Your worst group?

[Kevin]

Nerf Tal. ;)
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But we luurve da Tal! :)

[Mavfin]

I'll have to confess to zerging RFC with my 22 warrior, a 16 warrior (my guildmaster's alt) and a 28 undead rogue that he knew. With only 3 of us, there was some challenge to it, and we did get wiped on the way out by about 10 troggs, but it was fun.

Deadmines? Don't get me started. I've had good runs, and bad runs. Even on the good runs, some bad people.

BFD, I've run once, and completed with 3 people, and had the most mind-boggling fight on the first pull in the boss' room. They MC-ed the rogue and the healer, leaving *ME* alone with them all for a little bit, and coming within moments of a wipe, but the rogue came out of MC and first-aided me while I fought, and saved us. By that time I had the two mobs locked on to me, and the rogue calmly helped butcher them while the healer came to and healed me fully.

After that fight, clearing out the rest of the casters was easy, then all that was left was the boss. Since no one else was left in the room, I charged him, and the rogue butchered on him, I kept shield-bashing him, and got a nice execute crit for the finish....then the turtles and crabs ate us!!!!!! We just laughed and walked out of the instance after that, having completed all the quests.

[Darian]

Good luck finding five competent mages who are willing to try an instance without a healer or a tank.
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Heh, got two of them all ready to try this someday already... :)

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!

Exactly my line of thought. Throw in Scarlet Monastery, Zul'Farrak, BRD, most of BRS (damned spiders)...

Now, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang, Razorfen Downs, Maraudon, Sunken Temple, Scholomance... those wouldn't be very fun with a 5-Mage group. ;) Nor would Strat, only because getting TO live side would be a nightmare.

[Darian]

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.
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Yep. Although Shiarra and Sormus (27/29 mages) usually have a warrior in tow, they have blown away equal-level elite quests as a duo by very carefully using Nova and Poly in rotation. As long as we have room to move, most things are doable.

[Phoenix]

You two are confusing me everytime you post. I can't see who's who with a quick glance because your names contains a, i and n, and you have the same portrait and a small signature. Sad panda.

[kandrathe]

You two are confusing me everytime you post. I can't see who's who with a quick glance because your names contains a, i and n, and you have the same portrait and a small signature. Sad panda.
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Oh, Mavfin and Darian! I had to switch to linear to understand what you were talking about.

[Phoenix]

Oh, Mavfin and Darian! I had to switch to linear to understand what you were talking about.

I just click Fast reply and type in what I'm thinking. Outline is too many clicks to read an entire thread. I guess I should start quoting people so that you guys know what I'm referring to.

[kandrathe]

I just click Fast reply and type in what I'm thinking. Outline is too many clicks to read an entire thread. I guess I should start quoting people so that you guys know what I'm referring to.
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I believe most people use a threaded view and try to use the "reply" or "quote" rather than the "fast reply" to keep the context of comments and reply's clear. Such as in this case. ;)

[Malakar]

Even in linear view, I find it faster to click reply on the post I'm replying to, rather than scroll all the way down for "Fast reply". Easier than quoting too, and it really helps those of us who read in threaded view.

[Phoenix]

Even in linear view, I find it faster to click reply on the post I'm replying to, rather than scroll all the way down for "Fast reply". Easier than quoting too, and it really helps those of us who read in threaded view.
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Excellent idea.

Just to try to put this back on topic, I remember a Deadmines group I was in where the mage decided to blink right in the middle of as many mobs as possible, use Arcane Explosion a few times then run back shouting "HEAL PLZ HEAL PLZ HEAL PLZ" and expecting the warrior to grab aggro from him.

He constantly complained about how the other members in the group played and he rolled on absolutely everything. I would have kicked him but I wasn't group leader. His IRL friend the hunter was. Who played just marginally better, and kept pulling new mobs even when we had mobs left from the previous group.

The only reason we succeded was because we were all over level 22 and the priest was really good. The warrior knew his stuff too, and I stunned everything I could. Still a miracle we never even wiped, although the mage died seven or eight times.

[Thecla]

Well, I'll add my worst experience in a group, which was way back in the open beta, in the first instance I ever played (deadmines).

I joined a group led by a higher lvl mage and his warrior as a lvl 20ish hunter. They had obviously been there before and knew more-or-less what they were doing, unlike me. Now I will admit some culpability -- early on, I hit a few sheep (I didn't know polymorph even existed at the time); ok, I learned quickly that wasn't a good thing to do, and stopped targeting any sheep. :)

Things proceeded a bit better after that; or least as well as they could in a party with 2 other complete newbies like myself, and two less complete newbies, including one egomaniac.

Then we got to the shredder room. The mage, who was doing all the pulling, opened the doors, and I hung well back with the priest trying to attack at range. The next thing I see is two goblins rushing through the door toward me and the priest, with the other forward party members fighting more goblins at the door.

I waited a second or so to see if help was coming, which it wasn't, then set my pet (who was on passive and under manual control) on one goblin, and fired at the other. The good news was that I aggro'd both goblins; the bad news was that neither me nor my pet were a great match for them. I was running around in a panic (I would try not to do that now ;) ) being chased by a goblin or two when the rest of the party arrived back from the door.

