Caution – This Post starts off all fine and dandy, but rapidly turns into a rant of epic proportions. There is swearing. There is lots of swearing. If that offends you, unlucky, I’m a sailor. I’ll summarise the post for you here: People suck. There. Move on, read something else now. Take care.
You know, you have to take your hat off to Blizzard. If there’s a glaring problem in their game design they don’t mess around. You have to realise I came to WoW from Star Wars Galaxies and after suffering under Sony’s horrific mismanagement of that title I tend to lean back in my chair and laugh so hard I cough up a lung when I hear people moaning that Blizzard don’t respond to players’ concerns. Seriously, you have no clue how well looked after you are. Take one small example. I have a friend who came to WoW from Lord of the Rings Online. Apparently over there they have quest items sorted into their own bag so you never have to mess around finding them when you need them. Why, he asked, can’t Blizzard do something similar? I had to admit he had a point, as I scoured my bag for that damn Tualik Prayer Book I needed to get my current quest underway. Less than a month later Blizzard have the relevant quest item pop up ON SCREEN when you need it. You don’t even need to OPEN a bag, much less look in it. Quest item bag? Pfft, that’s so 2008 darlings! When Blizzard fix something it stays fixed.
The Dungeon Finder tool and badge reward system is a similar innovation, but this doesn’t just fix the one obvious problem (finding a group for an instance), it fixes problems you didn’t even know you had.
Blizzard’s current raid design is two-tier. The normal mode boss fights are simple enough that any cack-handed monkey can muddle their way through them with enough determination. The Heroic modes are where people go when they want an actual challenge. No seriously, they are. Put your ego aside, stop the bullshit hardcore vs casual argument for half a minute, take a step back and look at it again. Ulduar had some challenging normal mode fights with the Keepers and Yogg-Saron but Blizzard’s design philosophy was slightly different back then. Move on to Crusaders’ Coliseum and even a room full of monkeys could down The Twin Val’kyr if they stayed at it long enough. Try Coliseum on Hard Mode and things are slightly different. Normal mode is for everyone, Heroic Modes are for the top raiding guilds on your servers. Doesn’t mean only the top raiders are allowed to do them, but they’ll be the only ones completing them. You can probably count on the fingers of one hand the guilds on your server who’ve done Anub-arak in 25 man heroic mode and still have enough left over to order a round of beers. But who hasn’t done him on 10 man normal?
This isn’t one of those hardcore/social posts by the way, I couldn’t care less if you raid in 10 man or 25 man flavours. 10 man Anub’arak on heroic was tough, I’ve done it so trust me, I know. 25 man heroic Anub’Arak is an order of magnitude harder, and no, I’ve not killed him yet. It’s just the way Blizzard design their content after past experience taught them that it’s not good business sense to spend millions of dollars developing level 60 Naxxrammas when less than 2% of your player base have the gear necessary to step inside without getting brutally slaughtered on the first trash pack. They don’t spend vast sums of money developing content for the sole enjoyment of the raiding elite anymore. Now everyone can at least get to see where their subscription money went, raid it, beat it, have fun and come away with some loot. For the so-called raiding elite, there are the heroic versions, both in 10 and 25 man flavour.
But the core of this post is really about how you get the gear to compete at whatever level the current 10 and 25 man bar is set. Thankfully, Blizzard have finally realised the dream of ditching the old model of raid x, gear up, move on to y, gear up, move on to z, etc… This linear progression does still apply if you’re at the leading edge of raid content on your server because that’s what leading edge raiding is about. But let’s say you’re not. Let’s say you started playing three months ago and just got to level 80. Back in vanilla WoW there was a long, hard slog ahead of you before you could get to the level where you were in a position to be able to make a valid contribution to a 40 man raid. Despite their sworn aim to fix this, they actually made it harder in The Burning Crusade with the absurd attunement requirements to the various raid instances. Let’s say you’re raiding Black Temple and your top Resto Druid healer suddenly gets pregnant and decides to quit playing (yes Phaelia, I mean you). Or your Main Tank has a heart attack, or whatever. You lost a key member of your raid team and you need to find a replacement, pronto.
You can either poach someone from a competing raiding guild or scout some up and coming talent and get them geared up. But getting people geared up was as far from simple as common sense and decency are from the average page on the official forums. Let’s say a long-term guildmate who hadn’t played since Karazhan returns to the fold and would be a great asset to your raid with the benefit of some better gear. First, they couldn’t even step into Black Temple to raid with you and get the gear they needed to contribute without being attuned. And that meant they had to start a pain in the ass quest chain from Akama in Shadowmoon Valley that consisted of 10 quests, some of them group quests. Then you had to sacrifice multiple raid nights going back to Serpentshrine Cavern to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress to open up the next part of the attunement chain, followed by killing A’lar in Tempest Keep, then back to Serpentshrine Cavern again, then a swift jaunt to Mount Hyjal to slay Rage Winterchill, followed by a raid battle outside Black Temple itself before your new raider could even set foot in the place, and THEN they had to take their chances with the loot lottery to get to the level of gear necessary to not be a burden to the raid.
Blizzard took the first steps to fix this utter stupidity by slowly removing the attunement requirements, one step at a time until eventually any idiot could form a raid and waltz into Black Temple, and believe me, any idiot did. Sadly (or happily, depending on your point of view), any idiot didn’t usually have the gear required to survive the first trash pull. So Blizzard got around this by introducing the badge reward system, and it did fix the problem. You could get decent gear in the most critical slots purely by farming heroics and Karazahn for badges, and so that’s what people did. But it introduced its own problems in that as each new tier of content was released there was no corresponding tier of badge that came with it, you just needed greater and greater amounts of the same badges that always dropped in heroics. Remember those 40 badge offhands that every man and their tennis partners bought in early Wrath? Imagine that the tier 10 versions still cost badges of heroism, except they now cost 160 badges each and you’ve got some idea of what it meant. It meant doing Karazhan for about two months just to get a pair of pants.
