What Did You Say About My Gear, Again?

Tonight, I was running random heroics with Altoholic and TheTank's Rogue Alt. I was playing my second-priest, who is also my newest 80. For some background, this particular character has a wow-heroes gear score of 2035. (Wait, wait, this blog is called Gear Score: Zero! Well, yes, it is, but if I popped into heroics naked, it'd be a little inconsiderate of me, so I try!). Our final heroic of the night was Heroic Halls of Reflection.

Now, I don't mind H-HoR all that much. I was just a little surprised that my baby priest is a-okay to be let in, but my hunter gets carded at the door then told she's too young.

Today has been one long string of gear score related incidents after another. My protection paladin, with a gear score of 2,542 on wow-heroes's scale was, without a word, kicked out of two different raids. One was ICC10, and the other was ToC25. In both situations, wow-heroes states I'm adequate for the job. Apparently, according to today's raid leaders, you need a gear score of 3,000 to attempt ToC25. Not TotGC. ToC. Tell your friends.

So, what's the first thing I see when I zone into the Surprise H-HoR?

01:55:56 [PallyTank]: not with these heals
01:56:04 [PallyTank]: sry folks

Ah, yes. The gear score monster strikes again. We take a look at the paladin, and now I can tell you that she has a wow-heroes score of 2821, with 46K buffed health. After we take a moment to convince PallyTank to give it a shot with us, PallyTank popped a health flask and things got off to a start.

And so I healed.

Things went smoothly, at first. But then, things started to happen. Things like aggro issues. Altoholic and TheTank's Rogue Alt had to hold back for fear of peeling aggro off PallyTank. Meanwhile, our dear friend PallyTank allowed the healer (that's me!) to catch aggro like a bad cold. Multiple times. The ranged adds often went completely uncontrolled, and when called on her lack of adequate tanking, PallyTank of course blamed the DPS.

Something wrong in any group setting? Blame the DPS! Totally their fault, guys. Ttly.

Things finally managed to spiral out of control, and we wiped after the first boss.  Unfortunately, PallyTank didn't use a few key abilities when fighting undead - such as Holy Wrath, for instance. Ever. 

Our next wipe came on the Lich King escape event, near the end. PallyTank was graciously allowing the abombs to spew their green crap all over the party, and the Witch Doctors and other assorted variety of ad were allowed to facially rape my poor priest with little intervention.

Politely, we offered some advice from the seats of experience; key binding raid marks for ease of pointing out DPS targets, how to key bind said marks, utilizing class skills such as Holy Wrath to stun the undead, and the classic 'face the yucky bad thing away from the good guys'.

02:33:44 [Altoholic]: Just keybind your y key to skull.
02:33:57 [PallyTank]: I don't know how to do that stuff

Yet, we were a patient lot, and gave it another shot!

And wiped horribly as the tank failed at aggro and ad management once more. Finally fed up, I gave some sage advice born of years of experience at WoW:

02:41:54 [GearScoreZero]: Lr2Tank

Truer words were never spoken.

02:41:56 [Altoholic]: You... spewed shit on us.
02:42:05 [Altoholic]: I asked you to turn the fatties around for a reason.
02:42:08 [PallyTank]: LOOK AT YOUR WEAK ASS DPS
02:42:09 [TheTank's Rogue Alt]: i didnt have agro and died
02:42:13 [PallyTank]: YOUR WEAK ASS HEALS
02:42:15 [Altoholic]: We can't do more DPS.

 When the DPS can't put out more DPS, not out of inability, but rather because if they did they'd be getting sweet love made to their faces, there just might be a tanking problem

02:42:32 [PallyTank]: i CAN HEAL THIS EATING 

 It had to be done.

How exactly PallyTank could heal H-HoR eating with a ret offspec is probably a topic best left for another day. Suffice to say that within two minutes we had a new tank - a druid. Once we got around the initial fun of said druid accidentally falling off the ledge, then after the post-wipe run back the druid moving on to initiate the event without everyone yet inside, buffed, and mana'd up, we finally got a good, solid go at running like sissies from a slowly approaching and very pissy Lich King. 

And this, folks, is what happens when the tank doesn't suck.

The druid was better than the paladin in many ways, and it wasn't even gear related (though that was a minor bonus). No. He took the wipes with good humor, and accepted that he had made a mistake. He didn't try to blame anyone else. He didn't try to play victim. He took it like a man (bear? cow?) and moved on with his night. 

The attitude he displayed was really good, and for that, my hat goes off to him. Having the tank fall off the ledge in H-HoR honestly made my night after PallyTank's failtankery. Most epic wipe ever. (Except for that one time on Noth... Except nobody has ever wiped on Noth. Especially not us.)

Now, our dear fifth member, the third DPS, was a warlock. I can only imagine that this man must be a paragon of virtue unto himself. He was silent for most of the run, a trait I admire in pugs, but to be honest, I can't help but wonder if he was so quiet out of sheer terror that it would turn out all three of us also played warlocks and wanted to give him some more of our wonderful advice. (Worry not my friend! My warlock has been in her early 20's for three years.)

At the end, all I really have to say is: what did you say about my gear, again?