I have designated Sundays as my "PuG & Pray" day. It seemed fitting.

Now that I'm raiding on a much less regular schedule, and mostly in ad hoc situations, I find myself pugging even more often. I don't mind for the most part; I rather like pugging raids in general, and most of the time I actually have a fairly pleasant experience, and meet a few new people to add to my growing friends list. I've mentioned before how I use pugs as a powerful recruitment tool, but to be quite honest, I don't think most people have the patience I normally have for pugs.

I generally have a pretty good sense of humor about it, and can swallow a lot of annoying people. However, annoying and rude are two different things - and I really cannot stand rudeness. With rude people, you cannot outsmart them or win - because it would require you to sink to their level and be rude. So, when I tried *yet again* to complete the Onyxia 25 pug this weekend, I didn't stick around too long when after one wipe, there were several people chastising the healers in all caps, and generally cussing people out and calling them losers.

I know that I did my job just fine. I also know that when you pug newer or harder content, it is very difficult to coordinate everything perfectly. Sure, the dps might have been 4000+, and the tanks may have had 40k health, but that doesn't really matter if I can't find the whelp tank, and dps are too distracted trying to figure out what's going on to get out of the deep breath.

So, after telling the rude people that perhaps they would be happier running their own raid instead of being in this one, and then being told off yet again, I did something that I *never* do. I dropped group and hearthed. I was in a funny way yesterday anyway, and it suddenly occurred to me that I no longer even wanted to run this raid. I liked the leader, but I didn't have to stand around for the next 2 hours and get frustrated with rude people. I don't want to down Onyxia THAT badly. I sent a tell to the leader and apologized to him, and let him know I thought he was great, but I didn't have the patience to sit around with a bunch of elitist asshats who just wanted to make everyone feel badly about themselves.

Of course, as soon as my feet landed in Dalaran, the two asshats in question sent me tells. One said "emoquit lol" to which i merely responded "mmmmm" (M is for Moron!), and the other let forth a slew of words in my direction that I do not care to repeat, to which I lawled. I probably could have come up with more witty comebacks had I not been so out of it yesterday, but it wasn't really worth it anyway.

I thought a lot about this when I read Larisa's post yesterday, and cheered for her as she told the story of one of the most memorable moments of her WoW experience. She's right, sometimes we healers and tanks do take it for granted that people will want us back (though I suspect I might have convinced 24 people that they DON'T want me back...), but at the same time, I have had a lot of those moments myself, particularly when I first started raiding. They want me back! I must have not been awful! No one died on my clock, and I guess the raid leader decided I was a good healer! When I was newer to healing in raids, it did mean a lot more to me.