Thursday, July 7, 2011

Holy Horrible Players Batman.

I finished off my weekly valor runs on my Hunter with mostly no incidents.  No bad groups and very few jerk players.  You know the type I am talking about, the ones that insult others for no reason.  I still think that should be a reportable offense that carries a 3 day in game ban.  That is not what this is about however.

After I was done with my hunter runs I decided to do a couple of quick runs on my Shaman.  While I've been lucky enough to do some really fast Zul's the last two days and healing them is not hard for the most part I wanted super simple.  Something where I can watch TV while I heal sort of thing so I entered the normal heroic queue.

Oh dead god I was wrong.  Nothing simple about this at all.  Even more so when it seems that you are running with people that either never did any of this before and are afraid to admit it or are just bad players over all.  I'm going to lean on the side of bad players because even when they where told what to do they still did not do it.  That is not a case of I didn't know, that is a case of I am too damn stupid to do it.

I get into a GB run that already has two bosses down, cool, quick run I think to myself.  We start clearing the trash from the point I joined to the third boss.  Every single trash mob is there, most with near full life.  Did you guys even try doing the dragon run?  I mean, come on, how can you do a dragon run and kill nothing.  Not even kill nothing but injure almost nothing.

Either way, it should be easy.  Wrong again.  Tank calls for no CC, grabs three mobs and lets the others do whatever the hell they feel like doing.  Everything takes forever to go down.  I go oom on trash in a normal heroic for the first time since the gearing up phase.  Next pack, I go oom again, next pack, oom again, next pack one of the DPS face pulls when the tank is not ready and I am not even full on mana yet and it turns into a serious effort to keep everyone alive but we manage.  Next pack, guess what, another of the DPS face pulls and again I am still not ready because I have not had the chance to get mana.

Finally after that I am able to sit and drink and get mana.  Tank pulls that last pack before the boss.  Quite honestly I do not think I have ever had to kill those guys, they have always been dead every time I've been in there, even the first time ever in there when we were all new and knew nothing that pack never seems to live.  I am starting to think that at least three of the original group had to think the dragons where a ride for fun and never bombed anything because no one could be that bad.

After that pack I am at about 70% mana and sit to drink and tank pulls.  Dude, check the healer before pulling I think but don't say anything and I go to work. 

First flame guy pops up, no one switches to it, the person it targets just stands there and lets it hit them and dies.  I say you need to switch to adds and run if it is targeting you. 

Next one pops up, no one switches to it.  Screw it, I start DPSing it, frost shock to slow and then whatever I can get on it.  Apparently it clicks with the hunter and he starts to help me.  Just in time.  Third one, same thing, just little old healing me DPSing it until the hunter notices that there is the giant flame thing is running across the room and thinks to himself, let me shoot it a few times. 

Forth one, targets me.  Oh well, can't really do much, frost shock, throw a heal, switch to wolf and run, throw another heal or two, frost shock, switch to wolf and run.  Throw some huge heals on the stupid rogue standing in the white stuff because he is too stupid to move or maybe it is because I am too stupid to just let him die. 

Back to wolf, frost, heal, wolf, frost, heal, wolf, frost, heal, wolf, I am starting to think because the hunter does not see me standing there DPSing so it means he doesn't have to either.  Would someone F'N kill this thing, is what I would have typed if I could ever stop moving and casting.  There is not a spare second to do anything.  I wanted to kick back, light a smoke and drink my coffee with a relaxing heroic and I get this?  False advertising if you ask me, heroics are supposed to be super easy for over geared healers now.  The boss dies, thank god, I can stop running.

I raise the dead, sit to drink and the tank pulls the next packs the moment I sit down.  WTF is wrong with him.  I wait, wait and wait some more.  Timing it to get as much mana as I can without letting him die.  I pop up and throw a riptide and two greaters on him to get him back into shape, thank god for 84K crits now.  Then I need to go do what I can to save the rogue who somehow seems to take as much damage as the tank.  How is it possible to take that much damage without ever stealing aggro from the tank?

Of course, the pat starts walking over and instead of moving back to avoid him so I can get mana he moves toward him to grab him with two mobs from the previous pack still up.  We all survive, thanks to me of course.  It is not like anyone else was of any help.  The mage and hunter, while not taking huge damage are doing DPS on par with a level 70 and the rogue doing level 65 style DPS while taking more damage then the tank.

Don't even get me started on the tank.  I wanted to get all medieval on his ass like Jules from Pulp Fiction.

"Cooldowns motherfucker!, do you use them?"

There is no reason to eat all the damage all the time.  You have cooldowns to reduce the incoming damage for a few seconds, all tank classes do, use them.  That gives me time to save the stupid rogue.  Next time I should just let you both die.

The two packs leading to the boss are always trouble because they can not be hit but we have been doing everything with nearly nothing being hit so that should not be a huge problem.

