The perils of Saturday morning LFG

To be honest the title is a bit unfair as this wasn't really a fail run but it amused me never the less.
So I popped on at 8.30 this morning as I wanted to get a daily heroic done as I was getting booted of the Internet shortly due to my lovely wife wanting to catch up on last nights rugby game and hogging all the bandwidth by downloading it on BBC Iplayer.
So first try in LFG one of the DPS (and sorry but it is always dps for me) didn't accept the invite guess coffee was brewing or the online porn he was watching while waiting was at a critical stage maybe.

But second try no problem I got into a group for Halls of Stone but they had done one boss which always makes me a little suspicious as generally people only drop a group if it really sucks. So I quickly scope out the tanks hit points just to make sure of the level of healing I need to put out and hes rocking at 51K hit points so I thought no issues should be an ok run maybe their healer disconnected or something.
We hit the maiden of Grief and it seemed to take a long time for her to die we missed the speed kill by quite a margin which is odd these days. I decided to inspect the dps to see what was happening not that I was really bothered as the boss died its just that the tank out dpsed the whole group.

I think the gods of LFG were have a laugh with poor Zetter and for that matter the tank on this fine Saturday. To get one poor dps can be considered normal, to get two can be considered unlucky but all three!!!!
The pally was wait for it wielding Stormherald yep I am not joking the level 70 crafted mace! I guess he missed all those blue or even green upgrades white he was leveling to 80 but hey purple is best as we all know.
The hunter had a green two hander and didn't actually have one gem or enchant on any of his gear and I swear was using auto shot through the whole fight, the lock also seemed to have passed the gem wagon by though he did at least seem to know there were other spells he could use apart from Shadowbolt.

Now the run went fine, ok it was a lot longer than I thought it would be with the tank manfully or should I say dwarfully putting out a fair portion of the DPS. But I dont think I have ever seen such a collection of dps in one place at the same time. Oddly enough though a couple of them actually had I level 264 bits (ungemmed of course) not sure if this was to push their gearscore up or they had used all their gold for wine, women and song.
I thanked them all at the end of the run for the group and resisted the temptation to ask if they had ever wondered what those sockets in the armour were for ( I dunno maybe they thought they were for putting flowers in or something).

But if you are the Stormherald wielding pally and by some miracle you read my little blog can you let me know what you are thinking?? I assume as you have stormherald you played during BC to a reasonable level so you must understand something of game mechanics so why the hell are you using a level 70 mace at level 80? Was it bequeathed from your dying father after Loken killed him or something so you swore to destroy his minions with your fathers mace?

Answers on a postcard to Zetter

Gear Score madness

Well it finally happened on the peak! After ages of people asking for achievements for everything (including when the fire watcher was released in VOA one genius asking for the VOA 10 achievement to join a group for VOA10 on the week it was released) now its gear score tastic.

By the looks of it now you cannot get into any raid without having done it before and also having some form of gear score (5K + for ICC it appears I have no clue what my druids is at all). It makes me glad I generally raid with the guild as for anyone new coming through even with an alt has had it for PUG raids even for older stuff like TOC which to be honest you could do easily as long as you know the fights.

Personally it really hacks me off as from where I sit gear score means precisely dick. Even asking for the achievement is a little better as you are asking if someone has seen the fight even if its from face down on the floor.
I have in heroics encountered people with nice gear on inspection who have turned out to be either asleep or not in possession of a keyboard I still shudder at the memories of full t9 ret pally pulling <1000 dps. I am sure their gear score is respectable but I think my dog could play better by licking pizza off the keyboard.
I hope that Ghostcrawler wasn't joking in his hint that Blizz could come up with a way to break gearscore such as the I level 600 shirt ect.

I don't know why this annoys me so much as it really doesn't affect me due to A) my main being well geared and B) me only raiding with my guild as a rule.
I think it is that I have always had a bit an issue with elitism especially when it is used by people who consider themselves elite by to be honest are so far off of it its laughable.

I get it sometimes at work as even though I am a qualified chemist I need by the nature of my work to wear overalls a lot. Ours are bright orange so we look like binmen it is amazing some of the assumptions that are made by people on sites we work on (generally those who wear labcoats as they work in a nice clean environment) as to the level of our skill and knowledge. Nothing give me greater pleasure that to put people such people right especially as I have 20 years experience in my chosen field.
Overall my experiences over the years at work have taught me never to make snap judgements on people as I meet all sorts of people who have all sorts of appearances depending on the work they carry out. I have met lorry drivers with doctorates, a man dressed like a tramp who in fact turned out to be a multi millionaire and people who are qualified way beyond I would ever be but who outside their chosen field I wouldn't have trusted to make a cup of tea as their common sense appeared to be have been pushed out of their heads by the knowledge they had accumulated.

I try and apply this in game to anyone I have grouped with I tend to judge on how they perform not on their gear or achievements. I only wish others would do the same but addons such as gearscore just push snap judgments even more and I wish it would go away as soon as possible.

But yesterday I saw someone asking for a 4K gearscore to do Naxx 10 so I guess we have a way to go yet....


Zetter