Put all of that experience together and we end up where we are today, with last seasons’ badges dropping from regular heroics, allowing us to gear up in the kit required to start this seasons’ raid content. The hardcore are all wearing heroic versions of last seasons’ gear anyway, so they get a head start in the new content, and they’re happy. Everyone else not only gets a fast track to last seasons gear without having to do last seasons raids, but they get a reason to go back to clear all that old dungeon content they never got round to or could never get a group for. Everyone’s a winner. Well, almost everyone.
There’s still one glaring problem with the way things are, but it’s not something Blizzard are ever going to fix unless they start mailing full epic class sets to people as soon as they hit level 80 and despite what the retards in trade chat would have us believe, that hasn’t actually happened yet. The other solution would be to ban the accounts of all the whiny little failures at life who plague this game and leave our servers populated with only those who might concievably be able to pass themselves off as civilised human beings, but this would write off at least 40% of Blizzards subscription revenue so that’s not going to happen anytime soon either.
Yes, something got me pissed off, and I’m having trouble finding adequate words to describe just exactly how pissed off I am. I’m not sure even swearing would begin to cover it.
Last week I was doing a random daily heroic on my priest, Aluriel. 9% of these dungeon runs are the three new Icecrown 5 mans which are always interesting to tank or heal. 50% are swift, efficient, and utterly, utterly boring old dungeon runs. You throw a Shield on the 40K+ health tank, toss him a Renew every now and then and only stop to hit the Disenchant button when the loot window pops up. 40% of them are the old heroics but mildly entertaining as you do all of the above as well as decide whether or not to throw a Flash heal on the moron dps who think that their inability to control their own threat is somehow the tanks’ fault, or let them die in the vain hope that they might actually learn something from it. And this brings me swiftly on to the last 1%.
1% of the time, you end up zoning into a heroic with a tank who has 24k health unbuffed. And it’s here where you often meet the most repellent scum the human race has to offer. Nine times out of ten the healer will immediately drop the group, because… you know, healing someone at the appropriate level of gear for an instance is hard isn’t it? If that doesn’t happen, the dps will either leave or someone will initiate a vote to kick the tank from the group.
Let me just put this into some kind of perspective here. People would rather spend 15 minutes with the deserter debuff, then a further 20 minutes queuing as dps, then a further 30 minutes clearing the instance again for a grand total of at least an hour spent dicking around waiting for a tank you like (who you never met before and never will again) than spend 45 minutes going with the tank they currently have, simply because he or she isn’t covered in purples from head to foot, but is instead, and let’s be absolutely clear about this because it’s 100% fucking true, perfectly well geared for the level of content in which they find themselves.
How the fuck is this poor bastard supposed to get to the level where dps and healers are going to condescend to allow him to tank for them if everyone runs a mile rather than spend an extra fifteen fucking minutes taking things at the pace they were intended? “Oh noes, I want my badges without any effort at all!”
Fuck. You.
Quite aside from the whole “not being a failure at humanity” thing, you think there are so many tanks around in LFG you can afford to be choosy? You want to ensure this one never makes it into the tank pool after having her enthusiasm crushed by your being a selfish prick more concerned about shaving fifteen minutes off the next soulless badge farming session than being a decent fucking human being? It’s only Heroic Violet Hold for fucks’ sake! I tanked this with 24k health buffed when Gorn hit level 80! This tank’s got 24k unbuffed! She’s actually overgeared for the instance and you’re going to leave or have her kicked because she’s not overgeared enough? Fuck you. Not when I’m the fucking healer you don’t.
This Deathknight tank already got brownie points in my book simply by virtue of being a lolknight who was willing to tank. Her gear was fine, it was all gemmed and enchanted sensibly. She’d actually put a lot of gold, effort and research into gear that, with the speed of upgrading these days, she was going to tank with for maybe three days, and she was proud of her gear, as she had every damn right to be because she was putting in an effort! Can you remember ever doing that you soulless pricks who turn up in my heroics with 5/5 unenchanted, ungemmed Tier 9? Can any of you mouth-breathing window-lickers actually remember making an effort? Fine, drop the group and take your deserter buff, pieces of shit like you are along every five seconds when you already have a tank and healer.
At the rate of acquisition of Emblems of Triumph you can go through these days, this tank is going to take away an average of 5 badges per instance, at maybe an hour per instance taking into account breaks for toilet/refreshments between dungeons. 6 runs gets the first piece of tier 9 gear, and they’ll be picking up incremental upgrades in almost every instance they run, too. I know a friend who hit 80 on his paladin on Friday and by Sunday he had all five pieces of Turalyon’s Battleset. In two or three days time this tank is going to be just as faceless as all the other anonymous tanks you bump hips with.
And you know what the first thing she said was, when she zoned in to see us all standing there, in her broken English, right before the dps started a vote to kick her?
“Sorry for my bad english, I try to be good tank, we have fun, yes?”
