Your worst group?

[NotSoDarklord]

Mine just ocurred. The instance: Zul'Farrak (The instance that no one likes anyways)

Myself (Sommli level 49 rogue). Abattoir (level 47 rogue) Grizelle (level 48 Priest) feel up for trying to new and nerfed Divino-matic quest. We ask for two more players in taranis and end up with a level 51 rogue (who will be referred to as apples) and a level 53 druid. We have no maintank. (I recognized apples because he had cost me several gold, i the area of 40 or so, by cutting into a market I had almost exclusive rights to)

Zul starts going smoothly, we get up to the divino quest with nothing eventful happening and we fail. (Amusing bit where apples argues that bly never descends the stairs... though he clearly does) We end up wiping twice just getting back to where we were. Apples decides to amuse us by fighting naked, which is somewhat funny at the time, though after refusal to reclothe after 15 minutes or so it gets old. Apples requests that we reform so we can try again and we head out.

Grizelle, Ab, and myself do not even make it to the door before apples has decided that we should do this quest in a raid. Despite various objections from myself and others that we believe the quest cannot be done in the raid, Apples assures us that the quest can indeed be done in a raid. We form a raid, but not just any raid. The most idiotic raid formation I can imagine. Group number 1 was rogue rogue warrior warlock druid. (Yes .... one healer, and the healer is level 42) Apples (the raid leader at this point) then puts all the major healers in another group with one rogue. (priest paladin rogue)

After arguing for a bit to reform the groups and getting nowhere we head into the instance and proceed to zerg everything. To make the matter of silly group formations worse, the druid in our group NEVER heals us. Apples and I almost die numerous times while his/her mana pool remains filled. After asking that he/she heal us I'm told to chill out, and the druid still refuses to heal. I honestly believe this druid thinks druid heals are noncombat only. We make it to the cages, and pause for buffing up. Griz (the only priest) uses all of her mana on buffs, and some genius opens the cages... before she has a chance to drink. Our main healer has NO mana, not that she could properly heal the demage dealers/tanks anyways due to the group setups. The mobs are dealt with (it has indeed been nerfed), and we find out at this point that of course, there is no completing this quest in a raid group.

Three hours wasted. I was left disgusted with this experience not due to people who had no idea what they were doing in terms of their ability to play their character's roles.... but due to various demonstrations of stupidity outside of what skills to use at what times..
</rant>
Sorry about what may seem like whining, but it was not a good situation and it's still fresh :)

[Treesh]

That really blows. I've still only had one really bad group. Gnolack and Aleri were going to finally finish up the Stockades. We were really overlevelled for it so we were intending on just duoing it. There's a pally and warlock sitting at the entrance. They asked if we wanted to join them. We figured why not. We're big enough that even if people are morons, GG and I will still live anyway. ;) There was also a rogue with the existing group so we waited a half-hour or so for her to get over there. First fight, the warlock pulls everyone from both first rooms to us. Gnolack goes defensive stance, I go into pure healbot mode, everyone comes out alive. Next fight, it's the rogue who pulls everyone in the world. Same thing, everyone comes out alive. Rogue leaves because that's all the bandanas (or whatever the collection quest is) she needs. I'm not too sad to see her go. We fight more, with the warlock doing some really stupid crap (btw, the soulstone is on himself and not me), but Gnolack and I keep people alive. We get close to the end, clearing out the side rooms before hitting that last guy, both side rooms get pulled to us because of the warlock. Warlock then runs back through a room that we didn't clear out because he was too impatient and just wanted to get to the boss. He's out of my line of sight and dies (I see now why he stones himself - he's too dumb to live through rough fights). He ends up leaving afterwards. Good. Happy to see you go.

Have you noticed that not much was mentioned of the pally? That's because the pally wasn't a moron. He was doing his job well. The three of us then take out everything else without any drama whatsoever.

I know this story really doesn't compare to most other people's horror stories, but on the few occasions where GG and I have done a random group, we're pretty lucky with who we get so I don't have much in the way of horror stories. :) My sympathies to those who have typical group luck and get stuck with losers.

[Kevin]

Have you noticed that not much was mentioned of the pally?&nbsp; That's because the pally wasn't a moron.&nbsp; He was doing his job well.&nbsp; The three of us then take out everything else without any drama whatsoever.
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The pally was actually a bit underleveled for the area as well. He was doing a good job of staying back to not draw additional aggro, he threw a few heals out when the early stupidity was going on and he picked up adds later on when it was just the 3 of us and then brought then from Aleri to me without us really having to say anything.

