Oculus, you Slay me...

(Contains: many, many rants, and a new carrot Blizz is tossing out to appease the masses)

...literally. Can we have a mechanic change on the giant drakes that, when some party member is wandering around while mounted and the rest of the group is forging ahead on foot killing trash, that any drakes said slow, wandering, lost mounted party member decides to aggro DON'T all rush the healer and slaughter her into a branchy mess of broken twigs?

/boots fury warrior off the side of the ledge

I have a guildie who was cursed with getting Oculus as his random every day for about 4-5 days. As a dps with the long queue times, he didn't have much choice but to forge ahead with it each time. All too often, tanks or healers with faster queue times will simply drop group, leaving the rest of the party waiting for another 10-20 minutes for a new tank or healer to join who doesn't immediately run screaming from the party, themselves.

For each PuG Oculus, there is a very high likelihood of getting players who don't know their drakes' abilities, and don't bother reading what the drakes tell them. The greens kill themselves channeling heals without keeping their poison stack running, the reds don't bother killing whelps, the ambers don't trade shocks or, worse, don't use time stop on the enrages. And then so very many of them don't run away when giant, pulsing, exploding orbs come out and annihilate them.

And all too often, they blame someone other than themselves. Usually the healer. "I could've survived that enrage if I got heals!" "I could've survived the orbs if I got heals!" "I could've survived channeling heals to that other guy if you had healed me!" "Those whelps wouldn't be a problem if you healed everyone!"

Healers are used to this. Healers tend to be blamed for others dieing while they're standing in flamestrikes, shadow zones, cleaves, or molten hot lava. It doesn't make it any less bearable when it's a PuG oculus.

There are also the occasional bugs, like hitting the instance reset timer while your healer is dead and ghosted outside of the instance, and thus s/he is unable to come back in since they didn't get the option to re-save themselves, and then when they drop to let you get a new healer, the new healer gets a fresh instance as well, despite being in your party. Oh, that was fun.

Now, you can always take the time to teach a group how to use their drakes. I have done this, it took about 4 wipes on the Ley-Guardian and some keen eyes to spot all the problems, as well as some mid-combat hastily typed alerts into party chat. It requires the group to be willing to learn, though, and someone in the party willing and with the patience to teach (without bashing the others for their inexperience). Some days I am willing; others I just want it to be over with as quickly as possible. Some groups are willing; others just want to blame everyone else but themselves.

But why do I go on about all of this, now, when there's much happier news with the Plagueworks being released in ICC?

Because Blizzard's staff has heard the angry cries, and is throwing out a carrot:

To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Oculus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option.

In light of this change, the Reins of the Azure Drake will now have a chance of dropping in both 10- and 25-player versions of The Eye of Eternity.

What's this? Blue gems, extra badges, and a mount chance?

Personally, the rare gems and triumph badges do not phase me in the slightest. I need epic gems and frost badges; the triumphs only add to my ever-growing stash of "convert these to gem-buying badges" and I can get those with a lot less hassle. The drake would be wonderful, but I think I would cry if I saw it go to some idiot who was earlier pulling drake aggro onto me and blaming me for his own "I'm standing in da orbs!" deaths.

I need a bigger carrot, I think, before I will accept Oculus pugs with anything but groans.