The place: Utgarde Keep. The time: I don’t know, there are no windows in the beginning. The people: Me, the Resto Shaman. A Mage, a Death Knight, a Ret Paladin, and a Prot Warrior. Five players with an intertwined fate. The goal: Frost Emblems. The affliction: a tank’s self-appointed sense of entitlement. Follow me now as I walk you through not one, not two, but three tanks that made this potentially 15-minute run a one-hour nightmare.
Chapter One – Prot Warrior
Everyone steps into the entrance. Utgarde Keep. Relatively easy, right? Of course. This is a cake-walk, even for a newly-minted 80. Speaking of which, the Mage was brand new. Supposedly, he also has a fully-geared main, which I could tell by the way he was talking. We start to buff.
I obviously put up Earth Shield on the Prot Warrior, and set up my totems for a mostly-melee group with a DK. I always try to be more conscious of totem selection with regard to group composition. The Mage throws up Arcane Brilliance, and the Paladin starts putting Blessing of Kings on everyone. The 10-minute version, not Greater Blessing of Kings. Cue the temper tantrum from the Warrior:
Warrior: “What the fuck, dude? Give me 30min Kings”
Paladin: “Sorry, I’m out of reagents. When the 10min falls off, I’ll rebuff.”
Warrior: “No, I’m not pulling until you give me 30min Kings.”
Mage: “It’s no big deal, he’ll just rebuff.”
Warrior: “STFU noob, GIVE ME 30 NAO, OR YOU CAN WAIT FOR ANUTHR 30 MINUTES 4 A NEW TANK.”
Me: “Hey hey, let’s all get along. We’ll be done with this whole instance in 10 minutes. No need to get uppity there, Mr. Tank.”
{Warrior pulls the first 4 groups, then teleports out of the dungeon. Paladin throws up Righteous Fury, I spam Healing Wave, and we survive.}
To the Warrior: Congratulations! Your two-year-old temper tantrum just earned you a 15-minute Deserter Buff. In the upcoming patch, it’ll cost you 30-minutes. Beggers can’t be choosers. We would all rather wait in the queue than put up with immaturity.
Chapter Two – Feral Druid
The four of us sit around and chat for a while, waiting for a new tank. All four of us are actively engaged in conversation about alts, specs, our raiding experience. All-in-all, a very nice group of people. A Feral Druid joins the group and zones in. We all send our greetings. No words, he/she just starts pulling. It’s fine. I can keep up.
We get to the room with all the drakes. The Druid proceeds to pull every mob in the whole room. Now, my Resto Shaman is pretty decently geared. I’ve two-healed 10man Marrowgar before. A chain-pulling Druid is the least of my worries. However, these mobs do a knockback, which puts a dent in everyone’s DPS when there’s multiple of them. Melee are constantly running back in to get one hit on a mob before they’re knocked back by another. My two cents about this:
- No need to pull each and every mob if we’re all here for Frosties.
- The constant combined knockbacks add more time than just pulling them in packs of 2s.
Also, in the Druid’s mastubatory aggro bath, everyone’s getting flame-breath’d. I’m confident in my skills as a healer, so everyone lived, but is that chest-thumping display of “tanking” really necessary? Are we all supposed to fawn over his/her amazing “skills”? (Don’t you all like my “quotes”?)
My issue comes with fighting the first boss, Prince Keleseth. During the Love is in the Air event, Prince Keleseth drops the Bouquet of Red Roses, necessary for the Meta Achievement, Fool for Love. The roses drop, and the Druid clicks Need, promptly followed by this jewel of a phrase:
“If you guys want me to keep tanking, you’ll pass on the roses.”
Now, I’m not sure if the Mage didn’t see that or decided to click Need anyways, but the Mage won and got his achievement. Not two seconds later, the Druid drops the group without saying a word.
To the Druid: Dude, there are plenty of other places to get the roses. This was the second day of the event. Plenty of time left. You don’t get any bonuses for speed (insert: “That’s what she said”).
Chapter Three – Prot Paladin
Well, we wait for another unimportant length of time, laughing about how ridiculous people are being today. Our new tank is a Prot Paladin, and zones in to join us. We let him know right off the bat that the first boss is down, and our first two tanks had attitude problems. He/She asks what happened. We give the whole truth, and the Prot Pally laughs. Pulls incoming.
Things go swimmingly. No aggro issues, and very considerate. Only thing I notice is that as a Resto Shaman, I have more health than this Prot Paladin (~23k Health). No big deal. Everyone started somewhere, right?
We get to the final boss, and the fight goes along really well. Let me just say that one point, way before the final boss, the Mage says, “I really hope Annhylde’s Ring drops.” Sure enough, the ring drops. We all congratulate the mage, seeing as he’s the only spell-caster there that could use the ring. The DK, the Ret Pally, and I all pass. The Mage clicks Need, and we wait. The Prot Pally has yet to (we hope) pass on the loot.
Nope. After about 15 seconds of silence, the Prot Pally clicks Need and wins the ring. In my experience, it’s usually polite to ask permission to roll on something that’s not your main spec. I’m sure that if the Prot Pally had mentioned something about wanting the ring for a Holy spec (I don’t know if that ring would be good or not), we would’ve had little issue. When the Mage confronted the Paladin, this was the reply:
“u shud be lucky i tankd 4 u at all”
And promptly left the group.
