Results tagged “PUGs” from Bitter Roots

With my druid being 80 now, I've been working on gearing up.  I've done Naxx (25) once now and I'm down for 10-man on Thursday.  I'm well over the minimum gear requirements, so now it's tweaking and upgrading with shiny shiny purples. 

I usually enjoy PUGing.  I like meeting new people and testing my skills.  However, today I joined a PUG and I left after the first wipe.  Why?

Point 1: Get to the stone with two other people and do my usual /inspect because I'm nosy.  DK with mostly greens.  Warrior with blues, but all the gem slots empty.  Uh oh.

Point 2: I finally get around to looking at who's in the group.  Two warriors, two DKs.  Uh oh.

Point 3: DKs disagree on who tanks.  One says "Frost DK should tank" and the other (unholy)disagrees.  Frost one ends up tanking, has a bunch of abilities bound to /say macros.  Spam ensues.  Uh oh.

Point 4: Almost die on trash because I get aggro and something runs up and whacks me in the face.

Point 5: Then we wipe because I get killed in the room with all the proto drakes (we're in Utgarde Keep).  Tank had been skipping a bunch of them.  Didn't see what happened as was too busy healing everyone, not sure if it was cone breath or aggro.

Made excuses, left before getting locked to it (daily heroic).

Was I too fast to leave?  Am I getting to be a healing snob?

When I hit 80, I did a round of CoS, UP, Occulus and got some gear, along with some reputation and AH stuff.  Only then did I start doing heroics.  I got enchants and gems, although I do have my own enchanter and jewelcrafter, so I admit it's easier than for some people.  I just think that not having at least the common gems in your gear is sheer laziness, as they aren't expensive and can just be grabbed from the AH.

I spent some time on Yolana yesterday, tanking Arcatraz.  We were in there for a mage friend but I walked out with the chestpiece of the bold.  It was pretty cool though, because I went in with Airbringer, Megawatt and Daelin and a priest that we found on the LFG channel.  I've been having really good luck with PUGs lately.  When Mega and I came out of Kara on Thursday I was asked to tank an Old Hillsbrad run, and that was an amazing group.  Then not long after Yol hit 70 I went to Botanica with one friend and three PUG'ers, and that was GREAT. 

 

I've found that putting together a PUG on a tank feels better to me.  As a tank you have a lot of control over the group... generally you're the one marking things, you do the pulling (unless you have an over-enthusiastic DPS/CC'er) and so you're setting the pace.  As a healer you just kinda stay behind the rest and drink a lot, hoping the tank doesn't pull when you're on 10% mana. 

 

I then spent some time with Megawatt on his newly-respecced level 65 resto druid.  He'd been levelling with his wife who plays a holy priest, so he has pretty much no healing gear right now.  I forsee many instance runs this week.  I spent a happy half an hour or so going over the theories and practices of healing as a resto druid (lifebloom, lifebloom, lifebloom, rejuv, regrowth, lifebloom, repeat until sick). 

 

Once he gets this character to 70, he'll join me and a few of our other friends in having the "Holy Trio" of characters - a tank, a DPS and a healer.

 

I've mentioned before, but I really love having the three characters.  It also works incredibly well when we want to do an instance, because we can fill in those three roles between us and then take pretty much anyone for the other two spots.  Admosmori also has a healer and is working on a tank, and so are a few of my other friends.  Admittedly, sometimes it leads to alt-itis where the individual characters suffer because you're spreading the time too thin, but I think around 3 is the magic number. 

 

Of course, I'm aiming to get my currently-63 warlock up to 70 at some point soonish, just because I want to rock the raiding damage meters, but we won't talk about that right now.