Now the jerk tank is a peculiar species, it is a jerk and it is a tank. Hence the name: jerk tank. But you can’t just kick him cause the group needs tank. But what happens when a fight occurs between tank and healer? This is what happened.

It’s Utgarde Pinnacle, two seconds into the run the tank leaves the group. Oh well, back into the queue few moments later we get a new tank. Little did I know the tank was actually a prophet and knew how badly this run was going to go.

New tank teleports in, he charges into the mobs and then into the next room paying no attention to the fact that our healer is not with us. We die, and the tank gets stuck into the healer who explains that he wasn’t there because a mob from the previous room was beating on him.

Know what happens when you give the healer a lot of crap? Yeah that’s right, he leaves. Being the nice guy I am and knowing fine well it was the tank’s fault for not paying attention to where his healer was I was supportive.

Unfortunately the waves of hate spurned by the failboat continued, Captain Strike at the helm not letting up, the healer DC’s… right as Strike pulls a boss.

You heard it here. Blood DKs need no healing. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Yup. Wipe again.

This sad tale does have some good news. We got a new healer and finished the run. Also I was on my Hunter so I had zero repair bills!

Necrall uses mockery, it’s super effective!

Related posts:

1. FAILPUG: It’s ONLY Ulduar!
2. FAILPUG! I’m Trying to Translate Them
3. Tales from the Dream: Bonzo meets FAILPUG

The confusion: But then da da darrrrrr, the raid leader sets it to 25 man in order to discuss with Brann turning off hardmode. You’re confused, the’re confused, everybody’s confused and then you remember….. it’s a weekly, and the raid leader has clearly never been to Ulduar before, after all how hard can it be!

The Horror: Smelling a FAILPUG swiftly you leave the group, needless to say they wiped on Flame Leviathan, the horror, the horror.

Have you been in a FAILPUG? Send us your screenshots to contact@emeralddreamers.co.uk and we shall inform the world!

Related posts:

1. FAILPUG! You Want a What?
2. FAILPUG! Heals? I’m a BLOOD DK!
3. FAILPUG! I’m Trying to Translate Them

In reverse order then, the ugly, the bad and the good!

The Ugly

So I’m faffing about minding my own business in Silithus (don’t ask), when guildie Maxdruid gets into a Black Temple run. Knowing that Max usually has good luck with pugs I wangle an invite only to find, horror of horrors, the raid “leader” is the now infamous Mikuru!

Max assures me it’ll be fine, and like the eternal noob I am I trust him. Much to my eventual regret.

The problems start when someone notices that there are 2 level 70s in the raid, when Mikuru specifically asked for 80s. His explanation?

They helped with your issues? Judging by todays performance I’d say you still have more than enough to be getting on with.

The upshot was that any and all loot that either of the 70s could use went to them no questions asked. All fine and well, assuming the rest of the group are fine with it. They were not. After much back and forth the loot was changed to need before greed, which posed it’s own problems.

Apparently we did, Moheno. The argument between most of the raid and Mikuru’s chums went on for the majority of the raid, the gist of which is neatly encapsulated in the following chat. I put up with this for the achievement and no other reason, though it was kinda exciting to see a warglaive drop!

The Bad

Onto ICC10. We’d attempted an ICC25 pug earlier in the week but it fell to bits too quickly for me to actually take a decent screenie. The guildie getting me into trouble this time was Liuxuandie, who seemed far too confident of finding a decent group.

After the inevitable AFKs, and difficulties summoning due to crazy phasing, we managed to get a full group together. Then disaster struck!

In the end, the mage decided to stay, but by this point we had other issues. One of our healers seemed to be in a different instance to us, but refused to admit that he was saved. We all left the instance, gave him lead, and went back in after him to be presented with the “this idiot is saved with 2 bosses down, quick zone back out” button.

The guy INSISTED he wasn’t saved, and that if he was his friend must be too.

