For every legitimately bad tank there are 10,000 mouth breathing dps waiting to make another player quit tanking altogether.
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Saturday I was asked to join an LBRS group, so I did.
We looked for a tank a bit, then got a response.
We waited at the entrance for 30 minutes for him to show up. When he did, he says Gems are reserved anyone got an issue with that.
We of course said yes, that’s why we are here.
He then immediately quit the group after we waited for him to show up to the darn run and wasted all our time.
All he had to do was say it before he joined, no hard feelings. But putting us on the spot there, he could go pound rocks.
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This guy doesn’t realize every tank he makes rage quit goes fury and need rolls on all his leather gear. Have fun farming your BIS in UBRS with 2 rogues and 3 dps warriors in every group
By far the hardest role in a group to fill is tank… followed by heals.
While your two experiences certainly aren’t shining examples of Classic mentality… it can happen when:
You don’t have guild tanks available, your friends list is thin. Perhaps if you had let the tank have the node… and made friends… you would have someone on your list to call on when you wanted a tank.
Remember, when you use the excuse that “man it’s just a node… not worth leaving a group over”… the other perspective is “Man, it’s just a node… not worth losing a tank and potential friend over”
Now, if you’re going to say: “We I don’t want Tank friends like that…” I can only direct you to your friends list and have you take stock of how many Tank friends you have. Obviously not enough to always have one tanking for you.
While you may have found a replacement in 10 minutes… at level 38. I wonder how more important Tank friends will be at 50… 55… 60. That is when the Tanks get really scarce as they get burned out from tanking and roll DPS alts.
Friends list always trumps a few nodes worth or ore.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Those ratios are what pretty much ensures the shortage of tanks for dungeons.
While I’m not sure if the original post is meant to serve as a sort of PSA to would-be tanks, a small rant about two tanks who weren’t much fun to party with, or what, but one thing stands out:
Sounds like there’s not much difficulty finding a tank. That’s been pretty consistent with my experience as well, particularly with so many warriors around. 
There’s a pretty good chance the people you list in your examples are jackwads regardless of their role in the group. A person doesn’t suddenly become a tyrant by just putting on a shield or swapping to bear.
It’s not tanks, it’s jerks playing tanks. And they introduce their own set of problems to a group the same as when jerks playing healers or dps bring their own form of misery.
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I saw a tank spamming LFG the other day advertising they would tank a run in exchange for money (55+ runs). I realize it’s not the norm… but man, people are the worst sometimes.
What’s worse is they probably didn’t have a single point in prot 
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Tanking kind of stinks, dps goes crazy immediately and even some healers oom cause they are dpsing too. I also miss a lot which means I lose agro because the dps is way to aggressive and aren’t compensating for misses. It isn’t fun often. And I don’t understand what gear to use, if I gear to not take damage, I don’t have rage. If I don’t gear to block damage, then I might die cause of a bad pull or bad play because of group.
Also, Why does no one focus fire the mob I mark? If they kill that target I can keep agro on who group easy and they can dps whatever.
As for mining nodes, I always offer to give anyone in group a tick at it in case they are still skilling up.
As for rage potions, yeah I’ll likely use them later on, but while leveling forget it. I can pop a potion and use all that rage and have no attacks land. I think in TBC they added a low level accuracy elixir. That one I’d use all the time while tanking if it were available.
People don’t complain in my runs, we do move smooth and chain pull, unless healer is dpsing to the point he ooms on one mob. But I’m not having good time.
No there aren’t. And it’s probably way less than 2%. In fact, it’s so low that it’s not even worth you attempting to argue for it.
Group taunts are on very long CDs. It’s best to take things slower so that nobody dies and casters don’t go OOM.
THis isn’t a hard concept.
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Beyond that, For warriors at least AOE is basically non-existant when it comes to tanking; I basically have to spam tab sunder/revenge and taunt to hold aggro and pray I don’t miss anything.
