One of the quirks of the WoW dungeon system is that if you leave a group before the end of an instance voluntarily, you have to wait 30 minutes before you can re-queue. For example, if you zone into a random instance and decide it’s one you don’t like so you leave straight away. However, if you get kicked by the other group members, you can re-queue immediately.
This week I figured I’d go on an emblem hunt before the next patch. I picked my druid because a) I haven’t played her in awhile and b) she’s a healer and I find healing very laid back in heroics these days, mostly due to gearing. Because I haven’t played my druid in awhile, she’s mostly in a mix of gear from the last couple of raid tiers prior to ICC. Although I did get lucky on an alt run of ICC 10 and picked up a decent healing mace too. None of this should really matter because I was healing heroics perfectly well a year ago.
So I queue up, instantly get a group, and zone in to Trial of the Champion. “This should be quick and easy”, I think. The tank is a bit undergeared so I run through one and a half mana bars during the first fight. One guy (a rogue) dies. He’s been mouthy the whole time so I am sure that he’ll be the type to go pull the next boss as soon as he is ressed. I decide, judiciously, to drink before I res him.
He says, “Res.”
I say, “Just drinking.”
He says, “res!”
I say, “You could run back while I’m drinking if you’re in a rush.”
He says, “res!!”
He says, “res!!!”
He says, “wait 5 mins and kick noob druid”
He says, “res!!!!”
And this is where it hits me like a bolt from the blue. I WANT to get kicked from this group.
(Yes, healing does make me quite passive-aggressive.)
Think about it. All I need to do is spend a few minutes reading and then I can get rid of this monkey, set him on ignore, and re-queue for another group immediately. I decide at this point that I’m not going to res him, whatever happens, but comment that he could ask politely if he wants a res. Unlike Tam, this is not because I am a nice person who wants to instruct the rest of the player base in manners. It’s because I know there’s no way on earth he’ll ask politely so I am bound to get my group kick.
(If he had asked politely I’d have done it, my mana bar was full by this point. I might have … slacked a bit on healing him later on though.)
Meanwhile, the other druid in the group disconnects while the group leader is whining at me and asking him to do the res. Fate is on my side! This is meant to be! No one suggests kicking the annoying rogue, or telling him to stop bitching and run in – it’s one of the shortest cemetary runs in the game. (I assume because I’m writing in coherent sentences they think I’ll be easier to reason with, which is probably true.) I certainly don’t suggest it.
Before the 5 minutes are up he keeps adding more exclamation marks to each res request, insults my gearscore (like I care) and says I must be a noob. I have gone to get tea by this point, I just notice it in the chat when I get back.
I realise he’s finally been able to request a group kick because he says, “kick the druid” a lot and I do in fact find myself very shortly back in Dalaran. I then put him on ignore and get into another group almost immediately. Working as intended.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
Devious!
I never imagined Tea with WoW could end up so wonderfully!
Great work,
unfortunatly I am in the leveling process right now. And there even as a healer I have a wait time of 5min+.
I want to level exclusively and since the dungeon even with a bad group only takes 30min nowaday, I usually stay with the group.
I try to get other people kicked. I recognized lately that the M&S playes know your trick also.
They would never leave the group on their on, they would ask for a kick instead.
In one dungeon the M&S get los and run into a mob each time he came back to the instance. We just refused the kick to let him suffer.
In situations like that I zone out and do some questing, teleporting back in one he realises he’s the only one in the instance.
I’m amazed!
There is a 15 min cooldown independent of the 30 min debuf which means you wasted at least 15 minutes as you could requeue immediately. Plus you can either kick immediately or after 15 minutes, depending on your chars status. The rogue definitely hat the 15 minutes status. 🙂
It’s hard to imagine spending 15 minutes on a full ToC run. 🙂
Which instance did you get afterwards?
Err, good question. I think I got UP next. But it was actually partway through, I joined them just after they’d done the gauntlet with Skadi.
