World of Warcraft

[Squeek]

There are bad tanks, and then there are baaaaaaad tanks.

I was finishing up Kalu'ak (yay fishing pole and pengu!) and got invited to a 10-man vault. I should've figured out right here that the tank I was eventually going to run with was pathetically bad, but I didn't. Looking at the DPS chart, he was so far in last place that it was almost pathetic. Tanks are supposed to be on the bottom (except good ones who out-DPS the terrible players like the MT did), but pulling 300 DPS...I don't think he even tried. I pulled aggro on the boss about 10 times, even with using my only threat-reducing skill.

So, violet hold came next, since it was the daily and I wanted to run it before the reset. It would've been easy, except the we got stuck with the offtank. I pulled aggro in every portal no matter how long I waited to attack. There was one case where I ran the opposite way from everyone else and got there about ten seconds late and STILL pulled aggro. Fortunately the second boss was Ichoron and I told everyone beforehand if it was him I was pulling the switches because he's just a pain in the ass, so I didn't attack until the third wave passed.

It's not good when you have a tank shortage and a shortage of good tanks. These people really need to learn how to start on Regular dungeons first, because they're clearly not geared for heroics yet.

But that's nothing compared to the worst tank we've ever had. The one who started pulls when the mage / healer was drinking / afk and never watched out for adds or pats and would verbally insult us all when we wiped.

And of course, in the end, they always get the gear they were there for -.-

[Solid Dreams]

Block, heroic strike, revenge, thunderclap, charge, bloodrage.

I'll probably switch out heroic strike to shield wall, and maybe revenge to last stand, when 3.1 comes out.

EDIT:

There's actually a thread on tankspot.com regarding crappy tanks. :P

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f160/...r-players.html

Well, not all tanks, but warriors.

[devonin]

Tanks are supposed to be on the bottom (except good ones who out-DPS the terrible players like the MT did), but pulling 300 DPS...I don't think he even tried.

I single-target for about 1200 DPS, and can AoE about 2300, more the larger the group is. Tanks can and should be putting out good DPS. They'll be nowhere near the top of lists, but they shouldn't be -that- far below the worst of the DPS.

When it's Pally tanks being bad, I like to check and see what weapon they're wielding. SOme of them seem to have not gotten the memo that spellpower maces are -not- our itemization anymore. I mean, in some extreme cases (You've got a crappy rare from a quest chain, and one of the 430+ spellpower maces drops and nobody wants it) it can still be a temporary improvement, but Hammer of Righteousness is your primary threat generating ability now, and it functions off your main-hand DPS. AP>Str>SP now.

[Squeek]

I'm talking about an ideal situation. Tanks should always be on the bottom of the chart. DPS should always be pulling more than tanks. Healers should not be on the chart (you know, unless they killed a spider or something).

It's easy to tell who sucks as DPS on a recount chart: the person who failed to outdamage the tank. I count my DPS as a failure if I can't even double the output of the tank. That is, of course, unless the fight is a special one where the DPS has to move a lot and the tank doesn't, like Sarth (though I just ran an OS-10 and more than doubled the tank~)

[Solid Dreams]

I did a heroic nexus yesterday.

I outdpsed everybody in the group. Including a rogue who was almost fully epic'd out.

I had a frostfire mage in the group that SHOULD have owned my ass.

Then, when they got killed on bosses where THEY have to actually help crush the portals, or they need to sheep one of the splits, or they have to do something other than suck at their job, they bitched.

They ended up ditching and blaming me as the reason we wiped. But I reported the damage meters, and pointed out how they were pulling before I did, wouldn't wait, couldn't follow simple strategies, and I got another group and demolished the rest of the area.

[Sir Psycho]

On 3+ targets, I push about 2100 dps. On a single target I push out about 1400-1800 dps, depending if I have enhancement shaman in my group.

[Vuture]

Originally Posted by Squeek

I'm talking about an ideal situation. Tanks should always be on the bottom of the chart. DPS should always be pulling more than tanks. Healers should not be on the chart (you know, unless they killed a spider or something).

It's easy to tell who sucks as DPS on a recount chart: the person who failed to outdamage the tank. I count my DPS as a failure if I can't even double the output of the tank. That is, of course, unless the fight is a special one where the DPS has to move a lot and the tank doesn't, like Sarth (though I just ran an OS-10 and more than doubled the tank~)

Yea, I was going to say, like in AN, the final boss requires quite a lot of movement.

