D'ye want PUG with that?

[plonq]

Wherein I rant briefly on the evils of Linksys tech support, and then wax poetic on the horribleness of PUG heroics.

Our Linksys router bit the big one on Wednesday. It talks to the internet just fine, and it talks to our computers just fine, but it won't let our computers talk to the net. In other words our router isn't routing. I tried a few tricks to convince it to work again (including reset to factory default settings), but it steadfastly refused to cooperate. After a bit of fiddling and configuring, I managed to get both of our desktops hooked up wireless through the D-Link pocket router that I ordered with my laptop computer a couple of years back. Fortunately atara's desktop has built-in wireless LAN, and I had a USB antenna kicking around that I could us on mine. It wasn't an optimal set-up, but it got us connected with the world again.

We stopped at a big-box electronics store on Thursday and picked up a fairly inexpensive Linksys router to replace the one that had died. I brought it home, opened the box, and things went downhill from there. My first inkling that all might not be well in router land was that it did not come with a manual, rather it had a card said little more than "insert the DVD in your computer and follow the instructions that come up on screen." Since I don't have auto-run enabled, I poked around on the DVD for a couple of minutes manually to see if I could find any instructions - even something as basic as a Read Me First.txt file. Eventually I gave up and just ran the Setup utility.

The utility was moderately unhelpful as it stepped me through the basic process of setting up the router. It offered instructions like, "Unplug the cable from your computer and plug it into the plug on the back of the router labelled 'Internet'." Fortunately the diagram that accompanied the instructions was a little more clear. What It meant to say was, "Using the cable that came with this router, connect your router to the modem." Eventually when the whole process failed, it dropped me to a main function menu where, amongst other functions, it had a button to call up the user manual. When I clicked on that, it performed three functions.

1) It attempted to install Acrobat 8 reader on my system.
2) It declared that I apparently already had Acrobat 8 reader on my system.
3) The program aborted, leaving me staring at the desktop again.
I went through the entire install routine again (including the three reboots they suggested - well, they suggested two, but when their software crashed on reboot I took that as an invitation to reboot again). Anyway, long story short, I finally got the LAN portion working, but it wouldn't connect to the DSL modem. Since I had already been at it for over an hour, and atara was beginning to worry that I was going to break something, I decided to call Linksys support.

I may be paraphrasing things a bit, but here are the next (very painful) ninety minutes in a nutshell.

"Hello, Linksys support. Please to be stating the nature of your problem."
"Hi, my router is giving me PPPoE configure errors when I try to connect to the modem."
"Please attempt these fiddly, unhelpful things that are written out in this script."
"Okay, we've been through your script twice and it still hasn't fixed the PPPoE problem."
"Please do not vary from the script. Now in the black window, please type PEE EYE ENN GEE one... nine... two..."
"Yes, yes, you want me to ping the router again, and once again it's not responding to pings after you had me enable the auto DNS settings again."
"please type one... nine... two... period..."
"Okay, we've been through this same cycle three times, each time with you having me unplug the router for longer times between each attempt. It still hasn't fixed the router."
"I have spoken with my team leader, and we are hereby giving you permission to return your router to the store along your original receipt for a replacement."
"... wait, you're giving me permission to return a defective product that I just bought this afternoon?"
"Please hold while I converse with my team leader again..."

What bothered me about this call was not her accent, nor the fact that I had trouble hearing her a few times over the people yelling in Punjabi in the background. My problem was that she had absolutely no technical knowledge whatsoever. When I tried to explain what I had already accomplished with the router, and where I was running into difficulty, she simply shut right down, and then started back into the written script as if I had not said a thing. Every time she walked me through setting up the router's config screen, I had to stop her and remind her that I was on a PPPoE connection, and that we needed to configure the modem -- you know the modem for which this router is giving me errors when I try to connect.

Anyway, stretch that out to 90 minutes in which, to my credit I think, I did not once raise my voice. The next day we returned the router and exchanged it for a (cheaper - bonus!) D-Link, which worked on the first try.

In other news...

