Boomkin - the new huntard?

OK, everyone is out there bemoaning DKs as the new 'class that the clueless play.' And there are good reasons for that, I can see where the little kids that are asking for ZF run number 85749835798 to get some blue to level in because they Just Can't Do It TM without it running to that class.

Maybe I missed the worst of it since I don't run instances while I level, so I've only seen 80 DKs, and the earliest ones were typically the best players. Point is, DKs haven't been too bad in my eyes. Boomkins, on the other hand... guh.

Admittedly, I'm biased. The Guild I raided with in BC, the GM/RL/MTs now wife played a Boomkin. This is not inherently bad. The example she set was. Cackling about pulling aggro, TRYING to pull aggro by timing Starfire to hit at the same time the tank does... healers should not have Shield MACROS for DPS. On trash. Nope.

As top DPS, it drove me nuts, since other people would follow suit. I can't tell you how many times we had to raise 5 or more people on trash in Gruuls Lair due to her causing those damn ogres to run amock amidst our healers. When I rolled into instances on my Resto Druid, stupid DPS got no heals from me. You wanna screw up the raid? Here's a repair bill. I'm sure as hell not doing much to get on that mobs aggro table. I don't want to be next.

Her argument is that I had FD, she didn't. What she didn't realize was that I endeavored to NOT have to use it. And typically, when I did... it was due to someone else messing up and me trying to burn something to save them. (And, she 'off-healed' a lot, that's why I beat her in DPS. Every time.)

That skews my perception, admittedly. But, PuGging heroics led me to run with a great variety of people. Many of them are Boomkins that can't seem to find healers. Moving on from that irony... Typhoon is the worst imaginable PvE spell they could have gotten. I can't tell you how many damn lazerchikkens I've seen indiscriminately pull aggro, wait for the mob to be just on them, then cast that silly spell and pray that I burn the mob with them before it smites them.

Which I do. It's my own damn fault. I enable this behavior. I swear, my pocket healer and I, one of these times... just going to let them die. Maybe they'll learn. I don't know what it is. It must be a combination of that spec being truly viable and there being a lot of Kara+ geared resto druids that respecced Balance to level and never looked back. But really, it's got to stop.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the general competence of the players I've run with. Getting to 80, for now, has seperated the skilled players from the maroons. Heroics are easier than they were as well. But there's something about Boomkins...