[tsugomaru]

I'm always at the top of dps on trash pulls in the Spider Wing.

Squeek, you just started playing and I may be wrong because WotLK came out where most of the dungeons are aoe tanked, but when dps pulls aggro off the tank, it's not on fault of the tank. Not all tanks can support a player with 3000 dps. The tank's job has always been simply to keep the healer alive and the healer's job is to keep the tank alive. If they both can do that, then the dps can take their time to take down a boss. However, in your case it just seems like the tank sucked it up.

~Tsugomaru

[Squeek]

Well, you can tell when you have a good tank and when you don't. When I'm running Naxx, I don't have to worry about a damn thing. I know I'm not going to pull aggro.

In most 5-mans, it's pretty obvious from the start who are the good tanks and who aren't. Some of them are too cautious, doing readychecks all the time, but I like that. I don't like it when they think we need the mage and the shaman and the rogue to do CC. It's not necessary guys, come on. Just kill them. If there are 6 enemies, then we'll CC one. There will never be 6 enemies unless you pull wrong, though, so have at it.

Good tanks always mark kill order (unless the dungeon is really easy and they know the group well enough that it won't matter). They always do a subtle readycheck before encounters (as in make sure nobody's drinking or afk) and do a readycheck before bosses. If they can't hold aggro, at least they keep the boss away from the ranged guys so that whirlwind doesn't kill us instantly. They also understand that sometimes eating damage is bad and stepping away for half a second will not hurt their aggro if it means lightening the load on the healer (for an example on this one: Loken. One tank in a pug I ran last night said he could eat the lightning nova. We said we could not and had to run, which meant that we'd be taking damage for being far away from him when he re-engaged him at the previous spot. The main thing he failed to realize, though, was that the healer wasn't even remotely geared for healing through lightning nova. Nor was he the right class as Shaman have a hell of a time trying to do that. We really only rely on Chain Heal, and that doesn't help much through Loken).

[Solid Dreams]

Since when, Squeek? My guildmate's resto shaman is easily healing Loken. In fact, what we do is just stand around him and the other dps run away while I sit there and eat the novas. It's how we got the Timely Demise achievement.

It's all a matter of knowing how your group works. My mage usually marks, because he's used to it. I usually just mark the skull while pugging and tell them to focus on that.

[tsugomaru]

You're not going to have raid level main tanks for every instance run you have. Besides, those tanks are extremely well geared and raid buffed. Not only that, most encounters are single target and all tanks have extremely good single target threat building skills. However, when you talk about AoE tanking, it's a bit different. Tanks do not have as good AoE threat building skills as single target threat building skills, so it can be easy for the tank to lose his or her target.

I'm not trying to defend the crappy tank you had in particular, but you have to realize that not all tanks are going to be able to handle AoE that well. A good example would be my Naxx 25 tank. He is very good at tanking raids, but he refuses to do any AoE instances because he can't tank them very well. Even my friend who has played a warrior for nearly 4 years has trouble holding aggro on all the targets in a simple raid instance like Heroic VH. It takes him a couple seconds to gather all his targets. In addition, you're not allowed to AoE them all at the same time unless he tells you to, otherwise, you must kill them target by target.

Some tanks may still have the BC mindset where crowd control is absolutely necessary. Some dungeons in BC were so insanely hard that even the best geared tank still had to have the DPS CC a mob or two or else the group they are pulling will kill the tank faster than the healer can heal. Back then, not all classes had some form of AoE so it would just be safer if everyone focus targets one enemy and take them down one by one. AoE was only really used on big group non-elite pulls.

However, in WotLK, every single class has some form of good AoE and the pulls in dungeons were designed so that you could use all this AoE and the mobs wouldn't hit so hard that the tank would be killed if he tried tanking them all. Although on some harder pulls with an under-geared tank, CCing may be a good idea so you don't wipe very often, it's not required to do that anymore. Pre-WotLK was a completely different world and gameplay was a lot different back then.

~Tsugomaru

[Squeek]

I only attack what the tank is attacking. That's kinda what made it so sad. He attacked one at a time until it died (which is a strategy I prefer for tanks but it's up to them how to handle it I suppose).