And right there the hunter started the vote. Whoever you are, if you’re reading this, I sincerely and honestly hope you die in a fire before you get the chance to teach your life values to children. Two of the dps left the group when I refused to kick. That’s fine, I told them both “The tank stays or I leave” and they made their choice. Fuck them both, enjoy your deserter buff and queue time, pricks. You know something else? Healing was a challenge, but no more a challenge than trying to keep some fuckwit dps alive with no concept of personal threat control, and I do that on every other dungeon so what’s the difference? The tank maintained aggro on multiple mobs, never once let the healer come under threat, taunted off when the dps opened up too early with AoE, didn’t die and cleared the instance in the regular time. Then at the end, actually apologised again for her poor English and lousy tanking gear. Skilled, competent, talented, multilingual AND humble? I’m just sorry she wasn’t on my server.
Seriously folks, wake up and smell the coffee, and stop being such utter self-absorbed shits. And if you’re ever in a group with one of these cockmongers, don’t let them get away with it. Call them out for the complete shitbags they are. Do the decent thing. Please.
Pew pew lazers! 
As someone who have been on that tank’s position (barely last month), I can tell you how it goes.
1) Everybody will whine about your gear until you get the t9 shoulders. Everybody.
2)If an overgeared DPS has more HP than you, whines will start. Nevermind that said DPS have gear with no avoidance or defense, and hence, get killed if they pull aggro (which they do, until they die for the first time. Mostly, the record has been 4 times)
3)GearScore. If you got less than 4k GS, the whine machine will start again.
4)Are you def capped? Are you sure that you are def capped? You don’t seem to be def capped (actual quote).
5)Since you aren’t overgearing this place, I’m just going to put my badass tank gear and start tanking the mobs without asking, specially without asking the healer if he minded to heal 2 tanks and without caring aboyt having LoS with him. If you complain, you are a noob and you must keep aggro out of me if you want to tank. Nevermind that I queued as DPS. (Not actual quote, but you can get the gist. To the druid in that HoL run, fuck you with a butter knive).
Non specific complaining:
1)Gogogo. General attitude of everybody in the dungeon. DPS pulling for me without asking is expected (and usually stops after a reclaim about it), but I have seen HEALERS do it (note the plural. Is several of them. Or I got with the same resto druid a lot, didn’t noticed). Mind boggles.
2)Since everybody is overgeared, everybody tends to assume that everybody else knows the fights…until they die. A severe lack of DBM is also noticed (except with the people with gear that only can come from raids).
3) A tank ready for heroics CAN keep aggro from people with Colliseum’s gear. People with ICC gear? Forget it, they are offtanking. Whatever they can live through it or not is a class choice (read: Only plate DPS can apply). The 4-times record guy was a mage. Got fece down a little too much in OK.
4)I don’t have a severe trauma with The Oculus like many, many others (and having to bribe people to do it is lame, Blizz), but it’s soul crushing to do the same instance FIVE TIMES AT A DAY. Specially with people dropping group (record is 3/5 of the people. And their replacements)
and with people that cannot do Time Freeze when he enrages for the life of it (see lack of DBM above).
With all that, I’m just doing the heroic daily now. Got everything that I can with triumph and just can’t submit myself to that level of douchebaggery too much.
What it all boils down to is impatience and a total lack of respect for anyone other than yourself. It’s just complete selfishness. On the bright side it doesn’t take long to get yourself past the level where people are being utter pricks about your gear these days. They don’t stop being utter pricks of course. When the mage opens up on a trash pull with a PoM Flamestrike plus Icy Veins+Blizzard and you mysteriously can’t hold aggro, it stops being your fault for having shit gear and becomes your fault for sucking. The tank just can’t win.
Bravo… As a 26k unbuffed paladin that has had to deal with this shit, I fully and totally support healers that stand up to fail overgeared dps. So it takes 5 more minutes to clear the instance, or not. It’s your dps that is going to make the difference not me being able to hold aggro. I’ll taunt aggro off you and keep the healer alive. I’ll die trying, that’s my job.
Hell, I bailed on a regular run of HoL today because of some idiot mage calling me a moron because the healer pulled more aggro than the dps could put down before I died. BTW, I was top of the DPS list in Recount. Me and the healer were the last standing. I had waited 20 minutes for a group on my lolDK before switching to my tank to run my regular daily, hope they had fun waiting for a new tank. 🙂
See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. 26k health unbuffed is ready to tank Ulduar 10. You are OVERGEARED for regular heroics and you still can’t get a break.
Not quite ready for Uld 10, I’m still trying to find my comfort zone. But thanks.
My gear is right, I still have a lot to learn but I can do my job in the regular and heroic instances to get emblems for better gear to give me an even better buffer when I start doing 10/25 mans. Thankfully, I’ve found a guild that is willing and able to help me continue to improve.
Utterly brilliant, Calli. I couldn’t agree more from start to finish. There’s nothing like a good rant!
Also, “cack-handed monkey”? My new favorite phrase. 😛
A big /tree-hug for telling it like it is!
You’re entirely welcome. 🙂
Here, here.
I have a leveling prot warrior and I am just learning how to tank properly. I am getting better at it, but I constantly get DPS that hit the wrong mob or AoE and pull aggro. It’s frustrating, especially when one then proceeds to call me terriberr. That was the exact word thrown at me by this snotty little s priest. I wish I remembered her name. What an ass she was. I was in my third instance with the other three and we had been doing fine, but she blew my flow and then dropped group. All of a sudden I started not having any more problems.
My main, on the other hand is a mage. And, I am fairly geared. When I PUG I check out the tanks gear. This is the only time (other than stroking my e-peen) that I find GearScore useful. If I significantly out gear the tank and I am talking about a difference of 2-3k, then I make sure not to open up all the way or pop cd’s. I watch Omen like a hawk. Mirror Image ftw.