I take things into my own hands and mark one for the hunter to trap and I bind elemental on the other.  It makes things a lot more bearable.  The rogue, of course, still made every effort he could to try and die, like he does on every pull it seems.  So far I have ruined his death wish.

Next pack the hunter CCs one of them and it is all hell breaking loses on the other three for a while.  Enough to oom me of course, we down them and the frozen one and I sit to drink.  You know what the tank does of course.  Pulls one of the mobs.  No biggie really.

Before the second mob someone asks for sides.  The tank said he and the hunter would be on one and the mage and the rogue would be on the other.  It should be okay being the DPS just might be enough, close, but might.  I point out that everyone must get in the eye of the storm or they will die.  I made sure to say that because I know someone in this winner of a group was going to screw it up if I did not say anything.

We kill the other mob and pull the boss.  All goes well from the start, everyone even gets into the eye of the storm and moves to the adds.  Wow, all done as if these people had a clue.  Miracles can happen.

Second time around, not so lucky.  Rogue doesn't get in the eye, doesn't even attempt to get in the eye.  I tried to heal him but for some reason as soon as I started to heal him he ran away.  Yes, not to the eye, away from it, until he was out of range, and dead.  Guess he thought I meant you only need to get into the eye once.  Maybe next time I should say each time.

Adds pop up and I go with the mage on his side.  We down it, woohoo, go go healer DPS.  Third one, same thing, forth one, same thing, fifth one, did you even know you could go that far, same thing.

Good thing as far as healing goes if no whelps are released that fight requires nearly no healing.  I was able to use most of my mana for DPSing and while my DPS sucked it was enough to bridge the gap.  Sure, our add made it to the eggs each time but never released.  That is the most important thing really.

The dungeon was done, so much for a nice and easy run however.  How is it that there are still so many people that bad this late in the expansion.  Sure, I know people are entering heroics new to them now, people that are just getting there and new players and the such but what are the odds of getting a group with four really horrible players like that?

I hate to say things like this but I feel it deserves it.  I carried that group.  Now I understand why they needed to replace the previous healer, the healer was not kicked or DCed, they quit.  Most healers would have quit on them.  I should have quit on them.  I guess I was not smart enough to do that.  Maybe somewhere inside of me I liked the challenge.

With that disaster done I figured I would try again.  Getting two bad groups in a row where no one knows anything is really rare.  Usually it is just one or two bad players at most.

I get into a fresh HoO run and see four guild mates.  This could be one of two things.  One being it is a killer group that just did not have a healer and they are nice people or they all suck and will blame me for anything that goes wrong.

Well, I can tell you one thing for sure, I was worried from the get go.  When I have over 10K more health then the tank does there are going to be issues.

At least the tank knew their limits.  The first pack, sap one, poly one, hex one, and take mobs one at a time.  Okay, I can deal with this.  Geez, how the hell am I losing the warrior, the rogue and the bear tank all at the same time.  Pounding the biggest heals I can I manage to keep them up.  They move to another mob and it is more of the same, all people in melee range think they are tanking and taking more damage then the tank is.  Hex breaks and starts beating the crap out of me.  Does the tank pick it up?  Nope, he is working on his one mob at a time. Apparently that is all he can handle.  I rehex the mob and we continue. 

After all is said and done I am oom.  Yes, doing one mob at a time and I am still oom.  Perhaps it had something to do with the mage doing a whole 3K DPS, the warrior doing a whole 6K DPS and the rogue doing an outstanding 7K DPS, all that added to the tanks 4K.  The tank is the only one I do not mind looking at these number but what the hell makes these people think they should be in a heroic when their numbers are barely even decent for a normal?

This is going to be a long dungeon.  I can feel it, lets just hope they do not want to do all 7 bosses, I don't have three hours to spend with these people.

We have to do the same one at a time thing on the other packs like that and each one involves me healing the rogue and warrior more then the bear.  Each one has a moment when I am getting beat on and no one is helping me.  Each one has me going oom.

I watched the warrior and the rogue closely.  I wanted to see where all this damage was coming from.  No ground effects.  Attacking from behind.  How the hell are they taking so much damage?  I swear they had to be doing it to themselves because nothing was hitting them, ever, and they where going down so fast.

First boss, three of the people jump, mage does not.  I go with them.  They jump down one side, run to the other and then run back up.  Excuse me, is anyone going to click any switches down here?  I did it myself.  At least they took all the snakes with them.  I run my little wolf tail off to get back to the top just in time to save everyone from certain death.  We jump down again, but I learned they are all too stupid to click on something so I do it myself from the get go and it is not so bad being I am not so far behind them so there really is no chance for death.

