Maybe it was a late night thing. Y’know, lack of sleep makes you do silly things sometimes.

Maybe it was curiosity. A “what would happen if?” kind of thing.

In any case, last night I decided to my try my brand new 80 Arms-specced Warrior in the Dungeon Finder. He was mostly geared in blues that Rokk had crafted for him, with a green Axe in his hands. I didn’t know if his gear total would be good enough to get him into Heroics, or if his poor weapon would keep his DPS to the point where he would be allowed to stay if he did get in.

Poof, he got the call – Heroic Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom.

The initial few moments were oddly tense for me. Would someone notice the Axe the Warrior was swinging, do a gear check, and vote to kick? I pushed the thought from my mind. I would stay alert, mindful of my surrounds and rotations, and prove that I was a decent player looking to gear up rather than some scrub just along for the ride.

Like most PUGs, the folks were quiet. At the start, two people asked the Mage for an Intel buff. Other than that, not much was said. We trudged along, wiping out pack after pack. I was a little disheartened at my lack of killing prowess – the Mage kept AoE burning everything down. I had Recount running but not up, which I felt was probably a good thing. That Mage had to be right at the top, standing firmly on my poor Warrior’s throat in the process.

We dropped the first Boss without much issue. Then, moving along, we picked up an extra pack during trash pulls and somehow the Mage was killed. We fought through, cleaned up all the adds, and I took a second to check my inventory while the Mage was rezzed.

Seconds ticked by. The Mage hasn’t released. He was just lying there. Was he AFK?

I was a little surprised when we started to move on. I passed by the Mage’s corpse. “That’s our AoE DPS guy,” I thought as I moved by the prone body. “What’s taking so long in getting him back?”

The Paladin pulled the next pack without the Mage. The whole time, party chat remained silent. Why wasn’t the Mage asking for a rez? Or even releasing so he could run back to the instance? Why wasn’t the group saying anything to the Mage?

That’s when the window popped up on my screen: Vote to Kick.

Just as quickly as it came, it disappeared. The Mage left the group.

“He wasn’t very good,” said the Paladin, finally breaking the silence.

He wasn’t very good? He was burning down the packs! He wasn’t pulling adds! What had he been doing, or not doing, to be considered “not very good” in the eyes of the party?

A second thought jumped up and slapped me in the face. The first time I die, I’ll probably be left hanging and then gkicked. I had to be at the bottom of the DPS charts, so why keep me around when they’d probably have a better chance at getting someone with more punch in their punch.

We advanced, and it finally happened during a fight with some bloated humanoid thing. It released a poisonous gas cloud that I thought I could fight through. I couldn’t. I wasn’t paying attention to my health. It killed me.

Here it comes, I thought. Here comes the kick…

It wasn’t the “Vote to Kick” window that popped up. It was the “Ready for Rez?” window.

Really?

The Priest apologised and made the obligatory “dangerous fart” comment. I said the death was my fault because I tried to light a match. That earned a couple of chuckles.

From that point on, I probably died five times. Two of those were on Boss fights, which were party wipes. There never seemed to be an issue with getting a rez when I solo died. When the party wiped, the Priest actually waited for me to zone in and ran back to the rest of the group with me. Nobody made any comments about the noob DPS Warrior. Nobody flashed a Recount result after a Boss fight. After all was said and done, my Warrior walked out with a new weapon:

I also came out feeling very lucky to have been running with some understanding strangers. This morning, I logged on for a second to check the Recount results. Had I done better than I thought I had? Did I have a stronger showing on the DPS chart, something that warranted the group keeping me around?

Hell no. I was fifth in line, right above the priest. Triple Digit DPS.

Yes, I was that guy.

Sometimes it pays to take a chance.

After much banging of head against keyboard, my Warrior has dinged 80.

And for the first time, I actually wish he hadn’t levelled so fast.

A couple of weeks ago, I was so tired of getting him levelled that I took the plunge and picked up a Levelling Guide. It was good. Very good. For the first time, I was doing quests I hadn’t done with either Rokk or Rukgut. That in itself made the acquisition worthwhile. Plus, my boy was eating up the XP. He even had the Heirloom shoulders with the 10% XP bonus.

Then Patch 3.3 rolled out and things went down the tubes.

Dungeon XP has always been good. So you take good XP and combine it with groups that like to blitz though encounters, and you get some quick levelling.

Too quick. Before I knew it, I was outpacing the guide.

On the surface, that might not be a bad thing. After all, he’s getting closer to 80, right? Isn’t that the point? Does it matter how he gets there?

It does if he bypasses all the phased content.

As luck would have it, he dinged 80 just as he received the quest to unlock the Sons of Hodir. I tossed him some relics to increase his rep with them, and he soon was able to reach Revered. That unlocked what would be an upgrade in the shoulder department. At 650 rep per 10 relics, it was easy.

However, the anvil is not back where it should be to unlock the dailies for it. That means he has to continue to quest, just to unlock more content. Which also means he has to do the questline to unlock Ebon Hold. That means questing without gains (other than cash, I suppose).

What should have been unlocked during natural progression, now has to be unlocked out of necessity. Piss.

The silver lining, though, is that I may try to use the Dungeon Finder to level my baby Druid. No questing, just instances. Curious to see how that little experiment goes.

But for now, Ding 80 x 3!