Holy Rollin'!

Think back before the Dark Portal reopened. Back when Rag’ and Nef’ were the be all end all. Now think about the Burning Crusade and even in to early Wrath. Good memories, eh?

Now ask yourself if you would roll and level as a holy priest or priestess during those times. I’d be right up there with you saying "No way," remembering how poorly equipped to level a pure holy spec was.

Now though, with so much more at our disposal it’s a much different World of Warcraft.

I roll how I play. I play how I roll.
First, a bit of perspective. Even with the introduction of dual specs, I intended to roll my priest as holy. I just feel that I get a better understanding of the nuances of the spec if it is what I am constantly in. I prefer not to switch between specs and try to adjust to two learning curves simultaneously.

So the first 20 levels or so were a bit painful. My wands got a rediculous amount of usage, which is sadly unique to priest leveling it seems. Once I had a decent feel for the class and an ok caster set -- somewhere around level 27 or so -- I started queuing in the LFG tool as a healer.

Elune be praised!
Levels have never gone by so fast. I could manage almost a full level per instance. On my priest I have by far the fewest flight paths. Why? Because I’ve never had to set foot very far out of Stormwind. In fact I’ve leveled from 27 to 44 almost entirely through the LFG tool. You might not think so but It is refreshing actually, because after having done the Loremaster achievement on my druid main, the prospect of questing again (especially through the tedious 40s and 50s) does not appeal to me much.

And my gear gets some fairly regular updates. I try not to be greedy, rolling on only true upgrades. And it’s nice to be in predominantly blues for a change. But why is it so damn hard to find a wand upgrade? Hey Bliz! How about an heirloom wand next?

Alliance rep is also now sickeningly easy with the inclusion of the faction tabards.

Oh and a floating priestess is just awesome! Gotta love Levitate. “BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE GODESS!”

Holy sacrifices
LFG leveling isn’t all roses and gold though.

First my professions suffer. On my other flower children, herbing was effortlessly easy. But on the priest, my herbalism takes a concerted effort to level since I’m not out in the zones questing. It is further compounded by difficult travel as I have very few flight paths. Even the level 40 “epic” mount upgrade doesn’t really lessen that pain enough.

Enchanting has been decent, though it is one I doubt I will keep. It's startng to become tedious again.  I will more likely switch over to a alchemy once I transfer her over to Wildhammer with the rest of the Jarr-heads.

Finally, you do run the same things with some disturbing frequency, especially at the higher vanilla levels. I’m quite tired of Dire Maul already, though Scholomance is still one of my all time favorites.

Healing ain’t so scary
My biggest fear was actually jumping in and being a competent healer. Having done decently on the druid and ok as a Wrath resto shaman, I wasn’t too worried. But coming in as a lowbie priestess with largely single target heals was intimidating. To those of you feeling the same way, here is my advice. Just do it! Remember the truly epic words of Patrick Swayze as Brody “Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.”

It’s not that hard. It just takes attention to detail and a willingness to triage. Plus a few tools will make this much less intimidating.

First, set up some mouseover macros for all of your healing / resto abilities. For example here are a few from the priestess:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead] Renew

Second, set your key bindings to be convenient. I’m not much of a configuration freak in this regard. I’d rather play than try to learn a whole new key set. Just be sure that your most used and most important abilities are tied to your most easily reached keys. For example on the priest I have Heal bound to “1”, Flash Heal to “2” , Renew to “3” ,Shield to “4”, and Greater Heal to “5”. Ideal for all players? Probably not, but it works for me. Find what works for you and roll with it.

Third, get a couple of add-ons that track your buffs and healing. I love Grid because it’s highly configurable and allows you to have your entire party / raid in one convenient frame. Plus it makes those mouseover macros even more potent.

Power Auras is another that I swear by, though I use it more on my other characters than this one currently.

Queuing Healer LFG
So I continue my trek, the Dark Portal beckoning on a not-too-distant horizon. Once I hit 51 I’ll be moving ‘Angel here over to Wildhammer (cursed gold limits) to rejoin my Calvary cronies. Perhaps there she will continue to find some competent groups to healbot.

“Healer LFG for randoms. No fatties.”

Because eight isn't enough

Likely much to my WoW mentor's dismay, I've once again made the trek through the stagnant 50s, plowed through the Outland 60s, and boosted through Northrend to have my nineth level 80. Jarramond the Warrior now joins my ranks of level 80 Jarrheads.  DING! GRATS! WOOT?

