Tales from the Random Pug - 7th story

Although getting into bad pugs isn't uncommon, I rarely get into pugs that are so bad you start looking around to see if you're on Candid Camera. But this happened to me the other night, as some of you might've noticed by my shocked and rambling Tweets (yes I am hanging with the cool kids at Twitter now!). This group was so bad, it was like a comedy or parody of WoW-pugging, you know the kind of group of players you'd throw together to exaggerate the horror of pugging. And just when you thought it couldn't get worse... it did. This story has a nice Shyamalanesque twist in the end, but I dare believe it is better than his are (except Sixth Sense, I liked that one).

It all started out when I decided to do a late night run on my blood dk. I like tanking on my dk, it's ridiculously easy and I would also get the satchel. I queue up and get into the dungeon after some wait (!). I face Erudax, with one add. Sweet! Only last boss, and goodie bag. 5 minutes worth of trouble and I get my satchel, I could even have the time to do another instance after this one. The group consists of me, a holydin, an enhancement shaman, a mage and a warrior. The shaman quickly tells us that they've spent some time in this instance because they've had some bad people. I also think I recognize the holydins name. She had a very special name, and I remember I had done a Throne of the Tides earlier that day in which she dpsd. So I figure I've been very lucky to randomly get into an instance with only last boss left to kill and with a dude (or dudette) I did an instance with earlier today! Coincidence? Freaky. I ask if everyone are ready, they say yes (or nothing at all) and we start the fight.

Everything is going along just fine until the first Shadow Gale comes up. The mage and the warrior don't move, and both die. We wipe because our remaining dps is too low to handle the adds. I tell the mage and the warrior that there is way less shame in admitting that you don't know tacs prior to engaging the boss, than having the group wipe because you didn't know what to do. Me and the paladin go on to explain the tactics, asking if the warrior and mage have understood everything or anything. They don't say a word. In fact they haven't for the entire time. I say that maybe they're young and don't speak english, it happens. The warrior decides that this is an excellent time to call me a "fuckface". I tell him that at least he just confirmed to me that he's probably a child. Sadly enough we can't kick this fine gentleman, because there have been too many kicks in this party already. Let me just say, I'm not surprised. We engage the boss. The first shadow gale that comes up, the mage and warrior dies again. The shaman, by then probably plenty frustrated with a group he's spent hours with (according to the paladin they had been there for 2,5 hours) decides to leave mid combat, fortunately so does the warrior.

In comes a feral druid who shares the wipe with us, and while we corpse run back a hunter joins the group. We ask them if they know tactics and the hunter says no, but that he is a quick learner. We explain them to him. First shadow gale, the hunter dies. He gets a combat res (yes, I have cr now!). Second shadow gale, hunter and mage dies. Progress, the mage survived one gale! We wipe and run back.

Fourth try, the hunter and mage have actually learned to move out of shadow gale now, at least most of the time. But alas, their dps is abyssmall. And I don't mean "omg, they don't do 20k dps? Lololol". I mean they're at 5k dps. And not just the hunter and mage, but unfortunately the feral druid as well. I'm doing 9k and vastly outperforming them, also the mage doesn't seem to know what Time Warp is because he doesn't use it when asked to, which leads to us wiping because the adds don't go down quick enough.

During the corpse run we kindly (honestly) ask the mage to leave. We tell him that we just can't complete the instance with him in the group, it's nothing personal, it's just raw facts. He keeps on dying and he performs the worst of us all (which really is saying a lot). He says "ok" and leaves. I do feel sorry for the guy, because he wasn't a bad person, just a bad player. If I could've kept him I would. He did actually, after a couple of wipes, do some questions about the tactics (it speaks!), and I could tell that he was really trying. Unfortunately (and I mean that) just trying isn't always good enough. In comes a priest.

We ask him if he knows tacs. I plead him to please do more than 5k dps (jokingly really, because most people at level 85 could stare at a mob for 5k dps, they'd do more damage with auto attacks only). I tell the group that he can't possibly be worse than the mage and that we will surely make it this time! The priest says nothing. We fear the worst, yet cling to hope. He just must be better than what we already have had so far. Can you possibly get five überfails into one group in the same night (ok the druid and hunter were just bads, not überfails)? I start the fight. What does the priest do?

He starts smiting. For petes sake! He's a holy priest whos signed up as dps, for some forsaken reason. I just stare at the screen and think "my lawd, this can't be happening? This isn't real. Someone is toying with me. He's really a GM who's laughing his ass off at us right now". Maybe he was. In any case he actually managed to do less damage than the mage but hey! At least he moves from shadow gale. He doesn't attack adds, but you can't get it all I suppose. By now I'm actually starting to giggle. I can't even be mad because this is just hilarious. I'm starting to understand Donald Duck in that show they always have us watch at Christmas here in Sweden. The priest does some 3-4k dps, but because he was offhealing we managed to finish the boss anyway. Apparently healing and smiting was his dps rotation. Our dps was so bad I could use two 3 minute cooldowns, I think the whole fight took some 5 minutes in total. But at least we made it. I still can't believe that it really happened. It feels like a nightmare, or like I accidentally fell into a rabbit hole when I pressed that "join queue" button. At least I can comfort myself with the thought that few pugs will be that bad in a long time. Or at least, that is what I dearly hope.