Me and my Big Mouth

I kept telling myself I wasn't going to post until both of my alts made L80, but the WoW gods conspired against me.  I'd had such a great run of good luck pugging the normal Wrath instances that I'd sort of forgotten what it was like to have a bit of drama in a pug.  Oh, I don't mean I'd had a series of Wrath Heroic "shh-don't-make-a-sound-we're-grinding-badges" pugs, because most of the pugs have become chatty affairs.  (When a UK run takes 45 minutes, you might as well talk about something along the way.)

No, I mean what I experienced today, where you become reacquainted with the Vote Kick button.

The first entertaining instance of the day, I got Halls of Lightning on Tomakan, and I was going into the middle of a run.  No big deal, really; when you LFD solo, you get that a lot.  The only issue I had was that I was inside Drakuru's Scourge tower, Voltarus, and I had to get out of there ASAP.  I ran down, ported out, ran down the ramp, and tried to mount the gryphon. 

Then I was reminded that while in disguise I couldn't mount anything.  (Yeah, insert adolescent joke here.)  So I bit the bullet and ported into Halls of Lightning, making a mental note that I'd probably port out into an aggro situation.

When I arrived, I found the priest and hunter standing around.  Recognizing the location, I said, "Afternoon.  Almost to Loken?"

"Um..." the Hunter said.

"Where is everyone?  Running back?"

"Um..."

"Hey everyone!" the tank shouted, running up.  "I'm an L82!"

"Okay," the Priest replied, "how did you get in?"

"The limit on normal Wrath instances is L82," I said.  In one of the most overused lines in Star Wars, I had a bad feeling about this.

"I'm a Worgen!"

"Yeah," I replied, "and I'm a Scourge.  Or I was a minute ago."

"And I'm a jelly doughnut," the Priest replied.

We buffed, and the tank took off.  I swear, he must have thought we were blitzing a Wrath Heroic.  "I can take on one of them all by myself!  Wanna see?"

"Um, no," the Priest said.

"Oh.  K."

We made it through to the end, killed Loken, and the tank queued us up again.  Since in spite of his overenthusiasm he was an okay tank, I queued up too.  The Priest and the Hunter had to go and dropped, and we stood around waiting for LFD to spit out a healer and DPS.

Then the tank and the other DPS started playing a game of comparisons.

"How old are you?"

"27.  You?"

"28.  Got you beat.  Married?"

"Yep."

"Nope."

"Kids?"

"Yep."

The comparisons began to veer a bit more toward the explicit, and before they could get to discussing things like penis size, I dropped.

I shook it off, ported out, and naturally got jumped by a pair of Scourge in the Reliquary of Pain.  Oh well.

Later that afternoon after I got done with work for the day, I got into what was almost an instant queue for Utgarde Pinnacle.  We got buffed, ran up, and started the first trash pull before I could even type the words "hello."

Then the tank lost aggro.

"Hey!" one of the DPS said as he and I died.  "Watch your threat!"

"WTH happened?" the healer asked.

"I was wondering the same thing," I replied.  "At least UP has a short run back."

Our questions were answered a few moments later when the tank DC-ed.

Oh well.  "I'm going to go questing," one of the DPS said.

"You're a lame-ass," the one replied.  "Questing during an instance."

"Why not?  It'll be 15 minutes before we can vote-kick him."

Lo and behold, three minutes later, the magic vote-kick window appeared.  "That was the fastest 15 minutes I've ever seen," I replied.

We queued up and got a new tank, and this one was so brand new he had that "new tank" smell.  "I've never been here before," he said, "and I'll need some pointers."

Things went okay --if slow-- until toward the end of the second boss.  "I've gtg," the tank announced, and suddenly I had aggro.

Oh.  Crap.

Luckily, Lay on Hands was off CD, so I was able to stay upright without us wiping, but the tank left the game without leaving the group.  We were stuck once more.

This time, the tank we got hung around until the end, but he ignored the healer when she called out for mana.  That almost cost us dearly in the Berserker area toward the end, because I got Feared into the latter two packs in the middle of the room.  Rather than do something stupid like run to the tank with two trash mobs trailing me and a healer low on mana, I stayed put and took one for the team.

"How'd you get over there?" the healer asked when he maneuvered over to rez me.

"Feared," the tank and I said in unison.

/sigh

This does not bode well for Cataclysm.



(Side note:  Draenei do not need the Viking-esque helmet that's a quest reward for UP; they're already horny enough, thankyouverymuch.)