I was a total jerk. Totally.
Deathjerk and Rankwatch
I started a random on my priest, and rankwatch started spamming me that the death knight had multiple downranked spells. I politely told him this in group chat, to which he responded that he had just hit 80 and “didn’t have the money” to train.
Now… this sort of thing grinds my gears, so to speak. If you are going to be grouping with others, you need to put forth the basic minimum effort to do your part. You don’t have to be wearing all blues, or be the best at your class… but training at 80 is something that you need to do before inflicting your craptastic DPS on the group.
I was feeling kind of snotty about this, especially since the tank was pulling like we had an overpowered group – and that clearly was not the case. I looked at Skada and saw the Deathjerk was doing 400 dps.
400 dps.
I kinda lost it. Politely. I said in group chat “[Name of deathjerk], the group is kinda carrying you. I’d suggest that you train all your spells before you join another random.” I wasn’t going to kick him or anything, but I didn’t want him to think it was OK to continue to expect other groups to carry him.
Tank says: “It’s ok, he’s in my guild, I don’t mind.”
So… wait… if the tank is ok with dragging your sorry butt through the instance, then we should all be OK with it too?
Deathjerk: “Yeah the only one who cares is you. Why are you looking at my spellpower?”
Spellpower? Really?
Me: “I care because everyone else in the group has put forth the basic effort to be ready for a heroic.”
And Deathjerk goes on and on about how I’m “stalking” his spells and nobody else cares, and blah blah. He will NOT let it go. Meanwhile his tank friend is still pulling like we’re overpowered.
Throw me in the bee pit now
I silently ported back to Dalaran and toodled around while they pulled without me and died. Yep, total dick move.
But I wasn’t about to drop group. Nope, I wasn’t about to get my debuff. It took them a while to figure out what happened, and when they did, it was of course “Heals?” Not like I have a name. The usual. Strangely, through the “figuring out what happened”, all other group members released and ran back except the tank. I guess he was waiting on a rez.
I told them that they were just going to have to kick me, and they did. Then I requeued immediately, and got a polite and easygoing group.
I’m not particularly proud that I was a total jerk. But hey, sometimes you’ve just had enough.
The death knight i just leveled on another server with no resources was doing 1500 plus dps at level 75… Â I have no sympathy for those doing less than 1k at 80.
I totally agree with you, that people really ought to put forth at least some basic effort if they want to group with others. It’s really frustrating to see players of DPS classes get away with being “carried” through a heroic—a tank doesn’t get that luxury, and neither does a healer. So why is it okay for DPS to be strapped on a litter and borne through to free badges?
(I guess you could make the case that a sufficiently overgeared group could “carry” an unprepared healer too, but that seems to be less common)
That said, I’m not sure that I would have left the group for that alone, myself. As frustrating as it is to see people freeloading on the efforts of others, I generally won’t leave a group unless for some reason they’re actually making the instance go poorly by their performance. If there’s just one person being carried, it often doesn’t make that much difference (perhaps they feel the same way parasitic cuckoos do about childrearing…)
I know just what you mean, though, when you say you’ve just had enough. I’ve totally been there.
I have mixed feelings on this. I think the fact that the tank and dps were acting like total scrubs make what you do justified.
However, I had a similar thing happen to me when I was tanking an instance once. I don’t really remember anything bad happening, it’s possible some people died on a trash pull, but I don’t really recall. Without saying anything one of the dps hearths to Dalaran and goes afk. I got no response when I tried questioning them in party chat or whispers. When I tried kicking the person, I got the “you cannot kick this person for 15 minutes” message. It was a major pain in the ass.
Yeah… like I said, it wasn’t a good way to handle the situation, hence why I need to be tossed into the bee pit myself.  I was irrationally enraged that I pointed out a totally legitimate concern, and the response I got (over and over even when I had let the topic drop) is that it was ME that was out-of-line for caring about it.
But I still hopped to Dal and let them die to rub their noses in their dickitry, and that was not mature or appropriate (though satisfying).
