
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.”

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