Dropping group is for pussies. Not running back is for pussies. Not watching threat as DPS is just noob, especially if you are in BoA’s or already geared. Players forget that they learned the game once as well and weren’t always decked out in full epics.
And really, this kind of whining and big headism is counter productive to the whole idea of groups and raids. The idea, people, is to work together.
You can have terrible tanks just as often as terrible dps or clueless healers. As you state yourself, this is where your cooldowns come in handy. You can quite happily blow Mirror Image at the start of a boss fight, pop every dps cooldown you have and sustain 9k+ dps for the next 30 seconds, at which point the boss is either dead or you’re about to use Invisibility. It’s the moron dps who refuse to accept that not pulling aggro is their own responsibility, coupled with tanks whose gear/experience/skill isn’t up to par that causes the problems.
Just to make it entirely clear to anyone else reading the comments, tanks are NEVER to blame for dps classes pulling aggro. They are 100% to blame if the dps have to throttle back to match speed with the tanks’ threat generation, but if you refuse to throttle your dps and die because of it, it is 100% your own fault. “The tanks’ threat sucks” is not an excuse. If the tanks’ threat sucks why did you blow all your dps cooldowns? Are you some kind of fuckwit with a deathwish? If you know the tank can’t match your dps output, slow your dps output the fuck down, idiot! If you refuse and you die, that sound you can hear is the world’s smallest violin playing for all the moron dps just like you.
I will argue this point, at least *slightly*.
If I (a ret pal) am in 4,200 GS gear, and am throttled back to ~2.5k DPS, using my (only) aggro dump AND attacking the marked target, there is *NO* reason a 4,900 GS DK tank shouldn’t be able to maintain aggro.
I will absolutely excuse a lower geared tank. I will happily throttle back. I will even switch to my tank gear and use THAT to DPS to make sure I’m not pulling aggro.
But the moment hte tank and his 2 guild mates start giving me crap for getting aggro, I *WILL* get loud and accusatory.
On the other hand, I am learning to tank my Pally. I am properly gemmed/enchanted, have a 3,600 GS and I am def capped. I ran H VH (the only instance I am comfortable tanking so far) and gave the group a warning that this would be a challenge.
Nobody dropped, the healer did a great job, and the one killer rogue kept popping tricks of the trade, and we made it through.
There are some great folks out there.
All my characters are willing to play with anyone regardles of their gear, language, computer performance or socioeconomic/demographical status. As long as they are skilled/competent, puts in the effort and willing to continue improving and take on suggestions (for e.g not replying stfu to advice such as don’t blast wave without blast wave glyph). That’s why I willingly play with people on my friends list despite wipes. That’s basically the raid mentality to success isn’t it, a group of competent people who are trying to take on a challenge. It won’t be piss easy but all the more rewarding should the challenged by conquered.
If in a group, someone comes in with more health than a tank, more mana than a healer, dazzling in purple and then afks half the time, or wipes the group due to their over flated ego. Then I will leave, but not before informing them of why I am leaving, and in the foul language that they deserve to hear.
So often you see players in good gear who cannot demonstrate why they deserve pranching around in that gear. People who demonstrate potential and effort should not be shunned by elitests.
That’s precisely what pissed me off most about this incident. The tank might not have had full tier 9 and epics in every slot but what she did have was well itemised, enchanted and gemmed. She was a GOOD TANK and the dps wouldn’t give her the time of day because they couldn’t see further than the fact that she didn’t have Tier9 shoulders.
I second that!
Only once I’ve had my doubts about a tank that didn’t even have a full tanking set, just some mix of dps and tank gear, all blue. It was in heroic UP. I’ll never leave for such reason, only if the guy is an asshole, or shows lack of competence beyond short term fixing. But this guy did a fine job, except for having a slight threat problem, nothing that taking a sip between pushing buttons could fix. He wasn’t even def capped, but who cares anyway: it’s just a heroic! Even if you get an ocasional crit (just 5.6% chance even with 0 +defense). With the stupidly low damage those mobs throw at you, even the crits are hardly a problem for a half competent healer. They’ll NEVER kill your entire HP bar like a raidboss can and that’s the sole reason for wanting to be crit capped: not getting one shot by hard hitting raidbosses. This whole defense cap knowledge used to be something only tanks or endcontent raiders knew and cared about, now it has leaked through to the common idiots, and they just love the simple rules to uphold as if it is one of the 10 commandments of warcraft.
A nice bit of avoidance, a well chosen set of talents, and preferably gear that is higher then ilvl175 on average is more then enough for tanking at least the entry heroics. With competent dps that have discovered their CC and interrupt abilities (or what I used to love: kite), even an old kingdom could be done in such gear.
I mean, if ulduar has been cleared in all blues, a heroic shouldn’t pose any problem… But I’m pretty sure there are some dps out there that dare to say that HC’s have a higher gear requirement than Ulduar.
Back in TBC, I started tanking on by druid for the first time. I had picked out the “perfect” pre heroic gear set from some tanking blog, mostly quest rewards or craftables. A few of these items were green, and just one purple rep reward, yet I was able to tank most instances fine. And the TBC heroics were considered a lot harder than todays heroics. Only once I met someone that was convinced that heroic SP needed t4/5 to complete, but nothing close to the gearscore mania of today.
Note: I kinda liked the gearscore addon, just to get a quick and simple idea about someone, nothing more, nothing less. But just like that def-capped knowledge, it’s good untill it falls into the wrong hands.
I remember stepping into the HC’s with my freshly dinged priest in LK. I was the first in my guild to ding, and there weren’t many 80’s yet. I was still wearing most of my tbc gear, with some questblues and a few normal dungeon pieces. The only HC we failed at was halls of stone: the tribunal of ages, the dps just wasn’t able to kill the adds before new spawned, and I ran OOM. The rest was no problem, I even succeeded in healing loken, with people staying in the AOE.