I don’t think that’s so horrible. I was in an occulus group on my pally tank Zimmer this weekend and did something so much worse. The group I was in were all pretty decently geared except our hunter. Side note he was not a huntard he was doing things appropriately even using misdirect on to me in the fist hall. We kill the first boss and everyone takes a drake. Healer takes a red one, to which I ask if he was going to take a green one and get ignored. At this point the hunter says he’s never been here and needed help. I talk him thru getting his drake while pulling the second level. But the healer decides he’s a nub and starts talking trash about him before initiating a kick poll. So the hunter gets kicked which just irked me even more than being ignored about the drake. So it asks us for our rolls. At thus point I was mounted as we had cleared the first two pulls and were waiting. So what to do, what to do? I turn on crusader and round up the next two groups bring them back to our healer friend, pretend to tank until he heals me, and drop group while saying how wonderful it is people are so patient to new people who just havnt learned instances. So the question is who gets the bee pit?
I am evil too. Â As evidence I offer:
http://youyankityoutankit.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/deja-vu-all-about-lag/
You definitely endured more than I did. Â Although I absolutely hate the assumption (explicitly stated or otherwise) that the healer should just STFU and step up their game to compensate for morons.
Ehhh that’s not evil, that’s totally justified. It’s mathematically impossible to survive two hits that both take 75% of their maximum health away, so pulling two groups with Spellflingers in them is almost guaranteed to result in insta-death, with no possible way to “just heal through it lol” except via Guardian Spirit or some paladin hax (I hardly know anything about paladins), or an extremely well-timed big heal.
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In fact, given that the Spellflinger damage is based on the target’s max health, it’d actually be easier to heal a freshly-80 25k-health tank through it.
Traxy is tank specced. She has a paladin disguise which consists of spellpower plate — she’s essentially decked out like a holy paladin. Needless to say, in such an outfit she would be completely useless to a group. She has one weapon instead of two. Not a single thing in her gear would contribute to her dps at all, nor is she specced appropriately to do dps.
Yet on a target dummy, unbuffed, in her paladin disguise, Traxy can generate 900 dps.
Any dps that does less should be kicked. Because if you can’t beat a naked tank with one hand tied behind her back, you should find a different game to play.
Well, I probably would have cut the tank and his buddy a little slack because I’ve done the “drag my newly dinged 80 friend through instances” thing myself once or twice. I figure if I’m tanking (or Reversion is and I’m healing) and I want to bring my noob brother along, it’s ok. Usually when I tank I’m above one or two of the dps anyway.
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But not training at 80…. I don’t get it. How is it even POSSIBLE to get to 80 and not have money to train? I know, I’ve shaken my head in Naxx pugs at the “lol I don’t have flying mount rez me when you get back plz” morons but the ones who don’t have training money at 80 are even worse. Just randomly questing on my level 72 priest alt, I made 200 gold in three hours last weekend. How do they even GET to 80 and not have money?
I don’t mind the noobness of a new 80… it’s the lack of basic effort that stumps me. Â It’s like going into the instance and only wanding or autoattacking.
Or going in and only casting Rejuv and WG when I feel like it while I read blogs on my offside machine? ;-p Kidding, since I have put enough effort in to support not putting an effort in now.
But if you cast anything else, you’re DOING IT WRONG! Â Oops, I guess I’m doing it wrong.
Maybe they gave priority to epic flying or professions, or their account was hacked.
Not entirely on subject, I never understood why players must purchase skils from their trainers in most MMOs. To make players decide whether a skill is worth purschasing is to ensure some will make decisions which are so bad they will trigger reactions such as described in the original post.
Also, please keep in mind bloggers and forum posters tend to forget there are plenty of players who play very casually and have never read anything about their class. You will encounter one sooner or later if you use the LFG tool.
When my brother’s account was hacked, we dragged him through normal instances, made him put pally plate on the warrior because it was better than cloth, and got him on his feet. He didn’t queue for heroics. If you can’t be darned to even train your level 80 skills, you should not be in a heroic. Period. Now, whether or not Zel’s reaction was justified or acceptable is a separate question. All the dk’s other issues MIGHT be explained away by being a noob, or not picking up resources, but there is no way he didn’t know to train.
What I understand you saying is heroics are serious business.
What I am saying is they are not. They are just like any other instances and friends are being run through.
I personally don’t care who shows up on the rare occasions I make use of the LFG tool. If I get into a group where every DPSer is doing less than 1,000 DPS, I will just mark mobs for crowd control and re-glyph for higher survivability.
If we wipe, we wipe, and I will try again with a different startegy. I only leave group if the language (after warnings) is too offensive or if the players refuse to adopt a new strategy after a bad wipe.
But that’s me. Other players enjoy their own things and I do not blame them if they will leave the group for whatever reason, as long as it is done respectfully. I believe the original poster failed big time in this specific  run.
