Your worst group?

[Zarathustra]

Short and sweet...

I was pulled into a party for the Dire Maul by a Warlock with whom I'd partied in the past. He knows his capabilities and role, and makes use of them to the utmost. Definitely a quality Warlock.

I'm a Balance Druid, and thus a departure from the norm (in fact, most high level parties/raids with people I've not met before usually end up with chat to the effect of "Wow! What's that lightning effect?! Is that Rammstein's?!"), but we've also got a Rogue, Paladin, and Hunter.

Gripes:
The rogue would vanish at 3/4 health and pull away from the fight, while asking for healing.
The Paladin complained about 8 times during the run that he didn't have Cosmos, and therefore was without the ability to quickly heal himself.
The Paladin somehow managed nonetheless, yet only healed himself.
The Hunter did not pull. Period.
The Hunter did not send his pet in against enemies. Period.
The Paladin designated himself tank and healer (sharing that duty with me), yet could not hold aggro at all.

What the run broke down to was the Warlock and myself being the damage dealers. The Warlock was the extent of our crowd control with the exception of freezing traps by the Hunter (which seemed to be the only trick he had up his sleeve aside from feigning death whenever an enemy hit him). Either he or I were taking aggro from enemies the entire time since we were doing the most damage, and I often had to shift to Bear form to tank when things got hairy and the Paladin WOULD NOT heal me. About half an hour in I told the Paladin I could really use some healing while enemies are beating on me, and he said "Druid is better at healing then me." [sic] Then a pause... then the rogue says "Um... he IS the Druid. He's asking you to heal too."

Keep in mind, that plan had been discussed and agreed upon before entering the instance.

To top it all off, we'd often stand staring at enemies doing absolutely nothing because no one understood their role even after repeatedly being commanded to do one thing or another.

Typical fight:
Warlock or Druid pulls since the Hunter is just standing there with his axes out looking at the enemy. Pet is on Defensive.
Rogue rushes enemy and deals damage, vanishes when 25% of life is gone and yells for healing.
Warlock and Druid dishing out damage while Hunter stands watching with axes at the ready. Pet yawns.
Paladin waits half the fight in the back, just watching while the Druid heals those in need (read: heals himself, Rogue, and the Warlock/Minion), then charges in and contributes a pittance as far as damage goes.
Attention finally on the Druid as a Starfire crits, forcing a shift to Bear form.
Druid dies from lack of healing and inaction of the rest of the party regarding DPS (save the Warlock).
Paladin walks ahead to the next group, forgetting he has the ability to resurrect until being told 10 times by the rest of the party.


So yeah... good times.

[savaughn]

Warlock or Druid pulls since the Hunter is just standing there with his axes out looking at the enemy.  Pet is on Defensive.
[right][snapback]71779[/snapback][/right]

I ran into one of these. I'd forgotten about it. Did a run through Stockades and found myself partied with a hunter who apparently was unware he could use a ranged weapon. He was running in, Raptor Striking once and then sitting back to straight melee. Seems like he was doing all of 11DPS. :wacko:

On a fairly regular basis people like to say "don't tell me how to play my class" - it comes up in the shadow priest discussions. I won't say what he was doing was wrong, per se, just that I wouldn't play with him again.

[Rinnhart]

I ran into one of these.  I'd forgotten about it.  Did a run through Stockades and found myself partied with a hunter who apparently was unware he could use a ranged weapon.  He was running in, Raptor Striking once and then sitting back to straight melee.  Seems like he was doing all of 11DPS.  :wacko:

On a fairly regular basis people like to say "don't tell me how to play my class" - it comes up in the shadow priest discussions.  I won't say what he was doing was wrong, per se, just that I wouldn't play with him again.
[right][snapback]71799[/snapback][/right]

The real problem is people who demand, or comment upon, certain things while not upholding their role in the group. Most of the people who ever "told" me how to play were incompetent themselves (demanding a specific aura when they have pack aspect on - thanks for the daze!).

[TotoGuy]

Just before the EU beta ended, I had a fantastic DM run with 3 friends and a random guy. All of us were at 20-22, I tanked, rouge and warlock damaged, priest healbotted, and the random druid supported nicely. Each did his job to the fullest. Couple of hours and the instance is done, not a single wipe, good times.

Then came retail... Sadly, as retail came, so did my army service, meaning I didn't have time to play with those friends anymore.
"Oh well, guess I'll do pickup groups on weekends". Ohh boy..

