Comments on: Thought of the Day: Fighting for Control of a Group

By: Rurjaos

Rurjaos — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:56:47 +0000

I usually run a guilded heal/tank-team with added dps. That gives us almost instant acces to random heroes. Most of the time I warri-tank shaman-healed, sometimes I tree-heal a pally. Since a few days my opening phrase is: “Making trouble to my tank/healer results in instant loss of healing prioity”.
That goes from hots-only to out-of-combat-only. I play long enough to distinguish avoidable aggro from rnd-dmg. Since mana is NO issue, even at an average ilvl of 220, the only thing that may count, is time… but the 15secs for rezzing, buffing, 3-hotting is worth the fun of taming stupids.
I miss that power, when I try to get smooth runs on my enhancer…

By: Stabs

Stabs — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:45:02 +0000

You’re right of course Kring but the thing is you end up doing runs you’re not enjoying with people you don’t like.

For me it’s about control. If someone is ninja pulling when I’m tanking it’s a horrible unfun run. I’d rather log off most times.

We can cope but it’s not very fun to have to.

By: Kring

Kring — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:49:52 +0000

Yeah, sure you can always let them die or leave or try to vote them out. In the end it’s just the fastest way to your 2 emblem if you try to cope for all the crap the other people do.

If you let someone day it slows down the current pull, plus the healer has to rezz, plus the healer has to buff, plus the healer might have to drink because a rezz and buff is not free. Plus you have to wait for the dead person to eat to gain mana or the healer has to heal them full. That can easily take a minute which is a lot if you can finish a heroic in 15 minutes by just stfu and keep everyone alive.

Is it fun? No.

Is it fun to tank for strangers anyways? Not at all.

—–

But, do you remember the level 60 days? With no raid symbols? Where the hunters insisted to mark the next target? Where hunters often insisted that they have to pull because it’s their role.

They whined quite a lot when Blizzard introduced the raid targets because they lost their power.

—–

What I think is interesting is when I tank with my Paladin. In a 5 man group without replenishment you have mana problems. Massive mana problems. (I would love an option to specify that I only accept a group with replenishment. So, the LFG system would create the group with Tank, Heal, Replenishment, 2 DD. That would be awesome!)

Anyway, you have to pull fast or divine plea runs our. If divine plea runs out it’s often faster to wait a few seconds until you can cast it again then to pull the next group without plea and run dry and drink after this group. Other group members who pull other groups often slow the run down instead of accelerating it.

By: Fremskritt

Fremskritt — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:57:36 +0000

I find this issue to be much less common, but that might just be my battlegroup. And yeah, I mostly play DPS, that might account for it as well, but I’ve rarely ran into problems on my healer either. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is on how much healing the tank needs. Some I can just slap ES on and they’re good to go, and some require constant attention. But I keep my mouth shut when that happens, I’ve found that stressing about the perfect run just makes it less perfect.

I tried tanking (again) the other day though, and found (again) that I lack the RL armour to survive the learning curve. But then my tank is in a different battlegroup from my DPS and healer. I am not going to try and find out though, I prefer nice and smooth runs, the funny part being that the smoothest runs are the ones where nobody ever says a word, no matter how badly other group members behave.

By: Oakstout

Oakstout — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:16:48 +0000

I’ve been leveling my warrior tank by just doing instances with a healer friend. Maybe 1 out of 5 groups is similar to the one your describing and trust me we run a lot of instances daily. The good thing is I run with a healer friend so if they won’t behave we leave and look for another group.. boom.. 4 secs later we are doing an instance.

DPS people just think they can take on the world at times and tend to think its the tanks fault for not holding threat. The game doesn’t work like that, everyone has to be responsible and do their role correctly. The funny thing is dps is a dime a dozen. They can easily be switched out for a replacement. If not, the tank or healer just has to leave and boom, they are running again with a new group in seconds, not minutes. I just don’t understand when you can be easily replaced why be the one causing all the stink?

Also, with the new ignore list being longer, I can ignore people from other servers who are troublesome and never see them again.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:43:55 +0000

Seen a lot of issues with the LFG system. You have no idea who will be in your group. I find it a bit easier when I tank. I can slow the pace a bit and ensure that everyone is buffed before we charge into the fray…

On the DPS end, I barely have time to say “Hi” before the tank is charging off at full speed. No time to loot from the trash mobs. My main isn’t that rich and could use the money.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:27:11 +0000

Yeah dps Death Knight is very useful for playing with idiots. You can even rip aggro and just kite with Chains without getting hit.

I used to stress about how people played in pugs when I tanked and then I completely changed.

I try to stick to a rule now of never talking tactics with pugs. If they don’t know it’s not my place to teach them and most people hate being taught. If they ninja pull I’ll cope best I can.

It obviously didn’t work that well as I got fed up with WoW but it did improve things for me. It became a wierdly asocial game, like playing Guild Wars with a party of hirelings because by not talking to them I tended to forget they were players. Might just as well have been 4 hirelings.

By: Gevlon

Gevlon — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:16:13 +0000

The rule with the ninjapuller: whisper to the healer to don’t heal him and let him die. That usually works when I’m a healer, I don’t bother saving them.

The votekick is also good idea, but I failed with it several times. People refuse to vote out even completely destructive idiots. The worse case was that the tank wrote “brb bio”, the 1100 DPS DK pulled, wiped us and the others refused to kick him as “anyone can make mistakes”. When I told them that he already made his mistake when equipped spellpower mail, they called me an elitist.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:07:05 +0000

In the assorted random pugs I have tanked, I have had runs where the dps pull. I will kindly taunt once, tell them I won’t be doing it again, and they usually learn their lesson.

There was one run where the healer started to pull the next group before we finished the one we were on repeatedly. I told them to stop and I won’t taunt off them again (unless it was a pretty obvious accident). They then proceeded to not heal me in the next two pulls. So I decide the 15min wait is worth it, but want to go out in fashion. So I pull another group and DI one of the dps and leave. I felt bad for the other two dps, but that was just too absurd to waste my time on.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:05:05 +0000

Simple Solution; You pull it, you tank it. If they don’t like to tank it, they can either stop pulling or leave the group. If they leave the group, it will take you all of 15 seconds to find another dps, while they spend 15 minutes finding another tank.