Uncovering talent

March 30, 2010

Uncovering talent

So a couple days ago one of my new guildies was asking for help with some Icecrown group quests, and so since he and I were both about the same level (77 on my holydin, he was a 78 retadin), I said I’d help him. Well, we 2-manned the 3-man quest without a problem, then did the 5-man ones with little issue, and he asked how good of a tank he made. I answered honestly: He could use some more spacial awareness that would come with the job, but beyond that he had the basic abilities needed to tank. He kind of laughed it off and made a comment along the lines of, ‘I’ll never do anything but DPS but good to know,’ and I thought that was the end of it.

The next night, I was on my hunter for one of her guild’s PvP events which had recently ended, and the guy whispers me from his warlock saying that same guildy was looking for a blacksmith. I open up Altoholic and link him my warrior’s blacksmithing for him to link, saying I’d be switching back over in a few, only to find out the guildy was looking for gear not for his ret spec as I suspected, but for a protection spec. I’ll admit, I was excited at the prospect of someone picking up a new role because of something I said, especially if they enjoyed it. So I switch over and we comb through my blacksmithing together to come up with the gear that would be best and the mats needed, and the guy and I total up how much we have, which was most of it, only a bit of saronite needed on the guildy’s part. He mails me the mats before logging off with a comment that there wasn’t an immediate rush, and not long after, the guy and I crash; next morning after we’re both on, I tell him I need the mats he’d vouched towards the gear, only to find out he’d forgotten all about it and used almost all of it, so I just head on over to the auction house and buy up more than enough for a couple sets and mail it to my blacksmith and get the gear made then mailed.

Later that evening the Tankadin-to-be is all geared up in his mighty tempered saronite and dinky little sword snagged off the AH, with his talent points painstakingly filled out, and we’ve told him the rotation and every tip we could think of and he’s eagerly absorbing it all despite the painkillers from recently having his wisdom teeth pulled, and when we think we’re all ready to go we queue up, and pretty soon we have a group.. For Halls of Lightning. And two PUGed DPS which proved to be stupid on our part.. As well as forgetting one very important topic: BLESSINGS.

The run is going absolutely horribly, as you can probably imagine… We had something like a hunter or a DK for the fifth DPS, I’m really not sure, he wasn’t outstanding but he wasn’t really sub-par either, as for our fourth DPS… Well, it was an elemental orc shaman, who apparently failed DPS class. Not in bad numbers, but in reasonably poor skills. She kept starting her attacks before the mobs even really got a chance to look at Tankadin-to-be, much less form a grudge against him, and of course when out of the blue someone’s shooting lightning in your face, you’re going to get angry at and attack them too. When she wasn’t doing that and Tankadin-to-be actually got the mobs positioned fairly well and had a reasonable amount of aggro, she’d go and knock them back. And I know that skill gives mana back and does DPS, but her DPS was more than fine and she stayed at or above 80% mana pretty much the whole instance. And throughout all this he’s complaining about being OOM, which he frequently is, and we just write it off as fairly normal, until… I notice: He has his own Kings. We get that fixed, despite the guy’s complaining to me about what a poor endeavor this was to undertake, and Tankadin-to-be’s mana problems improve, and he’s a bit better by the end.

At this point I stop and ask in guild for a DPS to fill our last spot, since the DK (and I do remember now, it was a DK, a very friendly one at that albeit Unholy, that ended up sticking with us for a few runs) stayed, and thankfully the shaman left (at this point I’d been watching to the point I was sure Tankadin-to-be would be better if he got practice in with DPS who weren’t worried about either being dickheads or padding their meters). We nab another Unholy DK from the guild and off we go to another dungeon, and Tankadin-to-be actually is doing noticeably better with DPS who know how to wait just one second for him to actually finish the pull or at least lay down Consecrate. We continue on like this for a while, giving tips or guidance where needed, and he keeps on improving.

Then we get Violet Hold. He’s never been there, doesn’t know anything about it, and we explain.. fairly poorly.. but he gets it. The guy makes a comment to pray we don’t get Xevozz (the one you have to kite) or we’d all die. We kind of laugh off the joke that now we’re going to get him since it was pointed out and get on with it, and everything’s fine. Until the second boss.

Guess who we got.

Go ahead, one guess.

Yeap, you got it. Xevozz. We explain to him quickly to just kite him up across the balcony then back and pretty much pray he got it.. He stands about in the middle to pull Xev, and I inwardly groaning thinking he didn’t understand, only to be proven wrong as he begins to kite, albeit a bit awkwardly. We down Xevozz with no deaths in 50 seconds.

I ended up disconnecting right as Cyanigosa transformed, and after getting back on find everyone dead.. Including the boss. Apparently Tankadin-to-be managed to tank her without heals until about 20% where he dropped, and the guy who was the only one alive then tanked her the rest of the way, dieing mere moments before she had.

Tankadin-to-be in one night went from someone who hadn’t the faintest clue what he was doing, to a decent tank for a PUG, to an okay tank, to a tank I’d heal for in an instant. All it took was a bit of guidance (phased out after the first 2-3 instances, actually), a little patience, DPS who gave a damn, and some practice. He ended up capable of doing things even I hadn’t been able to do (like Xevozz) until wiping a couple times, and he did them successfully the first time.

Now, what is this besides an interesting story? Hope. That bad whatever in your group may not actually be bad, they may just be new. Don’t be afraid to whisper them and ask if they’re new and/or would they like some pointers to make the job better and more enjoyable for them if you know the class/role. If they respond don’t respond in favor of the idea, don’t press it. But if they do, you could be helping that bad whatever become an all-star with practice, one of the people that you enjoy enough you wish you could pull them into any of your groups and not have to rely on the LFD tool’s random chances.

Permalink