Often, PUGs are a lot better than what the constant barrage of horror stories suggest, and with the bad reputations such random gathering of people have, there’s ample opportunity to be pleasantly surprised when things work out well.
Sometimes, though, you do run into genuinely bad players, who do not just play subpar but will also stubbornly refuse to listen and adapt to whatever the circumstances demand.
Shorsha, of CC= Constant Consecration (best backronym in WoW, ever), recounts one of these experiences in Blood Furnace with a huntard who stubbornly would refuse to turn Growl off his pet, while having it fight the main DPS target. The hunter eventually left without ever saying a word, and Shorsha, being fundamentally a nice person (at least from what I gather) now feels bad about it.
There are people who live with the philosophy that nobody is ever too old to learn or too young to teach, and some who may react badly to being told what to do but who can nonetheless adapt, and eventually accept that they haven’t been born best player ever and can perfect their gameplay.
There are people, however, who stubbornly refuse to admit that there is anything they could change, improve or perfect in a group setting. These are basically the sociopaths who should have, in an ideal world, stuck to single-player games, or at least to soloing. When they end up in a group, wipes or at least conflict is usually inevitable.
Competing for aggro with the MT, with the exception of specific boss fights requiring this as a tailored strategy, is a mistake one is allowed to make on the first two, three instance runs. Say in RFC, Deadmines, Wailing Caverns and à la rigueur up to BFD. In the mid-sixties, considering that the Outlands instances tend to require a bit more skilled gameplay and at least a modicum of knowledge of both your class and group dynamics, this is inexcusable.
Tanks in general require both hitting and being hit by their targets to generate the fuel of their threat mechanisms. Remove the being hit part and you cripple your tank, forcing him to blow a taunt which may be on cooldown when it would have been most required, say to save the group’s healer. This is however a lot worse for tankadins than warriors and druids.
Let’s remember how the tankadin threat generation cycle works:
- Tankadin spends Mana on active and reactive threat generation spells (consecration, holy shield, sealing / judging)
- Tankadin gets hit, increasing threat output
- Tankadin loses some health
- Tankadin gets healed back
- Through Spiritual Attunement, the Tankadin regenerates the mana to start the next round of the cycle
Without mana, no threat. Without getting hit, the Tankadin loses no health and therefore gets no mana back. In this particular case, this specific huntard’s mistake was double: Not only did he disrupt the tankadin’s threat generation cycle, he also wasted 15 of his pet’s focus points every 5 seconds, focus points not spent on dealing more DPS.
Double incompetence, cannot and doesn’t want to listen, and you get the guy to leave? I say bravo. Your group inevitably worked better as a result, if only because the threat generation cycle is no longer being disrupted.
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Tags: Hunter, Mechanisms, Paladin, PUG, TankingYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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4 Responses to “No, Shorsha, Causing a Huntard to Leave doesn’t make you a Jerk”
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If i have problem with pets, i usually tell the Hunter kindly to turn pet growl off. If he don’t and want to be stubborn about it, i have a easy fix for that. If their pet somehow steal aggro i let their pet have it and i just don’t waste my taunt taunting off of it and pet dies problem usually fixed after that.
“There are people, however, who stubbornly refuse to admit that there is anything they could change, improve or perfect in a group setting.”
- Don’t get me wrong, as there ARE exceptions, but most of these are probably kids and possibly with a bad understanding of English (assuming an English realm). I’d guess these probably happen much less on German, French, Spanish realms than on English ones because everyone else and their dog plays on English realms (except for many German, French and Spanish ppl and an occasional curious one that doesn’t know the language and still ventures there but will most likely not get to 70 anyway!).
Of course, there are more grown up simply stubborn people, but I’d guess those are probably the minority…
One example of such “kido” would probably be a lvl 20 warlock I ran into in Loch Modan on the 20ish section when I was taking some rust out of my paly tonight… Upon blessing him, I noticed he had NO self-buffs on so I asked him why he wasn’t using any (at 20 he gets Demon Armor and he should have Soulstone up because it costs nothing and cuts on the travel time upon death). I got no answer from him/her and he continued his fight, starting with Shadow Bolt, then Shadow Bolt and when the mob was attacking him, the VW would step into the fight… Typical “lockard”!
Since he didn’t even answer, I assume he probably didn’t even KNEW much English which is odd as at least some knowledge is required for understanding the quests… Of course, he can simply grind away, but he had done at least one quest since he had a VW!
Like I said at start, I’m not saying that ALL kids are like that, nor do I want a “adult-only realm” just because I’m 40, but I’m saying that it could account for the majority of those bad players. The reasoning being that any teen or higher will actually WANT to learn how to play, but most 5 yo just use WoW as a Diablo with more variety of classes…
Oh god, you’re even older than me and I’m an old gamer… :-p
Feel bad? We had a saying back in my college days:
“F**k you, I have enough friends.” (yes, I just censored myself, but this isn’t my blog
If that hunter wants to get all emotional about being told NOT to screw up, then youre better off without him. Don’t feel bad because you refuse to accept sub-par playing. I wish more people would hurt the feelings of those uncoachable jerks - we might start seeing a more competent player base emerge.