Note that I blacked out the whisperer’s name, that she might not know the shame of spelling you “u”. So this went on for a while, but after much sarcasm and whinging from myself and Liuxuandie we persuaded the druid to bog off. Another healer joined, it was all looking good, but alas!

Needless to say we gave up at this point, left the group, and reformed one of our own. Not before some gibberish from our awesome mage though.

The Good

Yes, sometimes pugs are good! After reforming we found ourselves in the loveliest pug I’ve been in in a long time, excepting that priest who spent the first half hour of the raid either afk or trying to get Liuxuandie to main tank for his guild, and then ragequit when we wiped once at Deathwhisper.

We only managed 3 bosses before people started needing to leave, but with an hour plus setup time we still did pretty well. A public thankyou to everyone who made that raid extremely fun indeed, especially Wizzbosh for his regular soulstoning as I tended to die quite often!

Related posts:

1. FAILPUG! I’m Trying to Translate Them
2. FAILPUG: It’s ONLY Ulduar!
3. FAILPUG! Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

Once again throwing myself with abandon into a total FAILPUG!, I bring you a tale of roguetards, strange Greeks and amazingly calm raid leading.

Picture the scene, you’ve logged in with the intention of catching up on some achievements, because you’re racing a mage to 7k points. You have a spreadsheet, and a detailed plan for the day, and then a guildie suggests you come to a pugged ToC25. “It’ll be fun”. Yeah, right.

While the humble beginnings of the group were pretty unorganised, that seems to be standard practise in these situations and apart from the token impatient types we coped with the inevitable delays like real human beings. Unfortunately into this seemingly inoffensive situation stepped some bosses, and that’s where the fail began.

Take One

On our first Northrend Beasts attempt there was a bit of a tanking “incident” with the worms. A taunt failed, it happens, but the tank in question didn’t get much chance to explain himself due to a wonderfully understanding rogue named Gorgorth. Gorgorth, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out, is a tool.

So with battle-rez and soulstoning we managed to get a vaguely respectable portion of the group back to life and made it through to Icehowl. All was going pretty well considering. My Grid was freaking out and only showing some names, but that’s par for the course and mostly unrelated.

At around 10% of course, disaster struck! Someone was hit and one tank went down. The other picked up the boss and we seemed to be ok when at about 5% BAM! another hit and the second tank dead. By this point Icehowl was running around with abandon and hit me in the face, which was a bit mean. /wipe.

Cue the inevitable

<insert bickering, foul language and pointless name calling here>

Then the adults have their turn, which was admittedly a nice interlude.

Take two

With the bad luck excuse firmly supported by everyone with half a brain cell we decided to take another game stab at the fight, it was our last chance to have the honour of Gorgorth’s company after all. It went ok up until, you guessed it, the worms. This time the tanks were fine but it turned out half the group were asleep or watching porn or whatever other reason they could possibly have for standing in something green and painful until dead. Gorgorth was not amused.

I’m not sure exactly how many people we lost in one fell swoop, but by this point I do remember that over half the group were dead. Battle rezzing commenced, and by the time we got to Icehowl again we had enough DPS to take him down barring any mishaps.

Mishaps

I am shamed. We got, once more, to the point where he was so close to death we could taste it. Then I somehow managed to become lodged on a tree druid while trying to run away from the crash. Yeah, you can’t get stuck on players and it was probably a bit of wall but that’s how it looked to me. Anyway I wasn’t the only one, there were 3 or 4 of us stuck on this druid, and we promptly died. We lost the main tank but some quick taunting from the off-tank netted us a win. I have never been so grateful to see a boss die (or so embarrassed). Not only did we get rid of the pesky beasts, we got rid of the pesky rogue too, and there was much rejoicing.

For the love of God, cut!

Our one attempt at Jarraxus was short-lived, and pretty damn catastrophic. A paladin died at the start, then proclaimed “too laggy, sorry” and quit the group. His death was soon followed by others and the domino effect began. Unfortunately the first leavers all seemed to be from the same guild, and someone didn’t seem to like them very much.

