Not the Best Selection of PUGs

The other night, I was giving a remote (cross-country) lecture to a group of 40 college students. The topic was some open source software I had a hand in creating. I was using LiveMeeting and also had a camera aimed at me. It was fun.

I was doing it from my home office. It ended exactly at raid start time. So I flipped over, and yes of course I was late and the raid was full. Okay, not un-expected.

They did Onyxia-25, ToC-25, and then VoA-25. All the places I need both Triumph badges from, and where my only gear ups are from. This is the second week they've done this on Wednesday and I missed them both. So, I decided to try and PUG them and the daily.

VoA-25 is usually easy for me to PUG. Win Wintergrasp and get in as high dps. I average about 6k dps there. Well, I suspected it wouldn't go well at the beginning. We had four hunters, so I resigned myself to no loot. I was inspecting them and noticed one was in mostly greens. Even his weapons and bow. (How do you even do that?) I was thinking that maybe he was joking around so I checked his spec, and it was.. well, confused. I did what I never do, and whispered to the RL. I was impressed that he was kicked. It turns out, that night must have been brand-new-80 night because we wiped many times in VoA. But we got a half-dozen people achievements on all the bosses... At least I had a fellow dps'er in a similar raiding guild to bemoan it all.

Heroic Halls of Stone was the daily. Yes, I wanted more Triumph badges. To summarize it: four wipes, I was responsible for >50% of the damage done, eventually I went BM pet-tank spec and tank-heal-dps'd the last boss. It was 1.5hours of pain and grief. We skipped the optional bosses. "No, I don't think I feel like we need to go back and do them. Thanks for the group through."

Then I get picked up for a ToC-25 PUG. Advertised as "Be geared, have vent or know the fights very well." We had some people that weren't any of that. But we also had some of the most well-geared, amazing-in-their-mind, obnoxious, insulting, bitter, hyper-critical, self-important, raiders from the most cut-throat elitist guild. We got through faction champions but it took two hours. I was 2nd and 3rd damage done on the fights, though I was far under the gear of most of them. I took it as a learning experience. I don't want to experience it again.

As far as "loot" they beat last week's Onyxia-25 PUG where I was #1 damage done (by a large margin) on each of five attempts over an hour and we never brought her down. But as far as pain and PUGdom, it was a pleasant experience.