Tanks

[Cephius]

I've been playing WoW on and off, but I've tanked on two different classes now and it's frustrating when people 1) pull for you instead of simply asking to pull faster and 2) roll on tank loot. (note: in heros)

If you're tanking you're automatically the party leader. You dictate what to pull and when, and you're capable of carrying the group if you're good enough. Even the best healer or DPS can't carry the group if you have a shitty tank, so it's a unique position. It's also a thankless job, because in a world where people only care about meters and loot, the tank is the last to get credit but the first to blame if people die.

It's my belief that in exchange for that, tanks get first pick of tank loot (crazy idea, right?) when it drops. There's nothing worse than tanking the whole instance only to have the shitty dps (who's alt spec isnt even in protection/frost/etc) need it and win it. Want tank loot? Get badges and get T9, then tank things yourself.

I don't see why rolling on tank loot is a problem in raids. Most raiding guilds only have a few main tanks. They are normally the first to get hooked up, and tank loot is generally the first stuff that ends up going to alts or getting disenchanted. If your healer wants tank loot, how about you just wait a few runs?

[Kaylia]

Here's one thing that really tends to irritate me. In a standard 25man raid it's general 2tanks 5heals 18dps. When DPS gear drops generally 4-6 players roll on it. When healing gear drops generally 1-3 roll on it. When tank gear drops either 1 tank gets it or they both roll. So in the event that a healer who needs absolutely no healing gear from said raids wants to roll on tank gear why is he or she shunned? DPS has to roll against sooooo many other people I don't think tanks should cry because they have 1 more roll against them instead of 15+

Tank mentality

This can be said about healers too. Why do tanks think they're ALL that. Specially low level. "you pull you tank!' "if you pull one more time im out" etc etc. It's like they think the other players should give 2 shits about them.

sup?

In 10 man, it rarely make a difference for gears. You have 2 tank that are most likely using plate, and there is 3-4 possible dps set for 6 melee. DPS got it bad for trinket in 25 man though.


After trying all 3 jobs, I have to say that tanking is the most stressful out of the 3 (for me). You get blammed a lot more on tank if you screw up and your mistake rarely get unoticed. I'm not saying anyone should ever act as a jerk, but it's probably why many tanks end up taking this attitude as some sort of defense against criticism.

If you're tanking you're automatically the party leader. You dictate what to pull and when, and you're capable of carrying the group if you're good enough. Even the best healer or DPS can't carry the group if you have a shitty tank, so it's a unique position. It's also a thankless job, because in a world where people only care about meters and loot, the tank is the last to get credit but the first to blame if people die.

Something like this.


The worst part on tank is learning encounter in PUG. Unless you're doing it on the release, don't expect any praise , because people won't be happy, even if no one dies and you win the encounter.

[altwight]

lolol funny experience with a tank just now

On my 64 mage doing ramps with a group.

The warlock and the tank were talking about LIFE TAP and the DK tank says that he doesn't heal warlocks who use life tap on his druids because they overuse it and it makes them suicidal.

this struck my attention:

me>> so you really don't heal locks who use a skill they have every right to use just because it damages themselves?
dk tank>> nope
me>> ima stop healing DK tanks who use DnD because it makes the mobs attack them so they're directly damaging themselves

and he freakin rage quits. SERIOUSLY GUYS?

[Plow]

I'm a healer and I agree with the war thing I told my buddy that. "I can understand if it was a warrior tank since they suck at holding threat on multiple mobs without pulling first"

Well, first off, after having read this, I can say quite clearly you should probably figure out what you're talking about first.

Thunderclap is the most effective tool for picking up random shit that someone else pulled by MILES AND MILES.

If it's a dps that can survive standing in our consecrate, sure, a pally's threat will add up competitively, especially once we get to the second hammer and can cover the whole group with it.

But when it comes to "oh shit that guy pulled gotta grab that whole group," nothing comes remotely close to thunderclap.


Anyway....


It's mostly just that slow tanks tend to be dumb, lazy tanks (or distracted). If they don't want the intensity of pulling quickly, you can be quite certain they don't want the intensity of grabbing whole groups that someone else pulled quickly.

