Ony 25 Fail rant (E/N, no real point, very long)

[Prucilak]

Sometimes, I wonder if blizz making gear easier to obtain was a horrible idea. There are some people with good gear that shouldnt even be level 80 after the complete meltdown of a group I witnessed last night while doing Ony25.

My guildie was putting together a pug Ony25 and he asked if I wanted to bring my pally for a chance at some loot. (Pally is at 4400gs, hes undergeared really.) After the tanks disappeared, I was asked to tank. Being that everyone in the group save for 2 people were OVER 5k GS, I figured this was a bad idea, but gave it a shot anyways. After reminding the group to stay away from the front of the adds, we gave it a shot. Between people stacking on the tanks and losing aggro, we wipe.....on trash....

I decided to switch to my warrior and tank it. (5600gs) No aggro problems for the rest of the raid no matter what the dps or tanks did.

I gave out assignments and after reminding people to NOT stand at her face or tail, we go in.

Right off the bat, someone gets tail swiped. Idiot....no big deal. I start noticing more people getting tail swiped. Aggro is good, boss isnt moving.

Phase 2, after i specifically said to stack in the middle and let tanks gain aggro, people run to the whelp entrances. Lose some dps and my healer. People are running towards the walls in the flame breaths and slowly started dropping.

In the transition to phase 3, I get killed and called for a battle rez. Doesnt come.....Dps starts dropping and tanks go down, wipe.

I asked why I wasnt battle rezzed. The druid assigned to B-Rez me said "we were going to wipe anyways."

*Starts pulling hair out*

Try 2.

Pull boss and start backing up towards the wall. Failbot is going off like the national debt counter. Someone got smacked like a baseball into the whelp cave. Here come da whelps. -50 dkp. Pick up whelps, burn them down, back to phase 2. Same crap happens.

Phase 3 we wipe, I told the group to disband.

Seriously, how can people in 5k GS be THAT stupid? Did you guys just do heroics and jump into ToC and get your 245's or something? If I had the power, I would send some of these people back to level 10 and told them to go and relevel, maybe by time they hit 80 again they will have some remote idea on how to not doing stupid crap.

[Dreador]

It's a poor use of gearscore, for sure. You can easily hit 5k only by running heroics, best plan would be to have your friend who started the pug actually do a gear check in Dalaran or something. I'd even go so far as to make them link an achievement. Ony is not a hard fight, but it's really easy for a couple of idiots to screw it up. I remember one 25 man where the last 20% of her health was killed of by myself and a resto shaman. 2 people.

[Kurtosis]

One thing I've found that helps with positioning is to find a melee dps that knows where to stand, star him, and tell all the other melee dps to stack on the star. That position should ideally be exactly between her front and back legs, and as far back as possible, which is several yards outside her red target circle.

Then call out any melee dps not stacking there. Most people don't realize that on big bosses like dragons, their hit box is even larger than their already large target circle, it's just that they can see the latter and not former.

On Phase 2, same thing - all the melee dps stack on the starred guy who knows what he's doing - in the center of the room - and wait for the tanks to pull the whelps to them.

Same for phase 3.

Other than that, yeah link achievements - no link, no invite. Learn the fight with a guild, not a pug.

[Vindicatar]

i like the fact that you're ranting about how people with a *k GS are bad but they have a good GS... this is EXACTLY why GS mods are utter crap to be using for any reason. they give you NO indication of how well people will play.

i get told i have a 6k GS... my response, "is that good?"

honestly GS doesnt mean shit and if you expect to get knowledgable pugs GS is not the way to do it.

and telling them to re-level will hardly solve the problem... i dont know about you, but im pretty sure i didnt come across an ony style quest that taught me how to complete that raid. /shrug must've missed it on my 4 80s...

so imo, take this thread to the wow forums where you can get trolled and keep it out of DECENT forums such as the TS ones, it hardly belongs here.

[Dreador]

The Gearscore mod does have it's uses, however the general populace doesn't use it well at all. This is the cause for all the hate.

[Kamani]

To OP: Your raid failed because of laziness, not lack of skill, I did Ony 25 last week and I got cleaved immediately on the pull because I was having a conversation and wasn't paying attention. By your explanation, I'm a terrible player. I've seen plenty of really good players do the same thing. Pug raids bring out the laziness and lack of interest in people.

To Vindicatar: I've never met you. Never seen anything about you. But you have a 6k gear score. That means you are capable of content to getting you that 6k gear score. You are either 2200 capable in PvP, HM 25 ICC guild capable in PVE, or have been pugging ICC every week since 3.3 came out. Yes, that does make you inherently more trust-able then the 5k guy.

