With the onset of Cataclysm I find myself running into groups with tanks who have no concept of waiting or of marking mobs for kill order or CC (or both). That's not to say I haven't run with tome tanks who REALLY understand all that and make running instances a pleasure.
What I find to phenomenally stupid are tanks so dead set on continuing to move forward that they cannot wait for some party member to get a rez, pull a boss then blame the group and quit in a huff.
TLDR: Tanks should wait for party members before attacking a boss.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Why "The Reluctant Tank"?
When you play a warrior, you will find you occasionally get whispers asking if you want to tank such and such instance. My experience by level 62 was still that instances were unbearably long (dead runs tend to make things last longer ya know). Add to that my experience with "end game tanking" *cough cough* in Vanilla WoW left me with a very poor view of the end game instance community in general. I got into a group doing a Stratholme 45 Minute Baron Run that had been spamming for a tank for some time. I told them from the start that I had very little experience but was billing to give it a shot. Short version: their explanations were not nearly enough to prepare a noob such as I was at the time and they realized - as did I - that they were were not going to make their time limit with me tanking - I was simply too new and they had no patience for teaching a new tank.
In BC things got better. I pretty much held off on doing instances but but I was feeling a little better about myself and was willing to give it a go when I got a whisper to tank Slave Pens. I had an AWESOME, helpful supportive group. i think this helped for me to decide to go tank spec once I hit 70, which I did. Oddly enough, most groups I ran with were rather supportive with tips on positioning, tanking movement, etc. I got my first GOOD Shield off the first boss in SL (we stopped at him because we could tell I would NOT have been able to tank the rest of the instance, not only that, it STILL seemed to take FOREVER to get up to the first boss. I kept at it with my tanking, made some good friend who were super helpful with advice and eventually got my tank geared enough for Karazahn. Unfortunately I only got in there twice during the run of BC, but I DID pull off a decent job off tanking Moroes so that I had enough aggro to get him on me when the main tank died and we (everyone else) burned him down. This was after a couple wipes and some REALLY good advice from the main tank that paid off when he got downed on our third attempt. And no, I got no gear from Kara during BC for my tank 8^(
One of my highlights as a tank in BC was when a fellow I befriended as a level 60 Pally eventually way out geared me with lot of epics and tier gear would a go on runs with me, he would regularly compliment me on being able to hold aggro even with his DPS (and he had some damn high DPS).
When Wrath came along I stayed a tank for leveling since Blizz did a good job of FINALLY upping the pve DPS reasonably well, and I love the survivability. Once I learning the bosses and instances I did pretty good in Wrath. Again, it was all about learning the boss fights and the peculiarities of instances and eventually I was tanking away like crazy, especially after the LFD (looking for Dungeon) tool was implemented.
But now I am face with a new expansion with many (thought not NEARLY as many) tanking choices and what seems like a complete new paradigm for tanking. Or maybe its just a throwback on Blizzard's part.
Lately the only instances I will, and have, tanked, has been Black Rock Caverns. That was only because I had run the place at least 4 or 5 times as DPS and had a reasonable concept of what a tank needed to do. I only tanked it after a lower level tank was struggling (did that on both my warrior and my druid - his only tanking experience too date).
Maybe at this point in the game I am just a little burned out on tanking and instances in general, but until I get more experience in all the instances and can understand WTF is happening on varius bosses, I passing on queuing as a tank.
In BC things got better. I pretty much held off on doing instances but but I was feeling a little better about myself and was willing to give it a go when I got a whisper to tank Slave Pens. I had an AWESOME, helpful supportive group. i think this helped for me to decide to go tank spec once I hit 70, which I did. Oddly enough, most groups I ran with were rather supportive with tips on positioning, tanking movement, etc. I got my first GOOD Shield off the first boss in SL (we stopped at him because we could tell I would NOT have been able to tank the rest of the instance, not only that, it STILL seemed to take FOREVER to get up to the first boss. I kept at it with my tanking, made some good friend who were super helpful with advice and eventually got my tank geared enough for Karazahn. Unfortunately I only got in there twice during the run of BC, but I DID pull off a decent job off tanking Moroes so that I had enough aggro to get him on me when the main tank died and we (everyone else) burned him down. This was after a couple wipes and some REALLY good advice from the main tank that paid off when he got downed on our third attempt. And no, I got no gear from Kara during BC for my tank 8^(
One of my highlights as a tank in BC was when a fellow I befriended as a level 60 Pally eventually way out geared me with lot of epics and tier gear would a go on runs with me, he would regularly compliment me on being able to hold aggro even with his DPS (and he had some damn high DPS).
When Wrath came along I stayed a tank for leveling since Blizz did a good job of FINALLY upping the pve DPS reasonably well, and I love the survivability. Once I learning the bosses and instances I did pretty good in Wrath. Again, it was all about learning the boss fights and the peculiarities of instances and eventually I was tanking away like crazy, especially after the LFD (looking for Dungeon) tool was implemented.
But now I am face with a new expansion with many (thought not NEARLY as many) tanking choices and what seems like a complete new paradigm for tanking. Or maybe its just a throwback on Blizzard's part.
Lately the only instances I will, and have, tanked, has been Black Rock Caverns. That was only because I had run the place at least 4 or 5 times as DPS and had a reasonable concept of what a tank needed to do. I only tanked it after a lower level tank was struggling (did that on both my warrior and my druid - his only tanking experience too date).
