Venting = Good

It is good to vent, and I suspect that the more instances I run, the more I'll make use of this blog for exactly that purpose. The Delusional Hunter was just reflecting upon this as well, and also on the types of behaviors that can really rankle a person in-game as much as they do in real life. It also takes just one person, I've noticed, to destroy the dynamics of a group.

My mage once ran SFK with an excellent pug. A dream pug! Everything went smoothly. Everyone was polite, and treated each other respectfully. The tank held aggro, the healer kept everybody healed. When it was time to stop and drink and rebuff, everybody stopped and sat down together. When it was time to move on, everyone was paying attention and we got going immediately. We rolled on all chests, and people were conservative with greed with bind-on-pickups. If nobody could use the BoP item, someone disenchanted it and we rolled for the shard. Nobody died during the entire run, and we downed Arugal with no problems. It was so fun! So, at the end of it, after we all congratulated each other, I asked if anyone cared to run BFD, too. All but one person could stay on and play, so the healer invited one of her guildmates to join us...

The new addition to the group was also a mage. At first she seemed quite normal, and I shared some extra green cloth gear with her that I happened to be carrying. As soon as we got into combat, however, my opinion of her changed. The main thing that bugged me about her was that she was not assisting the tank. I often saw her on the edge of my screen, attacking mobs nowhere near our group. Talk about poor grouping technique. Her guildmate healer kept healing her and didn't seem to be running out of mana or complaining about it, and we didn't seem to be having trouble killing stuff without her, so she was just allowed to keep doing it.

This behavior was made even more annoying by constant commentary suggesting, "You should all stop and appreciate how much dps I am doing." Some of it was was just excitable smack talk at the monsters -- that I didn't mind so much. What I did mind were the comments like, "don't forget to thank your mage! aren't you glad you brought a mage along?" (uh, you're not the only mage), "I am just doing too much damage! stupid crits!" (no, it's because you're attacking different mobs than the tank), and "why do I feel like I'm the only one doing any damage?" (because you are going off on your own instead of killing with the group!) I normally don't pay that much attention to the damage I'm doing compared to everyone else, but it filled me with passive aggressive DELIGHT at the end of the instance when the leader posted the damage stats and I topped the list.

She also got pouty over loot rolls. If anyone else rolled greed on a cloth item, there was whining. Finally, the healer said "if it is an upgrade for you, roll need," but still... lots of sighing and so forth. (I do understand that it gets frustrating when the rolls don't go your way turn after turn, but let's all be adults about it.)

I was relieved when the instance was over. Normally, at the end of a run, there's a lot of... "hey, if you ever need another for an instance, etc, etc," but not after this one. I was happy to see this other mage's name disappear from my screen, and it will be too soon if I see it again. It's not the worst pug I've run with, but it was night and day compared to the previous SFK run, which had 4/5 of the same players. It was impressive that the behavior of just that one person made it all less enjoyable for me.

But, venting is good. I regaled my husband with every detail, every comment, every sigh. Then, refreshed, I returned to the LFG channel for another pug. Illegitimi non carborundum...