Pushing the Envelope of Stupidity

The video gaming world is full of bullies, idiots, misanthropes and mouth-breathers.  The Gentleman Gamer knows this, because they all wound up in my Zul'Gurub dungeon run last night.

Even though the GG has preached the mantra of patience and subscribes to Wheaton's Law, I fully recognize that sometimes you just can't fix stupid.

So how does the Gentleman Gamer handle himself when surrounded by jerks and jackanapes?


The Pull

Things started calmly enough, if a bit bumpy.  The group fought across the poison path and through to the area just outside High Priest Venoxis' chambers with a few stops and starts.  The trouble started when I noticed the Ret Paladin in the group wasn't doing great DPS, and realized he'd been auto-following me since the beginning.

No big, he probably had a phone call.  Or a puppy to kick.  Or baby to punch.

Either way, it was annoying but not drama-causing.  At least, until he suddenly went sprinting off toward the boss room and got himself killed by the guards we hadn't cleared yet.  The tank must have realized something was wrong when one of his DPS had suddenly died, and in a moment of brilliant tanking clarity thought this would be the perfect time to kill those guards that had just scrubbed his Retadin.  While we were a man down.  And the priest hadn't finished refilling his mana yet.

"It'ssss too late for you," Venoxis cackled, "too late for all of you!"

I was starting to agree with him.

The Burn

Needless to say, the guards killed us in short order.  As we were running back to our corpses I recognized this was just the time for someone to get mad at someone else, start calling names and then ragequit the group.  Since I'd waited thirty minutes for the group to come together, I decided to try and smooth things over.

"In case you haven't seen this before," I offered, "the tank should be killing the guards at the cauldron where he can constantly replace his poison resistance.  I noticed some of the DPS were killed by the poison clouds they drop:  they can be hard to see, so we should spread out to keep that from happening."

The response was quick, and expected.

"I know what the f*** I'm doing," said the tank.

"STFU noob," said the warlock DPS.

"...." said the Retadin, who had apparently gone AFK again.

Now a lesser gamer may have used the opportunity to drop a few choice expletives, then dump the group like a Twilight-adoring fangirl.  A calmer gamer may have swallowed their frustration and just quietly left the group to their own devices.

Not the Gentleman Gamer.  Because the Gentleman Gamer's a masochist.


The Boss

Once everyone got back inside we cleared the guards and set up for the boss.  Venoxis creates a maze of poison on the ground, had a cone poison attack, and had a channeled venom spell that needed to be interrupted.  Rather than go through needless explanation, I tried to remind the group of how to deal with the biggest threat.

"We have two good interrupters with the tank and Retadin," I said, "so try to keep..."

And then they pulled.

Sure enough, the channeled venom killed the warlock before you could say say "Whispers of Hethiss".  In between dodging venom I watched the tank get sprayed with poison constantly instead of moving out of it, the AFK Retadin sit and auto-attack the boss while using no special abilities or interrupts, and the priest run out of mana and have to start using potions less than halfway through the fight.

Somehow or another the boss died, probably out of sheer embarrassment, and dropped a plate tanking belt.  The DPSers threw their Disenchant rolls, the tank threw a Need... and the AFK Retadin showed up at his keyboard in enough time to roll Need as well.  And, naturally, won.

This resulted in a profanity-laced tirade from the tank, who initiated a vote to kick the Retadin.  His listed reason:  "Because he's a pussy and does s****y DPS".

And that's when I hit my enrage timer.

"YOU," I pointed at the tank, "are an impatient DICK."

"YOU," I pointed at the Retadin, "are an AFK ninja LEECH."

"YOU," I pointed at the warlock, "are probably 12 years old but STILL shouldn't be using that kind of language when other kids or their PARENTS might be playing."

"YOU," I pointed at the priest, "....managed to keep me and these keyboard-turning mouth breathers alive longer than I thought you possibly could.  You're cool.  Apply to my guild."

And I left the group to do something more calming, like hammering a nail into the wall with my forehead.

I may be a Gentleman Gamer, but that doesn't mean I can't tell it like it is.