The Warlock also insisted on pullig using a wand then waiting till he got hit before sicking VoidWalker on the mobs. I got whispered at with some harsh words for trying to grab aggro before the voidwalker did and then I got a whisper later from the lock for not getting aggro on the stuff that voidy wasn't hitting even though the Walker had aggro on them. Oh well.

[Treesh]

The Warlock also insisted on pullig using a wand then waiting till he got hit before sicking VoidWalker on the mobs.&nbsp; I got whispered at with some harsh words for trying to grab aggro before the voidwalker did and then I got a whisper later from the lock for not getting aggro on the stuff that voidy wasn't hitting even though the Walker had aggro on them.&nbsp; Oh well.
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:lol: I didn't know about the whispers! That's too funny. Let's see, we have an over-leveled (although every mob in there was still green to us so we weren't completely over-leveled), protective specced warrior, but let's have voidwalker be the main tank? No wonder I had to heal him so much more than I should have. That explains a lot about the way things went.

[kandrathe]

Lately? :)

That last worst group was the VC raid with MJ (Grizabella) leading, and we had another Lurker (Priest or Paladin) but I forget now who that was (speak up :) ). We added two more to the party, a hunter I believe (who was good), and a Mage. I had at earlier in the day attempted to get together a run with my Warlock, but there were too many soft-shelled types and this group wiped at Gilnid when the rogue pulled Gilnid and 2 or 3 adds, so I switched to my Warrior Brynmawgr, who was also ready for VC.

A few things to note; this was my first time tanking VC, so I was feeling less than expert on exactly how to manage all the encounters. This was the first time I had every teamed up with a mage that uses "Sheep", other than for extreme situations. Before this my standard group tanking tactic was to grab and hold all the activated mobs, focusing on aggroing each enough to hold them while the team pummels each in turn to pulp. I guess no one else in other pickup groups I was in previously really understood crowd control. With two mages it was doubly hard to know which of the adds was going to be sheeped, so we ended up with alot of popped sheep in this run. All in all, though we made it to the docks in pretty good shape. I'm feeling MJ is a little on edge at this point due to how messy some of our scrims are, plus at this point the mage has already picked up at least one BOP item she could not use.

At the ramp to the ship we err'd in not pulling and removing the bodyguards first, so it was decided that I would tank the Tauren boss while everyone else would take out the bodyguards. Well, during the second round of the Tauren stunning everyone to switch weapons, people are dropping behind me. 3 of the party died. We regroup, fight past the patrols and make it to the ship. We fight to the back of the ship and take out cookie, and he drops the BOP meat tenderizer -- we discuss who should get it and just when I agree my warrior could use it, the mage grabs the BOP mace. Doh! Then she tries to make the excuse that she did not know it was BOP. Double Doh!!

Here is where the trouble begins. :( We clear the lower decks without trouble, but as we are trying to make the last turn, we attract Captain Greenskin and he scrams the ship down upon us. Some of us make it to jump into the water, but we have at least three deaths. After again fighting past the patrols, the group tries again. Same result and we have 2 more deaths. By now, the docks NPC's had respawned, and so after reconstituting we again fight our way to that point. The third attempt, I tell MJ that being a dwarf has a liability in line of sight, so how about someone standing back and watching to make sure Greenskin is clear, then we all made a dash up to the top. Whew! Finally! We systematically work the mobs up on the top of the ship, and even pulling Captain Greenskin with his adds went well.

Time to pull Van Cleef, and MJ clearly gives instructions for me to tank VC, while everyone else kills the bodyguards, the right one first, then left one. I'm tanking VC and I notice his life bar dropping quickly, and at first I'm thinking I'm "Super Dwarf" back off a little. I try do more shield bashes and lower damage attacks and still VC is dying too fast. Yes, you guessed it. Our darling mage was full on blasting VC. Now, extra bodyguards spawn before the first are dead, people are dropping behind me and shortly we have a full wipe.

This one was the most painful because at this point we had HOURS invested in getting though VC, and we were minutes from completing the mission, bar the stupidity of one mage who would not follow the leaders directions.

But, in true Lurker spirit we waited an hour and this time with a full Lurker contingent did the full deadmines run in less than an hour with no drama.

