The Mandatory Bad Pugs QQ post
After our Arena run, a tank I had been to Shattered Halls to with whispered me to go to Black Morass, where I still hadn’t set a single foot. They had an additional spot for Steptoe too, were ready to summon, and it looked all gravvy.
It turned out quite disappointing, two wipes before we called it a night.
The team was that warrior, Steptoe, a second lock and a mage. And me as the resident healbot. From what I gathered of the fight structure, this looks like one of the more powerful group setups for that particuliar instance.
Key word is “looks like”. The mage was assigned to adds duty, with a 28/33/0 arcane/fire build, he spent most time casting arcane missiles and complaining about being OoM. Steptoe had to take over frequently, which generated a different problem as the rift elites suddenly didn’t get enough DPS.
On the second attempt, the mage went down at wave 2 or 3, and for some reason wouldn’t comprehend that “I can’t rez in combat, release and run back” wasn’t something I’d say because I like a good laugh and a nice repair bill.
But the major disappointment that night was that other warlock. So we had that guy with Reverred Scryers kit including a nice red glow on his shoulders. Not a piece of greens left, he was all blue. Destro build, though. First thing which struck me was that his imp was getting damaged on trash clears. So Steptoe checked whether he was using a Gatling Imp build… but no, missing 2 key talent points for that, improved firebolt.
Looking at SW Stats at the end of the second attempt told the rest of the story. Steptoe (who has a SL/SL build since two weeks, ezMode for arena but not exactly the best for PvE) delivered 6 times more damage, but more importantly, healed himself for 12 times more than the other warlock. 12 times. I don’t think that guy cast Drain Life even once in both attempts.
I was having issues managing my mana and burning through pots quite a lot. Needless to say, keeping up a warlock who wasn’t pulling his weight didn’t help.
Now I know I haven’t touched my lock since TBC and know little of level 70 warlocking. I did some raiding in the good ole days though, and despite not having stellar gear, I did what was expected of me: produce respectable damage (top 10 in MC, top 5 in ZG) to justify my spot, CC where appropriate, and avoid being a burden on the healers by managing as much of my own health I could do. I expect there is a lot more to being a good warlock at level 70 nowadays, but being at least a passable warlock shouldn’t be too hard if you actually levelled that toon instead of getting it off e-bay.
As I said, I’m out of touch with the warlocking world, but his build doesn’t strike me as particuliarly well done.
The most embarassing thing of course was the permanent comparison with Steptoe. So after the second wipe we simply called it, an unsatisfying end to a good arena evening.
Oh well. PUGs come and go (not often on our near-empty server, but still). The warrior is pretty decent for a tank, the only issue is that the two guys are guildmates of his and running with the tank probably will lead to other encounters with the two gimped dpsers. And this concludes today’s rant. If I manage to write these a bit angrier, I might apply to Mike Shramm’s job at wowinsider, or something.
Two comments.
First: A while back I wrote up our how-to for BM. It’s posted here. http://warcraft.fibergeek.com/?p=299
Second: I’ve found it helpful on that fight to declare “If you are not the tank, you will not get heals”. This forces people into a more “I’m solo on this” type mentality so they will bandage/eat/life tap more often.
In between EVERY portal I have a drink. This sometimes means that the tank and I sit out of range of the portal while I mana up.. and the adds head to Medivh.. but having mana is more important than a few adds.
I did a writeup a general writeup a few days ago of my fist time run thru BM and it was a heck of a lot of fun with the group i was running with. Most the group were all guildies of same group. But i had tanked with them before on different pugs so were kinda friends already.
Since some in group been there before they just game me a idea of what to do since i was the Paladin Tank. Boss at 6,12,18. Use my becon on last boss at around 50-60% and inbetween control adds and take care of them quick means more time to rest and mana back up for group.
I just tanked all the Riftlords at the portal with the rogue we had and the rest of group took care of adds and helped out as can. I burned up a lot of mana. But i made sure i always drank inbetween for mana as fast as i can and then head to the other Rift lord as it opened. Sometimes i just used JOW and SOW to help out on mana or chugg a mana pot to help out after wave 12-18 as they came faster.Overall we had 4 good run back to back. But i cant remember our mage been OOM nor did our Lock. even on the last boss which took longer to fight no one went out of mana i saw and i was using Judgement of Crusader to speed up the fight.
Hey there Nibuca That was a nice write up. Thanks for the link.