Last night I wasn’t really into doing much. For some reason I was having major fps issues. Normally I can run around at 70-75 fps, even in Dalaran. Last night I was getting 12-18 fps in Dalaran topside, 66-68 fps in the sewers. Since I figured the issue was in Dalaran I left the city and started flying elsewhere to see if the issue would be fixed. I ended up in GH, all alone, and was still getting 22-40 fps. This made no sense. I could understand Dalaran with all the people, despite there hardly being anyone around, but Grizzly Hills?! It was a ghost town. Ok so maybe it was my computer. I shut everything down, made sure I had updates downloaded and installed and restarted my computer.
Log back in, I am still getting around 40 fps in Grizzly Hills and about 17 fps in Dalaran. I got frustrated and just moved my toon down to the sewers because at least there I was getting 66-68 fps. I normally run at around 240 latency. Last night it ranged from 80 to 308. When I had really low frame rates I would have about 80 latency, the higher rates would get me around 300. Very, very odd.
Since I was bored I decided to do some instances. I hadn’t done much on my druid lately in regards to PuGs so I figured why the hell not. I queue up and got CoS. There was an overgeared Unholy DK, the warrior tank was about ilvl 207, the rogue was 187 and the mage was about 196. The first thing I noticed was no one was doing the crates. Everyone just ran to the front entrance. Since I was the last one running I ended up doing the crates, which is probably what they had in mind. I think most people forget that you have to do the stupid crates to start the instance. I finally get up to the front and check everyone out. I like to know what I will be up against for healing. If I can sleep through the instance, or if I will actually have to pay attention and heal. I said in party chat that the tank should vig the DK, he said he had already done it. Good tank :D. The mage didn’t make a table, didn’t offer food and that made me sad. I asked her for a stack (I like to have some for other instances) and she made me two. I gave her a hug and she started kissing me. It was very odd.
The first thing I noticed was the rogue knew his shit. He was #2 on my meter behind the DK, who also knew his shit. Which would mean that the warrior knew his shit because he held onto aggro with these 2 guys. The mage, eh I am still kind of up in the air on her. She never refilled her mana, ever, in the entire instance. Even when we had time for her to drink she didn’t. She didn’t use a mana gem, she didn’t evocate, no potions, nothing. She was an arcane mage so I don’t know if you guys have something else, but at one point she went completely oom. I wasn’t sure if she was just expecting me to innervate her, since I obviously didn’t need it or what. I have this thing with innervate. If it is obvious that you are having mana issues, and you are working towards keeping your mana up (hunter’s using viper, mages drinking every chance they get, etc) I will innervate you when you need it. If you just run around and ignore the fact that you use mana, I will most likely ignore you as well. It is my innervate, I can be a bitch about it if I want :D. Despite her never drinking, she didn’t do half bad. Her numbers didn’t pick up until the 3rd boss fight though. I don’t know if she just hadn’t gotten her groove or what. Overall the group was a quick easy run. We made it to the optional boss with 8 mins left on the timer. The extra badge was delicious.
That run over I decided to get into another group. Oh guess what, heroic Halls of Lightning. I swear I cannot go one day without getting this instance. Turns out it was a guild run and they were lacking a healer. My biggest peeve as a PuG healer is the tank running away from me. As soon as I zoned in, I was buffed and the tank was pulling. The tank was alone on the mobs because everyone else was still buffing themselves and refilling mana/health. The tank just kept pulling, despite her guildies being on the lower end of the gear/dps scale. No sooner were the first mobs killed then the tank was pulling the boss. I hadn’t even finished bending over to loot when I heard “I am the greatest of my father’s sons!” and saw bars start dropping. As soon as the boss fell down the tank was off and running again. She had the arc weld on her and just kept running. At that point I stopped healing her. She obviously did not need me there to heal her. She kept running away from me and the party. The rest of the group wasn’t much better. The warlock would life tap until there were nubbins left then run in and melee. Yes the warlock was whacking things with his dagger. The lowest geared person was the shammy, who at least was smart enough to stay with the healer. I healed her. The other player was a shadow priest. She stuck with me and the shammy, but wasn’t getting any damage so I didn’t have to heal her. At one point I asked the tank if she really had to keep running constantly, even when she had a debuff on her. Silence was all I got. I finally had enough when we killed the 2nd boss and the tank immediately ran into the next room with the spawning Vrykuls. I wasn’t even in the room with her. I just said to hell with it, they obviously don’t need me so I dropped group.
Maybe I was an asshole for that, but frankly I hate runs like that. If you cannot even bother to make sure everyone is there, then you don’t need anyone. That is the one thing guaranteed to piss me off in a PuG run.
Andrew came online and wanted to tank with his pally. We queued up together and got UP. Turns out we had 3 freshly geared 80s. Two were alts and one was someone who hadn’t played in over 6 months. The shammy (the one who hadn’t played in a while) asked if the tank (Andrew) was going to bail immediately. I told them he better not because I would kick his ass. Andrew then pipped up with “Yeah she knows where I live >.>” to which everyone laughed. I told them we didn’t mind that they weren’t uber geared as long as they didn’t do something stupid. I said if they do something stupid I wouldn’t heal them.
We had an arcane mage, a hunter and the enhancement shammy. This was the first hunter I had come across who wasn’t spamming volley every pull. When we got to Svala I had to tell them to kill the adds. Only the shammy and the tank were doing that and each time the ritual came up it was one of them who was caught in it. The mage and the hunter finally stopped dpsing the boss long enough to kill the mobs. I was close to changing out of tree form and spamming hurricane. I had to heal so little that I was joking in vent that I should just go boomkin and heal that way. I would have probably beat their dps too.
Skadi was a pain in the ass because they didn’t seem to know what to do with the harpoons. I swear they were just shooting them each time they got one. Andrew said “how much do you want to bet that the shammy will die in the whirlwind?” To which I said in chat “MOVE AWAY FROM HIS WHIRLWIND WHEN HE COMES DOWN.” He whirled and the shammy ate it. *sigh* He ate it again on the final boss too.
At this point I just felt bad for the kid. He truly was a fail shammy. Having a fail mage, I can relate. Even then I still was never as bad as this dude. He did get a few upgrades and I wished him luck then we bailed.
The best part – I was getting 88-90 fps in the instanced runs.
Fucking game.
DoTs & HoTs - Damage over time is awesome! 