A German commenting on German politics
2 weeks ago
Showing posts with label pug. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pug. Show all posts
Last night I had a humbling VoA pug experience. For the first time in months, I tank healed alongside another Disc priest who actually knew what the hell she was doing - and that is an incredible understatement.
I know this, because her tank target actually had weakened soul on them the whole time. In fact, one time I was slow on the uptake, my tank target's health plummeted, and she shielded my target. I imagine she was probably wondering what the hell I was doing, and, while hesitant about shielding my target, figured it was better to be annoying than dead. She was the best Disc Priest I'd seen in a raid in a very long time.
But what has me totally fascinated, is that she's not a raider - she's a PvPer.
She was in full PvP gear (966 resilience). She carried a PvP heavy disc spec. Her glyphs and talent choices and gear priorities were nothing I would ever recommend for a PvE healer. Her gems were full of resilience and stamina. She had 128 hit rating. Everything about her gear, talent, gem, etc choices screamed PvP. And she healed just as well, if not better, than I did.
Her spellpower: 2569. Mine? 2840.
Her haste? 162. Mine? 716.
Her crit? 17.5%. Mine? 31%.
She matched me almost exactly on pure healing output, though I had significantly more mitigation/absorbs from peppering bubbles throughout the raid (because rapture procs make me smile). This makes sense, because her spellpower, crit, and haste are lower. She would, in theory, spend a little more time casting and have less Divine Aegis procs.
But the end result was the same. In full PvP gear, she matched my healing ability, and her tank stayed up just as well (sometimes better) than my own.
I shot her a whisper after we finished the fight, and told her she was amazing, and it was nice to heal next to someone who actually maintained weakened soul on the tank. She laughed and thanked me, and I'm sure she'll never see this post. She'll be too busy in Arena, kicking everyone's ass.
You might see her doing her daily random heroic, accruing emblems of frost. It looks like she does the weekly raid every week, and obviously pugs VoA (not surprising for a PvPer anyway). I'll think of her next time I see someone laughing at another pugger's PvP gear.
As someone who is completely oblivious about PvP, I admit being pretty jealous of the people who are good at PvP - I am awful at it. I personally think it requires a lot of quick thinking and maneurvering at which I am simply awful. So, I'm not ashamed I was, in my mind, out-healed by a PvP Disc Priest. I am, however, a little embarassed that I was surprised.
I know this, because her tank target actually had weakened soul on them the whole time. In fact, one time I was slow on the uptake, my tank target's health plummeted, and she shielded my target. I imagine she was probably wondering what the hell I was doing, and, while hesitant about shielding my target, figured it was better to be annoying than dead. She was the best Disc Priest I'd seen in a raid in a very long time.
But what has me totally fascinated, is that she's not a raider - she's a PvPer.
She was in full PvP gear (966 resilience). She carried a PvP heavy disc spec. Her glyphs and talent choices and gear priorities were nothing I would ever recommend for a PvE healer. Her gems were full of resilience and stamina. She had 128 hit rating. Everything about her gear, talent, gem, etc choices screamed PvP. And she healed just as well, if not better, than I did.
Her spellpower: 2569. Mine? 2840.
Her haste? 162. Mine? 716.
Her crit? 17.5%. Mine? 31%.
She matched me almost exactly on pure healing output, though I had significantly more mitigation/absorbs from peppering bubbles throughout the raid (because rapture procs make me smile). This makes sense, because her spellpower, crit, and haste are lower. She would, in theory, spend a little more time casting and have less Divine Aegis procs.
But the end result was the same. In full PvP gear, she matched my healing ability, and her tank stayed up just as well (sometimes better) than my own.
I shot her a whisper after we finished the fight, and told her she was amazing, and it was nice to heal next to someone who actually maintained weakened soul on the tank. She laughed and thanked me, and I'm sure she'll never see this post. She'll be too busy in Arena, kicking everyone's ass.
You might see her doing her daily random heroic, accruing emblems of frost. It looks like she does the weekly raid every week, and obviously pugs VoA (not surprising for a PvPer anyway). I'll think of her next time I see someone laughing at another pugger's PvP gear.
As someone who is completely oblivious about PvP, I admit being pretty jealous of the people who are good at PvP - I am awful at it. I personally think it requires a lot of quick thinking and maneurvering at which I am simply awful. So, I'm not ashamed I was, in my mind, out-healed by a PvP Disc Priest. I am, however, a little embarassed that I was surprised.
I might just do a whole buncha posts today!
First things first though... Wednesday night I did an interview with Exanna at OMGpriest! for her podcast, and it was pretty fun. I sound so tired and goofy, so all of you haters will want to listen to it and give me hell for it!
In all seriousness, it's a fairly short interview just talking about some of the basics of Discipline priesting... things you might want to know if you're switching from Holy to Disc. Listening to it now, I keep thinking of all these other things I should have said, but alas, hind sight is always 20/20. It can be rough making the switch, but Exanna and I went over some of the basics that a fresh Disc Priest may need to know.
Check it out on her page: OMGpriest!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
And speaking of newbie Disc Priests, I want to leave you with a lesson I learned in a ToC25 pug tonight - It is far better to do nothing but cast Power Word: Shield as a Disc Priest than it is to go through entire fights without casting it once.
I've run into this a lot lately in pugs - other priests healing tanks with me, and me feeling that I needed to shield their tanks because they just weren't doing it themselves. Yes, Penance is an awesome spell - and you could argue that Penance is a bigger staple of the Disc Priest diet than even Power Word: Shield. But the foundation of Disc Priesting is mitigation - SO USE YOUR SHIELDS OR I WILL CRINGE.
And then I'll blog about it.
But at least I don't name names. I'd like to think that if you are a Disc Priest, and you read this blog... you know better.
First things first though... Wednesday night I did an interview with Exanna at OMGpriest! for her podcast, and it was pretty fun. I sound so tired and goofy, so all of you haters will want to listen to it and give me hell for it!
In all seriousness, it's a fairly short interview just talking about some of the basics of Discipline priesting... things you might want to know if you're switching from Holy to Disc. Listening to it now, I keep thinking of all these other things I should have said, but alas, hind sight is always 20/20. It can be rough making the switch, but Exanna and I went over some of the basics that a fresh Disc Priest may need to know.
Check it out on her page: OMGpriest!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
And speaking of newbie Disc Priests, I want to leave you with a lesson I learned in a ToC25 pug tonight - It is far better to do nothing but cast Power Word: Shield as a Disc Priest than it is to go through entire fights without casting it once.
I've run into this a lot lately in pugs - other priests healing tanks with me, and me feeling that I needed to shield their tanks because they just weren't doing it themselves. Yes, Penance is an awesome spell - and you could argue that Penance is a bigger staple of the Disc Priest diet than even Power Word: Shield. But the foundation of Disc Priesting is mitigation - SO USE YOUR SHIELDS OR I WILL CRINGE.
And then I'll blog about it.
But at least I don't name names. I'd like to think that if you are a Disc Priest, and you read this blog... you know better.
Last night I was having a discussion with one of my favorite pallies about Gearscore. He informed me that he had the add-on, and having heard so much about it in the blogosphere, but never having witnessed anyone actually using it on my server, we started a discussion about the tools one can use to estimate the gear of other players.
See, I don't use Gearscore, though I certainly don't have a problem with it. If I'm trying to put together a raid, and I want an estimate on others' gear, I use wow-heroes. This gives me a pretty good idea of the content for which they are prepared gear-wise, and it's also a very solid interface for quickly determining if they have put forth the effort when it comes to A) Enchants, B) Gems and C) Sons of Hodir rep (oh yeah, I went there.)
But in a daily pugged heroic, I don't bother with this. I have a slightly more ingrained way of determining someone's "Gearscore", and it's called... your health bar.
It wasn't something I intentionally began doing, but truthfully, I spend so much time staring at your little green-light-indicator, that it just became a natural thing for me. Note that I did not equate someone's health bar with their ability. But if a DK tank walks in with 50k health, I know he's probably got some pretty purple gear... or at least a LOT of Stamina gems (which is probable).
I'm a Disc Priest with somewhere between 20-22k health when buffed for a five man. If the elemental shammy in my pug has 16k health, I know he's starting out his gearing effort.
Because Stamina scales with item level on gear, your health pool tells me everything I care about in regards to your gear.
The thing is, I really don't mind quick gear estimation tools. To me, it's sort of like Recount. These things are tools to help you estimate some abilities or your gear. If used properly, they can be solid indicators. Yes, there are ways to fool the meter, just as there are ways to "fool" the gear estimation.
But it actually IS important for me to have a rough idea of your gear in a 5 man. I don't really care about your DPS to be honest - I'm sure you'll do fine, and if you are slacking, someone else can pick up what you lack. But I do need to know what your health is like. If you only have 16k health, then I may just keep you bubbled all the time in an effort to keep you from dying too quickly. I don't mind doing this - but I do need to know before hand if this is something I should be doing.
