Looking for Group
The majority of my experiences with the random dungeon system have been pretty unremarkable. Whether I'm healing or tanking, I ridiculously outgear the content and the majority of my group ridiculously outgears me. If I'm healing, this leads to me casting the odd PW:S and POM while reading a magazine with the other hand and occasionally glancing at the screen to admire my 30,000 point mana pool. If I'm tanking, I have an extremely intense 20 minutes of chain-pulling to try and generate enough rage to hold threat against the 6k gearscore DPS who are somehow managing to generate 9k TPS. Roll tanks guys. You'd be *awesome*.
While tanking is obviously more stressful for me than healing, in general, when my dungeon experiences go badly it's in a reasonably predictable way regardless. I've had a moonkin roll need on a healing trinket then drop group, or the paladin who got so bored healing me they activated their retribution spec halfway through the Nexus and refused to switch back. One constant though is a really nasty entitled attitude from, in particular, DPS.
When I was starting to gear my bear, I encountered a lot of hostility from geared DPS who were not happy about having to watch their threat. A bear in blues can very easily acheive 38 - 40K HP and high mitigation, but threat generation scales much slower and is pretty miserable if you're wearing mostly ilevel 200 epics and blues with a reputation reward weapon. One particular heroic ToC was a complete nightmare for me from the beginning, with the three DPS who were from the same server and guild constantly abusing me for having to taunt targets back when they unloaded on the wrong target despite my marks every time.
I eventually told them to get over themselves or find another tank - which they did. Thinking themselves very clever they waited until we'd engaged the final boss and then all three dropped group. I guess they were chuckling pretty hard thinking they'd caused a wipe, but the healer took pity on me and stayed. As soon as I was finished blowing defensive cooldowns to buy a few moments, I clicked the dialogue to replace them. Three new DPS appeared, heard the story from the healer, cried 'Those bastards!' and charged in to help me finish the fight.
Unfortunately, sympathy isn't usually that easy to come by. Even in my own guild I often encounter an attitude that shows people don't want to have to play with people who have inferior gear to theirs, no matter where or why. Every day there's at least one complaint about the undergeared people in battlegrounds or heroics who are apparently ruining the entire world for them. It seems low gearscore has an offensive smell that these raiders don't want to be in the same room as.
Usually I'm induced to frothing-at-the-mouth rage within minutes by these attitudes. Not only have these people forgotten that, once, they were new 80's too and that geared tanks do not spring from the ground fully formed, but they refuse to allow for any avenue for people to learn or become geared. If people who don't have high levels of gear yet aren't allowed to battleground or run heroics ... then how on earth can they possibly ever attain gear or experience? This attitude is ridiculously short sighted when one thinks of the shortage of tanks in some battlegroups. In Bloodlust, I have an instant queue as a tank, a 3 - 8 minute queue as a healer and a 20 minute queue as DPS. The only way of making DPS queues faster is to get more tanks into the system - and they're not all going to come fresh from ICC 25 with 60k HP and kingslayer.
So few tanks are required for raid makeup as compared to DPS that the gaps in the system are crying out to be filled by a new breed of tank - the heroics tank. We're starting to see quite a few tanks who are geared through the heroics system and BOE's whose only real raid experience is in tanking 10 man weekly raid quests and the odd ToC 10. As far as I'm concerned, this is excellent. It gets more people experiencing tanking, brings in more tanks for the DPS who need them to farm their frost badges and provides a pool of back-up tanks for lower-end guild content.
Assuming a tank has a willingness to learn and an understanding of their class, the only real drawback is that geared DPS need to settle down a little and pay attention to threat. I'm afraid my sympathy for this dire predicament ran out quite a long time ago. I'm not in blues anymore, with 4/10 ICC and tier 10 gear under my belt but I still encounter far too many DPS who feel they should be able to unload everything on a target that's only barely in my swipe radius and ignore all marking or direction. If we think about the numbers for a moment here, it becomes pretty obvious why this is a failing proposition. Even a geared bear is going to generate less threat on an AOE pack than they do on a single target. If you are going to use high damage single target abilities, then please unload them on the target marked skull. My swipe is designed to hold against AOE abilities that generate low DPS per target as compared to your single target abilities. The target I am focusing on also gets my single target high threat abilities and you wont rip it off me so easily.
This, by the way, is why HoR is wipetastic and you die all the time. Just in case you were wondering.
I'm starting to wonder where all of these people are getting their high-level raiding gear from. No raiding MT is going to tolerate DPS ignoring marks and disobeying their direction on breaking progression fights - do these people know how to play their classes properly in a raid? If so, why can't they elsewhere?