To the Paladin: If I would’ve known you were a d-bag, then ‘u shud be lucky i heald u at all.’ A simple, “Hey, can I roll Need for my off-spec?” or “Hey, Holy is actually my main spec, so if it’s alright, I’d like to click Need.” would’ve saved you some trouble, and saved me the trouble of writing your chapter.
Epilogue
I know that as a healer, it’s relatively easy for me to get groups, but that doesn’t give me the right to go flaunt my “huevos” as God’s gift to LFG. It could very well be that I just got a really bad sample of the community within one Heroic Dungeon, but it got me thinking. Do we, as healers, feel a sense of entitlement with regard to our role in a dungeon? Do we feel more entitled to certain benefits because we are one of two roles in short supply? How about this:
- If there’s no tank, the healer dies.
- If there’s no healer, the tank dies.
- If there’s no DPS, the mob never dies.
Granted, that’s very generally speaking, but everyone in that group deserves every chance at what drops. No need for anyone to feel “holier than thou.”
Email: Elder.Thespius@gmail.com | Twitter: @Thespius
I love this post. I have, since the beginning of the LFG tool, felt that tanks (just because they are few and in between) take it upon themselves that they are the high and mighty…they ALMIGHTY…and we are expected to follow with them without thoughts, questions, or comments.
I think one thing they need to realize pretty quickly is (as you said) “Without a healer the tank dies.” I think a lot of us healy types, we don’t think we are entitled by our skills, but we feel it is time to stop being walked all over. I think people see us as the “support” roles and therefore we don’t even get the respect we should.
I think every tank should read this and realize that without a group YOU ARE NOTHING.
PS. Yeah I know people run out of reagents, but symbols of kings stack to 100…it is annoying when people run out. ((whisper) but not something to throw a tiffy over).
Your asshole tanks sure are a lot more talkative than the one’s I’ve run across!
I certainly don’t feel entitled because most of the time I’m not really playing very hard. (Also because I’m not a massive jerk.) The only time I do is when someone does something stupid, no one dies, and a couple people, probably DPS, pat themselves on the back about being “pro.”
That’s about the only time I feel the need to smack people down with something like “If you guys weren’t such idiots, I wouldn’t need to be so good.
.-= Cal´s last blog ..The Last Question and WordPress Combine for Unsettlingness =-.
Yes sometimes tanks get a sense of entitlement but the reverse is true as well. I have 3 tanks , warrior , dk , pally. In almost every group , they expect a zergfeast on the mobs to the boss. If I dont pull fast enough for them I can expect to have the following happen:
1. gogogogogogogo in party chat over and over again – annoying.
2. DPS or healer starts pulling for me since my pace is slower than they like.
I usually warn them the first couple of times about this but then if it keeps up , if we are not more than 50% thru the instance , I would probably drop now and find another group. Now with a 30 minute timer that would give me pause.
Bottom line all the people in a random group need to not act like azzhats and let each role do its job. Not all people are geared equally.
The first thing that shocked me is – people actually speak in your random Heroic groups? Of course, after reading some of those Mensa-like comments, I think I’m better off with getting little more than a “Hi” out of my random group-mates.
Honestly though, it’s much more entertaining to read other’s experiences in these randoms than to have to live through them personally. Only had one rough experience so far, thank goodness, but I would imagine that healers and tanks would have many more war stories like these.
.-= The Rokk´s last blog ..Blizzcon ’10 – Coming Soon? =-.
Every time a tank says “do this or i’ll drop group” I leave group…I’m usually the healer and have a few dps friends with me.
I’m sooo sick of “tanks” being divas it isn’t even funny, I’d rather not do the run at all than to give in to demands. I have two kids I parent full time and one I parent part time, I don’t need to coddle a tank too!
Of course on my main, I have tanks readily available to farm frosts, but on my alts who are still leveling, I consider doing the random dungeon a break from questing at best, so a temperamental tank isn’t going to get much pity from me!
.-= Almostaraider´s last blog ..Mods* to help you shine as a healer =-.
Stories like this are getting more and more common everyday. It makes me a bit sad to be a tank and see immature people making Tanks look bad.
I was running UK on my Mage the other day when the Tank pulled the whole room with dragons knocking people back and spewing flame breath all over. My thought was, wouldn’t it have been quicker to just go down one side like we used to rather than pull the whole room?
It’s a shame that there are Tanks that know they get instant queues and are using it to their advantage to treat other people like crap. I’m finding more and more that people are becoming increasingly disrespectful in random heroic pugs.
I try to urge everyone to show each other more respect and this was an issue we covered on the last episode of our podcast. As a tank, I myself will try to respect my healers and dps, and in the meantime continue to tolerate being told that buffing people is taking too long and waiting for the healer to drink is taking too long and I need to hurry up my pulls.
.-= Jason Z´s last blog ..WoWphiles Podcast Show #20 =-.
Just reading that post made my blood pressure rise.
95% of my LFD experiences for heroics have been good (LFD at lower levels is a completely different story). I haven’t had much personal experience with entitled tanks, but I know they’re out there. I have seen blog posts from tanks about how the tank “has the power” and everyone needs to respect that. I promptly unsubscribed from those blogs.
However, I don’t think it’s a case of tank (or healer) entitlement. I think it’s a case of douchebag vs. decent human being. If you’re jerk who thinks you’re better than the other people in your group it will come out no matter what role you play.
.-= Jasyla´s last blog ..I hate you Sony =-.
