Forced to PUG as a way of life

Publicado por warlock454

I have a bit of a sad tale to tell.

I have a level 80 blood spec death knight. You can see her here.

She's not uber, or anything close to uber. But she's decent enough. I play her periodically when I can stomach the PUGs.

The reason I am forced to PUG is because I don't get to play that often and when I do, it's usually for a limited time. So I hop on and see if folks are running any level 80 dungeons because I have run so few of them.

Last night I joined a PUG doing Utgarde Pinnacle. It was a total nightmare. The tank that we had did not have any clue how to tank at all. We did make it all the way through to the final boss but that was a 4-wipe masterpiece.

Others in the PUG confronted him about his poor tanking ability, but not in a mean or disrespectful way. Probably the worst comment of all was from the healer who said: "You don't tank much, do you?" His response was "No, I don't."

When someone else asked him what his defense was, he responded with "eight million" which caused our healer shaman to quit instantly. So there was nearly an hour of lost time there.

Which sort of brings me to my frustrating point. I don't get to play often, as I said. And when I do get to play, my time is usually limited to an hour, maybe two on a good day. My soul gets sick sometimes when I get that shot to do an instance. I don't mind failing at it; the game isn't supposed to be easy.

I think what's irritating is the complete lack of fun I have during the process and knowing that everyone is leaving the group ticked off. I know there isn't anything that can be done about that, outside of making the game so ridiculously easy that it isn't even worth playing.

People have suggested to me in the past that a good way to avoid this is to join a big guild or to maintain a long friend list. But in those cases the problem is me, not the people. It's my time limitation. All the friends in the world won't make a difference if I log on at 10pm and I have exactly 60 or 90 minutes to play. Which is why I generally join the PUGs because they are often starting as soon as I log in.

This has been more of a QQ post than anything else. There's nothing wrong with the game or the people. I just wish I had more time.

Publicado por Lorkin

There's 2 things you can do about this, I had this issue before and this is what I did.

Create your own group. You take charge, invite the geared people you want to invite, make the group yourself. I generally armory people I invite before hand to make sure they aren't in all greens.
Take up the tanking role. You play a DK, its easier to find groups as a tank. You just need to find a good healer and generally you can make it through any heroic successfully. I know it takes time to gear up but nowadays it's not that difficult.

It does suck to have like an hour and join a fail group. So cut down the chances of those by taking charge. You have Limited time, do the things that would yield you the most success. Don't rely on others especially if you have limited time.

Publicado por warlock454

There's 2 things you can do about this, I had this issue before and this is what I did.

Take up the tanking role. You play a DK, its easier to find groups as a tank. You just need to find a good healer and generally you can make it through any heroic successfully. I know it takes time to gear up but nowadays it's not that difficult.

Publicado por Paolo

Yeah, fair enough. Keeping a long friends list is definitely the way. I don't even use the friends list any more; it's just not long enough. Instead I use an in-game text editor to keep lists of tanks/dps/heals. I also annotate people I pug with using DoIKnowYou. The longer & stronger your list of trustworthy pug-people gets, the more fun I'm sure you'll have in-game.

Oh, and get a plugin called QuickArmory. It's one of many ways to help you ensure that people you're about to run with are up to snuff. (It generates a URL you can paste into your browser to armory someone.) Gear doesn't indicate skill, but at least you can check if your tank is def-capped.

I haven't done any Argent Tourney stuff, but it looks like one way for casual or solo players to spend enjoyable game time. It's not dungeoning, so it doesn't have the thrill that you get from good teamwork. But you might check it out anyway.

Publicado por warlock454

I haven't done any Argent Tourney stuff, but it looks like one way for casual or solo players to spend enjoyable game time. It's not dungeoning, so it doesn't have the thrill that you get from good teamwork. But you might check it out anyway.

Paolo, that is a good idea. In fact, I just started the Argent Tournament stuff a couple of days ago. I had not been on this character in some months prior to that so all of this Tournament stuff is new to me.

Publicado por Dunsinane

There's 2 things you can do about this, I had this issue before and this is what I did.

Take up the tanking role. You play a DK, its easier to find groups as a tank. You just need to find a good healer and generally you can make it through any heroic successfully. I know it takes time to gear up but nowadays it's not that difficult.

I have considered this but my experience tanking is also extremely limited. I don't want to be the bane of some other group members' existence like the guy we had in our group. I have been collecting and storing some tanking pieces that I have found (I got one in Pinnacle last night).

How do you recommend I learn to tank without becoming hated?
Start by heading over to the DK forums. There are stickies and regular posts discussing tanking concerns there. That'll give you the information you need to get started.

From there, head off to Outlands. Solo the instances there to get used to the new rotations. When you're comfortable with the mechanics, put together a group for a level 80 instance - or even volunteer for something lower level that you see forming.

Publicado por Lorkin

You can also tank the regular instances, like regular UK or Nexus or something just to get the feel for it. The 70's-79's would really love a level 80 tank to come and tank for them.

Maybe you can join a guild that does heroic runs nightly or something like that. You mentioned that you have up to 90 mins sometimes, can this extend to 2 hours (120 mins)?

There maybe guilds that do the first half of Naxx 10 the first night, and 2nd half another night. It doesn't take long to do the first 2 wings of Naxx, and you can had a shot at some raiding gear as well. See what's available on your server.

Publicado por Porcell

Others in the PUG confronted him about his poor tanking ability, but not in a mean or disrespectful way. Probably the worst comment of all was from the healer who said: "You don't tank much, do you?" His response was "No, I don't."

Heh, this sounds exactly like a PuG UP I ran a few days ago. I was on my warlock and we had a druid tank. Being an MT myself I'm always very conscious of threat when I play my DPS classes. IMHO, I'd rather have a pull take an extra 4 seconds than to start instantly, rip aggro, make it hard on my tank, and possibly die.

So we are going, but it's pretty rough. I thought it was just because I was doing my warlock thing and just totally blowing everything up. I don't think we wiped at all, but threat was a pretty constant concern.

Anyway, we are clearing the last room before the big ramp up to the last boss. I take a second to inspect him and he's in 4 piece T7.5 and pretty much all heroic Naxx epics. I check his spec and it's all feral, and from what little I can tell it is bear spec, not cat spec. I then check recount. It looked like this:

Melee
Swipe
Mangle
Thorns

Now, I'm no bear tank myself, but... Lacerate? Maul? Maul is the "Heroic Strike" of bears, right? He didn't use anything but Swipe Spam (and a couple mangles) through the whole instance. Every time I looked at his rage bar it was pegged at 100. On bosses I'd wait a pull like 8 seconds, start my rotation, and be threat capped before the boss was at 50%.

I asked the guy if he tanked much, and what about Maul. He said something like "lol sorry, I forgot" and then a minute later said "I gotta go" and logged. This guy HAD to be using a friend's account or something. No way he has that gear and yet has no idea how to tank.