[Winterburn]

Other than that, yeah link achievements - no link, no invite. Learn the fight with a guild, not a pug.

This approach has a significant downside. Looking for people with decent GS to form a 10/25 raid could take quite some time on realms with low population. Now, if you're looking for both GS and experience, this will take a while longer. And it will be quite a long while.

I'm not raid PUGing Ony for achievement or the Reclaimed Vendorstrike, but rather for the sheer fun of it. Hence, I'm not really willing to wait over one hour doing nothing just to find a PUG. Neither are many other players. So you either have to deal with what is at hand or forget raid puging entirely... weekly included. The only bosses pretty hard to screw up on in a pug seem to be Naxx ones (with the exception of Razuvious) and Sartharion.



I think the greatest problem with raid PUGs is poor management. Coordination is the key in any raid event and every raid leader must know abilities of every class in the group, as well as be able to give a reasonable amount of advice to players before and during the raid. "ZOMG! You stupid dps get outta here!" does not count. Most PUG raid leaders either can't or don't care to go over the fight beforehand or give warnings in Vent during the event.

From my personal experience, I never get to be MT in PUGs (even if MT is more than 200 GS lower than me and has considerably lower health), because every PUG raid leader knows that DKs are only good at multi-target threat and nothing else. Which is quite untrue. But I stay nonetheless, even though I can pretty much predict at this point where the raid is going.

Now, the second most problematic part of raid PUGs is morale. Say you get a wipe on trash somewhere on your way to Ony. Healer got distracted, tank recieved a particularly bad damage spike, etc... What do people do at this point instead of rezzing and doing it again? Whine and leave. This causes a chain effect and the amount of whining and leaving grows in geometric progression. Moreover, everyone starts blaming and calling names everyone else (raid leader included) instead of analysing the situation, regrouping, and going in for another run.

At this point I see no reason to stay and leave saying, "<strike>You're the most useless bunch of losers I've ever seen</strike> Well, guys, at least it was fun. Good luck next time."

[Prucilak]

i like the fact that you're ranting about how people with a *k GS are bad but they have a good GS... this is EXACTLY why GS mods are utter crap to be using for any reason. they give you NO indication of how well people will play.

i get told i have a 6k GS... my response, "is that good?"

honestly GS doesnt mean shit and if you expect to get knowledgable pugs GS is not the way to do it.

so imo, take this thread to the wow forums where you can get trolled and keep it out of DECENT forums such as the TS ones, it hardly belongs here.

At some point along the way, I figured people have done ony at least 1 time. Especially when I asked if everyone knew the fight.

To be honest, it goes along with why I hate pugs. The low morale, the people that abandon, unfortunately its nature of the game. I would be perfectly happy doing all content within my guild. At least I would know what Im working with.

As for releveling, You mean to tell me youve never seen a dragon before level 80? Hmm....stand at head, bad. Stand at tail, bad. Maybe you paid a leveling service?

I like how you came to troll my thread. You hardly belong here.

[Blue]

Yeah, I don't know what it is about Ony--maybe how long it takes to get a raid toghether for it, or something-but, finally, after several attempts similar to the one described by the OP, I found myself in a raid that was at least a bit more determined than others. We wiped on the trash, going in, twice...nobody accused anyone, or left. The RL simply told everyone to adjust the tactics, here or there (he was more specific), and we got on with it. The actual fight took three trys, mostly because most of the people there were new to the encounter...morale stayed high, because the whole thing was about having fun, while at the same time, focusing on the fight.

When we finally did kill Ony, it was one of the most wonderful kills I've ever been involved in, as, at about 20%, she killed everyone but the MT, a shaman healer, and me, as Shadow Priest. It took forever, with her fears coming, one of us almost dying several times (I got feared dangerously close to her tail three times, for example), all trinkets popped, and me doing more dps than I've ever done before (I've struggled with the 4k wall, for past several months). I don't think I've ever used my shadow fiend so many times, in one fight!

Gear--yeah--it's important...that's why I come to sites like this, after all. But, I also think determination, humor, practice, and sometimes just sheer luck, make all the difference.

[leethaxor]

Onyxia has what I consider one of the deadly sins that punish a fight to be nearly unpug-able; Namely adds. I don't know what it is with PUGS but deathbringer, onxyia, and more then likely putricide will remain incredibly difficult to pug, even long after gear is not an issues. The addition of new mobs into a boss encounter requires the ENITRE raid to change targets or at least to refocus (at least pull their heads out of there cast bars) for a second. In my experience new adds during a boss fight making pugging really really hard.