See, I don't use Gearscore, though I certainly don't have a problem with it. If I'm trying to put together a raid, and I want an estimate on others' gear, I use wow-heroes. This gives me a pretty good idea of the content for which they are prepared gear-wise, and it's also a very solid interface for quickly determining if they have put forth the effort when it comes to A) Enchants, B) Gems and C) Sons of Hodir rep (oh yeah, I went there.)
But in a daily pugged heroic, I don't bother with this. I have a slightly more ingrained way of determining someone's "Gearscore", and it's called... your health bar.
It wasn't something I intentionally began doing, but truthfully, I spend so much time staring at your little green-light-indicator, that it just became a natural thing for me. Note that I did not equate someone's health bar with their ability. But if a DK tank walks in with 50k health, I know he's probably got some pretty purple gear... or at least a LOT of Stamina gems (which is probable).
I'm a Disc Priest with somewhere between 20-22k health when buffed for a five man. If the elemental shammy in my pug has 16k health, I know he's starting out his gearing effort.
Because Stamina scales with item level on gear, your health pool tells me everything I care about in regards to your gear.
The thing is, I really don't mind quick gear estimation tools. To me, it's sort of like Recount. These things are tools to help you estimate some abilities or your gear. If used properly, they can be solid indicators. Yes, there are ways to fool the meter, just as there are ways to "fool" the gear estimation.
But it actually IS important for me to have a rough idea of your gear in a 5 man. I don't really care about your DPS to be honest - I'm sure you'll do fine, and if you are slacking, someone else can pick up what you lack. But I do need to know what your health is like. If you only have 16k health, then I may just keep you bubbled all the time in an effort to keep you from dying too quickly. I don't mind doing this - but I do need to know before hand if this is something I should be doing.
(Shorter post from PvD about this topic which is very good and spelled correctly - I am a Wall of Text writer. If you have a problem with that, you have been warned - comments complaining about it are rather silly. My follow-up posts on this topic can be found here, where I talk at even greater length about the 3D environment problem, and here where I tell you all to suck it up, I spelled it wrong AND YES I KNOW IT BY NOW ZOMG)
Occulus has obviously provided some serious development problems for Blizzard. Actually, that would be an understatement.
In order to fully understand why, we have to move further back – to the beginning of the WotLK xp.
When Wrath of the Lich King came out, we were all introduced to the concept of vehicle mechanic fights. I remember very distinctly when this was a major new feature coming in Wrath (along with those dance studios and hair salons…). It sounded so awesome in theory, didn't it? Let's list off a few things that utilized this vehicle mechanic:
- Multi-rider mounts
- Quests requiring you to mount
- The daily quest in Coldarra
- Single person mounts (Flying Carpet)
- Raids (Eye of Eternity, Ulduar)
- Dungeons (Occulus)
- Jousting
Despite the obvious amount of development and promotional effort poured into this vehicle mechanic, it may have been the largest overwhelming failure of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack. That isn't to say that everyone hates them, or that they weren't a cool idea, or even that they don't have some really positive effects on gameplay. Look, I love my multi-rider mount. I especially like drowning my allies in the Stratholme moat. This very evening, in fact, I was almost successful in making Fuubaar vomit all over herself while riding with me through Pit of Saron. If success were measured in liters of projectile, then maybe we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
Mechanical Malfunction
The fundamental problem with vehicle mechanic fights, aside from the initial glitchiness, is that in order to accomplish your objective, it requires you to quickly learn the abilities of something other than what you have spent so much time and effort researching – your own character abilities. It doesn't matter if you've put hours into RAWR-crafting, or reading "How To Heal" blog posts, or scoured through your spec to maximize your talented potential – none of this has any bearing on vehicle mechanics. You have a few moments, at most, to familiarize yourself with the abilities of your vehicle, and then you have to get down to business. At best, you gear item level will boost the health or armor or whatever of your vehicle, but otherwise, nothing that makes your character special, or had any bearing on why you chose to put so much effort into leveling, developing, and improving it and its role, has any bearing on your abilities or success in a vehicle fight.
The problems with these vehicle fights, aside from the largest reason explained above, can be fairly easily listed.
- Problems with add-ons. I should note that I do not think it is Blizzard's responsibility to be overly concerned about whether or not add-ons have difficulties with game mechanics. Allowing add-ons is a bonus that Blizzard has wisely implemented into World of Warcraft, but I don't think they should have to develop gameplay with an eye to making it easy for add-ons to work with everything.
- Problems with Macros. In my opinion, macros are a bit different. This is an in-game user interface issue that Blizzard has developed. I am developmentally challenged when it comes to flying – the reason I have an issue in EoE and Occulus is more related to the fact that I can't fly worth a damn. I have to set myself to follow someone. There is a significant delay in how soon the /follow function will work properly when players are mounted, and it irritates the hell out of me.
- Interface familiarity. If you use the default interface, you may notice that in certain fights, when you mount up on your vehicle, your bars change. This has presented countless difficulties for people who put macro buttons on their bars.
For all three of those problems, you could easily argue that people are just stupid, and there are easy fixes to all those issues if the player is just somewhat able to comprehend how to troubleshoot interface issues. Okay, fair enough. But, as an interface-moron, let me ask you this – would you rather see a fight dumbed down and nerfed to the ground, with gratuitous rewards given out in a desperate plea to bribe players into sticking around long enough to wipe through it, or would you rather see changes to the mechanic interface itself in order to make it easier for the average non-troubleshooting player?
Since I presented that question in such an obviously unbiased way, I'm sure you know what I think. I don't begrudge you if you think there is nothing wrong with the interface. I can't say this with complete certainty, since many of my issues may have been related to add-ons I've swapped in and out, but I do think Blizzard made some improvements to the interface in an effort to improve the vehicle mechanic and other issues. Unfortunately, once an impression has been left on us Luddites, we're hesitant to go look like an interface-induced moron all over again to see if Blizzard's changes really improved usability. It wouldn't really matter anyway, because the overwhelming problem of utilizing vehicle abilities within moments of gaining them is still the largest underlying issue.
The Vehicle Raids
When the only raiding content available consisted of Naxxramas and Eye of Eternity, many may not have noticed that there was a problem with these types of fights. EoE was the highest end content available, and so if you wanted the best gear possible, your only choice was to struggle through the mechanic fight. And, to be fair, Blizzard also had the foresight to recognize the inherent problem with this mechanic, and they offered a daily quest that awarded Wyrmest Accord rep that introduced you and familiarized you with the abilities you would have in Eye of Eternity. This was a brilliant idea.
Unfortunately, people hating that daily just as much as, if not more than, the EoE raid itself. Blizzard picked up on this, and when they implemented the next set of dailies intended to introduce us to vehicle abilities, they took it to a much grander scale. And thus we were presented with the Argent Tournament dailies. The benefits of taking the time to learn how to joust (which was exceedingly frustrating for a vast majority of people due in no small part to the clunkiness of the mechanic) were much larger. No longer were you simply given a small sack of gold and a pittance of rep with one faction. You had choices, and tokens, and pets and mounts and achievements.
Yet, in terms of progression in an instance or a raid, you were NOT required to do these dailies. If you boil it all down, their primary function was to teach you the jousting vehicle abilities. It seems so obvious that I'm left wondering… was there originally intended to be a jousting sequence in the ToC raid? Was this idea scrapped when Blizzard recognized that despite their efforts, players still hated jousting? Was EoE such an abysmal failure that developers read between the chat logs and accepted the fact that players wanted to play their actual characters and not a fancy mount?
In the original plan for the ToC Raid, were we expected to joust the faction champions before the famous PvPesque fight?
I realize I'm backtracking a bit, but let's touch upon Ulduar. Once Ulduar became available, players stopped running EoE en masse. Instead, they jumped into the Flame Leviathan fight.
I hate this fight. It just seems like a massive cluster of pointless button clicking – at least up until you get to Flame Levi. I like to heal in a raid. I didn't level to 80 to play a siege engine. I struggle through the fight just to get it over and done with so that we can move on to a more interesting fights that actually present an individual challenge for me that I enjoy – healing. In fact, part of the reason why I don't run Ulduar anymore if I can get away with it is simply because in order to get to the fun stuff, you have to waste time on Flame Levi.
On the opposing side, many people would form 25 man raids whose entire purpose was to finish off Flame Leviathan, loot, and then disperse. If you know the abilities of your chosen vehicle, the FL fight is a piece of cake. Even I myself don't find the fight hard per se, I just find it boring and a waste of my abilities.
The ease of these fights if you DO know the abilities is directly related to the balancing effort that Blizzard had to use in order to make this mechanic functional. The vehicle mechanic quests you did while leveling were usually actually very easy – if you knew the vehicle abilities. Their difficulty was reduced in order to offset the challenge of new abilities. So, if you learn new spells and how to use them properly very quickly, these fights are quick and easy. If you do not learn new abilities that easily, they may be a nightmare.
