It's Deja Vu All Over Again.

As Yogi would say, it is Deja Vu all over again.  I am back at my original raiding guild and it feels right but it feels different.  I think the difference is that before we had maybe 12 raiders when I was in it and we ran with the same people every day.  It made for the perfect learning environment for me being I had never raided before joining there.  Everyone knew I was new and everyone was the same person every week.  Now it is different because now I am the co raid leader and we now have a lot of people there.  Many more then we had back when I was there before.  So it feels the same, but it is feels different.

I must admit that I am a bit worried about how things will work out.  We do not have enough tanks or healers at the moment to do a 25 and to many people for just doing a 10.  I told everyone to bear with me while we see what we have to try and set thing up on a more normal schedule in the coming weeks.  They know that this is basically a rebuilding and people are slowly flowing into the guild.  I put our first full run on the calender for Thursday night and hope that it all goes well.  Worst case scenario would be me having to do a power gearing on my Druid Tank or my Disk Priest and having to fill one of those spots just to help things out some.   I have no issue doing that if I needed to but I hope it does not come to that.  My hunter is my main and will remain my main.  While I love healing with my priest and tanking with my bear they are secondary things which I would prefer to only run on alt runs.

All in all I think things will be fine if I am willing to do the one thing I have noticed that others are not willing to do.  PuG.  Yeap, it is simple as that.  When only 8 would show before, we did not run.  In the guild I just left if only 16-18 were on we did not run.  Either one of those situations if we PuGed the guild would have not fell apart.  That is where my issue will come in.  I have no issue pugging.  I just do not want to be the person that fills the group out.  If someone else collects all the people together I have no issue running the group and even explaining it for first timers.  I will help everyone with the fights that needs it.  I can not however fill the group myself. 

There are two reasons for that really.  One being that I generally hold people to a high standard.  Prime example is one pug I was in a bit ago there was this hunter that wanted to join and they asked me (being I am a hunter) to take a look at them and tell them what I thought.  I saw missing gems, missing enchants, mixed ArP and Agility gems, and other minor problems.  I said that the spec was perfect but they were missing things and had a couple of bad gems so I would not take them.  Another person said that they did fantastic DPS.  I said I do not care if they can out DPS me, I would not take someone that does not even enchant or gem their gear. 

If they are not willing to give their gear 100% then they will not give the raid 100%. Even lower cost gems and enchants would have been fine but having nothing means you do not run with me.  I do not care about your gear level, the gem level, the enchant level.  I only care that it is the right type of gear, the right type of gem and the right type of enchant.  Everyone starts off somewhere so low level stuff is fine with me as long as it is the right low level stuff.

The second reason is because I am, as the title here says, a grumpy elf.  More then anything else that makes me grumpy it is stupid people that get to me. Assembling a PuG is like a gauntlet through tons of stupid people.  I hate stupid people.  I hate them with a passion so much that I would rather quit the game then have to deal with them.  I am also not like anyone else.  I do not give a flying fuck if your gear score is 6000, if I do not want you in my group I do not want you in my group.  I do not care if you have the achievement, if I do not want you in my group I do not want you in my group. 

Gear score is a nice way to see the potential of people but if you are a warrior gemming for spirit because it helps your health regen, I do not want you in my group.  If you have a mish mosh of normal and PvP gear because it gives you a higher score I do not want you in my group.  If you are wearing things that are not right for your spec just because they give you a higher gear score then I do not want you in my group.  If you have a 3800 gear score I do not care if you have the achievement for the first quarter of ICC, sure you can do it, you can do it with a 3300 gear score (I've seen it) but I can not tell if you got carried or you are really skilled just from looking at your gear.  So even if it is all the right gear and it is gemmed and enchanted correctly I am not taking the chance. 

Those above people are the ones that will instantly turn from people nicely looking to join a PuG into stupid people in the matter of a heartbeat.  I will be getting hate messages because I turned them down.  I will be called an elitist because I turned them down.  Heck, of all the people I know I am the least elitist of them all.  I've been offered to join the top guild on the server twice before and said no both times because they are like that and I do not want to be around that.  The nerd rage will start to fly and they will now be part of the stupid people which I hate so much.

For those reasons I can not assemble a PuG.  It is not in my to do so.  I can add a third reason as well if I wanted to and that is because over all I am a nice guy.  I would feel bad telling someone that is actually a good person for the job that I do not need them because the spot is full or because I want to get someone that is a bit over geared to make it easier.  I would really feel bad telling them no.

So, if I can delegate the job of assembly for the PuG to someone else and then run it myself we will do just fine.  If I can not find someone to do it I will either have to suck it up and deal with the great masses to stupidity.  I do not want to do that but I know that PuGing is required for a guild to thrive.

Only time will tell, but I am sure as hell glad to be back home now.

Now to start thinking about working on making all those guides again.  But this time I will be smart and also post them here so that way I have a back up of them.