P.S.: Deathbringer is a stupidly easy fight (in guild), I have never had a pug clear past him because of the blood beasts either directly or indirectly (so much blood power).

will edit with grammar or spelling errors shortly

[Fenier]

At this point I see no reason to stay and leave saying, "<strike>You're the most useless bunch of losers I've ever seen</strike> Well, guys, at least it was fun. Good luck next time."

Fun Fact (not picking on you) use of HTML markup on most message boards will not work. This is due to the fact that you can use HTML to cause browsers to distort the actual page, or cause it to load external scripts. This is a security issue. There is also a data storage issue where HTML characters may not properly import to a database and so are 'sanitized' prior to being inserted. This is to prevent SQL injection.

This is why most board software has developed workaround code, such as BBcode used on PHPBB systems.

We now return you to your thread.

[Winterburn]

Fun Fact (not picking on you) use of HTML markup on most message boards will not work. This is due to the fact that you can use HTML to cause browsers to distort the actual page, or cause it to load external scripts. This is a security issue. There is also a data storage issue where HTML characters may not properly import to a database and so are 'sanitized' prior to being inserted. This is to prevent SQL injection.

This is why most board software has developed workaround code, such as BBcode used on PHPBB systems.

We now return you to your thread.

I'm perfectly aware of all that, but, unfortunately, while disabling HTML most message boards do not implement some very essential tags in their BBCode. In fact, they rarely implement anything new at all, so users have to make do with the standard stuff. Since there is no strike out tag, I used the standard HTML tag (though I believe they use <del> for that purpose now) in a hope that people would get my idea of thinking one thing, while saying quite a different thing in a raid chat. Which might seem hypocritical to some, although I consider it good manners.

Onyxia has what I consider one of the deadly sins that punish a fight to be nearly unpug-able; Namely adds. I don't know what it is with PUGS but deathbringer, onxyia, and more then likely putricide will remain incredibly difficult to pug, even long after gear is not an issues. The addition of new mobs into a boss encounter requires the ENITRE raid to change targets or at least to refocus (at least pull their heads out of there cast bars) for a second. In my experience new adds during a boss fight making pugging really really hard.

Returning to the original thread, it isn't just a matter of adds, really. Any amount of coordination required for a raid boss seems to be unmanagable by PUG groups even with high GS. Which should indicate at least some amount of experience.

I ran quite a few weeklies with PUGs and most of them were unsuccessfull, including Razuvious, Jaraxxus, and Ignis. Adds on the last two are pretty trivial, although, frankly, I could never kill all Ignis' adds on my own even with a dedicated mage assigned for finishing them off. So I prefer just pulling and tanking them, thanks to the fact that additional punishment on main and offtank can be easily shrugged off with high GS. In Jaraxxus' case it's more about timed interrupts, which tend to kill the tank if the heals get too sloppy. As for Razuvious... there's nothing really complex in this fight if the tanks communicate and know what exactly they should be doing and if the healers heal the right DK at the right time, but for some reason in PUGs it just never works out.

As for ICC PUGs I do dread those. The guys who put ICC PUGs together do tend to require 5.2 k GS, clearing out the first wing before, and what not, but I doubt it's that easy. Considering that raiding ICC is by no means a trivial thing, I suppose that this sort of PUG raids are considered lucky if they make it past the first boss. But I'm yet to try one, since it might as well ruin by rep farming capability for the week and turn out to be an all-pain-no-gain run.

[Maèl]

There are 4 critical points in the Onyxia Encounter

1) The pull
She tail swipes when on the move. So running right behind her is going to cause grief. Run besides her. As a tank, pluu with a defensive CD up.

2)Takeoff
The whelps need to be collected ASAP. DPS as to play ball for this. If they nuke too soon, they are toast. Healers need to knwo where to stand.

3)The Adds
Boy, these hit HARD. Disarming, using defensive CDs as a tank is a must. IMHO the best geared of the two tanks(you are not pugging her with one tank, are you) should be assigned to the adds. Onyxia herself doesn't hit as hard as those two. Melee will have to run out of their AoE.

4)Landing
I gave up on trying to position her. I pick her up where she lands. Everything else will only lead to a swiping cleave-fest.

Fear and DB isn't that big an issue. The only issue with these is that they quite often are the only thing mentioned when explaining the tactics. And the other 4 issues don't get any mention at all.

So whenever I organize a pug for Ony because I still need the Quel'Serrar(well, ok, want) I make it a point to stress these critical situations in that fight.

...also I will put anyone on ignore who leaves after one wipe. I don't want to group with you. Like, evar. And you will find yourself being blacklisted at an amazing amount of raids on my server. Raid Leaders hate quitters as much a people who whine about loot.

