Pugrage

Flinging myself into the monkey enclosure for yesterday's VP was... interesting.

First group: Blackwing Caverns. Blow up the first boss with only mild hunter-standing-in-instadeath. No worries.

On to Corla - first there's some discussion of doing the achievement, but eventually everyone decides not to as the tank has to go soon. Tank pulls, random DPS decides to let their acolyte evolve. Said acolyte dies, but my unprepared self has no mana left at this point: announced this to group. Second random DPS decides to evolve an acolyte and the third AFKs in the beam and turns into a gribbly. Wipe ensues.

Everyone runs back in, mage drops and is replaced by a 'lock. Try Corla again, after stating we definitely are not doing the achievement. Someone manages to pull a massive group of caster trash from waaaay at the back of the room, no interrupts or CC anywhere, wipe ensues.

Run back in again, hunter drops and we get a shadow priest. At this point, the rogue pipes up that we can skip Corla if we don't mind wiping on the bridge and using the teleporter to cheese past it (no Raz to clear for us). Not heard of this approach, but the tank is again making high-pitched whining noises so we go die hilariously.

Run back in, teleport to just before Karsh Steelbender. Tank starts sneaking around the edge to skip him too, and it all goes well until the warlock wanders into the middle and pulls the elementals and a bunch of slimes. Panic, dead me, wipe ensues. I ankh to save everyone the trouble walking. Warlock drops, I can't even remember what replaced him as at this point I've basically given up on life.

Proceed to epically mis-pull trash groups up to the final boss (every single pull involving zero CC and at least two groups pulled), but thankfully sufficiently frenzied spamming of Healing Surge and cooldowns meant no more wipes. Hooray, my VP are so close I can almost taste them over the overwhelming tang of failure and needless repair bills!

Arrive at last boss. Stare at all his trash, with no Raz on hand to clear them.

I get as far as asking "So, how do we handle this pull without Raz?" before the tank silently drops group, swiftly followed by everyone else.

Well, that was fun. Excuse me whilst I go and kick a few puppies in an attempt to expunge my hatred for the human species.

Second group: Grim Batol. Tank is decently geared, pulls the first group and asks if I'm comfortable running without CC. I agree to try it, and we proceed to clear everything in a fast, efficient, wipe-free manner with a little bit of pleasant banter.

Why can't more groups be like that?