Minor Peeves

Meh, I've just been hopping around on Ragnarl, hoping to hear someone putting together a respec or Bastion TF and get invited, but looks like I'm gonna have to bite the bullet eventually and go lead it myself.

Minor Peeve No. 1:
For one thing, it seems like some team leaders/members haven't figured out the one critical rule of having a tank on your team.

(Now, I know a lot of tankers are major egoists, can't do this, can't do that, wait till I finish herding, don't shoot until I give the say so, yadda yadda... Well, I don't have any of those rules. Especially in a mission that is even-con to blue or greens, hell, you can do what the heck you want, it's my own personal challenge to take aggro and keep it. Except...one thing. One itty bitty detail...which is:)

YOU FOLLOW THE TANK. He point man guy. If you want him go somewhere, you point it out before hand, and say, Raggy, can go this way? Shoo shoo (push push). Raggy happy to go dat way.

You don't rush off by your lonesome to go and fight a crowd that is +2 to you (I'm 29, the mobs are 28 +-1 lvls, you're 25-26, figure it out, if you likey the xp/PL so much, better follow tanky) and then when your hp drops, you scream, TANK I NEED HELP, where are u?

Tank was busy having fun herding clumps of Family for you, and laughing at you as you take off in the wrong direction on the map and have your hp plummet accordingly.

A stoner especially has the habit of being real slow. Yea, I don't need rooted, but I don't quite feel like superjumping all over the map trying to babysit your ass. Yer too spoiled by healrz-types who will rush after you to keep you alive - trust me, my emp def will not do something stupid like that. Take some responsibility for actually staying alive by being aware of stuff.

So maybe if I have the little star by my name, then people will figure out that you need to follow me. Tank + Team Leader = you better the heck follow, no?

Minor Peeve No. 2:
People who have all lowercase in their names. (There is a Shift key for a reason. Just be careful not to hit the CAPS LOCK key once and lose sight of it forever.)

People who cannot spell 'you' and persistently use 'u.' (Is it the SMS generation or something that's ruining English with their cellphone code?)

People who lead with blasts and hope/expect the tank will take aggro from them. (Is it so hard to just let the tank do his thang the way he likes? When I'm on any other class, and I have a tank on the team, I always let the tank start. He might do my style of run in and taunt, and that makes me very happy because I can unleash hell. He might run up a bit and taunt, in which case I back off more and wait for the mobs to sorta straggle near him before attacking, or stand there to support him. He might just do the scrapper single-target lock, in which case I back off a LOT and switch to single-target assist on him. I never understand this, I have such an innate sense of self-preservation that I don't start aggro unless I am a tank or scrapper, and prefer to assist through someone. It's not like I'm standing there asleep for 15 mins, y'know. In fact, Raggy is downright hyper and has been yelled at by the rare wussy scrapper for starting fights too early. Can't you wait 5 seconds for him to run up and start?)

What am I hoping for anyhow? If these people have such little pride in their names, and cannot bother to spell 'you', then their English language comprehension is so poor, I doubt they've ever read a guide to tactics. :P Not to mention their situational awareness or caring about it (since they don't care to correct their spelling mistakes/grammar, why would they correct themselves or notice anything wrong in team combat either?)

Minor Peeve No. 3:
/t Ragnarl, Hi, can you help me with such-and-such a mission please?

*sigh* I am too fucking soft-hearted. Any time I hear the word 'help' in a tell, I get all googly-faced and mushy and I say okay to the team invite. I've done it three times already and it's always an exceedingly boring mission with dumbass teammates.

Couple weeks ago, it was some poor stone tank blind-inviting, then begging for help from me for a mission. Was about to quit, when the magic word 'help me please' came up, and I noticed it was the Defeat Villains in Memorial mission...ahh, cape mission. Oh, it's on invincible, no wonder he can't manage. Ok, no probs, help some poor hero get his cape.

The moment I walk in, I do a double take, the guy is level 21, I'm level 26+, the mobs are completely grey to me, and there's like a total of 15 Lost. At most.

(I'm wondering, WTF, my controller could do these numbers, albeit slowly. Oh, and the tank also invited a second 26+ ill controller to help out. So I had to check his powerset. Aha. All attacks, weird power pools, rock armor and mudpots. No root. No freaking wonder he was getting pwn'zored by status-oozing Lost.)

Sigh to myself, can't help just mentioning that root would have helped him here, and then get down to button mashing and mallet smashing. Other controller drops PA to basically clean up the remainder I walked past.

One minute later (or seemed like it), DING and done. Talk about overkill. Talk about sad when you can't even solo the nerfed cape mission. Heck, poor Ochre did it with a hold and air sup ad nauseam - which was tricky when there were groups of 2+ major-ass-kicking-Big-Sword-wielding Lost and not just one guy to whack.

But nevermind, first time was ok. We did a good deed. Guy was grateful. We left. Guy sends a tell wondering if we could take him to Icon. (groan) But he took the verbal instructions about landmarks and NW side of map and go to city rep first quite well, and thanked us again, so ok, not so bad. Just a clueless chap with no vidiotmaps.

Second time was yesterday. "We need help on a mission. It's lvl 27s, 28s, maybe some 29s." I'm 29, so I think, oh, ok, fine. I join two chaps, and start hopping to Dark Astoria.

Then guess what, yes, this ALWAYS happens. The group gets larger. And larger. More and more people are added. I don't understand, this isn't a TF, you don't need 6 people minimum...how come you are getting them when all you're doing is making a mission (invincible at that) you need help on harder?!

Laughable moment occurs: Guy pokes his head in and goes, OMG, they are 24s. RESET RESET.

