As a tank who is breaking into the 10-12ish range and trying to fine-tune routes, I can understand the frustration here. DoS is pretty straightforward. Some other dungeons, however, aren’t as easy. SD, for instance, in a PuG. I don’t expect people to bring invis pots in a PuG. That makes lining up prideful buffs in there very difficult for anything other than the first and last bosses. Is that my fault as a tank?
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Honestly, Prideful was such a bad thing to add. It makes it so if you pull one or two extra mobs, you can basically toss your Prideful buff into the trash. It just creates more pressure than needed to make sure no one (including DPS that accidentally pull) make a mistake and you run a perfect route.
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The problem is that it’s mandatory to get that route addon for tanks.
It’s a design issue. Already tanks deal with stress in general specially with the kiting meta and such but also the group have to deal with no ideal routes sometimes… expecting prideful for every single boss on pugs is a bit unrealistic.
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The game and community does everything it possibly can to make tanking unrewarding. The expectation is that you will have done research and watched videos on how to play your video game correctly. If you did not someone will leave the group and everyone’s time is wasted. The idea of learning as you go and progressing with your character is completely dead in WoW. I play 3 MMOs currently, because SL, and this seems completely unique to WoW.
There is a path you will follow. It will not change, except for when it does. You will not deviate from it or all of the prideful timings will be off. There is no room for individual choice. There is no room for individual playstyle. This is poor game design. I liked the S4 affix from BFA, Awakened, It let you run instances in multiple ways, do different skips based on the affix, and even let you make up lost time by having a harder boss fight. This was good game design.
I do my M+ if the few friends I have still playing want me to.
But why tank in WoW when I can have fun tanking in other MMOs?
When I went back to FF14 following the dissapointment of Blizzcon I got to my first dungeon as a gladiator (tank) and got a whisper before the first pull “Hey, I see this is your first time here. It’s pretty straightforward but whisper me back if you need any advice on what to do.” I have never seen this in WoW, and was actually pretty shocked by simple human kindness. That’s considered NORMAL in other games. It was actually weird adjusting back to people who chat, and to having fun.
All this is my opinion, your results may vary, blah blah blah.
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I don’t know about that one. DoS is one of the least straightforward, solely because of the Ardenweald wing and having to clear half the inner circle before going to hakkar. It’s just not that intuitive for someone who hasn’t experienced it before. Once you get the route down it is easy, but that can be said about them all.
It’s entirely possible to look at a route online and never need the addon.
Actually you can find an interactive route for each week on Icy Viens
It is basically the MDT but in a web format. So you can keep it open on a second monitor and it makes it easier to look at while playing.
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You can have routes ready to go to help your tanks. Talk to them before the run if you’re pugging and make sure they have a route. If not have routes ready to link them. You don’t need to make your own either, just take the “no skip routes” from here, those are perfectly manageable for anyone within reason.
https://raider.io/news?tag=weekly-routeI’m new, ok! Too used to following the tank that sometimes I tell a DPS to lead because as DPS, I can know the road, but suddenly when I’m a tank I forget. 
I haven’t tanked that high, though.
1 Like
tanks are usually braindead in all manner of speaking. DPS usually has to always carry the tank and healer around for all end game activity.
Nope, you nailed it actually. There are dungeons that either require complex skipping, multiple backtracks or something else to line up Pride on more than 1 boss and that I think you just suck it up I would never blame anyone for not being able to manipulate the numbers in those dungeons. I mean myself I still avoid tanking Plaguefal becauce for some reason my routing is also janky so I either heal or dps til I learn better.
But also there are some dungeons like DoS and Halls of Attonement where you can manage pride on every boss or most bosses at least. I mean in DoS you almost need pride for a pug during tyrannical weeks or you get so many extra phases and shields.
To top it all off if the tank had just gone straight, pack to pack to boss to pack to boss then I wouldn’t have even been upset. But this guy went out of his way to waste time with extra running around and still didn’t line up prides… that’s like the double whammy of stupidity.
As stated I do tank, I know my route as well as the other popular routes through each dungeon especially Other Side because I’ve been trying to “farm,” the trinket. As soon as we killed the pride, two trolls and he kept going around the platform I said “this route is only going to get pride on 1 boss right?” He said yeah so at that and pulled the next pack so at that point my realistic options were…
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Drop group because I didn’t like the route, not fair to the other three people.
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Tell the tank we need to rework his route during the middle of a dungeon and recalculate on the fly?
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Suffer through and add him to my list of tanks not to use in the future. This is what I chose.
It should NOT be at the point where the expectation is to have a route planning mod installed so that you can participate in your video game correctly.
The fact that this is considered normal is a symptom of some very deep problems in WoW. Both in game and in the community.
14 Likes
I’m going to start asking, this is actually a great point. Since I rank half the time I know the routes so if I’m healing and ty r tank doesn’t know where to go I can offer to lead from the get go.
No one said anything about needing another program installed, although I don’t know many people looking to do even remotely difficult content that don’t use addons. That’s a different thread though.
If he doesn’t have the addon, and he had done +12 mythics already which I could see he had, then why was he running around like a headless chicken instead of following the normal path?
I used to feel like that. But you have to remember that you don’t have to do it exactly the way they do it.
Call that the “ideal perfect situation”, but remember you don’t need perfection to time dungeons.
Those videos are a great starting point, but don’t try to memorize everything. As you tank, you will learn naturally that there are 2-3 hard pulls in a dungeon that give you trouble and that you should save a/some cooldowns for it. Which ones? As you tank, you will get an intuition about which ones.
Memorizing the video is trying to learn everything in a way that is not organic. Practice will lead you there in a more organic way.
If you are not feeling sure about something on a dungeon, jump into a group doing a dungeon a few levels lower so that you can try it and still save the run if things don’t work well.
That said, be prepared for some rude people calling your names while you are still learning lol
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I’ll take pride over last seasons obelisks. But I’d love something that didn’t require totally changing routes.
Bruh, you have no idea how terrible most of the playerbase is. I honestly can’t play my alts anymore. They’re dps so I can’t be picky about who I group with. So many 200+ ilvl dps doing sub 3k dps. Totally clueless tanks, healers literally not using healing cds. Absolute pain. They make a +8 feel like a 20.
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Are you quite certain?
You had a bad tank experience, and that sucks.
If your in a +11… maybe he’s learning the prideful paths? No need to be mean to the man. Not following the most optimal possible path does not mean that he’s running around like a chicken without a head, but probably that he is unsure of the optimal route and is doing the best he can. If he was able to complete +12 that does not mean he did it with the most optimal route.
May I ask Oortaelia: What did you do to help the tank to improve? You’re complaining about him on the forums, but did you provide him any feedback like whispering “Hey, next time your in here, you can skip that one, hug the wall here like I am and you can run by?” Or “Grab those guys and we can get a prideful before the boss fight.”
So, did you try to help him or are you just unhappy?
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Routes are overrated. I’ve yoloed through dungeons doing the most simple straight forward pathing in the game. The biggest difference on weather or not keys go smoothly is people doing the mechanics clean, using utility well and overall not sucking
My routes are impeccable
Prideful is great, the way it spawns is not
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If he did those 12s as dps it’s easy not to know. If he did them as a tank with someone helping he might not know. If he did them as a tank with no assist he probably had beast dps.