Over the weekend I worked on power leveling Samius up. Getting up early and soloing things, taking shorter breaks to energize up to power through the same content for the 3 or 4 time this life. And I went from 18 to 19.2.
At one point I happened to just finish running though Jeet’s mind, if you can call it a “mind.” And hit the LFM panel, there happened to be a group doing the front half of the IQ on hard, listed as IP-BYOH. So I jumped in and found a fairly pleasant group. The mindless chatter was low and most of the group was a solid.
That said there is a bad egg is every pug, this group was no exception.
This one was a Barb, using that named sword from the Madness chain…. Insanity (+5 Great Sword: Wild Frenzy, Bewildering, Unbalancing, Unwiedly) aka crap. Never spoke and only typed two thing the 2-3 runs I ran with him/her and that was “Hjeals” and “rez”, maybe a thank you. But I don’t remember one of those.
Anyway we did the Shipwrecked Spy and I saw the Barb fall into the pit. He lived through the fall via fair amount of hp. But died right away as he went for the ladder with out healing at all or going into sneak mode.
BTW: If your in a spiked pit, sneaking more often then not will keep you from taking more damage as you make your way out.
The next quest (Dream Conspiracy), I needed ship buffs so I was a min or so late getting started. Once I had saw that people had zerged ahead, no big deal. I step around and start my own buffing and I see a rat run over the bridge towards me and then jump in to the little pit right at the start. Look down and that barb is dieing. It jumps out the pit and runs away from the rat. As it runs past me I punch it once and it stops to fight me. It dies fairly fast, in 4-5 swings.
Mean while that barb finds another rat and its Hps keep falling so I kill that rat too and finish my buffing. It stands there, at 30 hp.
Over mic the leader starts to tell the barb that this is a BYOH group and has been and he needs to drink some pots. When I am done buffing the barb still hasn’t healed any. Felling sorry for my no death bonus I throw it a heal scroll and move on. At some point I think he/she died again. Not sure how as everyone else killed the hell out of that quest until the end fight and I think there was a clr with an aura running the whole time. Not a great Clr as it died twice in another quest later, but an aura was ticking, stand in it with massive HP buffer == win???
So I told all of that to get to here…
Again the leader reminds the group that the group is byoh. Over voice and in text. Lets everyone know if they can’t heal themselves they need to go. And asks everyone if they can handle that. 4 yeps and no reply (aka the Barb). Tries again. Asks another person to try. Tells everyone that if they don’t reply in 10 seconds they will be booted. I counted 30 seconds the hole time standing in the next quest just waiting for the barb to step in. But the leader finally dropped him.
I have to say, that leader tried and tried to get something from that barb.
Over the weekend I joined a few groups that I wanted to drop and run away from and groups that were less then nice. One shroud run I Dced for a min or two in part 2 of a shroud. Got back as they finished part three, so it was a good group speed wise. But they had opened every chest they cold before I could get back.
After dealing with those groups, it was nice to see some one that seemed to care some for others.
❤
Samius Gurobo 
The party leader’s courtesy seemed quite reinforced by common-sense gameplay rules. What he tried to do is one reason why hireling clerics are (when misused) the ultimate gimping that players do to their characters. If your character takes substantial damage (loss of 1/3 HP) from a single event or enemy in under 3 seconds, your character is either In The Wrong Place (too far ahead of a tanking character or generating too much aggro) or Not Worthy for Party (little to no fortification, bad ability specs, too low AC or HP for quest level).
Hireling clerics come in handy for emergencies. But experienced players know that the better-prepped toon, no matter the class, learns to be as independent as they can be through knowledge of the quest, gear, respect of the roles of themselves and others and, most importantly, communication. I can’t tell you how often I’m ready to immediately boot anyone joining a party I create that can’t even bother to have headphones on for instructions or uses too much abbreviated gamespeak.
How I wish most PUGs I join end up like that — fair to everyone, especially to the ones rowing the boat.
Though sadly it is very often in PUGs on Orien that the leader is no more than a name with a star.
Two things..didn’t know about the possibility of sneaking in a spiked pit and 2nd I always thought Insanity was meh too and you solidified my opinion.
Sneak thing is new to me too.
As to insanity, last I checked(No guarantee of accuracy) It’s saving grace is 0 wisdom = mob can’t cast. That said.. Dead mob’s don’t cast either, so if your in end game.. It’s -acceptable-. But really, work on improving that.