coincidentally i was in this situation last monday night, during my guild's flashpoint mondays, recently got my ops healer to 55 and she's mostly in 156's with one or two 140s and one or two 162s i've run healers in many MMOs and i know how to heal (also got a 55 merc healer), i've been healing HMs this last week or two to get her gear for ops nights (she's successfully healed NiM EV/KP and most other HM FPs but we then got into Core Meltdown, and i have to say, there was no way i could heal thru the desert sandstorm fight. she's got 24.7k hp and she was going down before we got to the generators once they popped. we wiped a few times, and i told my guildies that it wasn't happening, they all insisted it wasn't my fault or anything, but it clearly was me being undergeared. To me it wasn't fair to keep enlarging their repair bills just to try to make me feel better. i have to say though, for the hardcore healer, there is nothing more frustrating to see ppl die on your watch when they not doing anything wrong (dps jumping before tank, etc).

this was this past weekend, having recently gotten my Merc healer to 50+, i been trying to get some 50 hm runs with guildies we form a group, but we lacking a tank......we figured it couldn't be THAT bad to pug one (despite many many sarcastic remarks from other guildies). we (55 sniper, 55 mara, 52 merc heals [me]) wait for a bit and we finally get a "tank" (50 sin) and false emperor.... we go in, say hi and all that, and the "tank" just stands there before the first trash pull..... i tell him that he can pull whenever he wants, and he finally does.......we almost wipe on trash, due to him going down faster than a ******'s panties, fortunately my two guildies were WAAAAY overgeared for the FP, and we managed to survive with just the tank dying..... that should have been a dead giveaway something was wrong, as he also had less HP than the healer.... we continue like this for a bit, with him not taunting, guarding the healer (instead of the ovious 55 ubergeared sniper), and waiting ages for pulling (afterwards we theorized he was just hoping someone else would pull/tank). after the first boss on the bridge kills both the tank and me, and my guildies get him down, they decide to inspect the "tank" a perfectly full set of DPS gear.....then it dawns on us, and we asked him why he queued as a tank if he was DPS, to which, after being asked like 4 or 5 times he replies "i can queue as both so i do".... after some more prodding and asking / demanding he at least puts on some tanking gear, he misteriously disconnects. Sniper pulls out Scorpio and we proceed to kick FP butt, even wtih my undergeared merc heals. needless to say the votekick after he DC'd passed as swiftly as a bribe in congress. all in all, i enjoyed the experience, since it really put my heals to a test, both when the fake tank was "tanking" and when Scorpio was tanking.... but it also pissed me off that a guy could pull the "i can so i do" card in a HM (i can understand in a lowbie SM fp before you know much bout the game).

After being in my own fair share of PuGs i've seen that when it comes to pets / speeders / rep items, everyone needs, (i had always greeded on the rep items till i saw it was a trend......). I won't need on a piece of gear i don't need, not even if it's for my class..... i can equip companions just fine with comms or passdown gear, when i run with guildies, i'll most likely greed / pass on everything, but on pugs, when a speeder / pet / rep item pops up, you bet i'm gonna need it..... everyone else already does.

dunno if LI is the hardest or not, on our run, i really didn't feel at any time that we were sucking badly at it, if anything, those wipes were educational.... and i didn't say stay under the bonus boss, just run round close to is so you can keep dpsing.... we was all over the area the first few times....and the boss ended up enraging.... once we closed down the circling we did it in 1/2 the time and effort.

Not much of a horror story, but more of a good cherry popping: fist time doing a hard mode (me a 53 assasin), get paired for lost island with a 55 sniper (dps), 55 jug (tank) and 55 sage (heals) neither the sniper nor i had ever done Lost Island on any of it's modes, which for some ppl in previous posts would have meant instant votekick....the tank / healer were more than ok with it, with the tank saying "hey, lets see how it goes" I know i am somewhat (a lot) undergeared having only gotten to 50 last week, and only got 4 156 pieces so far (with a couple 150's and ancient implants / ear pieces (green/blues). nevertheless, with 3 55's i figured we'd breeze thru it (remember i had never done it). all was pretty much as expected till bonus boss, where it took us 3 wipes to figure out we had to stop running around the whole place like headless chickens and keep near the boss so we could still dmg it during icicle phase (still, we were all happy we got it and joked bout not realizing this earlier). last fight was kind of a mess due to the boss carpetting the whole place with green goo spots but after a couple tries we got the ugly phase over with and rest was easy as pie. tank tanked great, heals healed great and the other dps and i did dmg to baddies all the mobs were killed in the more or less right order, no one broke any CCs (well, maybe once by accident), and other than a lil happy trigger before tank built aggro from the sniper, (again, nothing too serious and easily and quickly remedied by the tank), it was a really nice run. talking about it with some guildies they all gave me their condolences when i said i had run a Lost Island HM, but i really didnt feel it was that much of a PITA. tank and heals were more than helpful and understanding towards sniper and i, explaining tactics and stuff (mechanics for bosses mostly) rest was common sense (which does seem to be the least common of senses in PUGs) most important i think was that everyone kept a nice friendly relaxed attitude towards the rest and the FP. anyways, i guess i can say my HM FP cherry popping was a nice happy experience.