Nowadays healing regular HC’s is so boring that I’m mostly just dpssing. I don’t understand why all healers aren’t embracing those fresh tanks. Finaly a tiny bit of challenge again. Sure, pulling half the instance for your overgeared tank might have the same effect. Unless I’m that tank, because I’ll suddenly forget my AOE abilities and where do you think those new adds will go after first… right 🙂 … and I enjoy doing that a bit too much too, so I never pass up such a chance. Even if it could wipe us 🙂
Wow, monster reply! But you’re right, there’s nothing in the old heroics that needs 40k health unbuffed or 5k dps. Loken used to kill more players than Kel’thuzad but now he’s just a minor annoyance on the route to your next tier 9 badge upgrade. I can appreciate that people in ToC25 heroic gear don’t want every dungeon farm session to turn into a challenge, but not every one is! It’s very rare you get a tank who’s just hit 80 and isn’t dripping in purple gear because you gear up so fast these days. On the rare occasion that you do get a tank who’s new to the game it’s depressing how they’re treated by people who really should know better.
Please don’t judge all of us dps on the majority of ignorant cockmongers out there. I actually felt a pang of guilt when you mentioned what she said. I severely hope you managed to find some more dps and finish the instance.
I’ve played random dungeons with some outstanding dps. Hunters who ensure there’s always a freezing trap at the healers’ feet. Who Misdirect every cooldown to make sure an undergeared tank gets all the help with threat thay can and Feign Death before they pull aggro, not after. Mages who single target nuke down the tanks’ target before unloading their aoe on everything else instead of opening up with Shock and Awe and Daisycutter Bombs even if it costs them #1 on Recount because they can clearly see the tank can’t handle it. This kind of player is more common than you’d think but they’re totally outnumbered by the window-lickers who think the world begins and ends at the tip of their own epeen.
I know this is gonna come out the wrong way, but I laughed so hard I cried. That was an epic-rant on massive proportions, and I loved every minute of it.
I think the whole “omg, we have to spend 2 extra minutes because we have a competently geared dps/tank” and by competent I mean geared for heroics, not raids. I notice this issue never comes up with healers — I think people are so ignorant of anything but X health, X dps, that they don’t have a clue how to judge healers on the fly, so burgeoning healers get less of hassle.
That’s actually a good point, and you’re 100% accurate. No-one EVER drops group because the healer is undergeared. No-one ever bitches at the healer if they pull aggro and die. If the tank goes under on a trash pack it’s always the tanks’ fault for pulling too much or not having the gear to survive it.
The only person who ever seems to bitch at the healer is the overconfident and overgeared tank who’s off pulling fresh trash packs three rooms away as the healer’s trying to regen mana after rezzing one of the dps, and thinks that pulling a pack of lvl 82 elites and dying on them while the healer’s on 10% mana 100 yards away is somehow not their fault.
Agreeing with Windsoar in that this post made me do lots of genuine Lols at work. Fantastically written post as per usual (one of them long time readers first time commenters *wave*).
Have written my own post that was originally a comment but then turned far, far too long!
Thanks for the awesome blog
Elsen
Well, welcome to the comments section at last, hope you enjoy your stay!
[…] started off as a comment response to Pew Pew Lazers! post “Angry priest is Angry” but I realised I actually wanted to blog about it anyway and it was getting far too long for a […]
I was in one of these runs, but I was the crappy geared tank. My DK was collecting too much dust so I took him out for a walk. Since I knew it would take a long time to get a dps spot I decided to try tanking hoping not to get into any of the new instances (I’ve tanked the old ones without any problem, even ToC hc). The first one was AN and was easy cake, but Lady RNG hates me with passion and the next one was Pit of Saron. Upon entering I informed the rest that I was undergeared and didn’t think I could handle it (I’m 541 defense but only 26-27k unbuffed, reaching 31k with flask, stam buff and so). The party only asked if I was def capped and told me to try, so there we went. I also told them that if things were unmanageable I would bring my 40+k pally to tank the place. The healer didn’t have any spare time to slack around or dps a bit, but Garfrost and Ick&Krik went down without much problems. We only had issues in two places: the ramp after Ick&Krik and Scourgelord Tyrannus. On the ramp the healer quit after first wipe, so we got a new one. We cleared the rest of the ramp in two shots, handled the tunnel without problems and then had several wipes at Tyrannus because my hitpoints were frankly low (we lost some dps there too). Still the rest of the party, including the new healer decided to keep trying and we finally downed him at the 5th try. Kudos to all of them (even the first healer) for their patience, I’m sorry for their repair bills 🙂
Good post Calli, it just shows how stupid people can be because they’re so greedy. But there’s also a reverse side, where overgeared tanks just quit instances (aside from Oculus), I’m preparing a post about this.
Funny story, It’s not a secret (anymore) that I am in the same guild as Calli and the story about the lost guildie that left around kara, that was me!
And let me tell you, forcing an entire guild to put their progression on hold for at least 3 raid nights and THEN having to spend a lot of time in progression raids undergeared, scrounging for gear desperately waiting for the day that you are no longer a burden… it is not fun, but it sure does make for a loyal guildie in the other end ^^
Also, I too have suffered the sting of being wellgeared for heroics (on my pally tank), yet not in t9 and thusly “undergeared” and kicked, and it sucked, hard.