Tanks and healers are definitely in a position of privilege on account of their high demand. Two of my level 80s are tank/healer and the third is pure healer, so I have occasionally used this privilege to influence the group, but usually it’s been for the better.
The problem I encounter most frequently is impatient DPS who want to start pulls. My rule is that everybody gets a freebie, which I’ll politely announce with a message /p along the lines of: “I’d really appreciate it if you let the tank start the pulls. If you really want to pull something else, you should be prepared to tank it :)” Nine times out of ten, that does the job. If they insist on starting another pull, though, I’ll either withhold heals or withhold tanking.
Some might call it an abuse of power, but part of me feels compelled to retaliate against someone deliberately making my life more difficult for no good reason.
If it’s any consolation, I actually experienced a non-douche while using the LFD. I was running with some guildies last night and we had to pick up a dps as our 5th. We got into HVH.
Although we all said hi, this arms warrior was pretty quiet. As curiosity gets the better of us, we inspected him. As I was the tank, I was instantly filled with fear. Why? Well, because I’m running around in ilvl-245 or LESS (and my guildies in similar gear) – and this guy, ilvl-245 or MORE. Now, it’s only HVH and our healer is pretty damn good, I still don’t like losing aggro to DPS. And this guy’s gear screamed “aggro magnet!” And like MultiTank said above, plenty of DPS can be major asshats as well.
So, we start it up, and what does this guy do? Well, lo’ and behold… he actually holds off for a bit and lets me build up aggro. I was both shocked and thankful that despite being quiet, he was courteous and paced himself accordingly. Other than some targetting issues with the group pulls, I never lost aggro. And this guy never got impatient. It was refreshing.
It’s funny to think that with all the blogs and all the complaints about asshats with the LFD, it’s kind of disturbing that the problem still hasn’t gone away. There are still a plethora of dillholes out there. But it’s nice to know that at least not EVERYONE out there is a tool.
.-= Darthregis´s last blog ..Tranquility doesn’t entirely suck =-.
MultiTank has it right, there’s too much entitlement in EVERY role these days. Heroics have gotten so fast and so chore-like that people forget that they’re not actually a tedious collect-nine-boar-livers style daily. You’re liable to meet people in there who aren’t after the fastest possible frost emblems, and they have as much right to be there as you do.
When I’m healing with my main I run into both “power whore” tanks and “gogogo” dps, and when I run on my mage I see the “omg, this is so slow I could out-dps you in my holy spec” healers.
It’s an epidemic.
.-= Rhii´s last blog ..A Dedicated Raiding Guild =-.
“Do we, as healers, feel a sense of entitlement with regard to our role in a dungeon?”
I personally do not. However, it’s become clear to me as a certain thread on Plus Heal keeps on spinning along, that many healers do.
Your story and the one from Lodur the other day remind me why I try to stay out of the LFG system as much as possible. I’ll take a run with my guildies any day (even the ones who are not great players or not well-geared) over the kind of crud I see being written about everyday.
.-= jeffo´s last blog ..‘I’m Just Sayin’ and Other Words of Hate =-.
Its not that some of us tanks are high and mighty, it is more we are tired of always tanking. We would like to dps on our dps classes as well. But since all of the badges and gear are BoP well there goes that.
When I queue as DPS it always feels like a waste of time. If I could gear up my alts while tanking I would gladly tank all the time, when I wanted badges.
.-= Malchome´s last blog ..Posts Coming Soon =-.
The random heroic is quite an interesting beast. I am sure someone out there is writing a thesis on it as I type this. I have healed over 200 of them, and I can honestly say the biggest problems come when people are there for different reasons. When the finder came out, the “Mains” were predominantly in LFG. They were trying it out, getting the pet and title, and soaking up emblems. Sometime around Christmas / New Years that all changed. LFG had a major shift to “Alts”. This is when I started noticing the problems. Instead of getting ICC geared randoms I was getting people who just dinged 80, to people in full ICC gear. Tthe vast majority of Randoms I have done have been nondescript to pleasant runs. You really don’t remember those though. You remember:
The guy who lost a roll on roses and dropped
The guy who won a roll on roses and dropped
The guy who left after talking to the Elder
The guy who was doing the cheev for the love fool, and left
The guy who charges into a room full of mobs while the healer is looting.
The guy who AFK’s constantly
The guy who just dinged 80 and whines about loot.
The raider who has to finish before the timer expires.
The guy making a game out of a random, like only using 1 ability.
The guy who tells everyone else how to play.
The guy who demands we do a cheev. All cheevs not created equal!
etc, etc, etc.
Honestly how many of us would be doing randoms if they didn’t give two Frost Emblems. That’s the hook that throws all these different types together. I usually get a group in 2 sec flat as a healer. I am surprised if I can even close the box before a group is found. Maybe LFG should make us all wait a little longer and try to find a complimentary group instead of putting us with the first 5 people in the queue.
The extended deserter debuff and re-tooled vote kick won’t change things. They aren’t addressing the right problem.
@malchome – And the rest of us are JUST as tired of running LFG, and WE have to wait for 20 minutes for the “pleasure”. You can be done by the time we get to even zone in.
BUT, I completely understand how idiot/a$$hole DPS/healers can make life miserable.
I’m slowly getting better at tanking, so if a tank pulls that crap, I swap specs, and I’ll happily 4-man the rest. (assuming the other 3 will tolerate a slow tank)
.-= SlikRX/Balthazario´s last blog ..Rotation will Spin you Right ‘Round Baby, Right ‘Round =-.
