Archive for April, 2007

30
Apr

Unsuccessful PuG #10 - RFK

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Dungeons, My Priest, My Warrior, World of Warcraft

Our uber-casual guild doesn’t have enough organization to go through the Old World dungeons very often, so I decided that I’m going to try to PuG a little bit more with the toons I’m looking to advance/practice with/burn off some rest bonus for.

Specifically, my 53 Warrior is often “alone” in advancing, as she’s a level range we don’t have many players/alts in at this point, and the ones we do have aren’t altaholics (yet) and play very very casually in terms of time online.

While I’d like to get into the Outlands Instances, I’d really like to do that as a non-Hunter, mostly because there’s a lot of DPS out there to fill roles, and players have a particularly bad view of Hunters because of our capacity to screw up. My warrior tank (fury/prot “defiance/imp shield block” spec) is what I’ve been working on with the hopes of getting him into the Outlands for guild adventures.

31 Priest Ditches Stalled RFK PuG

This past weekend, however, I decided to take my 31 Priest out for a spin, since she’s got full rest bonus right now and at least one quest to finish in Razorfen Kraul. Plus, having not really run her during instances all that much, I wanted to get some healing practice in.

I’m learning more and more about screening potential PuGs, every time I do it…

First, I know that before putting myself into the LFG tool as a healer, I should already be pretty much “ready” to go, because odds are that I’m not going to sit and rot in the LFG queue for very long before someone contacts me. So, I get mostly ready - just have to hit a bank to drop off all the Jewelcrafting materials I’ve got on me.

I go into the /lfg tool, uncheck ‘auto-join’ and select three dungeons I’d be willing to go into - Razorfen Kraul, Scarlet Monestary - Graveyard and Scarlet Monestary - Library.

I get an invite immediately - NOT preceeded by a whisper. I whisper the guy who invited me and ask him where they’re going, but figure I might as well ‘accept’ and see what the party looks like at the very least. I accept, and there’s a 31 Mage (leader, member of a new zerg guild that’s recently formed on our realm and has other members I’ve had bad experiences with), 2 Shammies between 28-32, a 28 warlock, and myself, and they’re already in Razorfen Kraul at the summoning stone.

I hearth to Shattrath and hit the bank and deposit my stuff, and the leader summons me without whispering or asking if I’m ready. Fortunately, it was perfect timing, I had just finished banking things. I accepted the summon and we started forward.

We hop into the instance. One guy disconnects. Another guy is AFK. The three of us remaining start on some of the beginning guys and take them down pretty easily with minimal healing. I even get to throw in some attacks because the healing is so minimal.

The AFK guy comes back, and we move forward for a bit. We booted the Disconnected guy some time shortly afterwards.

One fight resulted in a bit more aggro than expected, and that’s when I noticed I didn’t bring any water… (well, actually, I did but I didn’t recognize it in my inv at the time! duh) so I asked the mage if I could get some. He asked how many, and since I saw he could only make 2 at a time, I said 6 would do fine for a while. He said “sure, tips r nice” and traded me 6 Conjured Purified Water. I way over-tipped him as is my standard behavior for helping build good will - 75s.

The mage liked that! So, he traded me 20 of the Conjured Fresh Water for which I paid 45s.

Then over the next few fights, I had to tell him FOUR TIMES, and cancel the trade window each and every time because he kept on trying to trade me more water. He even sat there and conjured water and food in mid-battle, conjuring until he was out of mana while the rest of us fought.

The AFK guy fought with us for a bit, and after I finally got the mage to stop trading me water, I saw “tips r nice” on the party line, and saw the mage and the previously AFK Shaman hanging back down the hallway we had moved out of. Fortunately the other Shaman who was moving forward didn’t start to attack while half of our team wasn’t in the vicinity to fight.

Then, the Mage party leader starts to spam the crap out of us with the LFM tool to try to see if other players are looking for a party. He switches between RFK, SM-GY, SM-Lib, SM-Cathedral and back to RFK.

AFKShaman leaves the party without a word, shortly after I said “wow that’s spammy” on the party line. I understand why he left… we were in RFK and the leader was not only spamming us, but looking for players who might not be interested in the dungeon we were currently in.

