Greetings, all.
As this is a reactionary first post, I feel I must explain.
Thusly: When you enter into an instance, particularly using the random dungeon finder instigated in Patch 3.3, you face various tasks.
If you are a tank, you must enter battle upon the front lines, hold the threat and generate aggro from the various baddies you will be encountering; protecting others in times of great need, and generally being the heart of the fight.
If you are a healer, you keep the heart pumping. Make sure s/he is taken care of, but keep in mind the various limbs and digits also in your presence.
And finally, if you like to do a lot of damage, please do, but bear in mind that if you do too much of it, you will be targeted by the aforementioned baddies. Running away screaming is not the best course of action, although it is recommended if you would like to meet a quick demise.
A recap:
Tank: Take damage and mitigate threat.
Healer: Keep people alive.
DPS: Kill things. The quicker the better.
As someone who has played in all these roles, I find it particularly frustrating when I am grouped with others who do not understand these basic concepts.
A prime example of this occurred not just 10 minutes ago, which in fact inspired this very blog to be created.
I have been taking advantage of the Looking For Dungeon tool with all four healing classes, creating entirely new characters in order to experience the low-level dungeons from the healing perspective. Before the LFD tool was created, not many priests spent their time questing in Holy, nor Shamans in Restoration, as it simply took too much time to kill things in the vicious and not-very-friendly lands of Azeroth. You can survive much longer than others could, but the enormous length of time it took to dispose of your enemies more than not discouraged players away from this leveling tactic.
Now that there is the LFD tool, it is completely viable to level up your class as a healer through dungeons. In fact, the wait time is much less than that of a DPS class, so it could be argued it is now the fastest way to level. As a young healer, you learn the importance of your role; how, without you, the group is failed to meet their doom and certain death. You attain a newfound respect for those who do this at higher levels, and feel inspired to become the best you can at keeping your group alive. You reap amazing rewards (easily surpassing those found from questing), and gain experience at a rapid rate. You are vital to the success of the group, and without you, there is no possibility of survival.
Feeling inspired by this sense of importance ("Look, I'm not just hitting things!"), I decided to respec my warrior into a tank. After all, even as DPSers wait for the healer to queue up, the healer waits for the tank. The tank waits for no one.
Gilithan, the level 40 night elf warrior, gave up his dual-wielding skills in place of a sword and shield. He queued up in LFD, and not after 20 seconds (I kid you not), there was a group ready and waiting for his unique set of skills. He entered his first instance and explained to his fellow party members that this was his first time tanking, so please bear with him as he figures it all out; any advice would be welcomed; expect certain failure and please have patience.
Well, they didn't bear with him, they didn't give him any advice, nor did they even wait for him to grow. After the first wipe, they booted him from the group amidst comments of "lol nub" and "fail tank". Sighing heavily, Gilithan took to the world of Azeroth to hone his skills and learn the proper keybindings.
So I did. I leveled him to 42 via questing, figured out a decent rotation to stay alive (which was no problem) and to do damage (which took a bit longer). I re-entered the queue and Gilithan is now level 46, having run The Scarlet Monastery, Uldaman, Maraudon, and Zul'farrak multiple times. I met some great folks who were both insanely patient and extremely helpful. They gave me some advice on gear, my spec, and most of all just didn't act like a jackass. They acted like real people who have the ability to interact with other real people, albeit through an mmorpg.
The point of this whole story:
I'm currently on vacation, and have been playing Gilithan a lot lately. He's 4 talent points away from Warbringer, which I'm really looking forward to. He's gotten a lot of pretty good gear from the Satchel of Helpful Goods (thank you, Blizzard), quest rewards, and dungeon drops. So he's a lot of fun to play. Tanking requires you to be a sort of zen presence - even if you're not the party leader, you're in charge of the group moving forward, the first one to move onwards, and generally the "in charge" presence (having 4 healers, however, I learned how important it is to wait for their readiness in moving on). If you're a douche, the rest of the group doesn't enjoy their time, and they know that if they boot you, they'll have to sit and wait around for a new tank - which takes days. So if the tank's a jerk, he can just be a jerk and get away with it. Which sucks for everybody. So I try not to be a jerk. If I know the instance well, I'll explain what I can, and even if I do know it well, I'll defer to someone else's judgement if it's clear they know more about it than I do. I want to people to enjoy themselves; it's a game, after all.
So Gilithan logs in, queues up, and runs some instances. I meet some cool people, we have a good time, we get mad rewards, and great XP. As a tank now, I just live in Ironforge, going between the bank, auction house, and the repair shop to the right. Every time I finish a dungeon, I repair up, sell some stuff, auction some stuff, and queue up again. I ran Maraudon a few times and Zul'farrak about 4. My fiance starts to cook up some dinner and I decide to queue up one more time. Bam; 5 seconds later, I'm in.
