The following comments are offered to those who don’t tank and don’t understand how tanks play their role.
why do tanks pull a whole dungeon? (normal or heroic dungeons especially)
while this causes frustration to some people, read along.
where we are in this expac, you really don’t need much gear to solo early expac content. even a modestly geared tank (e.g. 450 ilevel) can solo that content.
if they are running that content, it is for the tank bonus. they are going to pull everything to the boss. just run along until they stop and do your thing.
why do tanks jump ahead of where the dps is and the pack isn’t dead yet? (for general M+ dungeons)
this is in most cases the mark of a good tank trying to make sure that they are maintaining a good pace but also managing their threat/aggro.
there comes a point in a pull where the tank has so much threat and/or the mobs are dying quickly enough that even if the tank isn’t in the physical presence of the mobs, they will maintain aggro until the mobs are dead.
at that point, the tank will begin the next pull.
by doing this, they get a big jump on threat on the new mobs. the tank can also begin positioning the mobs so that the dps can efficiently engage the new pack and not have to wait to unload on them.
tanks always want a threat lead whenever they can get it. moving into the next pack before the dps can engage it helps the tank do that and move the completion of the instance along.
The problem with the pull everything and run ahead style of tanking is 90% of the time a bunch of mobs get left behind doing AoEs that burn and rot down the group while the tank doesn’t care and is speeding along making everyone else have a bad time. It’s especially bad when bad tanks use like one ability and don’t gain enough threat and then just leave it all behind.
This is fine, as long as the DPS’rs understand that tactic. Unfortunately, half the time they are trying to pad their damage chart numbers, and unload on the trash mobs along the way…thus drawing aggro and damage upon themselves. Then, out of a sense of duty, I reflexively heal them, and quickly gain aggro upon myself. These times make me glad for paly tanks that have the foresight to always drop a consecrate to run through…
Further, I don’t move as fast as many tanks can (and do), and it’s difficult to keep them in range and/or line of sight. Especially in time-walking pugs, the tanks are often a bit on the squishy side. Fortunately, it’s been very rare that I don’t catch up to them in time to restore their health, but the constant close calls in those runs are scary.
I only tank aggressively if DPS start pulling for me. That’s my cue to go wall-to-wall and it doesn’t stop until I hit a boss. You want a fast dungeon? You got it.
Otherwise, I pull at a normal pace when I’m partied with others, even when I vastly over-gear the content. Why? Because other party members want to play, too, and I’m not a jackass.
It’s already been said a few ways here, but packs getting broken up and mobs aggroing onto other players is, generally speaking, on the DPS. Caster mobs will eventually get LoS’d or outranged and channel abilities will end. The only thing that breaks up packs if they’re being pulled properly is someone other than the tank attacking them before they’re grouped up.
So I ran some Timewalking last week with a couple of guildies. I was healing on an alt, they were dps. We got into a group with a newer tank who had never seen these dungeons.
He hesitantly told us that and I assured him it was all good and we explained the dungeon, the trash and the bosses. It was Mogu’shan, so there’s that trash that stuns the tank if we can’t stun the trash. So I wanted to explain that.
He moved from pack to pack for the trash, didn’t pull more than one at a time, but we downed them quickly and he started to keep a good pace with that.
By the time we were done, he wanted to keep queueing with us and thanked us for helping him out and not pushing him forward. We got him through a bunch to learn each one and there was no chain pulling. But we still finished them quickly.
Moral of the story: be nice to your tanks and they can still get you through these things quickly without having to pull the whole place at once and without feeling like they have to.
I do wish more people would understand this. Some people are still learning, packs can be chain pulled without going breakneck pace or causing utter chaos or leaving people who have trouble keeping up behind. The dungeon can still be done in less than 10 minutes without going as fast as humanly possible
I see this a lot in timewalking, like with the spirits at the end of forge of souls.
Ego tank will pull all the spirits at once, and the spirits all case a high damage unkickable AoE that the healer can’t heal through, and people die.
Same as the room before Lokhan in Halls of Lighting. A lot of tanks don’t understand how brutal the spinning runeshapers are (who also love to cast Sleep on the healer) and how brutal the poison dot from the runeforged vrykal is, all of which can quickly overwhelm a healer if you pull multiple packs of mobs.
I pull the whole instance because the average PUG dps does worse damage and has worse survivability than the follower dungeon bots, and we finish the dungeon faster going at my pace with all three of them dead than we finish at their pace with all three of them alive
For me it’s just not fun following behind a tank who just never stops moving and by the time I actually get to where they’ve stopped everything’s dead. And being told ‘That’s a you problem’ or ‘I don’t care’ just makes me not want to do group content. It’s why I am excited for Delves. Probably won’t touch the dungeons in TWW. Will probably do the raids once for story. Beyond that…probably just gonna do Delves.
This times infinity squared. I have left groups there because tanks just don’t get it and after 3+ wipes with them doing the same thing over and over and not listening, I’m out.
