I didn’t mean to imply that you were. When I said ‘you’ above, I meant tanks in general, not you specifically here. You weren’t complaining you were asking advice. <3
In case it got lost… I’d encourage you to just join in the dps fest and not tank in those situations. It’ll be messy, but seems like the healer wanted the chaos.
gosh I’m glad I got my pre-bis done before the baddies crew catched up in strat-scholo.
those horror stories about bad tank make my shiver.
Most likely, you’re running with a ‘coolkid’ who only knows one speed: their own. You have two choices from that point. Play with the ‘coolkid’ or find a group they are not in. If you opt to stay and they keep pulling, break out the 2hander and snare/taunt mobs while everyone dps’s stuff down.
It will be obvious to the dps that the healer is pulling. If disaster strikes, they’ll know why.
I mean if you want me to show you how to ruin a run with a Paladin or Priest I can do it in spectacular fashion by just out-pulling the Tank. /shrug
Better get used to having to deal with bad players as a tank. They pull for you, all hit different targets, don’t snare enemies that flee, don’t kick enemies that cast, the list goes on and on. The worst is priests that keep bubbling you, which causes you to lose rage. You have to keep clicking the thing off. Unless I have blood fury up (which I don’t use as a tank) DO NOT BUBBLE ME.
Here’s how I have dealt with it in the past, if you’re looking for options.
I stay silent in game and give the other person a -1 rating in the Rep tracker app, so I see it next time. Then, next time, I can drop group right away, as soon as I see a person with a negative-1 rating, and can drop before entering the dungeon.
So I put up with it that one time, reminding myself to be thankful for even being able to find a group at all, after days of searching. And try not to ever group with that person in the future.
Never heard of that app, I’ll have to check it out. Thank you for that info
Put a 2hander on in these situations. More damage=more rage.
Ok, get in the right mind set, tanking is PVP, you vs the DPS. Never use rend while tanking, dont use heroic strike until you are 60 and have some gear, basically, your only 2 buttons for the next 40+ levels for tanking is sunder armor and revenge. Tab is your friend, if you lose aggro, taunt it, then put a sunder or 2 into it.
Taunt generates zero threat, it just puts you at the top of the aggro table and you must generate threat from there.
Demo shout is only good for the debuff and the first thing you do to get the mobs that may have been body pulled by someone else, to get them on you. If there are more than 5 mobs, battle shout is going to be your AOE tanking ability, but it requires you to actually hit the rest of your party members with the buff to actually generate threat.
Facts about tanking:
-You will lose aggro.
-You will have to be mobile, while back peddling is acceptable for specific positioning of mobs, you will be swiveling around and moving quite a bit with your mouse, keyboard turning is really not acceptable, unless you are scratching your nose or something and have to slightly turn.
-You will probably have taunt on cooldown.
-Stuns are your friend while waiting on taunt to come off cooldown.
-Priests that Power Word Shield you on the pull, are not your friends, click it off.
I don’t know. I’m a healer, and I don’t pull in Classic.
If I’m sitting there twiddling my thumbs because a tank is pulling like a turtle in a snow storm, I will /s “You can pull more if you want. We’re good.”
After I say that, the tank pug will typically type something like one of the following:
1.) Yeah, sorry. I’m trying to figure this out. It’s been years since I did this.
This means: deal with it. He’s trying to re-learn Classic tanking. Let him do it and don’t be a dbag.
2.) If you don’t like the way I tank, gtfo.
In which case, I leave the group because I don’t need to pug to get my needs met in Classic. I have a guild for that, and I don’t play with jerks if I can help it.
OP strikes me as the #1 type. Anyone who gets too impatient with you (like a couple posters on this thread) is just…one of those people. They’re always right and you will always be wrong, and nothing you say will ever convince them to hear your side or sympathize with it. Let them play with others like them and let it go. But on the plus side, you’re a tank. You’ll always have a group that wants you.
That only matters at higher levels when the DPS get 3 shot. For level 20’s, even a DPS can tank. As a tank, if you show weakness your group will get impatient and kinda take over. As a tank you pull when your healer has 80% Mana or above. You don’t have too wait for the Mana DPS to get Mana, unless it’s a big pull or a boss fight. If your healer pulls, you are going to slow or you were unlucky and ran into that .001% scenerio.
You can make some of the pugs happy most of the time or most of the pugs happy some of the time, but you will never make all the pugs happy all of the time.