Want your heroics to be fast? Check your bad attitude at the door and follow the tank's direction. Taking fights seriously is far quicker than wiping and having to run back. Otherwise you're more and more likely to find yourself sitting there waiting for another tank to join your party after the first one realises they don't have to put up with you and leaves. Like I'm starting to do.
While tanking is obviously more stressful for me than healing, in general, when my dungeon experiences go badly it's in a reasonably predictable way regardless. I've had a moonkin roll need on a healing trinket then drop group, or the paladin who got so bored healing me they activated their retribution spec halfway through the Nexus and refused to switch back. One constant though is a really nasty entitled attitude from, in particular, DPS.
When I was starting to gear my bear, I encountered a lot of hostility from geared DPS who were not happy about having to watch their threat. A bear in blues can very easily acheive 38 - 40K HP and high mitigation, but threat generation scales much slower and is pretty miserable if you're wearing mostly ilevel 200 epics and blues with a reputation reward weapon. One particular heroic ToC was a complete nightmare for me from the beginning, with the three DPS who were from the same server and guild constantly abusing me for having to taunt targets back when they unloaded on the wrong target despite my marks every time.
I eventually told them to get over themselves or find another tank - which they did. Thinking themselves very clever they waited until we'd engaged the final boss and then all three dropped group. I guess they were chuckling pretty hard thinking they'd caused a wipe, but the healer took pity on me and stayed. As soon as I was finished blowing defensive cooldowns to buy a few moments, I clicked the dialogue to replace them. Three new DPS appeared, heard the story from the healer, cried 'Those bastards!' and charged in to help me finish the fight.
Unfortunately, sympathy isn't usually that easy to come by. Even in my own guild I often encounter an attitude that shows people don't want to have to play with people who have inferior gear to theirs, no matter where or why. Every day there's at least one complaint about the undergeared people in battlegrounds or heroics who are apparently ruining the entire world for them. It seems low gearscore has an offensive smell that these raiders don't want to be in the same room as.
Usually I'm induced to frothing-at-the-mouth rage within minutes by these attitudes. Not only have these people forgotten that, once, they were new 80's too and that geared tanks do not spring from the ground fully formed, but they refuse to allow for any avenue for people to learn or become geared. If people who don't have high levels of gear yet aren't allowed to battleground or run heroics ... then how on earth can they possibly ever attain gear or experience? This attitude is ridiculously short sighted when one thinks of the shortage of tanks in some battlegroups. In Bloodlust, I have an instant queue as a tank, a 3 - 8 minute queue as a healer and a 20 minute queue as DPS. The only way of making DPS queues faster is to get more tanks into the system - and they're not all going to come fresh from ICC 25 with 60k HP and kingslayer.
So few tanks are required for raid makeup as compared to DPS that the gaps in the system are crying out to be filled by a new breed of tank - the heroics tank. We're starting to see quite a few tanks who are geared through the heroics system and BOE's whose only real raid experience is in tanking 10 man weekly raid quests and the odd ToC 10. As far as I'm concerned, this is excellent. It gets more people experiencing tanking, brings in more tanks for the DPS who need them to farm their frost badges and provides a pool of back-up tanks for lower-end guild content.
Assuming a tank has a willingness to learn and an understanding of their class, the only real drawback is that geared DPS need to settle down a little and pay attention to threat. I'm afraid my sympathy for this dire predicament ran out quite a long time ago. I'm not in blues anymore, with 4/10 ICC and tier 10 gear under my belt but I still encounter far too many DPS who feel they should be able to unload everything on a target that's only barely in my swipe radius and ignore all marking or direction. If we think about the numbers for a moment here, it becomes pretty obvious why this is a failing proposition. Even a geared bear is going to generate less threat on an AOE pack than they do on a single target. If you are going to use high damage single target abilities, then please unload them on the target marked skull. My swipe is designed to hold against AOE abilities that generate low DPS per target as compared to your single target abilities. The target I am focusing on also gets my single target high threat abilities and you wont rip it off me so easily.
This, by the way, is why HoR is wipetastic and you die all the time. Just in case you were wondering.
I'm starting to wonder where all of these people are getting their high-level raiding gear from. No raiding MT is going to tolerate DPS ignoring marks and disobeying their direction on breaking progression fights - do these people know how to play their classes properly in a raid? If so, why can't they elsewhere?
Want your heroics to be fast? Check your bad attitude at the door and follow the tank's direction. Taking fights seriously is far quicker than wiping and having to run back. Otherwise you're more and more likely to find yourself sitting there waiting for another tank to join your party after the first one realises they don't have to put up with you and leaves. Like I'm starting to do.