First came RFC. Being on a small server I wasn't too picky on who I'd do it with, so I was looking for people to do it with. All I could find was a group of 3, a shaman, warlock, and warrior, all of them around lvl 20-21.
Usually I'd avoid joining a group that overleveled, especially since RFC is pretty easy. But I was getting tired of looking and they really insisted I'd join, so what the heck...

They were already inside the instance, somewhere after the troggs part. I go in and see the mobs at the entrance respawned, and they tell me to wait while they run back to help. After a minute of waiting I ask why can't the warlock just summon me. "Oh right, I can do that." . I shrug it off as they summon me hoping he didn't remember that because he got the skill just now or something like that.

After a couple of fights I realized why they couldn't manage around here themselves. Although they were all above lvl 20, they were playing like they were lvl 5 (and their gear was about right for that level as well...).

Shaman insisted on pulling everything with his lightning bolt (Note that I was a hunter. And that we had a warrior, more on him soon), as well as tanking, while being the only healer. The warrior didn't really care, he just ran around hitting stuff, barely gaining any aggro whatsoever.
After several horrible pulls, in which I kept suggesting I'd do the pulling and he refused, we wiped. Then I waited for the shaman to rez himself with a soulstone. Noticed his soul wasn't stored. When asked why, the warlock replied "What's a soulstone? Got a skill to make them but I never really used them".

After a corpse run and a short 5 minute talk about soulstones and why they should be used, the warlock made one for the shaman, and we continued. Around that time the warrior got disconnected and never returned. This affected nothing.

Somehow we managed to make it through the rest of the instance, probably thanks to their higher HP that was somehow high enough to balance out their level of skill and keep them alive through many, many horrible pulls. By horrible I'm talking about 3 adds to pulled groups of 3.. Oh, and the shaman allowed me pull the last boss :P

Couple of weeks later and I head out to do WC, hoping for a better experience.
Formed up a group of random guys (another hunter, 2 shamans, and somewhat higher leveled warlock) and headed in. One of the shamans, named Trolly, a name I'll make sure to avoid in the future, kept rushing ahead, even before we got into the instance. Many times we'd find him fighting 4 raptors alone by the time we manage to catch up with him. He didn't seem to mind though, since we kept barely saving him over and over, so that must mean such strategy works.
Had nice tactics as well, Frost Shock-> walk back while hitting-> Frost Shock-> etc.

By the time we got into the instance, with him still refusing to even respond to our cries for reason, we decide to just let him die and get back out to find a replacement. He then blurps out "K GTG" and vanishes. Woo.

We get out, find a warrior, get back in. I wish we kept Trolly.
Things went along fine after that, the warrior didn't really do his job well but we had 2 pets and a voidy to tank so we managed fine, and the shaman did a great job keeping everybody alive. Thing is, almost every green item that dropped, the warrior would roll for.
Some pattern dropped, "Hey I can sell those", some bow dropped, "Hey I can use ranged weapons", some cloth shoulders dropped, "Hey I have no shoulders, I can use those". If that wasn't enough, he kept winning most of the time.
We tried being nice though, since he seemed pretty young, so we just explained how even though he CAN use just about everything, doesn't mean he should roll for them since other people need them more than he does.
Didn't seem to help much since later he started rolling on blue items as well. Including some nice mage staff because it's better than his cracked, 9DPS hammer, and he can use it, if he trains in it...

Since everything else was going along so well, we tried being nice and kept asking him over and over not to roll for stuff WARRIORS CAN BUT SHOULDN'T USE. He seemed to get the idea after about 2-3 times.

Then came the final tree boss, and since that battle can get tough, we made sure to tell the warrior to use Taunt when possible and keep the aggro. After a not-so-surprising "what's Taunt?" we just stared at the boss, sent off the pets, and started attacking. Boss dead, I'm still somewhat calm since we're all alive and none of the drops the warrior took was good for me anyway. Almost done.
We do the extra quest and get to the murloc boss. We kill it. Blue cloth shoulders drop. He rolls, he scores. Hey, they're better than the green ones he took 20 minutes ago after all...

