Hits and Misses in the LFD

So yesterday I got online and started to do some digging after I queued up for a dungeon.  This is the second day in a row I took off from dailies again.  They are mind numbing to say the least.  I keep having to take a break from them because they are flat out boring.  Not sure what is different between the LK dailies and these but the LK dailies, while repetitive, where not as dreadful as the Cataclysm ones it feels.

After 46 minutes I finally get into a dungeon that is in progresses.  Never know what to expect with one of these.  It is HoO and we are at the start of the hall to the 3rd (2nd if you are skipping mini marrowgar) boss.  We are just standing there.  All the members are there.  They are all buffed. Full health.  Full mana.  Why are we not moving?

Five minutes in and a conversation begins something like this.

Tank: Can you just drop group.
Healer:  No.
DPS: You only have 74K mana.
Tank: Then just log off for a minute, we will kick you and it will not lock us from kicking someone else.
Healer:  No, just go.
Tank: You can't heal this.  Just leave already.

This was getting annoying.  I had to say something but as always I try to be polite.  They got the first boss down.  If this healer was with them on that boss and they did it then nothing else should be much of a problem with exception of the few AoE heavy moments.

Me: I healed this yesterday on my Shaman and it only has 64K mana and worse heals then a paladin.
Tank:  You just shut up, we are not moving anywhere until the healer leaves and you are going to wait.

I just drop group.  I could have tired to kick the tank but I just walked in.  I do not know if the healer had done something stupid or was a jerk or anything.  I can not really make a judgment on if the healer deserved to be kicked based on attitude or performance.  Based on the mana comment I figure it was a performance thing. Either way I will not stay around and be verbally abused by some little boy that probably doesn't even have hair on his balls yet and thinks that he is an internet tough guy. 

Anyone on the internet that comes off with an attitude like that tank in a public setting is usually a miserable person in real life.  Either an adult that gets crap all day at work or home and has to act tough to make themselves feel better or a kid that is the mega geek that gets his ass kicked by everyone at school, even the girly girls that are three grades lower then him.  So when I see an internet tough guy I feel pity for them and just leave them be.  These people are also, 95% of the time, hard core PvPers as well.  Best way to compensate for real life being so horrible, beat on other people online. 

That holds true all over the internet.  There is a study about it that proves that the more abusive people are to others under the cover of anonymity the higher the likelihood is that they are abused in some why in real life, be it physical, mental or social.  Next time you see a person like that, rude and abusive, in a dungeon, do not get angry but instead feel bad for them.

I think I have experienced that myself more then a few times.  While I am always polite I've been known to throw out an insult in public sometimes and it just so happens that those days there is usually something bugging me.  I guess with these horrible dungeons I should be rude more often.  Maybe I am trying to earn my sainthood by not going off on some of these people in these dungeons.  They really do deserve it.  I just am not the type to tell them they are bad unless I can offer a suggestion to get better and my suggestion of learn your class and gear up before entering heroics sounds rude in the ears of bad players, so I don't say it.

Back to the story at hand.  I figure I will have the deserter debuff but look to queue up again and notice I have a 6 minute wait.  Wow, no deserter debuff, just the normal 15 minutes between being allowed to queue again.  I did stand there for 9 minutes waiting for this tank to do something.  I guess they really did not want to run a dungeon.

I start digging again and forget to queue up again after the 6 minutes.  So that is another 30 minutes lost before I notice it.  I queue up again and go back to digging.  42 minutes later I pop into another dungeon.  It does not say dungeon in progress but apparently it is. 

I am standing at the top of the stairs before the first boss in SFK.  Okay, this is really the hardest boss in this dungeon so it might be an issue but at least if we get past it I know the rest of the dungeon is no problem.  We have a warrior DPS, a DK tank and a Mage.  No problems with interrupts here.  This should not be a problem.

We spend 18 minutes.  Yes, that is right, 18 minutes with all these people discussing interrupt duties.  I am not kidding.  I popped a flask as soon as I came in and we did not pull until I had 42 minutes left on it. The tank keeps saying, Hunter you interrupt the mend rotten flesh and I keep saying, I do not have an interrupt in this spec.  This goes on a few times and each time I correct him.  He then says, okay then, tranq shot the mend rotten flesh.  Um, okay, not really sure it will help, but if you really want me to okay.  Tranq removes a magic or enrage effect, it is not an interrupt.  If mend rotten flesh put a HoT on him then tranq would work.

Guess what we got?  A DK tank that says it is his job to tank, not interrupt.  A warrior that has no clue what pummel is.  Being I am a hunter I know nothing about warriors of course right?  A mage that has his counter spell with the long cool down so he can only get 1 thing during the fight.  You are kidding me.  It is a 24 second CD.  I've seen that fight last 6 minutes.  There are more then enough things you can interrupt. Either way, the warrior and the DK should have all interrupts covered. 

First try, one of those 6 minute fights, almost 7 minutes actually before we wipe. The guy is not going down because no one is interrupting the mend rotten flesh.  When we finally do get to the dark angel phase the healer apparently thinks it is better to waste the mana keeping the other two DPS up and letting me die.

Lets do some math here.  I am doing 15K on that boss.  The mage is doing 5K.  The warrior is doing 5K.  So you, the healer, would rather spend the mana on two people, meaning twice the mana, to keep 10K DPS alive then spend the mana on one person, meaning half the mana, to keep up 15K DPS?  Just keep me, the tank and you up and this fight is done in 20 seconds.  But nooooooo.  That would have made sense.  Let the only person doing more DPS then the tank die.  How did that work for you?

