The View From Down Here

Bringing out the worst in people

The patch has hit. There’s lots to do and see, including the Amazing Bugtastic Ulduar and the new raid instance, which I’ve not yet seen, and the Trial of the Champion, which I’ve seen altogether rather too much of, in search of The Black Heart (and no, it hasn’t dropped yet). But, more than that, I hate the instance, and I’ve hated it since even before the first time I cleared it on Heroic.

Let’s be clear here, I have had many, many good results from pugging 5-mans, in every instance and on both my level 80 characters. Trial of the Champion, however, may as well be called the Trial of the eejit. I’ve had many decent runs of the place, both normal and heroic, but there’s been a few terribad ones too – mostly through DPS players  doing sub-800 DPS, as well as one where the healer, a holy paladin, was far too undergeared. I’ll let the paladin off, though, because after the run, I had a conversation with him about his gear choices – he knew he needed to improve, and wanted to do so.

What took the biscuit, though, was my first trip there on Heroic mode . I’d briefly read up on each boss, but I’ve always stood by the fact that reading up is no substitute for experience, and in general, I’m right. Once I’ve seen a boss, I understand it. Before, I jut have hints of what’s going to happen.

The jousting wasn’t too painful. After countless runs, I still hate it though – there’s just too much going on in the transition to foot battle, especially if the bosses are spread out. It seems like dumb luck as to whether anyone else will get killed before I can round them up successfully, but they’re not too bad once you’ve established themselves.

Then we came to Argent Confessor Paletress. After the DPS went all-out before I had a chance to grab aggro from the Memory of Van Cleef, and dying. Then we wiped, allegedly because “Namthe’s taking 10k melee hits”. Uh, what? Recount didn’t agree, and I said as much. After a second wipe much the same as the first (DPS dying to the damage reflection), our first healer left, and our retri paladin went holy, grabbing another DPS from somewhere. That just about got us through.

And then came the Black Knight. On top of his Frost Fever and Blood Plague, the healer couldn’t keep up, trying to heal through rather than cleanse the diesases. I was also told that I was obviously doing something wrong. I can’t see what that was (and having run it sucessfully since, both as healer and tank, I still can’t.)

The rest of the group, trusting their healer more than me, booted me. To be more precise, they all broke group and reformed, because I was the leader. What they hadn’t reckoned on was:

1. I was utterly, utterly incensed by the abuse directed at me for allegedly repeatedly wiping the raid
2. I was part of the original instance group, and still in the instance

Hell, if I was going to have a wasted instance ID because of asshattery, so were they. While I sat in the instance, they couldn’t enter for more than 59 seconds at a time. They asked for me to leave. I declined. Repeatedly and always politely. I told them that the instance ID was as much mine as theirs, and given that they had elected to leave the group, would they please go away?

The standoff lasted an hour or so before I decided I’d rather do something rather more productive. But hey, if you’re going to piss me off, set me back 80G in repair bills and then just dump me, I’m more than happy to return the favour.