Thats about when I start losing it, yelling at him after staying silent for the past few hours. But he says "Ok we're done here, GTG" before I manage to relieve any stress.
So we're all done, still happy that we finished it nicely, even though we ended up with barely any new equip. Stuffed the other guys to my friend list, stuffed him to ignore list, and noted to self to kick people out of groups after a 2nd foul...
I miss that DM run... :(

Bleh. This came out long. At least I feel better now :P

[falconesse]

Did you mean too low for the Stockades?  At 23, you're actually quite high for the Deadmines.
[right][snapback]71684[/snapback][/right]

Heh. Oops. Yeah, I meant too low for the Stockades. My boss kept walking by, so I was alt-tabbing something fierce and got all confused. :)

[kandrathe]

Just before the EU beta ended, I had a fantastic DM run with 3 friends and a random guy. All of us were at 20-22, I tanked, rouge and warlock damaged, priest healbotted, and the random druid supported nicely. Each did his job to the fullest. Couple of hours and the instance is done, not a single wipe, good times.

Then came retail... Sadly, as retail came, so did my army service, meaning I didn't have time to play with those friends anymore.
"Oh well, guess I'll do pickup groups on weekends". Ohh boy..

First came RFC. Being on a small server I wasn't too picky on who I'd do it with, so I was looking for people to do it with. All I could find was a group of 3, a shaman, warlock, and warrior, all of them around lvl 20-21.
Usually I'd avoid joining a group that overleveled, especially since RFC is pretty easy. But I was getting tired of looking and they really insisted I'd join, so what the heck...

They were already inside the instance, somewhere after the troggs part. I go in and see the mobs at the entrance respawned, and they tell me to wait while they run back to help. After a minute of waiting I ask why can't the warlock just summon me. "Oh right, I can do that." . I shrug it off as they summon me hoping he didn't remember that because he got the skill just now or something like that.

After a couple of fights I realized why they couldn't manage around here themselves. Although they were all above lvl 20, they were playing like they were lvl 5 (and their gear was about right for that level as well...).

Shaman insisted on pulling everything with his lightning bolt (Note that I was a hunter. And that we had a warrior, more on him soon), as well as tanking, while being the only healer. The warrior didn't really care, he just ran around hitting stuff, barely gaining any aggro whatsoever.
After several horrible pulls, in which I kept suggesting I'd do the pulling and he refused, we wiped. Then I waited for the shaman to rez himself with a soulstone. Noticed his soul wasn't stored. When asked why, the warlock replied "What's a soulstone? Got a skill to make them but I never really used them".

After a corpse run and a short 5 minute talk about soulstones and why they should be used, the warlock made one for the shaman, and we continued. Around that time the warrior got disconnected and never returned. This affected nothing.

Somehow we managed to make it through the rest of the instance, probably thanks to their higher HP that was somehow high enough to balance out their level of skill and keep them alive through many, many horrible pulls. By horrible I'm talking about 3 adds to pulled groups of 3.. Oh, and the shaman allowed me pull the last boss :P

Couple of weeks later and I head out to do WC, hoping for a better experience.
Formed up a group of random guys (another hunter, 2 shamans, and somewhat higher leveled warlock) and headed in. One of the shamans, named Trolly, a name I'll make sure to avoid in the future, kept rushing ahead, even before we got into the instance. Many times we'd find him fighting 4 raptors alone by the time we manage to catch up with him. He didn't seem to mind though, since we kept barely saving him over and over, so that must mean such strategy works.
Had nice tactics as well, Frost Shock-> walk back while hitting-> Frost Shock-> etc.

By the time we got into the instance, with him still refusing to even respond to our cries for reason, we decide to just let him die and get back out to find a replacement. He then blurps out "K GTG" and vanishes. Woo.

We get out, find a warrior, get back in. I wish we kept Trolly.
Things went along fine after that, the warrior didn't really do his job well but we had 2 pets and a voidy to tank so we managed fine, and the shaman did a great job keeping everybody alive. Thing is, almost every green item that dropped, the warrior would roll for.
Some pattern dropped, "Hey I can sell those", some bow dropped, "Hey I can use ranged weapons", some cloth shoulders dropped, "Hey I have no shoulders, I can use those". If that wasn't enough, he kept winning most of the time.
We tried being nice though, since he seemed pretty young, so we just explained how even though he CAN use just about everything, doesn't mean he should roll for them since other people need them more than he does.
Didn't seem to help much since later he started rolling on blue items as well. Including some nice mage staff because it's better than his cracked, 9DPS hammer, and he can use it, if he trains in it...

Since everything else was going along so well, we tried being nice and kept asking him over and over not to roll for stuff WARRIORS CAN BUT SHOULDN'T USE. He seemed to get the idea after about 2-3  times.