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I said players who never read about their classes may not understand the importance of prioritizing their skill over other aspects of the game; not that they did not know how to train.
It’s a very easy problem to solve when designing a new game (if the designer believes this is a problem).
“What I am saying is they are not. They are just like any other instances and friends are being run through.”
That’s just the thing… run throughs are something nice that a higher leveled or more geared player decides to do for their friends.
If I’m not a friend of that player, or if I didn’t decide to do a nice thing for him, I don’t want to be running him through. It’s fine if you want to run people, but don’t inflict free runthroughs on the random people you meet in LFG.
Before LFG was introduced, never in a million years would I have shown up underprepared for an instance whether it was a heroic or deadmines unless I intended to be run through and the person/people in the group were cool with it. You don’t take advantage of people you don’t know. And riding them to badges/gear is taking advantage.
Just because you queue with the tank and the tank is cool with it doesn’t give you the right to inflict a charity run on someone who didn’t sign up for that.
It’s exactly the same as if the dungeon finder suddenly stuck me in SM to give free runs to twinks.
I think the part that does make it at a dick move is that you put the other 2 dps into the same lump as the tank and deathjerk. Â Were they all in the same guild? Â Or were those other 2 dps stuck there with the scrubs because they’re dependent on a healer and a tank to get their random done and their frosties earned. Â Or were they just different language speakers so had no clue what was up.
Standing up for justice, and fairness, to yourself and the group is fine. Â I even like it. Â If reading this I could say I knew for sure about the responsibility those other 2 dps had in the situation, and if not, if you had let them know to port out too because you weren’t healing.
I felt bad for one of them, but the other was calling me an “a-hole” so… not so much for that one. Â The other I meant to whisper and I was having trouble with the whole cross-server junk.
There have been many a time where I have wanted to drop group because of some idiots. But really… I’m dps… I’d be replaced in a heart beat. If I were a healer and in this type of group I’d probably do the same thing and of course feel terrible after… but only because of the others in group with the jerks.
I am also puzzled how you can only pull 400 freaking DPS?! Like how is that even possible for someone being level 80? I mean did this DK not get any training after hitting 70 or something. That is totally ridiculous. And who the hell runs heroics if you’re not up to date on your training? The tank and his dps guild mate should have brought their own guild healer to the party. But I guess if that were the case we wouldn’t have this great tale to read.
You might be my hero. <3
I dropped group in combat for the first time yesterday, so you can go ahead and throw me in the bee pit too.
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My level 65 priest doesn’t like it when people start the (difficult) escort quest in mana tombs without adequately preparing (ie clearing the previous rooms of all trash, asking the other party members if they’re willing to do it). So when some random dps started the quest without asking, and with half the trash still up, I ditched. I don’t feel like taking a repair bill helping someone do a quest when they don’t even have the courtesy to ask the group if they’re ok with it first.
All this for an heroic instance?
I am sorry, but you were a total dickhead in this case.
It is perfectly acceptable for you not to want to run an instance with the DK. But as you voiced your opinion and no one else has an issue with it, you can either accept the vote of confidence of the remainder of the group or say this is unacceptable and leave the group.
Hearting during a pull and subsequently not dropping group is just selfish behavior at its worst.
A question for you. Would you have done that before the introduction of the cross-realm LFG tool?
I bet not.
No it’s not bad behavior. Ok, going out in the middle of a pull might have been but refusing to tag along with people who are not doing even the basic job of having their spells is perfectly fine.
If that DK can’t be bother to spend a 100g (only 10 quests!!!!) to upgrade his skills to the max of the 5 minutes to go to the trainer he certainly doesnt deserve for Zelmaru to spend 30 minutes healing him. It’s blatant lack of respect for others and I have no pity for that.
It’s so interesting to see the different points of view on this one. Â I should clarify that the tank was extremely aggressive about running ahead to pull, often when I was far out of range. Â I ported out between pulls that were quite far apart, and it is telling that he didn’t notice AT ALL as he ran boldly forward.
I see your untrained DK and raise you this: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Vorqueri&gn=TheBoopBank
I tank. I left an instance when the healer was telling me to hurry but got lost on her way back to nexus.
I don’t have time to put up with BS from pugs. I’m not a great tank but I can do my job, I can be friendly and I can help most people get achievements in the dungeons. If people are going to be rude I leave. It’s a small planet, and even smaller game and I’ve got better things to do.
If it’s taking away from your JOY Zel then leave. The only person looking you in the face in the mirror is you.