Going through the elementals was fun.  I knew at the bubble guy we where going to be in trouble if I got bubbled.  The tank got bubbled, no one switched, I started DPSing it, the warrior then threw a shot in and it was enough to break it.  The mage got it next.  I knew I was alone on this one. I do some DPS while healing and almost have the mage out when I get bubbled.  Me and the mage are nearing death when the elemental goes down so the bubble breaks.  No one even attempted to free us, ever.

The fire elemental was another event I saw coming before hand.  The warrior, rogue and tank all stayed in for the hellfire thing.  I could not keep all three up so I had to choose between the rogue and the warrior, the rogue had more DPS so the warrior lost the coin toss.  I healed the two through each one because they refused to move from it.  After the fight I start to rez the warrior and the bear decides to go corral up every single throgg he can find.  To the point he almost died.  Like a fool, once again, I saved him.  I should have let him die, might have taught him a lesson.

The boss, well, needless to say, it took forever.  The DPS here sucked big time but I am over geared so I was not going to run out of mana if the fight when on longer.  Over all it is not very damage intense.  They make me work for my valor however by always waiting to move from the purple stuff.  I hit hero when the boss starts his alpha thing for some added DPS, don't help, his life looked like it didn't budge.  We did it, everyone lived, I DPSed the whole fight again because I had to.

On to the last boss, so glad they skipped the other stuff.  When the little fire guys exploded, all melee died.  As expected, they where all too stupid to take one step back, or left, or right, or anything.  I revive them, we go after the boss, it stomps the mage for a one shot kill.  Bears do have interrupts, maybe someone should point that out to this bear.  Looks like I am on interrupt duty as well as healing duty and CC duty and DPS duty.  A day in the life sometimes I tell you.  We finish it, I rez the mage and wish them a good day and leave.

It amazes me sometimes that people can actively be that bad.  Once again, as much as I hate to say it, I carried that group.  Most other healers would have left on that first pull going oom fighting one mob and seeing a mage do 3K DPS.  I am not most healers.  I am not most people.  I like to give everyone a chance but sometimes you just want to hit cruise control and have fun the quick and easy way.  I had wanted that but what I got was a challenge.  Twice.  But I can gladly say I lived up to the challenge and did my job about as good as it could be done.

While healing can be really boring when you are with a good group or an over geared group there is one thing that will always remain true.  Healing with a bad group will always be exciting, even if not actually fun.  They kept me on my toes.  That is for sure.

I guess back to Zul runs for me.  Wanted to do normal heroics because they should be easier.  I had more trouble healing each one of those two normal heroics then I did healing 7 Zuls last week combined.

Really, just really, how is it possible to do 3K DPS as a mage?  At least they knew where the poly was so I could out DPS them as a healer.  Not kidding, a few pulls I did.  Sad, right?  That is why I said, holy horrible players batman.

4 comments:

  1. Wow, that sounds both impressive and painful. But I can understand why you stayed. It's a mix of wanting to watch the train wreck to see how bad it gets and seeing whether you can live up to the challenge. Afterwards it often doesn't feel like it was worth it though.

    As for that warrior and rogue taking crazy damage in melee, I guess it was either the shadowlancer's pact of darkness (channelled AoE around him) or the fireshaper's molten barrier (buff that shoots fireballs at everyone near him)?

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  2. Yikes!
    But you know what? When I was gearing up my Holy Pally, I actually queued hoping for undergeared/bad groups. I don't have much experience in healing and I wanted to learn. Well, you can't learn healing withough putting yourself under stressful situations and bad groups are perfect for that. Good groups, as you said, are dead boring to heal.
    I feel DPS can be exciting all the time, you can always try to surpass yourself in every pull, healing is a lot more dependant on the situation and the people you are running with.

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  3. @Shintar, I was thinking some sort of AoE too but none of the usual suspects where around. I swear they found a way to injure themselves. lol

    It is like watching a car accident, you can't look away no matter how horrible it is.

    @Xayide, You are very right. It is impossible to learn to heal with just good groups. Good groups make healing easy. Any group I am in where all I need to do is heal the tank and that is it, is a good group. That is a horrible way to learn. Once you get hit in the face with an oh shit moment you are screwed because you do not know how to handle it.

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  4. Two comments: "The two packs leading to the boss [in Grim Batol] are always trouble because they can not be hit [by the dragon fires] but we have been doing everything with nearly nothing being hit so that should not be a huge problem."

    Actually, only the last group cannot be damaged by the drakes. The first group you encounter in that Hallway can be attacked on the Drake, its simply that almost no one ever bothers to do so.

    "Going through the elementals was fun. I knew at the bubble guy we where going to be in trouble if I got bubbled."

    I have a "/help" macro that I like to use on this encounter. It shouts help, but also places a skull on my target - this time being the bubble. When the fight starts I stand up near the boss and hit the macro if I get caught. I don't think I've ever had a group that didn't destroy the bubble.

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