PUGging weekend

Ewww...

What else can I say: had a weekend from hell, something to have nightmares over. Needless to say, but it involved WoW, too, and mostly because of that it was a crud.

Attended to two trainings which took most of my daytime both on Saturday and Sunday. Meaning that the play time was restricted to night, of which I just didn't have stamina to utilise to the fullest. After all, I had spent former week on work trip and hadn't been with the family: what the heck happened to 'Quality Time' in my life?!

Never the less, to cut the long story short, here is the recap of the weekend's endeavours.

Friday. I logged in as Pupunen, my NE Priest, lv27 then. She started off as my AH mule, but has grown to one of the toons I like the most to play. Ever since I changed her from full Shadow (with appropriate gear) to Disc/Holy healer spec (with Shadow gear, still...), I have noticed how much I like tanking and healing. Both being aspects I liked while levelling my former Tauren Druid to Outlands, where he has been stuck at level 62 ever since.

So I logged in, kicked the LFG tool into high gear (BFD, Stock, SM-Grave) and went to scan the AH. To my surprise this time the first invite to a group came before I got half way through: in other words, it took only 7 minutes for someone to notice this silent seeker. As customary to me, I whipered to the sender "Where to?", because no-one ever asks if you would like to join their party going to [enter specific instance]. No, people just spam invites in the suitable level range in the list and hope that some fool catches. Well, this time they were going for Stockades, which suited me well: had several quests there (4 I think) and knowing I could heal the lower range easily I didn't even flinch.

I should have known better when it occured to me that I was there first, and two of the party of four were in SW already. I mean, I came to the instance first, and I left from Darnassus!

Two pallies and warrior. One would think that healing would be ok, and tanking would be easy to settle. You couldn't be farther from the truth, trust me!

Warrior was the lowest of us, clearly someone not too fluent with english. Silent, Leroy Jenkins kind of guy, living in a land of "do as you like". One pally was clearly set for tanking, dps'ing and holding the aggro SO well I was amazed. Not even heavily twinked, from the gear, regular blues from DM and BFD, but nothing special. The other pally... well, he thought he could do this, and he thought he could do that, and in the end he couldn't decide what to do. I guess he was well versed in the game, as he knew about everything, too.

First encounter in the passage went well: I healed, as was decided outside, the warrior tried to tank and the tankadin took the aggro all the time. Easy kills. The second...

Well, warrior and the healbot went for one room, I went with the tankadin to another. Only to notice that I couldn't heal both instances at the same time and that the other duo couldn't make it as easily as we did. So they ran to us with all the mobs! All of a sudden the first cell room was full of prisoners and foray, but we managed to go through with it.

Both I and the tankadin tried to say that we should concentrate on the same area and stay together, but the next rooms proved this to be in vain: the warrior either didn't understand, listen or care about what we told him. Also the healbot started to get nervous and insisted that he should heal. I didn't comment: how could I, disc/holy PRIEST be of any help in dealing damage?! Or taking it, as the next turn of the events showed.

We took to the left at the end of the passage, and went down. I know, the main boss, Bazil Thredd is in the right, but I wanted to get the bosses. And show that I can heal in the heated combat. That went well, till we came back: I had started to take care of the tankadin, making certain he could use his mana for killing instead of healing. And -if I may say so- I did a pretty good job.

Until someone, the warrior most likely, aggroed adds on us and the patrol from behind took on me. The wipe which resulted was the healers fault. I should have kept the warrior alive, even when I was pounded to pulp. Well, that wasn't a wipe, as the paladins got out alive and came to ress us. At that point the tankadin made the first whisper: "we can do this together" and "wanna try?"

No, I didn't, knowing the last room and Thredd's awfull habit of calling his henchmen to arms. But I was flattered, as this tankadin had thanked my heals earlier.

We managed to do it all, wiped only after killing Thredd, though. Got the achievement and all the quests done, resulting level and a half. And got a friend from that tankadin, whom with I promised to go on quests at some point. Nice.

Saturday.
By habit, I kicked the LFG on and all of a sudden there was someone offering boost in BFD. Knowing that the blues from there would be great for me, and the price was peanuts for my AH deals, I settled to meet this other guy at the summoning stone.

As I was flying and running there, my brother with his BishopGeorge logged in and... well, I asked him to come with me. Told the initial booster that I had found a group and in we went.

Shadow Priest as tank we went in and at the same time the wife aggro started to grow in the house. We just pushed through Gamoora (?), Lady Sarevass and the murloc boss, and were just about to enter the room before Aku'Mai when I had to quit.

Got nice gloves from the instance and the dice were on my side on the rest of the blues we got. Oh, and level up. That was nice.

Sunday. Logged in amidst of house full of wife aggro. It was Father's Day in here, and I had been most of the day in training. Logged in, with the intention of rising my trade skills - FA especially - up to the appropriate level. Ran to and fro in Darkshore and Ashenvale, doing old, grey and green quests. Mostly I returned quests I had done already. And that was all.

Only then I understood that I had to run all the way to Arathi Highlands to get the recipe for Silk Bandage. Well, off I went, chatting with my brother who was online, too. Without problems I got to Wetlands, returned a quest here, took another there, gained rep and progressed to Dun Modr for more. Dinged 30 on that trip, which made me grin.

But just as I crossed the bridge to Arathi, the connection froze. Which also made me grin, with anger this time. I was certain the computer had broken and it took me half an hour to give up trying to fix the connection.

Well, three levels in about five-six hours of /played. I had fun even though at the time with the PUG I cried inside, adamant to learn my priestly ways.

Oh, yes, the connection was cut as the service provider had lost a server. The connections were cut for half a million connections and the breakage took them several hours to fix.

Should I ask for recuperations for lost playing time?