Some might ask why, especially given that the expansion is right around the corner. A few reasons jump to mind. First, why not? There was little else to do in the game. Our guild's raiding has been effectively halted as most are burned out on it. It’s disappointing because we had a great and fun Friday night group assembled, but it's certainly understandable.

Second, I realize that leveling is something I really enjoy. It’s tedious at times, but I like the challenge of seeing if I can do it better, faster, more efficiently. 

And to that end, the new LFG tool is SERIOUSLY overpowered. My old manner of leveling in Northrend would have me do the two starter zones (Fjord and Tundra) first. I just like the quests there. Skip the Grizzly Hills and move on to Dragonblight. Finally wrap up in the Basin and usually will ding 80 there. With the LFG tool and a toon in all possible heirlooms (sans ring) and it’s a different story all together. By way of comparison, I had hit 77 before even completing the Tundra.

So now it’s a self-imposed fun race against the expansion. Can I get yet another Crusader title before the sundering? Can I get a full tier 9 DPS set for him before the Earth Warder tears his entity apart? Can I get him all the Northrend reps to Exalted before we all burn?  It’s not so much a question of needing to do these things, but rather a wondrous sense of what might be possible.

Then again, I do have a lonely  level 23 priest sitting in Ashenvale. Pehaps...LFG anyone?

Update:  Crusader -- check!  Full Tier 9 and decent weapon -- check!  Northrend exalted -- check!  It was fun getting it all done within a tight window.  On the other hand with 1 main and 8 alts all pretty much geared how I want them (I love full sets) now I sit here wondering "Now what?"  Fun run nonetheless.

Heroes, to Arms! Defend the Skybreaker!

This is just way too cool.



Oh and...

We stand with you, Brann Bronzebeard!
For the Child King! Long live Anduin!

Take a look over there...

Regardless of where you stand on the RealID debate, I strongly suggest you read the article below.  It's an excellent read and I think it captures the feelings that most of us have on the subject.

Shades of Grey: An Open Letter to Blizzard (Internet Dragons)

"Someone save that tree before the internet dragon kills it"

LFG: Frost Lord Ahune

Curse you Lord Ahune! Why are you being so stingy with your capes? Casters get all the love as do the Agility wearing crew, but have you no love or loathing for the big shinny folks with the big swords 'n boards?

I guess I really can't complain though. I got the rogue an easy upgrade. Pugging it is fantastically easy with the LFG/LFD tool, with queues averaging about 4 minutes for DPS and even faster for healers and tanks.

Still no pet though and no tanking cape for my Tankadin-wannabe. Oh well. Guess I have a bit more farming to do.

If you have a new toon or with a sub-par cape (ie below ilvl 232) jump in and grab free a free upgrade from Frosty here. Though don't you dare roll on my tanker cape. I called it. Dibs! See it's mine. I called dibs. If you can call "dibs on a spaceship," I can call dibs on a loot drop. Dibs!

That's what it's all about

It’s amazing how easily we become creatures of habit. In doing so, we sometimes forget the basic tenets of that which we hold dear.

So last night I was a bit tired of tooling around on the Ret Pally, so I jumped over to my rogue for a few random dungeon runs. He’d been a subtlety spec since his inception, minutely tweaked from expansion to expansion. With the coming of dual specs and a bit of coin in the purse I went dual spec: keeping subtlety and adding an assassination/mutilate spec.

I’d typically run Shadowstep/Subtlety for questing and pick pocketing, using Assassination/Mutilate for instancing or (Elune forbid) raiding. Last night I was having a rough go at it as mutilate. I just couldn’t get my openers down and my DPS was really rather lackluster. I couldn’t even discount my gear really. I’d done better in the past. It just wasn’t clicking. So mid run I swapped over to Sub.

Best thing I could have ever done! It finally clicked why I was doing so poorly before. Yeah I can do well with Mutilate. I just don’t like it. Why? Because it’s not fun. Despite being the flavor of the month and one of the preferred DPS specs, I just don’t like it. I’ve been tolerating it to do some decent numbers. In doing so I surrendered one of my longest lived Warcraft beliefs…

Fun is greater than all!

