My first day Solo Boxing in a long time..

[Hachoo]

Oh..my..lord.

Tried to run two instances, first Ahn'Kahet, second Oculus, Heroic, and got 2 horrid fail groups both times

In Ahn'Kahet I knew we were in trouble, the second pull somehow 2 DPS died (not sure how I had a ton of aoe aggro), then someone accidentally re-pulled that spawn again and wiped us when they were rezed. Finally got to the first boss, DPS at the end of the fight? Me (Tank), 1500, and then DPS started at 1200 and went down to 800. Ouch. I'm used to running instances with all 4 DPS at 3000-5000. I left the group right after the first boss.

Second instance, Heroic Oculus, started out OK. Was me, a priest healer and mage who were both pretty good, then 2 completely fail hunters. One of them was blind or something - we kept typing to him and he just sat there doing nothing. When it came time to hop on drakes it took him almost 5 minutes just to get on a drake. The other hunter wouldn't shut up about posting dps meters - he kept asking for them, even though the dps was all from drakes, LOL. We wiped twice on the last boss, and then I booted both hunters and the priest had 2 of her guildies come in and we nailed it first try, but I felt like pulling my hair out. What a waste of a day.

Maybe I should try some solo PvP instead.

[EaTCarbS]

This is the reason many of us started Multiboxing

If I single box an instance, I do it with guildies, and all goes well.

[Niley]

find a solid guild, never do pugs = win.
I've had more fun since I quit boxing than when I was still doing it, its weird...

[Bot]

wow ive never had such fail pugs as those. occulus sucks for pugs anyways. theres inevitably at least 1 person who has no clue about them.

worst pug i can say i was in was a reg gundrak run. my friend asked me to dps cause he said they were on the last boss. and me being a dk tank geared for maly 10 said... sure thing. hes a new tank without much experience and we proceded to wipe about 5 times on the colossus boss (they thought it was the last one). he just couldnt figure out how to hold aggro. i was just swingin my mace using no abilities and was occasionaly pulling the boss off of him. i wanted to just start tanking it but i know that would do him no good so i grinned and bore it. we finished the instance but i ended up just tanking the last boss without asking cause it was wipe 8 and 330am. i felt kinda like a dick but also kinda like a hero to the other poor saps who had probably no clue about this guy being new. all in all i guess its good he didnt try to start learning on heroics.

other than that my puggin experience has always been pretty good.

[shaeman]

I love soloing - because I never, ever, ever, ever, ever pug.

When i did pug I didn't have really bad ones - but even one muppet in a run causes problems.

If you get a good guild - a guild run is like multiboxing on steroids - All your slaves do exactly what you want them to do without even pressing a key - Telepathic controls FTW.

I still enjoy multiboxing though (but I haven't done a fraction what hachoo has achieved.

[OogaJiggaWooga]

Quoted from "shaeman" never, ever, ever, ever, ever pug.

This.

Although PuGing will teach you to be a *much* stronger tank and/or healer.

Amen to that. I have had to solo box due to a fund shortage for a month or so now, so I am working on getting my DK tank and holy priest up to lvl 80, and what Fur said about if making you a better tank / healer is right on the mark. If only that was enough to make it worth having tanking gear ninja'd from you...

[puppychow]

find a solid guild, never do pugs = win.
I've had more fun since I quit boxing than when I was still doing it, its weird...

same. Also, don't bother pugging heroics unless you know the people. The only people still running heroics are usually very bad players.

Run raids, if you stop caring about the gear a lot its not too bad, join good pugs and you can usually clear naxx 10 or 25 in 3-4 hours with very few (or no) deaths, I've been pugging every raid on my DK and having a lot more fun than multiboxing to be honest.

Ulduar is gonna be harder so I'm glad my mage is in a good raiding guild, right now its pretty funny though since we clear all 25 man content in a single night (and I don't run 10s on him) so the rest of the week is just me screwing around on my DK.

[Rin]

DPS at the end of the fight? Me (Tank), 1500, and then DPS started at 1200 and went down to 800. Ouch. I'm used to running instances with all 4 DPS at 3000-5000.

Haha... Hachoo, this reminded me of the very first time I ran a PuG Violet Hold with my 80 Priest. I clearly remember that the demo warlock (lvl 78?) was doing about 430 dps, the hunter was at about 590, and everyone else was below 1000. I look at the dps of my new team right now (druid, 3x shaman, 1x pally - fresh @ 70) and both of my ele shamans + druid can crank between 1200-1400 dps on a stationary target, or on a boss that doesn't do anything gimmicky - without bloodlust -or- elemental mastery -or- trinkets. Only in very rare cases will you see people pushing over 3000 dps in a PuG - hell, I'd say it's rare to find PuGgies putting out over 2k dps.

[Hachoo]

Yeah - now that I bought the T7.5 bracers for both tanking and DPSing for my DK with gold I no longer need to run heroics. (The only items left I needed were the DPS wrists from Oculus and the tank wrists from Old Kingdom).

So far I'm just running VoA 10/25, OS 10/25, and trying to get into EoE (probably not going to happen with a PUG). I want to try Pugging 10/25 man naxx but i just never have enough time consecutively to do it.

[puppychow]

do EoE as DK dps, its very easy as unholy - just focus on killing first spark and positioning second spark on top of first. I never try to tank EoE, its very hard as unholy DK since DPSers pull so easy. if you respec frost of course its easier to tank it, but its a lot more fun DPSing on that fight. I pug it and 25 man eoe weekly on my DK.

naxx10/25 is easier to pug as a tank, there are billions of melee that want to pug it and your DK will be one in a sea. I always inspect everyones gear and if anyone is in greens i'm out, if anyone is in mostly blues im out.

os10/25 is also easy to pug, I usually pug 1-2 drakes since you get better drops and more loot. There are more and more 3 drake pugs on my server, at least 5 downed him with zerg strat this weekend.

the hardest part of all of this is just having the achieve first so you can "prove" you know what to do, so just getting it done first time opens a lot of doors, especially as the achievement date goes by. I've got about 1/2 of the 10 and 25 man random achieves (safety dance 8 man maly 2 drake sarth etc) on all my guys and it makes it really easy joining very geared pugs.

Oh, don't pug on fri/sat nights, those tend to be absolutely full of retards. those are nights to go out or watch a movie tuesdays and weds are usually good groups.