On the other hand, i’ve also been in a group where the (pvp geared.. and crappy gear at that too) hunter whined and moaned because the tank pally only had 37k health and had one item that was not tank gear. The guy wasn’t himself wearing ANY pve gear, yet the rest of the group moaned with him, untill i (the healer) told him to stfu or me and tank would find new guys. He then md’ed and mistrapped and did everything he could to wipe us (and suceeded) in order to blame the tank. Aint that just a great guy?
*salute* well said, Bravo 🙂 It’s no fair to the poor guy who tries his best to gear himself up with the appropriate level of content.
The one time I’ve been iffy with a tank in the Random is when we got Heroic FoS. I queued up as healer, thinking it’d go faster. Well, we got a tank that was like Kurnak. The self admitted “I probably can’t do this” tank. Our group convinced him to try anyway, and we did fine…until the last boss. I couldn’t heal both the tank (who was taking a lot of damage) and everyone else during the Ghost phases. After 2-3 wipes, the tank says good bye of his own accord. Sadly, we had just realized we can interrupt the Phantom Blast thing that I think was killing him. We got a new tank, and finished it off…albeit slowly.
I never inspect the tank. I go in to all pugs quiet happy that the wait is finally over and I got a group. My main is a hunter, and has been since vanilla. I’ve always watched omen like a hawk, and kept a sharp eye on where the tank is along with everyone else in threat. The recent changes to misdirect have made it easier to pump extra threat to the tank if they need it. I throw up misdirect every time it’s up to make sure the mobs are all paying more attention to the tank than everyone else. Controlling aggro is key as DPS, and I absolutely loathe with a burning passion any and every DPS who has the balls to bitch, whine, and moan about the tank or healer. Asshat DPS that whines about the tank’s gear or the healer’s gear are ruining the game for the rest of us.
Very nice rant. And yes, i do feel with you, and trust me, i rather run with tank with the gear level for the instance i am in, than with some of the overgeared idiots who keep chain pulling everything.
L
“The tank stays or I leave”
🙂
Sometimes you just gotta draw a line in the sand.
Thank you. My faith is restored 🙂
Which is kinda important for a priest I guess
A-Friggin-Men.
Well said and I don’t doubt one bit that your tank appreciated the support!
[…] on January 12, 2010. Filed under: Fail, Healing, PuG | Tags: lfg system | I was reading another epic rant about the asshats who infect the LFG system (you’re excluded of course–asshattery […]
Instant gratification is a bitch. I don’t understand the mentality, being over 30 (and then some), but I hear kids today suffer from the illusion that the world owes them everything now. It will be awesome to watch those little asshats step into RL and get squashed.
In the meantime, I am lucky to have a decent guild, and much less playtime than ever before, so I use dungeon finder only rarely with my main (resto druid). However, I do use it occasionaly with a fledgling warlock of mine, and the “go go go go go” is present even there. In my last run (Uldaman), healer said he will drop the group if they don’t allow him to drink. I seconded the motion. No-one else even remotely understood what we were talking about.
As for the startup gear – remember the days when we dinged 80? You know, centuries ago? When the Wrath came out? Well, back in the day, I had a group for heroics with DK tank sporting a whooping 22k health, and 450 def (yes, he got critted a lot). I have just specced resto, being feral tank during TBC. I had like 4 – 5 pieces of Karazhan gear on me, two crafted epics and probably feral rings… Which amounted to 850 bonus healing. We died a lot. And walked to school uphill both ways.
There is no going back, ever. The only thing you can do is to refuse to participate in the asshattery. Be nice to your young tank (or healer), and they will grow and grind your heroics for you. And that’s about it!
Love the rant. It’s crucial that the community encourage more people to join the adventure that is tanking and healing. If you are a jerk to new ones, than you simply lower the number of them, meaning you have to wait longer in Q as dps. These jerks are taking actions that are counter to the very reason they are taking the action. Sigh.
Other people suck.
The vast majority of kicks I’ve seen have been for legitimate reasons; going afk and not coming back, DCed and not coming back. There was the one mage though who would have been kicked for being a whiney, swearing jerk except that he left before the vote finished (he liked to ignore the assigned kill target, single-target pull an unmarked mob, and then bitch at the tank and healer for letting him die).
That mage was the only vote kick of an active in-party member I’ve ever agreed to. I will try to work with people no matter their gear level, because that’s where/how people gear up; heroics. As long as they follow directions and they’re willing to try, that’s the most important thing.
I led a group of newbies through Oculus (!) and sure we wiped a time or two, but the newbies were upfront about their newness, never complained, and did their best to follow directions. When we got to Eregos he ended up a one-shot.
In my experience the newbies are usually a pleasure to run with, too. They may not 100% know what they’re doing every time but if you bother to offer advice instead of mocking them they usually respond well to it. I mean… when I was levelling my first toon, my hunter, I had a Demonslayer enchant on my melee weapon because it had a nice glow. I didn’t have clue #1. We were ALL clueless once, we didn’t learn anything from “lol noob, ur gear sucks” other than that people can be shits.
I heard a guy in /trade a while back asking for someone to do an attack power enchant on his bracers. The first thing I usually do as an enchanter is to shift-click on their name to see where they are and if I can bothered going out of my way to do it. That’s when I noticed this guy asking for an attack power enchant was a level 24 mage. He actually thought it would boost his spellpower. Most of his gear had agility and stamina enchants on it. Now that means someone had actually taken money off this guy to put worthless enchants on his gear and not bothered to say anything to him. Half an hour later he’s got some decent, free newbie mage enchants from materials I had left over in the bank and a slightly better idea on how to itemise. These days he’s raiding in one of the top raid guilds on my server.