Of course, MageLeader doesn’t understand why the guy left with no word. A few minutes later he cycles through the LFM tool again, for the same four dungeons. More spam. We stood around for a while. The leader didn’t know about the LookingForGroup channel, so I let him know about it and he LFG’d in there, but presumably didn’t get any responses. He started running circles around me and said “ask guildmates”, but I was the only one online. The third guy in our group was guildless so he couldn’t ask guildmates.

While we had this bit of a downtime, I went up to the mage and /inspected him at one time that he wasn’t running in circles and jumping. It was the Firey enchant on his staff that drew my attention initially, and I asked him about it. He said he got it for free. Internally, I was glad he didn’t pay for it, and gave him the benefit of the doubt.

But then on further inspection, it was apparent that the rest of his equipment was … Melee Mage equipment! +agi, +str, +sta! Sure, there were some blues in there, but they didn’t seem like Mage stuff to me. And while he did know how to sheep a bit and how to frost nova to protect non-tanky people, I certainly didn’t see many fireballs or frostbolts, his mana stayed high throughout most of the fights, and he was right in there, fighting up close (probably with his firey-enchanted staff).

We took on a bit more on our own, but it was looking quite like this guy wasn’t going to be able to pull together a team, and even if he could, we’d have to spend the run reading his continuous drivel about things nobody cared about, and when the fights get particularly tough, I’d probably spend a fair amount of time running back from death, or rezzing his melee mage ass.

I pondered for a bit, wondering what I should say about leaving. I ended up taking the coward’s way out after documenting the party mates in my Karma addon, saying nothing to them and just closing my WoW window.

I plan to contact the guildless guy who was the third in that party, apologize to him for bugging out and invite him to another party that looks like it might be more successful. I didn’t get a chance to determine if he would be a good PUGmate or not, because the other three in the group took more attention.

As for the leader Melee Mage guy, I marked him down 10 points in Karma and will not purposefully party with him again, as I’m looking to party with folks at least as experienced as I am, and hopefully more experienced, so I can improve without having to coach others towards improving all of the time.

1 Comment
26
Apr

Pondering Where To Put My Toons (leader vs follower)

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Dungeons, World of Warcraft

One day I’ll accept this, find my spot, and revel in it.

My challenge? Over time, in whatever I do, I tend to “settle into” a leadership position, where people look to me to start/continue/deal with things.

It doesn’t start out that way of course, because when I start something new, I’m a complete stranger and have to “earn respect” from other people around me. Over time, however, the dynamic changes to where I’m looking to others to get my questions answered/help me reach my goals, to where I’m the one being looked to by others.

Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t.

Right now, I’m struggling with it on a few different fronts in my life, including online while playing World of Warcraft as an Officer in my uber-casual guild.

You see, I don’t mind leading in general, but it _does_ bother me that so many people default to “following” instead of “leading”. It further bothers me that I cannot be like them, able to find someone to follow whose lead is respectable and reliable.

I’ve been thinking, however, about the wonderful part of this problem as it relates to World of Warcraft and alt-o-holics like me:

In the game, I can have multiple personalities, multiple personas, and “lead multiple lives”.

I’m wondering if I should take a toon or two out of the uber-casual guild and put them into a levelling guild that is competently run by an Officer’s team that’s been in place for more than 6 months, and uses some type of scheduling tool for “old world” dungeons, and eventually Outlands. This way, I could have toons that I specifically behave as a “follower” to augment the toons I have where I already behave as a guild organizer and leader type.

It sure would be nice to log in, check out the scheduled runs, sign up for the ones I can make, then be one of those reliable folk who turn up on time, repaired, with consumables and a clear inventory, standing at the instance door, ready to go, and open to learning and suggestion from the class and party leaders. Exactly what every leader hopes for.

Do you have your toons all in one guild, or are they split around various guilds? If they are split, why did you split them that way?

5 Comments
23
Apr

My PUG Toon Rules

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Dungeons, World of Warcraft

I’ve got enough toons to work on advancing at any one time that I can start to specialize certain functions beyond the standard - Professions.