If you are leveling your fifth alt through Northrend, the vehicle fights may even be ideal – you know the abilities from having done them so many times, and they are, therefore, especially easy for you.
The Great Occulus/LFG Debacle
Where am I going with all this? Aside from the fact that even Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn voted Eye of Eternity as least successful raid instance of 2009 with multitudes of people agreeing with her choice, let's take a look at an incredibly sad (in my mind anyway) Blue Post from this evening.
To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Occulus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake.
My first reaction to this was sheer horror. Really? Are they so desperate that they have to go beyond the limits of traditional bribery in order to get people to run this instance? And then it occurred to me… yes they do. And I don't know if there is any better way to handle it without completely removing the vehicle mechanic fight from Occulus and redeveloping the instance – which is not realistic at all at this point in time.
The problem was there before the LFG tool. People hated Occulus. Of course there were people who loved it, but overall, it was easily the most dreaded and detested instance. Back when we had daily heroics, the groans were heard 'round the trade chat if that was the choice of the day. Most people would simply skip it. Before the LFG change, it was not an overbearing negative consequence to the average player if most people didn't like Occulus.
But now, with the LFG tool, it's an even bigger mess. I have only had Occulus once as my random heroic, but my fiancé, who has been running heroics much more than myself, has been so unlucky as to get it multitudes of times. And 95% of the time, as soon as all five strangers land on the first walk in Occulus, at least one person drops group, and the remaining members are forced to re-queue in an effort to find a replacement and not walk away with a debuff that will prohibit them from queuing for their random heroic for another 15 minutes. If the person who drops is a tank, or perhaps even a healer, you may just spend the entirety of that 15 minute debuff searching for a replacement.
In Blizzard's defense, they are a lot more aware of problems in the game than we often them credit for. They knew Occulus had been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned before they released 3.3. They nerfed it in what I can only imagine was preparation for what they perceived as an inevitable Occulus/LFG debacle. Unfortunately, it still wasn't enough. Some players get it into their head that they hate an instance, and no amount of nerfing or free gifts will change their minds. First impressions and overall attitude towards a game mechanic are very influential.
The one time I did get Occulus as my random heroic, I really did try. I did. I died 6 times trying (most of those in an attempt to get back to where my party stood impatiently waiting for my return), but I gave it my all. I looked like a complete fool. I made an ass out of myself in front of, not only strangers, but several guildmates. I felt pretty humiliated, to be honest, and vowed that the 15 minutes of LFG debuff were completely worth the 2 hours of agonizing mortification I had just endured. The pugged members of my group dropped out as soon as the boss went down and they got their badges. That's right, they were so eager to escape my fail aura that they left without even waiting to see how the loot rolls came out.
What, doesn't everyone fall off the side of the entry walkway twice when running back in? Am I really the only person left in Azeroth who gets lost flying around a giant pillar, and dismounts 1 foot from the edge of a platform, only to fall into oblivion and death? I could do an entire series on humiliating ways to die in Occulus. Those of us who are incapable of doing Occulus well are too embarrassed to stick around in a group with those of you who have no problem. You should be thanking us. BUT AT LEAST I KNEW MY DRAKE ABILITIES.
Keep the Vehicle a Vehicle
Despite all the vehicle mechanic complaints, let's talk about one of its uses that has actually been successful. The vehicle mount… mount.
My flying carpet brings all the boys to the yard. When I first crafted it, actually, it was very glitchy, and there were a lot of serious problems. However, it only took one patch for Blizzard to correct the most egregious of these issues, so I had no further complaints. I was too busy soaring through Northrend in my magicy magicness. I refused to even close my eyes.
The three-person mount is even more successful. Aside from just being blatantly fun and allowing players to interact with one another in ways previously unavailable (no matter how I tried, I just was not capable of inducing Fuubaar vomit pre-Mammoth), it also had lots of practical uses. Go back to the old world and drive your low level guild-mates through the Wetlands!
And how about that Chopper? Aside from being a very effective gold sink, it also revitalized Engineering. Gold sinks are necessary, and fun crafted items are also necessary. Choppers are NOT necessary, but they sure are a fun addition to the game.
So I can't call the vehicle mechanic a complete and utter failure. It has certainly been an interesting device, and has added a certain… something to the game. But, by far, its most successful and loved manifestation has been when it was simply for fun – when it isn't a game-breaker. When it isn't necessary for further progression in a raid or any other instance, it is adored by players.
The bag of "thanks for not dropping group and screwing over the other Puggers" goodies is nothing more than a last ditch, desperate effort on behalf of Blizzard in an attempt to salvage a miserable failure of an instance. There, I said it. I feel bad saying it, and therefore tried to justify it with 3 pages of explanation.
I salute Blizzard for their undying effort in trying so hard to make this much anticipated mechanic work. You can't say they didn't try. I can't even imagine the amount of development manpower they invested in this integrally flawed mechanic. Hey, I tried to major in Latin for 4 years guys. I know all about pursuing lost causes. To soften the blow, look at it this way. The reason so many of us dislike the vehicle?
We love our characters a hell of a lot more.
It’s official, the Holidays are OVER. Part of me is sad, the other part is celebrating at a return to some form of normality. However, as every student knows, my life is broken down into a series of semesters or quarters. This semester it appears I will be trying to finish up my thesis (egads), which means I will be home a lot more. Unless I find a rocking job.
Why am I telling you all this? Because while I was working I took great pains to try and post something around 10 am every day. Now, however, though I may post nearly as frequently, it may be at various times of the day. So, stay tuned to see how posting patterns change.
Now, enough of all that jibber jabber. It’s Monday, and that means it’s time to regale you with Sunday’s Pug n’ Pray. Except I was in Cleveland all weekend visiting family… But no matter! I will pull one of my many pug stories from the past out and share it with you, though it is a bit shorter than the usual. They aren’t all LFG tool stories, after all!
This particular story happened the same week as the Perfectest Pug. It actually occurred a few days before, in one of my failed PuG attempts to complete the weekly raid, which was Jaraxxus Must Die.
While we did have a group, we seemed to be short-handed tank wise. The feral druid who had intended to DPS offered to tank in order to help out in case we could not find anyone else. The raid leader took this to mean that the druid felt perfectly competent as the tank, and stopped looking for another tank. We set ourselves to go.
During Northrend Beasts, the druid tank did not turn one of the worms quickly enough, and everyone was splattered, resulting in a slow death, despite the efforts on behalf of the healers to save them. Immediately five separate members of the pug began their shrieks of epeened outrage at the mistake the druid made. The thing is, they didn’t just separately point out the mistake. For a full five minutes each of these DPSers went on and on about what a terrible tank the druid was, what a miserable failure, why did he even wake up that morning?, only a complete moron would make that mistake, and so on and so forth. Finally, the druid noted that he had offered to tank to help out, but was not accustomed to tanking, so he was learning it. Again, several people chided him, saying that everyone knows to turn the boss away from the DPS, and again, they went on about what an absolute moron this guy must be.
Finally, he simply left the group. Cheers went up from the DPS, and immediately they began searching for a new tank. Then I spoke up: “Be sure to find a new healer while you’re at it.” And dropped group. They didn’t like that one too much, as I noticed they were still looking for a tank and a healer for the next hour.
I then sent a tell to the druid, and added him to my friends list. I let him know I thought everyone had been out of line – when someone makes a mistake, even if it does seem to be an obvious and stupid one… usually all you need to do is point it out, ask the player to correct it in the future, and move on. The raid leader could have just booted the guy from the group. Instead, I wasted ten minutes of my very important and exciting life waiting for everyone to finish attacking this druid until he dropped group before they would even consider trying again. Maybe I stuck around so long because I was horribly fascinated by what was going on. In truth, it was also because I wanted to see what this druid would do. In the beginning I even piped up and said that the gratuitous insults were highly unnecessary – I’m sure the druid got the point. I was, of course, completely ignored.
The druid thanked me for my courtesy, and added me to his friends list as well. This all happened several weeks ago, but I ran into that same druid in Ironforge two nights ago. We chatted a bit, and he linked me his current ToC achievement, and told me that he had tanked every one of those fights now, and never had a problem. We laughed about it together, and then went our separate ways.
As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter if the tank screwed up, or was a completely awful tank in the first place (which he was not). He made one stupid error (one that, for the record, many tanks have made in that fight), and was ripped apart. Somehow, during the entire time (I have no idea why he stayed in the group as long as he did – some people get really desperate for that weekly quest!), he managed to stay completely calm and polite. If he had responded in a violently defensive manner, I would have paid it very little attention, rolled my eyes, and forgotten about it.
