Our uber-casual guild doesn't have enough organization to go through the Old World dungeons very often, so I decided that I'm going to try to PuG a little bit more with the toons I'm looking to advance/practice with/burn off some rest bonus for.
Specifically, my 53 Warrior is often "alone" in advancing, as she's a level range we don't have many players/alts in at this point, and the ones we do have aren't altaholics (yet) and play very very casually in terms of time online.
While I'd like to get into the Outlands Instances, I'd really like to do that as a non-Hunter, mostly because there's a lot of DPS out there to fill roles, and players have a particularly bad view of Hunters because of our capacity to screw up. My warrior tank (fury/prot "defiance/imp shield block" spec) is what I've been working on with the hopes of getting him into the Outlands for guild adventures.
31 Priest Ditches Stalled RFK PuG
This past weekend, however, I decided to take my 31 Priest out for a spin, since she's got full rest bonus right now and at least one quest to finish in Razorfen Kraul. Plus, having not really run her during instances all that much, I wanted to get some healing practice in.
I'm learning more and more about screening potential PuGs, every time I do it...
First, I know that before putting myself into the LFG tool as a healer, I should already be pretty much "ready" to go, because odds are that I'm not going to sit and rot in the LFG queue for very long before someone contacts me. So, I get mostly ready - just have to hit a bank to drop off all the Jewelcrafting materials I've got on me.
I go into the /lfg tool, uncheck 'auto-join' and select three dungeons I'd be willing to go into - Razorfen Kraul, Scarlet Monestary - Graveyard and Scarlet Monestary - Library.
I get an invite immediately - NOT preceeded by a whisper. I whisper the guy who invited me and ask him where they're going, but figure I might as well 'accept' and see what the party looks like at the very least. I accept, and there's a 31 Mage (leader, member of a new zerg guild that's recently formed on our realm and has other members I've had bad experiences with), 2 Shammies between 28-32, a 28 warlock, and myself, and they're already in Razorfen Kraul at the summoning stone.
I hearth to Shattrath and hit the bank and deposit my stuff, and the leader summons me without whispering or asking if I'm ready. Fortunately, it was perfect timing, I had just finished banking things. I accepted the summon and we started forward.
We hop into the instance. One guy disconnects. Another guy is AFK. The three of us remaining start on some of the beginning guys and take them down pretty easily with minimal healing. I even get to throw in some attacks because the healing is so minimal.
The AFK guy comes back, and we move forward for a bit. We booted the Disconnected guy some time shortly afterwards.
One fight resulted in a bit more aggro than expected, and that's when I noticed I didn't bring any water... (well, actually, I did but I didn't recognize it in my inv at the time! duh) so I asked the mage if I could get some. He asked how many, and since I saw he could only make 2 at a time, I said 6 would do fine for a while. He said "sure, tips r nice" and traded me 6 Conjured Purified Water
Requires Level 15
Use: Restores 835 mana over 24 seconds. Must remain seated while drinking.
Item display is courtesy world of warcraft.allakhazam.com. ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">Conjured Purified Water. I way over-tipped him as is my standard behavior for helping build good will - 75s.
The mage liked that! So, he traded me 20 of the Conjured Fresh Water
Requires Level 5
Use: Restores 436 mana over 21 seconds. Must remain seated while drinking.
Item display is courtesy world of warcraft.allakhazam.com. ',VAUTO,HAUTO,FULLHTML);" onmouseout="return nd();">Conjured Fresh Water for which I paid 45s.
Then over the next few fights, I had to tell him FOUR TIMES, and cancel the trade window each and every time because he kept on trying to trade me more water. He even sat there and conjured water and food in mid-battle, conjuring until he was out of mana while the rest of us fought.
The AFK guy fought with us for a bit, and after I finally got the mage to stop trading me water, I saw "tips r nice" on the party line, and saw the mage and the previously AFK Shaman hanging back down the hallway we had moved out of. Fortunately the other Shaman who was moving forward didn't start to attack while half of our team wasn't in the vicinity to fight.
Then, the Mage party leader starts to spam the crap out of us with the LFM tool to try to see if other players are looking for a party. He switches between RFK, SM-GY, SM-Lib, SM-Cathedral and back to RFK.
AFKShaman leaves the party without a word, shortly after I said "world of warcraft that's spammy" on the party line. I understand why he left... we were in RFK and the leader was not only spamming us, but looking for players who might not be interested in the dungeon we were currently in.
Of course, MageLeader doesn't understand why the guy left with no word. A few minutes later he cycles through the LFM tool again, for the same four dungeons. More spam. We stood around for a while. The leader didn't know about the LookingForGroup channel, so I let him know about it and he LFG'd in there, but presumably didn't get any responses. He started running circles around me and said "ask guildmates", but I was the only one online. The third guy in our group was guildless so he couldn't ask guildmates.
While we had this bit of a downtime, I went up to the mage and /inspected him at one time that he wasn't running in circles and jumping. It was the Firey enchant on his staff that drew my attention initially, and I asked him about it. He said he got it for free. Internally, I was glad he didn't pay for it, and gave him the benefit of the doubt.
But then on further inspection, it was apparent that the rest of his equipment was ... Melee Mage equipment! +agi, +str, +sta! Sure, there were some blues in there, but they didn't seem like Mage stuff to me. And while he did know how to sheep a bit and how to frost nova to protect non-tanky people, I certainly didn't see many fireballs or frostbolts, his mana stayed high throughout most of the fights, and he was right in there, fighting up close (probably with his firey-enchanted staff).
We took on a bit more on our own, but it was looking quite like this guy wasn't going to be able to pull together a team, and even if he could, we'd have to spend the run reading his continuous drivel about things nobody cared about, and when the fights get particularly tough, I'd probably spend a fair amount of time running back from death, or rezzing his melee mage ass.
I pondered for a bit, wondering what I should say about leaving. I ended up taking the coward's way out after documenting the party mates in my Karma addon, saying nothing to them and just closing my WoW window.
I plan to contact the guildless guy who was the third in that party, apologize to him for bugging out and invite him to another party that looks like it might be more successful. I didn't get a chance to determine if he would be a good PUGmate or not, because the other three in the group took more attention.
As for the leader Melee Mage guy, I marked him down 10 points in Karma and will not purposefully party with him again, as I'm looking to party with folks at least as experienced as I am, and hopefully more experienced, so I can improve without having to coach others towards improving all of the time.