Fail PuG

I'm sure everyone has seen these posts all over blogs and forums.  People complaining about the (not as new anymore) LFG system and the people it causes them to get stuck with.  I was healing on my druid when the system came out, and I really didn't have many problems with people.  Some DPS might suck, or Tank may not be able to hold aggro.  But honestly, I knew more or less what I was doing and I had the gear to back it up (read, completely overgeared for heroic content).  If a DPS did pull aggro, chances were good they had decent enough skill to kite for a second and I could NSHT/Swiftmend/Nourish them and keep them up.  Either way, I never really saw what all the fuss was about.  Now I'm leveling a warlock, she's 72, and I've been running instances.  Now I realize the DPS complaints about 20 - 30 minute queues.  Still not too terrible as I just queue and continue doing quests.

Last night I had a stellar experience with my run through Azjol' Nerub or however it's spelled.  Our first tank (before we even got into the instance) declined group invite, 2nd tank went offline before we even pulled.  3rd tank is a DK that seems to have an idea of what to do, so I'm excited.  He pulls first mobs in the Gatekeepers rooms and dies at the end of the pull. "Wtf healer, heal".  Priest apologizes and we move on.  The priest didn't survive a different pull later on.  Tank asks me to put a SS back on the priest, so I let them know it's cooling.  Tank immediately  asks again, and so does the healer this time.  So I let them know it's actually still cooling like it was 5 seconds ago.  I'm beginning to get slightly irritated by this time, but we move on.  Tank boy asks for levitate and takes off, dropping down the hole towards the final boss and continues running right to the last adds and pulls them.  I'm right there with him and looking around at the complete LACK of anyone else in our group.  Healer is still back up top drinking water as he had to res some people.  DK dies "Wtf Healer, Heal"

I politely explain why pulling when he doesn't have a healer is a bad idea.  He then whispers me and asks if he can have a soulshard.
1) wtf are you going to do with a soulshard?
2) they're soulbound

I just don't understand where these people come from.

TWOTHREEFOURFIVE

So there are some pretty stupid nick names for different arena makeups but the comp I've been recently playing really takes the cake. It is really shocking that someone called Warrior / Ele Shaman / Frost Mage / Disc Priest / Holy Paladin 2345 and it stuck. It isn't catchy and its not amusing. But apparently it did stick and even spawned 2 copycat naming conventions 2346 and 2347. Apparently 5 = frost mage, 6 = warlock, and 7 = hunter. Anyway I've been playing that comp recently and doing alright, esepcially considering I had never played my paladin in 5s before. My gear was pretty gross, with only 2 pieces of relentless and 3 furious - and almost no wrathful off pieces. My GS was 5100 compared to the rest of my teams > 5800 so they were definitely carrying me a bit. Of all the people on the team I have one of the least difficult jobs as I mainly spam flash of light with the occasional holy light bomb or cooldown to save someone. That being said my priest is extremely aggressive both on mana burns and offensive pressure so the better I stay on top of healing the more it allows him to control the mana pace of the match.

One thing I am noticing I need to work on a lot more is my positioning. I have played 2k+ in all brackets on my priest as disc before and its amazing the difference in where I need to be as a paladin vs my priest. Priests have a good number of mobile heals and their positioning forces the enemy to react with the threat of mana burns. The difference on the paladin is I am way more effective of a healer when I don't have to move and get to pump out heals. In order to do this I need to almost predict where the fight is going to be so I can be where the action is going to be as well as where it is now. With 2 defensive dispels I don't need to worry too much about polymorphs but I could still improve a lot about deciding when I hide from cc and when I stay in and heal.

The other thing that I have been working on is using my hammer at good times. 2345 has a lot of offensive pressure, which acts like CC in a way by forcing people to line our frost / elemental turrets. Besides that all we really have is polymorph on demand so we really have to use our hex / fear / hammer wisely. I'm still learning but I've had some big stuns that have scored us kills when we didn't have a polymorph or counterspell available to use against one of their healers. My general strategy there is to inch closer to their paladin or druid. If I run up to their paladin early I can usually lure his hammer when it really isn't effective. My team is pretty verbal on swaps so I know when it's time to help out. Most of the time their healer can trinket it right away but that brief interrupt is enough time for our burst to drop someone very low and even if we don't score a kill they are burning cooldowns, mana, and iniative.

The new random BG system is simply amazing compared to the old suffer through isle of conquest strand of the ancients to complete the set. I am at full wrathful off pieces on my rogue and only need to upgrade furious ring to wrathful ring on my paladin after 2 hard weekends of farming. I wish alliance stood a chance in WG on my server, but in the last week we won a total of 3 times. The silver lining is with 9 tenacity I'm going 30-1 soloing on my rogue taking on 3 people at once and winning with under 20% health. I know its not skill but it is fun to break face sometime. We'll see how much the upgrades matter on my paladin tonight, we're hoping to break 2000 team rating this week. We started the team from 0 (ugh) and have kept a ~65% win ratio. Our initial 1800 MMR quickly rose once we started beating a few 2200-2300 teams but we're hanging steady now at about 2200 MMR because we keep running into a really good Euro Comp (Lock/Mage/Rogue/Resto Druid/Disc Priest). That comp was invented in S3 to beat 2345, and while we haven't given up, they have both the comp advantage and 5 really solid players.

I'll try and fraps some matches tonight and see if it is even worth watching from the paladin's perpsective :)