Simply because I was enjoying it more I was actually doing better. I picked up roughly 800-1000 DPS just by swapping. Is this because of a superior spec? No. Most would probably argue that I moved to a poorer (worst?) spec. But I did better because I was having more fun. Faster stealth movement? Hell ya! Shadowstep poofs? Bring it! Tricks of the Trade + Shadowstep + Shadow Dance + Ambush, Ambush, Ambush!?! Ooh yeah!

I kicked myself later for not realizing it. I’d given up what was fun for what was “expected.” Fun is indeed better than all. It’s largely why my specs are rarely cookie-cutter. I play how I want and enjoy it. I don’t need to top the meters. I don’t need to have top of the line, progression level raid gear. I want to play a game and have fun doing so. And I want to do so on my terms.

So when it comes down to it dear friends, play your way and the rest be damned. Spec how you wish.  Play what ever content makes you happy.  You will fare far better if you like what you’re doing rather than simply doing what some Jerk (©?) recommends. If your desire matches their gospel, so be it. Just don’t lose sight as I did.

It’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun. Never let anyone tell you how to do so. Fun is subjective. There is no wrong way to have fun. Well, except maybe to roll Boomkin. Other than that you’re golden. :D

So you wanna be a Crusader?

I’ve got a little project I’m working on that hopefully I’ll have completed soon. I’m trying to create a calculator that will tell you what it’s going to take to go from your current state and reputation levels to earn the Crusader title and all of the glory that comes with it.

My vision is that it will tell you:

• Which quest lines you need to complete
• Which dailies you need to complete
• How many days will you have to spend doing dailies
• How many Champion Writs you will need to earn and spend
• How much gold you would earn in working toward crusader.

Right now I’m working in Excel, but if I could figure out a way to get it online that would be even better. The “pie in the sky” vision would be to have it pull in data from the armory somehow, but that’s much beyond my expertise.

It's something I would have loved to have had before working on my five Crusaders and I realize it may be a bit dated.  Nonetheless it's a been an interesting excerise.

More to come. Let me know if you are interested or have any input.

Wipes happen

Bad is never good until worse happens. ~Danish Proverb

Inevitably it’s going to happen. At some point down the road you are going to wipe on a five-man instance that you’ve run multitudes of times before sans incident. It could happen due to a number of factors: some controllable, some not. As in most things in life, it’s how you react to such adversity that often determines the outcome.

Last night I ran into a situation that I’m sure we’ll all find familiar. PuG run and the tank pulls a big group, gets spotty heals, and dies. The substantial remaining mobs then run rampant over the group and full wipe ensues. Again, I think we’ll all find familiarity in this sequence.

The Example:

Trollgore room in DTK.  Mass pull leads to wipe.
• Tank: “So heals just stopped.”
• Healer:"I lagged."

So far so good. What happened + explanation = solved? Time to move on? Not so much.

• Healer: “ I also wasn’t in the room before you pulled. It’s called situational awareness.”
• (Insert simultaneous DPS "uh-ohs" here)
• Tank : (insert derogatory, accusatory “fail” comment here)
• Healer: (insert derogatory, accusatory “no-u-fail” comment here)
• Jarr: “Let’s just regroup and move on.”
• Tank has left the group.
• Healer: “What a fail tank baby.”
• Requeued to find a Tank

Let’s pick this apart and get into the Jarr zen mentality. Let’s avoid the FPB and do the right thing.

Keep your mouth shut!
In most wipe cases it’s evident what caused it. Tank pulls too much. Healer didn’t keep up. DPS pulled agro. Disconnects. Lag. You name it. There is no need to point it out. Sit quietly take your rez or walk-back and move on.

However if you’re one of those folks that must open your pie hole (though I’d strongly advise against it), then …

Consider how you say what you need to say
In our example, Mr. Tank set the completely negative tone with the opening salvo. Automatically the healer is in a defensive position. Keep your comments positive or at least neutral. Here are some examples.

“Why didn’t you heal me?” vs “Ouch! What happened?”

“Didn’t know you were pulling the whole damn room!” vs “Sorry, I wasn’t prepared for that. If you’re going to pull big, just let me know.”

Suck it up and fess up
We’re human (despite someone’s accusations of cyborg infiltration). We make mistakes sometimes. If you mess up, then say so. Apologize if something went awry, even if it wasn’t entirely your fault. Again some examples for roles:

• Tank: “Sorry guys. I lost that dude somehow.”
• Healer: “Whoops! Sorry ‘bout that. Rez incoming.”
• DPS: “You guys suck! Scrape me up!”
Whoa! Get outta here you dime a dozen deeps! /kick

• DPS: “Ouchie! That hurt. Sorry ‘bout that. Can I get a rez please.”
Much better.