[savaughn]

This one was the most painful because at this point we had HOURS invested in getting though VC, and we were minutes from completing the mission, bar the stupidity of one mage who would not follow the leaders directions.
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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. :( 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.

[Hillary]

Grizelle was not pleased. At least I got a decent drop out of the experience, but hey . . .

Yeah. We have to do Divino again at some point. I'm seriously considering just boycotting that instance until a full Lurker group can form.

That sucked.

[Arethor]

Lately?&nbsp; :)&nbsp;

That last worst group was the VC raid with MJ (Grizabella) leading, and we had another Lurker (Priest or Paladin) but I forget now who that was (speak up&nbsp; :) ).&nbsp;
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The priest was me as Zane. I had actually been on the first two attempts mentioned when Kan was his warlock and then when he was his warrior.

The first group was half decent except that there were one or two occassions where my "On Me" calls went unnoticed while a different mob was filleted by the full party and looted before anyone noticed me down at 35% health. The other problem with the first group was the rogue. He took it open himself to be main-tank/puller. We didn't have a proper tank other than maybe Kan's VW so that wasn't too terrible but he would regularly run ahead aggroing multiple mobs at once either on purpose or because of his large aggro radius that he was oblivious to. If anything we were slightly underleveled for a proper VC run. The Gilnid wipe was the nail in the coffin. The rogue pulls 4 goblins and Gilnid while i'm still drinking, not even expecting more mobs to come. In about 2 seconds the rogue is gone and everyone else steadily falls under the mob. This coming about 30 seconds after a soulstone saved us from a complete wipe as i was able to rez everyone except for the one person who needed to leave.

The second group made believe there was hope for me to get a decent run that day. We picked up MJ and Kan switched to his warrior, so I knew i'd have proper sheeping and tanking. After many little things along the way we made it to the ship room.

Smite should have been easy, but instead our second mage decides to go all-on Smite instead of healping with the guards. Smite does his shocker and while he goes to get his new weapon the two bodyguards team up on me. Bye Bye healer. I run back to the instance where i'm greeted by the hunter who had also died. We fight our way forward while everyone else fights their way back.

We get back to the ship room, clear Cookie and work our way up the ramp. Our aggro radius must've been huge. When get near the top, Greenskin aggros pulling the rest of the ships crew at us. I yell to everyone to jump in the water and as I go to jump off of the platform I get frost nova-ed and slaughtered. Another run of passing patrols and we get back to the ship. We pull Greenskin and he brings the whole crew. I jump into the water and I'm the only one to survive. I wait a little bit and make a newb error. I didn't wait for the full reset and end up getting slaughtered as soon as i set foot on the beach. Another corpse run and sneaking by patrols. This should be the last time, right?

We get back to the ship room get up the ramp and here comes Greenskin this time we all make it into the water, wait for the full reset and try again. Greenskin comes again, jump, climb ramp. At this point it was pretty obvious that our aggro raidus was too big to stand on that platform as Greenskin walked by so I suggested hanging back till he passed at the same time that MJ suggested the same thing. We finally made it past that section of ramp, kill off the pirates on the top ramp, so now it's just Greenskin and his 2 cronies. They go down very quickly and with quite a bit of satisfaction.

I call a drink break and while doing so I tried to quickly inform MJ of how VC acts now since he hadn't been at this point since beta. So i reitterate in party chat multiple times. Tank on VC everyone else on bodyguards. MJ stated the same thing and I stated it one more time for good measure. I made sure to stress that we would get 2 more bodyguards when VC got to 50% health. I don't think MJ and I could have been any clearer.

So of course what happens? We pull VC, Kan runs in with no fear showing in his eyes taking on the man himself. I step off to the side as one of the bodyguards aggros on me because of proximity and promptly shout "On Me" knowing that we're going to be needing some healing. This is when i realize that there are 2 bodyguards near VC pounding on Mongo and 2 bodyguards pounding on me.

I managed to get myself overboard and into the water with hopes of rezzing the 2 fallen heros and one fallen moron. After VC goes and resets himself I climb out, go across the dock and stand at the bottom of the ramp to the boat. The entire boat has now respawned as we've been in the ship room for over an hour now. I make the call that it's a full wipe with no chance of recovery. I hearth out and call it a day. Wish I stuck around so I could have done the Lurkers run. Zane still needs the head of VC. ;)

[Brista]

Which is my worst group? So far, excepting guild groups it's almost every one - at least every full group of five.

