In the last few months, years maybe? I have seen a gross rise in the number of people with crap attitudes. It’s not just in raids, but in instances, in world quests and in everything I have to be involved in. I honestly have very little problems with the game. So rather than going on a rant, I have some solutions, suggestions maybe.
1: When you enter a dungeon, there is a hierarchy. That means 1 person leads and the other 4 follow. Almost always this person is the tank.
Reason 1, as a tank it is far easier to get and control aggro if the tank pulls first. There are a lot of cases where the direction most NPCs are facing can have catastrophic affects on the group.
Reason 2, a clear path is set. For most people, your primary amount of experience is going to come from finishing the instance. In the higher end stuff like heroics, mythics and mythic + anything else pulled is an annoyance. With this clear path set STAY in the path. That means you wont randomly aggro stuff and cause a general cluster with the tank, heals and other DPS. Stay in the tanks cleared path.
Use your skills to the groups advantage.
Tanks, keep in mind your job is to provide aggro, a clear path to the objective and a suitable damage mitigating force to your group. Amusingly enough you are not a DPS but I do acknowledge and strive to provide as much DPS as I can. When you queue for a dungeon as a tank be in tank spec before you pull. In random groups be prepared to figure out what your group is capable of and move at that pace. Keep in mind other people do not like dying and just because you survive does not mean it is fun for them.
Feel free to use marks to indicate what should die first. CC means crowd controlled (Sheep, Trap, Sap) I assign the marks starting with Skull (primary target) to Shift-F1, Moon (first CC) to Shift-F2 and Square (second CC) to Shift-F3… and so on. Almost always, anything with a mana bar needs to be interrupted or CCd. Specifically with healers, either be prepared to Interupt them or spell steal, dispel and or add DPS to the target receiving that heal.
Melee DPS: Interrupt, currently on a 14ish second cool down. Other skills like AoE stuns, Single Target stuns also work to at least stop a spell.
Ranged DPS: I think have a 24 second cool down interrupt? Also, personally I hate fear and knockbacks, are an option. Sheep, Hex and anything else you might have may also work.
In most cases you want to wait until the cast bar is almost complete to interrupt. The NPC casting an ability is NOT doing anything else that includes hitting players, moving or assisting with other mechanics. The other thing it does is allow another players interrupt more time to come off cool down.
In general:
IF you are not the tank do not pull. If you start pulling and the tank exhibits annoyance with you and tells you to stop then stop. It is your fault and you are in the wrong.
IF the tank is not sure what to do, as an experienced wow player you can probably identify this, do your best to help them. A lot of groups do not use voice comms. Please have enough patience to type out useful information and help them along the way. And before you utter the words ‘but they should know already’ take a few steps back and remember when you first started you knew absolutely nothing as well. I think this is called empathy.
IF some DPS in the group pulls and refuses to stop then remove that DPS. Not the tank. If you remove the tank all you do is get long angry rants. (That is almost what this was until I got coffee and realized an angry rant would do nothing but feed trolls.)
Article A: If one of your friends is one of these people then either get new friends or be a good friend and straighten them out.
World Quests and General World STUFF!
Rares: Call these out. You are not going to have a better chance of getting a drop you want because you soloed it. Someone else might and you just did a nice thing helping someone else.
Rares that are hard to kill: Most cases your pet is a really good tank (hunters) in some cases it is the easiest way to kill a bunch of people. If a world boss needs to be faced away from the raid group then your pet is NOT the correct tank. Let one of the player tanks deal with that mechanic and take your pet off taunt.
Just be nice to other folk.
-If ya see someone near a flower or ore help them kill whatever is stopping them from looting it.
-If you see someone dying take a moment to help them out.
-If some random person asks for help with something then help them out. (Gold and other materials like that do not count. Most of the time they are just being greedy and looking for handouts.)
But mostly just try and be patient with people. If they do not listen to you then feel free to escalate conditions until they do or you are forced to vote kick them from the group.
If you are interested in what brought this post about:
I run heroic Motherlode almost every day for the last boss. Roughly 50% of the time I get a group that pulls random stuff, will not interrupt, will not use their abilities and when I stop to try and explain they need to do this I get a ‘just keep pulling’ comment, someone mad because they died, or worse just removed from the group. In cases where there is a world quest, I have no idea there is one, people pull stuff in that direction and get other people killed. And then ask why I didnt stop to help them. Well, I just pulled half the stuff to the boss, Im more worried about keeping my defenses up and dodging stuff than I am the rest of the group. Of course I notice people dying and then that most of them arent in range.
SOMETIMES! (and this is the most fun for me) I get a group that comes in and interrupts and stuns and EVERYTHING DIES QUICKLY! Its awesome! And then someone is like ‘Hey yo! World quest here, can we do it?!’ And I am like ‘Oh… world quest, yeah. Lets go take care of that.’ And it is still fun for me when people just stay behind and obey the basic rules. I can deal with people not interrupting. And I can adapt to a group not being able to handle massive pulls. And I can see you type ‘Hey slow down, I dont know whats going on’.
What I cannot abide is a lack of communication. Speak up. Say something. Yes there are people who wont respond and those are crappy people. But under no circumstances should you kick someone without telling them they are doing wrong. And DEFINITELY do not kick someone because you are doing wrong. If you are not following the above guidelines then you are the one who is wrong.
On the other side if you follow the guidelines above then you are going to be part of the group of people who make this game far more enjoyable.
Thanks for reading and I hope this does some good.