Check out the tank forums, it's embarrassing how many threads there are that are basically "If you don't behave exactly how I like I'm going to stand there pissing you off as much as possible and hopefully get you killed asap, because I'm a tank and I can just requeue anytime."

moreso heroics, loot thing was about raids. i still find it dumb that with dual spec tanks are like 'NO THAT'S MINE!' especially when someone is already gear'd and is trying to gear their offspec. if it's not announced i can see a problem but i was talking about telling the raid leader you'd like to mainspec your offspec.

just because a player plays more and is able to gear faster than you doesn't mean he or she should be hindered by your lack of ability to play.

Sure, there's "16 people rolling on dps gear." I know my mage wants the exact same loot as that fury war over there.

I also know my pally healer wants the exact same loot as that druid healer over there, right? (sadly that's a bad example cuz we do want to jack shammy loot, but that's another story lol)


Meanwhile, there's 1 stam trinket in all of Icecrown.

There's 1 ring with armor in 10 uld and another in 25. Then there's 1 in 10 man toc, and one in 25 man ICC. That's it.

There's 1 armor trinket from raids in the entire expansion.

There's 1 weapon with armor in the ENTIRE EXPANSION.

Shield drops are just plain stupidly rare outside icehowl 25 and anub 10, for pretty much the entire expansion.

etc. etc.

Do you want tanks rolling against you for their dps offspec when you still need the loot?


The fact is raids that are run main spec > offspec are a really simple concept. If they'll accept you ahead of time as a different spec but rolling tank gear for your offspec, that's fine. If not, then don't go if you don't like it.

Nobody's going to bitch at you for paying as much as you want for tank gear in a gdkp.

I've always felt that... y'know... talking to your heroics group is more effective.

Wish I played in your battlegroup, trying to tell people things in random heroics in bloodlust almost always results in an intense hatred, utterly being ignored, and just general shitheadedness altogether.


HERP DERP I HAVE 37k HP BUFFED LIKE I'M GOING TO LISTEN TO SOME MAGE ABOUT HOW TO TANK TYRANNUS, IN FACT I THINK I'LL INTENTIONALLY FACE HIM AWAY FROM THE FROST SO I'M GUARANTEED TO GET OWNED IN THE FACE.

I DON'T CARE IF WE JUST FUCKING WIPED BECAUSE I'M RETARDED AND REFUSED TO EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR STATEMENTS AND AS A SOLO MAGE YOU LASTED TWICE AS LONG AS I DID TANKING HIM WITH A HEALER, I'M DOING THE SAME SHIT AGAIN.



sorry, bad day in pos random yesterday

[Plow]

In 10 man, it rarely make a difference for gears. You have 2 tank that are most likely using plate, and there is 3-4 possible dps set for 6 melee. DPS got it bad for trinket in 25 man though.


After trying all 3 jobs, I have to say that tanking is the most stressful out of the 3 (for me). You get blammed a lot more on tank if you screw up and your mistake rarely get unoticed. I'm not saying anyone should ever act as a jerk, but it's probably why many tanks end up taking this attitude as some sort of defense against criticism.



Something like this.


The worst part on tank is learning encounter in PUG. Unless you're doing it on the release, don't expect any praise , because people won't be happy, even if no one dies and you win the encounter.

lol I remember coming into toc10, my first week back since before uld was out, the week twins came out

At the first boss I stated that I hadn't done it before. Raid chat spams with "oh god inc mass wipes qq blah blah why did we get him etc. etc."

All the shit talk you can expect when they think the tank might not be perfect.

We then proceeded to 1 shot every single boss except, of course, FC.


And of course, as you stated, never a single word of praise, or even an "ok he didn't do so bad," or anything.


But... I find that the better the player, the more likely I am to get compliments from them, which is comforting in some respects. I get comments in heroics sometimes like not too long ago when I got a crazy good rogue and mage that queued together from tich, and at one point the rogue says "mage (can't remember name), I like this tank, can we keep her?"

