/Vent (Not about you guys this time, I swear!)Follow

This is a long post... so if you don't care about my story you don't have to read. =P

So I'm looking at the daily heroic a couple days ago and it's slave pens. It had been a while since I stepped into heroic SP, much of my gear has upgraded since then and I was curious and anxious to see how I would do now. I see someone posting in LFG chat and I join up. There's 4 people in the party, and long story short we get another dpser and our party configuration is Elemental Shaman, Rogue, Warlock, Holy Paladin, and Prot Paladin (Me).

It takes about 45 minutes for everyone to get ready to go, people forgetting to grab the daily and doing other stuff. I was fine with that, I can be patient. Finally the healer comes, and I check out his gear. He has +800 healing, +0 spell crit, and +80mp5 w/BoW up. I already know this is going to turn out bad, but I didn't want to just bail on them, I don't like to bail, I just consider it a challenge.

Anyway, we get into the instance and buff up. Then the Paladin says "Oh ****, hold on guys, I need to get something and I'll come back by myself." I'm thinking ok.... I hope he doesn't take too long. Someone who is in his guild says his baby is crying. I don't know if he's kidding or not, but I'm waiting and waiting and waiting... finally I check the map and he's moving to Cenarian Refuge. I ask repeatedly what he's doing and why he had to leave (I think he didn't have the key) no one answered me, two of the others were in his guild and one just kept saying "haha" when I asked.

I was already pissed by this point, I can be patient but this is turning rediculous. Finally the Paladin comes back and the rogue wants to mark and sap and everything. Normally I would just aoe tank the first pulls, but considering the healer's crappy gear I decide to just let them have their cc.

So he saps and I run up to body pull the mobs. I do my judgement on the skulled mob (wisdom) and the rogue immediately starts going crazy on him, stunlocking and wailing on the mob. So's the Elemental Shaman. As soon as the mob knocks out of stun he one-shots the rogue. I taunt him onto me and the warlock just starts fearing them randomly. The other one breaks the sap and runs at the healer. Among all the confusion I didn't notice and he died. The elemental shaman starts healing me and the warlock keeps fearing mobs, even though im more than capable of taking their hits until they died. I then ask the rogue to not use his stunning moves at the beginning of the fight. To which he is not privy to and pretty much doesnt listen to me.

We heal up, I just start aoe-tanking the mobs thinking F--it. We take the next couple of pulls pretty easily. Then on the next pull almost the same thing happens as the first pull, this time I managed to taunt the mob back onto me before he killed the rogue and I aoe them down, or at least try to because the warlock just keeps fearing them, even though I'm nowhere close to dieing, even with the healer being in the crappy gear that he was.

We finally get to a pull of 3 naga, I just toss my shield at them and start aoeing them down like normal, then the warlock runs up and AOE fears all of them, one of them going into another group. As soon as I see that other group aggro, I bubble, hearth, call the warlock an idiot, and drop group.

I start getting whispers from the warlock saying I'm the idiot and I should learn how to tank. When I mention he was the idiot for fearing the mobs he stopped replying. Then the Rogue comes up saying I was a horrible Paladin tank and should learn how to tank and he has never had a problem with other Paladin tanks, etc.. etc... I explain to him how our threat works and his stunlocking was ******** me over. He said he was trying to stunlock in my consecrate radius but he kept missing it, which I believed, the second mob he did that to was right outside the radius. Anyway, I ended up convincing him I'm an awesome tank, that miscommunication was probably the source of our problems, and he added me to his friends list and invited me to OT kara later.

That was the second time I bubble+hearthed out of a group due to frustration. I'm usually pretty easy-going as most of you know, but that was just the straw that broke the Camel's back.

Hey, look, a new member for your fan club, Jack.

In any case, "speak for Pallies" my ***. Those people were just idiots and there really doesn't need to be anything else said about it. If you friended that Rogue back or OT-ed his Kara run than you're more forgiving than I am. By the time you're running heroics at 70 you should know what the hell you're doing and what other specs of other classes are doing.

