Except positive feedback rarely works. It just creates more hostility. Any time I make a minor suggestion, I get told to STFU and stop telling them how to play, it's their $15, etc.

Raaj its all about how you do it. I own up to my own mistakes at the same time as respectfully pointing out what other people in the group can do better. Its very easy for people to take criticism personally but usually if you are fair to everyone including yourself its ok....sometimes there ARE just people who react immaturely and perhaps you are better off in a different group to them.

I spent 6 hours one night trying to finish heroic SL. It was an all guild run, with me (the pally tank) being the only non-guild member. Most of the people had 3 or 4 pieces of gear from Kara and I was decked out in the best pre-Kara blue items available with the best enchants available. After about 3 hours, people left the group and it devolved into a PUG.

We had three rough spots....

1) The mobs right before the first boss that cast fear. For some reason, one of our players (a rogue, I think) kept getting feared through the wall in the hallway.

2) The group pulls right before the second boss. as I understand it, there are a few mobs there that have no aggro table and just make a bee-line for a random person. Whatever the problem, line of sight pulling didn't really seem to work.

3) Murmur..... sigh. Seriously Blizzard, WTF? We tried to take him down 8 times and eventually gave up. I had to repair about 5 times that night. Initially, I tried to get out of the circle when he cast sonic boom, I usually got hit anyway, and since I didn't have a way to get back to him fast enough, it always resulted in a wipe. I actually found that it worked better just healing through the sonic boom. As long as the healer timed it right, we seemed to do much better with me not moving. Regardless, we never got him down.

...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com

Unfortunate as it say sound but latency plays a role in avoiding Murmur's sonic boom. If your latency is not low enough and you failed to move right after the cast of sonic boom, you'll get hit even if you are physically outside the circle of death.

I prefer running back out and running back in method but I have done it the other way as well. If priests time their prayer of healing to hit just after sonic boom, the healing becomes a cake for that fight.

Holy crap can you imagine the ninja's from another realm?

The idea of a ZA pug horrifies me, yet my experiences with them is that they are only acceptable on the PTR where you have a slew of t6 geared people to choose from.

On most realms the kind of people you get who want to ZA are usually only dreaming and will wipe you repeatedly before agreeing they are woefully undergeared.

That's why I got a couple new mods that help give me a split second decision as to who I will pug with and who I will pass on. If I see more than two PvP items, I usually pass on the person. No enchants? Buh bye. Blues anywhere but in the trinket slot? Cya!

Examiner is a good mod and so is Inventory On Par, but be careful that you don't weigh too much on the item level because most pvp items are very high level. What this does is let me quickly see if someone is very sub par (perhaps less than 500?) and then I check out the gear on people who pass that watermark.

"Lets face it, heroics have been nerfed so anyone with a few kara pieces will be fine."

Uhhh Heroics gets you ready for Kara, not the other way around.

I have healed all the way threw ZA, Grulls, and Kara. Having healed just about every instance made. Nothing is as hard healing as a 5 man Heroics pug. There are Pallyies that think they can tank and DPS they think they need healing the instant they receive damage. Soon as the healer (Thats me) gets blamed I just shake my head and leave. If they really irritate me I logout, logon with my high end warlock, and add them to friends list. When I see them in LFG asking for DPS I ask them for and invite. Then I wipe them on the first trash pull with fearing the mob and run out.

Muhahhahaa

"Bring on the magtheridon Friday night drinking PUG!"

Now that's what I'm talkin' about. :-D

Naix, you are positively evil.. lol..

But in my experience it was kara that got me geared for heroics..

First heroic i went in i was one shotted alover the place as a resto druid, I couldn't keep up the tanks. Get carried through a couple, (and seriously, like 2) kara runs and i was geared enough to keep up tanks in heroic (ie. +healing increased by 300 or more) Now i have to watch threat more then the tanks health bars. All my gear came from kara and badges, and i stayed away from heroics at the beginning simply because they are harder then kara.

The reason is probably because more people means more room for error

There is no reason why I should have to hit revered on my alts to run a heroic. I know them so well that it doesn't even matter if I'm still in some greens as a DPSer. Heroics are easy. Regular instances are a complete waste of time, and running them over and over again just for rep is a painful waste.

The second I hit 70 on my tankadin alt, I was tanking heroics without wipes (of course through careful planning I also had all blues when I hit 70). If I had still been constrained by the old rules I would have had to run a bunch of worthless regular instances just to get the rep to run what I was already capable of running.

How do you ever get a group together?

If you spent less time making lists, asking for advice and dropping groups, and more time playing, you might not have these kinds of problems.