Next try I say, I'll switch specs.  I switch to MM with my 20 second silence shot cool down and interrupt mend rotten flesh each time it pops.  It is not even close to being tight.  The mage with their 24 second CD counter spell could have easily handled it.

We get to the same point and this time the healer seemed to learn from their mistake.  I am at 100% life through the whole dark angel phase.  We down the boss.  I did less DPS as MM of course, only 12K but still more then both other DPS combined.

So now we are about 35 minutes into this heroic and we finally get the first boss down.  We are talking that I have been playing 3+ hours and all I got was one boss down that means nothing to me.  I do not need any heroic gear and I've been capped on JP so long I do not remember when the last time I needed them was.

I switch back to SV and we move along.  Every pack of mobs gets marked with a square and a diamond.  Trap square and sting diamond.  Every... freaking... pull.  Only 3 mobs.  Trap one and sting one and we will take them one at a time.  Is this really needed.  Each of the mobs goes down in roughly 5 seconds.  The healer is seemingly at 100% mana all the time.  You can take on 2 mobs at the same time Mr. Tank.  This might amaze you, but some tanks even take on 3 mobs at once.  I know.  Amazing right.

One good thing is that we make it through the run with no more wipes. Everything is slow but smooth.  Even springvale is easy and that one is usually a killer in most pugs.

We get to the last boss and we wipe because the mage starts attacking as the boss is coming down the stairs to be positioned by the tank.  No problem, I am a hunter.  FD, so I do not die.

Second attempt, same result.  This time the wipe is because for some odd reason the boss turns and pistols everyone killing 3 people.  I run up the stairs and FD.  It is a wipe, but it is a good day to be a hunter again.

Third try goes a little better but the mage, who was told to cure curses, doesn't, and we wipe.  Or as the pattern has been, they wipe.  I FD.

Forth attempt.  They remind the mage to cure the curse.  I make a gentle reminder that the spell can be interrupted.  Just interrupt it and it is not an issue.  Apparently they do not have any interrupts in this group.  Oh yeah, I should have remembered this from the first boss.  DK's, warriors and mages have no interrupts.  Remember that next time you are in a dungeon so you do not act like an idiot like I did and think they they do have interrupts.  I was so wrong it seems, they do not have interrupts.

We do a little better this time around, almost get it done even.  Wipe again, this time it gets me too but in all fairness to my FD, I never used it.  I tried kiting him between platforms when everyone went down.  For any hunter, that is an amazing way to solo this fight.  Just have to do it better then I did.  I fell off and I was no longer a grumpy elf, I was a dead elf.  If you are capable of making the jump however, you can bounce from one end to the other.  He will have to go down to the ground to run around.  When he runs around, you jump back, he goes back down to run, continue until he is dead.

That was close, it was only the second time I died.  Over all, not so bad.  With exception to the fact that it has now been more then 4 hours since I started my quest to get my valor for the day.  I figure, one more attempt.  If we miss it again I will switch to MM and do the interrupts myself.  Why is it that every dungeon I am in I have to do everything myself?  Does anyone know how to play this game?

We get it done nice and easy this time.  Cool.  I finally get my JP.

Now I was going to switch to my healer and get my healers JP.  Usually I do a guild run with my healer but a tank that is gearing up and does not know the dungeons asked if I could go with him and explain the dungeon along the way to help him out.  No problem.  I am a team player.  My healer will live without a run.  I need to go on my hunter, that way I assure that we have some good CC and some good DPS to help him out.

One other guild member that is gearing up joins, her DPS will be low, we know that.  We queue up and get HoO.  I remember this place, hours ago I was here standing there waiting for some idiot tank to start pulling.

The run went smooth.  We never wiped, we downed things with efficiency and had a healer that was geared and knew what they were doing and another DPS that was capable of pulling 12K.  The first ret pally I have ever seen that pulled over 5K.  Maybe ret isn't in that bad of shape as it seems.  Maybe most of the people that play it just really suck that badly.  This guy rocked.  Even came close to beating me on a few fights and that is no easy task when it comes to boss fights usually.

None of the fights go on long enough for anything bad to really happen.  Last boss was a pip.  I did 17K the pally did 12K and the tag along DPS from guild pulled 7K.  These types of numbers through the whole dungeon made for a fast run.  A fast run in HoO is still an hour and a half however when you do all the bosses like we did.

This meant that I spent 6 hours on WoW today for just my VP.  Nothing else.  Sure I helped a tank out in the guild but it feels like I wasted my entire day playing for nothing.  I should have not even logged on.  The only time I spend that much time in game is when I am raiding that day.  It should not be 6 hours of work to get just 70 VP.  And the other run where I helped there was nothing what so ever for me.

Blizzard needs to put something into heroics for people like me, people that really have no need to run them, people that are an asset to them, people that make the run easier for everyone else.  This coming update where you can buy junk for huge amounts of JP is not worth it.  Let us buy orbs (non BoP ones), Pristine Hide, Maelstrom's, things like that.  Let those be things we can buy with JP and you will get people like me, people that make those runs go nicely, to run them more often which in turn will make it easier on other players working on gearing up

In all truth, do you think the SFK run I was in, where I was the only one CCing and pulling more then 50% of total damage, more then the 2 DPS and the tank combined,  would have ever finished without me or someone like me? 

Nope, those 4 players would have died lots and lots, dropped groups, got fed up with the game, never gotten their JPs or VPs, and maybe, just maybe, had it be the straw that broke the camels back and quit the game because they could not get a dungeon finished.  With me there, the dungeon was a breeze.  With another DPS that was their equal in skill level it would have meant an unfinished dungeon and 4 unhappy players.