[Korietsu]

i usually say this in the beginning "let's do this fast please"

i said that at the start of a gundrak this morning and got "no" from the tank so after he pulled i pulled another bunch. everyone's health was fine aggro was fine im the healer my mana was fine (infinite holydin) but the tank ragequit and said 'if you wanna go fast then don't q at all' o.O?

i'll ask nicely once, after that the 'pull plox!' comes into play.

Enjoy your next 35 min sitting in queue, or your repair bill. I just plain wont pick up aggro if DPS starts pulling shit. If heals start pulling shit, I'll just rock the vote kick button, or pull unbearably fast so that they understand they're stupid.

I'll judge the speed after the first few pulls and pick it up but there's no reason to completely ignore common sense on the part of everyone else. Mabey your tank doesn't know how to chain pull well, mabey they're not that well geared. etc.

[Pendas]

Honestly, as someone who has played both tank and healer, you have bad seeds all over the place. I generally prefer pulling as a tank (especially DK, since runes are time based) because a DPS can't see my timers and doesn't know if I had to waste a rune to pop a CD last fight or whatever the situation may be. There's nothing worse than a dps pulling a pack when your threat abilities are on CD because he "wants things to go faster" then blames the tank when he dies.

On the other end, I've had tanks that swear they're Gods and attempt to chain pull packs and expect the healer to keep his elitist ass alive. Had one the other day who chain-pulled packs in Forge of Souls (Yes, those fucked up AoE Bonecaster packs). When I told him to take it easy and take them one at a time he called me a shitty healer (even though I healed through it) and voted to kick me.

The warlock and the tank were talking about LIFE TAP and the DK tank says that he doesn't heal warlocks who use life tap on his druids because they overuse it and it makes them suicidal.

Seriously, this shit is stupid. No healer should complain unless the lock literally takes himself past 50% mid-battle. Much less a DRUID, one Rejuv and he's more than topped off.

[Siniroth]

Seriously, this shit is stupid. No healer should complain unless the lock literally takes himself past 50% mid-battle. Much less a DRUID, one Rejuv and he's more than topped off.

I can understand if they get locks that use all thier mana then life tap back to full, cause that's retarded, but honestly, lets see them work as a lock without life tapping ever (sans affliction with dark pact, but this is heroics so lol affliction), then I'll start

[Marcin]

Well, first off, after having read this, I can say quite clearly you should probably figure out what you're talking about first.

Thunderclap is the most effective tool for picking up random shit that someone else pulled by MILES AND MILES.

If it's a dps that can survive standing in our consecrate, sure, a pally's threat will add up competitively, especially once we get to the second hammer and can cover the whole group with it.

But when it comes to "oh shit that guy pulled gotta grab that whole group," nothing comes remotely close to thunderclap.

^
This warrior has terrible AE((Multi-mob tanking to be more precise) nonsense is annoying to see everywhere. I'm a protection warrior, I pull heroics quickly, I also don't care if someone else pulls. Thunderclap lined up with a nice shockwave allows me to tab target shield slams, devestates and heroic strikes. It isn't hard to look at omen to see what you should tab to next to shield slam. Bad warriors are bad.

LOLS LOOK AT ME JUST CLEAVE AND HOPE FOR THE BEST ITS OKAY THOUGH WARRIORS HAVE TERRIBLE AOE.

[Halion]

I've had all my experience on 5mans almost exclusively with a friend who is a war tank. Based on that I would wager that some tanks who aren't the normal personality-based prima donna that any class can be are pushed to be a little more so by other people's attitude towards them. I think I got angrier in his defense sometimes than he did for himself.
Less than a week after hitting 80 every other healer we grouped with would say one or both of "LOL that is really your health?" within 10s of entering and "Faster faster faster" throughout the run with many raid geared dps also chiming in on tooslow when in fact he was doing a really good job for being a new and first time 80 and gets compliments constantly from healers that aren't dicks.
He is a little slow on pulls because some people are up his ass the second we enter about why we aren't going yet and others sit there buffing and whatnot for 5 minutes before they're ready.
I don't envy tanks in that, they're trying to please everyone all the time without knowing what it is that will please people. So maybe the first time in a night someone else makes his job harder he brushes it off but over the course of doing many heroics he gets to the point where people pulling aggro on the mobs that aren't marked for kills yet are just going to die. Stupid dps aoeing when he hasn't had enough rage to do an AoE yet etc.

