Failpugs and You - How You Can Cope

I was a bad boy last night.

I'd logged in to take care of some odds and ends, and queued up for the daily random 5-man.  The destination?  Azjol-Nerub.

The tank started on it as soon as we ported in.  "All noobs leave now!" he said, heading down the path.

You have got to be kidding me, I thought.  This is freaking A-N, for pete's sake, and he was going to be an ass over this?

Nobody responded to his comment, but naturally he'd already run ahead before the rest of us could buff him.  He'd already engaged the first bit of trash, but he oriented himself in such a way that it was hard to get behind him so I wouldn't pull aggro.  It didn't matter anyway, since he had difficulty holding aggro with the casters nearby.  Trash disposed of, he turned to me.  "Surprised you haven't left yet," he said.

An evil thought entered my head as I stared at the screen.  Oh, he wants to play, does he?  Then let's play.

"Gee," I replied as he pulled the first Watcher to him, "and I was just about to ask if you wanted to do Watch Him Die."

"Yeah yeah!" said the healer.  "Let's do the achieve!  gogogogo!"

I looked at the health bar of the first Watcher.  "Too late," I said, dangling the lure over the edge.  If I played this right, "No-Noob" would take the bait and do something stupid rather than actually think through the suggestion.

My prayers were rewarded by the WoW gods.  The tank whirled and headed for the first boss.  "No it isn't!" he declared.

I began to follow but got caught in a web, requiring the mage to zap me free.  Two fewer DPS in the fight was even better than I hoped for.  By the time I arrived and took my position on the last boss, the tank and one of the DPS had already wiped.

Almost immediately, the tank dropped.

Scratch one obnoxious, overbearing tank before he caused even more trouble.  I hope he liked the debuff, too.

The reason why I related that story is because the level of asshatery in random 5-mans seems to be rising lately.  I don't even need to bring it up in guild chat; others have noticed it too.  One guildee has gotten so disgusted with it that he refuses to run pugs at all, and several others will only go with fellow guildees; no random characters, period.  Speculation has wandered from the end of the school year to the Cataclysm blues to the BP oil spill (okay, I made that last one up).  Whatever the source of the recent spate of pugfail, I've begun picking and choosing some passive-aggressive resistance.  If I can get away with it --and it won't harm the rest of the group too much-- I wait for an opening and use a bit of reverse psychology on the offending party. 

Sometimes it works, sometimes it goes completely over their heads.  I'd rather not say something like "Hey Jerk, why don't you leave before we kick you out?" but instead manipulate the person into bad decisions.  It's much more fun that way.