How to deal with DB

I do not think I have contributed to the PUG horror stories floating around the wowgosphere ™ (it means World of Warcraft Blog Atmosphere, I think I portmanteaued an acronym containing portmanteaus, my head just exploded).

I had, what I consider to be an amusing episode last night for my random on my druid.

Let me paint a picture –

Utgard Pinnacle, middle of the night, storm clouds are rumbling in and torrential downpour is imminent. I decide, since I have been spending a lot of time at targeting dummies I am going to attempt to feral dps the instance. BUT, since my gear is almost all 251 I wanted to make sure the group knew I was new to the dps thing.

me: Hey guys, just want to let you know, my main spec is heals, but I am working on my dps spec. I will not be doing stellar dps in here as I am cutting my teeth on this run.

everyone else: some variation of cool, ok, nice, good luck.

tank: nothing

A few pulls in it is clear by my dismal 2100 average dps that I am not the best dps in the group, as a matter of fact the pally tank is out dpsing me pulling about 3100.

I am not sweating it, I am concentrating on not pulling aggro, getting good solid rotations down, ensuring  Savage roar is up, and bounding and leaping and flying and clawing, and stuff.

Nobody is saying anything, we are all doing our jobs.

Then out of nowhere.

tank: DRUID WHY AM I OUT DPSING YOU?

me: well, I told you at the beginning, I am practicing, heals is my mainspec, I am not good at dps yet.

tank: no kidding, you need to pick it up and pull your own weight or i will kick you.

me: … ok?

And we carry on, finally coming to the first boss, now keep in mind, the instance was moving relatively quickly, I have done faster, but we were at a pretty good clip, I think maybe 3-4 minutes from first pull to first boss.

I pull something like 1900 on the boss, we had a disgusting lock do like 7 k on her and I was booby-trapped, and she was dead before she hit the ground, not a lot I can do about that.

tank: DRUID Y UR SO BAD?

At this point, the other dps and the healer are telling this guy to shut up and just do it, I am feeling pretty bad about not pulling my weight and thinking maybe I wasn’t ready to be in a heroic yet until a few more hours behind the targeting dummy.

For the next several pull random snide remarks are thrown my direction. I ignore them. We kill the 1 boss = 5 ( really bad with most boss names btw). I actually get to do some sustained target time with him and pull 3.2 or 3.4 or something.

As the dust is settling, he casts one more remark, and it was the snide thing he said to me all night. He insulted my healing ability. You can make fun of my mother, wife, child, parentage, nationality, whatever. DO NOT TELL ME I CAN’T HEAL! Especially if you have never seen me heal.

tank: I bet you can’t heal for shit either

me: Tell you what, I will show you how well I heal during this next boss pull if the healer will go dps.

heals: sure

tank: oh great this will be fail

Tank pulls the mobs, we kill first group. he ALMOST dies. I don’t put one hot on him.

tank: why didn’t you heal me at all?

me: I told you I was going to show you how well i can heal.

Meanwhile adds are still spawning and I am still not healing.

Tank dies.

Fury Warrior has aggro on all mobs. He gets heals, we complete the skadi fight in record time, pally tank even gets the quick kill achievement.

tank: WTF? ERGH, (lots of obscenities)

me: Look at that, I was able to heal through a boss fight with no tank, and nobody died, except the one person I WANTED to. Does that make me a good healer in your book?

everyone else: lol, rofl, various signs of amusement

tank: said nothing

I went back to my mediocre DPS, everyone else continued on their merry way. Not another word was said about my abilities either as healer or DPS.

Like Aesop, I have a moral for this story. Don’t make me feel bad or you will die.

Seriously though, feral DPS is a bitch for me to get the groove of. I decided more hours behind the targeting dummy wont make that much of a difference, I need to actually apply what I have learned in an instance environment. It is fun having so much to do, but it gets complicated at times, I know I should be pulling a LOT more DPS with the gear I have on, but just havent hit the sweet spot yet. I will get it.

And yes I am a jerk for letting him die like that, but I knew I could keep the dps alive, it isn’t a hard encounter.

Also, today is reset. So excited for a fresh raid week.