03-23-2005, 08:24 PM
Man, you guys have some horror stories. I thought I was jaded and bitter about players I don't know... ;)
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I pretty much got to 60 either soloing or grouping with the same four people. With the exception of BRS and Scholomance, that five-person group hit every instance as a group; sort of an unspoken rule, "Nobody goes until we all go." We also made a point of hitting the instances before we really "should" have (with the exception of the Razorfens, which we kinda blew off and zerged the hell out of later), which was extremely educational, and had the benefit of all of us knowing one another's capabilities and tendencies. (And had moments of high comedy, such as the day Maraudon opened and we decided to go check it out -- when we were all between 41-44...)
So -- outside of raids on the high-end instances, where one can easily find large populations of morons ready to ruin your experience -- I just haven't had a lot of opportunity to be part of a "worst group." One case which might have qualified involved three of our core group (myself tanking at 55, Vilatra healbotting at 56, and Ewber hunting at 58) needing to make a run to Sunken Temple because a couple of us hadn't had a quest or two the first run through. We picked up a couple of other hunters (!) -- a 53 and a 52.
For the first half of the run, the 52 was pretty quiet; we weren't real thrilled with him because he was instancing like he was soloing, but we had everything under control so it wasn't really frustrating. The 53, though... he was instancing like he was soloing, AND he was constantly bugging us...
Okay, see, we were ALL there to do the upstairs half except him. Both of the other hunters did need to do the downstairs half, and we'd been pretty clear we'd do that after we took down Jammal'an, Hakkar, and Eranikus.
...anyway, the entire time we were working on the upstairs bosses, the 53 was doing a brilliant impression of a four-year-old asking "Are we there yet?" After we completely cleared the center axis, and then took out Jammal'an, he started bitching about wanting to go do his quests now. even though we were explaining that all we had left to do was take out Hakkar, the second pair of dragon twins, and Eranikus. Finally he subsided (I think he was afraid we were going to bail after Eranikus, but we'd made it clear we were going to take care of the basement too).
By the end of the run, the 52 had actually -- by observing Ewber -- learned how to play his damned class in an instance group. ("Hey, this volley thing works pretty well on these maggots." "Should I hold my pet back for a couple of seconds when you pull?") In fact, that's why in the end I actually enjoyed that run, because we were watching him grow before our eyes. The 53 never learned a damn thing as far as we could tell, and as soon as we knocked off the boss in the basement, he hearthed immediately.
Except for times when I've been clearly over-level and basically just tanking a lower group through an instance, though... I've never done a 5-man outside my usual group. So all my truly bad grouping stories have been raid stories, which are a beast unto themselves. The worst one was the other night in Strat, when a hunter kept pulling with what must have been his most damaging opener because I Could Not get aggro off him short of the temporary effects of mocking blow and taunt, the mages started blasting other mobs before the mobs even got into my range to start drawing aggro which meant there was no way I could get the aggro on those mobs period, and the paladin wasn't doing anything worthwhile in the way of off-tanking... finally I just gave up and resigned myself to simply making sure Vilatra wasn't getting beaten on.
It's enough to make me want to take the MongoJerry approach and just 5-man everything short of BRS with a group I know and have faith in.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I pretty much got to 60 either soloing or grouping with the same four people. With the exception of BRS and Scholomance, that five-person group hit every instance as a group; sort of an unspoken rule, "Nobody goes until we all go." We also made a point of hitting the instances before we really "should" have (with the exception of the Razorfens, which we kinda blew off and zerged the hell out of later), which was extremely educational, and had the benefit of all of us knowing one another's capabilities and tendencies. (And had moments of high comedy, such as the day Maraudon opened and we decided to go check it out -- when we were all between 41-44...)
So -- outside of raids on the high-end instances, where one can easily find large populations of morons ready to ruin your experience -- I just haven't had a lot of opportunity to be part of a "worst group." One case which might have qualified involved three of our core group (myself tanking at 55, Vilatra healbotting at 56, and Ewber hunting at 58) needing to make a run to Sunken Temple because a couple of us hadn't had a quest or two the first run through. We picked up a couple of other hunters (!) -- a 53 and a 52.
For the first half of the run, the 52 was pretty quiet; we weren't real thrilled with him because he was instancing like he was soloing, but we had everything under control so it wasn't really frustrating. The 53, though... he was instancing like he was soloing, AND he was constantly bugging us...
Okay, see, we were ALL there to do the upstairs half except him. Both of the other hunters did need to do the downstairs half, and we'd been pretty clear we'd do that after we took down Jammal'an, Hakkar, and Eranikus.
...anyway, the entire time we were working on the upstairs bosses, the 53 was doing a brilliant impression of a four-year-old asking "Are we there yet?" After we completely cleared the center axis, and then took out Jammal'an, he started bitching about wanting to go do his quests now. even though we were explaining that all we had left to do was take out Hakkar, the second pair of dragon twins, and Eranikus. Finally he subsided (I think he was afraid we were going to bail after Eranikus, but we'd made it clear we were going to take care of the basement too).
By the end of the run, the 52 had actually -- by observing Ewber -- learned how to play his damned class in an instance group. ("Hey, this volley thing works pretty well on these maggots." "Should I hold my pet back for a couple of seconds when you pull?") In fact, that's why in the end I actually enjoyed that run, because we were watching him grow before our eyes. The 53 never learned a damn thing as far as we could tell, and as soon as we knocked off the boss in the basement, he hearthed immediately.
Except for times when I've been clearly over-level and basically just tanking a lower group through an instance, though... I've never done a 5-man outside my usual group. So all my truly bad grouping stories have been raid stories, which are a beast unto themselves. The worst one was the other night in Strat, when a hunter kept pulling with what must have been his most damaging opener because I Could Not get aggro off him short of the temporary effects of mocking blow and taunt, the mages started blasting other mobs before the mobs even got into my range to start drawing aggro which meant there was no way I could get the aggro on those mobs period, and the paladin wasn't doing anything worthwhile in the way of off-tanking... finally I just gave up and resigned myself to simply making sure Vilatra wasn't getting beaten on.
It's enough to make me want to take the MongoJerry approach and just 5-man everything short of BRS with a group I know and have faith in.
Darian Redwin - just some dude now