Enjoying the fail

Sometimes a failpug can turn into something better even it's a painful wipefest. I logged my mage to do the daily random since I haven't been playing him much (it's a pain to get into pugs with a dps and mages seem to have to wait even more than other classes) and to my surprise I didn't have to wait more than 8 minutes. The party was composed of a protection warrior, a balance druid, an unholy deathknight and a discipline priest. We got into Halls of Lightning and I was expecting a fluid run. How wrong was I...

 

I'm not dropping aggro, I'm just chillin'

 
The party had two big problems. First and most important was the tank. He had good gear (over 38k hp) but was terrible at aggro generation. He almost never charged in, just ran to the mobs like he was doing a walk in the park, used few aoe aggro skills (just some demo shout and thunderclap at start and much later a shockwave, but nothing else during the fight). I didn't check what other skills he was using since I had very tough times trying to drop aggro. No matter if I waited to start dpsing, I always snapped aggro off him at the first or second cast. The slacker even never released after a wipe and just waited for the druid or priest to ress him. The druid was also running around trying to get mobs off him. He was the second problem. Before the tank started his minimal aggro building he already had started the fight pulling some mobs with Moonfire. So if the tank was bad at aggro generation the boomkin just made things worse. The deathknight was poorly equipped (green quest items and some blues) but he made all he could to save our asses. At one point he even asked if somebody had Recount. The boomkin asked "Are you sure you want to see it?", "Yes!" he replied. I was first with over 3.5k dps (and I was restraining myself to hit with full force to avoid more deaths). The boomkin was secod with 2.6k and the dk was third with only 1.6k or so. No surprise with that gear but the chap merrily replied "it's just my first heroic, sorry". The poor priest... well, she was going mad because everybody was taking damage with so many rampant mobs running around and disc spec isn't good for aoe healing, so she was casting bubbles and Penance like mad and discovered the wonders of Divine Hymn.
I was expecting to see the druid quitting after the first wipe but nobody quit during the whole run. And to my surprise nobody complained or bullied the tank for being so terrible (and I was tempted to shout at him, trust me!) If you've read previous posts from me you'll know I don't feel comfortable tanking with the warrior because I feel the aoe aggro generation isn't that good, specially when you have people covered in T9/T10/ICC gear chucking out damage like there's no tomorrow, so my biggest concern is to generate as much aoe aggro I can to keep all mobs on me. I use thunderclap, demo shout, shockwave and cleave as much as I can, switch targets to use shield slam... and despite all that I feel I'm terrible at tanking with the warrior, but the dude we had wasn't even trying. With all the ingredients of the recipe for insanity on the table people still carried on without a single word. Neither a single complain for the tank not releasing after dying like the rest did. And this way what it was a damn wipefest on trash subtletly transformed into a pleasant run because everybody (even the slacking tank) keep pressing forward to get it all done. First I was just wondering who'd be first to take the deserter debuff. Then who'd be the first to shout "L2Play!"... then how many wipes we would take until next boss... and finally, after an indecent amount of deaths and wipes we managed to oneshot Loken without problems.
For me the run was a good practice of evasive skills, reminding me a lot of the Faction Champions fight where you try by all means to avoid getting ganked, immobilising foes, dropping aggro... and do some dps meanwhile.

PS: I just had a simmilar case yesterday with my warrior, but at least the tank was competent and nobody was ninja-pulling, just everytime I hitted whirlwind I snapped aggro off the tank. When the run ended I checked Recount and found I had done 45% of the total damage, with over 3.3k dps, while the rest was at or below 1.5k So I blame the Finder for putting me in that group. They weren't undergeared, I was overgeared.

Post soundtrack: Addicted to Chaos - Megadeth