Maybe at this point in the game I am just a little burned out on tanking and instances in general, but until I get more experience in all the instances and can understand WTF is happening on varius bosses, I passing on queuing as a tank.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
My intro to WoW
I only started playing World of Warcraft so I could do something with my brother, as we had been in touch too rarely for far too long. My video game experience prior to WoW was limited to Baldur's Gate for a few years until a friend turned me on to Diablo II. I gave a shot at playing that on Battlenet a few times, but discovered that too many of the world's asshats were there (my introduction to ganking, although I didn't know that term for a few years). I started playing Battlefield 1942 at an internet gaming parlor, and there were a number of peole there who played WoW. I remembered my brother showing me Undercity in the game when I'd visited him some months before, so I go the the game so we could play together online - at least I'd know someone and he could show me what to do.
BUT I was SUCH a noob. More one that later.
I've been 'seriously' tanking since sometime early in the Burning Crusade expansion. I did some tanking during vanilla WoW around the mid 40s one time time in Zul Farrak. Luckily the group I was with really knew their stuff and I was an passable meatshield despite know damn little about what I was doing.
I hit level 60 with about 2-3 months to go before the Burning Crusades Expansion. I was till such a massive noob, but I had heard that if you wanted "the good gear" you needed to do the level 60 instances - Sunken Temple (although not techincally a lvl 60 instance, good gear could be gotten there), Strat, Scholo, LBRS and UBRS.
I had the experience of attempting to to tank exactly ONE Strat run. A 45 minute Baron run no less. I had no idea exactly what that entailed and even told the group that took me in as much. Turns out that a Strat Baron run was no place for a new tank. No one had time to to explain anything - hey, it's supposed to be a timed run, but what did I know. Anyway, I was semi-politely asked to leave so they could get a new tank who knew what he/she was doing. I doubt they ever finished. Forming groups in Vanilla was an extremely painful and time consuming affair and my experience with instances was that they were excruciating long as well. The only other instance run I recall doing in Vanilla after htting 60 was an UBRS run, and I recall that run specifically because I got some much needed shoulder upgrades off The Beast.
Lightforge Spaulders. Yes, pally shoulders. And yes, I went into Outland wearing those shoulders. As I was still very gun-shy about doing instances, I had them until sometime in level 61 or so.
I was, at the beginning of BC, still very much a noob. But a new co-worker played WoW and was just great about explaining thing like putting talents primarily into one talent tree to get better results; explained what AP was and why it was important...things like that. I changed my talents to a deep fury build instead of the hodge-podge mix I'd been using up to that point and found thing started improving for me greatly as I progressed through the game.
When you are trying to learn such an important role so late in in the evolution of the game - especially so close to the release of an expansion (I was at level 60 with only about 2 months til an BC)....well, it did not happen. People were too impatient. The general attitude I saw was one of "If you don't know how to do it already you suck, things like that. Not the best thing for someone who was rather withdrawn and in general did not care for people very much anyway. So I quested on my main, a warrior, and on my alts, put the things my friend had explained to me into practice and slowly started getting better while either doing quests with my brother or running around solo.
I really think as the game has evolved there are more people willing to teach and give others a chance to screw up as they learn. My hero is Daniel Howell, better know to the WoW community as BRK. His blog and videos on hunters were, and still are, amazing. I think I'm blogging in part because of him, as a way to POSSIBLY give something back to the WoW community and a way to dust off off my writing skills and share some experiences.
BUT I was SUCH a noob. More one that later.
I've been 'seriously' tanking since sometime early in the Burning Crusade expansion. I did some tanking during vanilla WoW around the mid 40s one time time in Zul Farrak. Luckily the group I was with really knew their stuff and I was an passable meatshield despite know damn little about what I was doing.
I hit level 60 with about 2-3 months to go before the Burning Crusades Expansion. I was till such a massive noob, but I had heard that if you wanted "the good gear" you needed to do the level 60 instances - Sunken Temple (although not techincally a lvl 60 instance, good gear could be gotten there), Strat, Scholo, LBRS and UBRS.
I had the experience of attempting to to tank exactly ONE Strat run. A 45 minute Baron run no less. I had no idea exactly what that entailed and even told the group that took me in as much. Turns out that a Strat Baron run was no place for a new tank. No one had time to to explain anything - hey, it's supposed to be a timed run, but what did I know. Anyway, I was semi-politely asked to leave so they could get a new tank who knew what he/she was doing. I doubt they ever finished. Forming groups in Vanilla was an extremely painful and time consuming affair and my experience with instances was that they were excruciating long as well. The only other instance run I recall doing in Vanilla after htting 60 was an UBRS run, and I recall that run specifically because I got some much needed shoulder upgrades off The Beast.
Lightforge Spaulders. Yes, pally shoulders. And yes, I went into Outland wearing those shoulders. As I was still very gun-shy about doing instances, I had them until sometime in level 61 or so.
I was, at the beginning of BC, still very much a noob. But a new co-worker played WoW and was just great about explaining thing like putting talents primarily into one talent tree to get better results; explained what AP was and why it was important...things like that. I changed my talents to a deep fury build instead of the hodge-podge mix I'd been using up to that point and found thing started improving for me greatly as I progressed through the game.
When you are trying to learn such an important role so late in in the evolution of the game - especially so close to the release of an expansion (I was at level 60 with only about 2 months til an BC)....well, it did not happen. People were too impatient. The general attitude I saw was one of "If you don't know how to do it already you suck, things like that. Not the best thing for someone who was rather withdrawn and in general did not care for people very much anyway. So I quested on my main, a warrior, and on my alts, put the things my friend had explained to me into practice and slowly started getting better while either doing quests with my brother or running around solo.
I really think as the game has evolved there are more people willing to teach and give others a chance to screw up as they learn. My hero is Daniel Howell, better know to the WoW community as BRK. His blog and videos on hunters were, and still are, amazing. I think I'm blogging in part because of him, as a way to POSSIBLY give something back to the WoW community and a way to dust off off my writing skills and share some experiences.
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