Gaaaaahhhhhhhh, the horror

This is actually a nice tale, with a twist of tragedy. The horror doesn't come till the end, so scroll down if you dont want to hear about the guild.

Slight digression into what we're doing about our raiding in the guild....

We're altering our approach to Kara teams. They're no longer "guild assigned", but rather, there's team captains assigned and that capn's job is to form up a team and ensure that team is made up of appropriate classes/specs and that the players get geared appropriately. And that captain is also supposed to devise a schedule that the players can all attend.

I like the idea of spreading out the burden of recruiting and scheduling. That's probably the good side of this way of doing things. The downside is that you'll end up with internal competition for scarce resources, such as healers in our case. Additionally, I think too much of the onus is put on the capn to gear people up. I'd much rather be surrounded by people who want to gear themselves up, know what they need, but they just need me to go on the run with them. That would be awesome. But in this environment, twould seem that the burden is on the leader. Overall, I see the approach as an obstacle to guild progression, but what does my opinion matter?

Where we're at now is there are two PM team captains, as the third candidate for the position (me) said he'd rather stick pins up under his fingernails and type up a copy of the bible before getting involved with that mess at this point. Just what I want, a pack of DPS'ers looking to me to solve all their problems and who will now be pissed at me for the lack of healers. No thx. So we've got two capns. They both approached me, I picked one I'd prefer to run with. So two teams, instead of three.

Either way, back to last night

Talking with the capn of my chosen team, we've got three healers who actually approached him because they want to run with us, and what would appear to be 2 tanks. Also a mage, which would put us at 3 DPS. I've got my fingers crossed for a shammy and a shadow priest, who are as yet unaffiliated with a team.

Taking a cue from WoW Grrl, I'm all about greasing the social wheels, so I'll be hitting up the team members hard to make sure they're getting the runs in that they need for the loot they need. Even better if it overlaps with a dungeon that drops Desolation gear, as I'd love the +35hit bonus from another one of those puppies.

Unfortunately, nobody else from the team, or potential recruits, were on last night, besides me and the capo. I want to get into heroics more, so we go after a PUG. He needs some thing-a-ma-bob that drops from Heroic Slave Pens, so that's the one. And they drop Desolation something or other in there, I'm a big fan.

Started with a tank who's been in our guild for a few days.

Picked up a rogue who somebody knew.

No healers. Anywhere. Other than raid dungeons. Every single resto/holy spec'd level 70 on anybody's friends list or /who results was in a raid instance. We became sad :-(

Not too sad, as I was just circling around Zangarmarsh picking flowers (lol, about 200g worth. ding!!)

Finally find a holy paladin who had just stepped out of Tempest Keep and wanted some Heroic action. Sweet.

Rogue was afk and nowhere to be found. Boot.

I had a shammy friend who was in BG and she said she'd join in a minute.

We totally rocked the place. The 4 of us were in pre-kara gear, and the healer was much better equipped. But we really did awesome. The DPS was good enough to burn everything down, felt like we were on normal mode.

Sure, we wiped a couple times. For CC we had my traps, warlock seduce, and although I'm not too familiar with how it works, there were times when the shammy would whip out some windfury and save our ass. Long story short, not too much CC, so lots of chaos on the multi-pulls with mobs who fear the party. I made pretty big use of kiting with wingclip and concussive shot when traps broke early or when I actually double trapped on purpose once and on accident twice. Pretty cool stuff.

Overall, an awesome time. Feel good moment of the night...healer from raiding guild and much further progressed than player I've ever worked with....chimes in with major kudos about the trapping, and he's never seen action like that. I was a bit surprised to hear that.

Ok, on to the horror......

When we took the second boss, the giant lobster, down, there was some akward discussion about the loot. Not drama per se, but the raiding healer wanted everybody to pass and then we discuss and loot, where as the rest of us were used to pretty standard need/greed/pass-DE situations. The loot wasn't anything that there was competition for, as the party had pretty distinct gear needs. Just a bit of confusion as to the process, and some tense words. Not angry words, just tense because nobody wanted to mess up but we were clearly not understanding eachother.

Then we get to the last boss, the giant pile of moss shaped like a humaniod swamp thing. Spank him down, and instantly somebody loots so up pops four items. Primal Nether, some spell damage plate chest (ret pally?), some epic spell damage mail shoulders (shammy), and some either trinket or off-hand spell damage thing-a-ma-bob.

Immediately there's all kinds of chatter about what to do, what to do. My part is easy, as I don't want any of it, so I'm just gonna pass on everything, I just want my badge. So the healer is insistent that everybody pass, and then we'll figure out what to do. Ok, everybody passes.

Warlock says he wants the off-hand trinket thing-a-ma-bob. Everybody says ok.

Shammy walks up, bends down, and receives the thing-a-ma-bob.

Ugh.

Warlock is clearly pissed, letting out a nice WTF on voice.

Shammy is totally beside herself, as it was a total mistake. Aparently she was just going in for the Badge of Justice, and fat-fingered it and clicked the wrong thing.

You could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

Supposedly that thing-a-ma-bob was the actual reason we went into the run in the first place.

Damn. One tiny click, and wham-o, no turning back.

Blizz, please, give us a 1 minute mulligan so we can fix mistakes like that. PLEASE!!!!!

So now everybody thinks she's a ninja. She's so upset she actually wants to pass on the shoulders, which I wont hear of. Damn epic shoulders, take them. The other guy will get over the fact that his thing-a-ma-bob is gone. Nothing we can do about that now.

Yuck!!!!

Onc click, basically ruined the run, and maybe the social rep of an awesome shammy. Not to mention, they all look at me as a bad guy for bringing a ninja into the team.



How many times you think I can fit "thing-a-ma-bob" into one post?