A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Wyrmrest Temple

At some point the weekend before last, I got a bee in my bonnet to level another character on the live server. For whatever reason, rather than leveling my priest which was my original intent (some how I have five healers at 85, and the priest just can’t seem to make it into the line to level), I opted to dust off my mage who hasn’t been played outside of leveling JC early in the expansion. Now, I must say that rather enjoyed putzing around with her again, and leveled/quested/dungeoned as frost. She has pretty much always been frost, aside for a short period of time where she was arcane at the tail end of WotLK.

Anyhow, I came home Monday night jet lagged and exhausted from my trip home, and needing something completely mindless to keep me awake so that I didn’t go to bed at four in the afternoon. Being the stellar pocket tank that he is, Brade carried me through all of the level 84/85 instances and before I crashed for the evening I managed to hit 85 (hoory!). So I did what every freshly minted 85 would do and hit the AH to fill my bags with PvP gear, and my sexy goblin body with any gear available that I could wear.

Soon enough, I was of a requisite level to enter the new HoT instances. But before I could tackle them, I let Brade talk me into go fire. I have never had a fire spec. Never dabble in the heated ways of the mage. And I was a bit at a loss for what buttons I was supposed to push. I spent a little time at the target dummy with Brade looking over my shoulder trying to give me a crash course in fire magery and realizing that if I don’t make a power aura for those stupid mirror images and my fire orb thingy (that looks WAY cooler as a frost fire orb…just sayin’!) that I would probably forget to use them.

Anyhow! A few of my guild mates were kind enough to drag my sorry, undergeared ass through the new HoT heroics the other day. It was my first time playing as fire. I couldn’t remember where half my hot keys were. And I’m pretty sure on Tyrande our holy paladin out DPS’d me…but let’s not explore that anymore! So we get through the first two and into the third, where we are joined by a rogue. I don’t remember his name. I’d gotten a little more comfortable with the fire rotation as long as we were just killing one thing, but to say I didn’t quite grasp the whole AoE thing yet would probably be an understatement.

As we were moving through all of the zones, I’d pretty much just been soaking up any loot with Int on it, as it was far superior to the blue and green items I was wearing – which meant that I was that amazingly awesome spirit wearing mage that everyone was probably mocking in a venue in which I can see them. Whatever. I’m going to wear an upgrade even if it isn’t perfectly itemized for me, and I’m not going to complain!

As we are clearing the trash to that annoying smoke bomb lady, I declare just how terrible I am as a mage, have a good laugh, and keep trying me damnedest not to be so fail (note: I’m not entirely sure I succeeded!). We proceed to kill the smoke bomb lady and she drops a spirit/int cloak. Since no one else needed the item, I was like “hell yea! Cloak upgrade!” and needed the shit out of that spirit cloak, immediately equipping it to replace my heirloom cloak.

We are mounting the dragons to the last boss, the rogue starts bitching that I rolled need on a spirit cloak. The tank in our group, one of my guild mates, starts laughing and says “have you seen her gear?!?!”.  I commented that it was an upgrade to my heirloom cloak, even with the horrible itemization. To which the rogue responds “go get a 384 from LFR”. Hey! Sure thing pal! If only the bosses in LFR dropped a cloak! “Whatever, go buy one with VP”. I’d love to! As soon as I get the VP! Until them, I’m gonna totally rock this spirit cloak with pride! The rogue then calls all of us a bunch of baddies and noobs. Which is mildly amusing since both the tank and the healer are fully geared heroic raiders…playing on their mains.

So the healer points out that the tank has beaten him on damage for every fight (granted the tank was tanking in his DPS gear….). And the rogue goes “well, he’s 408 iLevel, do you know how hard it is to get that?!”. “Yes, I do”, says our healer, “I’m in 409”. So this rogue keeps going on and on about how terrible we are, and I say to him “I know I’m terrible! I just exclaimed that exact thing 5 minutes ago!”. At some point the rogue gets agitated and says to the tank and healer something to the effect of “whatever, you think you are better than me because of your gear”. To which they both said “nope, but we also aren’t the ones going around calling people terrible”.

As we approach the last boss, the tank asks the healer if he thinks he could keep him up in his arms spec. Always up for a challenge, the healer says “sure”. And so we encountered Benedictus and our “tank” did about 60% of the damage on the fight. When we finished, the rogue posts the damage meters and say “see, you are bad, I beat everyone but the 408 guy”. I laughed and responded that the person who really deserved credit was our healer…who just healed an arms warrior tanking the boss. At which point the rogue left the group.

I felt kind of bad for the shaman in our group, who was lumped into the rogues statement of how “terrible” we all were. But he seemed to enjoy the playful banter we had with the rogue, as he asked us if we were going to do anymore instances. Sadly, we were finished for the time, but I had a good chuckle all night long about this rogue. I mean, really, was he so desperate for 7 gold that letting me take the cape was a huge detriment? Was he so disturbed by my taking a poorly itemized upgrade that he couldn’t stand by without correcting that injustice and making sure I knew just how awful I was?

Seesh!

Anyhow, not to be deterred by my terribleness, I somehow managed to be of a requisite gear level to enter into LFR after the upgrades I received (spirit and all!) that I just had to try my luck at the front half. So I queued in, and did my worst! And you know what? The truth is that my worst is apparently better than others, as I wasn’t the last DPS on any of the bosses – and was actually in the middle of the pack on two of them.

For me? That is a solid success! I was pleased as punch and excited to get some more (perhaps appropriate) gear and explore my fiery ways. Perhaps next time, I’ll even manage to be hit capped!

So, Mr. Shitty Attitude, I may wear spirit gear, but at least I try hard, can laugh at my (admittedly terrible) learning curve and have fun in the process. Which is, apparently, more than I can say for you. I would hope that you learned a valuable lesson from your encounter with us, but somehow I think most of it went right over your head, and sadly, it’s people like you who ruin the game for others. My guildmates may be snotty, elitist raiders to you; but mind you they didn’t disparage anyone’s play and were more than content to laugh as I floundered my sorry ass through fight after fight. So I really think that you should re-evaluate how you look at people, good or bad, and include yourself in that evaluation.

For now, however, I will simply cast Polymoph:Turtle in your direction, and hope that no one else has to encounter the likes of you – or your negative attitude – again.