Intent & Tone
Again, before you open your mouth. Think!  Then perhaps think again.  What are you trying to accomplish or gain by speaking? Are you after knowledge to prevent or remedy problems going forward or simply trying to assign blame? If it’s the later then follow my advice and just STFU. If it’s the former, then move on to your tone.

Consider what you say and perhaps even to whom (party vs. whisper) before you say it. Think about how you would react if your question/statement/accusation were tossed at you.

I’m again focusing on five-man content here (because it’s largely all I do currently), but these same attitudes, mentalities, and approaches can be applied to larger raids or even (GASP!) real life.

Seewhutididthere? Sensei Jarr has just taken you down the path of enlightment without you realizing it. You’re welcome, Grasshopper. /bow

The tank said what?!?!?

"I picked Tank for the faster queues." 

* Cue the FPB *



Keys you should not be tanking:

• You don't know what Defense is
• You don't know what your defense cap for heroics is (535)
• You have less health than your healer
• You think that PvP gear is tanking gear

Gotta love the LFG tool. It truly brings out the tools.  It's great that it's pushing interest in tanking.  It just sucks when it brings tanks that don't know how to tank and only selected that role in order to insta-queue.

Tanking: Do the right thing

Yeah, Facepalm Bear is back again. This time it’s the tanks’ turns in the barrel. I’ve been rolling healbot for frosties more so than tanking, simply because I find it frankly easier and less stressful. If I’m not healing I’ve been on the mage shooting fire around. From either perspective I’ve seen some doozies of fails when it comes to tanking. Granted most times things go smoothly. But when they screw up, it’s usually big time.

So let see what the FPB has to say today.

Don’t Be a Hero: Even if you’re pushing 50k health, there is no need to try to pull the entire instance in one shot. Pull two groups, no problem. Going larger than that rarely goes without someone pulling agro. The best example of this was a bright and shiny T-10 pally tank over 50k health that decided to pull the entire first hall of Utgarde Keep. Things went well…right up to the point he got stunned and his avoidance went all to crap. No matter how big your life pool is, you are not invulnerable. If you still feel the need to pull big than at least…

Speak the F^~% Up!: If you insist on pulling big, open your damn mouth and let the party know. This is important for two reasons. First it let’s you round them up and the DPS can hold off until you’ve got them where you want them. Secondly (and more importantly) it puts your healer in the right mindset. Your healer can be preventatively healing for the expected damage rather than getting taken by surprise by the fact that your tank just ran out of range. It is so much easier to heal big when you start ahead of it than to scramble and catch up. And if the healer draws agro due to your “heroic antics” then you are nine kinds of fail.

Control the Locale: Pop quiz. By show of hands, who wants a fast heroic run? OK good. Who wants to move along briskly with few snags? Good, good. Ok so where are you fighting the following?

• The Commander boss in Heroic Nexus
• The statue & mojo mobs before the Collossus/Elemental boss in Gun’drak
• The all-caster groups in Hellfire Citadel Ramparts

If you answered any of these “Where they stand” then you need to go back to basic tank training (or at least not queue tank for a while). More often than not, where you fight is going to dictate if you’re going to have surprises. Fears will happen. Melee DPS needs to be behind their targets to be most effective.  Too close and they could pull additional groups.

By bringing the mobs to you rather than you running to them, you control these factors.  You lessen the risk of pulling more that you wanted. Remember, as the tank if you have to scramble because of positioning, you failed. Even if you save it, you still failed.

The Key to Smooth:The key to a smooth run is simple. It’s not what you pull or how many. It’s all in how you do it. A little communication and a little bit of forethought goes a long way. They definitely go further than having to scramble. Don’t get complacent because the higher gear on most folks these days grants them higher survivability. Do it right. Do it smooth. Be the example. Be the tank. Make the Bear happy will ya?

Let it all BURN!

I’ve been setting the World on fire lately! I’ve recently started playing my mage again to trying to rid him of his few remaining blues and outdated trinkets. I’d forgotten how truly fun a fire spec can be. There are just so many things that make them fun.

