I enjoy tanking, and it’s what I have been doing since S2 of BFA, but trying to tank for randoms is just too stressful these days.
If you pull too much, people complain. Don’t pull enough, complaints. Try and manage your pulls and someone pulls for you. Need to move mobs to a certain spot and stand around a corner, someone stand out in the open and dies.
There are mobs that stun you, fear you, silence you and when you pull all those together along with too many casters, or too much AOE, wipes happen. Worse is when someone runs ahead only to die and blames the tank.
I had that earlier in TW where the DPS decided I was not pulling enough so they ran ahead and died, straight up blamed me. I got vote kicked out for that and realised the rest of the group was premade.
And it’s not just low-level dungeons either, this stuff happens in premade M+ groups also, aside from the vote kicking, people just leave and brick the key instead.
But as a DPS, man it’s all chill. Follow the tank, ignore what everyone else is doing, I don’t have to babysit the DPS. No worrying about being vote kicked because I am not pulling exactly how a 4 man premade wants me to. No one blames me for pulling too much or not enough. If I fall behind because the tank runs off no big deal, if I am doing low DPS no one cares.
And it’s just sad, some of the playing group treat tanks like garbage some days. Treat your tanks a little better and you might find there are more players willing to tank.
No, actually it’s not chill as a dps. It’s just as annoying and stressful getting yelled at by others to ‘git gud’ or ‘interrupt’ that 1 in 20 mobs you just drug across the room. I mean, come on, do you really think we just sit in one spot and just blast fire from our fingers? I’m a sv hunter, so I’m having to constantly move with you. My last tw, I listened to them fight over this.
Blizzard did this. There was no reason to speed race it. But whatever, it’s the same as cars passing you on the highway at 60 and you catching up to them at stop signs 5 minutes later. It’s not faster.
i just spent my evening tanking keys on my pally alt, doing 8-14 range. on my main I’m doing 20-24, and It’s not nearly as bad as you’ve described in keys. most groups are just fine.
as for TW and LFR, I believe it in TW, because people expect wall to wall (or boss to boss) pulling now.
I won’t tank LFR because the other tank is often a 500% grade A idiot, and life’s too short to deal with a co-tank who doesn’t have taunt keybound. or if he does, he hits it on CD.
it’s really comparing apples to oranges though. DPS don’t have the spotlight on them, every little mistake isn’t evident like it often is with tanking, that’s true… but I’ve mained a guardian druid since wrath. I absolutely think that playing a dps well is more stressful than tanking. I don’t find tanking all that stressful other than the first few weeks of a new m+ season when I’m trying to learn routes (and frankly this season was perfect because it wasn’t so hard, I could yolo it until I figured out the routing)
note the “well” part because it’s key. Anyone - even me - can play a dps mediocre-ly. But to really shine and push up into high keys, a dps needs to know the route just as much as the tank does. They need to know what all the mobs do, just like the tank does. idk. I legimately think being a good dps is just as much work as being a good tank… just different work in some aspects.
It can be hard to ignore when dumb things happen or people feel the need to blame you. I get that totally. I had to step away from my computer earlier this week because I was mentally exhausted after a mythic run and was getting told how bad I was the whole time. It was hard to not say anything rude back and take blame when it wasn’t my fault, but we did finish the dungeon at least.
This could happen to anybody though in any role, it’s true. I’ve ran into it more as a tank however I admit. The upside I’ve gotten from these types of encounters is that it’s helped me realize that temper tantrums aren’t to be taken seriously. That people will say or do anything or avoid taking responsibility of any kind, or it’s like people have to get some final word out to establish that they weren’t the problem, you were. Perhaps they are simply angry and venting their frustrations.
Sometimes (many times!) it IS my fault though too, and you gotta be able to accept it as well and take it as learning opportunities.
Thing is I almost always know when it’s my fault. Trust me I already feel bad.
Of all of the roles STRESS WISE… healing was the absolute hardest to deal with to me. You make up for every mistake and if you can’t keep up… well obviously it’s the healers fault! Lol
I don’t miss that. Tanking is a different stress than healing, but less taxing overall imo.
One of the last times I ever did LFR was in Terrace of Endless Springs.
On the dragon boss, the other tank never taunted. I whispered and asked for him to taunt, I said in /ra for him to taunt, I started doing it in /say so he could see the word bubble for him to taunt.
I finally got up to something like 90 stacks. Fortunate it’s LFR, so nothing does any damage, but still.
After the boss was dead, I started to complain. His buddy from the same guild said in raid chat, “He’s a Paladin. He doesn’t have a taunt.”
In all seriousness though, pugging is a drag unless everyone puts the effort into being on the same page, which rarely happens.
Sorry your TW stuff went sideways, it’s in a weird spot imo cause in most cases you can just W through it. So that comes with expectations that you’ll press W through it without issue and anytime that doesn’t happen it’s likely ending in flaming because the group wasn’t in alignment.
Do you mean that the 4 other people joined as a group to a random queued dungeon? Does that happen all that often? I’ve done a few TW dungeons this week and don’t think I’ve seen it once.
A few of them are pretty bad. But if I find any player in a group is causing me too much stress, I generally just leave. I’m too old to put up with crap behaviour, whether it be the tank or anyone else. And there are bad tanks, despite what you are saying. Just there are bad dps or heals.
As a tank the thing I would find most annoying is dps who feel the need to pull mobs before I can. I see it randoms quite a bit and can only imagine the muttering that must sometimes be coming from the player tank.
As a healer, when someone runs off and pulls extra mobs, i stay with the tank and keep the tank and group that is following the tank alive. The one that runs off can die. I dont care.
The intention is for you to learn the layouts of the dungeon and have an intuition for where the tank is going and where they are going to stop and stack the mobs. You’re misinterpreting the “speed racing”, it’s people playing the dungeon as designed. What’s actually happening is you are stopping in extremely unintuitive places.
