Repair All... Oh, God. I'm giving *how* much gold to him?!

Ugh. I was too tired to blink last night, much less post.

Six hours of playing. Six hours of dying. Six hours of two/three bad players. Not even PuGs! Our own guildie, who has been seventy, and a warrior, for a while now!

Okay, let me back up.

So I was considering writing my template post for here (haha... Yeah, concerning it... It's currently lost in the pile-of-drafts-that-I-really-need-to-get-to-someday-soon, but, anyway!), and I decided to hop online. Maybe get some inspiration, y'know how it goes. I see an old friend of mine on -- a druid who has recently gone resto for PvP. (It's rather weird to think of him as resto -- Awin has almost always been feral for as long as I've known him -- since pre-BC.) Tree-PvP-Resto though... and we decided to give him practice healing.

Not healing me though -- there just happened to be a tank in LFG -- Heroic Slave Pens. Whoot! Three free badges, as soon as we grab two more DPS! Snag him, look around for DPS.

Nothing when I ask. Awin decides to ask in LFG, and he gets responses.

So I ask for his secret.

"I don't use roleplay-speak."

"What? It was just "Looking for two more for Heroic Slave Pens. (CC preferred!)"... the second time around, anyway." [Roughly.]

[What he used was "LF2 Heroic SP" or something to that sort.]

"Fine. Names?"

A hunter and a rogue, who left before the instance started, and we got a mage instead.

[courtesy of Pike, of Aspect of the Hare. Fun blogger, by the way! Definitely go check her out!]

While we were gathering at the stone, Awin decides to tell me the one big thing he forgot to mention about the hunter:

He didn't know what SP was. And that Awin hoped that he didn't have a heroic key.

...Oh, God. What has he gotten us into? I pop onto WoWArmory, and look up his rep.

"...He has his key." Oh, this was going to be fun. I go back to his gear tab. Blues and greens. Even more fun.

Okaaaaay. Maybe the mage will be better. Look him up. Blues, a few greens, and... er... Is he wearing the Hallowed Garments for his chestpiece, or are my eyes deceiving me?

Nope. He was wearing them.

All righty. I am dreading the run even before we start. I un-alt-tabbed, and first thing I see is two of our party members dead, and the third one about to die. I back out of the instance (as I was standing right in). Look around. See the hunter being the only other one alive. Whisper Awin: "What happened?"

"The hunter ran into them."

"...He did what??"

"Ran into them?"

"Oh, joy..."

But they get their bodies back and we move on.

I was on Losse, who I had recently respec'ced feral again, and we officially pulled stuff.

First thing I noticed? The DPS sucked. Both the hunter and the mage were doing twenty-percent of the DPS each. Give or take. I was doing forty-percent. And using boss-rotation to kill stuff due to DoTs and it generates less aggro than huge crits of Shred. Second thing? Tank had very little aggro over anything. I'd end up tanking for a few moments while he found his taunt button. Forty-percent of the damage! Oh, geeze! We're in a heroic and I do forty-percent of the damage?! This was going to be a very long and painful run.

Tank (flavor: warrior), Awin (tree), and I each died another once or twice times before we got to the end of the first tunnel (and to the open space where Ahune resided for the duration of the Midsummer Fire Festival). Notice that the neither mage nor hunter did.

Pull the guy with his slaves... and the tank, Awin, and I die again -- didn't expect him to run into the mobs and fight them there, so... Awin had out-of-range issues, and the tank dropped. I went bear, and was trying to keep the slavemaster away from everyone else before Awin dropped due to a stray slave, and I die shortly after.

Recover, do that pull fine. The we'll-be-very-very-sneaky-and-not-have-to-kill-the-pat part was hard for our hunter, apparently. Ran directly into the slavemaster, and the pat came back just at that time. Another wipe.

So we fired the the huntard.

Got Cil's warlock to replace him. First group of defenders, I hop up, toss on healing gear, and helped heal the tank because he was being squashed on regular pulls and it was a struggle for Awin to keep him up...

I was proud of myself. I actually used Cower for the first time in... forever. Alarms of aggro! COWER! And Cil was terrified of getting a crit (for, apparently, he gets 5K shadowbolts on his lock -- I'm torn between envy (wishing my frostbolts critted for that much!) and fear (to be on the end of one of those!)).

So, Cil, who plays a warrior as his main, asks about what abilities the tank was using. Not the right ones, apparently, and was macro tanking. [Which brings us to the question -- is warrior tanking that hard that you need macros to do it? Oh, and why does looking up "human prot warrior wow" come up with pictures of paladins, cows, undead, orcs... you get the point. Oh, and a mage as well.]

Boss. Wipe due to a freak accident of the group behind us pulling. Boss again. (By the way. Feral kitty on totems is terrible. Kills DPS -- Mine, at any rate.) Somehow, we struggle through it. By after the second boss, I was tired of the tank not being able to tank, and I got mean, and went bear and picked up the third tank mob when there was one, and rushed after anything that was going after Awin (nomnomnom -- tasty healer!). Don't think it made the warrior too happy, but he wasn't at all open to suggestions about his tanking style, how to improve his threat generation, or anything at all, even.

Three pulls later, he has to go do something in RL. Doesn't actually leave the group, and I get passed leader. I go bear and tank the next four pulls (wiped once -- stuck my ugly bear face where it didn't belong and pulled four mobs when no one was ready). Warrior isn't back, so we replace him with a DPS warrior from the guild. Dee [fake name. >_>].

Free badge for him, for we one shot the boss.

Thirty more badges until my Embrace of Everlasting Prowess! [Uggggh. Shouldn't have bought those epic healy gems for my hat...]

Lesson of that run: If you want to ask in... well. Not-proper-English, don't expect well-geared (or even know how to play their class) people to join.

"Another run?"

Warrior: "Sure. I need to go prot before the raid though."

"Go prot now. You can tank."

"Okay."

Cil puts it together while I run around looking for the mats for +15 agility to my shiny new Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves (to replace Verdant Gloves, which I've had forever).

Heroic Ramparts this time. Well, I can vouch for three of the four people that we had in the group... And the forth is a guildie. He can't be too bad, can he?

Note to self: Dee can't tank. He has tunnel vision, and is slow to build up aggro.

Healer kept dying, and the hallway of Hell was just that -- three wipes in the hallway that held the four casters and the melee guy (one on top of the ramp). I had brought Mel for the CC, and we found a shaman out of no-where (having got rid of the mage from Heroic Slave Pens).

What should have been an easy run turned into something that lasted a long long time, and a decent repair bill -- fifty-something for the tasty plate. Not me though, so I wasn't too bothered. Still, irksome. I ended up grabbing Losse two pulls before the second boss so I can pick up the mobs that tend to go running by Dee and try to own Awin (why did I get so lucky with Tanks with Tunnel Vision (TVV) today?!)...

Oh. And, after all of that, I didn't get my Tree-Mender's Belt. Still.

Just recalling all of this mess makes me want to curl up and cry.

And makes me wonder: are people just really that bad at playing, or is that normal and Cil and I are just that awesome?

[Please say the former. Our egos can't take it if it's the latter, and, therefore, don't tell us if it really is so!]