PuGs: Combat the Suckness

Everyone has their personal philosophies on PuGs–or pick-up groups. Some of my guildies actually refuse on a matter of principle to PuG. At all. Not one spot. Others have no problem with it–and do so daily to make sure they get their points for the day.

I fall in the camp of I won’t PuG all by myself, and certainly do not want to PuG a tank, or a healer. DPS is ok. For that–I want to lay out some pointers and tips directed more at the DPS PuGers. While certainly–these tips would apply to all of us, it’s the DPS that I feel really needs a bit of help.

The Non-Math Bear Tank Manifesto

Yeah. I don’t do a lot of math. Math and I have a tenuous relationship at best. It’s why I was in remedial freshman courses, while taking high level English courses and excelling. Granted–some of my practices here on the Blog wouldn’t reflect that–but–you’ll just have to take my word for it.

English/Creative Writing/Journalism = Good for Barklay’s Scholarship. Math = Badness, and much needed tutoring and otherwise “using the system”.

So, you are not going to find mathematical works of genius or theory-crafting. What you will find is how I tank as a druid–and by most accounts do it fairly successfully.

Glory of the Hero: New Internets Edition

I am going to try and keep this brief because my eyes are still bleeding. (Full disclosure: I failed at brevity).

Yesterday Marv’s shiny new internet connection that was giving him something like .1 nanosecond ping to the server was installed. About the only thing I know about ping is that they make golf clubs. It was explained to me yesterday (a lot, very many times) that a low number of pingness is: “awesome, incredible”.

“I’m weeping with joy”. -Marviliper

True story. He’s pretty stoked about the new intartoobz. It would not surprise me if this happened shortly after the installer left.

Glory of the Hero: Bait Company Style

Yeah.  As you can see Barklay has a long way to go before he’s any kind of Glorious Hero.

Being a new toon to the World: Barklay was started launch night, leveled up through the Worgen starting area, and then was recruit-a-friend catapulted up to level 60 where he joined Marv for the ultimate in WoW zones:  Hellfire Peninsula.

Marv had pretty much shut down his WoW playing, and was somewhat on the fence to if he was going to make it for Cataclysm.  Fortunately he decided he did want to play again.  A lost authenticator/screwed up account just led to a completely new account for Marv.  All new toons for him. It was a perfect time to start fresh for me, and get back to the class I love the most:  druid.

Simple Raid Target Icons

I like to keep things relatively simple when I’m tanking.  Mostly it’s because things don’t always go…ahem…smoothly.  Sometimes shadow priests decide CC means CRAZY CROWD!! instead of crowd control.

For whatever reason, as a fledgling WoW player, I decided that I would like to try the tanking thing.  I used to play quite a bit with a couple of my college roommates.  Will was a pretty awesome shaman healer, while Alex enjoyed sucking souls out of enemies with his lock.  I think I was playing a rogue at the time (badly–terribadly) and it seemed like getting a group wasn’t always very quick or easy without a tank.  So.  I’m a tank–and have been for a few years now.