Instead, he took the higher ground, and responded to such inane rudeness with uncharacteristic grace and courtesy. I cannot say I would have reacted as well.
Why am I telling you all this? Because while I was working I took great pains to try and post something around 10 am every day. Now, however, though I may post nearly as frequently, it may be at various times of the day. So, stay tuned to see how posting patterns change.
Now, enough of all that jibber jabber. It’s Monday, and that means it’s time to regale you with Sunday’s Pug n’ Pray. Except I was in Cleveland all weekend visiting family… But no matter! I will pull one of my many pug stories from the past out and share it with you, though it is a bit shorter than the usual. They aren’t all LFG tool stories, after all!
This particular story happened the same week as the Perfectest Pug. It actually occurred a few days before, in one of my failed PuG attempts to complete the weekly raid, which was Jaraxxus Must Die.
While we did have a group, we seemed to be short-handed tank wise. The feral druid who had intended to DPS offered to tank in order to help out in case we could not find anyone else. The raid leader took this to mean that the druid felt perfectly competent as the tank, and stopped looking for another tank. We set ourselves to go.
During Northrend Beasts, the druid tank did not turn one of the worms quickly enough, and everyone was splattered, resulting in a slow death, despite the efforts on behalf of the healers to save them. Immediately five separate members of the pug began their shrieks of epeened outrage at the mistake the druid made. The thing is, they didn’t just separately point out the mistake. For a full five minutes each of these DPSers went on and on about what a terrible tank the druid was, what a miserable failure, why did he even wake up that morning?, only a complete moron would make that mistake, and so on and so forth. Finally, the druid noted that he had offered to tank to help out, but was not accustomed to tanking, so he was learning it. Again, several people chided him, saying that everyone knows to turn the boss away from the DPS, and again, they went on about what an absolute moron this guy must be.
Finally, he simply left the group. Cheers went up from the DPS, and immediately they began searching for a new tank. Then I spoke up: “Be sure to find a new healer while you’re at it.” And dropped group. They didn’t like that one too much, as I noticed they were still looking for a tank and a healer for the next hour.
I then sent a tell to the druid, and added him to my friends list. I let him know I thought everyone had been out of line – when someone makes a mistake, even if it does seem to be an obvious and stupid one… usually all you need to do is point it out, ask the player to correct it in the future, and move on. The raid leader could have just booted the guy from the group. Instead, I wasted ten minutes of my very important and exciting life waiting for everyone to finish attacking this druid until he dropped group before they would even consider trying again. Maybe I stuck around so long because I was horribly fascinated by what was going on. In truth, it was also because I wanted to see what this druid would do. In the beginning I even piped up and said that the gratuitous insults were highly unnecessary – I’m sure the druid got the point. I was, of course, completely ignored.
The druid thanked me for my courtesy, and added me to his friends list as well. This all happened several weeks ago, but I ran into that same druid in Ironforge two nights ago. We chatted a bit, and he linked me his current ToC achievement, and told me that he had tanked every one of those fights now, and never had a problem. We laughed about it together, and then went our separate ways.
As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter if the tank screwed up, or was a completely awful tank in the first place (which he was not). He made one stupid error (one that, for the record, many tanks have made in that fight), and was ripped apart. Somehow, during the entire time (I have no idea why he stayed in the group as long as he did – some people get really desperate for that weekly quest!), he managed to stay completely calm and polite. If he had responded in a violently defensive manner, I would have paid it very little attention, rolled my eyes, and forgotten about it.
Instead, he took the higher ground, and responded to such inane rudeness with uncharacteristic grace and courtesy. I cannot say I would have reacted as well.
With the new LFG tool, these are so much easier to write, since everyone is pugging more now. However, this week's edition of Pug n Pray has nothing to do with the LFG tool. Also, I need to actually start posting these on Sundays so that they make more sense or something. But I'm always a day late and a dollar short, so whatever.
ANYWAY. The awesomest pug ever happened some time this weekend.
I had tried getting into a couple of ToC10 pugs, because the weekly was Lord Jaraxxus Must Die. In fact, I'd probably started in two or three ToC pugs, but dropped before Northrend Beasts was even down, because people were being so rude. I have no patience for rudeness. People weren't even being rude to me - they were being rude to others who made mistakes, which is not something I can abide.
It was 11:00pm and I was bored, so I threw myself into the LfR lists for anything I wasn't saved to. I was in the lists for less than 2 mins, when I received a whisper... "ToC10?" Having had some pretty bad ToC runs in the past week, I was hesitant, but I really wanted to finish the weekly quest, so I accepted.
What followed was a two hour run of ToC that was wonderful. Did we one-shot everything? Nope. Every boss was a two-shot, except Faction Champs, which only took once. Just about everyone in this raid had only been to ToC once or twice, with a couple of people who had never been at all - including the fresh level 80 Rogue who did not know how to /roll, how to get into vent, and was not even naxx-geared. Did the group kick him out? No. The vent conversation went something like this...
Guy 1: "Dude, this rogue has awful gear and dps. What the... he has spellpower leather!"
Guy 2: "Heh. He's been doing okay so far I guess. Let's just carry him, he will get some nice upgrades."
Guy 1: "Yeah, true enough. Someone who is more familiar with rogues though should probably send him a tell and offer to help him figure stuff out."
And that is what made this PuG so awesome. Instead of lawling at one another with recount spams and shouts of "L2PLAY N00B LOL", if someone was having a hard time with something...
Now, I get that not everyone will want this for a pug. To be honest, normally if it's something with which I'm familiar, I don't even have the patience for it. I mean, that's two hours, in a pug with strangers. Most of the time, if I'm pugging a raid, I just want it to be done, though it's a lot better if people are friendly and conversational with a sense of humor.
What made this different is that everyone (with the exception of the rogue) was well geared, and knew how to play their class - they just didn't know the fights. Wipe on the boss once to figure out how it works, take it down the next time with no problem. Cheer at one another, say something about the awesome DPS, or wonderful heals, or perfect tanking, and move on to the next.
It's one of those things you don't see in PuGs often enough. The ratio of Recount-spams to compliments is about 20:1. I don't know why people don't want to compliment others in a PuG, but if you don't ever do it, you should try - Especially if there are newbies in the group. In a pug last night, we had a rogue who was a fresh 80 - he got so excited about his 2.2k dps on one fight, that I admit I found it somewhat contagious. Good job kiddo. That actually is really good for your gear level - and there are few compliments better to a fresh 80 than a few well geared raiding 80s telling him he's doing a good job.
So readers, that is your homework for this week - in one of your pugs this week, compliment someone who does a good job.
To continue on with my perfect pug story, after we two-shot Anub'rekhan, we decided that this group of folks was too awesome to waste... so with a couple of member changes as some peeps had to go to bed, we went and hit up Onyxia - and took her down in 5 minutes, 2 seconds. Had we not had a few loose whelps that got attention instead of Ony, we would have had our More DoTs achievement.
As it stands, I walked away that night with a few more emblems under my belt, and six new people added to my friends list.
At which point I received an error message, saying my friends list was full.
And that was the proudest moment of my 2009 in World of Warcraft.
ANYWAY. The awesomest pug ever happened some time this weekend.
I had tried getting into a couple of ToC10 pugs, because the weekly was Lord Jaraxxus Must Die. In fact, I'd probably started in two or three ToC pugs, but dropped before Northrend Beasts was even down, because people were being so rude. I have no patience for rudeness. People weren't even being rude to me - they were being rude to others who made mistakes, which is not something I can abide.
It was 11:00pm and I was bored, so I threw myself into the LfR lists for anything I wasn't saved to. I was in the lists for less than 2 mins, when I received a whisper... "ToC10?" Having had some pretty bad ToC runs in the past week, I was hesitant, but I really wanted to finish the weekly quest, so I accepted.
What followed was a two hour run of ToC that was wonderful. Did we one-shot everything? Nope. Every boss was a two-shot, except Faction Champs, which only took once. Just about everyone in this raid had only been to ToC once or twice, with a couple of people who had never been at all - including the fresh level 80 Rogue who did not know how to /roll, how to get into vent, and was not even naxx-geared. Did the group kick him out? No. The vent conversation went something like this...
Guy 1: "Dude, this rogue has awful gear and dps. What the... he has spellpower leather!"
Guy 2: "Heh. He's been doing okay so far I guess. Let's just carry him, he will get some nice upgrades."
Guy 1: "Yeah, true enough. Someone who is more familiar with rogues though should probably send him a tell and offer to help him figure stuff out."
And that is what made this PuG so awesome. Instead of lawling at one another with recount spams and shouts of "L2PLAY N00B LOL", if someone was having a hard time with something...
- They admitted it out loud (crazy, right?)
- They asked for help or an explanation.
- Others told them not to feel bad, we can take it slow and learn as we go.
- Others offered advice, help, and encouragement.
- Everyone was incredibly patient, and had a good sense of humor.
