battle. I need not have bothered.
We cleared the jousting rounds with little issue. Well, I got knocked off and trampled, but that wasn’t wholly unexpected. By the time I got back, we were ready to face a wave of Champions… three nasty, buff, spell casting, immune to polymorph bosses and that was where it all went to hell. The first run through we quickly discovered that unless the tank tags all three quickly, they will make a bee line to the healer and the party falls down very quickly. Ok, lesson learned. Throughout all of this, we have a VERY mouthy 5.8GS DPS, whom I shall call Jerkface, ragging on the tank. We point out we know he’s new and cut him a –little- slack, tyvm.
Take 2: Tank runs in, tags everything and we settle down to focus on bigbad #1. I alternate half the fight polymorphed as a sheep and the other half cautiously nuking out the brains of those who oppose me. Spells are flying everywhere and poison patches are thrown at us liberally. Turning my focus from my target for a second, I see that everyone else is dead. Oh, crap. Three seconds later, I embrace the cool floor. All the way back there is intra-party bickering between the Healer (appropriately named “Treeah”) and Jerkface, with the Tank feeling pretty bad because he couldn’t hold aggro.
While recovering my body and re-buffing, I was able to reconstruct what happened: Jerkface didn’t understand certain key concepts like “Aggro is everyone’s responsibility” and “Don’t stand in the poison patches” which led to a swift demise. The healer pointed out he can’t heal stupid and Jerkface starts a vote to have the healer booted from the party. Thankfully, it failed…much like attempt three.
Take 3: Same damn thing happens with the party wiping. The tank is starting to crack under the pressure and Jerkface insists it is Healer-FAIL’s fault for not doing its (I have difficulties assigning sexes to trees) job. This time I approve of a vote to kick a party member and we say goodbye to Jerkface and get a hunter replacement. Excellent!
Take 4: After all of that, it was a shame we wiped again. This time, I swallow a bitter pill and initiate a vote to kick the noobtank. It passes and we soon get a Paladin named “Noobedfish” whose first words were “What happened to your last tank?” After explaining, Noob notes sadly he hit 80 yesterday. We tell him that, honestly, he couldn’t do worse and we steeled ourselves for battle.
Take 5: The PalaNoob rushes forth to engage the enemy and the difference was immediately apparent. Everything –worked- the way it should and we made quick work of the rest of the instance. I felt bad about sending the first tank away, but my guilt was quelled after getting a nice upgrade for my shoes.
After all of that, I really didn’t want to run more randoms even though I needed the emblems. Weighing my options, my two next big goals were a trinket for Strev and a weapon upgrade for Anyth. Trinkets are pretty hard to come by, so it looked like I’d have to set my sights on a PvP-reward one. They come with a 48k honor price tag and I only had half of that squirreled away, so it’d be a few battles before I could claim one. To get an heirloom weapon for Anyth, I’d need to burn a ton of emblems I didn’t have…or… sacrifice part of my character concept and spend stonekeeper shards to get a gun. The PvP-vendor doesn’t sell bows.
Opting for the gun, I hustled over to Wintergrasp, chatted with the vendor, and discovered I was 20 short of the 325 needed. As I was determining this, I was obliterated by a rogue that was hidden in our fortress. Brian is right—they are always there just out of sight and always waiting to kill YOU. The battle for Wintergrasp was due to start shortly, so I queued up and did that. We won and in the process I earned the rest of the shards I needed to make Anyth a Happy Girl. I’d just need some ammo and a new pouch.
Logged on Anyth and found she was still in Elfville. No worries. I hustled to the mailbox, hefted the ancient dwarven hand cannon, and completely failed to equip it. Anyth didn’t have the skill. I run over to the Weaponsmaster and discover they can teach me to wield just about everything…except guns. Terrific. A search on the ‘net confirms that the only place I can learn to use a gun is the dwarven captial, Ironforge. *headdesk*
Long story short, I made my way to Ironforge and picked up the skill—playing a mage has REALLY spoiled me with the city teleports. The weapon upgrade effectively tripled her DPS and I’m looking forward to my next run with Zyrial.
Ran a few more BGs and am getting tantalizingly close to replacing the last non-epic piece of gear. Soon!
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