Then came the final tree boss, and since that battle can get tough, we made sure to tell the warrior to use Taunt when possible and keep the aggro. After a not-so-surprising "what's Taunt?" we just stared at the boss, sent off the pets, and started attacking. Boss dead, I'm still somewhat calm since we're all alive and none of the drops the warrior took was good for me anyway. Almost done.
We do the extra quest and get to the murloc boss. We kill it. Blue cloth shoulders drop. He rolls, he scores. Hey, they're better than the green ones he took 20 minutes ago after all...

Thats about when I start losing it, yelling at him after staying silent for the past few hours. But he says "Ok we're done here, GTG" before I manage to relieve any stress.
So we're all done, still happy that we finished it nicely, even though we ended up with barely any new equip. Stuffed the other guys to my friend list, stuffed him to ignore list, and noted to self to kick people out of groups after a 2nd foul...
I miss that DM run... :(

Bleh. This came out long. At least I feel better now :P
[right][snapback]71865[/snapback][/right]

I was in one of those type of groups heading into the DM with my hunter who was in the mid 20's. I was working on soloing DM with my hunter and so after a mistake with Gilnid and a run back to the instance, I saw and had pity on this group of three that had been spamming for 15 minutes to get additional help. At the last moment they added a 5th pickup player, a level 15 rogue.

The rogue insisted on trying to sap everything, but since he was lower leveled ended up pulling 4-5 adds every time. I couldn't believe it when we had difficulty killing the shredder and Mr. Sneed (which I had solo'd 15 minutes earlier), looking around after the fight, the rogue turns out to be off in town repairing his armor, the paladin was dead trying to get back, the warrior's connection bagged, me and a lvl 18 warlock are standing in the mast room and end up killing 2 or 3 patrols before the paladin gets back.

Finally, I just said "Guys, this isn't' working -- I must split." From my earlier runs, my loot bags were stuffed so I didn't roll on anything that run and left it for these lower leveled people who needed it, but again before I left, I had pity on the Warlock and the Paladin who had some sense of what to do, so I split up what goodies I had that seemed appropriate for them. I only needed the Spreckle Sprocket, but if it had been a more together group I would have taken them through to the end.

[Malakar]

... but as we are trying to make the last turn, we attract Captain Greenskin and he scrams the ship down upon us.

Yep, that last one's a doozy. Not so bad once you learn how to do it, problem is with pickup groups there's almost always someone who won't wait where they're told. I once had a guy agree to wait 3 times, then follow me up.

One VC run we had two pallies and two warlocks. The soulstones managed to save us every time except once. By the time we got to the boat, the instance was respawning and everyone's equipment was totally broken.

One time one of our group members was a complete prick. I had comtemplated leaving the group so he couldn't finish, but I didn't want to screw the rest of the guys over. The server was watching over us that night, though, and the run was botched near the end of the boat.

I initially did VC about 9 times to get an Emberstone Staff on my mage. I was in the high 20's by the time I finally got one. Of course, the first run I did on my warrior produced one and we had no casters, so I rolled on it for the DPS and won. :rolleyes:

Sometimes, the only way people learn to improve their game is getting kicked out of a run 1/2 way through. That mage should have been gone on the second BoP. sad.gif The only reason I mention it is that sometimes it's easy to want to be "nice" about this kind of stuff - but really, getting kicked out of a party and hearthed back to an inn is the most effective lesson you can give someone.

That's probably true, but I started kicking people not for that reason but because I was fed up. After so many bad VC runs, and several bad Redridge groups, I started only doing pickup groups when I was the group leader so I could kick. Of course I gave people some leeway, you can't expect everyone to play perfectly, but it's nice to be able to kick that mage that AOEs 3 elites rather than sheeping one after you've asked him to change twice.

[Gregorius]

I've finished VC twice after an unbelievable number of horrid attempts. In the future I'm considering never doing it again. The people there are so bad. Most recent failure was mostly my fault...for joining such an ill-prepared group! Two Mages, below level 17, a Paladin at 19, a 20 Warlock and myself, a 23 Druid. I hate to be so self-congratulatory but I think it's mostly my fault that I got the group through the Mast Room. Then the idiotic mages aggroed the entire Foundry! I know the room takes a long time, but it takes even longer when you wipe three times.

