An Evening of PuGs

I began playing wow in the days of BWL and started with a few friends. This was particularly effective as one friend would tank, one heal, i'd dps, and then the other 2 DPS were a dime a dozen. When I started healing as a priest/druid I didn't like to PuG groups as they were usually fail and it's just frustrating.

So anyways, healing on my druid for heroics/raids has been pretty cake (especially heroics) my gear isn't terrible, the tank's and dps' gear is pretty good. So while they kill things I can work on, and perfect, my hopping skills,dps, and blending in with the shrubbery around me, while in tree form. Sure they yell at me occasionally, but I always respond with "It's ok, I have Wild Growth". (note to self, WG doesn't actually heal for as much as I thought it did...oops)

Yesterday I decided to log on and see what said friends were up to. Ulduar hard-modes or some other such nonsense. I mean honestly, how am I supposed to PvP/VoA10 without you guys!? I once read a post (sorry can't find it anymore) about PuG's being the ultimate test of skill. I can see it. I think it would be difficult if I had to focus on healing a party instead of trying to /cower in funny locations. So bring on the tests!! I'm a tree, I can heal anything, I don't need them. Alrighty, let's start wintergrasp. AMG Alliance DEFENDED!?!? This is a sign from above, VoA10 go go activate. After an uncomfortably long time trying to get 10 people who feel like killing the same thing together, complete with our Black Temple geared rogue with 1 MainHand Warglaive and bear tank with green staff, we began our campaign. Koralon activate. Things are going good, There's a priest (raid leader) who's healing with me. We're bumping along, hmm. I'm out of mana. INNERVATE!!!! heal heal heal, I'm out of mana again!? Dubya. Tee. Eff. Ok, well maybe we're close to killing this guy? Oh...60% you say? Well that's awkward. Oh, another fun fact. I'm doing 55% of the healing, mr priest is doing like 25 or 30...The paladin tank in greens and blues is doing almost as much with his seal of I heal myself as much as bad priests. Now we come to a fork in the road, there are several possible reasons why we're in this position.

1) I worthlessly pissed my mana away nourishing everything in sight regardless of HoTs on the target.
2) I wasted/efficiently used my mana spamming HoT's and nourishes on undergeared tanks and raid, including a tranquility.
3) I'm in feral gear.

If you've read Raithen's post below this, you might be inclined to guess #3. Oh ye of little faith! Not only was I actually in Resto gear and Resto Spec, but my PvE gear and spec no less! I prefer to think the problem was our dps, or lack there of. Why do I think this you might ask? Because Koralon ENRAGES!?! wtf...this guy has an enrage timer? The answer is yes, he does, and after doing VoA10/25 each week for the past like 6 months I'd never seen that happen before. Anyways, we regrouped, booted some people (we kept the warglaive rogue...as he was our #2 highest dps...) and killed him, almost as slowly, but he didn't enrage, so that's neat. Hunter/lock loot, neither of which is in our group, ok....neat. On to Emalon, long story short, no dps switched, we got blowed up hardcore, i chose life instead of VoA of Doom. Alrighty, let's PvP. A few 5 cap losses of Daily AB later, friends are done with ulduar!! Come play with meeee. We form up, holy moses we're 5 cap winning an AB!!! And then I did what every AB newb has done. While defending LM I almost kill this shaman, amg amg, must kill him!! He's got like 20% health!! Chase chase chase "Horde has assaulted the Blacksmith"


Fuck. That was just the beginning, with like 40 resources left to go Horde 5 nodes us ftw...Achievements and all. They beat us so quickly my timing mod hadn't even had a chance to catch up yet, it still had Alliance winning in the next 5 seconds...What a tease. At least then we realized it was an org group. I wish I could have at least been in their vent afterward to hear the cheering/name calling/taunting