[robbon]

how did we ever do stuff as random pugs before ICC and GS ?

i think the answer is wing and a prayer ...as well as replacing people who suck.

[Dreador]

A raid is only as good as it's leader. People can always be replaced, and if the invited raiders were bad to begin with, guess what? They weren't scrutinized hard enough from the beginning.

[Prucilak]

Im new to raid leading. Still learning.

[Dreador]

Im new to raid leading. Still learning.

I would take this experience as something to learn from in this case my friend.

[Kazeyonoma]

Lets not turn this into a Gearscore rant. We do have blogs you know.

[Prucilak]

It started off as my guildies raid, but he kinda handed it over to me after everyone was invited.

On one hand, I want to succeed in raids, but not at the extent of having to deal with overconfident jerks who think having great gear means you can make stupid mistakes.

I'll take someone in bad gear, I'll take someone who is inexperienced, but I cant handle stupidity. At least admit to not knowing the fight, or forgetting the main mechanics, I'll be happy to explain it in detail in laymans terms.

[Maèl]

Funny, how just now a raid leading thread pops up. My warrior tank isn't my main raiding character. She's been mooching off my disc priest for a long time. I simply never got a steady raid for her.

Yesterday I got an invite to ICC10. Their assigned raid leader didn't show up so they needed a tank and somebody who was willing to show some leadership. I have to do a lot of that, lately.
The group was mostly pugged. Those can be pretty hit&miss, as we all know.

We had 2 toons who never made it past Saurfang. One of those was a healing pally never had been this deep into ICC10 on any character. This could have been the stuff nightmares are made of, but it wasn't. We one-shot the first 4 bosses without a hitch. We did the LDW weekly by having a DPS DK with Meh! tanking equip kite Daravan. Saurfang only got one mark out. So far so good, not much raid leading required. One of the raid members was on a soul collecting spree with his main, so he switched toons for trash. There was no tension over this because I explained how he had to get a million souls so don't stand in front of his cleave.

The next two bosses(Fester and Rot) were unknown to one raid member. So I meticulously explained each and every raid members role. We had the time due to the soul-harvesters relogging. We had one wipe because the holy pally didn't expect Fester to hit THAT hard, but he died in the second try. So there was some joking over Vent when we did our corpse run.

Rotface was next. I took 5 minutes to explain who had to do what. We killed him first try. Which is more than respectable for a pug. So I flattered everybody all the way to Val trash. You need to do that. Since I was the MT for that one I had ample time to see what everybody was doing. People didn't get hit by slime spray and explosions. Everybody who I called out ran out and joined his blob. It was perfect. No casualties. Timing of illness removal was perfect, too.

We only had one hour left so I decided to head over to Val. Due to trash and time constraints we could have either 3-4 tries on Princes or Val with little chances of succeeding. That would have taken another hour. So Val it was for the easy badge on the way. I explained the trash(melee&pets go for the gal on the ground, rnaged nuke the other one), we cleared it wihtout a hitch. Free badge.
I spent 5 minutes explaining the waves, kill priority, mob abilities, stuff on the ground and organized the healers. I gave my "Stand in colourful stuff on the ground and you die. Stand next to the wrong mob and you die. Attack the wrong mob and you die. In fact you will have to work very hard to stay alive."-speech. The tanks called out priority targets, everybody complied. Nevertheless we had wipes after only 2 portals because that fight doesn't forgive errors. On the third try we got her to 78% after 4 portals. Then we wiped. Which was my fault. Which I told them. I had to end the raid then since it was 11pm and everybody was tired and had obligations in the morning.

I told them they were the best pug I ever had, congratulated everybody for his loot, told them that if we had had another hour we would have downed the Val encounter and told them I'd love to invite each and everyone of them next week.

This was a lengthy post, but I can't stress it enoguh. Stuff goes wrong. You need to call it out. But also stuff gets handled brilliantly. Emphasize that. You are the RL. It's your job to keep the spirits up. I had armoried a couple of the people I recruited from trade. The brilliant healing shaman never downed DBS/10 on the week before. Pugs are BAD on my server. Really bad. So if you find competent, yet inexperienced players, tickle them pink.

We ended this raid that was doomed from the get-go on a high note.

I can't stress how important explaining encounters is. Even if everybody downed it before, there are so many misconceptions out there it's not even funny.
Going back to Ony, it's amazing how many people don't know you can interrupt/disarm the adds that spawn at the entrance. Going in there and simply saying "Ok, folks, you are supposed to know the encounter" means that nobody has a clear assignment and you expect them to roflstomp the old lady. In that case, boy, do I have news for you. And that is raid leading failure. You have to prepared people for a wipe beforehand or they will jump ship.