When I was ready to do Blackfathom Deeps I had to wander around Ashenvale for a couple hours looking for a group. I teamed with a Priest on Culling the Threat and it turned out he needed to do it as well. When the Astranaar raid finished (well, paused anyway) two more priests signed on for the group. All three of them thought we were idiotic picking up a group with four healers. But we got a level 29 Warrior and we were in business. At the beginning we had a little trouble because everybody still had Scream on their bar. That got fixed quickly. We had a wipe, resulting from our warrior charging into the sunken part of the Twilight section. As soon as the first one ran in fear everything got aggroed. So I switched to Bear Form, and except for the wipe nobody in the group died, at all, in the instance. (yeah, this isn't a "bad group" story but I thought it was kind of funny)

When I was in the "let's try everything, for no reason!" stage of gameplay, I had an Undead Priest who went into Ragefire. The group was poorly constructed, with a Rogue, Warrior, and two Hunters. We got wiped because somehow we aggroed troggs from across a lava lake. Everybody knew we were dead as soon as a lightning bolt came out of the blue and pegged our warrior. Well, actually, the hunters survived. Little punks.

My favorite thing I've seen in relation to bad groups though was when my brother's warrior was in the Hall of Champions. There were two priests, a hunter and a paladin with him. The paladin went down first to tank. Soon he was getting totally whomped by Herod. The healers, who had stayed up at the top of the room, weren't in a position to see him and they couldn't heal him! Somehow the last priest killed him before they ended in a wipe. But even now I can't get the "Heh. Is that all you got?" clip out of my head!

[Tal]

When I was in the "let's try everything, for no reason!" stage of gameplay, I had an Undead Priest who went into Ragefire.  The group was poorly constructed, with a Rogue, Warrior, and two Hunters.  We got wiped because somehow we aggroed troggs from across a lava lake.  Everybody knew we were dead as soon as a lightning bolt came out of the blue and pegged our warrior.  Well, actually, the hunters survived.  Little punks.
[right][snapback]72088[/snapback][/right]

I'm confused - how is this poorly constructed? You have DPS and some crowd control with the Rogue, DPS and two pet tanks with hunters, you have a healer and the best tank class in the game. What makes this poorly constructed?

[kandrathe]

Another deadmines horror story:

I had already completed the DM instance once with lurkers, so my only reason was to go again to see if I could get my Warlock cookie's stir stick. I made my way to the instance to see if I could just tag along with a group, and sure enough there was a group of 3 waiting, (a lvl 22 mage "Glimmer", a level 18 Paladin, and another lvl 19 Warlock) and they addded me. IMHO, the paladin was too low level to try to be our main tank and healer. I suggest to the party we broadcast for a tank or a healer. Along comes "Masterfred" a level 42 Paladin. Let me just call him MF. :)

We are waiting for one of the party to get to the instance and a message comes up from MF "Help", and the party asks "Where are you?", to which he replies "In the instance". He has gone in and aggroed the entire first room and died. The party enters the instance and ressurect him. He continues this macho show throughout each room, attracting 10-15 mobs at a time. Often in this chaos, due to a heal or the mage casting on one of the mobs, mobs peal off him and kill the mage or our paladin. I suggested numerous times to the party that we not rush into every room and just peal off one mob at a time, it would be faster than having to ressurect dead party members after every snarl. But, this continued. Add to this that MF is rolling on everything, including BOP oblivious to class or need.

After the mast room, MF has bolted on ahead oblivious of the patrol that the 4 of us have had to deal with. The whole time I'm wondering "How is this going to work on the ship?" and "Is this worth it just for one item?"

The finale: MF charges the smelting room, at least the spiral. We do what we can to support and at this point I'm mostly draining souls to replace healthstones and soulstones as any of us fear to pull aggro on anything. MF merely says "Bye" and hearths out. I am livid and literally jump in my chair, which in a classic Seussian chain reaction eventually results in my 3 yr olds drink to spill onto my keyboard. Now I consider my options. I have to leave, but I wanted to communicate to the team at least why, so I arduously get out a party message "chld..\..splt...\\\kbrd...\\hozd\mustgo\\\\...inn" and I hearthed out feeling miserable for having to abandon them. I then spend the next 2 hours taking apart my keyboard and drying it out.

[Quark]

I'm confused - how is this poorly constructed? You have DPS and some crowd control with the Rogue, DPS and two pet tanks with hunters, you have a healer and the best tank class in the game. What makes this poorly constructed?
[right][snapback]72109[/snapback][/right]

Pet Peeve: people care about group composition too much. Everyone wants a "better" group than they have. I think it's time for the Variant Scum to come up with some interesting party compositions to help prove people wrong about groups.

