An irritating annoyance

I have noticed a few things while running lower level LFD content. Things that are like a mild sunburn on a warm summers day.

Annoying, but not that big of a deal really.

By lower level I mean everything from Ragefire Chasm to Blackrock Depths. I have yet to make it to Outlands in the LFD, though from all accounts I can look forward to a lot of misery there as newly minted Dps DK’s try tanking for the faster queue.

Meh, if it bugs me too much I’ll just pull on my extra tough Bear Druid pants and tank for a few levels myself. That, however, is a tale for another day.

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In the modern day of dual specs it is common for players to have a soloing spec and an instancing spec to make their leveling more efficient.  For a time I was rolling as Resto / Feral, now I am running as Resto / Balance (love my lazerchicken).

The point being that ever since level 40 I have been queueing both Dps and Heals. For the most part I am getting called on to heal, and thats great. In fact that is why I rolled the Druid in the first place. To that end I have made a macro that depending on what spec I am currently in, and what I am called to play, I may use at the beginning of an instance. It goes something like this.

Hello. I was in my other spec and gear set running circles around Dalaran when the call came in. Everyone gather up for your Druid buffs, and then I will need a sec to swap specs and drink my water gauge back to full.

This is often followed by half the group running off towards the first pack of mobs (out of range of getting either buffed or healed) and starting to pull things.

If they are lucky they have a Dps with them that has some healing spells, since I just swapped specs and I am sitting OOM watching them all die.

Public service announcement: If a group member says something that sounds anything like “Wait, I need to drink” you should listen. Particularly if that person is your tank or healer. The digital life you save might be your own.

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Speaking of letting people have the resources to do their job….

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For those who may not know this Druids and Warriors are what I like to call rage tanks, what with them using that as their primary resource for tanking. Rage tanks are like the energizer bunny, they can just keep on going and going and going as long as they are doing their job they will rarely ever run short on rage to do it with.

The trade off here is that they start off with an empty rage bar.

You know those football players you see in the movies? The ones that smack each other about the head and shoulders to get pumped up before a game? Remind you of anything?

Your friendly neighborhood rage tank needs to get smacked around a bit to get wound up and start smacking back.

If everyone were to just give them a good solid count to ten before beginning to AOE the crap out of everything life would be much better for everyone.

Believe it or not waiting those few seconds will actually save you time in the long run, as your healer won’t have to sit and drink for thirty seconds after every other pull. Not having to blow their cooldowns and spam heal everyone makes their mana last much longer.

We won’t even get into how much time you lose running back from a wipe. Hell, in BRD it seems that it takes as long to run back as it does to run the damn instance.

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The final annoyance for the day is the way a few people decide to talk to others. Sometimes its some EJ quoting, gearscore bragging, recount posting, asshat. Other times it’s the guy that thinks using offensive language is somehow a funny thing.  (His favorite reply when called out on it: “I wuz just joking, lol.  Lighten up.) Sometimes, like a few nights ago, it can get downright ugly.

That night I sat and watched two dps players in the group completely lose it on one another. Players who by the way had played quite well together through all of Maradon orange, down the falls, and we were right in front of  Princess Theradras . Literally all the trash was cleared and we were drinking up before the final pull.

One of the players decided that apparently that time was as good as any to start making racist comments, equating the rather ugly boss we were about to kill to an ethnic group he apparently did not like.

I was a bit offended, and said as much in chat. Something to the effect of “That wasn’t funny in grade school, and it’s not funny now.”

One of the other Dps players was far more vocal about being offended than I, apparently belonging to said ethnic group. Honestly I don’t blame him for tearing into the guy, that crap is exactly that. Crap.

Long story short ( a first for me, I know) is that the group collapsed at that point, never finishing the final boss and my ignore list got ever so slightly longer.

I did however find out a bit of useful information. Possibly as a fix for the exploit that happened to me (and many others) some time ago, you can no longer kick a player from the group after the official “you just finished the instance” boss goes down.

The moral of that little story? You never know who is behind the other avatars you are running with. Keep that in mind if you decide to “crack a joke” that some might find offensive.

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