This Druid Healer toon I’m working on as a Pick-up Group toon is going to take FOREVER to get to 60, nevermind 70. Her role is to give me an anonymous toon to play when I don’t want to socialize with friends, but instead just want to play for the sake of playing, without having to “socialize” so much.

I’ve decided that this toon, as a healer especially, is not going to lead any groups. She’ll join groups that have a leader, but if it becomes clear that there’s no real “leader” in the group and everyone’s hoping someone else will step up, I’m going to take my healer ass somewhere else. I do enough leading with my Hunter and Warrior toons.

Sunday afternoon, about 4PM was an example, and a small learning experience for me. I saw someone LFGing for an RFC group, so I whispered to them that I’d hop over to my Druid Healer alt in order to join them, and I did it right then, without having asked any questions. That was my first mistake.

So, I hop over and join a party, and there’s three of us in it - two level 12’s (a hunter and a warlock) and myself at 14. The Hunter is the leader of the party, and he LFG’s on the LookingForGroup channel like this:

“LF2M RFC”

Which is fine in the most basic sense, but it demonstrated a bit of lack of experience as well, since “tank” and “healer” are the two hardest positions to fill in a team, and generally when you have one or the other, your LFG message asks specifically for the other and sometimes even mentions that one position has already been filled.

So, while it’s a minor infraction, this was a red flag, and added in with my mistake of not confirming the party was already mostly-full, that’s #2 in terms of black marks against the PUG itself.

Then, the third and final black mark - there’s no LFG messages being sent to General, LookingForGroup or anything over the past 5-10 minutes, and the party leader says:

“Does anyone know anyone else who can come?”

At that point, I bugged out and went back to grinding with my (now) level 38 Mage.

What Did I Learn?

I’m going to be very picky about my PUGs with this toon, and get out early instead of suffering. For this reason, here are some of the things I believe I’ll start doing/looking for:

  • I’m not leading the group. If there’s not already a semi-confident leader, I’m bugging out, because I don’t want to participate in wishy-washy confused advancement on a realm where 70%+ of lowbies are alts of higher level toons.
  • I’m willing to be the main healer in a group, but I’ll be asking them to call on me when they’ve got the rest of the group secured, so I can grind on other alts in the mean time. My part in this deal is that I agree to be dungeon-ready (repaired, stocked with consumables, in the right gear) so I’m not the one slowing down the group.
  • I’ll never offer to join a group that is “LF2M, need tank and healer” since they’re demonstrating a strong lack of understanding of who to get into a party first, or they simply haven’t developed friendships/relationships with tanks and healers period, which is a problem on its own, especially at lvl 20+ for folks who obviously know the dungeons they’re in.

Then, there’s things I don’t really care about, exactly. I mean, I may award or remove Karma points for them (++karma = +10 pts, +karma = +5 pts, -karma = -5 pts, —karma = -10pts), but they won’t make me leave or get me overly stressed:

  • Rolling need without (being polite and) asking on the Group line first
  • Ninja’ing chests or items that other players in the group wanted to use
  • Nuke-happy mages dying (if they bitch about lack of heals -karma. If they know they caused their own death by pulling aggro and are okay with it, ++karma)
  • Tanks and shields (druid tanks don’t count here of course, but ++karma for Pally and Warrior tanks who show up with a shield equipped and don’t need to be asked. —karma if a Warrior/Pally is asked if he has a shield and the answer is “no”.
  • Knowledge of primary roles (tank is about holding aggro while others burn down the targets, DPS is about burning down the targets without pulling aggro, healing is about keeping the main tank up while providing occasional emergency support to DPSers who pull aggro) can result in a ++karma or a —karma or anything in between.
  • Knowledge of support functions (I’m very weak here, but certain classes can cleanse certain debuffs, and having an on-the-ball party mate can help a lot with those debuffs)

In the end, I’ll have a lot more Karma-ized information about players who are progressing through the levels at the same time as this Druid healer toon is. As I progress I’ll continue to post the stories and we’ll see how it goes :)

Oh, btw, the lvl 12 hunter who started this Sunday afternoon party and couldn’t get it populated got -10 karma. In order to get back to “average” he’ll need to be in a couple parties I get into, and perform well. I suppose the odds are, however, that I’ll never see him again.

We’ll see!

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