I usually run as a healer, I even was resto all the way from 1-70 and from 70-80, and I absolutely hate chainpulling tanks. The only reason at all for it is when we have to beat a timer but mostly it’s just a huge stressfactor for me trying to find the time to loot the mobs and still keep up with the tank. I just hate it!

However, as you’ve said, not everyone is that bad and I gets so happy every time I happen to get a tank that give me that 1-2s break before their next pull. I’m not saying I like to wait on people, because I don’t, but a short stop to let everyone catch their breath and see where the mobs are before the pull does wonders. Hell, I even got a tank lately who, in addition to not chainpulling, both kept an eye on peoples mana and gave a warning when he pulled. Since he also were a decent tank he went straight on to my frineds list

Btw, you’ll find me on Lightbringer EU if you look

I’ve pugged a LOT since Wrath came out, and haven’t seen one bear tank. But I have seen many, many tanks who flat-out didn’t know that hunters now had a freezing trap they could toss from afar. Who didn’t know that shammies could frog a mob and better yet, that that frog could stay CC’d through such abuse as Volley and Whirlwinds. Who didn’t know that druids could put beasts and dragonkin to sleep, or cyclone something, or slap down some roots.

I love how Blizzard has changed all of the instances so that they all take almost exactly an hour to complete even if you’re a bit undergeared for them (except for H-VH… 20 minute badges FTW!). It makes it easier to get a quick group together and have some fun even if no one has three hours to commit to something. But like you say, it’s also encouraged the “AoE Zerg” mentality… and a lot of new tanks are coming into this atmosphere and never even learning that other classes HAVE these forms of CC.

A “Here’s How Your Other Group Members Can Help You Out” post would probably be golden, eye-opening info for them.

I had an elemental shaman all through BC and i always wanted a warrior so i leveled one very slowly. Infact i never reached 70 with him till just after the xpac.

You probably never knew the frustration of trying to find a group as an elemental shaman. I would be in LFG for hours before i finally got into a run. Now im a valued member of a group, not a non-cc burden. Do i use Hex? Rarely, its not important anymore. What i do use is my totems. Poison on all groups, drop poison cleansing, disease, do the same. These mobs fear? drop tremor etc. I don’t think chain pulling and no cc is a bad thing, infact i think its the best thing to happen to this game.

I liked to run instances with my friends. It was me, prot warrior, healing priest and 2 hunters. Try doing Heroic Magister’s terrace with that group. With certain combos in the pvp fight it was impossible. Wipes upon wipes. I want to run with my friends, not with some pug just because he is a mage and we need the CC.

As for my warrior, I tank whenever a guildie needs one. And I do have the rockstar mentality sometimes. There are very few pulls that require CC. But if its needed, i use whatever is available. For example on the 4 pull before the 1st boss in heroic UK. I can tank all four without CC, but if one of the rune casters is hexed or sheeped it makes it a little easier. so if i have it available, i will use either of those.

But i like being able to tank for my friends now, instead of having to go into LFG and saying “need 1 more DPS/CC” and not take my friends enhancement shaman because of the lack of CC.

My gear never got past the Clefthoof set in BC, plus some nice quest blues and a couple of cheap badge items. I could OT Kara and tank some of the lower level heroics easily enough, but anything beyond that was really out of the question. But there were times when by buddies in their purples would need a tank for the daily heroic, and after waiting thirty minutes, decided that an undergeared tank was better than none at all.

My hp would deplete scarily quickly and I’d be lucky to never lose aggro the whole fight, thanks to the T6 rogue spamming his DPS macros, but I didn’t mind that. It made me a better tank—forced me to remember every cooldown I had, bust out every trick I could think of, keep a close eye on the threat meters. What I did mind was the occasional kid who got pissed off when I COULDN’T speed run the instance, who insulted me and my gear if I marked and asked for CC. I spent a lot of time learning how to tank well, and now here they were insisting that I just get on with it … all the while insinuating that I’m a lazy chump ’cause I’m not sporting purples in every slot. I had owned the game barely six months. My /played was under two weeks. Screw off.

Most fun I’ve had in a five-man wasn’t on my tank—tanking, especially in those days, was too damn stressful to enjoy, and I felt like I was being judged incompetent every time I missed a keypress or got the marks wrong. It was my fire mage. Level 66, in Mana-Tombs. It’s 2 am, I was about to log, but hey, I really need the consortium rep and my buddy recently respecced to resto and wants to try it out. So it’s me, the tree, a lock, and two DK’s. Now I’m wary of locks, and twice wary of Death Noobs, but what the hell, let’s give it a shot. First few trash pulls and they seem pretty competent. I’m tired. I begin to get lazy. It’s not too long before I realize that, even if I’m not watching Omen too closely and tabbing to the wrong target every now and then, the group is collectively good enough to handle it. And I think everyone else realized this too.

And that’s when the fun began.

Every pull, each of us would do something wrong. On purpose. And then everyone else would have to scramble to fix it. I yanked aggro every other pull. The tank would “forget” to see a pat or pull while the healer was drinking. The lock would fear for no good reason. But the real kicker? We did it all with style! One of the DK’s made a point of exploding every corpse on the ground (including mine, twice). After one death, the tree exclaimed “where’s your god now, mage??” We had a dance-off during the escort quest. The chatter was lively and entertaining.

We never wiped, but we were on our toes the entire time, and everyone enjoyed the run immensely.

