Being the odd one out

My guild is not a group of active raiders. We have members consisting mostly of their 30s and onward. Heck, one of our officers is 59, if I'm remembering right. That is not to say, we don't raid, but it is to say, our raiding time is a bit more limited than most, and getting scheduling down

I'm still pretty young (I guess?) so I have loftier expectations of raiding. I want to push icc content, and thankfully we downed anub'arak this week, so in the future, icc looks doable.

However, this week I still wanted to persue ICC goals. I preform to the best of my abilities while dpsing in a PUG 100% of the time, for exactly what I'm going to describe to you. I ran a mostly guild rep run a while back with another guild, one that I hadn't had much interaction with at all. Theres about 7 or so guilds that raid, and 2 or 3 of them are pretty elitist/cliquey. This group saw I preformed my role to the best of my ability, and their raid leader, asked if he could jot down my name.

I LOVE getting asked for friend request, not because I want friends, but because it shows me that people are willing to rely on me, if they find themselves short a person on random day.

So today I get a whisper, from said raid leader, asking "hey your enhance right?" and my immediate reaction knowing he was in ICC, was "and resto, if you need it" because healers are NON-existent, so any shot for a raid, is one I want. Apparently they run a VERY range heavy group full of mostly younger members who knew each other on a first name basis, and were on lady deathwhisper. It's a completely different dynamic than my own guild, which is incredibly melee heavy, old, and we all refer to each other by our characters name at the time, for the sake of ease of anyone not completely in tune with us.

Well I was brought in to physical dps, which was a bad decision for them, but fine nonetheless as I'm sure said raid leader considered this when inviting me along, rather a good dps, than another facerolling dk.

I've never done the deathwhisper fight from the perspective of picking up adds (normally they'll stick me on a shield) but hey, when you have no physical, you got no physical. I did ABYSMALLY, but we one shotted the fight. I did my said role of killing the specific add.

Now when I say I did abysmally I'll try to paint you a picture, this morning I went to the doctor, to treat a huge swelling in my neck, which as far I know, may be mono. I'm am not in the best state of mind, and it may show in my writing, I don't know, but I'll tell you what, when I died, for seemingly no reason, then ankh'd into a death and decay, I felt outright embarrassed. They called for a battle rez on me (their tank, no less. I felt horrible). Sure the rest of the encounter I preformed fine, but I felt like everyone was judging me, although it was far from the truth. They were all ecstatic that they finished the fight the second I joined. Trash occurred, and I tried my best to make amends by pushing out as much dps as my tiny little shammy body could, and it happend until we got to the stupid dragon.

I HATE dragons. There's something about their hit boxes that are misleading to me, I always end up standing in front of them and going splat. (I do the same thing every time I get to dps ony, I'm surprised it hasn't become a running joke yet).

Of course I'm the only one who died on all of trash, and again, I feel the sting of guilt. I hugged my rezzer, and mana/healed up on my own. I don't like wasting resources.

The gunship battle was next and while it was everyones first time there I was the on the boarding party, and through some combination of luck and awful, the entire front side of the ship decided to aggro me and kill me. That attempt was THANKFULLY a wipe, and I saved face a bit.

The second attempt was a lot smoother. I died again, except through no fault of my own. The pilot the tank was supposed to tank, decided to ignore his taunts and attacking and eat my face off, despite none of my dps being on him. It was like my mere presence in ICC that day was a mistake. I'm glad the tank noticed that was the problem too, or I'd probably have to deal with a grumpy raid leader about how I couldn't manage to stay alive.

Loot dropped, and I asked If I was allowed to roll. I beat out the hunter, which again made me feel terrible, as he/she was sporting 232 bracers, and was generally topping the dps meter. I've made it a point to save for some crafted 245 bracers for him/her and give them to her in good faith. My leatherworker tends to depend on me for mats anyways, so I'm excited to help out another guild.

We got to saurfang naturally, accidently started the battle and took it as a "well lets learn on the go" attempt. I made observations while we trucked along, barely getting anywhere but it provided them with insight into how the fight works. They took a break to "video watch" and then came back. I knew my roll was that of patchwerk dps so when I loudly proclaimed "FINALLY A FIGHT I WONT DIE ON FIRST THAT I'M THE ONLY ONE THATS ALLOWED TO FACEROLL" the entire group snapped into laughter and had a good time of it. We didn't down it as our healer fell asleep on us (quite literally, 8 minutes into the fight she greyed out to afk) but it was a good attempt and it was fun.

I still very sorry to that guild, that I wasn't preforming to the standard I normally hold myself to when dpsing but alls well that ends well. That hunter will possibly see a neat wrist replacement in their mailbox, and I walked away with a shiny bracer myself. It's an odd situation though, being that one person, pugged in, failing. I don't much like it, but they were good sports about it.