If Two's Company and Three's a Crowd...

You know how I'd mentioned a while back that I rarely see another Ret Pally in pugs when I'm queued with Quint?  Tomakan's Retardin failpug had been so long ago that I'd figured the WoW gods weren't planning on taking any sort of revenge for my post.

How wrong I was.

On last Tuesday after getting some lowbie WoW time in with Soul's wife, I pulled out Tomakan to run a pug or two.  I wasn't exactly surprised to see the Scarlet Monastery in the load window, and truth be told, I was looking forward to it after having been in the other lowbie instances for a while.  We zoned in, and I noticed that we had a Pally tank.

"Who's healer?"  One of the DPS asked.

"I am," I replied.

My response kind of got lost in the scrolling text as we had our hands full with the quick pulls in the torture area of The Graveyard.  Good thing the tank was a Pally, as he dropped a Lay on Hands on himself when he overpulled around the bend where I momentarily couldn't reach him.

Then I realized he hadn't used Lay on Hands.  A Shaman was healing too!

"LOL!" he said.  "I thought I was the healer!"

"Same here!" said another DPS, another Shaman.

"You mean we've got three healers here?" the tank asked.

"Yeah, Tom's healing!"

"Oh sweet, and two of us are Pallys too!  Let's pull the entire Graveyard!"

I did not think this a good idea.  At all.  But at least I knew how to run back in case of a wipe (don't ask), so I figured why not.

The tank began pulling.  And pulling.  I think that it took three waves of pulling to clear the entire open area in the Graveyard, but I was able to keep the tank upright.  Mana was good, and with two other healers around throwing down totems, we didn't lose anybody.  There was a brief moment of concern around the bends getting to the bottom of the sepulcher where the final boss was, but once I got within LOS I was able to keep the tank upright.

"Oh, that was great!" one of the Shamans said as we finished.  "We have to requeue again just so we can do that!"

So we did, and gave the undead in The Graveyard an encore performance.  Two Paladins and three healers can fuel some insane ideas, I suppose, and if there was an undead heavy instance somewhere between Graveyard and, say, Strat or Scholo, I'm sure these puggers would have been game to try it.  Thankfully, for my sanity's sake, there wasn't.

Two mornings later, I figured that instead of doing my dailies under Quint I'd run Tomakan through an instance or two.  Lo and behold, I get The Graveyard again.  Pally tank, but sadly no other healers.  With everyone in the low 30's, the Graveyard is quick enough of an instance, kind of the A-N for lowbies.

We finished the instance, and three of us --the Pally tank, a hunter, and I-- queued up for another run.

And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

"WTH?" the tank asked.  "It's never been this long before."

"Must be the 5 AM crowd," I said.  "I just hope we don't end up with Gnomer again."

"Me either."

What pops up after a 20 minute wait?  Gnomer.

I start distributing blessings, and I noticed something strange in Pally Power.  Where are all the...

"Hey!" the tank shouted.  "Four pallys!"

Yes.  Not two, not three, but four of us.  I'm pretty sure this is quite a few WoW players' nightmare, but it gave me the chance to see how this was going to work out.

Ironically enough, it wasn't so bad.  Okay, I'll admit that seeing Judgements flying around like they were pigeons in a park was very strange, but it wasn't the aggro hell that it could have been.  We didn't have Retardins in the group, and conversation was more along the lines of when to jump to the lower level.  I kept thinking why I couldn't have had one of these other three in the Razorfen Kraul run rather than the Retardin I did get.

But yes, this sort of grouping can happen, and people can survive this without wanting to claw each others eyes out.  If it can happen with Pallys, I wonder what it would be like with Death Knights....