One of my guild mates put out a call for a healer this evening. He wanted to get to one of the elders in AN. I figured since some of the others had been kind enough to run me that far last night, the least I could do was help him out. Well, the next time he puts out a call for help in an instance, I am going to be prepared with some questions before I volunteer.

"Is this going to be a PUG run?"
"Is this going to be a PUG run consisting of a priest, a rogue and three death knights?"
"When you said 'help me get to the elder', did you really mean 'full heroic clear of one of the uglier heroic instance'?"
"Are you and the other two DKs who aren't tanking going to behave like idiots?"

Okay, so here's how it went down. I joined the party, and right on my heels three DKs joined the party in rapid succession. The one who I (rightly) assumed was going to be tanking expressed concern over the balance of the group if we were going to be doing a full heroic clear. I complained that I had been told that it was going to be a regular run as far as the elder. After some discussion, I agreed to try and heal it, but I echoed his concern over group balance.

I buffed everyone and we entered the instance. On the first pull, all four of my party members started taking huge swaths of damage. I blew through half of my mana pool trying to keep them up, and ended up taking a lot of damage myself from all of the healing aggro I pulled doing so. On the second pull, the same thing happened again, but this time two of the bugs from that pack peeled off and latched onto me. The tank died, I died immediately after him and it was a wipe. Our first wipe, on the second trash pull.

We ran back, buffed back up, and tried again. Once again, the damage spiked across the board, and suddenly I had critters chewing on me again. I tried to heal through it, but I quickly bit the floor again and the tank died shortly after. He said, "CYA" and quit the group. I said, "Guys, this isn't going to work without some ranged damage" and then I quit the group too. I sent a /tell to the tank to apologize for the fiasco, but he told me "don't sweat it, because none of that mess was your fault. There was nothing you could have done in there." We ended up chatting for awhile, as he turned out to be a fairly mature and well-spoken fellow. He explained that his policy is to drop group after two wipes in a PUG. He had only joined because, like me, he had been brow-beaten into it by a guild mate. He also confirmed what I had already suspected - the three dpsers had been going balls-to-the-wall the moment he pulled, none of them targeting the same mob, and none of them waiting for him to build aggro.

How that usually ends up is as follows:
Tank pulls group.
DPS classes open up on targets not being tanked.
DPS classes pull threat and start taking truckloads of damage.
They either die, or the healer manages to keep them up. In any event, due to the sudden burst of healing, the healer's aggro quickly passes theirs and the healer suddenly has critters chewing on him.
The healer dies.
The group wipes.

Anyway, I remembered why it is that I seldom run PUGs.

Comments

[leopanthera.livejournal.com]

I've had nothing but problems with Linksys equipment. I default to Netgear, which so far I've had no major issues with.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I've usually had decent luck with Linksys, but my experience with this last router has definitely put me off the brand. It wasn't just the bad hardware, but the utterly pointless help desk experience that did it for me. In the entire 90 minutes of the call she had me do nothing that should not have appeared on the first page of the manual anyway (if it had come with one...)

I've heard good things about Netgear, but they didn't carry them where we bought this router. They had Linksys, D-Link, Belkin and a couple of brands I had never heard of (whose design had a very Soviet-era Eastern European look to them).

[kamiten.livejournal.com]

Early on in Wotlk, pugs really weren't that bad. I have watched them steadily decrease in skill since I hit 80. Back when I was first running heroics everyone that was 80 knew their jobs and could coordinate with the tank and healer. They also had standards on how much DPS you had to pull (I believe the lowest I saw at that time was 1200 from rogues/warlocks. I was under the impression that warlocks were still getting over their class changes at the time, and rogues have had issues all of Wotlk producing high dps) where most DPS was pulling around 1500 or greater. Now I'm starting to get your own distaste for pugs as I'll join a group and produce 40% of the damage dealt, while the other DPS target and pull aggro from mobs we aren't supposed to be hitting.

It's no wonder Blizzard keeps making the game easier. So many people still don't know how to play, but are paying the same $15 as those of us that do.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

My problem was not with their damage output, but with their common sense. I like to think that I am a capable enough healer to deal with fights that go on a little longer than they need to because damage output is low. Not everyone is decked out in full Naxx and 3D gear yet, so I don't get too badly bent if their numbers are a bit low.