• The satisfying FWOOSH! of ignite after a crit that would make Richard so proud.
• The fireworks of explosions after tagging four mobs with Living Bomb, making it look like the Fourth of July. Enough internal combustion to make Vael and Geddon smile.
• Instant cast Pyroblasts and that big ball of goodness is always cool. Hot streak rules!

Fire mages are just too much fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Arcane may be still king of the meters. Frost may be the PvP defending champ. But fire is just way cooler…er hotter.  Come on! You’re hurling frickin’ fire around for Elune’s sake!

It took a while for me to figure out how to get decent DPS numbers out of my spec, but now that I’ve got it down ALL WILL BURN! Muhahaha!

“I’M CASTING FLAMESTRIKE!!!! Ooooooo, you're on fire!!!!” 

Caster DPS LFG, baby.

Jace Hall rules

Jace is one of those guys in the media that just makes you proud to be a gamer. Here are two of his tunes that I now regularly listen to while playing.

I Play WoW


Superplaya

How to play a mage

Ok, this may be just the thing to make me play my mage again. And I fully intend to play it EXACTLY like this.

All I can say is "I'M CONJURING MANA STRUDEL!!!"


Drekor, dust off that wand. It's time to rock!

Get it off the back burners

Ok, people. You now have no excuse. If you have neglected your cooking skill to date, shame on you. With the new Pilgrim’s Bounty world event, you are given a chance at a reprieve. With the purchase of 1 recipe book, a bit of capital city traveling, and a minimal amount of coin to buy the vendor sold mats, you can now effectively level your cooking from level 1 to 350 in one day.

That’s right folks. You can take a newbie chef in the making and have them Wrath buff food enabled in one sitting. Level is irrelevant. For example I took my humble level 29 paladin all the way from level 129 cooking to a few points past 350. She is now ready to make all of the Wrath buff foods that don’t require Northern Spices.

So if you’ve ignored your cooking, GET ON IT! You now have absolutely NO EXCUSE to come into any party with out a cheese head buff. In fact if I have lead, and you don’t have a cheese head, I may be tempted to kick you. I’ll go Harvey Dent on you and toss my Titanium Seal. Heads I win, tails you lose. Don’t be that guy. Raise it, cook it munch it, crunch it.

Kudos Blizzard!
I think Blizzard took the perfect course with this one. The biggest problem most people have is getting the mats needed to level cooking to a viable useable level. This circumvents that. All of the mats needed are easily obtained from vendors or from abundant turkey critters in the starter areas.

Another problem people have with cooking is that it shares a symbiosis with fishing. Having fishing makes it easier to level cooking. But even I must admit that leveling fishing is tedious. The holiday cooking removes this need. You can go from start to finish without ever seeing a bobber. Bliz has removed the necessity of fishing for cooking with the holiday so that excuse is now removed as well. However, fishing is still one of the ways to get some of the most potent Wrath food buffs so I wouldn’t completely ignore it.

I love also that Blizzard tied cooking so plentifully into the world event. Food is a big part of the holiday tradtions around Thanksgiving so I find it so fitting. When I think of family Thanksgiving get-togethers, I think of traveling about to be with friends and family, loved ones hovering in and out of the kitchen, helping with the cooking, and sitting down together to feast with merriment. All of those WoW-heads gathered outside town, cooking fires ablaze, and achievements abounding, it felt like Blizzard captured a good essence of the event and holiday.

Plus all of the cooking quests make the Chef Hat a much loved accessory! Few things more smile inducing than blowing through 20 slow roasted turkeys in less than 7 seconds.

Well done, Bliz. Well done indeed.

The Where, when, and how
There are probably already a few guides written to accommodate the holiday cooking quests and mat guides. You can Google them on your own if need be. But to get you started, head outside your capital city and look for the holiday cooking trainer & vendor. Then buy the Bountiful Cookbook. Inside this delicious book are all of the recipes you will need to make you a skilled gastronome. These recipes will take you incrementally all the way up to 300 cooking. At that point you will need to head to either Outland or Dalaran to train and level it further.

I hope this is helpful and that you all can enjoy the holiday, both in game and out. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Now, could someone pass me the sweet potato pie and a port to Exodar? It seems the space goats are out of turkey.

Help me, Help you

In running some 5-man content lately with both PuGs and guildies, I’ve noticed a few behaviors that rather irk me.

As a tank I judge my success by a few simple measures.

