Refusing To Be A Fail-Enabler During Double XP Weekend

The plan for this double XP weekend was to get my long-neglected healing scoundrel from 50 to 55, so I’d have more options on the republic side, should any of my buddies want to run a thing. Rather than going to Makeb, which I’m seriously sick of, I decided to heal my way through instances. Also, my companions have super-crappy gear so questing with any of them would probably be an exercise in wiping the floor.

All was going smoothly – more than smoothly, actually. I got added to several friends lists because apparently competent healers are uncommon.

Then came that Esseles run. I haven’t been to Esseles in a long-ass time because I’m almost never on the republic side anymore. I got pulled into a group already-in-progress, which can sometimes be a forecast of bad things to come. The tank explained that they were stuck on a boss – one that I didn’t remember as being particularly challenging, but hey, I’m not on the pub side often.

I healed my ass off. We died. After rezing, the tank gave condescending instructions to stay out of bad (duh) and to prioritize healing the tank (double duh). I healed my ass off again, and this time we squeaked by. When I say “healed my ass off” I mean that I don’t work this hard when I’m healing hard mode progression content.

We keet going, and the content was still unnecessarily difficult. At which point I glanced at the tank’s buff bar and realized that he’s not in tank stance. These things happen to the best of us (I once ran an instance in no stance whatsoever) and I gently notified him that he wasn’t in tank stance.

Him: I know. I still have threat abilities and I do more DPS. It’s better this way.

Me: … but you’re much harder to heal.

We kept going, and he didn’t change his stance. At that point, I had a few competing thoughts…

I didn’t have time to requeue if I dropped group
I could probably heal through it because I’m awesome. After all I had just healed through it without realizing.
He’d never learn to play properly if I enabled his failtanking. If it was possible for him to get through this instance doing things wrong, he’d keep doing it wrong and blame the next healer for being unable to heal him through his idiocy.

So I said “You know, no, I’m not going to heal through stupid” and dropped group. One of the DPS whispered that he didn’t blame me at all. I put the tank on ignore and moved on.

Other than that appallingly stupid tank, the rest of the double XP weekend was without incident and I did hit 55 on my scoundrel.

How was your weekend?

Comments

Refusing To Be A Fail-Enabler During Double XP Weekend — 7 Comments

Heather on April 14, 2014 at 9:39 am said:

Tough love! He’ll always keep playing like a dumbass unless people take a stand. Nice job.

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Redbeard on April 14, 2014 at 10:29 am said:

I got in a bit of time on the Old Man, my Scoundrel that I deliberately made gray haired because I was on the same server my kids play on. Got him past Nar Shadda, through Tatooine, and halfway through Alderaan, which stops in Athiss and Mandalorian Raiders along the way. Considering he’s around 33-34 and plenty to go on Alderaan, I foresee smooth sailing to the end of Chapter One and through Balmorra.

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The Guilty Party on April 14, 2014 at 3:20 pm said:

Ran through the new tactical flashpoints a few times on various characters. Both of them are pretty entertaining and (mostly) a fair level of challenge, a step up from the old Czerka ones. I appreciate that story-central dungeons are now coming out as tacticals that anyone can easily hop in and do.

But man, those Sith Juggernaut pulls that bring in a bunch of adds hiding behind them… they are brutal. Especially when it’s three sentinels and a gunslinger so you have no CC and no heals. As the gunslinger I ended up tanking the jugg by slowing him until he ran up, then stun, then shield while he whales on me a bit, then knock back, then slow him, then knock back again… it works for a little while, but lordy does it go faster when you have a Sage around who can just lift him and be done with it.

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- Njessi on April 14, 2014 at 3:50 pm said:
  
  When there’s a healer around, people don’t have any respect for CC! I stopped bothering to CC after a while and focused on healing people who had no business pulling entire rooms.
  
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  - Sean on April 14, 2014 at 5:44 pm said:
    
    Or, worse, see the mob that’s _not_ attacking, and decide that this _clearly_ makes them their priority 1 target. I’ve forgotten how many times, with a Smuggler, in the KDY ‘shut down the cannons’ last room, on the left of the right side where there’s a Strong droid standing apart from a group of regular mobs, I’ve used Slice Droid on the droid… and five seconds later had J. Random Trooper start lobbing grenades into him.
    
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DualBlastersGuy on April 15, 2014 at 12:39 am said:

The classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario that all PuG-healers must face sooner or later.

It’s why I don’t do more than dabble in Merc-healing despite finding it enjoyably challenging, with a really cool and fun dynamic.

My last few DXP weekends have been amazingly incident-free, though; Well except for PvP, but the men in the stylish white coats tell me that the shaking will stop. Eventually.

It’s the next several days after DXP that, IME, are the most grating: Bads gonna bad no matter what we do, but now, more of them have access to content that they really have no business even attempting.

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Richard on April 15, 2014 at 12:34 pm said:

That’s probably the thing annoys me the most.. People who are doing something clearly wrong AND being pigheaded about it.. So many people blaming “the other guy” in PUG’s…

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