Seems we have a bit in common. Both too forgiving, both lovin' the game, both full of too much rum. I have to say... sometimes you just have to bubble and hearth, then ignore.

I have posted a "How To avoid a sh'itty PUG", you think the admins would sticky that! But noooooooo...

I feel your pain Cap, I had to heal too many horrible groups as I geared up for Kara. Worse I have gotten talked into to many failed ZA runs. I have had to re-adopt my own rules. Since then things have gotten better seeing as how I avoid about 90% of the suck.

I still have fond memories of the time I got invited to a heroic UB showed up only to be told "the rogue has to go afk for 10min to pick up food", I told them to replace but he was their friend. I put a blessing up, went and tidied the apartment up some and he still wasn't back so I left the party and headed back to Shatt.

About 15 minutes after I left them I recieved a tell saying the rogue was back and begging me to come back, I refused. They threw some hate my way. I watched for the next hour as they spammed for heals and didn't get it, I laughed when they bugged me 3 more tmes to heal. I laughed harder when I formed my own group and cleared UB no wipes in record time and came back and they were still looking for healer.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2008 10:36pm by bodhisattva

Yea...why ARE you judging wisdom on the groups first kill mark?...at least as your initial attack...?

I would be supportive of that change if I thought it would do any good, but honestly... I don't. Ignorance will fade over time with experience. The only cure for stupidity is death. If you're an idiot at 35 then you're probably still going to be an idiot at 70, at heroics, at raids... That's been my experience anyways.

Edited, Feb 23rd 2008 9:17pm by Gaudion

I don't understand. Prot pally is simple, especially if you've got the gear to handle the mobs.

1) Load Righteousness
2) Avenger's Shield for maximum impact.
3) Wait for any CC
4) Judge Righteousness on Skull
5) Conscecrate
6) Holy Shield
7) Load Righteousness/Wisdom
8) If 8=Righteousness, go to 4. If Wisdom go to 5.
9) ???
10)Profit.



This is the same thing you'll be doing to trash at level 50 all the way up to raid bosses in BT. Any adjustments will be situational (putting up wisdom for your raid), but essentially this never changes.

Just because I fear doesn't mean you have to write a whole post flaming me! haha j/k, couldn't resist since it wasn't about me this time =p

I feel your pain though, there are lots of horde still not used to how a paladin tanks.

You're probably right. Like I said, it's usually not an issue if I can get the Avenger's Shield in. It's just an old school habit that I never rid myself of.

On a heroic like SP - mana regen is bad. I'll have my targets marked in a certain order, usually Skull, X, star, condom. I will usually judge wisdom on the condom while Skull through star is taken down. Makes for less downtime.

If we have a burst DPSer in the group I might focus on the targets as DPS does, but a nice BoSalv can fix all that!

The problem arises when someone sees my judge, and for some unknown reason feels the need to attack my target instead of the target I have so graciously set up for them. I don't like people that use /assist on my Pally.. It makes me cry tears of holy sadness..

Edited for my inability to spell on Mondays..

Edited, Feb 25th 2008 9:32am by TacticalRage

PuG'ing heroics since the change to honored to get the key is a hit-or-miss proposition. I commend your patience, but I think you should have made any excuse possible and ditched the group when you saw the healers stats. That alone was probably enough indication that the group was trouble.

The other sign of trouble, in my opinion, was the 45-minute time to get things going. It just seems more often than not that when a group can't make it to the instance in a timely manner it's a bad sign.

My aborted PuG story from the weekend was Shat Halls. A rogue, ret pally, dps warrior, warrior tank, and holy pally (me) were the group. Before the group picked up the dps warrior--I was the 4th member invited--I was already saying in /p that we needed a mage or more cc. No one responded. They picked up the dps warrior and were all set to go...I decided the guild needed my help with something and left.

That's exactly it(not that I'm epicd out, but I'm somewhat 50/50). Which is why I never toss gear, I keep my blues around for normal 5mans which, as you said, still isn't enough. All I do in normal 5mans is consecrate, hardly ever holy-shielding just so I can get more mana. It's sad when I need to get hurt more to be effective..