Finally I see somebody with similar expierences!
Since the new LFG system all the tanks behave like they were superheros and unique and important guys, never saying anything and ninjalooting everything or being incredibly rude.
That’s just wrong :/ and makes me feel very sad playing this game now..
.-= Nanuki´s last blog ..Recent Nukis #2 =-.
Dahk, I think you’re exactly right about the Frost Emblems being the reason many of us run randoms. And you’re also right that the changes aren’t going to fix anything. I recently zoned into a random HoR to find that 3 group members were dc’d. I guess they were hoping to be kicked and avoid the 15 min timer. The 30 min timer will just bring more of that kind of nonsense. I’d like to see people who do that get a worse debuff not a free ride. (We did kick them and never managed to fill the group at all.)
I do believe that things have really gone downhill. But it isn’t alts that are the problem. It’s as if more and more of the people using lfg are the ones who are such jerks that lfg is the only way they can get a group. At first I thought lfg was a fun way to get a group. Now I grit my teeth and hope for a good group so I can get my daily emblems and get out. People have gotten ruder, more selfish, and more inconsiderate. Like all the ones described above. Like the players who drop group in Occ at the first wipe on the last boss. When you have people new to it that’s what happens. But replacing the people who drop at that point is impossible so all that time is wasted. I breath a sigh of relief when the group is even just average. Low level gear? Bring on the healing challenge! Fast moving (but still pleasant) tank? Woo hoo! Average, polite group? Hooray! Too bad those are becoming so rare. /sigh
As a healer I actually haven’t had too much trouble with tanks. Yes, sometimes they are severe asshats. But generally, it’s the DPS that are jerks in my opinion. It really irritates me that, according to every rogue and huntard on my battle group, the tank and healer has to have a 5k gearscore, with all epic gems and the most expensive enchants, to tank Gundrak. But they can DPS it as a minty fresh 80, of course, with completely unenchanted gear. But the TANK doesn’t have a GEM in his BRAND NEW HELMET OMGWTFBBQ.
My usual response to complaints from DPS about the tank’s gear is “I’m healing, not you–it’s not your problem. Do your job and only complain if we wipe because the tank’s taking too much damage for me to heal.” (In Gundrak?? Not likely. OK, if the tank’s GS is under 5k i MIGHT have to cast more than ES, HST and the occasional riptide. I might actually have to use my direct healing spells! God forbid!)
What irritates me more than anything is DPS expecting to be carried through by an overgeared tank and healer, and pissed off when they might actually have to… watch aggro, crowd control, interrupt. When people ask for meters, I post interrupts meter. The other day I had a super sweet mage in H-VH. The tank wasn’t amazingly geared, GS about 4k or so… the mage was 5800 GS. So he actually took off some of his gear. His options were to pull aggro and stress out the tank, sit there wanding for half the time, or just go half naked and pew pew to his hearts content. So he took off some of his shiny purples to make the tank’s and my life easier.
That was a very impressive post–and a very good description of tank divas. Luckily, I haven’t encountered the kinds of a-holes you have. The majority of problems I encounter are in the low dps variety. It takes so long as a dps to get into a random heroic that dps, by and large, don’t spend much time bitching and moaning. Perhaps that 30 min debuff will fix that problem–I certainly hope so.
In answer to your question, yes it is good for a Holy Pally. Not all tanks are jerks. This is part of the reason I am so quiet in runs. I like being viewed as an NPC, if they see me as a person they start berating me for every minor issue.
“What WTF why can’t I open up before the tank casts consecrate or the mob gets to it. My LEET DEEPS!! Lrn 2 tank noob.”
Very few people talk to NPCs. I limit conversation and just try to soldier through.
And also I don’t care how you do H VH if I can’t get to the area above the rubble where the mob splits in 2 I tank them by the entrance stairs. As dps please notice I am heading there and adjust accordingly. I don’t see why that is so hard. We didn’t wipe.
I ignore the hate, and I don’t care about the drops, need everything, fine, I just don’t care anymore all I want is frost badges.
“You wanna tank? Fine I will be happy to let you. I didn’t want to tank for a pug anyway. I only did for a guildie. I do decent dps in my tank gear, or the healer will go dps and I will heal. Go ahead I will wait.” I have said this several times. The alleged tank either shuts up, or drops group. You bring such leet skills show them off or shut up.
That has become my attitude now. If I am alone I just heal for my frost emblems, the wait isn’t that much longer. I hate tanking in pugs.
And I don’t tank unless a guildie is healing me, or a dps really, REALLY needs a run through something. Otherwise forget it. I ain’t tanking nothin’ for puggles.
I do try to say “nice group” or something at the end if it was, but I WANT to be viewed as an NPC while the run is going on. No one talks then no one hates. More pew pew less QQ as the kids say.
I rush if the healer can handle it. More rushing means more dps and less hateful typing. The healer is on vent with me so I get an update from her if there is a problem. I am like Arthas in H CoS, I just move at my pace. Mob almost dead move on rinse and repeat.
At the end “thanks for the run and grats on the loot.” /leave party
Sorry but I see this attitude from all types, tanks, dps, and I used to see it in healers, but since I heal usually now… Well I try not to be a jerkwad, and my guildies aren’t not jerkwads to me so now I don’t care if you are. I don’t vote to kick either. Unless someone is doing stuff to wipe us. I just stopped caring. Dungeons that should only take 15 minutes takes an hour, frustrating yes, but tolerable if there isn’t all the hate. I don’t care that you just dinged 80. I don’t care that you are wearing blues and greens, just don’t be a hater.