Now, I get that not everyone will want this for a pug. To be honest, normally if it's something with which I'm familiar, I don't even have the patience for it. I mean, that's two hours, in a pug with strangers. Most of the time, if I'm pugging a raid, I just want it to be done, though it's a lot better if people are friendly and conversational with a sense of humor.
What made this different is that everyone (with the exception of the rogue) was well geared, and knew how to play their class - they just didn't know the fights. Wipe on the boss once to figure out how it works, take it down the next time with no problem. Cheer at one another, say something about the awesome DPS, or wonderful heals, or perfect tanking, and move on to the next.
It's one of those things you don't see in PuGs often enough. The ratio of Recount-spams to compliments is about 20:1. I don't know why people don't want to compliment others in a PuG, but if you don't ever do it, you should try - Especially if there are newbies in the group. In a pug last night, we had a rogue who was a fresh 80 - he got so excited about his 2.2k dps on one fight, that I admit I found it somewhat contagious. Good job kiddo. That actually is really good for your gear level - and there are few compliments better to a fresh 80 than a few well geared raiding 80s telling him he's doing a good job.
So readers, that is your homework for this week - in one of your pugs this week, compliment someone who does a good job.
To continue on with my perfect pug story, after we two-shot Anub'rekhan, we decided that this group of folks was too awesome to waste... so with a couple of member changes as some peeps had to go to bed, we went and hit up Onyxia - and took her down in 5 minutes, 2 seconds. Had we not had a few loose whelps that got attention instead of Ony, we would have had our More DoTs achievement.
As it stands, I walked away that night with a few more emblems under my belt, and six new people added to my friends list.
At which point I received an error message, saying my friends list was full.
And that was the proudest moment of my 2009 in World of Warcraft.
I wanted to get one of my fiance's toons through the ICC5 man questline, so several of us in our guild decided to run through the three ICC dungeons on heroic. Unfortunately, I'd already run the first two on heroic, so I was saved on my priest. You know what comes next.
I had no choice but to bring out the RETPALLYOFDOOM. Our resident shammy did the healing, and we pugged the fifth slot.
To the hunter who joined us, thank you for your patience. You must have thought we were awful. Of course, the four of us were chatting in guild chat and vent, but our pugged fifth had no idea we were all talking. At some point in the beginning of the run, I noticed the hunter was inspecting me, and I figured "oh here comes the schpeel." But she never said a thing.
And five minutes later, I looked at my own gear, and noticed I was wearing my holy set, not my ret set.
As per my typical Pally rotation (Judge -> Divine Storm -> Die) i spent a lot of time facedown on the floor. No, I did not get out of whirlwinds. Whenever there was bad stuff on the floor, I was most likely standing in it. Also, I was never attacking the right guy. Again, I just flailed my axe around wildly, thankful that Gordin is a Dwarf and therefore short, and hoping I hit something that was unfriendly. (Part of the reason why I'm so awful at melee is that I just can't make any sense of stuff that's happening right on top of me, i.e. in melee range - I need to be at a distance from it. That's my excuse anyway)
But the hunter never said a critical word. Her DPS was three times as high as mine, and I also kept forgetting to give her the proper Might buff, because I hadn't loaded PallyPower.
In fact, she even joined us in the next heroic, Pit of Saron. She wasn't especially talkative (but of course, neither were we in party chat, since we were talking in vent), but whenever she spoke, she was very friendly and polite.
The whole time I failed miserably, I wanted to shriek "No really! I'm not an awful player! I have a priest, and I swear she's really good! IM NOT A TOTAL FAILURE I SWEAR", but I resisted the urge.
We parted ways after the second instance so that I could jump on my priest, and we could do some other group changes, since GordinDwarfTank had to leave.
And as the hunter left the party, I thought to myself, "What a great pug." She likely had run through these heroics multiple times at a much higher speed, with much fewer deaths. She was possibly very frustrated with my failness. But she never said a critical word, and instead just went cheerfully about her business. Maybe somewhere right now she's writing a blog post about this truly awful ret pally she met in a pug the other day... and I wouldn't blame her.
So let me just take a moment to thank our Shammy who was healing, and hopefully laughing at my utter failure, and not cursing me. And also to you, anonymous pugged hunter. Thanks for your patience, and for not pointing out how much I suck. I will never forget your kindness - and I have no doubt you will earn your "The Patient" title!
I had no choice but to bring out the RETPALLYOFDOOM. Our resident shammy did the healing, and we pugged the fifth slot.
To the hunter who joined us, thank you for your patience. You must have thought we were awful. Of course, the four of us were chatting in guild chat and vent, but our pugged fifth had no idea we were all talking. At some point in the beginning of the run, I noticed the hunter was inspecting me, and I figured "oh here comes the schpeel." But she never said a thing.
And five minutes later, I looked at my own gear, and noticed I was wearing my holy set, not my ret set.
As per my typical Pally rotation (Judge -> Divine Storm -> Die) i spent a lot of time facedown on the floor. No, I did not get out of whirlwinds. Whenever there was bad stuff on the floor, I was most likely standing in it. Also, I was never attacking the right guy. Again, I just flailed my axe around wildly, thankful that Gordin is a Dwarf and therefore short, and hoping I hit something that was unfriendly. (Part of the reason why I'm so awful at melee is that I just can't make any sense of stuff that's happening right on top of me, i.e. in melee range - I need to be at a distance from it. That's my excuse anyway)
But the hunter never said a critical word. Her DPS was three times as high as mine, and I also kept forgetting to give her the proper Might buff, because I hadn't loaded PallyPower.
In fact, she even joined us in the next heroic, Pit of Saron. She wasn't especially talkative (but of course, neither were we in party chat, since we were talking in vent), but whenever she spoke, she was very friendly and polite.
The whole time I failed miserably, I wanted to shriek "No really! I'm not an awful player! I have a priest, and I swear she's really good! IM NOT A TOTAL FAILURE I SWEAR", but I resisted the urge.
We parted ways after the second instance so that I could jump on my priest, and we could do some other group changes, since GordinDwarfTank had to leave.
And as the hunter left the party, I thought to myself, "What a great pug." She likely had run through these heroics multiple times at a much higher speed, with much fewer deaths. She was possibly very frustrated with my failness. But she never said a critical word, and instead just went cheerfully about her business. Maybe somewhere right now she's writing a blog post about this truly awful ret pally she met in a pug the other day... and I wouldn't blame her.
So let me just take a moment to thank our Shammy who was healing, and hopefully laughing at my utter failure, and not cursing me. And also to you, anonymous pugged hunter. Thanks for your patience, and for not pointing out how much I suck. I will never forget your kindness - and I have no doubt you will earn your "The Patient" title!
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Stories of Fail
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As my friends and I were doing some table top gaming on Friday night, our newest WoW playing member mentioned that he was nervous about using the LFG tool, particularly once he hit level 80, because he has a great fear of walking into a group, and having the not a-typical "omg... WHAT are you WEARING?" response. I hated to say it... but his concern is valid - and I find it very frustrating.
A Year Ago...
Remember when Heroics were hard? I'm not even talking about TBC-Heroic hardness... I'm talking about when you leveled your first toon to 80, and you were gearing up to raid not long after Wrath was released. Back when Naxx, VoA, and OS were our only raiding options. Did you jump straight into Naxx in your quest blues and greens, with one or two crafted epics?
For most of us, in order to gear ourselves up for raiding, we ran heroics. We ground our way through an entire dungeon, picking up one or two blue upgrades along the way, mostly in the hopes of getting a nice shiny epic to drop at the end that might be what we want. Heroics didn't always give badges, if you recall.
Remember when Heroics were genuinely a challenge for you? In our guild, we fought amongst ourselves, arguing with each other over the specs we were using, or the spells, or who ought to be healing or tanking or whatever. It was draining, we got frustrated, and often felt like we couldn't do it. Utgarde Pinnacle and Culling of Stratholme brought us into several raging arguments, and for some time, we just stopped running Heroics altogether.
These Days...
It is a lot easier to gear yourself up now, and I think we can all agree on that - even before the new LFG tool, people could chain heroics in a pug, and pick up enough emblem gear to be ready for the latest tier of raiding content. This is intentional, and exactly what Blizzard wanted to happen. The entire point was so that people wouldn't have to spend weeks grinding through old raiding material that raiding guilds didn't want to touch in order to be ready for the current content. Love it or hate it, it is working as intended.
However, in order to get to that end game raiding content gear level, you still have to somehow bridge the divide between Fresh 80 In Quest Greens And Blues and End Game Gear Level. And the best way to do that has always been, and still is, running Heroics.
So why do end game raiders seem so shocked and appalled by the mere presence of people using Heroics to do exactly that... gear up?
