Writing today’s post before sleep not because I’m currently having trouble sleeping, but because I fully intend to sleep as late as possible tomorrow to allow myself to wake up, bolt out the door for work, come home, and lose myself in the new season in Diablo. Today, I’ll be rambling about something that’s kinda been getting under my skin lately. A bit of a sore spot that there really isn’t too much to do about, other than rant then resolve.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m casual in WoW these days, and came from a long-ish background in Heroic and Mythic progression. I thrill for the difficult fight, with a crack team of well-trained raiders working together like clockwork. The fun kinda runs where everyone knows how each other person is going to react through pure muscle memory, and you can raid in either complete silence or while talking about completely different things. I loved being a part of a team like that, and my proudest and fondest memories in WoW came from those raids, or the people I raided with trying to blow off steam outside of it.
Well, now that I’m casual and my guild’s raids are on days I work late (aka every day except for my days off, since I always close, and they’re east-coast raid times whereas I live on the west coast), I pugged Normal Hellfire Citadel a few times. Tried to get a couple other casual guildies in along with me, then they went on vacation and I stopped caring enough to try. Eventually, another one of my friends asked me to help out with their raid group. They started with Blackrock Foundry and were claiming a full clear, so I figured why the hell not, I want to try for The Black Hand.
Almost 3 hours of wipes later, I realized the group wasn’t all it was cracked out to be. Sure, they had a tank who was new to the fight and new to tanking in general. And my friend was basically being carried to farm up some gear. But… some of their choices were… interesting. Then again, there were also some derpy pugs in there who had zero idea of what was going on, so I didn’t hold it against the raid group altogether.
My friend ended up getting some gear and since their guild liked me, they brought me along to HFC. That was an… interesting experience. The first boss is a joke and barely counts as an AoE loot pinata. Even then, they managed to derp on some of the fights. The second one… we actually managed to wipe a few times because people marinaded themselves in fire or stood in front of (or under) the boss when it was simple to get out of the way. And the third boss… I’d… prefer not to think of that one at all.
Another raid night, another time of me being dragged along. Fourth boss, and… oh good gods. It’s a really good thing that I have a decent amount of gold saved up for repairs, and that I stopped caring about raiding. The Council fight was miserable. Half of the people refused to move away from mechanics that would kill them, and the other half of the time, the healers couldn’t keep up with people standing in shit, the tanks being special ballerina snowflakes with their positioning (instead of kiting the boss to drop their stacks, or use personal CDs, they made the entire raid run all the way across the room) and the standard damage… so people would die.
We hit enrage on that fight more times than I care to remember, all because half the DPS was floor-tanking after the first phase. We don’t end up downing it on the second raid night of the week, and so we go back in again the next lockout. First boss, fine. Second boss, fine enough even though a bunch of people are dead (again). Third boss, several other wipes to the point that they ask the melee to run all the way out and cover the job that two of the ranged constantly prove themselves unable to perform. Even then, we wipe several times. Get back to the fourth boss, and yet again, it’s a clusterfuck of people having no damned idea of what they’re doing.
We EVENTUALLY down the boss, after the special-snowflake-tank suggests an idea that I brought up the previous week on the third wipe, and after changing the entire set-up around to allow him to stand still and not pop his CDs and still manage to stay alive. Woo. Astounding victory, go us. Moving along to the next boss, and it’s just as much of a miserable clusterfuck.
The main breakdown of what I can’t stand about the group, despite really wanting to help my friend:
- They ask for anyone they pug to have their gear in order and enchanted, along with using flasks and runes. However, they’ll take their guildies who are undergeared to the point of not being able to queue for LFR.
- They have too many “leaders” all with different ideas, which are usually clashing with one another, and trying to call different things at different times.
- There is little understanding of the fights by some of those leaders, and zero research done by the bulk of the raid on the mechanics and their personal roles.
- No situational awareness, to the point that someone was bragging about it.
- Regardless of how badly things go, they will never drop their undergeared DPS guildies who die within the first minute of the fight, and would rather wipe all night with them in the group than have them sit, fix their shit, and come back when they’re able to contribute.
My personal philosophy is that, if I’m specifically carrying someone, I’d better get paid for it. Since I can’t get any gear from the bosses we keep wiping on, and there’s no hope whatsoever on moving beyond them, I’m very rapidly approaching the point where I’m no longer going to be available for their group. Sure, they offered me an honorary raid spot on their team. But when they can’t even fill their own damned raids until an hour after start time, and once in the instance it becomes a carnival of horrible mistakes? Yeah, I’ll pass on that. I might be a bit pretentious, but that style of raiding to me is not fun, by any means.
Luckily, the new season in Diablo starts today.
-Bane Falcon
“Evil breeds in the guts of the lazy.”
The Driveling Dwarf 