The problem is 4 good players and one awful one = an awful group

Wailing Caverns seems a particularly touchy spot. It is Horde, level 20ish and it's the first instance I've seen that drops really good stuff, that introduces Bind on Pickup and it can be quite tricky tactically

One group was competent but I got very frustrated after winning two BoP rolls to have it stolen due to a full inventory. So frustrated in fact that I actually abandoned my Rogue and switched to a Mage. With the Rogue I had to care about stuff, with the Mage I don't

Today's effort was led by a very skillful, knowledgeable, irritable, hyperactive priest. He knew a lot about WoW. He knew virtually nothing about making friends. He spammed the tank (who was a bit clueless) with advice and kept ninja pulling adds during the easier fights. I added him to my ignore list after a while after which the group got considerably more enjoyable as far as I was concerned :D

To me a big part of grouping is a process of filtering people into two camps:
- good players with whom I would love to group again go on Friends
- people who I don't want to play with again go on ignore

I don't use these lists in the way I would befriend or ignore people in real life, to me it's a much more neutral Group With list and Do Not Group With list. The latter has the side-effect that I don't see the chat but it's prime purpose for me is to keep me from grouping twice with someone who makes the game less fun

I always try to send players tells before inviting them and I obviously don't get the opportunity to join up with recruiters who I've ignore listed

So while a third party might end up recruiting both myself and someone I don't especially want to play with it should do a reasonably effective job of separating these people out from my player pool

A related point about which I'm wondering is what the actual size of your player pool is. While there may be thousands of people on your server a lot will be alts or very casual players who don't get past level 20. The player pool who you actually play with might be quite small - for me currently its the low 20s Horde people who are mainly playing on Kalimdor, who don't exclusively solo or play with friends/guild. So if, hypothetically, it's actually only a hundred people of whom only 20% are so awful that they will ruin your evening putting a person on your Do Not Group With list is a significant step forward

[Treesh]

Zane still needs the head of VC.&nbsp; ;)
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I've got my Pepperi who has those quests to do still. She was just going to skip it all, but then heard rumors of a different VC run so she went and picked them all up. That run was a total bust though so she's still got the quests to do.

Edit: And I promise to not play her as insanely as I do when soloing. ;)

[Kevin]

I've got my Pepperi who has those quests to do still.&nbsp; She was just going to skip it all, but then heard rumors of a different VC run so she went and picked them all up.&nbsp; That run was a total bust though so she's still got the quests to do.
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Balador needs to do all the VC stuff as well.

[savaughn]

We get back to the ship room, clear Cookie and work our way up the ramp.&nbsp; Our aggro radius&nbsp; must've been huge.&nbsp; When get near the top, Greenskin aggros pulling the rest of the ships crew at us.&nbsp; I yell to everyone to jump in the water and as I go to jump off of the platform I get frost nova-ed and slaughtered.&nbsp; Another run of passing patrols and we get back to the ship.&nbsp; We pull Greenskin and he brings the whole crew.&nbsp; I jump into the water and I'm the only one to survive.&nbsp; I wait a little bit and make a newb error.&nbsp; I didn't wait for the full reset and end up getting slaughtered as soon as i set foot on the beach. Another corpse run and sneaking by patrols. This should be the last time, right?

We get back to the ship room get up the ramp and here comes Greenskin this time we all make it into the water, wait for the full reset and try again.&nbsp; Greenskin comes again, jump, climb ramp.&nbsp; At this point it was pretty obvious that our aggro raidus was too big to stand on that platform as Greenskin walked by so I suggested hanging back till he passed at the same time that MJ suggested the same thing.&nbsp; We finally made it past that section of ramp, kill off the pirates on the top ramp, so now it's just Greenskin and his 2 cronies.&nbsp; They go down very quickly and with quite a bit of satisfaction.
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This looks like it's a design decision and something you need to expect. If you do VC while level appropriate (18-22) standing anywhere but on the far side of that platform will aggro the good captain. I think it's expected that you must time your run up the ramp (and hide in the boxes at the top) and fight the defias on top up there.

Obviously, if you zerg it, you can just fight your way up that ramp (reduced aggro radius) but I don't think that's how it's intended.

[falconesse]

I've decided never to do the Deadmines again unless I'm with Lurkers (stories to follow). Threnn's a level 28 pally, so if you guys want to do a DM run and need a tank/secondary healer, just let me know.