In an LFG PuG earlier this weekend, I landed myself in a HCoS run. Everyone except for the elemental shammy was very well geared. In fact, the tank was in a recognizable raiding guild on my server... a guild that includes a few realm first type things, if I recall properly.
The tank whispered me and said "looks like were going 2b carrying this dam shammy lol". He then made a point to tell all the dps to pump out the damage in order to make up for the shammy who was in unenchanted and ungemmed blues and purples. Since healers and tanks usually have some sort of strange bond, and since I was fairly well geared, I guess he thought I would sympathize with his devastating woe.
My response?
"... So?"
The shammy stayed out of fires. She even did a healthy 2k dps in her gear. We finished the run with 10 minutes left to the timer, and she even passed on the drake to someone else who wanted it.
Despite the fact that the tank continued to send me tells bitching to me about the crap dps, we had absolutely no problems. Maybe the tank and I carried the others through. So what? No one died, they all did enough damage that we were successful, and I got the badges I wanted.
I can imagine it would be more frustrating if you are a very strong DPS with a weak tank and healer combo, but luckily, in all but the newest heroics, my heals are strong enough to where I can make up for a lot of errors others make, and get what I want from the heroic. As long as everyone is courteous and friendly, or at least honors the "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" rule, I'm perfectly content - you can even stand in the fire on occasion, and I don't really care.
Before you jump into a pug, consider this: There are generally two types of people using the LFG pugging tool to gear up. Those who are gearing up solely via grinding heroics for the badges, and those who are gearing up via the items that actually drop from these heroics. Even for a lot of the raiders there are some good drops in the new IC 5 mans, but I'm not even talking about those. You may just end up with someone who still considers the epic that drops from the final boss in Heroic Utgarde Keep an upgrade.
(I'm not sure yet if the tool matches people of similar gear quality, as this has been up for some debate and anyone who can provide a source confirming the subject gets personal Power Infused thanks!)
If you want to chain grind heroics on high speed, that's fine. Blizz thinks that's okay, and so do I. But you should also respect the fact that for people who have just hit 80, they have a right to use the LFG tool in an effort to gear up as well. Don't be a jerk.
You could even follow the Tamarind Method of Wanker Prevention if you're feeling
especially generous. For the record, I read his post several times before I understood it properly. If you play alliance, don't forget that everytime Tam refers to the DPS with whom he partnered a "cow", I'm almost positive he's pointing out that she was a Tauren, and not some other less courteous descriptor. Unless my context reading udderly failed. (CWUTIDIDTHAR)
A Year Ago...
Remember when Heroics were hard? I'm not even talking about TBC-Heroic hardness... I'm talking about when you leveled your first toon to 80, and you were gearing up to raid not long after Wrath was released. Back when Naxx, VoA, and OS were our only raiding options. Did you jump straight into Naxx in your quest blues and greens, with one or two crafted epics?
For most of us, in order to gear ourselves up for raiding, we ran heroics. We ground our way through an entire dungeon, picking up one or two blue upgrades along the way, mostly in the hopes of getting a nice shiny epic to drop at the end that might be what we want. Heroics didn't always give badges, if you recall.
Remember when Heroics were genuinely a challenge for you? In our guild, we fought amongst ourselves, arguing with each other over the specs we were using, or the spells, or who ought to be healing or tanking or whatever. It was draining, we got frustrated, and often felt like we couldn't do it. Utgarde Pinnacle and Culling of Stratholme brought us into several raging arguments, and for some time, we just stopped running Heroics altogether.
These Days...
It is a lot easier to gear yourself up now, and I think we can all agree on that - even before the new LFG tool, people could chain heroics in a pug, and pick up enough emblem gear to be ready for the latest tier of raiding content. This is intentional, and exactly what Blizzard wanted to happen. The entire point was so that people wouldn't have to spend weeks grinding through old raiding material that raiding guilds didn't want to touch in order to be ready for the current content. Love it or hate it, it is working as intended.
However, in order to get to that end game raiding content gear level, you still have to somehow bridge the divide between Fresh 80 In Quest Greens And Blues and End Game Gear Level. And the best way to do that has always been, and still is, running Heroics.
So why do end game raiders seem so shocked and appalled by the mere presence of people using Heroics to do exactly that... gear up?
In an LFG PuG earlier this weekend, I landed myself in a HCoS run. Everyone except for the elemental shammy was very well geared. In fact, the tank was in a recognizable raiding guild on my server... a guild that includes a few realm first type things, if I recall properly.
The tank whispered me and said "looks like were going 2b carrying this dam shammy lol". He then made a point to tell all the dps to pump out the damage in order to make up for the shammy who was in unenchanted and ungemmed blues and purples. Since healers and tanks usually have some sort of strange bond, and since I was fairly well geared, I guess he thought I would sympathize with his devastating woe.
My response?
"... So?"
The shammy stayed out of fires. She even did a healthy 2k dps in her gear. We finished the run with 10 minutes left to the timer, and she even passed on the drake to someone else who wanted it.
Despite the fact that the tank continued to send me tells bitching to me about the crap dps, we had absolutely no problems. Maybe the tank and I carried the others through. So what? No one died, they all did enough damage that we were successful, and I got the badges I wanted.I can imagine it would be more frustrating if you are a very strong DPS with a weak tank and healer combo, but luckily, in all but the newest heroics, my heals are strong enough to where I can make up for a lot of errors others make, and get what I want from the heroic. As long as everyone is courteous and friendly, or at least honors the "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" rule, I'm perfectly content - you can even stand in the fire on occasion, and I don't really care.
Before you jump into a pug, consider this: There are generally two types of people using the LFG pugging tool to gear up. Those who are gearing up solely via grinding heroics for the badges, and those who are gearing up via the items that actually drop from these heroics. Even for a lot of the raiders there are some good drops in the new IC 5 mans, but I'm not even talking about those. You may just end up with someone who still considers the epic that drops from the final boss in Heroic Utgarde Keep an upgrade.
(I'm not sure yet if the tool matches people of similar gear quality, as this has been up for some debate and anyone who can provide a source confirming the subject gets personal Power Infused thanks!)
If you want to chain grind heroics on high speed, that's fine. Blizz thinks that's okay, and so do I. But you should also respect the fact that for people who have just hit 80, they have a right to use the LFG tool in an effort to gear up as well. Don't be a jerk.
You could even follow the Tamarind Method of Wanker Prevention if you're feeling
especially generous. For the record, I read his post several times before I understood it properly. If you play alliance, don't forget that everytime Tam refers to the DPS with whom he partnered a "cow", I'm almost positive he's pointing out that she was a Tauren, and not some other less courteous descriptor. Unless my context reading udderly failed. (CWUTIDIDTHAR)
I was flying around Wintergrasp last night, farming a few eternals and trying half heartedly to get into a 25 man VoA group. Every now and then I'd remind those in /1 that I was a healer, lfg. There was a Death Knight following the same strategy, and I noted that both of us were in the LFG channel as well. This carried on for nearly an hour, as it appeared that no one wanted to make the effort to actually assemble the 25 man group, although there were plenty of people who wanted to run it.
Finally, I suppose the DK decided he would step forth, and he invited me to a group. Within 5 minutes he had a full 25 people heading into VoA. As we were clearing trash, we were having a conversation about dual boxing, and one of the other priests mentioned that it wasn't that hard to do: after all, Holy Priests only needed to use 2 spells to heal anyway.
Now, I'm not trying to be one of those people with nose in the air, claiming that MY class is extraordinairly difficult to play (I have a much more difficult time on my Pally, despite silly claims that Pallies are two-heal spammers), and if you find it so simple, you're obviously just doing it wrong. But... really? You feel Holy Priests ought to only use two spells?
"Wow. That's amazing. When I'm running holy, I'm using about 7 or 8 different spells," I comment. Another healer in the group seems to feel similarly, and mentions specific spells to figure out if this Obviously Superior Because I Only Need Two Spells To Heal Priest uses them. Renew? "Utterly useless, by the time it finishes healing the target, someone else has already healed them up." And so forth. This is the sort of thing I call Missing The Point. Miss Priesty Pants does not seem to understand the purpose of a HoT, I suppose. All you healing Druids, haven't you heard? You're utterly useless! That's why no one wants a Druid in their raid, after all, right?
I decided to just let it go. If she finds herself to be performing just fine with only two heals, well... more power to her. I don't really care how you heal, as long as you get your job done - and you don't give others crap for how they choose to get the very same job done. So go ahead and Flash Heal + Circle of Healing away. In a pugged VoA run it really doesn't matter much anyway.
But she really started to annoy me later.
After we finished off Koralon and began to make our way to Emalon, the same Priest made a comment in party chat (group 5, all healers!) along the lines of "Ugh, how pathetic. Our raid leader's dps is only 1500 lol". So I returned with "Well, this isn't exactly ToGC25." "Yeah but I mean, cmon. 1500? Really? The raid leader?" This is, of course, coming from the very same priest who insisted that her class only needs to use 2 spells to heal in a raid.