"What the $%#& are you doing hunter?" yells the mage. I was dead by the time the rest of the party finished off the goblins (the priest didn't get scratched), and I started back from the grave yard looking at a conversation in which the mage says "It was the hunter's fault", and one or two of the party at least say "That was a lousy pull."

While running back through the mines I get disbanded from the group, receiving a somewhat apologetic whisper from the warrior, and a whispered lecture from the mage telling me to "Learn how to control your arrows and your pet before you join a group."

[kandrathe]

Ouch. I enjoy feedback and learn from the occasional rebuke, but that was too harsh and certainly so for the Deadmines. Hunters, Warlocks and their pets make for good scape goats. Most people are oblivious to thier own lack of skills and I find you see everything that goes wrong when you play the squishies in the backfield. One of the reasons I think the instance of the Deadmines is deep inside the mine, is that it gives the party the opportunity to learn to work together outside the instance before they start hitting the Elites.

Playing Priest is the most interesting for observing others skills, since you are focused on who is being damaged you note every pull and where the adds go and who needs healing. The good priest is very attuned to the aggro of every mob. When a snarl happens, it's the priest who probably has the best notion of what went wrong. Again, to make you feel better, it is the job of the tank to also know where every aggro'd mob is and to insure he has its attention, or that it is sheeped, sapped or otherwise out of commision.

I have just come to expect most people running RFC, Wailing Caverns, Deadmines or the Stockade to be less than stellar group or instance players.

[Darian]

One of the reasons I think the instance of the Deadmines is deep inside the mine, is that it gives the party the opportunity to learn to work together outside the instance before they start hitting the Elites.
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Except for the fact that there's almost never any mobs in the non-instanced portion of the mines on the way to the instance... ;)

(I agree with your assessment from a design standpoint, it just doesn't work that way in reality unfortunately.)

[Phoenix]

Except for the fact that there's almost never any mobs in the non-instanced portion of the mines on the way to the instance... ;)

(I agree with your assessment from a design standpoint, it just doesn't work that way in reality unfortunately.)
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Yes, but even in the instance you first face a lot of non-Elite Defias Miners before you start facing Elites.

[Bob the Beholder]

Thread Necromancy ahoy!

Just had something of a horrific experience and would like to share very much.

Randomly decided to hop onto my orc warrior I haven't played for two months and go through the RFK run I had gotten myself prepared for before going all insane-o on my mage and druid...

After about 45 minutes of spamming to find a group, since all the people I had played with on that character ended up either level 55 due to my long absence, or straight up gone. Eventually, I find two mages, a shaman, and a druid.

So we go in, I do my usual, "Everybody try to attack the same target, and give me a few seconds to build aggro." So at the first mob group both mages run up and start charging up frostbolts while I'm still behind them... The squishies. They are pulling. With heavily damaging spells. >< But, eh, I've recovered from that before, it just takes some scramble... but once the spells are out and I'm into the 'ocrapocrapocrapocrapocrapocrap' segment of trying to keep stuff off of 'em... they go immediately into arcane missiles. Then fireblast. Then cone of cold. Then arcane missiles. And another fireblast. And THEN, against two elite enemies, one of them starts throwing arcane missiles at one, and the other starts throwing in random fireblasts and running circles around them spamming arcane explosion.

Oooh, and when they don't go for the 'deprive tank of aggro' route, the shaman starts pulling with chain lightning, and constantly throwing around earth shocks. Which, naturally, aggros more than expected, and everybody scrambles to keep the aggro off of me...

The whole time, I'm telling 'em, "Lay off on your nuking, give me time to build up aggro," and they keep on agreeing with me, and even going so far as to sympathsize with my situation seeing as they claimed to have each played warriors. But even then they both poured every bit of mana into doing as much damage as possible, expending every mana-draining, burst-damaging DPS-option they had, never once letting off.

The rest of the party wasn't so bad. The shaman, though he did decide to pull with chain lightnging a few times, seemed to only do so at the example of the mages, and he did break sheep and attack random, un-touched enemies sometimes, but he tended to throw down useful totems, add in some heals and some damage as necessary. The druid was the same, although he seemed slow and unused to healing others, but he still never let me down.

The worst part? We got through all right. Although I was out of practice, and didn't exactly have the cooperation of the party, I kept 'em off the squishies when it counted (managed the feat of holding down three enemies straight down to death while one mage spammed arcane explosion as fast as he possibly could, although that could well have been luck), and the enemies certainly DID die fast. I couldn't really convince them anything wrong was going on, 'cause, hey, we lived. But man it was stressful on the guy who builds his play style around being the first to die. And I guarantee you it won't work in any instance with enemies that actually hit hard enough to bother with.