[oldmandennis]

It's not a complete nightmare, but here's what happend to me in the Stockades a week ago.

My RL friends and I were a little over leveled but undermaned, so we picked up 2 randoms making it lvl 25 pally, mage, warlock, and a 21 mage and 30 druid.

We cleared the bosses no problem, but 4 of us still needed bandannas. The Druid said "I gtg", and just took off. He didn't stone, he took off. We begin to grind out the bandannas, but 20 sec later the druid returns. Apparently he CAN'T rush past 7 million ressed defias. Add the lot he brought to an subpar pull on my part and you have instant wipe.

The baby mage wasn't much better, but he did less damage. He was just annoyingly spamming AM, with a pally as the MT. Made me do a lot of running. Eventually I stopped healing him.

[falconesse]

Both of my nightmare groups were in the Deadmines. Threnn's still a baby pally, so I don't have many higher-level instances under my belt.

The first time I decided to go collect the head of Van Cleef, I was actually in a different group. I'd been running around Longshore killing Murlocs (hisssss) and helped a group of people out. They were all 17-20, I was probably 22/23. We finished the quests around there, and someone else tossed out an LFG: Deadmines over the LFG channel. I whispered to him, and, trying to be polite, asked the people I was with if they'd done Deadmines. Two of them were smart and said "uh, we're a little low for it".

Good, thought I, off the hook. And then the other group member pipes up: "If you can wait, my boyfriend has a 32 rogue. He'll be on in a few." I knew the run was doomed. And then...Stormrage crashed! Woo-hoo! I'd never been thankful for server problems before. I know, bad way to bow out of a group, but when the server came back up, the only person who came back online was the guy who said DM was too high.

So, I find another group almost right away. There's me, a lvl 23 mage, and a 22 pally. We try to find one more person. Outside of Sentinel Hill, a 40+ Night Elf rogue was having a snowball fight with another high level NE. To my surprise, the rogue joined our party. Turned out she wanted one of Cookie's rare drops, so hey, bonus. We shouldn't wipe.

We head in. You know those little mining carts that are all over the place? The other pally kept sitting in them and making choo-choo noises. Now, it was funny at first, but he did it every. single. time. we passed one. So, we're going through the instance pretty quickly. Not too bad, except for some reason I kept having to heal the rogue. Dunno what she was doing (or maybe it's just the way the class takes damage - I haven't played one yet), but every time I looked, her health was way down. The other pally? Not healing anyone but himself, and running ahead and pulling mobs when we weren't ready.

Also, the mage occasionally drew some aggro and the other pally ignored him. Which was odd, because I got the impression that they knew each other outside of the game. So not only was I the primary healer, I also had to keep watching the mage to make sure he wasn't getting eaten and tank for him if he was. He had the great timing of drawing aggro just when the rogue needed a heal.

And then -surprise!- the mage and I died. We ran back to the instance (don't ask why the pally didn't rez us. I have no idea) and for some reason, the mage couldn't get back in. So there I am, at the start of the instance with the pally, waiting for either the mage to come back in, or the rogue to meet us so we could all go back out, disband and regroup. Pally whispers to me: "So, when this is done, you wanna hit the skins?"

*boggle*

I typed something like "I'm not that kind of girl", and hoped he'd leave it at that.

He gets in a cart and says "Threnn, what am I?" and makes choo-choo noises again.

Being a smartass, and being a little exasperated with him, I say, "I dunno, a duck?"

His reply: "ur a moron. no dick 4u."

"Damn," I say. "My loss," although the temptation to either tell him I was a 13 year old boy or report him for harrassment was strong, but goddammit I wanted to kill Van Cleef.

The rogue gets back to us, we go outside, disband, regroup, and pick up a lvl 24 warrior who was about to solo it. The rest of the instance went pretty well. The warrior (mostly) knew how to tank, so I mostly sat back and healed and jumped in where I needed to.

We finish the instance, and are standing outside. The warrior asks us to help her with "one quick thing she needs in Stormwind." We agree to go. Turns out what she wasn't telling us was she needed to kill someone inside the Stockades. Grrr. But, in we go. Now, I know I'm way too low to be in the Deadmines, but if the rogue and warrior do their jobs, maybe, just maybe, we'll survive.

Nope. Apparently everyone's stupd meters went to 11. It was chaos and slaughter, and suffice to say, even the people who sort of had a handle on how to play their classes lost all focus.