We all enter Zul'farrak. Me, night elf warrior; healer, human priest, and 3 DPSers; two gnome warlocks and a draenei paladin. I say hello, they buff everyone, and we're off. Right off the bat, the healer says she would only like to get the final and second to last bosses, as she's only doing the quests and apparently can't be bothered to gain more xp. The pally says he is just here for xp, which I am as well, but as dinner-time is coming up soon, I say it's cool and we take the shortcut to Gahz'rilla, the amazingly cool 3-headed hydra. I've done this fight quite a few times, and never had any problems. General tactic: Clear the area of all mobs, get an open space, ring the gong and summon the big beastie. As the healer's in a rush, I pull a relatively large group of mobs, around 6, and we do battle. Right away, one of the warlocks starts AoE and the other's imp shoots off in a random direction, pulling over another 3 mobs. I run over, Thunder Clap, and move them all over to where we can stay out of stray walkers. Bam, I get turned into a frog. Stupid hex voodoo. The healer doesn't bother to dispel magic, but rather waits for the timer to run out. I pop back into normal form and start running around trying to regain aggro from the warlocks. They keep running away and aggroing more mobs. Not a good idea. I let off a Challenging Shout as a last ditch effort - all the mobs run over to me, and along with Last Stand and Shield Wall, I take on the at-this-point 12+ mobs and survive for about 30 seconds. I die, then warlocks, then healer, then pally. First wipe.
On the way back, doing the ghost run, the healer says "Tank, pull less." I respond, "I only pulled 5 and they were fine. Locks kept running away." The locks responded, hurt, saying "You didn't get the aggro back!" I replied "It's difficult to do that if they're focused on you and I can't hit them to generate any rage because they're chasing you across the room." The healer additionally adds in, "Tank, take out the totems." I reply "You have a wand. If you want the totems taken out, use it." "Couldn't. I was busy healing your fail ass." At that point I just rolled my eyes, took a breath, and smelled the delicious meal that my fiance was preparing. Life was good. Just had to deal with some difficult folks, finish this instance, and head out.
We all re-enter, run over to where we died, and rebuffed. I told the healer that if I get turned into a frog, dispel it, or it will make life very difficult. I've ran this instance 4 times today already, and it works fine if you just dispel it.
We clear a few more mobs, then I smell the food cooking in the other room. The healer keeps saying "gogogo" in party chat, so I ask "Do you guys want to clear the room, or just gong away?" Healer replies "gong", pally replies "wait". Too late. Gong went off, hydra rose up from the pool, and the warlock ran over with his little imp firing away. Right off, that's not good. Wait for the tank. I run over as fast as I can, Taunt, Bloodrage, Sunder Armor, Thunder Clap, and he's mine again. The other warlock Rains down some Fire, aggroing Hydromancer Velratha, some basilisks, and another group of mobs. Funsies. I let off another Challenging Shout, get aggro, get turned into a frog, wait the entire 10-seconds because the healer doesn't dispel it, the healer dies, locks die, pally dies, I turn back and hold them off for about 2 seconds, then I die.
Again, the ghost run back. Healer says "tank you suck". I reply along the lines of "You need to dispel magic when I get changed into a frog - I can't do crap if I can't do anything." Locks keep saying "take aggro, take aggro" and I reply "I can't take aggro if you're AoEing everything in sight, now can I?" Blah blah blah. I'm getting peeved that my last run of the day had to be with this lovely bunch of people, after 4 runs of getting a good group with everyone working together and doing what we can to stay alive.
And it got me thinking: Have these people ever played a tank? Do they think getting back aggro is just a magic button, with no cooldown and a range of forever? It's not. It takes work. It takes practice. I have to watch a little meter bar during the whole fight that shows me how we're all doing, constantly switching between targets to get Sunder Armor off, building up rage with Bloodrage or Berserker Rage, Taunting to save the healer or overly zealous DPSers, Thunder Clap to slow runners down, Cleave to get multiple mobs, all the while doing my own damaging attacks and making sure I don't die if the healer's busy. And you want me to take out the totems? No. I can't. A tad busy.
So yes, the group re-entered, re-grouped, and promptly re-wiped. I gave a farewell, told them real-life beckoned, and left the party. Hello resurrection sickness and dinner.
On the off-chance that the people I grouped with tonight are reading this: PAY ATTENTION.
Healer: If your tank turns into a frog, dispel it. Quickly.
If you complain about the totems; you have a wand - use it. On my priest, who's ran this very instance multiple times, if I'm not actively healing somebody, I'm sharpshooting the totems down with my wand. I realize the tank is busy and can't be bothered to target an additional object and waste a swing timer + global cooldown on a stationary object, when he could otherwise be establishing better threat on the mobs and managing the next tactical move.
Warlocks: If you're complaining about the tank not taking your aggro back, learn to run to the tank. It's not difficult. If you're being hit, stop hitting the thing, run to the tank, let the tank AoE aggro, then run away and let the healer heal you (or better yet, Drain Life on that Elite). On top of that, learn to Soulstone. There were 2 of you. Surely one of you can figure it out. If you're complaining about a wipe, look in a mirror - you are the only class that can prevent a wipe every 15 minutes. Use it.
Pally: We're cool.
And I hope, hope, hope that they sat around for a good 20 minutes twiddling their thumbs, waiting for another tank to show up.
