Hang On, What if...?

 Lesson #15: A little knowledge can be dangerous.

I'm beginning to wonder whether it's me now, you know...

Day 3 in the Onyxia PuG Drama, and I've been through one abortive attempt already. In my heightening annoyance, I have composed the following message to insert into LFG:

Shaman Healer LFG Ony 10: it would help if you weren't going to ninja the loot, that you knew what to do and you weren't going to spend half the raid bickering about who wiped us first. I may be over-optimistic, who knows?

This gets me what looks like my most hopeful try of the week thus far, and we make it to P2 before fiery Whelp Death eats us. I avoid all the Deep Breaths, and I'm the last healer standing. We do it again, and again. By the time we get to Wipe #4 we've been through six personnel changes. It's at that point that the Hunter (who has the Ghost Wolf pet back from Vanilla) pipes up:

'Hey M, how come you've not done one single Naxx run?'

Now, I know she's looking at PuG Checker. What immediately piques my interest is WHY suddenly, after all these wipes, it's being mentioned in Raid. Ah yes, I know, it's because I can't keep the raid alive that we're dying, isn't it? Got NOTHING to do with the stupid tanks or the rogues being swept into the Whelp pits or the mage who patently refuses to wait for the tanks to get aggro before arcane exploding and grabbing ALL the aggro... it's me. Me who, because I've never done a Naxx, must know diddly squat about the encounter.

My gear is clearly awful too coz it's not L219 at minimum and therefore I can't be expected to contribute in a ToC Encounter... ok so that's a fair point, but I've been here for an hour, two FAR better healers than me have buggered off, and I doubt their gear had anything to do with it.

To make the point she starts linking the healing stats into Raid... and suddenly I have an incredible feeling of Deja Vu. I find myself thinking 'no, this is stupid, if I tell anyone this they're gonna think I'm making this up for attention-seeking purposes, this is NOT happening again'. The Hunter stops typing to me for a good minute and when she refuses to respond to a RW from the OT I think I know what she's doing, she's whispering the RL. She has a replacement with better gear, and because of that they will succeed. *sigh*

So, it's a choice: do I stay or shall I just go this time and so I go, because frankly my life is too short and my son's now home from School, and I'd far rather spend time with him than a bunch of average no-hopers. As I leave I do /who Guild of Losers and there's three of them online. There's a Druid, already in the Wyrmbog. By the time I've ported to Dalaran he's inside Onyxia's Lair.

GAH!

So, I now have to ask myself, am I REALLY going to have to have gone and run Naxx 10, then 25, then Ulduar before ANYONE is prepared to take me seriously as a healer? What is so bad about being bottom of the meters, somebody has to be there. More importantly however... is this the way people play their game, where the PuG Checker is the Bible and nobody gives a flying *** about your word or your ability?

It is, isn't it?

I am SO Doomed .... :(