And the first encounter of ToC does take a few minutes, especially if people are a) slow getting onto their wolves at the start and b) if you have really low dps, an undergeared tank, and a couple of people get themselves killed (obv I battle ressed one of them.)
So I am not surprised that it took 10 mins to get to the conversation point.
Funny, my healer got kicked out of a bad group as well this weekend: Doing Utgarde Keep on normal with level 70ish characters, at the first boss (Prince) the tank deliberately pulls the 4 trash mobs together with the boss, instead of first killing the trash and then the boss. Tank can’t hold aggro on the trash, the boss, and the summoned skeletons. I can’t heal everybody at the same time, not even with Tranquility. We wipe. And without even a comment I get kicked.
It’s always the healers fault.
I guess I should start to make tea more often.
A lot of people seem to blame the healer or tank and it always annoys me. I guess it’s easier to blindly accuse a single person than it is to analyse the situation.
Funnily enough, I’ve noticed that a lot of people will tend to agree to kicking other players for honestly no other reason than the pop up box appeared on their screen.
I’ve tanked and I’ve healed (and DPSed). In both cases, it’s usually my fault if the group wipes or people die. The only exception being when people actually go out of their way to get the group or themselves killed.
In Tobold’s case, sounds like the tank’s fault.
Of course, a higher level healer could heal through that, but then they have more tools at their disposal. Again, tank was an idiot for not realizing he’s not level 80 in T10 stuff.
Tea…
Never thought of it.
It think every healer can relate to your story and most of them wish they had such guts.
The other day my 2nd healer – a shaman – got kicked at the start of UP heroic. The other 4 were a guild, fair enough, alls I saw was “lol nub healer, get a real GS nub” and I was kicked.
My GS, interestingly, is 5464.
That’s very weird.
I’ve actually found that you don’t always get the deserter debuff if you leave a group, though I haven’t figured out when you do and when you don’t. All I know is that I’ve dropped group a couple of times when I thought that people were being idiots, thinking “debuff be damned” just to find that I hadn’t got one and could requeue right away. So you still might have saved a lot of time by just leaving… 🙂
If you’ve been in the instance for 30 mins, you probably don’t get the debuff. Other than that I’m not sure.
I’m pretty sure that it’s a lot less though, even if I don’t know how much exactly. The example that I remember most vividly right now was a heroic FoS where the three dpsers kept abusing the tank and eventually kicked him after about three trash pulls, which is where I left as well. I’m pretty sure we had only been in the instance for a couple of minutes at this point, yet I got no debuff for leaving.
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that you don’t get the deserter debuff if someone leaves the dungeon before you do. So if you zone in and the tank bails, you do not get the debuff if you drop.
I’d have to confirm that, but I seem to recall that’s how it works.
I would of taken the Rogue’s name and server and posted here in your article, Spinks. So we can all internationally put him on /ignore. Just a thought.
Then maybe 10 people would put him on ignore. People who would refuse to rez him in heroic runs. I think he would actually win. 🙂
I need to do some more emblem runs ;p
My DK hit 79 this weekend, a couple levels back I was in a Violet Hold run. Had done it a few times before with no problems, however, in this run my router decides to take a dump so I drop connection. Not that great, when I come back online we have a couple waves of dragons to deal with and I am the only one alive (I joined the group when they at wave 4, so already in progress with the Druid tanking). This was only 2 waves from the end so I was narked at the router myself. I popped some of the emergency nuke buttons but still died, they told me not to release about 10 secs after I clicked it too. I came back went in to try and save the group (who had already entered on their own without me) and found the healer had crossed to the other side of the place where there was no way I could get to her. I got called a n00b tank and the healer left. I love WoW…
I don’t see why being a jerk to your entire group because this other guy was a jerk is a reasonable course of action. How do you know it is the rogue who tried to kick you? By that point, you’d been AFK for 5 minutes. Any one of them could have tried to kick you.
It’s semi reasonable if you don’t really care about the rest of your group. I’m not saying that this is desirable behaviour or that it makes me look good, only that there actually are advantages to being kicked as opposed to leaving a bad group.
