January News/Discussion

[NiteFox]

On that note: Worst group member you've ever had?

I can name two that are on about equal footing.

The first came during my first run through Ramparts normal not long after TBC went live. He was a tauren warrior, and pretty much the only option the group had as a tank. The party consisted of said tank, myself (tauren/hunter), a second hunter (who was absolutely sublime, and we met again a good few months later in Steam Vaults and she had about as many poor memories of this run as I did), a warlock and a priest.

So this is how the run went. The warrior charged at goddamned everything. The hunters would set up our traps, and we were all on the same page as to how each pull would go, but it turned out the warrior was illiterate. There were many messy deaths as the tank kept charging into packs, only to aggro a nearby pack or a patrol we had all seen. For the first time in a good while, I actually had a paper doll for damage up on my screen, and I couldn't have been the only one. It's the first (and only) instance I've been a part of where we all took an aggreed-upon break to have our gear repaired.

Clearing our way to Gargolmar took the better part of an hour. I am not kidding. We wiped on Gargolmar again, purely because the warrior seemed fond of breaking the traps we'd put on Gargolmar and one of his patrol, as well as due to the fact that he charged at the boss at a point where he would aggro a static pack of trash. By that point, we were all ready to either tear this warrior a new one, or just quit the instance. Warrior then made the decision for us by bandaging up to full health after the Gargolmar fight and charging the next pack of trash (and a patrol, natch) before the rest of the party had managed to recuperate. Cue wipe. So we both tore him out and quit the instance, with the priest first to do so. I remember putting him on my ignore list.

The second was a hunter. Now I'm a big advocate for the absolute abolishment of the word "huntard" and the banning of any account of any player using it, but if so then I'd have trouble finding a word to describe this hunter.

I think I'll settle on two: Whiny moron.

Shadow Labyrinth normal. I had two goals: The most immediate was to get part of the key for the Kara attunement, the second was to hope and pray that Murmur would finally drop his Sonic Spear for me. A troll hunter was putting together a party for said instance, and I actually recognised him from the previous day; I'd joined up with him to run Shadow Lab, but the run was aborted due to lack of a healer. So I sign up with him, party had a third DPS (Feral druid) and a healer (Resto shammy, who turned out to be the best little Resto shammy in the world, bless 'er.) in tow already, and a tank quickly joined (Prot paladin) who was promoted to leader.

We hadn't even opened up the gate when the other hunter began vocalising his desire to have Murmur's Spear. Well, no biggie, I'd just have to compete on him for the roll if it dropped, though I'd probably feel bad if I won it. We had a bit of a problem to start with when the Paladin accidentally narked off a patrol on a trash pull before Hellmaw (He had been using Avenger's Shield to pull until then, and after said wipe I offered to Misdirect pull from then on in, which worked for the rest of the instance.). The hunter was a moderately better player than the warrior from Ramparts, even if he had no clue how to trap and had a fondness for firing at my trapped mobs. We suffered a partial wipe just before Blackheart the Inciter which was caused by the hunter standing in the path of a patrol, but so far so good.

But he still wouldn't shut up about the Sonic Spear. It seemed that every other line that popped up in party chat was about that damn spear, and it was annoying the hell out of us. I, in the hope of letting him know that there was some competition for the spear, mentioned that I wouldn't mind it too. Those words. "I wouldn't mind it too."

A few minutes later, the hunter had delved into his AtlasLoot library and whispered me with a suggestion: "This <A blue strength polearm> would be better for you than that axe."

I laughed in real life over being suggested a downgrade on my current stat stick, and whispered what he had said to me to the healer. The healer wasn't really surprised and told me "If the Spear drops, roll on it. Anything to shut him up."

So we started on Blackheart, and due to some pre-boss fight dicking about I stupidly did the fight wearing these instead of my usual chest piece. Granted, the fight seemed longer than it should have been, but when the druid posted the damage metres for that fight I was surprised (or even not) to learn that I had still out-DPSed the other hunter, who was languishing just above the healer for damage. I sheepishly put my shirt back on, and decided to inspect the other hunter: A lot of green and some blue leather, with a lot of strength, some intellect on the non-leather gear, and practically zero agility. My competition was a guy running in druid leathers.

The instance rapidly went downhill. The hunter's survivability dropped significantly, and we were spending a lot of time waiting for corpse runs. And it seemed that every second he was on autorun, or we were recouping our mana, he would keep on and on about that Spear. We get to Grandmaster Vorpil, and tank asks if we all know the tactics. Only the hunter and druid hadn't run the instance before, so the tactics were explained to the druid and largely understood.

I suggested (Which meant that what followed could largely be my fault) that, as ranged DPS, the two hunters should not DPS Vorpil and concentrate on killing the adds before they heal him. Tank mentions that's an excellent idea, healer mentions that it's a tactic that put him through the instance before, and all five party members agree on the plan: Tank tanks, healer heals, druid DPSes Vorpil, and the two hunters stop those crucial adds at any cost.

So how was it that Vorpil managed to heal himself for so much that my HP report on him suffered an integer underflow reporting his current HP as something like minus several million? Other hunter forgot the plan, instead concentrating on doing his crappy DPS on the boss rather than the adds which he could have killed and controlled? I simply couldn't keep up with killing them to prevent a substantial chunk of them healing Vorpil, and all the while the tank was screaming "Kill the F$%@ing adds!" at the hunter. Tank dies, druid takes over tanking, healer dies, druid takes over healing and my pet takes over tanking, and I just throw as much DPS into Vorpil, only managing to bring him down before my pet dies. Long, awkward silence occurs as we glower at the hunter while the druid resses tank and healer. Hunter comment, "That took a long time."

No #$%&.

"C'mon, let's go. I want my Spear."

We slaughter our way to Murmur, while patiently explaining the Murmur strategy to the hunter: Pet on standby (We didn't really trust him not to be able to control his pet on the back and forth on the Sonic Booms), and just get the hell away if he pulls you in. Oh, and if we wipe, that's it. We're not running this again. As it happened, the other hunter did die on Murmur, but we spanked Murmur down competently.

Guess what dropped? First thing that happened was the hunter automatically clicked on Need. Second thing that happened was that the rest of the party clicked on Pass.

Third and fourth thing that happened was both the healer and the tank whispering to me "Go on, roll on it." Which I did. "You receive loot, [Sonic Spear]", and we all cheered. I equipped it straight away, grinned, and casually said "Right, Kara key next." Tank and healer helped, the druid went for a nice, long lie down somewhere in the dark, and the other hunter quit the group before I had even activated the container.

I do feel bad about taking the roll and winning it (By a wide margin. His 23 roll to my 97), but I still keep trying to convince myself that I deserved the damn drop more than he did.