Whatever the beef there is, this obviously wasn’t the best place to air it. Especially since not all of Bad Omen had quit the group yet. Cue 5 minutes of an increasingly annoyed warlock trying his best to sound angry and threatening, and everyone else either completely ignoring or being confused by the poor guy.

Re-reading that last part I still have no idea what he meant, but it’s ok…turns out he had no idea either.

Related posts:

1. FAILPUG! Heals? I’m a BLOOD DK!
2. FAILPUG! The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. FAILPUG: It’s ONLY Ulduar!

For our next instalment of FAILPUG! Alachia from Outlaws Torn provides us with this gem of an incident. Our poor Emerald Dreamer keen to gear his alt up joined Utgarde Keep as a random and the following hilarity commenced.

Step one: Roll a Paladin.

Step two: Get boosted through recruit a friend to level 70.

Step three: Enter instance and come clean about this………

Step four: Rethink life and everything you know.

We encourage naming and shaming in our FAILPUG! discussions but Alachia selected the anonymous version for publishing.

If you have fallen victim to a FAILPUG! send details and screenshots to contact@emeralddreamers.co.uk if you want to keep your identity to yourself that’s fine, but lets dig up and expose those people who make pugging a “bang head against wall” experience.

Related posts:

1. FAILPUG: It’s ONLY Ulduar!
2. FAILPUG! Heals? I’m a BLOOD DK!
3. FAILPUG! I’m Trying to Translate Them

Everyone expects VoA pugs to end terribly. Everyone except me that is. I’m like an innocent, fragile flower who has been sheltered from the raging storm of frustrating players by hiding behind my big rock of not-pugging. Good analogy, eh? So last time I saw a callout in Wintergrasp general for more to do a quick 10-man, I rolled up my sleeves and thought what the hell…

And Lo! Elitists Ahoy!

My first inkling that all would not be going to plan was when the raid leader asked if anyone knew a tank. Some replied that they had one, but try as he might the RL could not get a name out of this guy. The first 5 mins of so of the pug was spent like this.

So after much fannying about, giving up and getting a totally different tank, a warlock in the group uttered the fateful words “kick X, his gear bad”. If memory serves it was in reference to one of the DPS who was in blues, with one or two greens, but it’s only VoA. Unfortunately the raid leader kicked him without warning, and because I have a low tolerance for morons in pugs this prompted me to leave the group. Well…nearly.

What’s this, has the raid leader had a change of heart? Perhaps he’d been caught up in the moment, we all know what the power of being in charge can do to people. I’d give him a second chance.

Ok maybe not. Poor DK.

Let’s Kill Something

Finally with a full group we were on to Koralon, where the off-tank promptly died. Whether it was not standing close enough together, or standing in fire, or one of the other pug cliches I’ll never know, but we somehow got through the fight with one tank up and, spirits buoyed, made our way to Emalon.

The paladin boss tank ran in first without warning, leaving the poor warrior off-tank scrambling to get the adds off him and under control. This method did not work well.

In the pally’s defense he did apologise, but not before It started. You know It, that moment in all pugs when someone is insulted, setting off a chain reaction.

So off we went confidently for another try, whereupon at least half of the DPS failed to switch to the overpowered add. Again, not the best tactic, and in this case the final straw (thank the Noodly Lord)!

Main Offenders

If you’re to take anything from this new column, we hope it’ll be an ability to spot the warning signs and prior offenders and avoid situations like this. In the spirit of warning, I would suggest avoiding raids run by or including the following main offenders:

• Mikuru
• Wiizor
• Healsson
• Forlax

And an honourable mention for Throndill, who was mostly ok, for the inevitable

Related posts:

1. FAILPUG! The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2. FAILPUG! I’m Trying to Translate Them
3. FAILPUG! Heals? I’m a BLOOD DK!