I still finish them unless I am kicked though. My Tilly used to say, “It’s a sickness.”
.-= Arkaneena´s last blog ..Run Forest Run =-.
Does this really apply to Rogues? I really would rather they eat dirt than waste mana on them when they can’t stop standing in fire or getting one-shotted because they forgot where the tricks button was.
Seriously though, so many people have been right on with their comments. I am personnally tired of being walked on. Got cussed out for letting a dps die and still having 1/2 my mana… even after i pointed out that he took more healing than the tank. Or like last night, on ToC 5-man… the tank complained about low dps when the Shadow sub-boss from the priest (images of the past) didn’t go down after 4 min 55 sec and i went OoM. He certainly didn’t like it when defending the DPS I told him there was no way he was defense capped after the way the boss slapped him around pretty good.
We all can go on and on with stories like this. My favorites are the DPS that don’t think they need to eat between pulls because it is my job to heal them to full.
And, just to add like others above me, my main is a Pally Tank. If you don’t pull fast enought there is always the hunter or rogue or DK that will do it for you. If you try and wait for people to get their mana or health up… as a tank your are ridiculed and trashed for being considerate. So over time you do get callused to it all as a tank. I makes me sick too to watch it happen. One time, I zone into Occulus and the first thing said to me as a tank was, “I hope you don’t suck as a tank. Our last 3 tanks all sucked.” I immediately dropped group. Why should I take that abuse fresh to a group when i can get one in 15 minutes?
All and all though, it really boils down to the battlegroup as a pool for randoms. People didn’t act like this in the old system because you never knew when someone would recognize your guild and say something to another guildie or when you might be looking for another guild and someone remembered how you behaved in a 5 man. The way it is now… you know you will never ever see those random 4 people ever again. They act like children because the can and their are no repercussions. 30 minute debuffs aren’t going to change it as a whole. It might get better but it won’t fix it.
I think one of the problems is the self-reducing talent pool for randoms. Many of the above commentators have acknowledged that they bring their raider (sometimes alts too) through one run and are done because of the all the associated crap.
That means well geared toons, people who are socially adept enough to stay in a raid guild, and anyone with low tolerance for nonsense are less likely to do randoms. For the most part I only get overgeared jerks in HoR.
As the better folk get out of the LFD the % of troublemakers continue to grow. As a university student I’ve found that randoms early in the morning have way less nonsense and are usually the 8 minute stormtrooper zergfest. Groups during raid time on nights I’m not raiding are bad at best.
Perhaps it’s just my server, but on the occasions when the tank has dropped group from a heroic I’m in, they’ve been replaced virtually instantly, in even less time than it takes for my queue to pop as a healer.
I don’t often run into seriously obnoxious tanks, and maybe that’s because they really are that easily replaceable in my part of the world.
Oddly, the ones that I see most often trotting out the prima donna act are The Plate DPS guys. If someone is going to pull aggro, attack the wrong target or abuse the tank and healer, it’s most likely to be one of them.
It seems that some of them are strangely under the impression that DPS DKs and ret pallies are so very very rare and wonderful that we can’t POSSIBLY replace them easily.
It’s not all of them of course, but it’s got to the point that if I run with a Plate DPS Guy who just quietly gets down and does the job, it actually makes an impression. (Oh if only we had a way of upvoting puggees like that)
As the healer (Holy Paladin or Disc Priest) if the Tank starts giving attitude I tell him that if he doesn’t STFU he can leave and i’ll heal a ret pally/DPS DK because my gear is that good enough that we don’t need a defense capped meat shield to finish the instance.
Most of the time it works because my toons have the gear to back it up.
i have 2 tanks at 80 both on hydraxis and consider the tank as lead guy, not in a way to abuse power but responsible for the toons following you. now i read a few talking bout how pushy dps can be and omg thats true. any good tank watches his healers mana and pays attention to if people are falling behind so if the tank pulls slower then you like ….roll a tank! on the other hand though being the tank does not give you rights to treat people like they are lesser players or to ninja stuff for your off set. if i had one gold coin for everytime i bit my tongue watching a dps piece i really wanted go to a ret/fury/arms player cuz i passed on it i could buy anything on the game lol
As a melee DPS, I’ve dealt with jerk healers who refuse to heal us damage types because we’re not the tank, but those are 1 in 100 kind of runs… but more often than not, I’ve run into gogogogo TANKS who can’t hold aggro for the (rapidly dwindling) life of them. And then they complain that the healer wasn’t keeping them alive and we damage dealers weren’t keeping up. They usually drop group after that. The rest of us generally mock them after they leave.
As a healer my biggest annoyance is when i zone in and I see “I’ll tank as ret so it goes faster” Why should I have to work hard so you can save 2 minutes?
Jerks seem equally spread between tanks and dps, while healing jerks are uncommon.
But while dps jerks are mostly annoying for tank (and for healers who are still low on gear + experience), primadonna tanks can make the run painful for the whole group.
The number of tanks who drop group before start because they don’t like something is pretty astonishing.
The “pull-5-groups” tanks have become the norm and most f them will refuse to slow down even if 2 or 3 from groups kindly ask for that.
My groups have often been admonished by the tank at the start that we were not allowed to loot mobs because it would slow the run.
I’m an adult but I still have trouble understanding how some people expect to be playing a multi-player game with their attitudes, and I keep getting surprised by how many rude people are out there.
