Artie earned his Perky Pug the other day, which made me reflect on the various instance runs that I’ve taken and some of the problems, challenges and successes.

This, my virgin post on Blade Barrier, shares these with the 2 or 3 people that will find this from Google. Welcome!

Problems

These are the out-and-out “bad things”.  A problem in a PuG is either preventing the group from reaching the goal (Emblems!) or at the very least severly hampering that goal.  The examples I’ve experienced boil down to players either simply not knowing how to play their class (or at least how their class abilities impact other players) or perhaps not caring.

• The Hunters (sadly, yes there have been more than one) who used a tenacity pet instead of a ferocity pet. Please, Hunters, put your gorillas, turtles and bears in the stable before you accept the queue summon.
• The Hunter that ran all of Violet Hold in Aspect of the Viper because “Dude, I run out of mana quick and that helps!”.
• Death Knights that continued to drop Death and Decay on the pulls.  I realize that this is the new sexy theory-crafted maximum DPS from Elitist Jerks, but don’t drop DnD on the pull? Be like an NBA star and spread some diseases around before you toss down the DnD.  This allows me the chance to slap a Howling Blast and a few Rune Strikes.  For you Frost and Blood specs, just don’t even bother with DnD.
• the Warlock that refused to summon an Imp and stuck with his Voidwalker because “it will add to my recount dps”.  Welcome to /ignore…
• the <insert any DPS here> that is not even cracking 1,000 Damage Per Second in a level 80 heroic. Seriously, if you can’t pull AT LEAST 1,500 DPS, get the hell out of the heroic queue. I get (and support) that heroics are where you get gear before you can raid. But, not pulling your own weight drags down the group. If it’s gear holding you back, run random regulars. If it’s skill, research your own class and do your best to improve your performance.

Challenges

So I just complained about other classes… and you’ve gathered that stupid people set me off.  My challenge is not being one of the people someone else will complain about in their blog… I’m not gonna be “that DK”.

Artie’s Rule #4: Tanks do not lose aggro; aggro is stolen from tanks by DPS.

The biggest challenge for me — aside from even surviving the waves in the Halls of Reflection — has been maintaining threat when I’m grouped with raid-geared players. My gear is not crap, but it’s not “Raid Tank”. I’ve focused pretty much exclusively on 5m instances, and therefore my stuff is either instance drop or emblem drop. But when I’m in with a DPS (or multiple DPSers) that is averaging 5K dps in Utgaarde Keep, I will encounter threat issues.  If you’re kicking out 5K plus, and pulling aggro, please don’t yell at me? Watch your threat and reign yourself back. I’m really burning everything I got.

To help with threat, DPS have to learn to use /assist. If nothing else, see that big skull floating over that mob’s head? Hit that one. Don’t pick your very own mob and start wailing on it? Please? If you’ve got no idea what I mean, check out rule #1 in my favorite ever explanation from The Warcraft Hunters Union.

Successes

Despite the above complaints, my biggest successes have come from actually completing instances that challenged me prior to 3.3. I would beat my face into a wall for hours trying to get ToC done, because our party simply couldn’t pull off the Black Knight. The interaction with other players has given me insight into different ways of running the instances (running as a DPS and observing other tanks is invaluable) as well as different tactics for bosses.  These insights have translated into clearing more content than I could before 3.3. I’m also loving that I can actually purchase Triumph gear; without actually raiding, this is the highest stuff I can get and it’s cool to access it.

Bottom line for me is that I’m really enjoying the LFG tool. It’s great to decide “Yeah, I feel like a random” and insta-queue into a group rather than waiting the 15 minutes like I do my hunter. Once I’m in the group, I enjoy playing with new people. I never know if I’m starting a solid run with capable players or if I’ll have yet another OMFG story to share from someone’s antics.

Hope the first post makes sense, and I welcome comments / criticisms / observations!