I blink to myself. I thought you needed HELP on the fucking mission, weren't you killing stuff to see those mob levels, why are you reseting it? are my unspoken thoughts.

Apparently not. The guy prolly just saw the blaster's level (was his mission) and calculated upwards to +2, +3 for the mission difficulty.

I seriously consider if I want to join such a boring grey mission, but I notice the name of the mission and realize it gives the Spirit Warrior badge which I have outleveled the contacts for. Greed makes me stay.

Mission goes by completely uneventfully, except the scrapper leader provides many laughable moments by boggling over the levels of the mobs (24s, 25s, mostly - probably because it's a set mission from the 20-24 contact tier) and predicting it's gonna get harder as we go deeper.

Yes, they are all like 3-4 levels lower than me again, I'm 29 and completely bored and in total safety, and they keep boggling as to why I can run into the entire horde of mobs and not even blink in hp. The level 25 invul tanker has an inferiority complex or something, because she's right up there next to me and trying to take my aggro by taunting. And even though I taunt as well, she gets enough of it to whack her down to half hp. My hp bar barely winks, thanks to stoner and even-level con defense.

Meanwhile, the scrapper keeps predicting doom and gloom, it's gonna get harder, he freaks out when he sees a level 27 Totem, and I'm like YAY something kinda non-grey at last. Heck, nothing even touched the fire blaster (who figured out what I was doing and was very happy fireballing stuff, he didn't have fire breath though, what a shame they don't realize it is one lethal cone aoe) And the scrapper is still at it, believing stuff's going to run down the drain in short order (their hp bars are still perfectly fine since I was tanking everything) when I walk up to the last mob and beat its brains in...and the mission chimes goes, and he's amazed.

And they are all stunned to find out that they got a badge from it. I know, because all of them gasped out on teamchat, I GOT A BADGE.

And here I am thinking to myself, they were lucky it was a badge mission cos that's the only reason I stuck it out. For selfish badge collecting. :P I make a polite excuse and leave, logging off and go watch the animated cartoon dvd, Spawn vol. 2 and it was a lot more entertaining.

Third time's the charm: AGAIN, I get a tell from someone, saying he needs help with a simultaneous fire bomb disarm, could I help? Please? Now I'm actually afk in the bathroom, standing by the tram, but when I get back and scroll up, hoping to find a Bastion TF message, I see that.

Kind-heartedly, I send a tell back explaining I was previously AFK, does he still need help? He says, yes please, so I tell him to go ahead and invite.

Long pause...then I get a team invite from the team leader, which isn't him. It's 'onehotmama' who was the emp def on the second time I helped. *groan* Fine, nevermind. I hop over to the mission. Which by the way, was NEVER put up by onehotmama. It just so happens I was in the same zone as the guy who needed the help and sent me the tell, so I could figure out where it was.

3 simultaneous bombs, 3 members. Just nice, right? Nope, you guessed it. onehotmama sits in IP, when the mission is in Talos, and takes 10 minutes to invite two more people. The clock is merrily ticking away.

"..."

Somewhere in the middle of this I lose my patience. They're all level 27s again, the scrapper whose mission it is was on HEROIC fer goodness sake's, I'm 29, why the heck am I here standing around waiting for people to clump around?

I walk into the mission (which also selects it btw, onehotmama never got around to doing that) and go and amuse myself herding blue and green Family, which doesn't even require my other two armors, just rock and mudpots.

The two scrappers (one whose mission it was, and another who was just invited, no doubt) finally got bored of waiting outside in the mission for onehotmama and the other guy to arrive from IP, and came over to join me in total destruction.

Things go perfectly well, until onehotmama joins the scene with the other controller. Somehow, introducing the emp def causes everyone to waffle off in 5 different directions and lose track of the tank.

See Minor Peeves No. 1 and 2.

I give up and just amuse myself like a solo scrapping tank, herd a bunch of blues and greens, and then slowly mallet 'em to death while potting. They got into big trouble, and the emp def was wondering where I was and 'we need u rag'

Too funny. If you wanted a tank's help, you really should follow the tank. That's my one simple rule. I'm sorry, I will not auto-follow someone with mudpots on and auto-taunt or something. I'm not your pet tank on a leash to auto-taunt things away from you. Not when I'm level 29 and +2 or more levels to the party and the mobs, the only tank (thereby automatically designated main and lead tank - if there was another lead tank, then I would follow said lead tank - like that fire tank burning up Crey, I didn't run off except to save two squishies caught by a second group), you got me here by asking for HELP with a mission and you are practically pleveling off me in safety. And you still want me to chase you around?

I'm glad to protect squishies in my vincinity and I will taunt regularly. Anyone with a minimum of observation skills will notice that the safest place is near the tanker (but away from AoEs hitting said tanker. None from Family, y'know.) Not over yonder in the eastern most part of the map when I'm in the north part or already upstairs with two scrappers. I will not run over to you to pull your ass out of a fire you jumped into yourself by not noticing where the tank was.

It's really funnily sad. :P

I think I should learn to be a bit harder-hearted and not get fooled by idiots who say 'they need help' and then just drag all and sundry into a crummy (reseted) mission. Maybe the next time I see an idiot join, I should just quit the team. Nevermind, I recognize these fella's names now.

Maybe their definition of needing help and mine differs. Need help for me = I tried this mission by myself/ourselves already, and I'm/we're getting mauled, or the code demands simultaneous blinky clicking so I need some bodies please.

Maybe need help for them = i need u to finish mish for me plzplz!!11!one1!

And I'm getting a bit sick of the latter definition.

Ah well, this weekend *prays* Bastion TF!