And then ofc you get the exceptions, like yesterday when I joined LFD with my little (57) frost mage. We got to the rooms with all the groups of orcs (spellcasters, fire damage etc) and the druid tank died. Rest of group managed to kill remaining mobs one by one, only 2 died – and when we ressed I said that we had just seen a real pro operation.
The druid said he never managed to get to Wyrmthalak, and we all went “this time you do” – and on we went, all using our class skills correctly (we had druid tank, a warlock, my mage, a priest and can’t remember last). I was in heirlooms but rest were not, and the healer was in greens.
No one died, we cleared the rest of firebrand orcs, the spider zone, the doggies, and down went Wyrmthalak, with me ready to frost nova the last mobs in case someone had forgotten they come.
3 of us leveled during the instance, and ended up congratulating each other – job well done by all and a load of fun.
I wish there were more people like those 4 – speed, gear, dps, whatever – who cares – this is a game, the fun is playing it as well as you can with other players like you doing the same.
Yes, on my level 80s I just join LFD for the badges, but it’s not a paid job: I will try to have a fun experience, and won’t complain if it takes 10 minutes longer.
So please just make a different LFD ghetto for high epeens please, and if you want to finish instance in 10 minutes without looting the mobs etc – please join your own l33t LFD and leave normal people alone.
My main’s gearscore is in the 5750 range, and I can pull 4-5.5K in heroics (shadowpriest) but I would still join the standard groups and take a little longer if that allowed me to avoid the jerks – tanks who think they can get away with anything, “gogogo” dpsers trying to beat each other on recount etc.
As alternative view, I have mostly stopped tanking heroics, because I am sick and tired of the pressure. As tank I feel constantly pressured by all group members. Gogogo, pull faster, pull more, I don’t have much time. Tank, lrn2hold aggro! Tank, u suck! While in the past I blogged about how much I enjoyed the mini-game of tank vs party and holding threat against them, it’s really impossible for me to enjoy it anymore. No one follows kill orders, people just pick a target and go.
The most aggravating thing for me is that people will just pull for me. I can run stuff like H UK in under 15 minutes and still people think it’s cool to be the healer who pulls, the mage who pulls, the pally who runs into whole groups.
Maybe if people were more courteous in general and respectful and not so obsessed with speed speed speed, then tanks would feel less obliged to become divas.
Our MT just went DPS as offspec and has stopped tanking heroics due to being pressured and bullied around, and I have two tank specs and will only tank heroics with friends. Much better for my sanity.
.-= Kadomi´s last blog ..Another month, another patch =-.
Same here, though my main has a double shadow/holy spec and I don’t mind healing guild raids & friends’ heroics at all (& have the gear + the experience, as I have been holy 3 years before going shadow), I have stopped queuing as healer in LFD.
Same goes for my bear/moonkin druid, whom only queues as moonkin nowadays.
Too much pressure from idiots on healers and tanks, too much speed required, so I will just dps.
I guess a decent number of experienced tanks and healers are doing the same these days, thus reducing the pool of competent tanking/healing in LFD.
i think the whole LFG tool as a system has a major flaw : disregards people with alts
Example: I have a resto shaman(main), resto druid and a prot warrior, all up to hc gear levels
the 15 mins debuff (now 30…) WON’T MATTER TO ME AT ALL
if I tank, and my group pisses me off: relog one of my healers, get instant group, do the Frost on that toon before I log back to take another shot with the warrior.
Not that I do it that often, but if and when I decide to, the debuff won’t hold me back at all..
the only time when I must be a bit more patient is when I’m on my 3rd toon doing the daily:D
I tank / heal / dps in that order of preference, it has probably helped levelling with SWMBO as a tag team pally pair (tank/heal), with that combination pretty much nothing stopped us through wrath (except the Icecrown quest involving the fluid and the cauldron which needs a minimum of three people). There’s nothing like being shouted at across the room to give you pause when making silly mistakes when pulling.
Even in UK I pull “properly” (this on an ICC25 ready toon), if nothing else it keeps my skills sharp, I don’t need to keep the mitigation rotation perfect but why shouldn’t I? Ok the pulls are generally larger than when I was a freshly minted tank but that’s no reason to be a moron.
There are still instances which demand care, OK being my personal favourite. The new ICC 5-mans are a wake up call for the careless tanks.
So much to relate to. I have a DK tank, 2 priest healers, pala that i recently started gearing for Holy as well and a Mage. When I am tanking, I try to keep a good pace and I’ll check on my healers and dps to see if they can keep up or would like to go faster even. So far all experiences have been nice, and the only thing I ever asked for as a tank is being able to roll for the trinket from FoS. It is a dps trinket, but we all know how long it takes for dps to get a group up. So I queue up as tank to speed it up for the other 4 people as well. I do ask upfront if anyone has a problem with me rolling for it. Haven’t gotten a no yet, so.
As a healer, I’ve run into a plethora of idiot tanks, ranging from the overgeared asshole who doesn’t take into account the dps isn’t that high, so all the pulling he managed to do leaves us with a gazillion mobs that aren’t dead yet. Also the fury warriors & ret palas who think a dungeon goes faster if they are in their dps spec ‘tanking’. There are dungeons where I can keep you up, but some places are just going to bring combos I can’t do anything about and cause a wipe. A wipe does not speed up a dungeon!
