Cranky

I'm a cranky healer. This is something I'm still coming to terms with about myself, I ought to add. I'm a bit of an elitist about certain things, while at the same time very forgiving about those things which do not push my buttons.

Undergeared characters - they can be fun to try and keep up. Or they can be utterly infuriating as they do ridiculously stupid things, repeatedly, requiring my attention to save them from themselves at the cost of someone else (which I try very hard to avoid, but sometimes I just ... click the wrong bar). I don't like calling people or behavior "stupid," or any other derogatory term if I can help it, but apparently my elitism has forced me to start using such phrases.

The difference between the undergeared characters who aren't hurting the group and those who are hurting the group is what I go ahead and assume what separates a good player from a bad player. Team players vs self indulgent pricks?

Tonight I was shuffling through dungeons using the PuG tool (that's what I call it, regardless of whether it's a Dungeon Finder or LFG tool, I call it the PuG tool because it's going to get me a Perky Pug once I've saved 100 totally random people from themselves while using it). I got into a HToC group. Two of the people in this PuG were from my own server - I check, to find out whether I'll be embarrassing myself in front of people I might actually see again one day while sauntering through Dalaran. People from my own server make me feel ridiculously self-conscious.

Anyway, it seemed a pretty typical sort of run. Except at one point one of our group members (during the mounted phase of the first encounter) was just... sitting there. They weren't sitting on the knocked down body of the enemy, they weren't hurling javelins, they weren't working up the minimum distance to get a Charge in on a target. They just sat there, not doing much. Watching the show, I suppose. I didn't make note of who it was, but that I saw it happening at all sort of tripped a silent alarm in my head as a I charged in to skewer the enemy once my shields were maxed (they didn't need shielding either, they were at a full 3 green).

During the dismounted phase, I homed in on it a bit more. One of the enemy was a rogue. The rogue which spits poison puddles under people for giggles.

Well, someone just stood in their puddle. I was beside them and watched, and considered bubbling them or tossing on a Renew, but elected not to. Perhaps they were AFK without warning. Perhaps they hadn't noticed the puddle. Perhaps they were working up a really elaborate spell rotation. Except without the casting. Since I hate punishing my whole group for the mess ups of the few, I came to the decision that I would bubble and Renew them once they got lower on health. In the end, they got to about 30% before turning slightly where they stood and then moving their tuckus out of the puddle. And then they took another 5 seconds to find a target and start casting something - ANYthing.

Now 5 seconds, as I type this, sounds like a trifling thing. It's nothing. It's... it's... well it's not the snap of a finger, no, but one can easily hold their breath for 5 seconds without any problems unless, perhaps, someone's punching them in the gut, or they've just run for their lives and are holding their breath the better to hear the enemy approaching over the sound of their own pounding hearts. But in WoW, in Heroic instances, 5 seconds is long enough to kill some trash mobs. Which, granted, is not all that important, except that during actual boss encounters those 5 seconds of casting some pain causing spell could save another party member. Say, an under-geared but trying-very-hard tank. So what I've got is some guy not doing a whole lot for more like 10-15 seconds (because, well, he stood in the poison for a bit before doing anything, and prior to that likely wasn't doing much else).

A bubble and a Renew would take me 2 seconds. You could even call it 1 second to do both (cast one, global cooldown, cast second and ignore the next global cooldown, but I count the second cooldown because a) I am cranky and b) that's how many seconds I wasn't healing someone else in the group who was actually participating).

But I AM cranky. I was in a mood, clearly. I didn't have the patience for people not paying attention and distracting me from what I felt I should be focusing on.

So that little event stood out in my mind and made me a bit twitchy, but the guy seemed to be a bit more interested in casting spells after that. Maybe he'd finished getting his drink and was back at his keyboard and mouse - I don't know. But generally speaking, I want my group present and focused when I'm healing them, because that's what I'm giving them. If my group cannot do that, it's actually alright - as long as they actually tell the group that they're going AFK for a minute or 5. Those 10 seconds it might take to type the info out makes all the difference to me. I'll protect you from stray damage if I understand you're AFK and were kind enough to let me know ahead of time. When you don't do that, I feel slighted and will damn well let you stand in the poison and die.

The next encounter was Eadric the Pure. He's a fun encounter, I actually like him quite a bit, and the only reason I ever really groaned when he showed up to the party was because I still needed the Achievement that required me to help save my group from 5 different Nightmares brought out by sexy-breathy-voiced Argent Confessor Paletress. At this point I do my usual - run to stand between the melee and the ranged, facing the ranged so I don't have to keep spinning each time he casts Radiance.

As he casts Radiance, I finally realize something.

Neither of the two players from my own server has ever done this instance before. Neither of them seems to understand much about these encounters, and they're both bumbling their way through the place. Both of them get hit by Radiance - three times in a row. The "I didn't stand in the poison" one figures it out, and turns away during the second to last Radiance, and I presume he shares it with his companion as the "I like to stand in poison, fires and void zones" one manages to avoid the very last Radiance stun.

I'm a Priest. I can dispel magical effects. The stun from Radiance is a magical effect. But I'm just so flabbergasted at this point, and so irritated, that I make a point of not dispelling it from them.

I should clarify that I'm not making this choice because they've never done the instance before. We're all new at one point, we all have to do something for the first time eventually, there's really no shame or blame in this case. What really, really bothered me about the whole thing was that they'd never done the instance before, and they didn't even think to mention it to the rest of us. They didn't want any help figuring the instance out, they didn't want anyone to be aware that they weren't entirely up to speed on the instance, in fact they didn't seem to want to have anything to do with anyone in the group at all. (Which is another thing I dislike about PuGs - the number of people who use them as a stepping stone toward other things, rather than interacting with their fellow players, even just saying, "Hi," at the beginning of the instance)

I'm a fan for going into stuff "blind." New raid encounters I like to go into blind at least the very first time (reading strats ahead of time just overwhelms me, anyway, so it's also the only way I can learn as it is). But I'm not interested in doing it on a complete stranger's dime, and would appreciate it if others would extend the same courtesy to me.

You don't have to go into an instance for the first time and say, "Hey guys, I've never been here. I'm going to suck. I'm going to do a poor job. I'm going to make this run miserable for all of us." Because, you know, it's not actually true.

But don't be ashamed to admit that you're a newbie to something.

Be ashamed of your shame, instead. Be ashamed that your pride was so very delicate that you couldn't conceive of admitting to your lack of experience. Being a newbie won't turn your epeen into an innie. It won't make most of us think less of you.

The only other possibility I can think of in this situation is that both of them had run through the instance before quite a few times, were entirely aware of how the encounters went, and were simply AFK for most of the fights save their hands on their action bar keybinds. You know - watching TV while ignoring the screen and just tapping their fingers in a random or pre-determined order. Like botting, except with a warm body within 25 feet of the keyboard. Which would just enrage me if I actually felt it to be the case.

Ugh. I feel like a total bitch after that experience. The only thing that makes me not entirely hate myself over the whole affair is that I had no intention of actually letting them die - more like, I wanted them to actually experience the consequences of their mistakes so they'd be aware of what to avoid in the future (get out of the green stuff, turn away when he starts making that big glowy thing). I should add that I didn't mention my observations in group chat or in tells. I didn't actually trust myself to say anything in a constructive manner. But I also didn't come down on them with a ton of berating words, either. Looking back on it, I sort of felt like the painting, The Scream - wailing silently.

Do no harm, indeed.