You ever have those moments when you wish that you'd been a bit ballisier, and said what you really want to say? Like...
"Well then you should kick him out. Oh wait. You can't. Because you weren't the one who took the time and made the effort to put together this run - he did. He sat around for an hour waiting for someone to do it, no one did it, so because he wanted to do VoA badly enough, most likely in order to improve his gear, experience, and therefore DPS, HE was the one who assembled the raid. He hasn't been bossing anyone around, or insulting anyone, or kicking anyone. All he's done is assembled enough people and taken on the PitA task of distributing the loot properly and fairly. In case you hadn't noticed, his weak DPS does not seem to have caused any problems for us. So, if you feel that any pugged raid assembled by someone with obviously inferior damage output is unworthy of your presence, don't let the door kick you on the way out."
But, I'm somewhat ashamed to say, I did not come forth and defend the DK raid leader. I went with the philosophy that arguing 7x4 is 28 against someone who insists it's 27 would instead make me the idiot.
Instead I did the following things:
Finally, I suppose the DK decided he would step forth, and he invited me to a group. Within 5 minutes he had a full 25 people heading into VoA. As we were clearing trash, we were having a conversation about dual boxing, and one of the other priests mentioned that it wasn't that hard to do: after all, Holy Priests only needed to use 2 spells to heal anyway.
Now, I'm not trying to be one of those people with nose in the air, claiming that MY class is extraordinairly difficult to play (I have a much more difficult time on my Pally, despite silly claims that Pallies are two-heal spammers), and if you find it so simple, you're obviously just doing it wrong. But... really? You feel Holy Priests ought to only use two spells?
"Wow. That's amazing. When I'm running holy, I'm using about 7 or 8 different spells," I comment. Another healer in the group seems to feel similarly, and mentions specific spells to figure out if this Obviously Superior Because I Only Need Two Spells To Heal Priest uses them. Renew? "Utterly useless, by the time it finishes healing the target, someone else has already healed them up." And so forth. This is the sort of thing I call Missing The Point. Miss Priesty Pants does not seem to understand the purpose of a HoT, I suppose. All you healing Druids, haven't you heard? You're utterly useless! That's why no one wants a Druid in their raid, after all, right?
I decided to just let it go. If she finds herself to be performing just fine with only two heals, well... more power to her. I don't really care how you heal, as long as you get your job done - and you don't give others crap for how they choose to get the very same job done. So go ahead and Flash Heal + Circle of Healing away. In a pugged VoA run it really doesn't matter much anyway.
But she really started to annoy me later.
After we finished off Koralon and began to make our way to Emalon, the same Priest made a comment in party chat (group 5, all healers!) along the lines of "Ugh, how pathetic. Our raid leader's dps is only 1500 lol". So I returned with "Well, this isn't exactly ToGC25." "Yeah but I mean, cmon. 1500? Really? The raid leader?" This is, of course, coming from the very same priest who insisted that her class only needs to use 2 spells to heal in a raid.
You ever have those moments when you wish that you'd been a bit ballisier, and said what you really want to say? Like...
"Well then you should kick him out. Oh wait. You can't. Because you weren't the one who took the time and made the effort to put together this run - he did. He sat around for an hour waiting for someone to do it, no one did it, so because he wanted to do VoA badly enough, most likely in order to improve his gear, experience, and therefore DPS, HE was the one who assembled the raid. He hasn't been bossing anyone around, or insulting anyone, or kicking anyone. All he's done is assembled enough people and taken on the PitA task of distributing the loot properly and fairly. In case you hadn't noticed, his weak DPS does not seem to have caused any problems for us. So, if you feel that any pugged raid assembled by someone with obviously inferior damage output is unworthy of your presence, don't let the door kick you on the way out."
But, I'm somewhat ashamed to say, I did not come forth and defend the DK raid leader. I went with the philosophy that arguing 7x4 is 28 against someone who insists it's 27 would instead make me the idiot.
Instead I did the following things:
- Laughed rudely when afore mentioned priest spent most of the Emalon fight struggling to stay alive (I guess Binding Heal is not one of those 2 spells a Holy Priest needs?)
- Sent a tell to the DK after we finished the raid, thanking him for organizing the group for the rest of us lazy bums, and to feel free to send me a tell if he ever needs a healer for something
- Wrote up a post on my blog in pure passive-aggressive fashion.
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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.
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.
I'm actually not one to spend a lot of time criticizing other priests, but I ran a VoA pug this weekend that really made me start thinking about all the wrong ways you can priest-heal. If I ever needed proof that it is completely possible to have a fully epic set of gear without knowing how to place your class and spec, this run provided the requisite evidence.
This run also provided me the perfect opportunity to use Recount to get an idea of what was going wrong with the healers. Since it was a pug, however, I didn't really feel it was my place to necessarily do assignments or criticisms.
So here was the initial healing set up - Two holy priests and one resto shaman. The resto shaman was somewhat new to 80, and while he'd been making plenty of heroic ToC 5 man runs, he explained right from the beginning that he wasn't sure how strong his heals were going to be. The two priests were myself, and another girl.
On the fire boss dude fight (Koralon, but you knew what I mean by fire boss dude, right?), there are certain times when the two tanks take a significant amount of damage... and you basically need to spam heal them. The raid really should not be taking much damage except when he does his fire breath thingy. Therefore, I suggested that the other holy priest focus on one tank, and i would focus on the other, and let the shammy do the raid heals, since we would need stronger healing on the tanks.
After three tries, we gave up - we couldnt seem to keep the tanks alive.
I knew it was a healing problem because I was watching the tanks' health. My tank stayed up, hers continually went down. When I looked at her top three spells, it was Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, and Renew. 20% of my heals were overheals, which, while not great, is not unexpected for single target spamming. 40% of her heals were overheals.
So what? I hear you say. Holy Priests excel at raid healing, it's their biggest strength! That's what they're supposed to do!
And I will have to disagree. Yes, Holy Priests DO excel at raid healing, and that is the optimal assignment for them. However, the biggest strength of a holy priest is not their raid heals, it is in their versatility - they can do everything well. That includes single target healing.
A really great holy priest who understands their spec knows how to roll with the punches and switch healing assignments quickly. If you are the person in charge of keeping one of the tanks alive, Flash Heal (Binding Heal as needed) should be used often, along with Greater Heal and/or Prayer of Healing. Greater Heal is useful for precisely this scenario. If Prayer of Healing is your most used spell, and Flash Heal or Binding Heal isn't even in your top 3, then you aren't utilizing Serendipity to its fullest extent.
To her credit, her main spec was shadow and she was only healing to help out. She likely would have been one of the first to admit that she did not know how to heal holy very well, so I don't mean to pick on her.
When another player offered to come on his Disc Priest, she jumped at the chance to return to dps. And now we come to the Disc Priest.
The Disc Priest that joined us was dual specced Holy/Disc. And he healed exactly like a Holy Priest with Penance, but sans CoH. He did not cast a single Power Word: Shield. However, it worked, and we were able to finish off VoA.
At the end, he was boasting about how he was number one on the healing meter. Observe as I gracefully and elegantly bash my head against my desk repeatedly.
Did it work? Yes. Did we finish the instance? Yes. Everyone survived, the epics flowed like manna from the heavens, and everyone left a few badges richer, and relatively happy. Myself, the disc priest, and the resto shammy all did our jobs, so does it really matter if the disc priest didn't take advantage of the strengths of his spec? No, most likely it did not. When most people are overgeared for something, then it really doesn't matter. But I did walk away learning a few things about what people may or may not understand about priest specs.
For Holy?
YES YOU CAN HEAL ONE PERSON. And when that is necessary, you should be casting a lot of Flash Heals to build up Serendipity stacks for hasted Greater Heals.
For Disc?
Yes, Penance is awesome. However, Disc Priesting is not all about Penance - it's also about those Bubbles, so don't stop bubbling!
This run also provided me the perfect opportunity to use Recount to get an idea of what was going wrong with the healers. Since it was a pug, however, I didn't really feel it was my place to necessarily do assignments or criticisms.
So here was the initial healing set up - Two holy priests and one resto shaman. The resto shaman was somewhat new to 80, and while he'd been making plenty of heroic ToC 5 man runs, he explained right from the beginning that he wasn't sure how strong his heals were going to be. The two priests were myself, and another girl.
On the fire boss dude fight (Koralon, but you knew what I mean by fire boss dude, right?), there are certain times when the two tanks take a significant amount of damage... and you basically need to spam heal them. The raid really should not be taking much damage except when he does his fire breath thingy. Therefore, I suggested that the other holy priest focus on one tank, and i would focus on the other, and let the shammy do the raid heals, since we would need stronger healing on the tanks.
After three tries, we gave up - we couldnt seem to keep the tanks alive.
