Using CC == baddie tank?
I join the dungeon, and the party is bitching about two “fail” tanks already. They are at the first pack of trash. I start to give out CC assignments and kill order, and they tell me, “No CC just pull. Don’t be a baddie tank.” Just…. wow.
Enjoy the queue.
The queue, DPS, and your tank
You’ve been sitting in queue for nearly an hour when you finally get into an instance. Before the tank is done marking mobs for crowd control, you’ve “helped” by firing off a Shadow Bolt into one mob, Death Coiled another, ignored the Seduce CC target, and then feared the oncoming pack into another. Before you start with the string of profanities about the “bad tank unable to hold threat”, ask yourself a few questions.
- Did I wait for the tank and healer to be ready?
- Did I wait for the tank to mark the targets and explain how he wanted them crowd controlled?
- Did I follow the CC directions and kill order?
- Is not waiting for even as long as a minute worth waiting another hour in queue when I get kicked?
Tanks have nearly instant queues. If you find a tank that is marking targets for crowd control, spreading out the hate on threat, and calling for a specific kill order, follow his instructions. He doesn’t want to – or have to – deal with idiots. Yes, that sounds arrogant, but that’s the reality.
Bad DPS is easy to replace. Don’t be bad.
Cataclysm, ho!
Cataclysm is unleashed upon us next week and things will again be different. Here’s a primer for those of you that think all Heroics are speed runs, do not know what CC is, don’t understand kill order, think you should always be healed to the max, and don’t understand what it means to watch your threat.
DPS: Go back and read MMO Instances: Things to know for DPS. Read it again. In these last closing weeks of Wrath, I have seen way too many DPS players break all the rules. They don’t follow kill order. They don’t watch their threat. They break crowd control (CC) or fail to CC when instructed. They stand in fire and expect to be healed through it. We will no longer be overgeared for instances in Cataclysm. You will need to pay attention. Topping meters is less important than ever, as the tanks will have to fight to get threat and healers will not have the mana to spare for stupidity.
If you are trying to AE tank and a bad dps is attacking the wrong target and dies, we call that justice. If you are trying to AE tank and a healer pulls aggo, then threat generation is just too low and we need to buff it.
-Ghostcrawler
Tanks: It is time to lose that sense of invulnerability. We will have to fight to keep threat and our hit points won’t be through the roof. All of you tanks that stacked nothing but Stamina in Wrath will need to learn how Avoidance is important. You will need to ensure you mix a DPS rotation into your tanking cooldowns to continue to generate threat. You will need to learn to use your cooldowns instead of relying upon massive heals.
Healers: Limitless mana pool NO YUO. You may need to relearn how to heal with the change to healing spells and the need to watch your mana. No more spamming Holy Light non-stop. No more Chain Heals galore. You should be talking to your tanks to ensure your healing and their cooldowns are building off each other. You should have been focused on unlearning the whack-a-mole healing style of Wrath and been learning to heal as needed.
One last thing:
Follow kill order.
Why are tanks in short supply when leveling?
Queue as a feral tank and boomkin DPS, and get an instant dungeon as tank. No pro- wait, the Warlock is already sending his pet around, and the Shaman is blowing the mobs into more packs. To cap it off, that latter Shaman goes ghost wolf, pulls all the mobs to us, and dies.
The Warlock and Shaman? They refuse to leave the party and we can not kick them, leaving us to swallow the 30 minute debuff.
You want to know why your queue is so long as a DPS? There’s your answer.
“Let the tank pull” – leveling at the end of an expansion
There are three roles in every party – healer, DPS, and tank.
If you queued for the RDF as a healer, your job is to heal the party. It is not to run around gathering mobs and expecting the tank to grab them off of you. It’s not to stand and DPS and ignore healing the tank and the party. You chose heals, your job is to heal. I know as a tank in today’s game that there is a chance I will top the damage and sometimes even the DPS charts. There is no reason I should top the healing charts as well, especially as a leveling, undergeared Druid. [Don't get me started on being on top of the healing charts on my Death Knight.]
Let the tank pull.
If you queued as DPS, your job is to DPS, not to pull the next pack. I have noticed those of you that think your job is to pull the next pack or the pack I chose to skip are often at the bottom of the charts. There’s a reason for that. You are bad. It’s not the tank. It’s not the healer. It’s you.
Let the tank pull.
We, the jaded tanks, do not care any more if you pull and die. We have nearly instant queues, so you can vote us out and we will be back in another dungeon before you find another tank. In fact, if you annoy us, we may every well pull a stunt in an attempt to get kicked. If you want to avoid waiting around in a queue, there are four simple words.
Let the tank pull.
The dungeon not going fast enough for you? Use your head – this is not a heroic being run by folks geared to the teeth and with trained muscle memory for every ability. The healers may need to regain mana. The DPS may not know optimal priority. I do not care if you have some title on your main. You are not entitled. Slow down. Follow kill order.
Let the tank pull.
So bad.
I normally do not post DPS and Damage meters for the PUGs of Pain posts, but this is just pathetic. All were geared, all were full of bravado, and all failed.