We'd actually had multiple groups come apart after a wipe in the beginning of AN, before we were 80 and didn't know better, where the DPS and/or healers knew the kill order (because of the stalkers) but instead of correcting him after he marked the boss first they just dpsed the stalker off the pull and died. When they ignore his order like that and no one ever says the reason why we chalk it up to epeen dps trying to win the meters. Now we know better - after a pally healer who was a total dick and didn't do anything on the first pull group except say how much of a better tank he was on his offspec then let my friend die on the second group to prove how awesome he is left our group, the spriest changed to healing spec and explained about the stalkers.

I can easily understand how people who are less patient or don't deal well with/like confrontation "ragequit" and try to find a group that won't be assholes to them.

[Siniroth]

So maybe the first time in a night someone else makes his job harder he brushes it off but over the course of doing many heroics he gets to the point where people pulling aggro on the mobs that aren't marked for kills yet are just going to die.

Waiting until he's annoyed before that happens? If I take the time to mark (PoS comes to mind with flamebearers) and Random Mage 394727 wants to use blizzard, and pulls threat off my death and decay, and forgets he has ice block, he's dying

[Acturus]

Wish I played in your battlegroup, trying to tell people things in random heroics in bloodlust almost always results in an intense hatred, utterly being ignored, and just general shitheadedness altogether.


HERP DERP I HAVE 37k HP BUFFED LIKE I'M GOING TO LISTEN TO SOME MAGE ABOUT HOW TO TANK TYRANNUS, IN FACT I THINK I'LL INTENTIONALLY FACE HIM AWAY FROM THE FROST SO I'M GUARANTEED TO GET OWNED IN THE FACE.

I DON'T CARE IF WE JUST FUCKING WIPED BECAUSE I'M RETARDED AND REFUSED TO EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR STATEMENTS AND AS A SOLO MAGE YOU LASTED TWICE AS LONG AS I DID TANKING HIM WITH A HEALER, I'M DOING THE SAME SHIT AGAIN.

sorry, bad day in pos random yesterday

lol, it happens. And my thing is that I like smooth runs. I know from MMO experience that smooth runs happen when everyone is on the same page, and the odds of everyone beinig magically on the same page without some discussion are pretty fucking slim.

I'll reach into my prissy healer bag on occassion, but only in response to blatant ignorance. Saying a couple lines of chat takes all of 30 seconds, generally won't make or break anyone's dungeon cooldown timer, and will almost always result in a more intelligent run.

This saves me from chugging Mylanta over retarded PUG'ers, and I'm fine with that.

[Cephius]

^
This warrior has terrible AE((Multi-mob tanking to be more precise) nonsense is annoying to see everywhere. I'm a protection warrior, I pull heroics quickly, I also don't care if someone else pulls. Thunderclap lined up with a nice shockwave allows me to tab target shield slams, devestates and heroic strikes. It isn't hard to look at omen to see what you should tab to next to shield slam. Bad warriors are bad.

LOLS LOOK AT ME JUST CLEAVE AND HOPE FOR THE BEST ITS OKAY THOUGH WARRIORS HAVE TERRIBLE AOE.

Warriors certainly aren't as bad at multi-mob tanking as people make it out to be, but the problem is it takes slightly more effort compared to a Paladin. Like you said, you need to tab between mobs and burn your long cooldown to ensure the group stays on you. Where as a Paladin who sticks to the 969 tanking rotation probably won't have to bother tabbing.

So it's not that warriors can't AE tank, it's just joe schmo warrior is worse than joe schmo paladin.

[Tricen]

My new favorite thing. My friend and I queue as Tank and heals. He goes as ret with righteous fury. I spam lesser healing waves. Instances done instantly. Many lulz.