I guess I’m just saying, that there are so many ways people enjoy running dungeons.
Good luck and I hope you have fun with it. Also remember standing up for yourself and your ‘fun’ in a pug doesn’t make you a prima donna. How you stand up for yourself can though.
to the OP.
they wont learn till around… mara? or BRD.
I suggest not taunting off them. or trying to pull aggrro from people intentionally trying to get aggro…
They want it. they can have it…
If it isn’t leading directly to a wipe, I don’t usually say anything.
There are a couple of ways I tend to deal with someone else pulling, and those are relatively consistent with how I would deal with someone pulling aggro.
I tend to prioritize taunt for pulling off the healer, if the healer should pull aggro.
If a DPS is tanking a mob or 1v1ing a mob 25 yards away, I tend to do nothing, but will be ready to taunt should the healer pull aggro from that mob.
I do not recall ever having a healer start pulls. This makes me wonder if you were not going very slowly, but also suggests that the healer did not appear to be worried.
If it is a single mob, then it’s easy enough to taunt the one. If it is multiple jobs, then you likely have a situation where you have no rage, cannot charge and generate any rage, because you are in combat, and need to swing.
I suppose, in this situation, I would most likely start hitting some one of the mobs on the healer, taunt another of the mobs, and depending on how much rage I had then, and many others have engaged, Battle Shout, then start tab targeting, the whole time prioritizing gaining aggro over the healer.
If you get very frustrated, you can always pop on a 2hander, go battle stance and just DPS. Then complain to whoever pulled that they aren’t doing a good enough job of holding aggro.
Wrong. The healer could have said something to the effect of “I can handle it so please pull more” but obviously didn’t and kept on pulling after being asked to stop; that means they are either an impatient dick or just a dick.
do you have any threat plates or similar addon that allows you to see the aggro/threat of all the mobs?
so, as a tank, all the mobs would have “green” health bars when you had threat on all of them, yellow bars would mean you are losing threat, and red means it is attacking another party member
this helps immensely
also,
do you have a ranged pull yet (bow or gun?)
make sure you do or you risk body pulling extras if you charge into a mob and on certain packs this can be trouble
i wouldnt worry about “tanking” and outcomes until sm or later
up to there most toons in a group can (unless totally incompetent) “tank” a mob
the question you want to ask yourself is if you lose a mob where did it run to?
did it bee-line to healer? (and could be case if healer is pulling) then you need to do what you need to do to get it back
did it beeline to a “tankier” or another member who can “fend for himself” for a bit?
if so then let them
low levels is almost impossible to have perfectly clean pulls when more than 2 or three mobs get involved
——
other problems you will run into are initiating pull and intending to drag mob back to group to create some neutral ground but group immediately starts to dps as soon as you start combat
now you might lose aggro and there is good chance other mobs join the action
now i do not “let them die” if i can help it; a passive aggressive response can lead to a wipe if not careful
but in an rfc if group is pulling first i might let them handle the inc
or run ahead to force group to keep up
part of the dynamics of being a tank is manipulating the pace of the run
let group pull as mobs come and dps opens up hit a couple of mobs and move ahead to the next group and pull them- the first mobs will die and group wont have time to get in trouble because you are already on next pack
embrace the chaos
be most wary of straggling casters that have come to the party and no one is aware of
can you interrupt? will charging said mob get more mobs?
maybe i should kite all the way back and drag everything
you need to be mobile and active
not just tagging one mob and face tanking unaware of the whole fight
use your cd’s
be vocal and communicate
You’re the tank law down the rules before the run starts If they cant follow them then remove them from the group or just leave. You wont have trouble finding another group or replacement DPS.
Not true. I’ve been in dungeons where the healer runs ahead of me and pulls 10 mobs.
As many as I need to.
I only leave if someone who immediately starts DPSing on the pull with AoE or like Blade Flurry says something like “This tank can’t hold aggro”. Yeah no kidding I can’t hold aggro, you’re dropping your load immediately.
For low level tanking:
Spam shield block and Revenge.
Sunder costs too much Rage, Heroic Strike costs too much rage.
Hi Texhaka,
I’m sorry that it didn’t go as smoothly and without the extra issues. I figured with RFC and this late in the game that it would be all new and unexperienced.
I am sure that you have read the forums (not just replies to this posting), so the question is what do you want to do.
Good luck and I hope things get better.
Edit: