I am the GM of a raid guild on my Server(Durotan) and my main is a very well geared rogue. My druid was my first toon, and was originally a healer. I parked him for several years because the rogue was so much fun to play. Having gone back to the healer and respec’d to bear, my lil druid quickly leveled to 80. I also had the benefit of Tanking in front of 2 players that ARE tanks. One of each class tank, per player. These guys know the game. They also prepped me for almost every kind of fail dps situation their 4 plus years of tanking have afforded them the insight of. These guys would chain lighting mobs before i was there, they would seed of corruption the mobs around the corner, and not tell me. I can tell you i had my fun with the manna wyrms in the BC dungeons, You know the ones, they blow up when they die? AoE a pack of 6, and they all go boom, and wipe the melee. Good fun as a tank.

Now, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my guildies look after me, and they say nice things about my tankability, and my patience. But there are times i step out of the guild run random, and take on the LFG system. It helps me to stay sharp i think.

my last random LFG i ran ( and will ever run) on my bear went along the lines of,

Rogue(sub spec) 1.8speed dagger main hand, 2.6 speed sword offhand, no poisons on either, and he insisted on sapping every mob before i pulled.
Mage(71 point frost) that frost trapped every LoS pull i made.
DK that ran into the mobs, dropped his death and decay, and then turned his back to the mob.ON EVERY PULL!

now, Heroic UK is not hard. Least i dont think so, but when the combined group dps does not break 4k, with the tank doin 2k of it, a challenge is the term that comes to mind.

having spent almost 20 minutes clearing to Kelseth, the rogue now had nothing to sap, since the boss was immune( He tried). No LoS pull to trap, but our ever confused DK continued to drop his DnD and turn his back. I got Iceblocked first, and typed out in party chat that they needed to dps the ice block to get me out. the DK, turned, faced Kelseth, and somehow gained aggro. The healer shaman(Bless her soul) got me out of the ice block as all dps continued to beat on Kelseth. Free at last I taunted Kelseth back, and failed to type the string of obcenities that were coming out of my mouth untill……

The DK deathgrips Kelseth back. Growl on CD, I use my roar.

Now i know nothing about DK’s. I broke my first one before ever leaving the enclave.( if you die, dont release, the NPC will rez you, since there is no way to go from the spirit healer to the enclave, Blizz suggest deleting and rerolling should you find yourself at the spirit healer) Somehow he managed to taunt Kelseth back. The mage….blinked away from the fight and was halfway to the entrance, the shaman(healer) was top dps, and the rogue was cussin about how sap was not working.

I /hug the healer and quit group.

now maybe i am elitist. Maybe i have an ego, since my guildies tell me I am a better tank than a rogue. But i dont lend quarter to DPS that play by themselves in a 5 man environment. If you are in a GROUP, then you are part of that group. Work together. Comunicate. Play the game. Dont QQ about who is at fault for this or that. Overcome the obstacles and finish. or solo another alt to 80.
but the attitude these days does seem to come from guys that dont belong in the heroics being run by overgeared players that donate easy loot and badges. Once you remove the overgeared players, you have only noob players with more gear than they know what to do with. And the attitude that they deserve more.

Now, I’ve never played a paladin, but I know they have “drop a glowy hammer on the bad guy’s head” abilities and “gather up stray mobs” abilities and “kill stuff” abilities. This paladin didn’t use any of them, just ran up to something and started attacking it, leaving other mobs on everyone else. This was not a tank that was having trouble holding aggro. This was a tank that Wasn’t. Tanking. At. All. There was some “WTF” and the “tank’s” response amazed me:

“It’s only SFK, we’re nowhere near dying, no big deal.”

So we keep going, the shaman is being the tankiest of everyone, I’m healing the crap out of everyone, including myself, and running out of mana constantly. Oh, and the rogue was spamming recount and the rogue and shaman were both bragging about their heirlooms. I now believe all the unbelievable stories you all post here.

More WTFs ensue when I can’t keep up with the chaos and people die. Paladin bails, we kick the rogue, and requeue, but the shaman keeps going, running out of LOS from me and bitching when my heals are late.

Then he says “It’s only SFK, I could run it by myself.”

I can’t help myself, and say “Ok, you have fun with that” and leave.

It almost came around from terrible to awesome in the “I can’t believe people can be this moronic” way.

seems to me the gradually decreasing maturity level of players is an ongoing trend, and it’s not likely to get better. as the game gets dumber and dumber, it gets easier and easier to find groups with children and turned-80-yesterday nooblets. just a fact we’re going to have to deal with. the new LFG system makes it even more likely that you’ll get these groups, and from my experience, there’s only one thing to do about it – tank it yourself.

personally i’d just as well dps in many cases, but out of pure fear of fail tanks, i don’t. i just tank it. if you have a heal spec and a tank spec, the best way to avoid these situations is just tank yourself. bears generate enough threat to keep aggro on all mobs 99% of the time regardless, simply spamming swipe and running around in circles. if one does get loose, just taunt it.

if you can keep control of everything, you don’t need to worry about how much the dps fails. healers only have 1 thing to worry about – not letting the bear die – so it’s not exactly rocket science for them either.

i’ve done the random heroic every day since the patch. in about 50% of those runs, i end up 1st in damage at the end. i’m not trying to say my dps is good, but that so far, in about 50% of the random groups i’ve run with, the dps is absolutely awful. still, you can overcome this enormous tidal wave of miserable failure by… being a rockstar tank.

so yeah, rockstar tanks ftw.

People pulling and attacking random targets, even with marks up. DPS not listening to rules, even if it’ll keep them alive, etc. We see it the most in heroic Halls of Reflection. Its gotten to the point where we do the three strike rule. Its mean, but we can’t tolerate it anymore. If you don’t listen to the guidance and we spoke to you three times: I’m not healing you. Most of the time it either scares people straight or they leave and we can easily replace another DPS.

Hell, before this random LFG tool, there were people who we know who are nice, but are completely incompetent when it comes to instances. We have to tell them how to spec, what stats to go into for their class/spec. And it could be chalked up to being that they’re just oblivious and don’t pay attention. Yet, if we do heroics with them, they ignore all the rules and guidelines, yell at us when they die, and then even have the nerve to roll Need on items for offspec against others who need it for main and then fight and bitch nonstop if we try to correct their actions.

As a tank and healer, I really believe that Wrath made DPS lazy. I don’t care if someone has an amazing gearscore and has the best gear there is. If you don’t listen and pay attention to what is going on, its not going to help the group at all – but make it much harder.

Hmm think u mixed things up a bit :)

Mobs CAN dodge attacks from behind. They can NOT parry attacks from behind. (Thats why dps should get some expertise to get rid off the dodges)

But i was laughing so much i fell almost off my sofa while reading your blog this time.

Good blog good writing i just love u, keep it that way PLEASE!

oh and hey I DONT LIKE COUNTRYMUSIC AT ALL! please kick me !!!!

fae from kazzak europe

On the other hand, my worst group was in UP. As a feral druid tank geared to run Icc25, I was doing about 60% of the dmg every pull or boss and outhealing the tree druid with my ImpLeader of the Pack. The tree druid was healing with my old tanking weapon and was spec’d 0/0/71, the ret paladin didn’t judge a single time the entire run … not ONCE. It’s possible he had no seal up either. The affliction warlock was using Curse of Doom on trash, cast haunt a total of once and had an unhealthy obsession with incinerate. The rogue, bless his heart, was doing everything he could with the 95% green quest gear he had.

The whole run made me want to cry. I’m ashamed to say that after the 5th wipe on the Skadi boss (8 wipe overall) I politely said that this group wasn’t gonna be able to clear it and bailed on them.

Whoops!”

You’re getting sloppy, big old bear.^^

It’s expertise not hit to avoid mob’s dodging, hit is more to avoid one’s own misses, I’m sure you know. ;)

Care to share your version? I haven’t actually done it yet because I also happen to think it’ll make me sound like a prick, but hey you’re the second person I’ve had tell me they already started using it, and I’m tired of people not getting the fact that I actually do know what I’m doing.
.-= Kaethir´s last blog ..Yet another Primer Followup =-.