Everyone deserves a break, providing they’re prepared to put some effort in and are willing to learn.
Wow. Truly, all I can say is that I wish I had written this. It made me grin.
Once that elitist attitude shows up i (usually on my healer) am in the tanks corner until he proves himself to be useless.
I presume that everyone in the heroic is geared satisfactorily and knows what they are doing. Sometimes i am pleasantly surprised when this eventuates.
Usually it doesnt. But i heal through it and keep my mouth shut.
That annoys me too, I’ve healed tanks like that before on my Priests and Druid. The tank was adequately geared, gemmed, and enchanted for the Heroics we were doing but I’ve had a few jerkwads in my group that have attempted to kick them. Sorry I’m not kicking.
I’ve also been in groups were other DPS have been sarcastic about other DPS. One stands out in my mind. This DK had obviously just hit 80. His gear was a mix of greens and blues, and one crafted epic. He had everything gemmed/enchanted. He still did a little over 2k DPS however that wasn’t good enough for the TOC 25 geared Mage. She started the vote to kick him. I and the tank declined. She didn’t know we were a team. The tank is my best buddy on that server and we’ve talked about this type of BS before. I declined the kick, and politely said the DK was staying, he needed the gear more than anyone else in that group. The DPS and my buddy overgeared the place. If any of the other two DPS had a problem with that, well they could leave. She didn’t say one more word.
I’ll be putting myself in the tanking role within the next few weeks. My feral is in a mix of blues and purples. She’s gemmed and enchanted. However until I require better gear I’ll be bringing my tanking buddy along. He has two healers (Druid & a Shaman) I just don’t feel like going through that crap of having someone voting to kick my because I don’t overgear the place.
There are about a million things I could say in response to this post. But I’ll go with:
Calli … I think I love you.
Thank you.
I get this.
But, also, It’s annoying to be in a group with people that obviously aren’t even trying. Up until about a week ago, all of my lfg experience was as a tank. I use the tank dps as kind of a metric of what ‘good dps’ is, if you’re above the tank, that’s good, below, not so much. As long as you don’t do something stupid that causes a wipe, I don’t see why anyone cares.
It’s frustrating though to get people in an instance that are apparently not even trying. I did CoS the other night with a rogue that was doing 700 dps.
I especially hate it when you get low dps AND whiny. That particular rogue really really wanted the mount. The warrior tank was obviously new to tanking, and I’m guessing CoS isn’t the best place for warrior tanks. He did a good job, and also rolled on the mount, since he needed it as well. He ended up getting it, I was glad that the warrior got it.
As I write this reply, one of our Dwarf holy priests is in an instance using the Dungeon Finder right now, and he’s doing more dps using Holy Nova to heal than two of the dps classes in the group combined. Yes, they’re both wearing full tier 9. Yes they’re almost certainly afk and on /follow letting people carry them through to their Embelms of Frost.
Votekick isn’t good enough for this. Votepetrolbomb, now THAT’S a button I could use.
When I get to 80, I hope I get you as my healer.
I started tanking on my little DK (lvl 60) yesterday and had an experience with the most abusive healer I have ever encountered. And just as I finished ranting about it, I found this post via Righteous Orbs.
All I can say, on behalf of all new tanks, is: Thank you. You honestly don’t know how much it means to see one voice screaming in the opposite direction.
Ahhhhhh… epic post 😀 Thank you!
Thank you so much for this. I recently leveled up a warrior (my 3rd 80–others are 80 enh shaman and disc priest so I know damn well what DPS and healers ought to be doing). Before I even tried tanking regular (non heroic) level 80 instances I purchased/crafted epics and gemmed/enchanted the heck out of my stuff. I dropped ~8k on stuff that I’m mostly going to replace immediately (or so I thought). I had 540 defense and 26k health unbuffed. GearScore says congrats, skip heroics–you can go tank Naxx10 with what you’ve got on. Sweet.
So I’m feeling well-prepared gear-wise and queue for regular level 80 instances–REGULAR, not even heroic–just to finish picking up some trinkets and stuff and get my feet wet for the instances I’ll be farming on heroic in a few days. I grab a guild healer who’s got ICC-ready gear. We’re way OP. It’s gonna be awesome.
I get a group. Someone says “OMG LOL tank with 26k health? ROFL!” Another player immediately leaves.
/facepalm
Are you fucking kidding me? You’re *LEVEL 78* and you’re going to bail from regular Halls of Lightning because you have a level 80 tank with 26k health unfreakingbuffed and who’s more than def capped for the instance? Really? I even brought my own damn pocket healer who’s amazingly overgeared for this…and we’re still not good enough for you?
I say “You do realize this is a REGULAR level 78-80 instance, right? We’re not even in a heroic!”
The other guy is like “LOLZ whatever. This is gonna be interesting.”
I spend a lot of time as DPS watching my threat so I don’t die, and watching the healer on the off-change the tank is not (Frost Shock FTW). I spend a lot of time as a healer watching everyone’s bars so they don’t die. And as a tank, I watch everything so people don’t die.
But, damnit, I really wanted to just let that asshole die. Unfortunately, that would have just proved him right, so I played good tank and we rolled through the instance as easily as we should have given what we were wearing. And at the end of the instance he said something asinine about me being lucky and bailed.
It’s ridiculous, really. I’ve tried to tank heroics and the whole group leaves almost every time when they see my health. I’ve taken to doing random heroics as DPS to pick up tank hear (hoping the actual tank doesn’t need it)…and I’ve only had one person even make a comment about my complete and total lack of decent DPS gear and the fact that I’m still using level 70 weapons to DPS. No one’s whining about my whopping 900 DPS on boss fights. But they’ll whine about it taking 20 minutes to get into an instance group…and then leave when they see I’m there as the tank.