Last thing that annoys me about LFG tool however, is the AFK dps that don’t click accept when they finally find a group. There needs to be a penalty for not clicking here Blizzard, honestly. A 1 hour no heroics debuff would be a nice start. Or anything else really, but it’s just way too annoying and nobody cares if they miss the click, they’ll just queue up again and alt+tab away to miss the next accept.
Sinuviel, you’re complaining about a 15 second additional wait, and you’re a healer? On Emberstorm sometimes dps have to wait 15-20 minutes to get a group. Damned if they’re going to drop lfd because the wife wanted them to kill the spider in the bathroom, or the dog needed to be let out.
You probably queue for less than a minute. The 15 seconds won’t kill you.
.-= Patrick´s last blog ..What Are Your Child’s Odds Of Choking To Death On A Hot Dog? =-.
As I said, I’m a healer, tank and dps. I don’t see why that should matter, it’s common courtesy really :p
Not to take a negative angle, but honestly all of this stems from a simple fact: a fair percentage of the wow-playing community are pricks who don’t care about anyone else. The LFD tool just allows you to experience a much larger sample of the community than you previously have been able to, so it makes it more obvious.
I usually run the random heroic on 3 characters every day, 2 of which always end up tanking, the 3rd heals. My usual routine is to say “hi” then unless people strike up a real conversation I just hide party chat. If I’m tanking and a dps starts doing pulls for me, I just let the mob they pulled kill them and then I continue on. If I’m healing and a dps stands in fires or keeps doing something stupid, I don’t heal them. Otherwise I just simply do my job for the run and move on.
One more pet peeve: with 4 characters at 80, they are of at different gear level.
The poor affliction warlock has the lowest gear (full epic, but 4-5 ilevel 200 and a couple of pvp items) and with her spec that builds damage slowly ends up with tragically low dps when ends up in a well geared group.
If she can pull 2.5-2.8k when I end up with a group of freshly minted 80, I drop to 1.5 or so at other times when dps is so fast that everything is dead before my dots have ticked twice 😛
I can play the class decently, and I make no mistakes, but sometimes I get shouted at for the low dps. I wish people could understand that not classes/specs are the same, and in a case like this ending up under 2K does not mean I’m an idiot or I’m wearing grey gear 😛
Wow, there’s so much to say about this post. This is pretty much the same thing that happened prior to the previous expansions. Some people are experiencing this for the first time, while most are running a heroic for the gagillionth time. Some people are cool, and some just wanna get through as fast as possible. People are silent unless someone does something dumb, to which everyone else in the group feels the need to descend from their thone on high and rebuke the “noob” with fire and lightning bolts from their eyes.
The dungeon finder is good, but more then ever, people just jump into the group, do it and then leave. Unless your with guildies (and sometimes not even then), its just an emotionless badge grind. I all feels kinda soulless to me.
This is why I am usually quiet in instances. Unless I get an instance I’ve never run where I’ll ask for guidance. I tank at my pace. Wait for healers to mana up if below 60% or so (dps also if they’re not yanking aggro off me all the time). I’ll taunt off you if I can, but sometimes even that doesn’t work.
But, I tank at my pace (except 4 mana issues). I ignore gogogo, and any calls to speed up. I know what I can and cannot do, you don’t.
Unfortunately, from all the negativity related to LFG, I’m feeling that I’m in the minority as far as tanks go.
For a change of pace, run the regular versions. Much friendlier people there if you ask me. And you’ll be suprised at the compliments your geared toon will get from freshly minted 80’s and folks still trying to gear up for heroics and higher. Just remember they aren’t going to be able to dps as well (my pally is usually #1 or #2 on the dps meters) so things will take longer. Still will find some asshats there though, I think just not as many and Ignore works just fine for me to keep it from being a problem again.
I love healing on Dalaran; wait times are in seconds also..
Too bad I don’t have time to raid, I’m stuck at 2556 gear score… 🙁
Thanks for the post Thespius, now I know I’m the only person who deals with
D-bags.. 🙂
Sounds like you got the typical mix of crap that PUGs are famous for. It’s even worse for DPS, at least healers and tanks have low que times. I have to give you credit though, you put up with a lot of garbage. If it had been me I would have dumped the group. ( Does that make me bad? )
@ sinuviel–the consequence for a DPS is having to rejoin the 15 minute queue again, if you even notice immediately that you’ve missed your invite. While queuing as DPS to test out my new and rarely used enhance spec, I waited ten minutes, got up to go to the bathroom, came back and kept doing dailies for another 10 minutes before noticing I wasn’t in the queue anymore. Had to requeue and wait another 15 minutes. That’s the penalty.
The sad thing is that for tanks (or sometimes for us healers) waiting for people to accept the dungeon is the ONLY waiting you have to do. It takes 30 seconds! Chill! Finish your auction or check your mail or /dance or something
All my hybrids now have a “valuable” offspec for this reason.
Its also the reason I have upwards of 50 new people on ignore so I never have to group with them again.
.-= Echo´s last blog ..Goodbye Sweet Prince =-.
Thespius, I’m sorry to hear about your unpleasant experience in H UK. It’s no fun for anybody when you get a real jerk in the group.
I think that a lot of the behavior similar to what was described in the original post can be chalked up to the general pug experience, but I think that the tank shortage also makes the situation worse. Tanks are in great demand and can usually expect a queue to take no longer than 20 seconds, at least on my battlegroup. As a result, the disincentives for bad behavior are quite weak in comparison to those for dps. If there were more tanks, the penalty for being a butthead would be higher and (hopefully) we would see less of this sort of thing.