1. Is the target(s) dead?
2. Did any of our party die?
3. If they died, was it my fault? Was it preventable?

In a few of the runs I did, I lost a few people to deaths. Surprisingly, they were not on boss fights, but rather on simple trash. I think it’s largely due to a few simple, preventable behaviors.

So once again, let’s delve into the Jarr perspective -- the one with the big bear butt staring back at you.

You are your own meter maid
You are running a threat meter right? If not, go get one. Omen is the current gold standard in WoW and the one I use, but I’m sure there are others as well.

With that said, it is your responsibility to watch your own agro. As a tank I will try to keep tabs on everyone’s agro, so that I can tell when I might need to taunt off. However, it is still your responsibility to control what you pull. We’re not talking about progression raiding here, so you don’t have to squeeze every little ounce of DPS out of your toon. If you get high in the agro bars, back off. A mob focused on the tank and is far easier on everyone (especially the tank and healer) than if it’s chasing you around the room.

Give me a sec
With the ramp up in gear availability through Ulduar, the tournament trials, and badges, most folks are now far out-geared for heroics. This seems to feed into a “kill it two seconds ago” mentality. It feeds a bloodlust desire to just blow through the content as quickly as possible.

However, that doesn’t mean you have to stack on the tank immediately. Take a moment. Count to two. Give the tank a brief moment to get the pull started and gain some initial agro. Then follow the tank in and start your mash and slash, cast and bash. A run will go far quicker if you let the tank get initial agro and maintain it than if you make the tank chase agro all over because you wanted to shave 1.3 seconds off of your kill time.

Are you focused?
Be honest. When was the last time you used the focus function? During vanilla WoW and TBC when crowd control was more eminent, the focus pane got a workout. Wrath’s laughable need for CC has largely lessened the use of the focus pane I fear.

Take it further. When was the last time you set the tank as your focus? Do yourself a favor. Set your focus to the tank and show the focus’s target. These two panes can make it so much easier to keep agro on the primary target where it belongs. Which leads us to…

Can you assist me?
Most trash mob groups are pulled and then killed with AOE. Even so, being on your tank’s target can help keep the agro on the primary targets. Remember how we set the tank to our focus? Here is a simple macro to help you stay on his target. Alternately you could hit the assist key (default key is ‘F’), but this requires you to target the tank first. This forgoes that need.

/assist [target=focus]

Toss Me Some Love
At the risk of parroting, I’m mentioning this one again. Threat redirection abilities are there for a reason. There is no reason to not use Tricks of the Trade or Misdirection. TotT is even less arguable, since you get a nice damage bonus. Perhaps Blizzard should consider doing the same with Misdirection.

Toss me some agro and then you can stand in place and pew pew away. Otherwise I may be chasing you all over, or worse letting you die. Pull once, shame on me. Pull again…well, it’s your repair bill.

Dodge the Bullet
The flip side of the love toss is the threat reduction. Fade, feign death, feint, soul shatter and the like. They all fall into this category. If you’re about to pull agro then dump some. The few seconds spent to drop the agro won’t hurt your DPS. Come on, you can do it. One global cooldown is worth a smooth run, right?

Lack of agro control is often the cause of deaths or worse wipes. Evasion tanking is not a sign of strength. It’s a sign that something failed. Even if you pull it off, you still failed.

Get behind me
Most encounters require someone to initiate a fight by smacking something. There are a few events that are triggered rather than attacked to start. The hunter trophy room in Utgarde Pinnacle, Keristrasza in Nexus, and the gauntlet event in Halls of Stone come to mind. In these events, the boss will typically go to whomever is closest to them. Let the tank be the only one in there. You don’t need to be on top of the boss at the go. Remember that two-second rule we used for trash. Apply it here. You’ll still get those high DPS e-peens that you seem to love to flex so much.

Sum it up
I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that most groups I’ve run with do well. Those that don’t go so smoothly usually fall into categories mentioned here or in the “Those ‘Uh-oh’ moments.” From where I stand, these a just a few things that can turn a decent run into smooth sailing. Good luck and good hunting all.

Those "Uh-oh" moments

Pick-up groups or PuGs as they are so affectionately called. We’ve all had to do them at one point or another. On a largely dead server like the Alliance side of Gul’dan it’s really the only way to run five-man content.

We’ve also all been in those groups that make you shudder. The kinds where you know there is going to be a problem, even before you get started. Having tanked through most of my Burning Crusade career and tanked and healed through Wrath, I think I’ve developed a keen eye for sensing and identifying those problems.