Once we all wiped, I was like "Okay, screw this, I'm out." Except I was much more polite about it ("It's 2 AM and I have to get up for work in four hours").

I have another bad group DM story, but I suppose I should save it for later and go back to earning my paycheck now.. :blush:

[Darian]

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.

[savaughn]

I was probably 22/23.

...

Now, I know I'm way too low to be in the Deadmines, but if the rogue and warrior do their jobs, maybe, just maybe, we'll survive.
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Did you mean too low for the Stockades? At 23, you're actually quite high for the Deadmines.

[kandrathe]

Adding to the hands raised. My Warlock Elleneor has all the quests queued up as well.

[Rinnhart]

'Twas a guild group, amusingly.

9 Guildies and a random warrior in FD Stratholme.

We wiped twice getting in the door to failed saps and then to the undead adds eating the druid.

Know that first hall towards the final boss, past the hall with the two locked doors? We wiped in there three times. Soulstone had been used when we wiped just before the cannon master, so DI saved the raid for a moment. Somehow, the next hall gets pulled down on us. I'm sitting at the back of the hall, see the approaching mob, ninja-vanish around the corner, and come back to rez once everyone's died. Then, as we begin clearing that last room at the end of the hall, the two monk patrols respawned. I was far enough back that, again, I wasn't initially in combat. Well, starts looking like we're going to win, so I charge up just as the battlemage goes bat-#$%& crazy and melts the rest of us.

So, we ran back. And the streets have completely respawned. Wiped again just past the gate trap to -the- worst pull I have ever seen performed at that intersection. The warrior picked up two of the big mixed mobs and a patrol of ghouls. 'Nother DI, 'nother near miss.

Tack on an additional wipe just before the boss, and we called it a day.

I firmly believe that it was the warrior's fault. I partied with him again in scholomance some time later- and all I can say is what a freakin' moron. I tanked most of the dungeon, including almost every boss. Just- ARGH!

[Crusader]

I, too, have a horrible experience with the deadmines. Strangely enough, during the beta people used to have brains.

I was level 32 or so at the time. Two guildmembers (21 paladin and 22 warlock at the time I believe) needed to nail VC and I had time to spare (as well as a great need for linen to tailor with and promptly disenchant for strange dust and magical essence). We had no priest. Two rogues were picked up to tag along. The warlock gave his soulstone to the paladin and we were off. Having donze the deadmines about 2 dozen times and knowing every inch of it, I told the party what to do, when tight spots would come up, and gave them a 10 minute lecture on what 'pulling' is. The guildies heeded my words (they were both quite new and seemed eager to learn and were quite excited all the way through at the pretty spots). The rogues (both level 20), on the other hand, considered themselves demigods and didn't listen to a word I was saying. One even went as far as demanding everyone would wait while he would pickpocket every mob despite my saying he shouldn't do so.

Don't get me wrong. Seeing the normal miners are no longer elites the deadmines aren't half the challenge they used to be, but it's darn risky. The rogue didn't listen. things went wrong. I didn't intervene for 10 seconds, while instructing the paladin not to resurrect the fool rogue. I then managed to get rid of the peasants and single elite. The other rogue got the idea and let me do the pulling, stayed neatly with the paladin and started doing his work. He got smart. This all went very wel, till we got to the goblin part. I told them about the trouble with engineers. Apparently, even after five times, the instruction "ignore the bots, kill the engineers first!" is too complicated for some, resulting in the rogue and paladin wasting their time on bots with insane armor. Still, no biggy, I'm a +12 so I can manage pretty well. Then something unexpected happened. The other rogue came back. apparently, he had come back into the instance and sneaked past all the respawns. After 'welcoming' him back (keeping up a good face of surprise) we went back on our old routine. that's saying the rogue decided he needed to pickpocket again. He needed to pickpocket the goblins. He got one.. .two.. three... he gets spotted by the boss, the other 7 goblins see a rogue appear in the middle of 'm and get that familiar 'look, lunch!' smirk... and we get wiped.

Needless to say, by then I was not amused. I kicked the rogue clean from the party and muted him after a few minutes of his whine/brags (apparently, *I* should have saved him from 7 hungry goblins+boss), the other one had to leave. We picked up another guildy and the four of us cleaned the instance quite fast (he was a 25 warrior I believe, tanks are a mage's best friend). Shows how one person can sick it up for everyone.