It took me five minutes to calm everyone down and say that all we had to do was have the tank draw the boss down and tank him at the bottom of the stairs and we would win because I could stay out of the aoe. So that’s what we did and we won.

As for me, I have a lot more confidence in players who take the time to communicate and think ahead to avoid problems than I do with people who wait until after the wipe to admit the mistakes. It never ceases to amaze me how people…even after level 70…run round advertising that they are a tank or a healer and have no clue how to play those roles. And how unwilling to they are to learn them. If they can’t dash right in and mow everything down, then it’s someone else’s fault. It’s sad; learning should not be a dirty word.

Yeah, you’re right of course. It’s very hard to know quite how hard someone else’s role is (or even exactly what it entails) if you haven’t tried to do it on that fight. I think the problem is not in making an honest attempt and failing, it’s where people don’t even try or are working on autopilot where a small amount of thought might have helped.

I can usually tell this if after a wipe, I ask what happened and someone is able to tell me. If they made a mistake and can point to it (or point to my mistake if I went out of LOS unintentionally) then I have a lot more confidence in them as a player.

I know that back when I was playing a healer, I found it helped a lot with things like moving around and being more situationally aware (and sorting out my raid healing addons) to run a few battlegrounds. It’s also good for the ego because it’s really easy to top bg healing meters if you’re actually there to heal.

I wouldn’t force anyone to PvP if they didn’t want to, but it is really good practice for that sort of thing.

Interesting that a post from a tank’s perspective turned into a discussion of the intricacies of healing!

LOS pulls are relatively straightforward. If I’m healing I don’t need to move forward at all. The tank will aggro, run back to where I’m expecting him to move to and I will be there ready to start healing once the mobs have arrived. I’ll probably never be closer than 60 yards from the mobs’ starting location.

LOS during fights like Ingvar in UK is trickier. I will try to anticipate that the tank might move but I won’t generally chase him. If you’re tanking at the top middle of the square formed by the four pillars and you los behind a pillar I’ll expect you to move back to the original tanking position after the shout. This is what I do when tanking and it generally works fine. If however you want to spend the rest of the fight hiding behind random pillars from both me and the boss we are going to wipe. I’m not telepathic.

In other words yes healers should move but tanks should try to tank in places that are visible and move in patterns that are obvious. If it’s going to be tricky, communicate first.

However I hatehatehate people moving without regard for LOS issues during the fight. As a shammy I have one instacast heal on a reasonably long cooldown and in 5 mans I am generally longcasting. If one of those fails to land it causes real difficulties.

BTW I second the annoyance for VH in this regard – I can’t count the number of times when someone moves too far over the lip and goes out of LOS, or when the tank is fine but I have to reposition to be able to heal the melee dps who are behind the mob. Bring em down the stairs already!! You won’t melt!

Line of sight only bothers me as a healer when the DPS are running away from the mobs into someplace stupid where I can’t heal them, especially during raids where I’ve got 25 people on my radar, and I can’t heal THAT guy because it keeps telling me he’s out of line of sight, but I don’t have the time to go searching for him. I’ve got other people to heal. Either you get back to where I can see you or you die. I always know where the tanks are though, and reposition myself accordingly.