Anyway, it was just a slap in the face after only playing my warrior with reputable players who would believe me when I say that they have a part in me keeping aggro. (Had a mage back in the day who would apologize for pulling aggro. Every time. Even though it was fairly rare, and she did a good job of skirting the line of monster-death and mage-death.) And, of course, after playing my mage, where I had always been careful not to pull aggro unintentionally, and always did everything I could to lose it. (I've gotten fairly good at doing all the damage I can without pulling aggro. I usually end up the last alive in my parties, when I can't sacrifice myself for the healer.)

It's always frustrating when you find someone who does what you do, only stupider. My guild on Gorefiend probably ended up all annoyed at me for spamming guild chat with rants like, "Holy crap, aren't they supposed learn, at birth, in mage school, that if you're wearing cloth, you DO NOT want to get hit!?"

[MongoJerry]

After that fight, clearing out the rest of the casters was easy, then all that was left was the boss.&nbsp; Since no one else was left in the room, I charged him, and the rogue butchered on him, I kept shield-bashing him, and got a nice execute crit for the finish....then the turtles and crabs ate us!!!!!!&nbsp; We just laughed and walked out of the instance after that, having completed all the quests.

... You know that the main boss mob in the instance is past the turtles and crabs, right? You light the four braziers one at a time. (Don't do more than one at a time. That's a bad scene -- seen it!). After each brazier, a group of mobs comes out -- crabs, turtles, whatever. After all four are lit and the mobs are killed, a door opens, and you get to see the big hydra mob at the end. No, there's no quest involving it, but fighting it is the big grande finale of the instance.

[russ]

Aku'mai doesn't really have many drops worth going after unless you've got a druid in your party. Kind of disappointing for the end of such an other-wise impressive instance - there's a load of blue-dropping mobs there.

My worst instance run, I'm sad to say, has to have been a run at Wailing Caverns. I had already duoed the instance with a 22 mage and my 23 hunter, so it's not a very hard place, although the final encounter ended up with both of us out of mana and my pet dead. But this group was my druid (20), a priest (22), a warrior (21), and another priest (21) , and the problem - a shaman (24).

Sounds like a great group, since everyone but the shaman knew what he was doing. But the shaman managed to make a complete fool out of himself, pulling tons of adds and breaking CC's left and right to 'see if we could deal with it'. This ended up culminating at one point in the east section of the instance where you have to jump from one ledge to another and another before reaching the far edge... and he couldn't make it.

On his third try, he took a wrong turn and ended up dragging about 13 elite snakes and druids with him. Not a fun way to wipe a party.

It kind of came to a head when he started being a looter, rolling on pretty much everything that dropped, and I do mean everything. Then we killed the rare spawn Fairie Dragon which dropped the blue wand, and he rolled on and won that.

/kick.

[savaughn]

A while ago, Gnollguy posted that a pickup group is basicallly 5 people soloing in the same area. I'd never had that feeling. Tried to run through SM the other day and saw this for the first time. Druid, rogue, warrior, rogue, priest (me). I notice everyone's health bars are dropping and I'm thinking we're seeing AoE. Nope. I look up and every single person in the group has taken a mob and wandered off to their own corner of the room to kill it. Except for one of the rogues, who has three mobs, two of which he hasn't hit yet. Oh good. He's saving those for me.

I should mention that this group included a warrior who informed me that a) he didn't have a defensive mode and b) when I pointed out where it was on his toolbar that you only use defensive mode if you have a shield. He kept explaining how he was taunting things off of me but it didn't seem to be working. The druid kept explaining how he was a great tank but depite this fact never held aggro on more than one thing at a time in the entire attempt.

Oh, and I got yelled at for not healing people when I died because I had 3 elite mobs beating on me. No, you're right. The dead don't heal so good. Neither do priests being cast-interrupted. Worst. Party. Ever.

[Mavfin]

... You know that the main boss mob in the instance is past the turtles and crabs, right?&nbsp; You light the four braziers one at a time.&nbsp; (Don't do more than one at a time.&nbsp; That's a bad scene -- seen it!).&nbsp; After each brazier, a group of mobs comes out -- crabs, turtles, whatever.&nbsp; After all four are lit and the mobs are killed, a door opens, and you get to see the big hydra mob at the end.&nbsp; No, there's no quest involving it, but fighting it is the big grande finale of the instance.
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Yeah, I know that now....didn't know it then (note post was 2 months ago) Live and learn, I guess. We were just elated that we lived to kill the boss.

[oldmandennis]

Got a new one folks....

Started playing my druid again after a long break, and took him to the WC with a bunch of random n00bs.

Lost one LD after a while, but we were still rollin, still bein idiots. People makin mad dashes for chests, since we don't seem to understand the concept of rollin for them. I was the MH despite havin a priest around, but whatever.

Our hunter ninjas a BOP cloth piece. Noone needed it, but everyone was mad, especially since we were explicit in our instructions at the start of the run. I actually was the one appealing for calm, since the n00b seemed genuinely confused.

Then the next boss dropped a BOP mace. The hunter ninjaed it again! This time his excuse was that our rules had been "tossed out the window"... by him.

I hearthed out, but the thing that makes it classic was I saw in /p before I left "Why can't I use the mace?? I know I trained it".