(If I’d been the tank for this group, I’d have just left as soon as the healer started arguing with the dps because I know how these things go.)
Is not caring about the rest of a PUG kind of like voting? That is, if we all did or didn’t do it, what would happen?
Have to agree with Argon. No advantages to pushing this kick forward. When you PUG, you catch some crap. The rogue’ll always be a jerk. No reason for you to bring the pain to the rest of the group. It’s hard enough to PUG as it is — don’t let your name get tagged and bring down others’ experience.
And sheesh, I hate it when a tank gets twitchy and leaves without a word. Give the group a warning. It’s just WoW. ;^)
Isn’t the cast time for a rez shorter than the actual run back?
Yes. If he’d actually said nothing he’d have been ressed as soon as I’d mana’d up.
It was the exclamation marks. They were driving me nuts.
Res!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Funny enough, for ToC, the run back is actually shorter than the 10-second rez cast time. Time yourself sometime.
You should remove this comment, it’s a link to some phishing scam. You should be able to tell by the fake sounding post too.
Thanks for that, and well spotted. (For anyone else — don’t stress, the spam is gone now.)
Where did you go?! I’m still waiting in ToC!
Res!!!!!!!!!!!!
ahhh the life of the healer.. and stuck with stupid kiddies
i think of fond times in warhammer online, when people would complain/be rude about about my healing, i’d say outloud to the entire warband that i’m not healing that person. THis would force people to get him to appologize.. yay peer pressure
This post is about me. You scream like an idiot for a res when running back literately takes 15 sec. I just suddenly became calm and serene. I have a cup of coffee. its also great to act as if nothing is a problem.. whats wrong? Someone pee in your Wheaties I ask.
“Unlike Tam, this is not because I am a nice person who wants to instruct the rest of the player base in manners.”
Also unlike Tam, it looks like you didn’t really try to engage with the buttheads in your group. Buttheads are what they are, so I generally just drop if I get annoyed. It seems you’ve found an even better method to leave the group. No sense in sticking around trying to fix what is irreparably broken.
Mmwelll, in a way it’s sad because it shows us how broken the entire feature is in practice, with the wrong people being booted from parties as often as the morons. that’s the trouble with democracy, it’s the rule of the majority, so not necessarily the rule of the brightest and should you find yourself outnumbered by idiots….good luck to you!
But it seems you were happy in this particular case, so who am I to stop you! 😉
Argon already wrote it. The feature is not broken. Both players, the rogue and spinks, were jerks to the remaining 3 other players. There was a tank and 2 DD in the group who had to sit around because of these two conflicting individuals. Therefore kicking either one is a good solution as it gets the run going.
And I would have also kicked the healer. ToC doesn’t really need much healing. Every healer who can group for that instance can get you through, these days. But kicking the only real DD would be stupid as it makes the last boss fight much harder.
We’ll have to face it. Healer and bad DD for heroics you’ll get a dime a dozen. The only rare things are tanks and GOOD DD.
“healing does make me quite passive-aggressive”
I’s noticed what Team Ratshag’s new healer is a lot more passive-aggressives than the team’s tanks. Ta the point of bein’ able ta sit and calmly finish her drink after the tank yet again ran off and pulled after bein’ informified what she needed mana. (He were outta mana too). After he died, she got up and healed the warrior fer the rest of the fight. Wouldn’t rez the bugger afters, neither.
Passive-aggressives. Healers haz them.
I’ve experienced the similar as Tank and Healz many times. Asking for a bit of courtesy isn’t a lot. Rude Dps. Its ALWAYS the dps You’d think after sitting in a 20-30 min queue they’d at least be tolerable.
On my tank, when i see crap like that I remind the offender about their 30 min queue…if they don’t catch the hint, i re-introduce them to it. Even without the deserter debuff, they still have 20 mins of timeout to think about what they’ve done.
That’s an awesome tactic to deal with annoying players Spinks. Thanks for sharing it. I’m thinking about doing some healing with my Druid when the new expansion hits and I’ll definitely remember your trick.