Grrrrrrrrr….
People are bailing on 26k hp Tanks in Normal lvl 78 instances? Really? That just plumbs new depths of retarded. We may actually have to make up a new word for it.
I’ve actually got a 40k (my warrior) and 34k (my DK) unbuffed tank toons but I will NOT tank a random pug with them. Life is just too short to put up with the crap that the comments to this post illustrate. I’d rather crack out some dailies while waiting the 20mins it takes to queue as dps than put up with some 700dps smacktard yelling “gogogogogo!!” at me for 15 minutes.
Ok, I’ve been reading a heck of a lot about this sort of thing lately. I’ve read all the previous comments and some of the horror stories make me so sad that I almost feel like I could cry! Why would I cry over a dumb game? Well, its not the game that makes me cry but simply the mean spirits that truly do exist in this world. It doesn’t just apply to the game but to EVERYTHING in life. There are always asshats everywhere.
The really sad thing is that we are sitting here reading these great rants and we totally agree and sympathize etc. BUT the people who really need to read these things probably aren’t reading this. Meaning that no matter how hard we try the asshats will never change and they’ll always be there.
Sad news.
Well all we can do is stand up to them. At the very worst it just means a couple of asshats leave your group because you refuse to join the /votekick, and is that really so bad?
I wholeheartedly agree.
I’m just done with a HC run, and first thing that came to mind was this post 🙂
I arrived in PoS HC as healer and the tank immediately mentioned he wasn’t good enough for this. His gear was very bad indeed, lots of dps stuff, some blues, missing enchants, etc. I wouldn’t even have dared to tank a regular heroic in that stuff, but I didn’t say anything. Nobody else had a problem, so we gave it a shot.
He took heavy damage. In fact, he took so much damage at the trash encounters I was convinced he would get one shot by the first boss. But I got to practice my spamheal rotation, and it’s fun to be able to heal a tank from 30% till 100% with one crit heal 🙂
Surprisingly, Garfrost was easy. I had more problems with the dps, who, after my specific plea, still ate all rocks and all possible stacks.
We wiped once at ick, but that was just people eating nova’s, the tank did fine untill he ate a nova too 🙂
Wiped at the ramp (not surprised), but again because of people eating hellfires and not following kill order. The 2nd time it was much easier, and continued without much trouble till we reached Tyrannus.
I feared his powerup buff, forceful slam, but mostly the overlord brand (the dps didn’t seem too bright). And yes, we wiped twice, it was indeed very hard to keep him up. We still got the boss till +/- 20% both times.
The thing is, it was obvious that some dps didn’t stop in time when they got the debuff. Also, one of the melee’s never moved away when they got the hoarfrost mark, freezing 2 or 3 people.
Then the misery started. One of the new dps figured out that the tank was undergeared, and started his tirade. The fact that we cleared nearly the entire PoS HC with this tank didn’t matter: he was suddenly the sole problem.
It could be done if everyone did their best. I mean, he was a warlock. curse of weakness would have been nice for example, or get the doomguard for it’s cripple (not sure if DK tanks have something similar). But no, he decided to burn down the tank verbally, and then left.
It pissed me off massively. He even thought that I was on his side, considering the fact that I was also overgeared for the instance, but I told him to get lost. The reason why it pissed me of mostly was because I was having so much fun doing this HC! I had a real challenge, and the tank had fun learning how to tank it too, besides, he was a nice guy.
The locks replacement happened to be a druid with a tank offspec and some heavy gear, so the tank decided to hand over his job to the new guy. Too bad, because I didn’t have this much fun healing in a while.
Haha, I tried to keep it short, honest 🙂
Epic response is epic!
You certainly do get a mixture of “whoo!” and “ohshit!” when you pop one crit GHeal and see the tanks’ health bar shoot from 30% – 100%! “Whoo!” from the “I’m the greatest healer evaaaaarr!!” and “ohshit!” from the realisation that GHeal just covered 70% of this guy’s health and you’re totally boned. 🙂
Great post! Kudos to you for sticking up for the tank 🙂
[…] any real fodder for a post. /sigh. So, I’m having to dig a bit. Yesterday, I came across this rant over at PewPewLazerz. I could reply over there, but the comments are already up to 50+, so I […]
[…] and Chas at Righteous Orbs are always entertaining. Clearly channelling Angry Priest, Chas has been Winning Asshole Chicken, and Tam has the most unfortunately-named Troll Shaman ever […]
[…] our American cousins refer to as “heart”. Much like the poor tank from my earlier Angry Priest is Angry post he had perfectly adequate gear for the content in which he found himself even if he lacked a […]
A bit late to the party, but felt the need to reply nevertheless.
Part of the reason I quit was exactly this; the distribution of people to numbers. Drugar wasn’t allowed to tank instances because he didn’t have 30k health unbuffed. He wasn’t allowed to DPS because he didn’t have full epic DPS gear AND no 30k health unbuffed.
With the inclusion of gearscore now (basicly your ‘worth’ in a number) it’s bound to be even worse. There should be a mod that’ll track “awesome” and “cack-handed monkey” points if you’re awesome or a cack-handed monkey. That’ll bitchslap a lot of people I think.
I hate gearscore with a passion that borders on the homicidal. Just as an example, the DK from my “Worst Deathknight in the World” post had a gearscore of well over 4k but didn’t have a clue how to play in a group. There’s no way you’re going to know how well someone’s going to play until you… you know… play with them. No mod or addon is ever going to replace that.