Apr 4

Pugs tend to come in two varieties:  really great ones where everyone seems to be able to work together, and ones where exactly the opposite is true. And whether the reason is lower quality of gear, lack of skill, bad communication, or anything else, the majority (not necessarily overwhelmingly, but the majority) of the pugs most people experience are the latter.

I have had a few experiences that lead me to believe that there are, basically, two kinds of bad pugs:  the ones that are bad because people are ignorant, and those that are bad because people are stupid. One is doomed to failure while there is a chance for success with the other. I’m going to share two (true) stories that demonstrate the difference and what you can do about the one with hope.

Scenario One: When I was playing my hunter and she was around level 38, I wanted to do SM something or other (I don’t remember which wing). I got a group together consisting of a warrior tank, paladin healer, myself, and two other DPSers (of course). So we start the instance, and I give the tank a second or two to grab aggro on the two- and three-pulls, and then fire off a shot. After an arcane and a couple auto-shots, the mob decides to come after me. We manage to get them down okay, and a later pull I decide to give the warrior a couple seconds to get aggro and then just autoshoot. After two shots the mob comes after me.

I whisper the tank to ask him if he’s familiar with his threat generating abilities. “What?” “Do you know how to use your abilities to tank?” I ask again. His response: “lol no idea”. He then proceeds to pull another group, we wipe, and after we resurrect nothing I suggest trying gets tried. Eventually I leave the group in frustration.

This group failed because of stupidity, and specifically stupidity from a core member of the group (the tank). Generally, you can get away with one DPSer being subpar, assuming they don’t do anything extremely stupid (like pull extras) and your other DPSers are good. But if your tank or healer can’t do their job, and refuses to take constructive criticism and change their ways (this is key), then your group will fail.

Scenario Two: I had run Underbog several times on my level 65 warlock (one of which, by the way, was with a pug so excellent I added them all to my friends list and we ran more instances together). I needed to run Slave Pens to finish off a quest or two, and had been having problems getting a group together. Finally, I was able to put one together with a feral druid, holy paladin, me and two other DPS. Suddenly the druid goes, “Oh, I just realized I’m probably tanking, huh…” “Yep,” I said, “you’re the only one here that can. Okay with that?” “Yeah,” she said, “but I haven’t tanked very much, but I’ll try.” And proceeds to drop to Cat Form.

We make it through a couple pulls, mostly because the hunter was a great chain trapper, when a couple of the members whisper me something to the lines of “Wow, you’ve got to get rid of her.” “Give me a moment,” I ask. So I whisper her, “Just curious, is there any reason you’re using cat form instead of bear?” “Yes,” she says, “I don’t kill things near as fast in bear.” “Well, when you’re tanking, the idea isn’t necessarily to kill things fast, but to keep the enemy hitting you instead of your groupmates because you have such a high health and armor compared to everyone else.” “Oh.”

So, I proceed to explain how to look for her high threat abilities, using things like Mangle and Lacerate, and tought her how to growl if the mage (or the warlock ^^) pulls aggro, how to use Swipe and her Demoralizing Roar to get a bit of aggro on non-main targets so the pally doesn’t get overrun with mobs.

We went on to completely pwn that instance. We were successful because the ignorant person decided to let someone teach her how to do the job properly.

So get to the point already, you say. Okay, I will.

In both cases, it appeared that we had a horrible tank and the run was doomed to failure. The difference is that the warrior, in the SM run, was stupid. He didn’t know what he was doing and he was content to be in that state, not wanting to know or be responsible for tanking. The druid, on the other hand, was ignorant–she had the same lack of knowledge as the warrior, but she was willing to learn. She took my constructive criticism as just that and listened to what I told her to do, and the run went great the rest of the run.

I ended up in a group with the warrior when my hunter got to Outland for Hellfire Ramparts. I didn’t realize who he was until I was summoned to the stone, when I noticed his name and when I moused over his character my NotesUNeed addon popped up “Has ‘lol no idea’ how to tank, not interested in learning.” I apologized to the group and left.

My whole point is to say this: don’t give up on people just because they don’t know what they’re doing. At least attempt to show them the error of their ways, and if they don’t want to learn, they’re not just ignorant, they’re stupid, and then I’d just as soon never talk to them again. But people who only don’t know may just be willing to learn, if someone would just take the time to show them.

Related posts:

1. PUGs
2. A Day of (Mostly) Good PuGs
3. Why Can’t I Decide?
4. Role Consolidation, or “Great, Now I’m Useless”
5. Moving Forward