Trust

Ok now that I most mentally awake and a little less pissy (still pissy but thats my natural state) I was sitting here thinking about something as I watched Project Lore and thought about me and a few guildies start into achievements in heroics last night as well as my Naxx run this week. Something clicked with me as something that is partly missing from WoW of late and thats the trust factor.

Now is there anything in paticular I want to address which trust in WoW? Not really this is more of an observation. Trust amongst people you run with is something that just happens as you keep playing with them whether it be pvp or pve. The more you are with a player the more you learn how they react to certain things. I mentioned this before in my "why I am BM" post in reference to my tanks and healers in guild. They have been running with me almost as long as I have been playing this game and it shows cause in the never fail oh crap moment I already know how they will react and vice versa. This makes communication much easier and its also easier to deal with new guys to the guild or pug memebers cause in general no matter what happens at least we dont have to worry about what the people we trust will do as we will all adjust accordingly. Now moving outside of the guild we get into PUG land and in general there is no trust in that vast barren wasteland. You could get a seasoned pro that is well aware of how to handle themselves in a group situation, or you could get the lone gunner that is determed to one man everything (even seen a healer do this before) and ignore the rest of the party and then my favorite the guy that you would swear brought his account or stole a friend's cause he has no damn idea what anything does on his toon or in the run. Trust is still a factor in said situation whether you realize it or not.

If you are in a group you have a certain amount of expectation of how your group memebers are to behave. Mind you, its not like we go in a PUG expecting people that are the top of the top but you do expect say a hunter (can your comments on huntards I've heard and seen them all) to lets say understand his pet is not tank and can kill you all so he should be in control of said pet, or another example, a DK on dps should know better than to be death gripping a tanks pull if the tank didnt tell them too and of course he shouldnt be in frost presense if he isnt the tank. Little things about a class you should have learned by now. This might be asking too much though so a player may have to adjust accordingly to deal with this and if you are in a group with other compitant players they will "trust" you to at least have the since to do the same and not add to the problem at least. Its not on the same level as say what I have built with my M.A.S. family but it is there wheither you notice it or not and its very clear when there are issues with trust in a PUG member as well as sometimes someone that was doing well decides to save the day and start doing the exact same thing as the person causing the problem. Runs like that really make you apreciate that trust with people you know a lot more I can tell ya.

Now getting back to my Naxx run I have developed a similar trust core with another guild I have pugged with a few times in the past. Now being a hunter I automatically get the short end of the trust stick as many before me have burned bridges for the class long before I ever picked up a bow so we I am brought into a PUG I am very much on my toes and hopefully on my A-game so there isnt an issue with them ever having a reason to point a finger at the "huntard". So running with this particular was a bit stressful the first time. I was asked to by a guildie (who was dced not long after leaving me to fend alone) and I had never been in Naxx old world or new then I was asked to do all the hunt-tanking things first go cause the original hunter had to leave. I apparently did well enough to gain their trust as well because scene then they have actively asked me to run various things and openly back my skills. Its a nice feeling to make that kind of empression on people you dont know that well.

Now gaining trust is not an easy mission to do. For instance as I told you before my play style is built on flexiblity so I can help keep the healer safe from stray mobs /adds in fights until a tank can get to them or I can kill or kite the thing to the tank. That is incredibly hard to do with a running healer especially when the healer runs away from me and the tank in panic. I had a priest in my guild at one point and this was a huge problem with me and him. Priest X squishy + running away fromt he people that can save him = dead. I tried to build up that trust with him but it never quite gelled unfortunately though he was starting to get used to it before he parted ways with us but to his defense he didn't have any experience prior to 80 of instance healing really so he was still learning everything as opposed to Eus and Ruhtra which had other members with an understanding of hunter play similar to myself, in fact I learned from them in the first place.

One last thing I wanna say about trust goes back to the guild I run Naxx with. They have a druid healer and I have grown to trust him to be my partner in my hunt-tanking parts like kiting the adds on Gluth and tanking the back on the 4 horsemen. I know unless everything else has gone to hell I will not die and he knows when I am kiting there will never be a zombie on him longer than it takes me to target and pull it off. Its a nice relationship and I really saw how much I trusted him when we had to switch healers for one of the many wipes on the horsemen we had this time. We only had 2 heals, both trees, and a shammy trying to off heal in the front and it was not working and once the other tree got in the back with me I saw why. He was a good healer and all but when the pressure was on he just couldnt keep up and actually gave up healing the back killing us both and wiping the group. I dont think I would ever want to have a situation where he was solo healing myself and himself again for that and i was more than pleased when he refused to go back to the back with me again and I got my favorite tree back again. I dunno it just interesting to sit and think about how you trust people in a video game you have never met before in general. Maybe I just pay too much attention to human interaction :).