A good group

| Wednesday, August 22, 2012
I've a weird habit of wanting to complete dungeon quests, even in Blackrock Depths where they appear to have gone out of their way to make Heart of the Mountain hard to complete.  Getting enough keys requires pretty much killing every dwarf in lower and upper city and they despawn on zone-out, so no saving up.  That last part is new, and I don't know why Blizzard would add something to make it harder to complete a quest at the same time that they made it easier to get the quest (used to be out in the Burning Steppes).

I managed to do this on my paladin thanks to being a tank and therefore being able to drag the group anywhere I wanted.  Usually just explaining that the quest they all had needed it was enough.  Other times people just had no clue that I was taking them on the grand tour.  Strangely I never had problems with people just in it for the loot bag at the end.  My hunter did it with the help of two friends I was leveling with: a tank and a healer, so again, we could go anywhere we wanted and didn't need anyone else if they all wanted to leave.

My mage was not so lucky.  She has no tank and healer to queue with, so it takes a while just to get in.  First group had a special flower snowflake tank who wanted to rush to the end, acknowledging that he was skipping every quest and almost the entire instance, regardless of what anyone else needed.  Sadly, there is no "report for being a douchebag" option.  The second group was going well enough, with the tank seeming to want to do the quest.  Alas, I could sense trouble.  The two other DPS wanted a speed run.  That made it obvious that "we'll do the quest after the boss" was just a blatant scam.  I tried to explain that even if they weren't being deceptive liars it was still faster to get the keys before the end boss, but no, he was going to charge bravely ahead to no clue where he was going at all.

Finally, finally!  I got a group.  A group that responded to questions regarding a full clear for the keys with affirmations and references to experience points.  Oh, glorious.  Even better, the tank responded to directions, following me, seemingly recognizing that if someone in BRD knows where they are going, you go along with them, lest you find yourself lost in endless tunnels.  It all went marvelously, with so many keys that we had enough to rob the bank without even needing to loop back after the bar.  Normally I find that we need to do some looping to get enough keys, but nope, plenty.  So we robbed the bank and looped back to the main path to the bar.  Things went well, at least until the bar when the tank had to go after a terrible incident with the Dark Keeper.  As these things go, they went downhill, until I was the only one left.

I decided to stick around.  I had a wonderful present after all: an open bank.  Finally, a new group formed.  With a little bit of confusion on their part, we finished off the bar and the Dark Keeper boozing within.  Four people got the heart of the mountain without needing to spend an hour and a half in BRD slaughtering dwarfs, which I suppose could be seen as an unfortunate loss on their part.  Still, I'd seen how tricky it was to get the quest finished, what with people rushing and not reading, so I was very happy to have been able to help out four people like that (plus the previous four).  We move along smoothly, with people again following directions.  At the end I thanked the tank for that and he thanked me for the guiding and everyone else thanked the tank for tanking.  The healer joined me in queueing for Lower Blackrock Spire.

Our tank didn't know the way and told us to say if he was going the wrong way.  I asked if that was our cue to trick him into doing upper spire too.  The healer said yes and the tank went along.  So up we went.  There were some problems regarding the healer forgetting that if we're not 85 we're not invincible and then a DC.  Still, the boss died.  I then invited them to a rousing game of Jump From Upper Spire to Lower Spire and Hope We Don't Die From the Fall.  We all survived the fall and proceeded to replicate our previous orc-killing success with the addition of troll and ogre-killing.  Things were spiffingly great.  At leat until we were afflicted with Sudden Tank Dropping Group Syndrome.  That resulted in a bit of a game of Two Mages Showing Off Their Kiting Skills followed by Klepsacovic Demonstrating His Total Knowledge of Shortcuts in LBRS, which unfortunately descended into a game of Priest Dying from a Misplaced Jump Onto Hard Surfaces and then Lava.  We got a tank, we killed a boss, then another boss, and finally the last boss at the end.

Sometimes things are pretty good.

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