I knew it was a healing problem because I was watching the tanks' health. My tank stayed up, hers continually went down. When I looked at her top three spells, it was Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, and Renew. 20% of my heals were overheals, which, while not great, is not unexpected for single target spamming. 40% of her heals were overheals.
So what? I hear you say. Holy Priests excel at raid healing, it's their biggest strength! That's what they're supposed to do!
And I will have to disagree. Yes, Holy Priests DO excel at raid healing, and that is the optimal assignment for them. However, the biggest strength of a holy priest is not their raid heals, it is in their versatility - they can do everything well. That includes single target healing.
A really great holy priest who understands their spec knows how to roll with the punches and switch healing assignments quickly. If you are the person in charge of keeping one of the tanks alive, Flash Heal (Binding Heal as needed) should be used often, along with Greater Heal and/or Prayer of Healing. Greater Heal is useful for precisely this scenario. If Prayer of Healing is your most used spell, and Flash Heal or Binding Heal isn't even in your top 3, then you aren't utilizing Serendipity to its fullest extent.
To her credit, her main spec was shadow and she was only healing to help out. She likely would have been one of the first to admit that she did not know how to heal holy very well, so I don't mean to pick on her.
When another player offered to come on his Disc Priest, she jumped at the chance to return to dps. And now we come to the Disc Priest.
The Disc Priest that joined us was dual specced Holy/Disc. And he healed exactly like a Holy Priest with Penance, but sans CoH. He did not cast a single Power Word: Shield. However, it worked, and we were able to finish off VoA.
At the end, he was boasting about how he was number one on the healing meter. Observe as I gracefully and elegantly bash my head against my desk repeatedly.
Did it work? Yes. Did we finish the instance? Yes. Everyone survived, the epics flowed like manna from the heavens, and everyone left a few badges richer, and relatively happy. Myself, the disc priest, and the resto shammy all did our jobs, so does it really matter if the disc priest didn't take advantage of the strengths of his spec? No, most likely it did not. When most people are overgeared for something, then it really doesn't matter. But I did walk away learning a few things about what people may or may not understand about priest specs.
For Holy?
YES YOU CAN HEAL ONE PERSON. And when that is necessary, you should be casting a lot of Flash Heals to build up Serendipity stacks for hasted Greater Heals.
For Disc?
Yes, Penance is awesome. However, Disc Priesting is not all about Penance - it's also about those Bubbles, so don't stop bubbling!
Nota Bene: In the next few days, there may be some strange random changes on this blog as I attempt to duke it out with the HTML to create a site more aesthetically pleasing (to me anyway.)
Recruitment gets tricky for us in the EGA (the alliance of which I often speak).
We aren't a guild, and therefore we lack many of the resources many guilds have, such as a guild bank, a strict set of guidelines for members, and ownership of players' souls. We are very casual, and yet still focused on progression. Balancing these things is incredibly difficult - and we have no precedent to follow, so we end up making up the rules as we go along. With the exception of the EGA, I have yet to hear of any other similar Alliances that tie guilds together under one banner the way we do.
Unofficial recruitment is sorta my thing. As mentioned before, I'm a very bottom-up person, and I focus a lot of my attention on individuals. I use my personal networks, word of mouth, shower my alliance members with attention, and get to know new people on a very personal level. Where do I go when I'm hunting fresh blood?
Pick up groups.
We all know it's hit or miss with pugs. With the release of WotLK, and the 10/25 man raiding differential, we've got a lot of raiding options - and a lot of raid lockouts each week. We've got badges too - so I don't like to let a week pass without running 10 and 25 man OS and Vault. These are short fights, and incredibly easy to pug - everybody's doing it. It's the new thing! If the pug is truly awful, you aren't stuck with them for very long in these raids.
But what I love about pugs is that they are the most fertile pools of people who want to raid, but may not have the guild resources to do it on a large and regular scale. That is exactly the niche EGA fills. What better place to find potential new raiders to fill our slots?
Do I just spam the raid chat with EGA information? Not at all. A lot of people may actually pug raids to give themselves a break - it's easy to be lazy in a pug. While everyone else is relaxing though, I am furiously inspecting others, checking recount, looking people up on wow-heroes, sending tells left and right to feel people out. It's a lot of work - I also have to remember to heal on occasion. I usually don't mention the EGA per se. I add good players to my ever-expanding friends list.
During our progression nights, we nearly always end up with 5 or 6 open slots due to a shortage of sign-ups. If it's just a handful of slots, we can usually fill them pretty easily with some of our more casual members who choose not to sign up for events and through various guild members who are not active EGAers. This is where I pull out ye olde friends list, and start sending out some whispers. Before I add puggers to my friends list, I always chat with them a bit via whisper - this way they remember me when I invite them to something later. If they join our raid, and see what we're about, and the positivity that runs rampant over vent, we can often score ourselves a new EGAer. Casual is okay.
It works very well, and I've managed to pull in a couple of new EGAers this way. And, if I bring in one new person, I also inadvertently add their entire guild to our network. The key detail is networking - and networking requires a lot of time and proactive effort.
I'm not the only person who uses this strategy, so it must work for others as well. I know this because I too have had fellow puggers attempt to recruit me. My name is relatively familiar in the raid pugging circuit, because I do it every single week, at similar times. So even though people often associate pugs with strangers, one might be surprised to discover an extensive community of regular raid puggers. We just start to recognize one another's names. If i see a few names I recognize, I also know that this particular pug will likely go well.
Puggy recruitment requires a lot of work, and it requires a person to be extremely proactive. But, the greatest benefit is that you are able to pre-screen everyone. The pugged raid itself is the pre-screening process. The pressure of testing people and potentially finding out they are a poor fit is significantly smaller, due to the nature of a pug.
Recruitment gets tricky for us in the EGA (the alliance of which I often speak).
We aren't a guild, and therefore we lack many of the resources many guilds have, such as a guild bank, a strict set of guidelines for members, and ownership of players' souls. We are very casual, and yet still focused on progression. Balancing these things is incredibly difficult - and we have no precedent to follow, so we end up making up the rules as we go along. With the exception of the EGA, I have yet to hear of any other similar Alliances that tie guilds together under one banner the way we do.
Unofficial recruitment is sorta my thing. As mentioned before, I'm a very bottom-up person, and I focus a lot of my attention on individuals. I use my personal networks, word of mouth, shower my alliance members with attention, and get to know new people on a very personal level. Where do I go when I'm hunting fresh blood?
Pick up groups.
We all know it's hit or miss with pugs. With the release of WotLK, and the 10/25 man raiding differential, we've got a lot of raiding options - and a lot of raid lockouts each week. We've got badges too - so I don't like to let a week pass without running 10 and 25 man OS and Vault. These are short fights, and incredibly easy to pug - everybody's doing it. It's the new thing! If the pug is truly awful, you aren't stuck with them for very long in these raids.
But what I love about pugs is that they are the most fertile pools of people who want to raid, but may not have the guild resources to do it on a large and regular scale. That is exactly the niche EGA fills. What better place to find potential new raiders to fill our slots?
Do I just spam the raid chat with EGA information? Not at all. A lot of people may actually pug raids to give themselves a break - it's easy to be lazy in a pug. While everyone else is relaxing though, I am furiously inspecting others, checking recount, looking people up on wow-heroes, sending tells left and right to feel people out. It's a lot of work - I also have to remember to heal on occasion. I usually don't mention the EGA per se. I add good players to my ever-expanding friends list.
During our progression nights, we nearly always end up with 5 or 6 open slots due to a shortage of sign-ups. If it's just a handful of slots, we can usually fill them pretty easily with some of our more casual members who choose not to sign up for events and through various guild members who are not active EGAers. This is where I pull out ye olde friends list, and start sending out some whispers. Before I add puggers to my friends list, I always chat with them a bit via whisper - this way they remember me when I invite them to something later. If they join our raid, and see what we're about, and the positivity that runs rampant over vent, we can often score ourselves a new EGAer. Casual is okay.
It works very well, and I've managed to pull in a couple of new EGAers this way. And, if I bring in one new person, I also inadvertently add their entire guild to our network. The key detail is networking - and networking requires a lot of time and proactive effort.
I'm not the only person who uses this strategy, so it must work for others as well. I know this because I too have had fellow puggers attempt to recruit me. My name is relatively familiar in the raid pugging circuit, because I do it every single week, at similar times. So even though people often associate pugs with strangers, one might be surprised to discover an extensive community of regular raid puggers. We just start to recognize one another's names. If i see a few names I recognize, I also know that this particular pug will likely go well.
Puggy recruitment requires a lot of work, and it requires a person to be extremely proactive. But, the greatest benefit is that you are able to pre-screen everyone. The pugged raid itself is the pre-screening process. The pressure of testing people and potentially finding out they are a poor fit is significantly smaller, due to the nature of a pug.
