PSA for "keep up" tanks: Healing generates threat

Community General Discussion
1

Look, I’m not going to try to tell anyone not to do content as fast as the group you have can do it. I’ve surrendered to and even made use of the fact that the current leveling dungeon reality takes advantage of the fact that tanks are nigh invincible in current content. It is what it is and I’m not here to tell you it’s not. It’s reality.

What I am finding is that this reality is often times ignoring another reality that allows a group with no more than one invincible person in it to function alongside said invincible person.

I just left, without a single word (as a DPS who would be replaced immediately) a leveling dungeon where the tank opened by politely asking everyone not to attack anything because he was going to pull literally everything before the first boss at once. As I sighed at my keyboard, I at least credited said tank with the manners to communicate, so thumbs up and full marks on that score.

He then took off and I realized this was going to go one of two ways, he either knew or he didn’t that…

Nope he didn’t know.

He clearly did not know that just asking everyone not to attack isn’t enough. First off, it’s a leveling dungeon and as I’ve seen since returning in novemeber, the modern WoW player has a better than average chance of not seeing LFD dungeons as a place to chat. Indeed, in conversations almost a decade old I can recall pretty reasonable WoW community conversations citing that “no one talks unless something is wrong, so talking is a red flag.” It’s dumb, but that’s the culture. My point is, not watching chat is something we have to assume and prepare for. So asking the DPS not to attack and not getting confirmation that everyone saw that is your first mistake. This isn’t your team, these are randos, and they’re not necessarily seeing the group as “human.” It’s gross, but it’s the culture. So away he goes, and the predictible happens: Someone gets hurt, the healer heals them, and because the tank is just going on “no one should be doing anything” as an assumption of full threat, the healer pulls agro and traaaaainwreck.

So I leave, because it’s going to get ugly and follower dungeons don’t abide by the dungeon cooldown, and because there have been deaths, there’s no deserter (at least I assume that’s why.)

Dear tanks, you can do “keep up” tanking, I’m not saying you can’t, but you do have to contact things and actually maintain threat, especially if anyone is taking damage and the healer is healing them. Healing generates threat. You can’t just expect everyone to melt in the wake of your huge pulls, you do have to make sure stuff is on you.

I mean, you don’t have to, but if you want healers in queue, you should maybe extend this courtesy.

Sincerely,

A “career tank” who would like to do some dungeons on my alts.

Have a nice day, and remember, you can always reclaim your time and leave a group, but hurling insults around is impotent silliness.

30 Likes
2

Reasonable take. Let’s await the strawmen and “so what you’re really saying is…” responses.

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Kudos for leaving when you weren’t having fun. :+1:

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4

The circumstance you describe for the tank seems like they don’t know how to get aggro/hold it.

I’ll admit my experience is mostly as Blood but as long as your AoE dot is being applied I’ve not seen any issues holding aggro.

Good on ya for leaving

1 Like
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There is a saying from one of the Dune books: “Never find yourself in the company of people with whom you would not wish to die.”

If the group isn’t functioning like a group, and there’s a sociopath turning group content into a circus, I leave.

To use a driving metaphor: People who tailgate and cut you off for a single car length honestly think they’re saving time. Are they? Could they ever honestly do the math on how much time their reckless driving actually saves them?

Nope. They aren’t tanking like clowns to actually save time. They’re tanking like clowns because they’re chaos junkies, working out some personal problems on your time.

Reclaim your time.

10 Likes
6

I would like them to do the leveling dungeons 10-60 with the npcs, that way everyone gets the leveling dungeon experience they want. People who want slow or chill can do them with npcs and people who want a speedrun will do it with each other.

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No you dont. You can social aggro all the way to your stopping point and then start in on aggro.

This is a trainwreck because of dps with poor situational awareness on many fronts by the sounds of it.

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Pull ends. Tank at full, DPS at half.
Tank face pulls the next pack, hits nothing, and moves on.
Healer heals a DPS and pulls mobs off the tank.

The tank can be bothered to push a single button to avoid this.

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Generally speaking, I’m all for tanks running through and grabbing everything, but yes, they need to do slightly more than hope that their good looks keep everything on them.

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Yeah. Not saying tanks can’t pull big if they want to. They give us all of these fun and easy ways to generate AoE threat for a reason though.

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The DPS can NOT push a button and avoid this.

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Reminds me of an episode of MASH, Klinger was driving Houlihan to the airport, late for her plane (this was the episode where he was also taking bets on the birth of a calf) when they came to a fork in the road, Houlihan asked if one was was faster, Klinger was like “yes but not in the way you want”, Houlihan demanded he take the faster way and they wound up breaking the jeep on the rocky road (not to the point it could not be fixed or anything, it just was not going anywhere).

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I think this is something that will eventually happen. Possibly later in TWW, but I imagine at least at some point during the trilogy.

1 Like
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Bro your huffing some mad copium if you think DPS have a pause button.

Every tank has an AOE that is almost free and spamable. Thunder clap, blood boil, swipe and thrash, the flame aura thing dh does, consecrate and hammers for pallies.

You hit that button once and it doesn’t matter what the rest are doing. Aggro is on you, the tank, as it should be.

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It’s really never been easier to generate threat than it is right now and if a single heal after a DPS gets pulsed into combat is ripping things off of you then you simply aren’t doing it right.

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I haven’t really done much LFD this expansion, but I did finally do a bunch of MoP timewalking to get Udiza up to 70. Healer queues have always been pretty short, but I was getting instant queues consistently, which I can’t ever remember happening. And yes, healing random dungeons is pretty miserable for the reasons you describe right now. I’m probably done healing randoms at this point. Udiza is 70 and any other class I play has a dps spec I don’t loathe.

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You havent done full pulls to bosses have you? To make it quick and easy you rum as direct as you can and just ranged to pick up packs. Theyre usually trailing behind and out of range of AoE abilities until you get to the boss. Which is why you say: dont touch anything, pulling all the way to the boss.

Its faster and easier to AoE it all down at the boss than it is trying to pick them apart as you go

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Oh they know, they just don’t care. And honestly, why should they? They could probably solo the entire thing. Like I said in another thread: this is the game that the players created as far back as Cata when the crying went nuclear over dungeon buffs. So now, unless you are in upper keys, the majority of the game just falls over.

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19

tune your early dungeons, it’s your best content let face facts…you certainly will turn off any new player the way it is now and plenty of old players .Buy a boost ppl and stop ruining others experiences .If i didn’t want to do the content I’d buy a darn boost ,BUT i do love those early dungeons on all my alts.

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This untuned weird stuff is going to continue to devolve into a very pathological mess