If you don't get given you learn to take. And I will take you.
So I ran Shadow Labs with Herk's butt-ugly Druid. Earlier, he, I and our friend's lock had done some remedial level 70 crap. Get the key to shat labs, kill uvuoulososo, whatever.
I drop the earth elemental, and let Herk heal. Elemental dies. Sigh. Itsa miscommunication thing, I think. I say, heal the elemental, he thinks... "heal the shaman!"
I pull the fel reaver with a weak lightning bolt (for the shat hall key quest) and take a hit or two while waiting for the elemental can get aggro. So for a sec I got aggro. No problem... I can heal myself, and elemental will get aggro offa me soon enough. Herk sees me taking damage, starts healing me, doesn't get heal off on elemental fast enough after aggro shifts, elemental goes down. This happens twice. Both times, herk switches to healing me. No biggie... as I said, miscommunication...
BTW.. we wiped the first fel reaver try after a surprise crit killed my shammy... Herk let me get too low in the eternal healer "I doan wanna waste a healing crit!" foolishness. Second time I called Melvin's mage in, and we waxed the fel reaver, tho Melvin bit it. Melvin complained that I didn't have Omen up, and so he pulled aggro around 30% and bit the dirt tamale. I pointed out that mages have had a neat ability called ice block for about 2 months, and that he neglected to use it...
Anyway... my initial impressions of Herk's healing. He knows the advanced stuff, but not the basics. Hesa outthinker. First task in an uncertain situation with off spec tank... don't cut it close.
Then we do Shadow Labs. Late saturday night, so late I was planning on just freaking logging. But Herk gets lonely online at night... and wanted to get his druid the first key part. No problem. I go with Majeure. We getta warrior tank, rogue and shammy to fill out party, and gtg.
Show up at summon stone, and alliance is bein bitchy again. One of the midrange instance groups is ganking, and then our party shows up and waxes em. Herk is all but unkillable, and maj is just freaking pain for 5 level 65ish allies to deal with.
So... first impressions. Warrior comes over, looks at Herk's druid and says "Your balance! What the hell?" Herk soothes em with the magic formula... "I gotta +1k bonus heals... you're gonna be fine."
Rogue is level 69. Sigh. O.K. gear but still...
And L70 shammy is enhance. And his gear is crap. I mean, friggin CRAP. I aint joking. I've bitched about crappy or badly chosen hunter gear.... this guy was pathetic. No +spirit crap, thank god, but way too much friggin agility, and not enough +str. AND he was wearing a level 35 ring and the level 44ish agil ring you get offa the ZF main quest. This is the first time I've seen a level 70 in level 35 gear. It was so bad the warrior called him out on it...
A note on that... when warrior bitched about Herk's build, Herk /w me a snide little comment. Ima sorry, but i've had enough shit runs that I think a warrior checking gear isa awesome sign.
K.. enhance shammy then decides he has somewhere else to be. We replace him with an elemental shammy. Again... night of the living dead shammies. This guy was pretty lame. The 69 rogue ended up beating him on damage meters... sigh. Not by much, but still. My problem... I was tired, and not into the teaching n00bs mood. So I didn't point out that the windfury totem he put up clashed with the flametongue totem he ALSO put up.
I think I spoke to him twice in the run. On first boss..
"Shammy, heal!"
"That's O.K., I'm fine, back to full health!"
"No, heal the tank, druid is OOM..."
And just after, when he got jumped by one of those stealthed assassins... he had a terminal case of "keep blasting even after you pull aggroitus." I see the assassin, rest of party is outta range for at least a few seconds, so I run up and frost nova the assassin. The shammy just stays there, right next to him, casting bolts and takin damage...
"MOVE"
K... so the point of all this? Aside from Maj, no one is particularly well geared. At least one of the party is a c- grade fool. Healer is off spec. Other dps is underlevel. Tank was proficient, but a little slow... I'd do a sheep pull, run the three melee mobs right by him, and he had probs establishing aggro on all three... (hint, charge and either demoral shout or thunderclap...) aside from that little bitch fest, he was pretty good on single targets... when the idiot shammy wasn't struck with sudden "attack the mob the tank ain't onitus."
And we ran the instance without a single death. Tank did well, Herk healed like a pro (I think he saves his best work for healing warriors... and just hates elementals...). Only bad healing spot came on first boss, where Herk got down to 3% mana when we had boss near death... see above... and BTW... if you an off healer... friggin watch the healer's mana so you can take over when you need to. A shame it fell on the mage to notice this crap... anyway, Herk potted and finished the job.
So really.. it doesn't take much for a decent PUG group. Not really good gear, not uber players... just keep to the basics... I had a lotta faith in the tank, almost as much in the healer, but still woulda doubted a zero group repair bill at the end... a greatly pleasant surprise.
A Melvin note. Melvin now has a level 62ish druid. He wanted a druid so he'd have a tank. I asked him if he'd done Ramparts or BF... he said no... he's feral spec, but didn't put anything in the tanking talents... he'll start tanking when he turns 70... cuz its not like he's gonna need any practice beforehand...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Thats better then most pugs I've been in. I've had decent geared pugs that couldn't clear out SLabs.
As far as Melvin goes he needs to learn at some point to tank but lvl 70 is not the level to do it at. I hated with my original druid when people would ask me to heal cause I was specced feral and didn't have any experience. Then I get yelled at by the group for not being a good healer and for pulling aggro. I left that group quickly. Granted I don't expect Melvin to fail miserably at lvl 70 trying to tank but if you expect to go full on dps you might look elsewhere cause a big repair is going to be had for whomever pulls aggro from him that he can't overtake again.
The snide comment came after he told me to respec Resto... 2x! After I told him I had +1k heals!
Heck, I regularly MHed for 5 mans as a feral druid in healing gear. Druids are ridiculous for regular 5 man content, they can really do everything.
As for Melvin...I kinda just have to laugh. He seems like a guy who mostly understands what he's doing, and is sorta right about the things he says, but makes one or two logical missteps and completely torpedoes himself. I mean, it's not insane to respec at 70 and learn a new role, but you have to train yourself first on easy content. If he respecs feral and then goes off to tank for other lvl 70s (and I can easily picture this happening), he's going to be a menace to his groups. He could also respec at 70 and start off tanking Ramparts for a group of 60s though, and that would probably be a reasonable idea.
Melvin needs to be pushed out of his comfort zone and constructively persuaded into different situations. That is what would expand his play style and make him better, but he gets his ideas that sometimes make no sense to the average person. If melvin ever did learn to take constructive criticism and adapt, we wouldn't have the amusement that is Melvin.
Post a Comment