Huntards and Not-So-Talented Warriors

The other day, a guildie wanted to a heroic -- any heroic. Me, being me and really wanting my belt from Herioc Ramparts, suggested that. Fine with him; he only wanted badges (him being a rogue [Kuri]). He found us a healer (Mac -- holy paladin), and a hunter. I was on my druid, and, recently, just haven't been in a tanking mood, and wanted to look for a tank. A while passed, and no tanks... then, Mac made a mention about an old friend of mine (and, apparently, a mutual friend of Mac's too), that I, in jest, always called Nar-Nar... a feral druid that was better geared than I. Nar switched over, got ninja invited, and was willing to go... as long as she didn't have to tank.

Fine. It was Nar-Nar. We'd probably be slightly better off with her DPSing as well, so... off we went. First few pulls I noticed something: the hunter trapped... and then started to take damage for a few moments, then Mac was taking damage. I kept pulling it off of both of them, and, on the pull after that, watched the hunter. He didn't retrap. Not well. He'd go shooting away, and then the trap broke, ran after him, and had an "oh crap" moment of running backwards, wing clipping, running around... and tried to kill him on his own without retrapping. (Happened for many pulls, and I know that his traps couldn't be on cooldown all that time.) It ended up that Nar went bear form to go save our healer half of the time as well, simply because I had my face tangled up with a caster and couldn't get back to our healer in time... And this was a heroic. But we finished the instance more or less intact, for which I was thankful for. (And, once again, the belt didn't drop. The plate one did.)

Later that day, my guild wanted to do the daily: Heroic Botanica. We had four: Ash (holy priest), Ramby (mage who was originally going to go on his warlock, but as I wanted to DPS, he was fine with going on his mage), and Sol (the guild leader on his rogue)... and me, the wanna-be cat. And spent a while looking for a tank while all of us continued to do dailies and the like... well. except for me.

I met Dara (a feral from one of the Kara runs I visit at times, and a member of GuildWatch) and had a blast chasing a mage around (who kept running towards the guards and trying to get us killed that way), and... well. A shaman who tried to heal him. Nothing is better than watching the shaman try to kill Dara, who was flying close-by, pouncing, shredding, mangling, ferocious-biting his face and killing him. And then going into stealth and waiting right behind his body... and he ankh'd, spinning around while casting a heal... and ravaging his face back into death. -grins- No one attacks my friends... acquaintances... on my watch. At least, not if I can help it.

By that time, we had got a full prot warrior, and headed off. It... wasn't pretty. Everyone had died a couple of times and we wiped twice more before we got to the first boss. At the first boss, Ash had to blow all of his cooldowns to keep him up... the second time. The first, he tried to tank the boss on the bridge, which none of us were used to, and was out of range... and the rate by which he dropped... well. He was dead, and so were we all. Ash was starting to doubt his healing skills (as the warrior is full prot after all), which was ridiculous as he is fully epic'd out and the only one of us Legion members that has really seen the inside of SSC. And, by this time, both Sol and I were thinking that we could tank far better than he. I was so tired of dying that I was willing to go bear, and Sol was almost ready to give up his chance for a nether, and for making a leatherworking chestpiece, in order for our group to be successful. I had to speak up.
"How much defense do you have?"
"480"
[in Guild Officer chat, for the rest of us were Officers] What does that mean, Sol? I don't know anything about warriors.
[Sol] It means that he doesn't have enough. Warriors need 490.

Ah-ha. Maybe that was the reason why the warrior was going down so fast... next pull, we wiped again, and were discussing kicking him in Officer chat... when he said that he had to go. Well, that made life easier. He left, I asked in LAF (Lost and Found, a channel for a group of us friends/roleplaying nuts) if anyone cared to come DPS. Got a good hunter, Sil, and we were off again, me tanking in half bear gear and Ash not having a problem at all (I did put on full for harder pulls/bosses), and we did the rest of the instances fairly easily (minus the part where Ramby kept dying on the AoE pulls...), and the wipe where Ramby accidentally got too close (silly easily excited gnomes).

I think, because of this, I have been rather reluctant to level both my shaman and my hunter -- I dislike questing, and prefer to instance my way up, but as I keep finding idiots in heroic instances... what's to say that the nightmare won't change for a normal instance? Sure, there's plenty of apt players, but it is the ones who screw up that makes us doubt...