A well-structured group (filling Healer, Tank, AoE, crowd control roles) has one thing over other groups: stability. The tank tries to get aggro on everything, while everyone else tries to avoid it (ignoring offtanks). That's oversimplying things, but it's the general premise.

My typical group is Hunter/Hunter/Rogue/Priest/Priest. If we're not MCing (for instance, at the 5-dwarf area of BRD), that leaves at best one Sap and Freeze Trap for CC. For groups mixed elite and regular, the bears split to offtank, the hunters focus on a single elite, and I wipe out all the non-elites. One of our priests is shadow-specced, so it's not like we get no damage out of the Priests. At the next point targets are decided by experience, by what goes down first, and if a priest gets aggro. I am amazes sometimes at how I stay alive, because I work hard to get aggro if I see a priest snag it.

If you haven't experienced it yet, it looks like complete chaos. But the party always knows what's going on, we pay attention to what others are doing, and we know how to handle different situations.

Yesterday we had a group with Flyndar and Yuen in Stratholme, but it didn't work out quite as well. Priest/Priest/Rogue/Rogue/Hunter. The problem wasn't in group dynamic as much as it was we weren't used to each other or the instance. Anytime we bit it hard, we had a way around it. Adds were the problem of the day, and that's more a problem of learning an instance. The Respawn Monster came eventually, causing us to forget going any further. Each of us learned our lessons, and I'm pretty sure my normal group will handle it as long as we don't make mistakes that cause adds.

So far as I've seen, the only role that is 100% necessary all the time is healer. No tanks and no pets I haven't tried yet, so I'd like to hear stories of how that goes. Any other composition that I see is probably viable. It may be hard, it may not be predictable, but groups can get by if they try deviating from the norm.

[kandrathe]

Pet Peeve: people care about group composition too much.  Everyone wants a "better" group than they have.  I think it's time for the Variant Scum to come up with some interesting party compositions to help prove people wrong about groups.

A well-structured group (filling Healer, Tank, AoE, crowd control roles) has one thing over other groups: stability.  The tank tries to get aggro on everything, while everyone else tries to avoid it (ignoring offtanks).  That's oversimplying things, but it's the general premise.

My typical group is Hunter/Hunter/Rogue/Priest/Priest.  If we're not MCing (for instance, at the 5-dwarf area of BRD), that leaves at best one Sap and Freeze Trap for CC.  For groups mixed elite and regular, the bears split to offtank, the hunters focus on a single elite, and I wipe out all the non-elites.  One of our priests is shadow-specced, so it's not like we get no damage out of the Priests.  At the next point targets are decided by experience, by what goes down first, and if a priest gets aggro.  I am amazes sometimes at how I stay alive, because I work hard to get aggro if I see a priest snag it.

If you haven't experienced it yet, it looks like complete chaos.  But the party always knows what's going on, we pay attention to what others are doing, and we know how to handle different situations.

Yesterday we had a group with Flyndar and Yuen in Stratholme, but it didn't work out quite as well.  Priest/Priest/Rogue/Rogue/Hunter.  The problem wasn't in group dynamic as much as it was we weren't used to each other or the instance.  Anytime we bit it hard, we had a way around it.  Adds were the problem of the day, and that's more a problem of learning an instance.  The Respawn Monster came eventually, causing us to forget going any further.  Each of us learned our lessons, and I'm pretty sure my normal group will handle it as long as we don't make mistakes that cause adds.

So far as I've seen, the only role that is 100% necessary all the time is healer.  No tanks and no pets I haven't tried yet, so I'd like to hear stories of how that goes.  Any other composition that I see is probably viable.  It may be hard, it may not be predictable, but groups can get by if they try deviating from the norm.
[right][snapback]72114[/snapback][/right]

I think the warrior is the best damage sponge, and does the very best at being able to hold aggro on mobs. Pets are ok, but they lack the armor to absorb as much punishment as a warrior or a paladin. The paladin is good tank, but without a good way for cause hate he has trouble keeping the mobs off the squishies. Using pets works if the priests can keep them healed, but again thinking of mana efficiency, it would be better for damage to be reduced by high armor. The advantage of using hunters is that they can deliver high DPS, and provide a tank. How are your priests spec'd, do they also participate in DPS?