I think that both Blizzard and the general WoW population have an interest in solving the tank shortage. Not only to balance queue times but also to help reduce the kind of rudeness that has been described in detail in this thread. I see two ways to do this: either increase the number of tanks or encourage existing tanks to tank more often. Blizzard tried the first option by creating a new tanking class, death knights, and the tank shortage is largely the same as it was pre-WotLK. I have heard others suggest and I agree that tanking is probably something that appeals only to certain player mentalities, so any attempt to increase the number of tanks is fighting against the tide of what players like. The second option, getting existing tanks to tank more often, seems more appealing. Existing tanks tend to be better at the job than new ones, at least at first, and are probably more likely to stick with it. Getting tanks to tank more often, however, would require some sort of incentive scheme such as additional gold, gear or badges.
I have read that Blizzard is adding some new statistics for tracking the number of times players leave a group, vote kick, etc. I think this is encouraging in that it could be used to help match ‘good’ players, which might be encouraging to good tanks, but I don’t know that it will help solve the issue of raw numbers. As a tank, I would love to have more control over the type of group I get, but I am uncertain if this would be enough to get me in LFD more often.
> Love Fool, Elder, Etc
Its a holiday, this can’t be helped. I would have done it solo if I could. I ended up taking my ICC geared healer through regular UK and nexus, managed to help out some otherwise lacking people get through a dungeon. Holy nova is good for dps and healing 🙂
> The guy who charges into a room full of mobs while the healer is looting.
Loot faster? I don’t have any remorse here. Turn on auto-loot and keep going it takes a single click on a corpse and everything it was holding is now yours.
> The guy who AFK’s constantly
I am seeing this more often, typically he is in the group with a pair of buddies so you can’t remove him.
> The raider who has to finish before the timer expires.
I don’t see a way to fix this, people will always assume they can make it.
> The guy making a game out of a random, like only using 1 ability.
Haven’t seen this one, but I frequently challenge my group to see if they can finish the dungeon faster than my last time in there. Or if they’re capable of bringing my (healer remember) mana low enough that I use shadow fiend or hymn. The trick is warning people that wipes are automatic failures and they lose Enki Points for doing it.
> The guy who tells everyone else how to play.
Ignore works cross-server
> The guy who demands we do a cheev. All cheevs not created equal!
All of them are not, and depending on if the rest of the group wants to or doesn’t want to I will go for it. I point out that some of them [Volunteer Work] for example, require doing nothing and more often than not people will go along with it.
I’d like to see an xbox live style player (not character) rating system. If someone got too many negative ratings for being a tool, primadonna or whatever their account would just get banned and they can start over. This system would at least be able to make it so you don’t have to group with people you down rate.
Just a pipe dream but how about if Blizz would keep an internal “kicked tally” that would group these people together for future dungeons based on the amount of “kicks” they had.
Sure would be nice to know they are keeping their misery and griefing amongst themselves and away from the general population 🙂
This is a rather interesting read for me. Sure, I’ve had some bad tanks, but in most heroics these days I tank myself. Suddenly it makes sense why people sometimes go out of their way to let me know how much they appreciate their tanking.
.-= Vigan´s last blog ..The World Event Menace =-.
It’s easy.
The good tanks tank raids. The shitty tanks tank heroics. Now the good tanks also need their frostemblems so they also tank heroics.
But here comes the real shitty thing: as gear gets better for tanks, their job gets hard: paladin tanks go oom because they don’t get enough damage, bears and warriors go out of rage because they don’t get enough damage, making heroics increasingly frustrating.
So as soon as the good tanks don’t really need to run heroics anymore they stop.
So, what do you end up with: the shitty tanks that don’t raid and have as a sole epeen meter the fact that they get instant queues for heroics. That’s all these guys have.
That’s why you end up with bigger and bigger jerks: the only tanks still doing heroics are the ones that get their fullfillment there, every other tank that doesn’t really have to do heroics avoids them like the plague.
This reminds me of the pug I did last night…
It was Heroic OId Kingdom… we had a warrior tank, three DPS classes (the specific classes escapes me) and myself healing on my Resto Shammy. After the first trash pull the tank pauses and says “667DPS? Really? Please leave.” I check my Recount and, sure enough, there’s someone pulling 667DPS. The player says “Who? Me?” and the tank says “Yeah. Leave.” and the player drops. I say “Maybe he was here to get gear” and the tank replies “let someone else carry him through here, then.”
Alrighty, whatever… we get another DPS and work our way through and after a few minutes the tank says “Hey , do you need an explanation of proper shadow priest rotation?” I respond “Mobs are dying, does it matter?” to which someone else responds “Dude, he’s just trying to help.”
I check the other three players and sure enough they’re all guildies… the Shadow Priest who had just joined and myself were the only two people not in their guild. From that point I just shut up, healed the instance and left.
I have a slight sense of entitlement in my heroic groups. Unfortunately, my playtime is incredibly limited. I don’t get to raid very often, so I get my jollies by running heroics and doing some PvP. When I get into a group where people are being stupid for no good reason (as evidenced here by your three chapters), I often bail without so much as a word. And I’m a really friendly guy. I try to get as much done and actually enjoy myself as much as I can in my limited time, so I have a very low tolerance for that kind of self-righteous groupmate.
.-= Professor Beej´s last blog ..I Am A Resolute Failure =-.