Varthar – Argent Dawn: 2670 DPS
Vitandus – 2379 DPS
Skeptar – Stormrage – 1674 DPS
Lanthsonna – Stormrage – 1446 DPS
Vitandus was the tank.
Tanking protip: Use your cooldowns
A common healer complaint is that a tank is too “squishy”. When faced with two tanks of equivalent gear, a healer is going to find the tank that does not use cooldowns to be “harder to heal”. All tank classes have cooldowns and part of being a good tank is knowing when to use them.
Some tanks withhold all of their cooldowns for the potential bone-crushing event on a boss or in case a healer goes down. Other tanks blow all of their cooldowns with no thought. In both cases, the tank is missing out on the tactical use of a cooldown to alleviate healing strain and chewing up the healers’ mana.
I do not have a quick and easy checklist to demonstrate when you should use your cooldowns. This can only come with practice and with monitoring your performance. Talk to your healers and get an idea of the times in the fights where they were strained. Do a post-fight analysis of your health to see where your health dropped or where you did not get lots of heals. Talk to your other tank to see where they felt the most pain.
All of this helps to avoid this kind of post-fight meter:
[13:16:12] Recount – Damage Taken for Last Fight
[13:16:12]: 1. Geared-no-cooldowns (43.8%)
[13:16:12]: 2. Lesser-geared-used-cooldowns (24.5%)
On LFD, your tank, and your healer
Your queue for a random dungeon just popped and you zone into the instance. What’s the first thing to do?
- Do you run off ahead and start DPSing mobs?
- Do you start typing in all caps, “GO GO GO”?
- Do you start typing in all caps, “BUFF PLZ”?
- Do you run off ahead and start tanking mobs?
The answer, of course, is no. The first thing you do is wait. Wait for the tank or healer to respec to the build for the instance. We often run in DPS spec when doing dailies. We might be stacked with PVP gear at that moment. You probably waited a long time for the queue as DPS. You can wait a moment more.
Once the tank and healer are ready and the group has started pulls, what do you do? You wait. You wait before attacking the mobs so the tank can get threat. Gear is easy to get for DPS classes and scales much better than tanking gear. If you pull threat, the tank and healer should let you die.
Tanks, you just got your second piece of tier 10 and have a “lot of hit points!” You know you can ROFLstomp this instance. What do you do? You wait. You are not as good as you think. You’ve stacked for nothing but hitpoints and your avoidance is lousy, so when you get hit, you get hit hard. Wait for the healer.
It’s the middle of combat, and you are standing in fire/poison/void zones, so what do you do? You don’t wait. We do not care if your rotation and swing timer gets reset or that it means your DPS won’t top the charts. If you are a DPS standing in fire, the healer should let you die.
Heroic Halls of Wretchedness
Zone into H HoR as my random, totally PUG daily. I notice that the first two bosses are down, which is odd, since that is usually the killer. I’m advised that this I am the fourth tank and I “better be good” and “heals are fine.” I’m also told this is the second healer. All warning signs, but I figure it’s the back half of H HoR so it can not be too bad.
We trigger the Banshee Queen and she starts down the path. We all move down to the wall when the Retribution Paladin – the one that had spammed gear scores when I entered – races down to Arthas as he’s summoning and starts engaging the mobs. I taunt, slap down Death and Decay, and struggle to keep threat on mobs pulled far, far away from me. During this ordeal, the healer is spamming his 900 HPS on the Retribution Paladin, all in vain.
The Retribution Paladin is raised just as Arthas starts to summon for the second wall. Once again, the Paladin races down to the pack, drops Consecrate, and gets eaten by Arthas’ aura. The healer thinks this is a sign to DPS and pops a Hand of Reckoning so he “can help brun down the mobs”. The Shaman, in party chat, reflects mournfully, “This is why we’ve gone through three other tanks. I hate PUGs.”
Healing ICC5 as a Paladin (or, Why not to make your tank and healer angry)
Now that I have some gear on my Paladin’s Holy set, the ICC5 dungeons come up a lot. First off, I am a relatively new Paladin healer. I am still getting the hang of things. Next, and more importantly, those instances deal a lot of damage to the party as a whole. It’s hard enough to heal without DPS standing in poison or casting spells at a spell reflecting mob. This was last night’s conversation:
DPS: “MAN THIS PALADIN SUCKS.”
Me: “I am a single target healer. Please try to avoid standing in void zones and casting at a reflecting mob, etc.”
Tank: “He is an OT/MT healer, not an AoE healer. Don’t be an idiot.”
DPS: “I HAVE A PRIEST ALT AND THIS PLACE IS EASY.”
Me: “You have AoE heals. I don’t have any.”
DPS: “THIS IS LULZ. YOU SUCK.”
Me: “kay.”
Tank: “Just keep me alive.” (Races ahead to next mob while the DPS is QQing. PEW PEW PEW, mob dead.) “See, we don’t need them. Let’s roll on the trinket.”
Me: “Sounds good.”
DPS: “HEY WTF.”