I haven’t ghosted a group yet but here are some things that make me consider it early…
Anyone pulling but me. I usually rectify this by avoiding tanking and telling the healer to watch. You pull, you tank.
Someone telling me to pick up the pace. This only happened once, but we were in mara and I wanted the elemental pats that explode in to little elementals gotten rid of before we took on the rock giants. (wiping in mara nets you confused players getting back in)
Needing on BoE tank gear when you cant wear it. Most of the time the group goes “wtf” and I receive the item (that i wear on the spot)
Running ahead of the tank all the time. These are the adhd players who just want to be first for whatever reason and body pull without knowing the instance. One guy yesterday rushed to eranikus’s quest spot not realizing the dragon would aggro.
As a tank we have to read our group comp and how they behave. It is also our responsibility to set the pace. So if I see some “gogo” player from the start, I know we will have some rough edges to smooth out before the run is over.
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Imagine a class that has the opportunity to get instant invites to every single group. But the quantity of this role is in such demand. Why is that ?
Saem and when a chest is seen we all roll, I unlock chest its a win win
Why the hell would you even fear in the first place if a root works just fine on its own? Assuming root is even castable in that particular dungeon.
I’ve seen Fear used to save a group wipe (fearing a random Assassin in UBRS after the rest of the room before Beast is dead), but I’ve seen it cause wipes far more often than not.
As a general rule, Fear is a last ditch CC to be used when you’re out of options and severely on the backfoot.
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Sometimes I have to run ahead of the tank just to get enough time to drink (as a healer) because a lot of them are just go, go, go. I actually don’t mind as long as they time it right so that my mana fills with a comfortable margin to heal them, and if they bring things back so I don’t have to run my butt off just to get there. Worst case I’ve had to lose more mana by going cat and using dash, or blow my 3min insta cast CD needlessly.
My point is that everybody just needs to take it a smidge easier lol.
This would be beneficial on a ranged add that needs to be CC’d without the risk of it running around and pulling more things. This is really only useful in ZF and maybe some areas of Dire Maul, though not sure if it works in there. Roots is extremely limited in usefulness for dungeons.
Personally, I’ve never seen fear save a group. I have many times seen it wipe a group when we otherwise might have had a chance to prevent the wipe though
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Agree. The attitude and entitlement from tanks in pugs is pathetic. Half of the time tanks cannot keep aggro even when we give the tank time to create threat.
This is why I no longer pug. I’ve seen some healers with this attitude but mostly tanks.
Far too many don’t understand how aggro works in classic. They’re too used to retail. It’s incredibly easy to pull aggro off a tank in classic and it isn’t so easy for them to get it back. That is why a lot of casters use downranking, not just to save mana but to reduce threat. Losing and having trouble getting threat back isn’t always on the tank. Most DPS don’t know how to weave their abilities to drop threat when necessary, they just go whole hog because OMG LOOK I’M TOPS ON THE METERS I’M SO OP AT THIS GAME I’M BETTER THAN ALL OF YOU.
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Literally the only way you are vulnerable to “ninjas” is to roll greed on those high value items. If everyone agrees to roll need right from the start everything is fair. If you naively choose to use need before greed then your “good group” is only good until one guy decides his epic mount is more important than finishing this dungeon run.
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On Fairbanks I had a warrior tank using a 2hander leave my ZF run on the scarab portion. We had an AOE based group, 2 Mages, myself as a Lock, and a shaman healer. Tank gathered up the mobs, the mages frosted/slowed them in place and we all began to AOE, including the Shaman with chain lightning. Tank stayed in melee range of all the mobs while they were frozen in place, and almost died from all the melee damage of these mobs.
Tank was upset that he almost died because the Shaman wasn’t focusing on healing him, and instead wanting to help quicken the AOE. Healer said something a little bit rude back about, “but did you die? and that he didn’t need to take the damage anyway had he just gotten out of melee range of the frozen mobs.” Tank left, punishing the rest of the grp for a single comment.