@Solid: That only works with geared people. The shaman in my party last night had run maybe two or three heroics before. It was obvious he wasn't going to be able to heal a 22k HP tank through Nova, especially with everyone else taking aoe damage from Loken's aura (or dying by not paying attention... how hard is it to outrun Nova? I've never once been hit by it -.-)

[rade0110]

Originally Posted by Squeek

@Solid: That only works with geared people. The shaman in my party last night had run maybe two or three heroics before. It was obvious he wasn't going to be able to heal a 22k HP tank through Nova, especially with everyone else taking aoe damage from Loken's aura (or dying by not paying attention... how hard is it to outrun Nova? I've never once been hit by it -.-)

Outrunning the nova is cake. It's the whole progessive damage per tick the farther away from him you are thing that kills most people. Loken is the hardest heroic boss in WotLK so far in my opinion.

[Squeek]

You misread my comment. I was mocking those who cannot outrun nova as I've never once been hit.

Loken is ridiculously easy when you're running with intelligent people, but those are rare these days, which makes him hard. He does practically no swing damage at all. I've managed to tank him during a fight once (since, once again, I was super-high on the aggro chart and after the tank died he headed for me). It's just like Heigan: once you learn how to avoid the actual-damage dealing attacks, the boss itself is ridiculously easy.

[tsugomaru]

Do you mind explaining Loken for me? I read the wiki, but I'm not completely sure we're doing it right. When he casts his lightning, are we all suppose to run away in the same direction or spread out in different direction. It doesn't matter what we do, I end up having to heal through it.

~Tsugomaru

[Squeek]

What my guild runs do that has been highly successful (100% success rate is highly successful) has been to follow the line on the floor. You tank him up at his throne, all stacked on the tank. As soon as he starts to cast Nova, you follow the line down the stairs to the ledge between them. Then he chases down the tank after casting Nova and you resume attacking, stacked on the tank once more. The trick to this is that you either start on the opposite side or swing around such that your back is to the throne. If you fight him facing the throne from the stairs, you're going to have to run through him to get back up and you will not make it in time.

I use totems to explain this to people in the area with the globe where the two giants pat around but I can make it a little easier here.

[] Throne
O Loken
x group
|
|
- middle (this is where I drop totems for reference if people need it)
|
|
x group
O loken
= stairs

The stairs are separated by a small flat section between them, which is where the group typically waits pre-fight. That's where tank spot #2 is.

You don't want to go all the way down or line-of-sight might come into play. Some people suggest running back and forth between the pillars but I found myself having problems with that technique as the room to run is much smaller and requires a total of three tank spots (1-2-3-2-3-2-3 etc) rather than the simple 1-2 of the line trick.

At all times during the fight, you want to stay together. You never want to spread out. One tank I ran with recently suggested that he'd eat the Nova since he could take it and the rest of us run out (as I mentioned before). The problem with this is that the battle re-engages too soon and everyone running back takes severe damage before they get there. When you wait for the speedy Loken to make it to your group after his Nova, you're all in position and ready to go.

[tsugomaru]

That would explain a lot. All the tanks I've played with suggest they can take the hit and the second lightning ends, everyone takes huge hits and it's so damn difficult to heal the dps through it.

The few groups that I've done this without actually taking damage were with warrior tanks. What they would do is tank him on the same spot, run away, and charge right back. However, when I'm playing with DK or Paladin tanks, they don't have this option.

~Tsugomaru

[vpr0721]

I know this is not the best place to ask this but if there are any hunters here please answer is it worth going survival? I'm MM and i cant seem to pull past 3.4k dps with all my T7.5 gear enchanted/socketed and getting my rotations perfect, while the other survival hunters pass 4k. And i also here that survival hunters are best in pvp too. If i do go survival then im going to have to get another set of T7.5 gear to socket in agi instead of AP. Any thoughts, experience?

[Solid Dreams]

Survival is the current best.

Why would you have to get another set of t7.5? Why not just socket the set you have now?

[Vuture]

I think because of the upcoming patch, which enables dual-specs. I know I'm going to have two separate sets of armor, one for BM and the other for SV.

As far as your DPS goes, there shouldn't be THAT big of a different in DPS. Sure SV dishes out the most atm, but It's only be a slim margin, especially for MM (It's a bigger margin for BMs like me). It could be your rotation, or pet. Are you using a raptor? That also could be an issue.