IMO part of the problem is that the content is so easy. People get this idea that they can just run in and zerg the content the moment the tank clears his throat. Then when we hit something a bit harder, this causes problems. Another part of the problem is damage meters and people under 20. Every kid wants to flex his epeen on the dps meters, and waiting for the tank to build threat is a missed opportunity to pad his numbers.

Sadly I've even encountered this in all-guild runs. I was chatting with a guild mate about it, and he said that it got so bad on one of his heroic runs (with a DK and Shaman) that he finally instructed the healer to stop healing them when they pulled aggro. He told them that he had all night to finish the run if needed, and that they could clear the trash with just the tank, healer and mage if the other two couldn't watch their aggro.

Apparently they both died a 2-3 times before they finally wised up.

[kamiten.livejournal.com]

haha. Well I was referring to people knowing their roles more than pure dps output.

Also as a sidenote since most people don't realize this, it doesn't matter when you start dps to the meters unless you're just looking at raw damage you've dealt over the course of a run. Your dps itself will always be the same since it's a measure of damage over time. This is why I ignore the "raw damage" measure in the meters. It's a useless measure except against bosses.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I like dps/healing meters when they are used for the right purpose. When people start watching them too closely, it leads to the creation of glass cannons - more so in raids than in 5-man content. (The classes with no aggro-wipe are the worst for this.)

You can tell the glass cannons because at the end of the fight they have the highest dps number in the raid, but their overall damage is down around 4th or 5th spot. Oh ya, and they're dead.

[kamiten.livejournal.com]

I don't die that often!

... maybe I have good healers.

[atara.livejournal.com]

"Also as a sidenote since most people don't realize this, it doesn't matter when you start dps to the meters unless you're just looking at raw damage you've dealt over the course of a run."

...unless you're an affliction lock. ;)

I did some combat dummy tests, and it was really interesting looking at the damage I was doing at different stages. (Keep in mind this was several months ago when my gear was a bit subpar.)

* After 1 minute I was at 1100 DPS
* After 2 minutes I was at 1400 DPS
* After 3 minutes I was at 1750 DPS
* After 4 minutes I was at 2100 DPS

Affliction DPS ramps up as time goes on, which is why we typically suck on trash. :)

[pfcottontail.livejournal.com]

"Is this going to be a PUG run?"
"Is this going to be a PUG run consisting of a priest, a rogue and three death knights?"
"When you said 'help me get to the elder', did you really mean 'full heroic clear of one of the uglier heroic instance'?"
"Are you and the other two DKs who aren't tanking going to behave like idiots?"
... I have been dragged into crappy pugs by guildies a couple of times, and yet I always forget to ask these questions!

As a healer, we have to look at 4 bars carefully throughout a fight. DPS'ers just need to look at a threat meter! I hate when they don't figure things out and I run out of mana, holy shit i am so angry right now just thinking about it.

I'm glad your run didn't take too long!

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I didn't live long enough to run OOM on any of the pulls. It's partly my own fault because I have 0 points in Silent Resolve. (Wasted points IMO with the way that tank threat works in Wrath now.)

On the other hand, it would probably help bit in 5s when you have dps peeling guys off of the tank. I can't think what I would want to drop to spec into it though.

[pfcottontail.livejournal.com]

As a holy priest I do not have that problem! If I didn't put points into Silent Resolve then I would probably end up with Lightwell.

In any case, the healer shouldn't have to spec a certain way to make up for group incompetence, that is just inefficient.

[atara.livejournal.com]

My theory is that the bad players are finally reaching level 80, so we're seeing more of them in PUGs.

I very rarely PUG.

[kamiten.livejournal.com]

That's also my theory. I am avoiding pugs more and more because of it.

Early on a pug was nearly as good as a guild group; I miss that.

[atara.livejournal.com]

This is also why I'm avoiding 25-man Naxx PUGs unless it's being organized by an established raiding guild who just needs a few more bodies.

....because asshats can arrange PUGs too.