So today kiddies, I’m going to share the Jarr perspective. Here are some signs that you might be a problem. If nothing else try not to be this guy or gal.

Lacking cheese heads
In your next PuG take a look at everyone’s buffs. Count how many people have an appropriate “Well Fed” buff from food. If there are not five cheese heads running, then someone is not coming prepared.

Vanilla WoW had some lack luster buff foods. Once you hit Hellfire Peninsula and BC content it gets much better. And Northrend foods are just outstanding. The resources for most are readily accessible from mobs you’re likely to be killing anyway (Nessingwary anyone?).

There is absolutely no excuse for this one. If you don’t have it, then it shows you either roll unprepared or that you don’t care enough about the success of the group to use it. Crunch and munch so that we can crunch a bunch.

"Does anyone have any XYZ?"
Fill in the blanks. This could be buff food, mana or health pots, hunter ammo, or elixirs and flasks. If you can’t keep on hand what you need to run something, then take the time to stock up before you join LFG.

And if you ask for a Fish Feast, you’re likely to get booted. Ironically the people that ask for them the most are ones that have neglected their cooking and fishing altogether. Bring what you need. Keep it on hand at all times. That means buff food, regular food,and water.  If you have a blue bar and no water on hand, you are nine kinds of fail.

"Does anyone have the meters for that fight?"
This shows two problems in my opinion. First it shows you’re probably trying to flex your e-peen. Second, if the meters mattered that much to you, then you'd be running one yourself.

Granted, some people may use them as an appropriate measurement tool. In most PuG cases though those asking are often more of a tool themselves.

Jarr’s meters are easier and require no mods to run. Is the boss dead? If yes let’s move on.

Can I get a summons?
This is a mixed bag but it always irks me. If you’re stuck in old world with a hearth on CD then I can understand (maybe). But if you’ve been sitting in Dalaran for the last 20 minutes I ain’t pulling you in. Make an effort to get there and if you’re not the first two there you’ll get your port. Don’t be lazy.

No buffet or candy dishes
Mages and ‘locks, I’m looking at you. It costs you next to nothing to toss up a table, soul well (candy dish!) or even a portal after a run. Doing something as simple as that sets a positive tone for you in the group. You’ve come prepared and are willing to help everyone out. Not doing so can show you as being cheap, selfish, or just an uncaring SoB. Do the right thing. Toss it down. Now, if people demand such things of you, then do as you will.

Agro! I gots it!
Hunters and rogues – it’s your turn in the barrel. Your threat reduction and distribution abilities (Misdirection and Tricks of the Trade) are there for a reason. Use them. Granted, most Wrath five-man content doesn’t truly need it. On the other hand, everyone loves a smooth run. Tossing a bit of agro gain to the tank can only help. Additionally, remember that it’s a PuG. You may not know the competence of the tank at hand. Everything you can do to help sets you in a better position to succeed and to be perceived as a team player.

"I hope my pants drop!"
Loot. We all want it.  It's probably the reason you signed up to PuG in the first place.  However, this shows that you are focused on a personal end goal rather than the task at hand. Additionally, it’s a bit insulting to assume that they would be yours when there is likely someone else in the group that could use it.  Even more so if it’s a larger upgrade for them. And remember the random number generator is the bane of such things. Generally when that is said in a group, it’s usually a guarantee that it ain’t gonna drop. Damn you, Ingvar the Plunderer!

"How do I get there?"
This one came out of Brewfeast really with Corbin Direbrew being buried in Blackrock Depths. It’s amazing how many PuGs I’ve run on this and how many people didn’t know how to get there.

It makes Jarr sad that so many people have blindly blown past that content. BRD is a lore rich and well constructed instance. I have some pretty epic memories of fights and guild runs in there.

Thank Elune for the Brewfest mole drillers at the start though. Can you imagine if these PuGgers actually had to navigate through BRD and find their way to the bar to do it? I wonder how many even have the Shadowforge key. Hell, how many even know it exists for that matter (let alone know how to get it)?

Jarr’s Motto for PuGgers
In short remember Jarr’s motto. Roll prepared or don't roll at all. You don’t have to come in with best-in-slot gear or break 4k DPS to be a winner in my book. Do your part, do it well, and roll prepared and we’ll get along just fine.

Happy PuG-ing all!  LFM for Direbrew.  I hope my Kodo drops.