Y’know what?

I like knowing something that someone else wants to know but doesn’t know.

And while I do like to help people and share things I’ve learned, I like it even more when the asker COULD know what they wanted, if they did something simple, but they choose not to take the action required.

“Does anyone have a DPS meter?” Is one of those questions that gives me cruel pleasure.

Pleasure for two reasons: Yes, I have a DPS meter, but no, I’m not going to admit it to you nor share the results of it. If someone else does, that’s their decision, but I won’t do it, not even for friends.

Turning Annoyance Into Pleasure

I’ll admit, I didn’t always feel this pleasure… It used to really annoy me, and I’d frequently say “if you want to know the meters, install them…” but that just served to escalate my own annoyance when the person ultimately responded something confirming just how lazy they really were, and how much they expected others (complete strangers!) to enable their laziness. And of course, they didn’t feel guilty about this at all.

But, at some point in trying to feel good feelings more often than bad, I switched the way I looked at the situation and now find myself feeling pleasure about having knowledge that someone too lazy to get it themselves wants, and purposely withholding it.

According to the works of Esther Hicks (which are odd in some parts but very interesting and helpful in others if you’re into the self-help/”how to live a joyous life” genre of books), I moved from Irritation to Pessimism, which is a step UP the ladder towards Joy and Appreciation and Empowerment, and away from the bottom of the ladder of Fear, Grief, Depression and Powerlessness.

Am I Being Mean?

Yes, it’s true, it could be labelled “not nice” behavior, but I tell ya - I do this in other relationships as well, without guilt: I withhold certain types of information that someone could easily gather themselves if it were truly valuable information to them.

Why? Because I’ve learned that if I just GIVE them the answer they seek, I teach them they don’t need to take responsibility for what they want to acquire/learn - they can rely on the organization or knowledge of others to get what they want. And worse, if they’re someone I run into often, the more answers I give, the more they depend upon me as the source of their answers.

Oops, did I just twist my body while doing a little shrug? Is that why you’re on the floor? Oh, I’m sorry. Looks like you’d better get up, as we’re moving forward.

Funny Who Asks For Posting Of Meters…

I do find it interesting, tho, that the person asking for the DPS meters is either right on top on my charts, or way down at the bottom. Very few of them are in between. Maybe those people have meters and are striving, or maybe they just don’t care?

Do you have some type of damage meter installed and running when you do an instance or a raid?

Or did you take offense to my attitude above, because you’re one of those who cares about the meters but doesn’t have them installed for whatever reason? :)

(and yes, I know some people’s computers are too slow to run many addons. In my mind, a crappy computer is not a valid excuse for relying on complete strangers in a PUG, or even your “buddies” in a Raiding guild. RL friends, that’s up to you.)

Tags: damage meters, joy of pugging, lazy puggers, pugging, pugging strategy, recount

I recently came out of my first experience of That Person Is Too Young To Be Tanking My Dungeon PUG.

I mean, I’ve had experiences before where I knew I was dealing with a young person:

• The Hunter who was enamoured with Eye of the Beast, and would channel that pet-control spell and attack with his pet instead of attacking with the pet AND his bow…

• The countless DPS who never talked on the party line but constantly pulled extra aggro and had to be saved…
  
• The players who type quickly and talk ALL ABOUT THEMSELVES

• And of course, the Jumpers who are SO BORED with any stop of movement that they need to jump around incessantly…

But this one took the cake. I was honestly shocked.

I logged in to my 37 Druid healer with the intent of hitting Scarlet Monestary or Razorfen Downs or Uldaman to burn off some rest bonus.

I got into a party, it was already full and a couple of people were already at the stone to start summons. The party line had light and friendly chatter.

All of these things were good.

In fact, there was no reason to suspect this wouldn’t be a fast-moving, “normal” PUG through a wing or three of the Scarlet Monestary right up until the moment that battle was to begin in the instance.

The tank came in a little behind the rest of us and DPS and myself on heals had taken down the first guy who aggro’s when you’ve got a lower-level member walking into Cathedral, and then we all lined up at the back of the hall and faced down the first hallway, and got ready to get started.

We waited. The tank was there, responded short responses to some of us in whispers when we inquired about her whereabouts, but didn’t move.

We waited longer. Lead was passed to the tank so she could mark if she wanted. Lead was passed on to a different DPS player than started with it, but the tank still didn’t move.

The DPS member who was given lead let us know that the tank was a “slow typer”. I said “She doesn’t need to type, she needs to tank”.

The other two DPS folk, including a Hunter with a squishy pet of 700 hp, get antsy and bored, and decide to let the pet tank the first 2 mobs. We get through it, but most of the fight I had one or another of the mobs hitting ME because of heal aggro to keep us alive.

The tank is still standing, motionless. Tank apparently gets onto vent with the party lead and the party lead lets us know that.

After a bunch of more waiting around, a second group is pulled with the tank involved, but again it’s chaotic and I should have let the pet die… so I’ve got aggro all over me. But they don’t hit hard, so we all live just fine.

I mention that we’d better pick up the pace a bit, or it’s going to take us 3h to get through this wing alone - and others had been wondering if we could do 2-3 wings this run.

At this point, we’re look into the lower courtyard of the Cathedral, and I stay back, as does the Rogue. A mob wanders by and aggro’s on us - the Pally tank is there and does manage to grab the aggro and we down the mob.

After that mob is down I get the shocking whisper:

“She is only 6″

Six. Six?? SIX!!??

I whispered the original lead of the party and relayed the information.

Then, I said on the party line as I turned back towards the door:

“I’m sorry, I’m 6x the age of our tank, I can’t handle that. Good luck”

And left the party.

Now, I don’t mind if 6 year olds play WoW (although that’s a big discussion on its own), and it’s possible I’ve had 6 year old DPSers in my PUGs before that we carried through and coddled, but surely it’s not to be expected for me to tolerate 6 year old TANKS in PUGs…

Note: WoW is officially rated T for Teen.

Tags: bad pug experiences, bad pugs, bad tank, kids on wow, pugs i bow out of, t for teen, too young for wow, too young to pug