Tales from the Random Pug - 2nd story

Random pugs never seize to amuse me! The other day I did a SFK run with my druid, who was dpsing. We had a tank who was rather over-confident about his abilities. I don't think tanks suck because they lose aggro from time to time. I do however think tanks should rethink their playstyle when they aggro entire rooms, die in 2 seconds and then yell at the healer. This run we had that kind of tank. He aggroed the entire room with Commander Springvale, note that all those mobs silence. Not only could he not hold aggro, since being silenced he couldn't thunder clap. The healer who desperately tried to keep him alive was also silenced most of the time and of course we wiped. The tank goes on to caps profanities at the healer, who justly decides he deserves better and leaves.

In comes a paladin. The first thing he tells us is that he's usually a tank, but he can also heal if needed. Apparently he has checked himself as healer in the lfg-tool, since that is what he came to us as. Everything works fine, I didn't even check if he had a proper healing gear or talents because his healing kept us alive well enough.

After killing Fenrus the Devourer, the Void Bracers (mail, 8 strength) drop from the voidwalkers. Both the tank and the paladin need on them and the paladin wins. And the tank immediately goes capsing profanities again.

Now, one can argue whether it was ok for the paladin to need on those bracers. It is true he wasn't tanking, and in one way I agree with people who say that you should only need on items that suit the role you're currently playing in the instance. On the other hand the paladin had clearly stated that he was interested in tank loot, but only healed because he could. In a way we should be happy since it's actually more difficult to find a healer, or at least as difficult, as a tank in low levels. The tank didn't agree of course. There was some shouting and I said I thought it was ok for the paladin to need on those bracers. We're talking level 20 item here, it's not like it's the end of the world! And it wasn't ninjaing since the paladin was main spec tank. But mostly I think I agreed with the paladin because I didn't want to agree with the warrior tank :P

The warrior was whiny the rest of the instance, randomly shouting noob left and right, pulling Arugal prematurely so we had to fight him and the three adds below at once. But we made it.

I thanked for the run (got a macro for it) and left and went on with my business. 15 minutes later I had forgotten all about it.

Until the day after. I queue up and get an instance fairly fast (considering I queued as dps) for BFD. Lo and behold, the tank for the instance is the same paladin who was healing me the day before in SFK! So at least he wasn't lying about that whole "I'm usually a tank"-thingy. I was just about to say hello to him to see if he remembered me and the "fun" run we had had the day before, but he got before me.

As you can see from the above message it wasn't the friendly hello I was about to give him (I am the Giskard he is capsing about). I was... not shocked really. Confused is probably the right word. Had he really totally forgotten what had happened the day before? How he and the warrior argued, and how I stood up for him? He had not only forgotten it, he had actually turned it all around in his head so that somehow I became the villain. I was cool about it, since I thought that he'd surely realize his mistake any second. I tried to explain - "no no, you argued with the warrior. The tank? Remember? I was on your side? Remember?". I even remembered the warriors name. But it had no effect. The guy was completely sure I was the asshole from the day before, left the group and so the whole party disbanded. I was... amused. Confused, puzzled and amused. In a way this was hilarous! The way a flying pig would be hilarious. It's just so weird you don't really know how to react.

I also learned something valuable. Never take sides in random pugs. The person won't just have forgotten about it the next 15 minutes, he'll even think you were the bad guy in the end.