[Eaglestrike]

Warriors certainly aren't as bad at multi-mob tanking as people make it out to be, but the problem is it takes slightly more effort compared to a Paladin. Like you said, you need to tab between mobs and burn your long cooldown to ensure the group stays on you. Where as a Paladin who sticks to the 969 tanking rotation probably won't have to bother tabbing.

So it's not that warriors can't AE tank, it's just joe schmo warrior is worse than joe schmo paladin.

Warriors need to tab if there are more than 2 mobs, paladins need to tab if there are more than 3 mobs. It's not the difference everyone claims it is.

[Cephius]

Warriors need to tab if there are more than 2 mobs, paladins need to tab if there are more than 3 mobs. It's not the difference everyone claims it is.

I never said there was a huge difference. Just that it takes more effort for the warrior. A paladin specced into Seal of Command and glyphed for HotR never has to tab unless he's with extreme dps that are focus firing a different mob. In which case it's probably dead before he tabs to it anyway. So if you take your average nub paladin and your average nub warrior, the paladin AE tanks better because it requires less effort, which is why there's a stereotype. Clearly, a warrior who even slightly gives a shit will be just as good as any paladin.

[Norellicus]

Paladins and Death Knights also have the 'luxury' of their resources being available to them before the pull, not during/after. Rage must be generated before it can be spent and bloodrage only goes so far.

[Eaglestrike]

Paladins and Death Knights also have the 'luxury' of their resources being available to them before the pull, not during/after. Rage must be generated before it can be spent and bloodrage only goes so far.

DK's are pretty terrible if shit goes wrong midway through a fight though. DnD requires half your runes off cooldown and generally I sit with 1 or 2 runes up at best and I'm already pressing my buttons to use them as they come back to me.

Whereas warriors generally always have a way to pick things up mid-pull, druids aren't that bad either, swipe and thunderclap are pretty good because they are unlimited target burst or burst-ish threat generation.

And really rage mechanics work so you should be rushing off to the next pull asap, it's pretty easy to end a pull at full or near full rage, which puts you in the same boat for the next group of mobs as any DK or paladin.

[Norellicus]

DK's are pretty terrible if shit goes wrong midway through a fight though. DnD requires half your runes off cooldown and generally I sit with 1 or 2 runes up at best and I'm already pressing my buttons to use them as they come back to me.

Whereas warriors generally always have a way to pick things up mid-pull, druids aren't that bad either, swipe and thunderclap are pretty good because they are unlimited target burst or burst-ish threat generation.

And really rage mechanics work so you should be rushing off to the next pull asap, it's pretty easy to end a pull at full or near full rage, which puts you in the same boat for the next group of mobs as any DK or paladin.

I'm not arguing for/against the chain pulling with that statement, it's just a flag as to why not all tanks are created equal.

But on that note, I'd hazard that most of the at-fault dps we're discussing here aren't looking at my rage bar and just figure "full health k GOGOGO"...and I end up dumping all of my rage pulling trash packs quite often, plus the fact that if I shift out to refresh buffs I lose it all anyway. Bear charge costs rage, not generates it, so warriors are actually better off in that regard with Warbringer...but it's still something that has to be considered.

And believe me I know all about DnD causing all kinds of shit with trigger happy groups, been leveling a DK myself. It's really a no-win situation, if I drop DnD to get initial aggro I inevitably lose something due to rune cooldowns, and someone bitches. I've taken to dropping it before pulling and DGing in the caster of the group so the runes are already on their way back up, but inevitably I get yelled at by someone who's got an 80 DK for wasting the DnD ticks or wasting one of my taunts just to make a pull.

I've almost considered just not even using DnD and getting diseases up/pest/BB spam but that's a lot of GCDs to get threat on everything. DnD is a quick 10-20k threat grab.

[fantasticdan]

Warriors need to tab if there are more than 2 mobs, paladins need to tab if there are more than 3 mobs. It's not the difference everyone claims it is.

Wut? I rarely need to tab target between mobs in aoe pulls on my prot paladin ever. Only time I lose threat to someone that doesn't severely outgear me is if they're being a retard and single-target dpsing a mob that isn't my target on a big aoe pull. And even than, I can use mouseover taunt/righteous defense taunt macros before I need to bother with tabbing around.