I don’t tolerate rudeness and ogogog, I don’t like players who aren’t capable of using their language and I don’t really care about poor dps-/heal-/tanking.
The most desireable (?) thing while playing is FUN. bad companions arent providing much of that.
Connivance to bad behavior is bad behavior to, so normally I don’t leave a group because of one dickhead, but because of 3 or 4.
I can totally sympathize with you here. Just this past Sunday, I was running heroics with my paladin in order to get a few more emblems prior to the patch, and ended up getting the healing role for Halls of Reflection.
Now, I’ve healed the Halls before, and quite successfully, but this time around, I end up with a tank who has 36k health after kings, fortitude, and a gift. Not the best possible option, but hey, skill means a lot, so I just shrug and go on.
First wave hits, and the tank is doing decently. The DPS in the group (a mage and retribution paladin) aren’t really holding back, so they’re getting threat and I’m having to spend a lot of time healing them on top of the tank. Not really a huge deal – I have a few tricks up my sleeve and melee in order to get mana back. Simple enough.
Third wave before the first boss, we start getting the rogues. This is when the problems hit. Sure enough, they shadowstep and start backstabbing the tank, and he goes down like a ton of bricks. We shrug it off and come back in.
Second attempt, third wave – rogues again. Shadowstep, backstab tank until dead. I say in group, “Hey, [tank name], make sure you don’t let the rogues get behind you – it’s very difficult to heal through that damage.” As to be expected, no response. Either they got the message, or they didn’t.
Third attempt, third wave. Guess what? Yep, rogues again. The tank goes down for a third time. We all get back inside the instance, and the tank says, “Hey, learn to heal.” and I get booted from the group.
I laughed for a solid minute before queueing back up and getting into the next group within 30 seconds.
Well played, spinks! Too many people reward bad behavior just to make it stop.
Although I rarely use the LFG tool because I prefer to short manned dungeons, I do use it on occasion.
The good one. Running Dire Maul in a level 55-56 group. The healer disconnects and despite having no one who could throw a healing spell, we decided to carry on after we established every DPS carried some Heavy Netherweave bandges. We set up a bandage rotation to heal the tank during combat and ate outside of combat. It was a slow run – we used CC on larger packs – but it was very enjoyable.
The bad one. Hellfire fire with the same toon. The level 58 healer is getting boosted by a level 73 mage. The mage and the healer constantly complained about the level 58 tank failing to hold aggro which resulted in the mage dying two times. I left after 6 or 7 pulls as the two were now in full rage mode and were quite abusive. I suggested to the tank a report may be worth filing and told him I would file one.
As a tank, I’ve always felt it was my job to watch my healer’s mana and manage pools based on what they can handle. Since I’m a bear and generally have over 60k health in a heroic, I’ll also tell healers to DPS if they’re bored. I do not understand tanks who don’t do the same for their healers.
I also own up when I make a mistake. Several days ago, I was chaining heroics to finish up the 2500 Emblem achievement. I lucked out and got a group of a healer and 2 DPS to stay with me for several. In hUP, I overpulled in the beginning (RAWR! I R bare – nuffink can hert me!) and wiped the group. I owned up, told them it was my fault and my ego that caused it, and would understand if they wanted to kick me. Everyone laughed and said it was fine.
Weeks ago, I was tanking a hOK group. With the spellflingers, I always take a moment to tell the group to please focus on the skull and interupt their cast, as it can really hurt a tank. Takes about 2 seconds for me to type that out and I generally do it as I finishing up the previous pull. Group is going along – unfortunately, my door rang right before the 2nd boss and I had to leave the computer for a minute (I timed it). Asked the group to wait and found that the ret pally had continued with pulling. Apparently, *I* was taking too long and spent too much time on explanations. He also said to hurry (when I was waiting for healer mana) because he had a raid in 5 minutes. Didn’t understand that – why queue for a heroic if you don’t have a reasonable amount of time to complete it?
Urgh. I can’t actually imagine tanking those without an interrupt, hope bears are getting one in Cataclysm.