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Well, it may have taken a couple months but Onyxia has become the new Vault of Archavon (maybe Onyxia isn’t quite as easy but it’s widely pugged and players with two brain cells to rub together can easily make some type of contribution to the raid). That said, there are some moments even in pugs, where the sheer cliff of incoming failure stands before you and forces you to make a decision. Am I going to give this a shot or no?  I wrote about this in a previous post but some of the issues that I ran into in this particular pug raised some new questions.

First off, it was immediately clear that several players in the raid were already saved to the instance. What was unclear was the reason why players couldn’t check their raid lock outs to see if they were saved (several players cycled in and out of the raid and we continued to get the saved to the instance warning message). Questions about who was locked out were greeted with silence or simply players dropping group. Needless to say, this was not an auspicious start.

Luckily, the down time before the raid gave me a chance to inspect other players. One Ret Paladin in particular caught my eye. Not only was he wearing a mix of Northrend greens, he also had on a pair of T4 pants and shoulders (Level 70 epics). I whispered the raid leader to ask him if he thought the group was geared enough to clear Onyxia.  I figured this was a softer approach than calling the player out in raid chat.  After receiving a curt answer that the player knew the fight and I shouldn’t judge others by gear score, I was a little put off. Maybe I was wrong and the pally could transcend his mediocre gear and contribute to the raid. Maybe I was too quick to judge, or maybe the raid leader and the Pally were in the same guild and exceptions were being made that weren’t clearly voiced to the rest of the raid. Bingo.

Factoring in the Raid Leader’s lack of transparency, the gear of other players and the disconnected nature of the raid as a whole; I dropped group. My question is, did I do the right thing? Is a player’s inability to check their raid lock out or another player’s clear lack of gear an indication that the group would fail? At what point do you simply throw your hands up and drop group?

By the way, I’m usually not a big fan of inspirational posters but I thought this one was done particularly well.  I found this one on an old blog called Of Light and Fury which hasn’t been updated in some time, and trust me, the paladin in that poster bears ZERO resemblance to the one in my Onyxia pug.