So, I offered to tank. The hunters would drop some traps, and I would hit the crowd with a blizzard and maneuver then to run over the traps. This would pull two out of the pack and the rest would follow me as I made my way back to the beginning of the instance, stopping every now and then to AoE just to make sure I still had their attention. Meanwhile, the rest of the party was able to tank them one at a time with the pet and burn them down before the other trap broke. I would hit the zone start, AoE, and then teleport though the mob running back to the party where I would find 2 fresh traps. A quick teleport through the crowd and I would repeat my previous trip while the party took care of their new guests.

This tactic worked great all the way up to the gauntlet where we were just overwhelmed by numbers. We did get to the boss at the end of the tunnel though, but by then we were hurting. It was a great run and forced us to use every trick we had to get as far as we did. I know we didn’t finish the instance, but each one of us counted it as a win.

So as far as CC useage goes… I don’t like using when I’m tanking because it means I have to rely on other people to do their job properly and I can’t count all the times I’ve seen that end in disaster. If its too much for me to tank I’ll get CC or if its someone I know can handle it. When it comes to healing… again I don’t like using CC but for different reasons. Healing gets very very boring when the tank is just getting beat on by 1 mob at a time. If the incoming damage can be healed witha single renew and I have to read a book or lolsmite to remain awake its not fun. The only exception to that is if the tank is brain dead and can’t aoe tank and I get aggro. If dps gets aggro it doesn’t bother me it gives me something else to do. When I dps… I totally agree with you. I WANT to use my CC. Regardless of who I am on I will keep an eye on what is going on around me. If there is a ranged mob that the tank isn’t hitting I’ll trap/shackle/sheep/blind etc.

Oh and Honors no hunter ever should have an issue pulling a mob off of the tank to trap it. Hunters are the only non tank class in the game with a taunt, those who don’t use it likely don’t know about it. Distracting shot doesn’t just generate aggro anymore its a full on taunt now.

I am a cat DPS girl. I leveled my druid to be a kitty cat, when they told me I couldn’t raid I said watch me and became (I hope) a valued member of my raiding team. A couple of weeks ago I think we were running UP (though I’m not 100% sure). It was a PuG (I know it’s supposed to be a good story right? It is!).

A couple members of the PuG were from one of ‘those’ guilds I’m sure every server has, the pompus I’m the best thing since sliced bread worship me kind of attitude and I was dreading what was to come.

Our healer was new to pally healing but all the DPS was good on not screwing up the agro for the tank and the healer could just focus on him. There were a couple of times when things got really hairy and I pulled out the ’swiss army knife’ joys of being a druid. Adds we didn’t mean to pull, beared out and took them, the healer was having problems, I popped out of cat form and tossed a couple HoTs on. The shadow priest took a moment to bubble me when I was in bear form tanking adds back to the tank to get from me. The hunter would lay an ice trap by the healer just in case something came after him.

We all used little tricks of our respective trades and made the run a success, even when things blow up in your face and you still see the run as smooth becuase everyone did what they could do to make sure EVERYONE won.

The healer had been from ‘that’ guild I mentioned earlier and I received a whisper thanking me for being one of the best druids he’s run with for making the most of what the class had to offer. Not only was I pleased on my behalf (who dosen’t like to hear nice things about themselves?) but on the guild’s behalf as well that just because something might have a less desireable rep, dosen’t mean that everyone is going to be an asshat.

It is good to have expectations broken, to challenge the diversity of classes that don’t normally get challenged or used in quite the way you thought they would use them but work.

Seriously tho… I’ve said this alot to anyone that’s been in a group with me, consecrate has sometimes made me a lazy tank – and I can definately see bad habits formed when someone ‘relies’ on consecrate for CC. Consecrate is great for dealing with mobs that co-operate and stay bunched, keeping aggro on the tanky. But it also shouldn’t become a crutch that enables a tank to ‘hey yall, watch this pull’.

I agree 100% with what BBB put down here. Guess what, our hunter trapper in our guild…loves to trap. The new remote method, chain traps in front of our healer etc. Our mage…sometimes likes to sheep -when he’s not competing on DPS meters ;) ….all kidding aside ..ALL classes like to feel useful and contribute in whatever way they can. If than means CC- a good player, and more important..smart tank…should let his entire team shine.

To be honest – AOE tanking, while an awesome tool, sometimes dumbs the encounters down too much . Once a group however is comfortable with how things are going, and everyone wants to just ‘blow the next group up’ – then go ahead and do it, if all agree. I greatly prefer to play with folks who’s know how to play the game, and when things go wrong – and that means each class knowing all their tools and having them at the ready.

btw – again – long time no chat BBB :) hope all is well -

I could recount many stories of great teamwork and skill in BC. Healing a heroic UK is most notable instance I have in WotLK. We had a prot warrior, ret paladin, rogue, hunter, and my holy paladin. The RET is tossing down consecrate in his rotation to pull maximum DPS and somehow we wind up pulling adds. The adds agro on and burn the RET down almost instantly and tank right after. The rogue, our guild leader and wickedly good player, throws out all the stops. Kidney shot, blind, evasion tanking. The hunter’s pet goes into off-tank mode and traps go out. I toss out my hammer of justice for a short stun. When the dust settled the mobs were dead and the 3 of us were still standing. It seems like the only time our skills get pushed like this now is when things go wrong, but its fun when it does.