What would you have done?

Another weekend, another job lot of heroics, all pretty non-descript valour points and rep grinds, that is, all but one. I jumped into the queue with a guild tank and another DPS, I was healing, PUGing the final two DPS. The guy tanking normally plays a priest and was undertaking his first tanking exercise since Cata so we were chatting most of the way through, we ended up in Blackrock Caverns, not the best place to have your first experience as a tank. The other two DPS, a mage and a rogue, were kicking out a decent amount of damage, nothing special, but nothing bad, so we decided not to re-queue; all was going relatively well until Karsh Steelbender, Steelbender himself was dispatched with ease, it was the item drop which caused the problem; a spirit neck piece dropped, now I'm at ilvl 346 or above on pretty much everything these days, so it's unusual that I take anything from heroic drops, but my neck was the final piece I needed, I already had a 346 item, but it was a DPS item, so I rolled need. No biggy you might say and I carried on, not noticing that the Fire mage that we'd picked up had also rolled, but had been beaten by mine.

To my surprise I got a whisper: "didn't you already have THAT necklace on?" ( I actually thought this was from my friend the tank as we'd just been talking about gear)

to which I replied

"I don't think so, I hope not"… as I furiously checked I hadn't been thick, realising that it wasn't actually the tank whispering me.

"link your old neck now" came another whisper, which I duly did, explaining that it was a DPS piece and this was a bit of an upgrade for my healing clobber (I kind of which I hadn't bothered trying to justify myself, in hindsight there was clearly no point).

"OMG!! You selfish tard! I've only got [some ilvl 333 piece], give it to me now!" (Actually, I think I'm doing him too much of a service including the punctuation in the correct place…) followed by a tirade of additional abuse before I had chance to reply which were a bit too x-rated to quote here.

Now normally, had this guy asked me politely to give up the item, I wouldn't have thought twice about it, I've actually, on several occasions, given loot that I've won fairly to people in PUGs who would benefit more than I from it; it really doesn't bother me in the slightest, this chap however had managed to rile me a tad. Quite understandably, I feel, I told him to stick it (I'll let your imagination work out where), and put him straight on ignore. I kind of wish I'd had the presence of mind to realise that for a fire mage, this SPIRIT item was actually a downgrade from the item he linked, I also kind of wish I'd given him both barrels and responded in the same manor he'd whispered me, but I think I'd of been annoyed with myself had I let him get to me enough to force me to sink to his level. And part of me wishes I'd taken a step back and tried to explain that, actually, I won it fairly, and actually, it was about as much use to him as it was to the rogue anyway.

Feeling a bit of a crisis of conscience, I whispered the tank to ask if I'd done the right thing, it was actually him who pointed out that it was useless anyway for a fire mage. Feeling a little reassured in my actions were both right in rolling on the piece in the first place, and in refusing to give it up, I promptly forgot about it and got on with enjoying my day. Well, when I say forget about, clearly not forget as I'm writing about it here, but you get the picture. This whole unsavoury incident got me thinking, how often does this kind of thing happen? How do people deal with it? I'm thinking how you as an individual behave can kind of bring it on yourself; I (hope) I'm generally polite and laid back in PUGs, and this is my first experience of any such abuse in 4 months of playing, however, there's a few, shall we say more abrasive characters, who I regular party with, who quite often get themselves into a little war of words with a fellow PUGger.

Did I do the right thing? Should I have reacted differently? Have you experienced anything similar? Was it YOU abusing me? :)