The Continuing Saga...Oh, the drama!

Ulduar - Part 2

The night fell, clear and cold in Northrend. Kalyara was feeling a little weary from her previous failures the night before. She couldn't let this hold her down. She had done her best, she had held her head high and done her part. She couldn't, no wouldn't, keep beating herself up. No Sir! She was going to go back in there and show them!

Maybe, just maybe tonight she would have stronger allies, surely it would go better tonight...surely...

We'll skip past the painful group formation of this raid. Since previous history proves that our raid leader, from here out known as Dr. Don't-Know, is seriously unable to form a decent group because he's trying to play the "nice" raid leader and take anyone and everyone, regardless of gear or skill.

Fast forward to the first mob encounter. Again, we're in the same position as last night, posed to try to get to Ignis because Dr.Don'tKnow read on line that we need to pull one of the Molten Colossus all the way back to XT-002's door to prevent the healers being silenced by them both back to back. Yay! No big deal right?

*face palm* The OT, our beloved, well skilled though under geared, warrior from the previous night isn't paying attention and I end up dragging both the monsters towards XT's door. Now I realize I have them, I avoid all multi-target damage so that I don't build too much aggro on the second one and stop moving. Finally, our warrior-wonder-boy, finally realizes and taunts off me but only to die an almost instant, painless death because his health is still way too low.

Now, insert the Full-of-himself-retardin, and I use this term lightly. Normally, I avoid using acronyms for any class, I don't believe in retardins, huntards or dumbknights. But this guy's attitude, if nothing else, earned him this beloved title.

Mr. Retardin, looses his patience, after one pull..which I can't blame because I was begging Dr.Don'tKnow to try to find us another OT and let Warrior-Wonder-Boy dps instead. I just did it somewhat tactfully in whispers and not openly in raid chat. And I didn't blast his gear and tanking abilities to the rest of the raid either.

So, Mr. Retardin, has a tanking set. Wow! Nice to know now, could have told us last night before the wipefest! And...it's not a bad tanking set. His stats are pretty good for a tank. Maybe..maybe...dare I say...will we make it after all?

We successfully pull the Molten Colossus and manage to kill them both with no problems! Mr. Retardin goes back to his ret set and leaves the off-tanking to our warrior-wonder-boy. The rest of the trash is no problem and we are ready to pull Ignis.

Dr.Don'tKnow, goes through is explanation, we remind him of a few things he didn't know about and I pull the boss. I'm not having any problem with Ignis himself but I'm also getting and holding the aggro on the Iron Constructs. Not surprisingly, we wipe.

No big deal, that's alright. Now the group has seen the fight. We know where to move, when to move and we got him down to 78%. My hopes are up.

*Release and run back into the instance*
Raid Warning: Let's move on to the Antechamber, we can just skip these harder bosses

What?! We are going to give the boss one attempt and pass him up for more trash and an attempt at another boss that people have never seen? Ugh! I'm all for progression but sheesh, give it at least one more go before giving up.

On to the Antechamber, trash clears go fine. We make it to the Assembly of Iron. Again, Dr.Don'tKnow explains the fight. I'm going to take on Steelbreaker while our warrior-wonder-boy takes on Stormcaller Brundir because "he'll do the least amount of damage in the first phase". I have my instructions...pull the boss to the right of the door keep him out of the blue circles, avoid getting close to the other guys, etc. Once Steelbreaker goes down I need to pick up Runemaster Molgeim. Got it.

Goes something like this -
Kalyara runs in, grabs Steelbreaker and kites him to the right of the door.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy runs in....dies...two shots.
Healers die.
Kaly dies.
Raid Wipes.
Release and run back in.
"So I guess I'm going to have to tank this too, huh?" - Mr. Retardin
"OMG, I'm sorry but there are two people in this group that I never care to play with again"
Druid Party Healer leaves the group.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy leaves the group.

Thus the drama begins to unfold...
Now to this point, Mr. Retardin had been tanking the trash, which I was unaware of. But did explain why the trash pulls leading up to the Iron Council were going so well.

As for the Druid Party Healer apparently she is the real life girlfriend of Warrior-Wonder-Boy and didn't like the fact that Mr. Retardin and the other druid had commented on him not being geared well enough to be tanking this far into Ulduar.

If that's not enough, now we have Dr.Don'tKnow pulling the drama queen (king)/oh poor me routine. "I can't handle this right now", "sigh, sorry that I took up everyone's time", "I don't pick people based on their purples, they have skills" and my favorite "if you want to be an elitist jerk then feel free to leave".

I attempt to make the point to Dr.Don'tKnow that we're not being elitist jerks but that he has thrown warrior-wonder-boy to the wolves. He knew his gear was bad. But still he brought him into something well above his gear ability and expected him to OT.

His gear was barely good enough to do heroics with. He was defense capped but that is about all he had going for him. His health pool was extremely low, 23,000 buffed, his gear score was only 355 and he was not enchanted or gemmed.

Now I'm not saying anything was wrong with the warrior. Honestly, I like him as a player. He has the potential to be an awesome tank. I commend Dr.Don'tKnow for wanting to help him gear. That's awesome but that's also what heroics, emblems and crafted gear are for. You can't bring a seriously under geared tank into something above his level.

It's easier to carry dps and even one healer, if the tanks and main healers are well geared. But you can't do that when you're the tank. Not when you are that far below.

So, thus ends our Ulduar group for the night. A few angry people because they are now locked to Ulduar and didn't down a single boss. A couple more angry people because they feel like they have been shunned. Then a few that just think the entire group is full of dumb asses.

I get a whisper from the Druid Party Heals shortly after getting back to Dalaran. Wanting to know my opinion on her boyfriend's tanking. I kindly tell her what I honestly believe. He has skill, he has potential, that's not easy to find. Now he needs the gear to back it up. That's the easy part.

And somehow...I've committed myself to helping him learn and get that gear. *sigh*

Happy Thursday!