All in all, my observation is that with good communication, experience and sanity, adequate tanking, adequate healing, and patience most dungeons are conquerable and enjoyable. But, one idiot can spoil it for all.

[Darian]

Pet Peeve: people care about group composition too much.  Everyone wants a "better" group than they have.  I think it's time for the Variant Scum to come up with some interesting party compositions to help prove people wrong about groups.
[right][snapback]72114[/snapback][/right]

Five mages, so long as you're largely hunting humanoids. I so want to do this it's not even funny.

[Gregorius]

I'm confused - how is this poorly constructed? You have DPS and some crowd control with the Rogue, DPS and two pet tanks with hunters, you have a healer and the best tank class in the game. What makes this poorly constructed?
[right][snapback]72109[/snapback][/right]

Hrmm. . .to me it seemed (at the time) that we were really missing something. To be honest, I think that a group like that WOULD have an easy time by now. What in my view we were missing was some level of competence. One of the hunters had done RFC before, with a Shaman. It was my second experience performing any sort of healing role for other people (with the first being "The Family Crypt," which I duoed with a 14 Troll Rogue). In general we were really badly organized-the warrior had problems holding aggro and I tried to stay close so I could heal the pets (I didn't know about the keyboard shortcut to select a party member's pets), which pulled everything onto me.
So. . .while that party could have easily finished it, only one of us really had any idea what we were doing and adequately performed group roles.

Five mages, so long as you're largely hunting humanoids. I so want to do this it's not even funny.

Good luck finding five competent mages who are willing to try an instance without a healer or a tank. But considering how many instances are humanoid heavy-Deadmines, Blackfathom Deeps, the Razorfens, the Stockades-what I really want to see is a five-mage Uldaman party!

[Treesh]

Hrmm. . .to me it seemed (at the time) that we were really missing something. 
<snip>
So. . .while that party could have easily finished it, only one of us really had any idea what we were doing and adequately performed group roles.
[right][snapback]72127[/snapback][/right]

And, as you came to realize, it really was the people in the group rather than the choice of classes in the group that was the problem. That's what a lot of people need to learn. Despite how people howl and whine for class balance, things really are pretty fairly balanced. There does need some tweaking here and there, but definitely nothing so drastic or sweeping as what people try to claim. A good player will make a "gimped" class seemed overpowered. A bad player will make an "overpowered" class seem gimped. We frequently make fake cries of "Nerf <insert class here>" whenever someone in the guilds on Stormrage or Terenas mention some nasty situation they got into and then came back out of because they played well (and sometimes had a bit of luck to go with it ;) ). Good players will shine and make so-called impossible situations work. Now, the truly impossible situations, you'll fail even if you are a good player, but that's why they are actually impossible rather than just so-called impossible. ;) Don't ask me to differentiate between the two more than that until after my body has hit the floor more than 5 times in 10 minutes. ;)

[Treesh]

Five mages, so long as you're largely hunting humanoids.&nbsp; I so want to do this it's not even funny.
[right][snapback]72126[/snapback][/right]

That could be fun. Tricky, but fun. :D Keep a frost nova rotation going and even on non-humanoids, you may be able to do well, except for areas with very small spaces. It would just take a lot of familiarity with the people you're playing with and really good communication.

[Quark]

I think the warrior is the best damage sponge, and does the very best at being able to hold aggro on mobs.
[right][snapback]72119[/snapback][/right]

Too many people take this statement and turn it into you can't do an instance without a warrior (or maybe Paladin). My group has had no unsolvable problems in BRD. As the Lurkers I was with in BRD one run can attest, the 5-dwarf part can be nasty. Yet in my usual group the most dangerous situation there was when we miscommunicated and a hunter shot my sap. The battle must not have been too bad, because we spent the whole duration of it yelling at each other in chat :whistling:

[kandrathe]

*Nerf* good players!! :) It's unfair to all those zergling, free for all, power levelers.

[Quark]

*Nerf* good players!!&nbsp; :)&nbsp; It's unfair to all those zergling, free for all, power levelers.
[right][snapback]72135[/snapback][/right]

Can't tell you how many times Tal has opened his mouth and the response was "Nerf Pallies!" :)

[Tal]

Can't tell you how many times Tal has opened his mouth and the response was "Nerf Pallies!" :)
[right][snapback]72136[/snapback][/right]

Nerf Tal. ;)